In 1950, the Korean War broke out, not long after, the central government decided to resist the United States and aid Korea, which also marked that the Chinese army will meet with the world's strongest army on the battlefield, and finally, after five arduous battles on the Korean battlefield, the United Nations army led by the United States will be driven back to the south of the "38th Line".
More than 70 years have passed since the Korean War, and so far, many people are talking about this war, but some people say that the biggest regret left by this war is that we missed the best opportunity to recover Taiwan.
In 1950, at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the central government was faced with two choices, one was to support Korea in fighting US imperialism and ensure the security of China's northeast industrial base. Second, without intervening in the Korean War, we should quickly send troops to liberate Taiwan while the United States is deeply immersed in the Korean battlefield and accomplish the great cause of the reunification of the motherland in one fell swoop.
These two options have been discussed at the top of the People's Liberation Army, and many senior generals are actually more inclined to the second option, because everyone knows that supporting North Korea means that the Chinese army will have to fight against the most powerful country in the world at that time, and it is difficult to say whether the war will last a long time.
The second option is better; Taiwan is not big, and if the People's Liberation Army goes all out to liberate Taiwan, it is fully capable of recovering Taiwan; moreover, after the Korean War enters a protracted war, most of the US Pacific Fleet will have to be sent to the Korean Peninsula to support, which greatly reduces the US military's support for Taiwan.
In addition, during the War of Liberation, after the People's Liberation Army won the three major battles with one stroke of the pen, it forcibly crossed the Yangtze River, marched south, and quickly liberated most of the territory of the whole country; at this time the liberation of Taiwan was so-called by the public; not only the people of the whole country approved of it, but also in the international community, other countries had nothing to say, after all, this is the internal affair of our country.
To sum up, the recovery of Taiwan has been endorsed by many people within both the Central Committee and the People's Liberation Army.
As early as June 1950, Chairman Mao issued an order to put Su Yu in charge of the plan to attack Taiwan, and to organize troops to be ready to attack Taiwan at any time.
Seeing the large-scale assembly of the People's Liberation Army, the Kuomintang reactionaries in the entire Taiwan region were also panicked for a while, and even Taiwan's "Central Daily" commented that "Taiwan has reached an unprecedentedly dangerous moment."
Just when everything was ready, the Korean War broke out, and the US military intervened in the war on the peninsula, causing the situation to change, and Chairman Mao had to put the "plan to attack Taiwan" on hold for the time being and consider the Korean Peninsula issue.
Why, then, did Chairman Mao shelve the "plan to attack Taiwan" and instead help the DPRK? The author believes that with regard to this issue, we should analyze the exercise from various aspects, and we will first analyze it from the military strength of the mainland and the Taiwan region and other comprehensive conditions.
First of all, in 1950, in terms of the size of the army, our People's Liberation Army troops had millions of troops, and could mobilize tens of millions of combat troops at any time, on the other hand, Taiwan, because of the failure of the three major battles, the main force of the Kuomintang was lost, and the remnants of the remaining soldiers had to retreat to Taiwan, at this time Taiwan was at most hundreds of thousands of people, even if Chiang Kai-shek temporarily recruited troops, the Kuomintang also had only 1 million troops at most, which is far from the size of our army.
Speaking of the morale of the army, there is no doubt that the morale of the Kuomintang troops who remain in Taiwan is far from being comparable to that of our army. However, from the perspective of organization and weaponry, the Kuomintang army has a certain advantage; they have the three armed forces of the navy and the army, of which the navy still has dozens of warships, and the air force has hundreds of advanced American fighters.
Our PLA Navy has only a few dozen dilapidated gunboats and some fishing boats, the Air Force has only more than a hundred captured fighters, the naval and air forces cannot be compared with the Kuomintang troops, and our army only has the army to crush the nationalist army, but the key is that the mainland and Taiwan are separated by a strait, and there are no large ships, so how can the army land on the island to fight? Is it obviously unrealistic to swim past.
Although the size and morale of our army far exceed that of the nationalist army, because of the Taiwan Strait, our navy lacks large ships and fleets, and there is no way to effectively transport a large number of soldiers to the island to fight.
On the issue of unity within the camp, this has become a major drawback of the Kuomintang; the Kuomintang is full of internal crises and serious internal attrition; from a political point of view, the Nationalist army retreats to Taiwan, and only a few islands are under control; when the People's Liberation Army assembles on a large scale along the coast, the defenders on The island of Taiwan suddenly feels tremendous pressure.
