The content of this article is written with authoritative information combined with personal opinions, and the source of the literature and screenshots have been marked at the end of the article, please be aware.
Preface
In 1988, General Su Yu's memoirs were officially published.
The old comrades-in-arms who had fought together on the battlefield got his memoirs, as if they saw the old friend who had passed away again, and their hearts were extremely emotional, both excited and sad.
The general's memoirs are written very plainly, with almost no rendering, but everyone still sees the problem.
The general did not mention a word about the Huaihai Campaign in the memoirs, and Chairman Mao once said that Su Yu "made the first contribution" in the Huaihai Campaign.
Such an important battle, why didn't Su Yu mention it?
The Battle for the Founding of the State
In 1948, with the successive victories of our army's Liaoshen Campaign and Pingjin Campaign, the Kuomintang was still in a state of siege and sent the most elite armed forces to fight to the death with our army.
The last battle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party is inevitable, what is the direction of the next operation?
This question kept circling in Su Yu's mind, and when the North China Field Army regained Jinan, Su Yu frowned as he looked at the direction of Xuzhou, which was not far from Jinan, on the map.
There are 180,000 national troops in Xuzhou, and if Jinan is not rescued, where will they go?
The next day, Chairman Mao received Su Yu's forward intelligence and his four suggestions for the future war situation.
Opening the intelligence, which included "If the enemy stops moving north, then we will carry out follow-up operations", Su Yu's suggestion outlines the prototype of the Huaihai Campaign.
In Su Yu's battle plan, the Huaihai Campaign was carried out in two stages: one captured the two Huai, recovered Gaoyou, and annihilated the invading enemy, and after the victory of the first stage, the three columns continued to expand their results and captured Lianyungang and Haizhou.
Before Su Yu's battle plan was handed over, Chairman Mao had already begun to think about the next operational direction of our army.
Many aspects of Su Yu's plan coincided with the chairman's ideas, and the chairman happily praised that "Su Yu's operational thinking is clear."
Chairman Mao immediately replied, "The Huaihai Campaign is very necessary, and I agree with Su Yu's opinion."
At the meeting of the Xibaipo Political Bureau, Chairman Mao put forward the principle of "transitioning from guerrilla warfare to regular warfare" after active discussions.
Soon, Chairman Mao's battle plan for the Dahuaihai campaign to the field armies was combined with the two key stages submitted by Su Yu.
The chairman added additional content that Su Yu did not expect, and Su Yu was also very impressed by the chairman's strategic thinking after seeing it.
Su Yu was very excited, the Huaihai Battle was the first time that our army took the initiative to attack from the Kuomintang and Communist War to the present.
Although there are only 600,000 troops in our army at present, while there are as many as 800,000 Kuomintang troops, there is a huge disparity in numbers, but this battle can be called a battle for the founding of the country.
The final attack was set for November 8, and the first target of the attack was Chiang Kai-shek's main force, Huang Baitao's corps.
If he defeated his troops in one fell swoop, it would be tantamount to a blow to the Kuomintang in the head, and although it could not be killed with one move, it would also be greatly damaged.
Su Yu thought of Sun Tzu's Art of War, and wanted to practice on Huang Baitao, and just finished arranging, but unexpectedly, the situation changed unexpectedly.
From small to large
At the beginning of November, Xibaipo suddenly received a telegram from Su Yu, temporarily changing the time of the attack to November 6.
When the news came, the atmosphere at the headquarters was a little solemn, and Su Yu's behavior was a serious violation of discipline, which was very unfavorable to him personally.
But Chairman Mao did not have any anger because of this, he hurriedly took the battle report, read the latest information, and fell into deep thought.
After many years of war with the Communists, Chiang Kai-shek still sensed that something was wrong and directly abandoned Lianyungang and returned to Xuzhou.
If the Kuomintang Department is prepared, it will inevitably destroy the preliminary arrangement of our army, and an early attack is indeed the best choice.
The chairman immediately called back, "agree, implement according to the actual situation", and gave Su Yu, the commander and fighter at the front, the highest trust and support.
The commander-in-chief of Xuzhou is Liu Zhi, who is known as the "victorious general" in the Kuomintang.
In order to ensure the stability of the war, Chiang Kai-shek sent his confidant Du Yuming to support.
After analyzing the offensive line of the East China Field Army, Du Yuming ordered the Kuomintang to retreat southwest of Xuzhou.
Then using the Huai River as a barrier and counterattacking with sophisticated weapons and equipment, it is fair to say that Du Yuming's tactics are very clever, but he missed a little.
Chiang Kai-shek was furious when he heard the news of the retreat of the defenders of Xuzhou, and airdropped his own handwritten letter to Xuzhou by plane overnight.
The content is concise and to the point: stop the retreat and turn to Suixikou for reinforcements. Du Yuming jumped in a hurry, but Chiang Kai-shek did not enter the oil and salt.
He also wanted to cut first and then play, but all the departments of the Kuomintang were directly under Chiang Kai-shek's orders, Liu Zhi and Du Yuming were already at odds with each other, and at this critical moment, Liu Zhi was eager to step on Du Yuming's foot.
This little episode turned out to be a turning point for the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
It is also a change in the situation on the front line, the commander must cut first and then play, our party troops are united in their hearts, and the leaders support and praise, while the Kuomintang is tilting against each other, and the top is suspicious, how can it achieve victory?
