The repeated defeats and retreats of the Kuomintang army in the early days of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression made Chiang Kai-shek feel extremely anxious.
It was precisely at this time that the Eighth Route Army's "Pingxingguan Great Victory," "Night Attack on Yangmingbao," and "Great Victory in Changle Village" were continuously reported, and it was these war reports that directly changed Chiang Kai-shek and his staff's previous contemptuous attitude toward the Eighth Route Army.
Especially after the publication of Mao Zedong's "On Protracted War," Chiang Kai-shek, who has always been arrogant and arrogant, had to bow his head to accept the ideas of our Party and Mao Zedong, to accept the guerrilla tactics of the Eighth Route Army, and to reluctantly recognize the important role of the Eighth Route Army in fighting behind enemy lines and in the overall situation of the war.
Mao Zedong and Zhu De
By 1938, almost half of the troops of the Japanese army invading China had actually been pinned down in the battlefield behind enemy lines by the Eighth Route Army, and with the expansion of the areas occupied by the Japanese army, the number of troops held back was still gradually increasing, which made the pressure of the Kuomintang army on the frontal battlefield gradually ease, and this was precisely the important contribution and important position of the Eighth Route Army in the War of Resistance Against Japan.
After accepting the Eighth Route Army's guerrilla tactics behind enemy lines, Chiang Kai-shek also began to form a system to send some Kuomintang troops to the areas occupied by the Japanese army to open up anti-Japanese base areas, and also held with great enthusiasm a guerrilla warfare training course with the generals of the Eighth Route Army as instructors, hoping to popularize the guerrilla warfare experience of the Eighth Route Army to all Chinese troops behind enemy lines.
This proposition and practice of Chiang Kai-shek was welcomed and supported by Mao Zedong.
Mao Zedong instructed that the Methods of Guerrilla Warfare should be taught to the Kuomintang troops. However, since the principles of the two parties in building the party and the army are far apart, this also dooms the Kuomintang army to learn only some skins, rather than the soul and essence.
Mao Zedong and the generals of the Eighth Route Army
Chiang Kai-shek not only ran the class, but also sent a telegram to the generals of various units, asking them to learn from the political experience of the Eighth Route Army in fighting wars.
Yan Xishan, as the commander of the Second Theater, did not know how to learn, so on the record of a staff officer's conversation with the local villagers, plus a few personal testimonials, he directly forwarded it to the troops, and asked his generals to speculate on their own according to this telegram.
The original text of Yan Xishan's telegram was:
Troops:
The conversation between Zhang Xiangshan, a staff officer of the headquarters, and the villagers of Dong Village in Xinze Township was telegraphed as follows:
Q: Is your village garrison good?
A: Okay. But more, there will inevitably be bad.
Q: You are very young, why are you not a soldier?
A: I plan to become the Eighth Route Army.
Question: Why did you become the Eighth Route Army?
A: The Eighth Route Army is good.
Question: What is good about the Eighth Route Army?
Answer: Once upon a time, the Eighth Route Army was stationed in our village, grinding noodles, sweeping yards, feeding livestock, and carrying children, just like a family.
After reading the above kind of talk, we know that the common people have a good impression of the Eighth Route Army, and the good reason is that they can sympathize with the people. Chiefs at all levels must pay earnest attention to the fact that officers and men are integrated, the army and the people are integrated, and the new army can exist.
In fact, it was true that the Kuomintang officers wanted to learn guerrilla warfare. Because what soldier doesn't want to win a battle? But they can only learn a little bit of fur is also true.
Why?
Because the purpose of our party in the initial establishment of the party and the army was to seek happiness for the vast number of poor people. From the beginning of the Red Army's fight against the local tyrants and the division of the land, from the encirclement of the cities by the countryside, every step taken was closely related to the ordinary working people, and everything done for the common people was also caused by a conscious and voluntary mission, and there was no sense of violation.
This is not the case with the Kuomintang, which represents the interests of the four major families, the bourgeoisie and the landlords.
The friendship between the Eighth Route Army and the common people is the true living soul of guerrilla warfare, and the Kuomintang naturally does not think about it there and does it like that, so it will not learn there. And these seemingly simple things, it is not easy to really learn the hand, even if you learn so little, it is often the east to do the effect, even if someone teaches by hand, it will also be very lame.
