General Wei Lihuang was a strange man with extraordinary experience.
He was Mr. Zhongshan's defender, the "Tiger General" of the "Five Tiger Generals" in chiang Kai-shek's hands, and a good friend of the CCP leaders;
He was also a wanted "war criminal," and when he finally returned to the mainland, he became vice chairman of the National Defense Commission of the People's Republic of China, and finally died well.
Foreigners looked down on the Kuomintang but respected him a lot, but their performance in the Liaoshen Campaign was greatly out of standard because of his disagreement with Chiang Kai-shek.
Such a legendary general, what are the twists and turns in his life that are not known? As a high-ranking member of the Kuomintang, how deeply did he feel when he met Chairman Mao? Why, once a war criminal, was he able to return to the mainland safely and spend his old age peacefully?
There are too many puzzles hanging over this general, and looking at the life of General Wei Lihuang, it is like a microcosm of the history of the Republic of China. Some people are trapped in the darkness at the beginning with a pure heart, and they long to get rid of this darkness all their lives, and finally they succeed, his mistakes cannot be erased, and his achievements are undeniable.
This is him, a remarkable, lost "tiger general".
Wei Lihuang
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > peasant teenager and threw himself into the revolution</h1>
General Wei Lihuang's father, who was a Field Official of the Qing Government when he was young, died of the plague, and the family could only live on the eldest brother Wei Lijiong, who already had a job at that time. Wei Lijiong was very concerned about this younger brother, and although the family was not rich at that time, he still insisted that Wei Lihuang go to private school.
Wei Lihuang was a diligent child in the private school since he was a child, and he seized this rare opportunity to find many books and read a lot of books, in these books, he slowly realized that the world is so big, not limited to the world where he is, and realized that China was suffering at that time, the disasters suffered by the motherland, he felt empathy.
Therefore, after the Xinhai Revolution was in full swing, Wei Lihuang, who had been educated by revolutionary ideas, immediately decided to cut off his braids, join military training, and devote himself to the revolution from then on, when he was only fifteen years old.
Wei Lihuang (left)
Because the revolutionary force at that time was still very weak, it was followed by many failures, the failure of the second revolution, the failure of the "Yuan Movement", and in the turbulent revolutionary career, perhaps coincidentally, he came to Dr. Sun Yat-sen's side as a defender.
This is his second chance to change his destiny.
Before meeting Mr. Nakayama, he was just a reckless young man, fighting aimlessly every day, not knowing what he was fighting for, nor how much he had to go to save the national crisis.
After meeting Mr. Nakayama, under Mr. Nakayama's explanation, he finally understood what he should revolutionize for and what the road to saving the national crisis was like.
Such an education in ideals and beliefs has injected a new soul into him. He began to understand what he should be fighting for.
Mr. Zhongshan also appreciated this young man very much, and when the Guangdong army returned to the division in victory against the Gui warlords, he found Wei Lihuang, gave him a single photo of himself, and solemnly wrote on the back, "Comrade Sun Wenzhi of Lihuang."
Sun Yat-sen
This precious photograph, Wei Lihuang cherished all his life, and used it to inspire himself to constantly fight for the Chinese revolution.
After Mr. Zhongshan's death, after Chiang Kai-shek came to power through the "April 12 counter-revolutionary" coup, Wei Lihuang did not see the essence of this national government clearly, plus he had just married at that time, and the relationship between his wife and Soong Meiling was very harmonious, and Wei Lihuang had been working for Chiang Kai-shek. Including the famous "Central Plains War", including the subsequent "encirclement and suppression" of the Red Army, Wei Lihuang participated.
In these battles, he also gradually became the "Five Tiger Generals" under Chiang Kai-shek.com. In a group of high-ranking Kuomintang officials who had a bag of wine and rice bags at that time, Wei Lihuang's ability, spirit, and achievements were particularly outstanding, but because he was not from the Huangpu family, Chiang Kai-shek had always been both useful and defensive of him, and although his status in the Kuomintang was high, he did not have a place to show his dreams.
Seeing that under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, China is still so poor or full of wars, and the Kuomintang is far less sincere and united than Mr. Zhongshan at that time, and there is a smell of decay everywhere.
He was confused again.
Chiang Kai-shek (left) Wei Lihuang (right)
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="21" > the Xi'an Incident and the change of thought</h1>
The third turning point in Wei Lihuang's life was the Xi'an Incident that Chiang Kai-shek did not want to recall in his life.
