【Huang Kecheng of the Ten Great Generals' War of Resistance】
Among the ten generals, Su Yu ranked first with invincible battle achievements, and Xu Haidong ranked second because of his great achievements in 5,000 oceans, so why did Huang Kecheng rank third in his ability to suppress Chen Geng, Zhang Yunyi, Luo Ruiqing and others?
Chairman Mao once said that General Tan Zheng is the representative of our military's political work, but in fact, Huang Kecheng is also a representative of political work, especially his advanced strategic vision, which few people can compare.
Today, we will introduce Huang Kecheng's outstanding contributions in the period of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Red Army made many major concessions in order to smoothly reorganize itself into the Eighth Route Army and maintain the hard-won anti-Japanese united front, such as abandoning the invincible magic weapon of our army: the political commissar system.
However, some drawbacks soon appeared, because the Kuomintang and communist armies fought in coordination and cooperation on many battlefields and had close exchanges, many of the evil tendencies and evil tendencies of the Kuomintang troops were inevitably exposed to by our army, such as the most common "meeting gifts."
Officers of different levels of the Kuomintang, when they first meet or ask for something, they will have different amounts of money as a "meeting gift", social contacts, eating and drinking, and even "playing tea and drinking flower wine", which are common things, even worse, and collude with each other, eat empty pay, drink soldiers' blood, engage in smuggling, extortion...
These unhealthy tendencies and evil tendencies may cause invisible corrosion hazards to the officers and men of the Eighth Route Army.
In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, some bad phenomena did appear in the Eighth Route Army; some cadres envied the Kuomintang officers, paid attention to food and clothing, and some even printed the business card of "major general" and flaunted their might; the most serious thing was Zhou Kun, chief of staff of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, who was tempted by the Kuomintang's sugar-coated shells and had a desire for profit, and even absconded with huge sums of money, causing a great negative impact on our army.
Huang Kecheng was then serving as director of the Organization Department of the General Political Department of the Eighth Route Army, and he saw these problems very clearly, so he solemnly wrote a letter to the Central Military Commission proposing to immediately restore the political commissar system of our army, which was highly valued by Chairman Mao.
Soon, the political commissar system was re-established in the Eighth Route Army, and Huang Kecheng was also appointed as the political commissar of the 344th Brigade of the 115th Division, and led the 344th Brigade with the brigade commander Xu Haidong to move to Jinjiyu and create the base area in the southern section of the Taihang Mountains.
At the beginning of 1938, the Japanese launched the "Nine-Way Siege" in a vain attempt to destroy the anti-Japanese base areas and seize the Yellow River crossing, and the 344th Brigade led by Huang Kecheng and Xu Haidong launched a campaign against the "Nine-Way Siege".
At the end of June, in order to support the nationalist forces in the battle of Houma, the 344th Brigade, led by Huang Kecheng, entered the village of Machidian, which was located between Jincheng and Houma, and a road passed through the village, often passed by Japanese Kou military vehicles, and Huang Kecheng decided to set up an ambush here.
On July 6, the Machidian ambush battle began, which destroyed more than 800 Japanese troops and destroyed more than 20 military vehicles in one fell swoop, delaying the Japanese action in Houma and effectively cooperating with the frontal battlefield of the Kuomintang army.
With the deepening of the war, the important towns of Taiyuan, Zhengzhou, and Jinan in north China fell one after another, and the vast area between the four major railways of Pinghan, Jinpu, Longhai, and Shide became a vacuum zone, and the central authorities ordered Henan, Hebei, Shandong, and other places to organize forces to establish anti-Japanese base areas.
In April 1940, Huang Kecheng led the main force of the second column from the Taihang Mountains to the Jiluyu Border Region, and merged with the Jiluyu detachment to form the Jiluyu Military Region, and Huang Kecheng concurrently served as the commander of the military region. By December 1941, the Jilu-Yu Anti-Japanese Base Area, which included southern Hebei, northern Henan, and southwestern Lu, had been initially formed.