Zhu De had taught the generals of the Kuomintang army how to fight guerrillas.
Jude
During the JinNan Dynasty, Zhu De's Eighth Route Army headquarters and Sun Zhen's Twenty-second Army headquarters were in Hongdong County, which was the first close contact between the two armies of different parties.
During that time, the officers and men of the Kuomintang became extremely curious about the Eighth Route Army. For example, the Eighth Route Army replied "to" when it was named, and the Kuomintang army replied "yes" when it was named; the cabbage and tofu sold to the Eighth Route Army by small merchants were all half price, and they were never discounted; Zhu De, the general of the Eighth Route Army, spoke like a family routine, unlike their commanders who often trained people; the reason why the Eighth Route Army did not fight was because their commanders did not want to die in the first place; the salary of the top commander of the Eighth Route Army was not as good as that of an ordinary soldier of the Kuomintang army, and it was open and transparent, and the officers and men were consistent...
Once, Zhu De organized a military conference, and some Kuomintang generals expressed great interest in the guerrilla tactics of the Eighth Route Army. To this end, Zuo Quan, deputy chief of the general staff of the Eighth Route Army, gave them a special report on their experience in guerrilla warfare.
At the end of the meeting, Zhu De extended an invitation to the generals of the Kuomintang army: The 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army is about to launch an ambush battle, and you can observe it on the spot.
Organize troops to observe and study
Inviting the generals of the Kuomintang army to observe the eighth route army on the spot, Zhu De, in addition to having the confidence to be able to defeat the enemy, also embodied the broad mind of the communists, because guerrilla warfare methods are the housekeeping skills of our party and the Eighth Route Army.
The ambush was set in a place called Xiangtangpu, and Zhu De arranged the generals who were observing on the peaks of the road and asked them to condescend to watch how the Eighth Route Army fought.
The commander of this annihilation was Marshal Xu Qianqian, then deputy commander of the 129th Division.
When the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army heard that it was a Japanese car to be hit this time, they all felt a little nervous, because the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army who were born poor could not imagine what this car looked like at this time, nor did they know how to deal with these behemoths that could walk quickly.
Therefore, before the battle, the leaders of the unit also gave the officers and men an urgent popularization of the knowledge of automobiles and the methods of striking automobiles.
Soon after the troops entered the ambush position, a huge convoy of Japanese troops appeared on the road, as many as 180 vehicles, and the officers and men of the Eighth Route Army held their breath and waited for the moment to attack, when they suddenly heard two "popping" sounds, two green signal flares crossed the sky, and Xu Xiangqian issued a general attack order.
Xu Xiangqian (center) with Zhu De and He Long
Suddenly, rifles, machine guns, and mortars fired in unison in the valley, and the dense artillery fire made the Japanese dizzy, followed by dozens of charge horns "Didi Da, Da Di Di" sounded together.
The officers and men of the Eighth Route Army rushed toward the Japanese army like fierce tigers descending the mountain, and thousands of grenades exploded in the middle of the Japanese army, and the entire valley was filled with the sound of gunshots, cannons, military trumpets, and the screams of ghosts.
In this battle, due to the large gap in the battlefield, more than thirty Japanese troops escaped, and the rest of the enemy was completely annihilated.
The officers and men of the Eighth Route Army who participated in the battle carried captured mortars, light machine guns with crooked handles and brand-new three-eight large-lid rifles, hung bullet boxes, and carried yellow tweed coats, leather boots, lunch boxes, and other military supplies, and happily withdrew from the battlefield.
For the 180 cars left by the Japanese army, because the Eighth Route Army had no driver to drive, all of them were burned and destroyed, and a cloud of black smoke rushed out of the valley, making the Kuomintang generals watching on the top of the mountain look excited.
After the war, Yan Xishan reported to Chiang Kai-shek that the results of the battle were:
Xiangtangpu ambushed Yamada and Morimoto's two car teams, killing more than 400 people under the enemy Morimoto Shosa, destroying 180 cars, and capturing 12 light and heavy machine guns and more than 300 long and short guns.
Jude commanded the battle
After this battle, Zhu De's battle plan of combining mobile warfare and guerrilla warfare was further supported by the Kuomintang generals, and then with the cooperation of the Kuomintang and the Communists, another larger-scale annihilation war was carried out, which was the famous "Battle of Changle Village".