From an economic point of view, although Chiang Kai-shek transported a lot of gold, silver dollars, US dollars, and other wealth when he retired to Taiwan, this could not solve the embarrassment of overcrowding on the island of Taiwan, and millions of people were suddenly crowded to the small island of Taiwan, which completely destroyed the economic ecology on the island, and the economic problems caused by serious inflation made the Kuomintang heavily indebted.
Without the support of the United States, the Kuomintang would have fallen long ago before our country liberated Taiwan. It can be said that the Kuomintang in 1950 was in a situation of exhaustion, which also led many radicals in Taiwan to believe: "Taiwan has no future, the international community has begun to abandon Taiwan, if the People's Liberation Army attacks Taiwan, Taiwan will collapse rapidly!" ”
Returning to the main theme, since attacking Taiwan has such an advantage, why did our army not choose to attack Taiwan first? Instead, what about choosing to resist US aggression and aid Korea?
On the bright side, the Kuomintang has reached the point of exhaustion, as if as long as our army can land on the island, Taiwan can be liberated. But in fact, the day after the outbreak of the Korean War, the United States quickly changed its policy toward Taiwan, and the US Government believed that Taiwan's strategic position was very important and that the United States could not relinquish its control over Taiwan under any circumstances.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman even declared: "The Chinese Communist Party's liberation of Taiwan will directly threaten the security of the Pacific region." Not only that, the most powerful Seventh Fleet of the US military has also entered the Taiwan Strait to prevent our army from liberating Taiwan.
In fact, just by virtue of the continental and naval strength at that time, even if there was no Intervention by the United States, our People's Liberation Army did not have a powerful navy and air force at that time, and on the endless sea, if there were no large ship carriers and aircraft as cover, it would be very difficult to rely on the army to cross the sea and land. With the strong intervention of the United States, it will be even more difficult for our People's Liberation Army to liberate Taiwan.
Why do I say that? Let's take a look at the previous operation on the island, as early as 1949, our army launched an offensive, the People's Liberation Army launched an attack in the Kinmen area, the Sanye troops fought on Kinmen Island for three days and three nights, but never took Kinmen Island, although nearly 10,000 Kuomintang defenders were killed, but Sanye also lost nearly 10,000 people, to know that the Sanye troops were more than 10,000 at that time, this proportion of casualties is still very large.
People familiar with geography know that Kinmen is very close to the mainland, and the strait between them is not wide, but just such a small distance makes the PLA pay a great price in casualties, which shows that if there is no cooperation from the air force and the navy, it can be said that if there is no cooperation between the air force and the navy, it can be said that it is a life-fighting operation by relying solely on the army to cross Hayden Island.
After the Battle of Kinmen, in December of that year, our army began to attack the Zhoushan Islands again, the difficulty of liberating the Zhoushan Islands was much lower than that of Kinmen, and the defenders above were not as many as Kinmen, only about 50,000 people, but it was such a small Zhoushan that made the People's Liberation Army feel pressure, and under the strong pressure of our army, the Kuomintang took the initiative to withdraw its troops, which allowed our army to get Zhoushan.
From the two cases of crossing Hayden Island, we can see that these two islands that are very close to the inland can make the People's Liberation Army pay such a heavy price, so how much casualties will our army have to pay for Taiwan, which is separated by a strait, to be barely liberated? No one knows, but everyone understands that it takes the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers to touch the threshold of Taiwan Island.
In 1950, Su Yu, the commander-in-chief of the attack on Taiwan, formulated a detailed plan for attacking Taiwan, which planned to invest 500,000 troops to cross the sea in two times.
However, the Taiwan Strait is more than 400 kilometers long, and the narrowest place is more than 100 kilometers, and if you want to liberate Taiwan, you must rely on the navy and the air force.
In his plan to attack Taiwan, Su Yu also estimated that if our army wants to quickly liberate Taiwan, the number of warships needed to attack Taiwan is calculated according to 500,000 people, then, together with the personnel weapons and grain, there will be a weight of 130,000 tons, which will require more than 600 thousand-ton ships and 2,000 landing ships.
