During the Liberation War, the Northeast Field Army was the field army with the largest number and the strongest combat effectiveness of our army, and there was no one. In August 1948, on the eve of the launch of the Armageddon, the total strength of the Higashino army reached 1.05 million. A year ago, the total strength of The Eastern Field (then known as the Northeast Democratic United Army) was only 380,000 people. In just one year, how did Higashino expand such a huge army out of thin air? This tremendous achievement is inseparable from Dongye's political commissar Luo Ronghuan.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, Luo Ronghuan: Except for combat, I do everything else</h1>
Luo Ronghuan is the only one among the ten marshals who has been engaged in a leading position in political work for a long time, and when it comes to his merits, he may not be very prominent in combat command, but his strength lies in grasping army building, whether it is political work, or developing strength, reconciling relations, etc., all of which reflect super organizational and leadership ability.
After moving to the northeast in 1946, Luo Ronghuan served as the second deputy political commissar of the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army (Peng Zhen was the first deputy political commissar, Lin Biao was the commander and political commissar), and partnered with the commander Lin Biao. Lin Biao's personal style has been truly described and displayed in many film and television dramas. He thought very deeply and meticulously about operational issues, devoted most of his energy to studying the strength of the troops and the situation, and often sat in front of the wall of maps in the command post for a day, and rarely even walked the road. The only activity item is to eat fried soybeans.
Luo Ronghuan understood and supported Lin Biao very well, and called Lin Biao's habit of specialized combat "Lin Zong's focus doctrine." Originally, as a deputy political commissar (the actual work was done by the political commissar), he was more in charge of major policies, party building, and ideological and political work. The training of the troops, logistics support and other matters are under the leadership of the commander, and other leaders in charge are responsible. However, Lin Biao was so "focused", and Luo Ronghuan could only shoulder all the work of military mobilization, force expansion, logistics support, and so on (Peng Allah was responsible for the affairs of the Northeast Bureau).
Long-term heavy work induced Luo Ronghuan's illness. In fact, as early as the beginning of leading the Shandong troops into the northeast, his kidney disease had begun to worsen. After arriving in the northeast and working continuously, the kidney disease has reached the point where it is incurable.
In the second half of 1946, Luo Ronghuan went to Moscow for treatment, removed the tumor on the kidney, removed one kidney, and also made preliminary treatment for hypertension. After his health improved slightly, he hurried back to Harbin and threw himself into the tense war.
Due to the tacit cooperation with Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan returned to the Harbin East Headquarters, Lin Biao was very happy, and rarely took the initiative to arrange accommodation for Luo Ronghuan, and also reassigned Li Xinjie, who had been following Luo Ronghuan's work, back as Luo Ronghuan's secretary. It can be seen how much Lin Biao relies on Luo Ronghuan, a powerful comrade-in-arms and assistant. Luo Ronghuan also laughed energetically at the comrades and said that Lin Zong wanted to continue his key doctrine, and I had to work a little harder, except for combat, let me do everything else.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > second, form a second-line corps</h1>
At that time, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army only had 380,000 troops, while the total strength of the Northeast Nationalist Army had been replenished by Chen Cheng's reorganization and replenishment to more than 500,000 troops, and our army was at a disadvantage in terms of strength.
How to solve the problem? With a very broad vision, Luo Ronghuan explored a relatively complex, arduous but potentially large path.
At that time, Luo Ronghuan was not only the deputy political commissar of the Eastern Union (at that time Peng Zhen was transferred back to the Central Committee, Luo Ronghuan mainly did the work of political commissar), but also a member of the Standing Committee and deputy secretary of the Northeast Bureau, leading the northeast liberated areas to carry out agrarian revolution, and the population of the liberated areas had reached more than 14 million. The peasants who have been liberated have gained land, their enthusiasm for productive labor has increased, and their enthusiasm and source power for defending the people's property have also been greatly enhanced.
Faced with the difficult situation of stretching the number of troops, Luo Ronghuan suggested to the Northeast Bureau that it is necessary to quickly mobilize the vast number of liberated peasants to fight to defend the fruits of victory, form a large number of second-line corps, and then expand the main force of the field army. After discussion, the Northeast Bureau unanimously agreed to this proposal, and made a clear division of labor, with Luo Ronghuan presiding over this extremely arduous and complicated task.
Mobilizing peasants to join the army is not as simple as imagined. In the past, the Northeast Liberated Areas were under the rule of puppet Manchukuo and the Japanese puppet regime for many years, and the masses certainly hoped to turn themselves around and live a good life and get rid of the shameful status of slaves of the subjugated country. However, after all, there has been no contact with systematic education and guidance for a long time, and the mass base is far from being comparable to the old liberated areas such as Shandong, Hebei, and northern Shaanxi, and the education and transformation of the masses need a process.
These problems, at the beginning of entering the northeast, when beards were full of harassment and chaos, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army had already learned. A large number of peasants and vagrants who had no political consciousness fell into the grass under the influence of bandits and bandits, and the East Linkage used regular troops to eliminate them one by one.
After the land reform in northeast China, some localities also appeared the ideological tendency to rush to improve their living standards and even overthrow the landlords to get rich and get rich. The local party organizations and the government complained bitterly, and the long-term war made the liberated areas very heavy, and in some localities, half of the people's total harvest was conscripted into the military, and the burden was very heavy, and if the young people were allowed to become soldiers, I am afraid that the localities would not be able to sustain it.
