Author: Cadillo
The Battle of Ganzhou, which took place from February to March 1932, was a bitter defeat for the Red Army. In this battle, the commander of the Red 3rd Army Corps, Peng Dehuai, commanded the post and the Red 7th Army, which was known for hand-to-hand combat, forcibly attacked the city of Ganzhou for more than a month, and finally was forced to retreat by the 18th Army of Chiang Kai-shek's army using tunnel tactics. In this battle, the Red 3rd Army alone suffered more than 3,000 casualties, and the division commander Hou Zhongying was also captured by Chiang Kai-shek and killed.
In fact, looking back at the conquest process of the Red Army, it can be found that this is the third time that the Red Army has folded under the city of Ganzhou, in addition to the fortified city and the lack of necessary siege weapons, another important factor that led to the failure of the Red Army's three sieges is that although the 34th Brigade of the 12th Division of the Yunnan Army defending the city in Ganzhou is a collateral unit of Chiang Kai-shek's army, it also has considerable combat effectiveness and is very stubborn, which is still different from the ordinary Miscellaneous Armies and Collateral Armies of Chiang Kai-shek's army.
The predecessor of the 12th Division was the former warlord Gu Pinzhen, who was expelled from Yunnan during the Northern Expedition. After joining Mr. Zhongshan's command, another group of people in this part of the Dian army were not optimistic about the future, and instead surrendered to the Beiyang warlord Wu Peifu and received the title of the 6th Division of the Beiyang Army. Only a few years later, the Revolutionary Army's Northern Expedition defeated Wu Peifu's army, and the 6th Division, which had always seen the wind and steered the rudder, surrendered to the Northern Expeditionary Army.
At that time, several of the northern expeditionary forces were based on geography, and the Yunnan troops in the northern expeditionary army, that is, the remnants of Gu Pinzhen, who had originally followed Mr. Zhongshan, had now been awarded the title of the 3rd Army, and the commander was Zhu Peide, an old friend of Zhu De during the Dian Army. Of course, Zhu Peide did not miss this good opportunity to expand his power, so he combined the 6th Division of the Beiyang Army with the newly recruited 2,000 Yunnan disciples into the 9th Army of the Northern Expeditionary Army, and the commander of the army, Jin Handing, happened to be An old friend of Zhu De.
Zhu Peide, commander of the 3rd Army of the Northern Expeditionary Army, and Jin Handing, commander of the 9th Army
After Mao and Zhu led the remnants of the Nanchang Uprising and the Autumn Harvest Uprising to meet the division at Jinggangshan, the momentum became increasingly great, and Chiang Rush dispatched the 27th Division of the 31st Army (formerly the 9th Army) in Jiangxi to attack, and the division commander Yang Ruxuan was also An old friend of Zhu De's army in the Dian Army. In the process of Yang Ruxuan's pursuit of the Red Army, Zhu Deshi suddenly turned around and attacked Yang Ruxuan's division headquarters in Yongxin County, annihilating a regiment of Chiang Kai-shek's army and killing the regimental commander Liu Anhua.
After the defeat of Yongxin, Yang Chisheng, another old friend of Zhu De and commander of the 9th Division of the 3rd Army, led his troops to support Yang Ruxuan. Before Yang Ruxuan went to Ji'an to recuperate, he reminded him to pay attention to Zhu De's guerrilla warfare method, but Yang Chisheng was full of concern and said: "I know old Zhu's playing style, there is nothing remarkable." As a result, before Yang Ruxuan reached Ji'an, news came that when Yang Chisheng led the 9th and 27th Divisions to attack the county seat of Ninggang, they were ambushed by the Red Army at the Longyuankou Gorge, and the whole army collapsed, and nearly 500 people were captured alone.
Under the command of Zhu De, the Red Army defeated the 3rd and 31st Armies with inferior troops twice in a row, and even posted a couplet: "Without the red army's three points of strength, eliminate two sheep (Yang) in Jiangxi." Zhu Peide, who had already served as the number one in Jiangxi, and the two military commanders Wang Jun and Jin Handing were very embarrassed. However, fortunately, Chiang Kai-shek did not make it difficult for Zhu Peide, and in the subsequent drawdown of the army, the 3rd and 31st armies were only reduced from the ninth regiment of the three divisions to the 7th and 12th two divisions of the three brigades and six regiments.
Yang Ruxuan, commander of the 27th Division of the Northern Expeditionary Army, and Yang Chisheng, commander of the 9th Division
Zhu Peide was naturally very grateful to Chiang Kai-shek for keeping the army for him, and he worked harder in the subsequent battles against the Red Army. After Mao and Zhu led the Red 4th Army to break through from Jinggangshan into Gannan and western Fujian, the 12th Division was humiliated by the two defeats before the snow and followed suit. Considering that the enemy was strong and we were weak, and that they were fighting on the outside front, this time Zhu De always avoided a head-on confrontation with the 12th Division, but instead focused on attacking the provincial defense forces and militia regiments with weak combat effectiveness in various parts of southern Gannan and western Fujian, helping the guerrillas in various places to expand their armament.
