Behind the Back of The God of War Su Yu (47)
In the previous section, we mentioned that Zhang Huizhan was executed by the people of the Soviet region for his heinous crimes.
When Zhang Huizhan attacked the Central Soviet Region, he ordered his subordinates: Donggu had been reddened, the stones should be crossed by knives, and the benches should be burned. Men and women over the age of 10 within 40 miles are not allowed to shoot and kill. Therefore, his troops in the Donggu area saw that the houses of the common people were often burned down without asking questions, robbed of grain and clothing when they saw them, killed people as "communist bandits" when they caught, and raped women when they were caught.
Some people want to ask, why did Zhang Huizhan issue such an order to exterminate humanity? In fact, any practice has theoretical support, especially military operations. Zhang Huizhan's approach should start from Chinese and Western military theories. Many of Zhang's military theories came from Japan and Germany, and German military theories had a particularly great influence on Zhang.
Born in 1885, Zhang Huizhan served as a staff officer in the Hunan Governor's Office in 1912, the chief of the Beiping Quartermaster School and a military instructor, and went to Germany to investigate the military, and only returned to China in 1916 to carry out activities against Yuan Shikai. Zhang Huizhan studied and studied in Germany for 4 years, and he completely studied and mastered German military theory.
German military theory is very rich and content, including a general theory of warfare. The core meaning of this theory is that to fight against the opponent, it is necessary not only to destroy the enemy's military strength, but also to destroy the economic force, human resources and other forces on which the other army depends for survival.
In fact, this theory originated in the American Civil War. The immediate cause of the American Civil War was tariffs. At that time, the north of the United States was dominated by industry, the south of the United States was dominated by agriculture, and the U.S. government decided to raise tariffs in order to protect industry, and as a result, the export of agricultural products from the south was hit hard, resulting in the outbreak of the Civil War. But if the war is not good for the government's propaganda because of the tariff problem, and if it is not hierarchical enough, it must rise to a strategic and political level. These are the tasks that experts do best.
For example, fuller, a well-known expert in military history, pointed out that this war is "not a war between two hostile political parties, but a life-and-death struggle between two societies that represent different civilizations."
The American Civil War was divided into two phases, limited war and total war, with limited war from April 1861 to September 1862 and total war from September 1862 to April 1865.
In the early days of the war, on the whole, the balance of power and the backsliding of the two sides favored the North. The North has 23 states with a total population of 22 million, concentrating 86 percent of the country's industrial production, 70 percent of the railway lines, 80 percent of the bank capital, and 97 percent of arms production.
The confederacy, which participated in the rebellion, had only 11 states with a population of just over 9 million, including more than 4 million black slaves, and was far behind the North economically. Politically speaking, the federal government is waging a just war to safeguard national unity and has won the support of the broad masses of the people, while the southern government is unpopular in maintaining and expanding backward slavery and splitting the country.
If the "theory of winning the hearts and minds of the people wins the world", the North of the United States will soon defeat the South, but the truth is just the opposite, the Northern army continued to lose militarily, from April 1861 to September 1862, the South held the initiative in the war.
The defeat of the Northern Army made U.S. President Abraham Lincoln realize that it was necessary to turn purely military warfare into a total war:
"To wage a war of utter defeat over the South, that is, to wage an indefinite war, not only against the Southern army, but also against the people of the South and to destroy their will."
That is to say, Lincoln must not only destroy the army of the South, but also destroy the economic and human base of the South, and all those who support the South will be executed, and the plantations of the South's economy will be destroyed. To put it bluntly, it is the three-light policy: kill the light, grab the light, and burn the light.
Two of Lincoln's most trusted generals, Grant and Sherman, carried out the strategy with ruthless and brutal means.
Grant, a graduate of the Military Academy at West Point in 1843 and had fought in the Mexican-American War, told Lincoln after serving as commander-in-chief of the Union Army:
"I am determined to continue to strike at the enemy's armed forces and their resources, and if there is no other way, attrition alone will leave him with nowhere but to surrender."
Grant gave Sherman, commander of the Western Front, a directive in April 1864:
"Go as deep as you can into the enemy's interior, do everything you can to destroy their war resources, destroy everything that can be used to support or feed the army, and destroy them without bloodshed but with the same effect as destroying the enemy army."
Under Grant's instructions, Sherman led 62,000 soldiers, without feeding, and began to carry out a three-light policy against the army in the south and the people and regions they supported, plundering all grain wherever the army went, burning all that could not be taken away, killing all livestock, executing all the people suspected of supporting the Southern Army, destroying all plantations, factories and machinery, and destroying all water sources, that is, destroying all those who could not be taken away, so that even those who stayed behind were starved and thirsty because they did not have food and water.
Sherman said to his subordinates:
"We are fighting not only the enemy armies, but also the enemy people, and we must make them feel the ruthless power of war and the organized army, young and old, rich and poor, and those who refuse to obey the law and the authorities should be eliminated without mercy, only to let them suffer from war, so that future generations will never dare to resort to war, we must remove and destroy all obstacles, if necessary, kill every person, take every inch of land, confiscate every property, a word, Destroy everything we think should be destroyed, and if you don't achieve your goal, you won't give up. ”
The central city in the south at the time was Atlanta, and after Sherman led a large army to occupy Atlanta, he ordered all the people to either move out of Atlanta or execute, in order to prevent the remaining enemies in the rear from revolting. After all the people in Atlanta have moved, the government of the North will move to support the people of the North.
