One day in November 1950, outside the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center at No. 1 Gongdelin Road outside Beijing's Deshengmen Gate, soldiers from the Chinese People's Liberation Army put one after another limping war criminals from their cars and locked them up in Gongdelin Prison.
These war criminals were many high-ranking officials of the Kuomintang military who were captured during the Liberation War, and in fact, from the very beginning of the founding of the Communist Party of China, a relatively detailed policy of "preferential treatment of prisoners" had been formulated.
The Chinese Communist Party has always treated prisoners in battle, and this is still the case with Japanese prisoners during the War of Resistance Against Japan, let alone to the Kuomintang troops who are also Chinese.
Among them, Chen Changjie, a "Gongdelin war criminal" who was once known as the "Changsheng General", was pardoned in 1959, but how did he live in his later years?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > First, the transformation of the institute from a military general to a "Confucian general" who is both literate and martial</h1>
In 1949, the Liberation War ended, and Chen Changjie, a senior Kuomintang officer who was captured in the Battle of Pingjin, was sent to Tianjin to serve as a guard, but was captured alive due to the inability to resist, and eventually Tianjin was peacefully liberated.
After Chen Changjie was captured, he was first imprisoned in the Fushun War Criminals Management Center for reform, and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Communist Party of China imprisoned a group of senior generals in the Kuomintang army and transferred them to the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center for reform.
In the year he was imprisoned in the war criminals management center, Chen Changjie was actually 57 years old, and until he was pardoned 10 years later, Chen Changjie spent nearly half of his later years in prison.
Ten years at the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center was a relatively long process of transformation for many captured Kuomintang soldiers.
At first, when they were imprisoned in the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center, the vast majority of these Kuomintang officers were dismissive, including Huang Wei and Shen Drun, who were friends with Chen Changjie, and former colleagues of the Kuomintang army, had such an attitude.
Due to Chen Changjie's high age and poor health, he only needed to participate in some minor labor during the transformation, and such "preferential treatment" also allowed Chen Changjie to begin to change his attitude and participate in the transformation relatively actively.
On the other hand, as early as the Pingjin Campaign, Chen Changjie was actually very shaken about whether to revolt or not.
After being imprisoned in the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center, in order to be able to get out of the "Gongdelin" as soon as possible, Chen Changjie has been very active in cooperating with the work of internal management personnel, and his performance in all aspects is very excellent.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" >2. Freedom was restored after amnesty, and his later years were accompanied by literature and history</h1>
Unlike other war criminals, because Chen Changjie was relatively old and had a lot of free time, according to the descriptions of other Kuomintang officers and war criminals, many war criminals at that time bought books in their free time to read.
After all, during that period, in addition to the daily work that was arranged, there was almost only reading, and Chen Changjie was also one of them.
However, Chen Changjie did not spend time by reading books, or trying to find the reasons for the defeat of the Kuomintang in books, as others did, and he would read carefully the books he bought, and even take notes on every page.
According to Shen Drunk's account in the book "What He Saw and Heard in the Reform of War Criminals", during the period when Gong Delin was reformed, Chen Changjie's only hobby was reading: "When he was resting, he neither played bridge nor chess, but read books with almost no release of his hands, and later my view of him was completely opposite to the original, and I thought that he was a true Confucian general with both culture and martial arts."
When many people think of Chen Changjie, they always think that he is a fierce general among the Kuomintang officers, born to go to the battlefield to kill the enemy, and even some people who have only heard of his name and have never seen Chen Changjie think that he is a brave and good warrior just by imagination, but in fact, Chen Changjie looks like a very thin "scholar.".
Chen Changjie was different from other Kuomintang officers, he was not born in the army, but graduated from the sixth phase of the Baoding Military Academy, during which time, Chen Changjie showed outstanding literary talent and a high and profound understanding of some theories.
According to the managers of the Gongdelin Management Institute, Chen Changjie bought Books related to Marxism and Leninism at his own expense and read them very carefully.