In view of these situations, Luo Ronghuan, on the one hand, organized the troops to carry out discipline rectification, called for strict economy, streamlined the organs and non-combatants, and effectively reduced the economic burden on the local masses. At the same time, a large number of cadres were dispatched to the localities to conduct education and guidance, and to make it clear that the purpose of fighting is to defend the people's own land. This principle is originally very simple, and the peasants are easy to accept, but what is missing is systematic and continuous mobilization. Luo Ronghuan has made great efforts and efforts in this regard, of course, the harvest is also great. It is precisely in this kind of education that the masses of the people in the liberated areas of northeast China have gradually integrated with our army in northeast China, and the people's great war power has been released.
The soldiers who were recruited were not able to fight in military uniforms. They must undergo the necessary basic skills training, such as ideological education, shooting, blasting, artillery operation, tactics, and guard service, in order to truly transform themselves into soldiers capable of fighting. However, Lin Biao certainly did not take care of these affairs, nor did he have the energy to take care of them, and these things that originally belonged to military work were also undertaken by Luo Ronghuan.
The difficulty of these things is different from that of the front combat commander, and it is also very difficult to do. The difficulty lies in gathering people's hearts, in straightening out relationships, in perseverance, in complexity and triviality, and it is difficult to accomplish without strong organizational ability, profound and keen insight, and strong implementation.
In particular, this kind of work requires a lot of energy to invest, although Luo Ronghuan's physical condition has improved, but he has just undergone major surgery after all, Soviet doctors suggested that Luo Ronghuan should rest for at least three years to resume work, but he did not even rest enough for a year, and put into long-term high-intensity work, this desperate spirit is awe-inspiring. Luo Shuai later lived only 61 years, which was the shortest life expectancy among the ten marshals, although his physique was relatively weak, but it was also directly related to the selfless work and hard work in the War of Resistance and the War of Liberation.
Under the strong promotion and strong organization of Luo Ronghuan, Dongye (renamed at the end of 1947) successively organized several batches of independent regiments of the second-line corps, each with 2,500 soldiers (this is very obvious with the national army's expansion of the army to occupy one-third or more empty quotas), and successively added to the regular army sequence. By August 1948, the main force of the Northeast Field Army had been expanded from 380,000 to 700,000, plus more than 300,000 local troops, bringing the total strength to 1.05 million. When Chen Cheng learned of this situation, he was originally very conceited about his short-term expansion of more than 200,000 troops, and at this time he could not help but lament that the mobilization ability of the communist army was too strong, and the nationalist army was not an opponent at all.
Third, build an independent artillery corps
At the same time as expanding the number of troops, Luo Ronghuan closely followed the reality that our army in the northeast gradually began to fight urban offensive battles, and put forward the idea of strengthening military production and the building of artillery units.
In fact, the Dongye Artillery corps was launched as early as the Siping Campaign in 1946, but due to the lack of a mature military production system, the scale of artillery and weapons and equipment were very limited.
Zhu Rui, commander of the Northeast Artillery Corps, was most deeply touched by the difficulties of the artillery, and the weapons and equipment used by the artillery units were all Soviet, Japanese, and American systems, and the source was first, left behind by the Soviet army and the Japanese army, and secondly, captured by war, but this was not a long-term solution at all.
Luo Ronghuan was keenly aware that the northeast had a good industrial foundation, which was an advantage that no major strategic region in the country had. As the saying goes, sharpening a knife does not mistakenly cut wood. Now, with the expansion of the scale of the war and the increase of soldiers, weapons and ammunition are still far from keeping up with the demand by capture and indigenous manufacturing. We must make use of the industrial advantages of the northeast as soon as possible and establish a well-established military production industry.
Under the direct impetus of Luo Ronghuan, the Northeast Bureau instructed the Northeast Military Region to set up a military industry department, which was specifically responsible for comrades such as Wu Xiuquan and He Changgong, and the main task was to establish an arsenal.
From the front-line combat unit to the rear military production department, many comrades can't figure it out, thinking that this is a decentralization and demotion of officials. Wu Xiuquan had a knot in his thinking; he had studied in the Soviet Union, worked in the central base area of the Soviet Union during the Red Army period, and had always wanted to prove himself on the front line. The Northeast Bureau appointed him in charge of this work, and he spat bitterly, and Luo Ronghuan bitterly persuaded him to take office.
By 1948, 55 military factories of various sizes had been established in the northeast military sub-districts, which could produce 2,000 60-mm guns, 500,000 mortar shells, 200,000 mountain artillery and field artillery shells, and 250,000 re-equipped mountain artillery and field artillery shells.
With the support of these military factories, the Northeast Artillery Corps became more and more hardened, and the size of the troops gradually expanded, becoming a pivotal strategic force in Dongye, and playing an extremely important role in the Liaoshen Campaign, the Pingjin Campaign, and other major battles. The achievement of these achievements is inseparable from Luo Ronghuan.
The role of political commissars naturally includes solving ideological problems and promoting the implementation of policy directives. This kind of work is difficult to do well without great patience and energy, but Luo Ronghuan is a genius in this regard, who can do anyone's work, and coordinate any relationship smoothly. Therefore, Lin Biao basically did not need to consult Luo Ronghuan when fighting in the front, but he was also aware of the heavy burden that Luo Ronghuan had picked up in the rear, and he also had great respect for Luo Ronghuan himself.