Although the whole country immediately prepared to build a navy after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the total number of naval vessels in the whole country was only a few dozen gunboats and some warships, which was a drop in the bucket compared with the estimated number. The Air Force is even more seriously insufficient, with the PLA having just over 150 fighters, half of which are in a state of maintenance and unable to fly.
Judging from these circumstances, the mainland cannot guarantee the smooth crossing of the sea by the mainland according to the scale of the air force and navy it currently has, and the feint attack strategy proposed by Su Yu is actually his next strategy, and he understands that if he relies on feint attack, the troops are also taking great risks, after all, the Taiwan Strait is too long, even if the feint attack force can hold the enemy for 1 hour, the main attack force cannot reach the main island of Taiwan, and even the Penghu Archipelago is unlikely to arrive.
There is also an important environment for the feint offensive strategy, that is, there are Chinese Communist agents and underground party members inside Taiwan, who transmit important information from time to time, and these underground parties can also win over Kuomintang personnel from within and then disintegrate the enemy army from within.
At that time, Wu Shi, who was then the "deputy chief of staff" of the Kuomintang Ministry of National Defense, offered to do internal response, and Wu Shi was called "Secret Envoy No. 1" by Chairman Mao. Later, when Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan, Wu Shi deliberately kept his wife and daughter by his side in order to dispel Chiang Kai-shek's concerns and make him believe in himself.
With Wu Shi, the top-secret intelligence front, there is a chance of victory in liberating Taiwan; however, the Chen Zemin and Cai Xiaoqian incidents have exposed our party's intelligence organization in Taiwan, and Wu Shi and more than 1,800 other underground party members were captured and heroically righteous.
Just when Su Yu was in a dilemma, the Korean War broke out, and on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the United States vigorously supported Chiang Kai-shek, while the Soviet Attitude was not obvious, which made the mainland fall into a very embarrassing situation.
Before the outbreak of the Korean War, Chairman Mao asked Liu Shaoqi to ask Stalin, hoping that the Soviet Union would help China train 1,000 pilots and 300 airport service workers, and sell another 100 to 200 fighters and dozens of bombers to China.
Stalin replied: "The Soviet Union also suffered great losses in World War II, and it was too busy to take care of itself; on the other hand, if we helped you, then the United States would have an excuse to start a new world war." This shows that the Soviet Union does not want to give more help on the issue of liberating Taiwan. In the face of so many difficulties, Chairman Mao still issued instructions: "It is imperative to liberate Taiwan!" ”
Without the Korean War, perhaps the PLA would have concentrated on attacking Taiwan, and although it may have suffered greater losses, at least there would have been a chance to liberate Taiwan. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the Korean War completely disrupted the plans of the party Central Committee, and the central authorities had to make a decision to resist US aggression and aid Korea and defend the homeland.
After the end of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, our army also lost the best period for liberating Taiwan. When Chairman Mao recalled in 1950 many years later, he would also sigh: "The liberation of Taiwan could not be delayed in the first place, and the best opportunity was lost when this delay was delayed." ”
Later, when Chairman Mao talked about the historical issue of the liberation of Taiwan at the congress, he said: "There is no liberation of Taiwan... Chiang Kai-shek's foothold in Taiwan was unstable, the US Seventh Fleet had withdrawn, it was the best time to liberate Taiwan, we lost this opportunity, in order to eliminate Hu Zongnan's troops in the southwest, I let Erye go to the southwest, Sanye also had to garrison the big cities and sweep up the remnants, did not concentrate the troops of Erye and Sanye to liberate Taiwan, but fought a battle at Kinmen with inferior troops, and finally made Chiang Kai-shek's chessboard in Taiwan alive. ”
If there had been no Korean War in history, China would probably have taken back Taiwan in 1950, but the outbreak of the Korean War was so unexpected that no one could have predicted a strong INTERVENTION by the United States, nor could anyone have predicted that the intentions of the United States were not just North Korea, but northeast China.
The author believes that Chairman Mao considers from a long-term perspective that on the issue of China's northeast security and Taiwan's issue, it is ultimately necessary to choose northeast security, after all, Taiwan has not been recovered, and there will be opportunities to take it back in the future, and once the United States controls the peninsula, then there will never be a peaceful day in northeast China.
Now that more than seventy years have passed since the Korean War, Taiwan has not been liberated for a long time, but we believe that in the near future, Taiwan will return to the embrace of our country.