It's no exaggeration to say that Grant and Sherman are like the Lich King in the game, where they go, deserted, and only undead creatures can survive.
Under this three-light policy in the north, the important communication lines in the south were paralyzed, Georgia as the main industrial base in the south was devastated, the material scarcity of the southern alliance was further aggravated, the south could no longer get a sufficient food supply, morale was getting lower and lower, the people's hearts were shaken, and more seriously, the southern army had no source of troops, and all those who thought that they might become the source of soldiers in the south were killed, these factors made the south finally fail, but also cleared the way for the industrialization of the south. At least it doesn't take time and money to demolish.
History is written by victors, Lincoln became the greatest president of the United States, Grant and Sherman became the greatest generals in the United States, and the United States also named a tank the Sherman Tank.
Grant's biographer Adam Dopa glorified Grant by saying:
He understood that he was waging a people's war, and that it would not end unless the armies and peoples of the South were conquered. Slaves, munitions, crops, domestic animals, weapons, ammunition — everything necessary to continue the war — is a weapon in the hands of the enemy, and every weapon of the enemy must be dispossessed. ”
The idea of total war is the basis of the entire Western military ideology, and the so-called democracy and freedom are but pretexts.
Therefore, to study the West, we must study its military ideas, because its military ideas reflect its essence. President Chuan's crackdown on high-tech enterprises is actually the embodiment of his overall war thinking.
The idea of total war took root in the United States, but it developed and grew in Germany and entered the military academy textbook, the core of which is: to eliminate the opponent by any means and at any cost, there is no justice or injustice, it does not matter what the people want.
When Zhang Huizhan was in Germany, this idea had already occupied the dominant position, but the very systematic exposition of the total war was published in the book "Total War" published by the famous German military scientist Erich Ludendorff in 1935.
In the process of Japan's rise, the object of its study is also Germany, many of its military ideas come from Germany, and the "three lights policy" of the Japanese army is also from Germany's overall war ideology.
The means advocated by this idea are extremely cruel and anti-human, especially in the state of etiquette, and are bound to be spurned. And Zhang Huizhan's thought was more than enough in the Battle of Longgang. According to Dai Yue, commander of the 52nd Brigade, he later recounted:
On 29 December, the troops arrived in Longgang. Longgang is located about 180 miles south of Feng County, and there are more than 300 shop houses in the market town. At that time, not only was there no food in the market, but it was empty. After Zhang Huizhan led the division headquarters to arrive, he found a middle-aged man, that is, he was accused of being a traitor, and I asked for a trial, even if I asked about the situation, Zhang Huizhan shot him without saying a word.
The Nationalist division commanders who were captured after Zhang Huizhan were not executed, and the most important thing was that they did not have so much public anger in the Soviet area. Zhang Huizhen's murder was actually a sin of his own making.
Because of this, the masses in the Soviet area hated him to the bone, and at the public trial meeting, the masses were furious and roared in the sky, and many emotional masses climbed on the rostrum and beat Zhang Huizhan; several young and middle-aged Red Guards members saw Zhang, and thought that their parents were killed, their wives were insulted, and their houses were burned.
Then the Red Army and the Red Guards hung Zhang Huizhan's head on a tall tree to show the public, then packed it in a box, sprinkled it with lime to prevent corrosion, and used a bamboo raft to take Zhang's head down the river. The revolutionary masses of Pitou stopped the bamboo raft from the river and hung their heads on an ancient camphor tree next to the Yicang in Pitou.
The next day, he was escorted to Duty Summer, showing public along the way, and finally held a larger celebration in Duty Summer Town. The venue was set up in the Gu qingyun Terrace opposite the xiaxia street and the primary school, and the organizers of the conference hung their heads high on the camphor tree in front of the stage. After the meeting, he carried Zhang's head to Futan and other places to show the public.
The organizers then placed two gate panels on the raft and piled some dirt on it, placed their heads on the dirt, and inserted the words "Down with the warlord Zhang Huizhen!" The placard "Down with Chiang Kai-shek" drifted down from Zhangjiadu in Futan, at the confluence of the Ganjiang and Taki rivers, and was later found and salvaged by the Kuomintang soldiers defending the city in Ji'an.
From the whole process, we can see the degree of hatred of Zhang Huizhan by the masses in the Soviet area.
Why was Zhang Huizhen finally executed? Zhu De once said: His study in Germany eventually brought himself the disaster of death. Because Commander-in-Chief Zhu also spent some time in Germany and knew German military theory very well, he critically absorbed German military theory and removed the dross from it.
(Heavenly Selection Miscellaneous Original: This article uses some literary techniques on the basis of historical facts, to be continued)
References: "Su Yu's Life Deeds", "Su Yu's Biography", "God of War Su Yu", "Famous General Su Yu ZhenWen" and so on.
Tianxuan is the author's pen name, who has engaged in teaching and research at the National Defense University, and has studied history and philosophy