Before the Xi'an Incident, Wei Lihuang could be said to have been very ignorant of the Communist Party, and in his heart, the Communist Party was what Chiang Kai-shek called "communist bandits," a major danger endangering China's peace, and because of this propaganda, he also participated in the suppression of bandits on many occasions and carried out many encirclements and suppressions of the revolutionary base areas of the Red Army.
Xi'an Incident
The real change of thinking must begin with the Xi'an Incident.
Wei Lihuang still had to go back to Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng when he went to Xi'an, and Chiang Kai-shek saw that Zhang Yang and the two men did not do their best to encircle and suppress the Red Army, and repeatedly advised him to put aside his prejudices and carry out anti-Japanese resistance.
To encircle and suppress the Red Army, we had to deal with the Red Army, and as a result, after a long period of dealing, through a contact with the top level of the Red Army, Wei Lihuang slowly found that the Red Army did not seem to be as heinous as he thought, but because of his different positions, he still maintained the duties of a soldier until the Xi'an Incident occurred.
Zhang Xueliang (left) Yang Hucheng (right)
On that day, when Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng launched a military campaign, it was not only Chiang Kai-shek who was arrested, but also more than twenty senior military and political officials of the Kuomintang, including Wei Lihuang.
When Zhang Yang and his men persuaded Chiang Kai-shek day and night to abandon the idea that "foreign countries must first be safe inside," Wei Lihuang and more than twenty other high-ranking military and political officials also inadvertently got the attitude of some left-behind officials in the Nanjing government, and they only wanted to take their place and encourage Zhang Xueliang to kill Chiang Kai-shek and others.
Wei Lihuang was suddenly very desperate, and when the party-state was in danger, these bureaucrats were still thinking about the matter of fly camps and dogs, full of selfish interests, and completely disregarding the overall situation of the anti-Japanese resistance at that time.
Unanimously resist japan
In the face of Chiang Kai-shek and other high-ranking military and political officials who had repeatedly brandished butcher knives to massacre Communists, the Communist Party showed rare tolerance, attaching importance to the great national righteousness and the overall situation of the Anti-Japanese Resistance.
Zhou Enlai even went to Xi'an to mediate at the risk of persuading Zhang Yang and his men to settle the matter peacefully as long as Chiang Kai-shek promised to stop the civil war and unite to resist Japan.
Wei Lihuang naturally also heard about the efforts made by the CPC deputies in this matter, and he was also very touched; under the comparison between the two sides, it was clear at a glance which political party was really and truly good for China.
After his release, Wei Lihuang became the friendliest ally of the Chinese Communist Party.
Wei Lihuang (second from left) Mao Zedong (second from right)
Under the banner of unanimous resistance against Japan, the Kuomintang troops under his leadership carried out this slogan perfectly, not only fully cooperating with the Communist army in military operations, but also in the giving of military supplies, General Wei Lihuang was never distressed. In his opinion, they are all anti-Japanese Chinese, what is the difference? This was remarkable at the time.
The Chinese Communist Party also captured the sincerity of General Wei Lihuang and was deeply moved by it.
In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, after hearing that There was a lack of educated and strategic cadres around General Wei Lihuang, the CCP sent the graduates of the Kang Da that they had trained at that time to work directly with General Wei Lihuang, who was cultured and qualified, and even in the mouth of a small secretary, they could say the professional words of "movement warfare" and "dispersing the enemy.", and the leader of the discussion with him, the general of the Southern Expedition and the Northern War, was the Tao.
Wei Lihuang couldn't help but wonder again, what kind of place was Yan'an that cultivated them? What kind of person was Mao Zedong who taught them?
He decided to personally visit Yan'an, the revolutionary holy city in the hearts of countless young people at that time.
Yan'an
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="39" > knew Yan'an and talked happily</h1>
In April 1938, Wei Lihuang visited Yan'an, and before that, he had just personally supervised the completion of a large number of supplies for the Eighth Route Army. When his convoy reached Yan'an, the enthusiastic people of northern Shaanxi welcomed the Kuomintang general who persisted in the War of Resistance with song and dance.
On the walls, trees were plastered with their written welcome signs, and when he reached the coast, many Communist Party cadres welcomed him outside the city. Wei Lihuang saw these simple and bright smiles, which he had not had for a long time.
Yan'an showed him a new world, a world in which there was no exploitation, no corruption, everything was new, leaders and the people ate and lived and worked together, and many things that happened here were unimaginable to him.
