Chen Cheng stills
On August 4, 1947, Chen Cheng, chief of staff of the Kuomintang Army, arrived in the Northeast and officially served as the director of the Xingyuan, and was fully responsible for the military affairs in the Northeast, "eliminating the communist bandits and building a new Northeast of the Three People's Principles". In order to achieve this grand goal, Chen Cheng began to spare no effort to increase troops and equipment for the Northeast; Since Guo Chen, commander-in-chief of the Joint Logistics Headquarters, and others were originally members of Chen Cheng's party, it was relatively easy to replenish weapons and ammunition, and in just a few months, 112502 rifles, 12,864 light and heavy machine guns, 12,770 submachine guns, and nearly 30 million guns and shells of different calibers were shipped.
The Kuomintang army reinforced the northeast
Annexation of the Northeast miscellaneous new 4 armies
However, it was more difficult to replenish troops, because the major battlefields in the Guannai were also tight, Chen Cheng only transferred the 49th Army and the 54th Army with all his efforts, and the remaining gap could only be solved on the spot. In 1931, he was still the commander of the 18th Army, and was ordered to Jiangxi to participate in the encirclement and suppression of the central "Soviet area" At the beginning, he only had 2 divisions and 1 brigade under his jurisdiction; However, by absorbing other miscellaneous divisions defeated by the Red Army, its strength doubled within half a year, and there were as many as 8 divisions under his command.
This time, in his capacity as chief of staff and director of the line, Chen Cheng took control of the military and political power in the northeast, and acted without scruples, swallowing up all the troops in the 13 security zones in the northeast, and also reorganizing the two traffic police corps of the Military Command and Secrecy Bureau in the northeast to form 12 provisional divisions, and then mixed them with the old units to create four new armies, namely the new 3rd Army, the new 5th Army, the New 7th Army, and the New 8th Army. In just one month, the Northeast Kuomintang Army increased from 8 to 14 armies, and the total strength of the army also rose from 360,000 to 550,000.
The quality of the newly formed troops is worrisome
For half a year, the offensive obstructed the enemy's training
However, these newly formed troops are all reorganized from the security regiment and the former "puppet Manchukuo" troops, and many of them are even bandits, improvised patchwork, and their combat effectiveness is weak; Even the original eight armies needed to be retrained because many backbone personnel had been transferred. According to Chen Cheng's plan, these units were unified into four field corps and three pacification offices, with the local garrison offices temporarily taking charge of the task and the field corps concentrating on reorganizing and training so that they could be used in the next mobile operation.
But our army did not intend to give Chen Cheng time to reorganize the troops. In September 1947, our army launched the autumn offensive, first encircled and annihilated 2 divisions of the 49th Army in the area of Jinxi, Liaoning, and then severely damaged the 22nd Division of the 93rd Army from Jinzhou, and by the end of the offensive on November 5, a total of more than 69,000 enemies were annihilated. On December 15, the winter offensive followed, and at this time, our army had grown to more than 730,000 people in the northeast, including 40 divisions in 9 columns of the field army, with a total of more than 420,000 people, so the offensive was very fierce. By the end of the offensive in March of the following year, the Northeast Kuomintang army had lost a total of 156383 men, of whom 105012 were captured, and more than 8,000 had revolted and surrendered.
Our army launched a series of autumn-winter offensives
Chen Cheng left the Northeast Battlefield in a gloomy manner
So far, Chen Cheng has only been in charge of the northeast for eight months, and the Kuomintang army has lost more than 225,000 people, in addition to 32 cities, and the remnants can only be trapped in three isolated areas centered on Shenyang, Changchun, and Jinzhou. On January 10, 1948, Chiang Kai-shek personally flew to Shenyang to clean up the mess, and decided to abolish the Northeast Expedition and change it to the Northeast "Bandits" General Headquarters, with Wei Lihuang, commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force during the Anti-Japanese War, as the commander-in-chief, and took over the military command of the Northeast with full authority.
Chen Cheng knew that he had completely lost the hearts and minds of the Northeast Army and the people, so he could only leave Shenyang on the pretext of illness and go to Shanghai for treatment.
Temporary
Wei Lihuang