He, like many captured Kuomintang officers, was initially motivated by curiosity, in search of the "secret" of the Chinese Communist Victory.
However, in the process of reading, Chen Changjie gradually became interested, and finally he could not release the volume, and wrote down his comments and experiences after reading in many places, and people at the same time jokingly called him a "theorist".
On December 4, 1959, as one of the first war criminals to receive amnesty, Chen Changjie finally regained his freedom after a decade of "prison disaster", although Chen Changjie was nearly 70 years old at this time, but his body was still relatively tough among the elderly.
After being released, Premier Zhou found the first people to receive amnesty, listened to them share their future ambitions, and provided them with a way out:
"Although your ambitions are all very good, don't forget that you are all witnesses to history, and have the responsibility and obligation to write out your own experience to future generations and warn them that history has a front and a back, it is not only owned by the victors, and without the back there is no front."
Premier Zhou mentioned that he intends to set up a committee for the study of literature and history materials in various expert associations under the jurisdiction of the CPPCC committees in various provinces across the country, and set up an office of the commissioner for culture and history.
According to the organization's distribution, a large number of Kuomintang officials, including Chen Changjie, were to serve as commissioners of literature and history in their first positions, but he took the initiative to ask to be a cleaner to sweep the streets.
Many people do not understand this decision, but in his own view, since he is now a citizen of the People's Republic of China, he should start from the lowest level of citizens and do something practical for the country and the people.
Later, it was because the central government pitied his talent and hoped that he could play his due value, because during his life at the Gongdelin Management Institute, Chen Changjie read many history books and accumulated a lot of experience in literature.
In 1959, Chen Changjie was appointed as the commissioner of the Secretariat of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, mainly responsible for the compilation of literary and historical materials.
In this way, Chen Changjie also returned to Shanghai to reunite with his family.
During his short tenure, Chen Changjie worked hard and wrote nearly 10 articles and more than 300,000 words of manuscripts, leaving precious first-hand historical materials for future generations.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > third, a life of horse fighting, with the great righteousness of the country in mind</h1>
Chen Changjie also grew up in an ordinary peasant family when he was young, and due to his family's poverty, his mother went out early to make money as a nursing mother for others in order to make a living.
But there are too many children in the family, and even if the mother earns money outside, she cannot take care of all the children in the family.
In order to make the situation at home better, around 1892, not long after Chen Changjie was born, his mother weaned him and abandoned him in a ancestral hall outside.
His brothers and sisters pestered their mother every day, only to learn that her mother had left Chen Changjie in the ancestral hall, and then she was carried home again.
Since then, Chen Changjie has had an alias of "picking up".
When he was a child, Chen Changjie spent a carefree childhood under the care of his brothers and sisters at home.
It is said that when Chen Changjie was 2 years old, he showed talent beyond his peers, and he was brilliant, and Tian Chungan, a teacher at the private school, liked this child very much, exempted Chen Changjie from "shu xiu", and also sponsored him to study at the Fuzhou Demonstration Academy.
It is worth mentioning that Tian Chungan is not only Chen Changjie's mentor on the road to study, but also his father-in-law.
After coming to Fuzhou, Chen Changjie caught up with the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, and Chen Changjie, who was worried about the situation in the country, resolutely decided to join the rebel army.
After that, Chen Changjie began to train in the Fujian Wubei Academy, working very hard, sometimes even at night without sleeping, he had to train until late at night.
Because of Chen Changjie's excellent performance, it was not long before he was sent to the Baoding Officer School to study in the cavalry section, where he also met Fu Zuoyi, and the two often drank and talked together during the military academy, and the relationship was very close.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, although the two were senior officers in the Kuomintang army, they often harbored the general righteousness of the country and national feelings in their hearts, and made great contributions to the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
During the War of Resistance Against Japan, in addition to the active resistance of the Communist Army to the Japanese Army, a large number of anti-Japanese heroes also emerged from the Kuomintang army, and General Chen Changjie was one of them.