In this battle, the Eighth Route Army annihilated more than 1,000 Japanese troops at the cost of more than 800 casualties, and with the encouragement of this battle, the Chinese army took advantage of the victory to pursue and recovered more than ten county towns such as Gaoping, Jincheng, and Liaoxian that had fallen before.
The Eighth Route Army fought continuously and repeatedly succeeded, which made Yan Xishan very shocked.
He carefully studied the examples of the Eighth Route Army's operations and found that there was no more mysterious military common sense in using special terrain to attack the enemy, but "no one in our army knows everything about this method, and no one knows all about other attack methods." However, why did the Eighth Route Army achieve miraculous results every time it attacked the enemy, but our army did the opposite? ”
As to why the simple method of guerrilla warfare became a farce in the Kuomintang army, Yan Xishan ordered his generals to "earnestly study the combat experience of the Eighth Route Army" and informed him of his own research experience: The fundamental reason for the Eighth Route Army's repeated victories in combat is not due to military skill, but to "concentrate on concentrating" -- "in advance, all the efforts were made to plan strategies for subduing the enemy, to carry out the art of reconnaissance and combat, and to temporarily concentrate the whole army on concentrating on the main annihilation of the enemy. ”
Mao Zedong and Zhu De during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression
However, Yan Xishan did not think about the root problem, because what would happen if the Kuomintang officers were made to become proletarians like the Eighth Route Army? This is tantamount to conspiring with the tiger, not to mention that the Kuomintang politicians are unwilling, and Chiang Kai-shek will be even more unwilling. Therefore, guerrilla warfare is not, in essence, an esoteric method of warfare, and the key lies in whether it is in solidarity with the people.
However, the Japanese were very eager to learn the guerrilla tactics of the Eighth Route Army, and even some Japanese generals were fascinated by it.
Yamazaki Shigesaburo Nakasa, a staff officer at the Japanese base camp, wrote an analysis of the guerrilla tactics of the Eighth Route Army after the war, believing that the guerrilla warfare of the Eighth Route Army was the "largest and highest quality guerrilla warfare" in the world's military history.
His original text reads:
Although there were various kinds of guerrilla warfare, only the guerrilla warfare waged by the Chinese Communist Army led by Mao Zedong in the War of Resistance Against Japan was the largest and highest quality guerrilla warfare in history. In Mao Zedong's guerrilla strategy, guerrilla warfare was carried out extensively in the military, political, economic, ideological, and cultural fields. It can be said that it is a kind of offensive strategy of general mobilization of the whole people and unanimous confrontation with the enemy. It mobilizes the people of the whole country, men, women and children, gives play to the subjective initiative of defending the country and the people, and creates the power of concentrating the strength of the whole people to directly attack the enemy... Turn the millions of Imperial Army around.
It can be seen that the Depth of Japanese research on guerrilla warfare of the Eighth Route Army far exceeded that of the Kuomintang at that time.
Mao Zedong Publishes "On Protracted War"
Just as the Japanese feared, only one year after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, in the occupied and controlled areas claimed by the Japanese army, the communist party created the anti-Japanese base areas behind the enemy lines so quickly, in number and on a large scale, that it can be said that one miracle after another was created in the history of human warfare. These small base areas were soon connected into lines and pieces, forming a counter-encirclement of the Japanese troops in the enemy-occupied areas.
It was precisely by winning the hearts and minds of the people, relying on one anti-Japanese revolutionary base area after another, and taking guerrilla warfare as the traction, the Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army extensively mobilized the masses of the people, and finally drowned Japanese imperialism in the ocean of people's war.
At present, there are still some people who are constantly belittling the important role of the Eighth Route Army in the period of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and doing their utmost to smear and powder Chiang Kai-shek, which is actually a kind of nihilism in the history of China's resistance, and everyone should refute it.
At the same time, we also welcome you to widely forward this article so that more people, especially our next generation, can have a deeper understanding of how the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army fought bloodily in the War of Resistance Against Japan under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.
This article is a companion to the previous article, "Mao Zedong wrote a book, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the officers of the Nationalist army to read it, and Feng Yuxiang also printed three thousand at his own expense." If friends are interested, welcome to pay attention to the previous article.
If you still have any different opinions, or if you still have something you want to know, you are welcome to leave a message in the comment area!