In March 1930, the Dian Army clashed with local warlords in Fujian, and the main force of the 12th Division entered Fujian to fight, resulting in the emptiness of the entire Gannan region. Zhu De took the opportunity to decide to attack the important city of Ganzhou in southern Gannan, but unexpectedly, the 12th Division also arranged a 70th regiment of the 35th Brigade in the city. Due to the strong defense of Ganzhou city and the fact that there were still many fleeing landlords in Gannan County, Zhu De saw that Ganzhou was difficult to conquer quickly, so he ordered the withdrawal from the battle, and this first attack on Ganzhou ended in failure.
Soon after the Outbreak of the Central Plains War, the main forces of the 7th and 12th Divisions of the Dian Army were transferred north to participate in the battle in the Central Plains, leaving only the 34th Brigade of the 12th Division to guard the city of Ganzhou, while on the Red Army side, the Red 4th Army first entered Fujian to open up a base area, and then together with other main Red Armies, it went north and merged into the Red 1Staffe Corps, preparing to attack Wuhan and Changsha, and the only thing left in the Gannan area was the Red 22nd Army commanded by Chen Yi and formed by local armed forces.
Chen Yi was the commander of the Red 22nd Army
In the spring and summer of 1930, driven by the rising revolutionary situation in the Xianggan area, most of the seventeen counties in Gannan were already controlled by the Red Organization, and although the 34th Brigade also went out to sweep from time to time, only the city of Ganzhou could actually be controlled. And under the influence of revolutionary propaganda, many officers and men of the 34th Brigade also secretly joined the underground organization, and in a sweep in April, more than 100 officers and men of the 68th Regiment of the 34th Brigade held a line of fire uprising and joined the Red 22nd Army.
Chen Yi, commander of the Red 22nd Army, decided to strike iron while it was hot, and with the cooperation of other members of the underground organization within the 68th Regiment, Li Yingwai took Ganzhou City, which was the second attack of the Red Army on Ganzhou. As planned, the underground organization of the 68th Regiment guarding the gates would open the gates to welcome the Red Army into the city. However, due to the traitors' whistleblowing, Ma Kun, commander of the 34th Brigade, urgently switched the positions of the 67th Regiment to the 68th Regiment and shot 16 captured members of the underground. Due to the lack of support in the city, the Red 22nd Army was ultimately unable to take Ganzhou.
Ma Kun was a native of Guizhou, had participated in the War against Yuan and was once a subordinate of Zhu De, but at this time he was obviously an official fanatic, and he was obviously reluctant to give up his position as brigade commander and defect to the Red Army. Some of the uprisings of the 68th Regiment were not entirely a bad thing for him, allowing him to reorganize the ranks and prevent further uprisings and similar events. For the next year and a half, Ma Kun led the 34th Brigade to remain in Ganzhou City, but there was no trouble with the Red Army outside the city.
Ma Kun, commander of the 34th Brigade of the Dian Army, and Cun Qi, deputy brigade commander
In February 1932, the superiors rejected the correct opinions of Mao and Zhu and demanded that the Red Army concentrate its forces on taking Ganzhou City first. Although the 34th Brigade was trapped in Ganzhou City, which was on the verge of the front line for a long time, the officers and men were already miserable, and even Ma Kun himself complained that he was always discriminated against by the side army, and if he did some work at this time, it was possible to promote the Ma Kun uprising. However, the superiors asked the Red Army propagandists to shout the slogan "Welcome the officers and men of the Dian Army to kill Ma Kun to become the Red Army", which forced Ma Kun to die in Ganzhou.
In the third attack on Ganzhou, the Red 3rd Army and the Red 7th Army combined with more than 14,000 people, while the 34th Brigade plus the fleeing landlords in Gannan County only had more than 8,000 people, which is not to say that the Red Army will never be able to take Ganzhou. However, in the actual siege battle, Commander-in-Chief Peng Dehuai encountered many problems, such as the failure of the various armies to coordinate the unified time when attacking the city, and the wrong point of explosion when blasting the city wall, resulting in the commandos outside the city being killed by the city bricks.
Originally, the 18th Army of Chiang Kai-shek's army had already received orders to rush to ganzhou, but the commander Luo Zhuoying, fearing the red army's encirclement and reinforcement plan, actually began to grind foreign workers on the outskirts of Ganzhou, until it was found that the Red Army's siege had not progressed for more than a month, Luo Zhuoying seized the opportunity to quickly rush to participate in the battle, so that the caught off guard Peng Dehuai drank and hated the city of Ganzhou. The Red Army could not take Ganzhou, which also proved that the 12th Division of the Dian Army was better at defending the city than in the field.
Officers and men of the Red Army captured in the Battle of Ganzhou
Later, in order to meet the operational needs, the 7th and 12th Divisions of the Dian Army were merged into the 3rd Army. As a collateral unit of Chiang Kai-shek's army, it has to be said that the 3rd Army was really a toiling unit in Chiang Kai-shek's army, and from 1933 to 1934, the army was transferred to the western Anhui region to fight the Red 28th Army, in 1935 it was transferred to the Zhejiang-Anhui side to fight against the Red 10th Army, in 1936 it was transferred to Shaanxi-Gansu to fight against the three main forces of the Red Army, the 3rd Army suffered heavy losses in the fierce Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain during the War of Resistance, and the deputy brigade commander of the 34th Brigade during the Ganzhou Campaign and the commander of the 3rd Army at the time, Zhi Zhiqi, also died heroically in the battle.
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