As his name suggests, General "Changjie" led the army to break through the siege and inflict heavy losses on the Japanese army many times during the War of Resistance Against Japan, which was not only very famous in the National Army, but also known as the "General of Constant Victory" in the Japanese Army, which made the enemy afraid.
General Chen Changjie, on the other hand, relied on his own military ability, and his title was particularly arduous, particularly unfavorable to the situation on the Chinese side, and even fought during the period when the Japanese army was particularly strong, and the "constant victory" luck of such a tiger general who could win the battle stopped in the period of the Liberation War.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="11" >4, "Changsheng General" Chen Changjie: Gong Delin reprimanded Fu Zuoyi in prison</h1>
General Chen Changjie himself not only possessed considerable military ability, but also harbored national righteousness in his heart.
It is said that Chen Changjie openly opposed Yan Xishan in 1939 for the sake of the War of Resistance.
Because Yan Xishan was originally inseparable from Chiang Kai-shek, he asked Chen Changjie to capture the machinery of a small number of troops of the Central Army in the Shanxi region during the critical period of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
General Chen Changjie, who received this order, was furious, and although Yan Xishan was his superior, Chen Changjie also directly rebuked him: "What kind of person do you think of me Chen Changjie, how can you do such a thing during the critical period of the War of Resistance Against Japan, and how can you ignore the great national righteousness?"
After that, Chen Changjie openly disobeyed and defected to Fu Zuoyi's account.
Fu Zuoyi led the troops to revolt directly contributed to the peaceful liberation of the Peiping area, preserved the ancient city of Beiping, and finally protected it from war, which made great contributions to the country and the people.
At that time, the supreme leader of the Communist Party of China made a high evaluation of this: "Fu Zuoyi's great merits in the peaceful liberation of Peiping, the people will never forget you." ”
Therefore, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, although Fu Zuoyi was a senior official of the Kuomintang army, he also served as a senior officer in the People's Republic of China.
But it was also because of Fu Zuoyi's uprising that Chen Changjie, who had the opportunity to revolt, became a "prisoner of the order".
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, under the recommendation of Fu Zuoyi, Chiang Kai-shek also attached great importance to Chen Changjie and appointed him as the commander of the Tianjin garrison.
At that time, although Fu Zuoyi decided to revolt, he ordered General Chen Changjie, who was stationed in Tianjin, to stay until the last moment.
Chen Changjie was grateful to his superiors and classmates for always knowing the grace of encounters, and repeatedly promised, "Please rest assured commander-in-chief, with my Changjie present, there will be no mistakes." ”
After the Pingjin Campaign began, the Northeast Field Army entered the pass and surrounded the urban area of Tianjin, and Chen Changjie received a letter from the Communist Party urging it to lay down its weapons and liberate peacefully.
Although Chen Changjie knew that the situation was critical, he did not dare to make a decision on his own, so he immediately asked Fu Zuoyi for instructions.
However, Fu Zuoyi, who was engaged in secret negotiations with the Chinese People's Liberation Army, issued an order that "as long as you firmly hold, there is a way", Chen Changjie can only choose to stick to it.
In the end, Fu Zuoyi became a hero, but Chen Changjie was called a war criminal after being captured.
Until Chen Changjie was imprisoned in the war criminals management center, he still felt very guilty about Fu Zuoyi because he could not hold the city of Tianjin.
But after knowing that it was precisely because of Fu Zuoyi's actions that made him a criminal, Chen Changjie rebuked Fu Zuoyi more than once in prison.
But in fact, Fu Zuoyi had always felt very guilty about this, often visiting him in Gongdelin Prison and interceding for Chen Changjie.
Fortunately, Chen Changjie also actively participated in ideological and labor reform, and after 10 years, as the first batch of war criminals, he received amnesty.