At that time, there was a popular saying among the senior commanders and generals of the Kuomintang army: Wu has Hu Zongnan, Wen has He Zhenhan, and can Wen can Wu Li Mo'an. From this sentence, we can see that Li Mo'an is a very outstanding person among the Kuomintang generals, and in fact, Li Mo'an led the troops in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and played a major role and made great achievements. But how could such an outstanding Kuomintang general be tricked during the Liberation War?
Born in poverty, study more
When Li Mo'an was studying at a young age, he often interrupted his studies due to family difficulties. In 1916, after completing his primary education in his hometown, he began to educate himself at home for financial reasons. However, thanks to the help of his cousin, who was a teacher at Chu Yi School, he was able to continue his studies at the school for two years before transferring to the B Industrial School for another year.
Although life was not easy and Li Mo'an had to temporarily give up his studies, he did not give up his desire to learn. He worked in a hotel for a year to build up capital and life experience. Subsequently, with his perseverance and determination, he was successfully admitted to Changsha Normal School, where he spent three years of study, and finally graduated from the second department of the school in 1923.
During the winter and summer vacations or during the suspension of school, his cousin would carefully tutor him, select ancient texts for him to read, and guide him in the practice of composition and character practice. These experiences not only greatly improved Li Mo'an's writing ability, but also allowed him to develop a good habit of diligent thinking and independent problem solving.
Nengwen Nengwu Li Mo'an
In the Battle of Xinkou in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, the Japanese army gathered 20 or 30 aircraft, more than 50 tanks, hundreds of artillery pieces, infantry and cavalry units, and launched several fierce attacks on the defenders' positions, making the battle extremely tragic. On the central position, the two sides engaged in fierce battles, and the positions changed hands repeatedly, and at the end of each battle, thousands of people were killed on both sides. On the left flank battlefield, due to the open terrain, the Japanese tank units were like fish in water, and the offensive momentum was fierce.
The terrain of the left flank battlefield provided excellent combat conditions for the Japanese tanks. Those tanks charged with impunity in the plains, causing great damage to the defenders' positions. Some battalions and companies of the 57th Regiment of the 10th Division, in the face of these ferocious tanks, did not flinch, and met them in a platoon, and although many were eventually crushed by the tanks, their heroic spirit was admirable.
In such a grim situation, Li Mo'an was extremely anxious in the command headquarters. He knew that he had to come up with effective countermeasures to deal with the Japanese tank attack. At the critical moment, he had an idea and came up with an ingenious tactic.
Li Mo'an ordered the soldiers to use bottles to load gasoline and kerosene, and they stood on the roofs of their houses and threw these flammable liquids on the tanks attacking the village. Immediately afterward, they skillfully used grenades to detonate the fuel, successfully setting fire to several enemy tanks, causing them to fall into flames.
The controversy over Li Su
In early July 1946, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized about 460,000 people from 58 brigades of the regular army to launch an attack on the liberated areas of East China. Among them, Li Mo'an commanded about 120,000 people in 5 integrated divisions and 15 brigades, in an attempt to occupy Rugao and Hai'an, consolidate their positions along the Yangtze River, and then attack northward, in response to the Kuomintang army attacking Huainan and Huaibei, and flank Huaiyin, the capital of the Suzhou-Anhui border region.
In order to smash the offensive of the Kuomintang army, Su Yu, commander of the Central China Field Army, and Tan Zhenlin, political commissar of the Central China Field Army, decided to concentrate more than 30,000 troops of the 1st and 6th Divisions and the 7th and 10th Columns, and with the cooperation of the local armed forces and militia, to make full use of the favorable conditions such as familiarity with the people and places and the convenience of supplies in the liberated areas, and to use the tactics of concentrating superior forces and annihilating the enemy in various ways to fight in a mobile manner and strike at the enemy. In accordance with the spirit of the instructions of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China on winning a few battles on the inner front and then moving on to the outer front, they were determined to respond to the enemy's attack with flexible and changeable tactics.
Su Yu led the Central China Field Army to fight seven consecutive battles in 45 days, annihilating six brigades and five traffic police brigades of the Kuomintang Army, totaling more than 53,000 people. This victory not only dealt a blow to the offensive spirit of the Kuomintang army, strengthened the confidence of the military and people in Central China in victory, and bought time for the work in the liberated areas of Jiangsu and Anhui to be transferred to a wartime system, but also provided valuable experience for the PLA to carry out internal operations. This was an important victory for the Central China Field Army and an important victory for the Chinese People's Liberation Army in the War of Liberation.
Where does the money come from?
Speaking of which, Li Mo'an is also a famous Kuomintang general who has experienced a hundred battles, and he also has very rich combat experience during the War of Resistance Against Japan, but why did he lose a complete defeat when he was obviously ahead in strength and equipment?
In addition to the gap in intelligence work and the underestimation of the enemy, there are two points that can be attributed to Li Mo'an, the supreme commander. On the one hand, it is because when the battlefield battle was carried out, Li Mo'an was significantly older than Su Yu, and the older Li Mo'an had lost the sharpness of the year, and he did not have the aura of the year in commanding operations.
On the other hand, it is precisely because Li Mo'an has a large number of soldiers in his hands that he needs to coordinate more battlefield arrangements, and perhaps there are also reasons for being pampered for a long time, Li Mo'an has basically rarely gone to the front line to command, and the news he has obtained is reported from level to level, and this kind of battlefield information is often unsatisfactory in terms of timeliness. Su Yu is different, he goes deep into the front line of operations, grasps the battlefield information in real time, and commands more flexibly and freely.
There is a person in the Kuomintang who has recognized this problem, and he is Chen Cheng. It's a pity that under the circumstances at that time, even Chen Cheng had no way to correct these problems in the Kuomintang army, so he could only watch the Kuomintang troops gradually move from superiority to defeat.