In August 1945, after Japan announced its surrender, Chiang Kai-shek had been plotting to provoke a civil war for a long time, but he pretended to want peace talks and invited Chairman Mao to Chongqing for negotiations, in an attempt to throw the blame off our party. But Chiang Kai-shek did not expect that Chairman Mao swallowed mountains and rivers angrily and went to Chongqing in person, breaking Chiang Kai-shek's conspiracy of fake peace talks in one fell swoop.
Chiang Kai-shek's conspiracy
On the other hand, Chiang Kai-shek secretly ordered Yan Xishan to take advantage of the peace talks to seize the territory. Yan Xishan then mobilized more than 16,000 troops to launch a large-scale attack on the Shangdang area, quickly seizing several cities in an attempt to control the entire southeast of Jin in one fell swoop. At this time, the conspiracy of "talking" has been crushed, and the strategy of "fighting" naturally has to be targeted, and Liu Deng's army immediately mobilized the main force and local corps with a total of 31,000 troops, and officially launched the Shangdang campaign.
After learning that our army had launched a counteroffensive, Yan Xishan was in a hurry, and immediately increased more than 20,000 troops from Taiyuan and threw them into the Shangdang Campaign, trying to resist the offensive of our army, and raising the total number of troops participating in the Jin Sui Army to the height of 13 divisions, a full 38,000 people. Judging from the number of troops, Yan Xishan's Jin Sui army has a slight advantage, and the defender occupies a favorable position, but Yan Xishan's abacus is still wrong.
First, from the point of view of the strength of the main force, the Jin Sui army has an advantage, and the weapons and equipment also have an advantage. However, the real combat effectiveness cannot be compared with our army at all, and the commanders of our army are Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping, so the command height of the two sides is not at the same level at all;
Second, the main force of Yan Xishan's Jin Sui army was not gathered in one place, on one side was more than 14,000 people defending the city, and on the other side was more than 20,000 people reinforced from Taiyuan, which gave our army the opportunity to break through one by one. When the Taiyuan Jin Sui army rushed to help, our army was already ready to besiege the city and send reinforcements, and an ambush caused the enemy's reinforcements to fall into the water.
Based on these two points, Yan Xishan's conspiracy to seize the Shangdang area was quickly crushed, and our army achieved a hearty victory in the Shangdang Campaign, not only completely annihilating most of the enemy troops, but also capturing an unimaginably rich trophy. Who would have thought that just by winning the battle of Shangdang, 2,200 light and heavy machine guns would be captured.
In the records of the Jin Suijun, this number is even more, and the details are even in single digits. According to the data, the Jin Sui army lost a total of 1,808 machine guns and 893 submachine guns in the Shangdang Campaign, with a total of more than 2,700. This can't help but make people wonder, why is Yan Xishan's Jin Suijun so fat? Why is the number of light and heavy machine gun losses recorded by the Jin Sui army more than the number captured by our army? Where did these 500 guns go?
Yan Xishan's arsenal
Before the start of the all-out war of resistance, there were three famous arsenals in China, namely the Shenyang Arsenal, the Hanyang Arsenal, and the Taiyuan Arsenal. Among them, the Taiyuan Arsenal is Yan Xishan's proud work, it was in the early stage of his administration of Shanxi, after seeing the sophisticated weapons of the Hanyang Arsenal, he realized that if he wanted to be strong, he must build his own arsenal, and the Taiyuan Arsenal was born.
Yan Xishan really invested a lot of money in the Taiyuan Arsenal back then, not only imported a large number of German equipment into the arsenal, but also invited a large number of talents in the field of ordnance manufacturing to help him, so that soon after the establishment of the Taiyuan Arsenal, it quickly entered the ranks of rapid development, and the explosives factory, gun and ammunition factory, artillery factory and other branches were established one after another, and the scale became larger and larger.
However, the reason why it is difficult to set up an arsenal is not because it is difficult to build an arsenal, nor is it that it is difficult to purchase weapons equipment, but because the arsenal is easy to build, but there are too many related supporting facilities, and we cannot only have the country's top weapon-manufacturing capacity, but we cannot master the energy, materials and other related facilities for manufacturing weapons.
Since Yan Xishan has built the Taiyuan Arsenal, he naturally has to build these supporting facilities, otherwise no matter how powerful the arsenal is, it will be just a useless showcase, and it will still be "stuck" in terms of materials. As a result, gasoline refineries, Northwest steelworks and other related energy and material manufacturers have been established one after another, because of the Taiyuan Arsenal to consume materials, these factories are also developing very rapidly.
Soon, the Taiyuan Arsenal was like a well-equipped aircraft carrier battle group, establishing a complete weapons manufacturing system, with a continuous flow of energy and materials, the Taiyuan Arsenal's high-end talents and equipment were frantically produced, and at its peak, it could even produce more than 100,000 grenades per day.
The light and heavy machine guns mentioned above are also the strengths of the Taiyuan Arsenal, among which submachine guns can produce more than 900 units per month, rifles can produce more than 3,000 units per month, and even artillery guns can produce more than 100 units in a month.
In addition, Yan Xishan also set up an automobile repair factory, although this factory was advertised as an automobile factory, but the equipment was amazingly sophisticated, and the supporting facilities were also very complete, and even aircraft could be assembled, making Yan Xishan a big warlord who could produce guns and ammunition, aircraft cannons and automobiles, and made a lot of money just by selling weapons and equipment to various warlords.
During the Anti-Japanese War, although the Taiyuan Arsenal was lost, the foundation of Yan Xishan was still there, and the accumulation of so many years of painstaking management allowed him to hoard a large number of weapons and equipment. The 893 submachine guns captured in the Shangdang campaign as an example, in that year, it was actually just a day's output of the Taiyuan Arsenal, and it was not unusual for the Jin Sui army to have so many light and heavy machine guns in the Shangdang campaign.
The reason why the quantity is not right
Even so, there were more than 2,700 light and heavy machine guns lost by the Jin Sui army in the battle of the party, why did our army only capture more than 2,200 when the number of trophies was counted after the war, and how did the difference between the two appear by more than 500?
Although the Shangdang Campaign did not last particularly long, the scope of the battle was still not small, and the battlefield centered on Changzhi was liberated by the five surrounding cities. After that, on the way to support the reinforcements in Taiyuan, they were ambushed by our army, and the battle was very fierce. In addition, the Changzhi defenders later broke through the siege, and the scope of operations was further expanded.
Judging from such a battle situation, the number of battlefields in the Shangdang Campaign was large, and the terrain was not complicated, but the position where the Jin Sui army lost its weapons was not the process of attacking the fortified position, but it was only on the way to the rout or breakthrough that there was a large-scale scene of "losing armor and abandoning armor", which led to the scattering of these weapons in all corners of the battlefield, and it was impossible to capture them all when cleaning the battlefield.
Moreover, in addition to the main force and local troops, our army also had various militias involved in it at that time. In the pursuit after the defeat of the enemy, many of the scattered and fleeing enemies were killed or captured by the militia, and the weapons in their hands were naturally captured by the militia. The combination of various reasons has led to a gap between the number of weapons lost by the enemy and the number of weapons captured by the main forces of our army, which is also a normal phenomenon.