On November 22, under the rumbling artillery fire of our army, Huang Baitao's army collapsed for thousands of miles, and countless deaths were captured.
And in nearby Xuzhou, Li Mi's corps, Qiu Qingquan's corps, and Sun Yuanliang's corps watched the destruction of friendly forces.
At the beginning of December, the Kuomintang Huang Wei Army was wiped out again, and Du Yuming's troops were beaten by the Central China Field Army at Chenguanzhuang, and history began to repeat itself.
Next to them, Li Yannian and Liu Ruming stood by indifferently, while the three columns of our army were like a sharp iron tong.
clamped off Huang Baitao, ate Huang Wei's corps, trapped General Du Yuming, and clamped Li Yannian's department, so "eat one look at two and take care of three", the Kuomintang troops collapsed on the whole front.
In January 1949, the Huaihai Campaign was a complete victory, and Su Yu turned the small Huaihai plan originally formulated by our party into the big Huaihai plan.
With such a beautiful turnaround, it is no wonder that Chairman Mao called him "the greatest hero of the Huaihai Campaign".
Full support
Among the three major battles, the operational area of the Huaihai Campaign can be said to be unprecedentedly huge.
With Xuzhou as the center, the combat area covers half of China, and such a vast combat range, the joint operation of the three columns requires a huge amount of military material support.
Comrade Chen Yi once said affectionately: "The victory in the Huaihai Campaign was pushed by the people with a small cart."
Our 600,000 PLA troops fought bloody battles on the front line, and 5.4 million migrant workers from Shandong, Hebei, Jiangsu and Anhui made every effort to provide support.
These migrant workers not only contributed their vehicles and efforts, but also brought almost all the food support from their hometowns.
During the Huaihai Campaign, a total of more than 900 million catties of grain were raised in various places, and almost all the young and middle-aged people in the four provinces went to the battlefield, either to fight or to transport grain.
When the war reached a critical moment, the soldiers in the front fought bravely to kill the enemy, and the people in the rear desperately transported.
In the war zone, there were bombing planes and artillery and tanks, and countless people died heroically during transportation.
There was even a family of young and old who went into battle together to ensure that the military rations and clothing could be delivered to the front-line soldiers.
Chen Yi and Su Yu
According to post-war statistics, the ratio of soldiers to migrant workers in the war was as high as 1 to 9, which shows that there were many dangers on the road to transportation, and countless migrant workers died on the way to transportation.
And the soldiers received the supplies, looking at these food supplies that were easily transported by countless transportation migrant workers, and they were soaked in the blood of the transportation migrant workers.
The victory of the Huaihai Campaign was due to the wise leadership of our party, the joint operation of all columns, and the heroic killing of the enemy by the soldiers, but it was also a victory for the people.
It is only when the army and the people work together that they can achieve the final victory in the battle.
Battle of Huaihai
However, with such a brilliant record, General Su Yu in his later years did not mention a word and kept it secretive, what is the purpose of this?
The work of the many
General Su Yu is introverted, low-key and unpretentious, and has always been reluctant to mention his own merits.
In his later years, even his wife Chu Qing's proposal to compile a memoir was rejected by Su Yu, and Su Yu avoided the Huaihai Campaign.
Later, after General Su Yu fell seriously ill, he finally agreed to write a memoir, recording his life experience truthfully and leaving it for future generations to remember.
All the experiences and all the battles fought have been recorded one by one, but there is no Huaihai Campaign.
Awayu
Now that I think about it, the reason why General Su Yu avoided the Huaihai Battle so much was mainly due to the following reasons.
The original battle plan of the Huaihai Campaign was indeed submitted by Su Yu to Chairman Mao, and while Chairman Mao approved Su Yu's plan, he also made improvements and supplements to make the final plan.
Although the actual commander was Su Yu, Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping were nominally responsible for the unified mobilization of various departments at that time.
However, with the full affirmation and full support given by the two comrades Chen and Deng to Su Yu, Su Yu's orders could be issued smoothly.
Therefore, Su Yu never mentioned the Huaihai Campaign, and he didn't want to compete for merit and show his intentions, which was in line with his low-key and calm character.
The Huaihai Campaign brought almost bankrupt people in Shandong, Hebei, Suzhou, and Anhui, and lost both people and property.
As the proposer of the battle, Su Yu felt guilty about the great sacrifice of the people in the four places.
The victory of the war in exchange for the tragic sacrifice of the people, let alone his exploits in the battle, so he did not mention a word about the Huaihai Campaign, and did not look at it.
In the end, in Su Yu's eyes, the Battle of Huaihai was really not a difficult war to win.
At that time, our army had made a qualitative leap in terms of both the number of troops and military equipment, and it was no longer inferior to the Kuomintang troops.
Zhou Enlai and Su Yu
Compared with the many crises in the early years of guerrilla warfare, there was a shortage of materials and an uncertain future.
Although the Huaihai Campaign is of great significance to our army, the Huaihai Campaign still does not need to be mentioned in the war experienced by General Su Yu in his life.
General Su Yu's only written record of the Huaihai Campaign is a poem "Qinyuan Spring: Huaihai Campaign".
The last sentence "Destroy the Jiang dynasty, but also look at the present dynasty", the general's style and spirit are all in the words.
Image source: Baidu Images
Information sources:
Baidu Encyclopedia: - Huaihai Campaign
Today's headlines:; Hole A C
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