The people of northern Shaanxi
He deliberately came to the playground of Kang Da to see what was different among the young people in Yan'an. As soon as he entered the venue of the Kang Da, rows of straight poplar-like students enthusiastically shouted slogans, "Stop the civil war, unite to resist Japan" and "The two parties of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party united" were louder than the waves.
Under the influence of the enthusiasm of the students, Wei Lihuang was also infected, gave up the manuscript he had prepared earlier, began to talk with his classmates, gave up the official clichés, but sincerely talked about his combat experience with the Japanese over the years, and at the end, he also unconsciously shouted slogans together, expressing his determination to resist Japan in unison.
After asking the students of Kang University, Wei Lihuang finally knew why his secretaries were so good.
Anti-large
In kang da, unlike any other Kuomintang school, there are no young masters, young ladies, some are just comrades, and it is not the officers in the Kuomintang army who have long been corrupted and rotten, but the leaders of the CCP.
Mao Zedong was busy and gave several lessons to the students, so where could the students who were trained in this way not be excellent?
In addition to the excitement, he still had a question in his heart and was ready to ask Chairman Mao, but after he saw this, he was suddenly full of confidence that Chairman Mao could solve this problem.
When meeting Chairman Mao, Wei Lihuang asked the question that had been bothering him in his heart: What should be done to completely drive the Japanese out of China?
When Chairman Mao heard this question, he would smile in his heart; this question was also the one he had been thinking about recently, and he already had a draft in his heart, and this remark he said to Wei Lihuang could also be regarded as the prototype of the later "On Protracted War."
On protracted warfare
First of all, Chairman Mao did not directly analyze the domestic battlefield, but set his sights on the more ambitious international anti-fascist battlefield.
He first analyzed the current world situation and pointed out that the reason why the Japanese dared to launch such a wanton all-out invasion of China was because it signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, but at the same time pointed out that this treaty was not long-lasting and changed with the changes in the war in Europe.
Then, turning to the surrender faction in China, Chairman Mao pointed out that only a small part of the people supported surrender, and the key to what we had to do was to mobilize the masses, let the masses spontaneously rise up to resist Japan, and change the army resistance war on which the Kuomintang army had long relied on it into a national war of resistance, thus dragging Japan into the quagmire of protracted war.
Mobilize the masses
In terms of Wei Lihuang's responsibility for the Shanxi Anti-Japanese Resistance, Chairman Mao pointed out that the place where the two sides must contend is the first line of the Yellow River, and if the Japanese army controls the Yellow River, it will take this as the key road to achieve its goal of cutting China's east and west, and in terms of specific combat methods.
Chairman Mao also proposed that guerrilla warfare should be waged behind enemy lines, and advised General Wei Lihuang not to fight positional warfare with well-equipped Japanese troops if he was not sure, but to drag the Japanese army and then slowly eliminate them.
Chairman Mao's analysis of stripping away the cocoon made Wei Lihuang open his mind at once, and he also deeply admired Chairman Mao's military foresight and judgment ability.
Guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines
In the evening, when the two were walking, Chairman Mao saw an old farmer in the distance leading his donkey up the mountain, and then he remembered his answer to General Wei Lihuang, and felt that there was still a lack of summary, so he felt that this was a good opportunity.
Chairman Mao asked, "General Wei, I have a question for you." When this donkey goes up the mountain, does it step on its left or right foot first? ”
This puzzled Wei Lihuang, who had never focused on this point, and before he could react, Chairman Mao came to the conclusion in a detailed observation: "With my observation, he should first lift his left foot and then his right foot." ”
Wei Lihuang (left) Mao Zedong (right)
Wei Lihuang stared at the old man and the donkey for a while, affirming Chairman Mao's conclusion, but he still did not understand why he was talking about this issue, which had nothing to do with what they were talking about.
Chairman Mao smiled and said to Wei Lihuang: "The Japanese army is like a donkey, it is kicking and biting." If I were fighting the Japanese, I would retreat first, then grab its tail and stab it in the ass! ”
Only then did Wei Lihuang understand Chairman Mao's meaning. If you don't really understand how your enemies fight, how can you strike effectively?
And this is also the ultimate learning that Chairman Mao experienced from "Sun Tzu's Art of War", "knowing oneself and knowing the other, never losing a hundred battles."
After this visit, Wei Lihuang suddenly understood how he should fight the war, and in the process of visiting Yan'an, he truly knew where the hope of the Chinese revolution lay.