The continuous growth of the Eighth Route Army's anti-Japanese base areas made the Kuomintang, which was constantly losing its divisions and land, extremely frightened, and constantly launched conflicts and frictions with the Eighth Route Army; in 1940, the Kuomintang diehards attacked the anti-Japanese base areas such as Taihang and Ji'nan, and Zhu Huaibing of the 97th Army attacked Wu'an in the south and attacked the advance detachment of the 129th Division.
Our party has repeatedly affirmed the principle that "no one offends me, I will not offend, and if anyone offends me, I will be a prisoner." The 129th Division organized a counterattack against the recalcitrant troops in the areas of Cixian, Wu'an, Xiangxian, and Linxian, and Huang Kecheng also led the 344th Brigade to cooperate in the response, eliminating more than 10,000 recalcitrant troops, which greatly dealt a blow to the arrogance of the Kuomintang reactionaries.
Our party has always had a superb strategic overall plan, the expansion of the Eighth Route Army in North China, the expansion of the New Fourth Army in East China, more and more necessary to achieve north-south communication, and at this time the Soviet Union and China are also facing the advance of the Kuomintang Han Deloitte troops, Huang Kecheng, who is known for his strategic vision, asked the central authorities and was willing to lead the troops to the south to support, which was approved by the central authorities.
In August 1940, Huang Kecheng led his troops into northeast Anhui and formed the Fifth Column of the Eighth Route Army, with Huang Kecheng as commander and political commissar. In October, at the critical moment when the New Fourth Army and Han Deloitte were decisively fighting the Yellow Bridge, Huang Kecheng led the main force of the Fifth Column to help and joined the New Fourth Army in the Yanfu area.
This is also the first meeting of the southern and northern units of our army after the Long March of the Red Army, which is of great historical significance, not only opening up the base area in northern Jiangsu, but also opening up the connection between north China and central China base area.
In January 1941, after the outbreak of the Anhui Incident in southern Anhui, the New Fourth Army was rebuilt, and Huang Kecheng was appointed commander and political commissar of the 3rd Division of the New Fourth Army, and also served as the commander and political commissar of the Northern Jiangsu Military Region.
After entering 1945, the Japanese army lost one after another in the Pacific Theater, and the Japanese army invading China also had to make a combat plan to prevent the landing of US troops in China, and dispatched Japanese troops from Funing, Jiangsu Province, to deploy along the Yangtze River to strengthen the defense of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, leaving a vacuum area filled by puppet troops. Huang Kecheng seized the gap between the two and concentrated his forces to launch the Funing Campaign, which connected northern Jiangsu with the liberated areas of central Jiangsu, Huainan, and Huaibei.
In the five years that Huang Kecheng led the Eighth Route Army to the south to create an anti-Japanese base area, he commanded the military and people of northern Jiangsu to fight more than 5,000 battles with the Japanese puppet army and the Kuomintang recalcitrant army, annihilated more than 60,000 enemy troops, opened up a liberated area including 40,000 square kilometers of land and a population of more than 8 million, and made great contributions to the victory of the national War of Resistance.
What is even more worthy of historical memory is that when Huang Kecheng was about to win the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he once again realized with great foresight that in the future strategic pattern, the northeast, which has the most important industrial base in the Far East, will certainly be a decisive region, and whoever preemptively occupies the northeast will have a great strategic initiative.
Huang Kecheng's proposal coincided with Chairman Mao's, and the central authorities soon made a strategic plan to march into the northeast, drawing elite troops from all over the country and going north to the northeast.
At the end of September 1945, Huang Kecheng, who was far away in central China, led 35,000 men of the 3rd Division of the New Fourth Army to the northeast in a lightly armored battle, becoming the first unit of our army to arrive in the northeast and one of the main forces of the Fourth Field Army in the future, making a major contribution to the final victory of the Liberation War.
(References: "Biography of Huang Kecheng", "Huang Kecheng and the Anti-Japanese Base Area in Northern Jiangsu", "Eighth Route Army", "New Fourth Army")
【The Story of the Ten Great Generals' War of Resistance】Published Articles——
How was Su Yu refined? As early as the period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, there were many highlights
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, how great were Chen Geng's military achievements? More brilliant than many marshals
——To learn more about the story of the founding generals, you can check out the column of the history inn, a total of 100 founding generals.