On November 7, 1946, the streets of Nanjing in the early winter were cold and windy, but outside the high court of the capital, there were people crowded, and the fire of national hatred and family hatred burning in their hearts made people not care about the cold, and waited for the final verdict of the court against the traitor Zhou Fohai. Zhou Fohai was sentenced to death and executed immediately, however, he escaped the fate of being shot.
Zhou Fohai, who was "protected"
Jing Shenghong, a professor at Nanjing Normal University, said that after Japan's surrender in August 1945, trial courts were established in Nanjing and Shanghai to try Japanese war criminals and Wang pseudo-traitors. Previously, Wang Jingwei had died of illness. In the first half of 1946, the second person, Chen Gongbo, was also shot, but Zhou Fohai was protected. Shanghai's "Peace Daily" and "Ta Kung Pao" have published editorials with the headline "Where has Zhou Fohai gone?" ”
Wang Xiaohua, a research librarian at The Second Historical Archive of China, said that Zhou Fohai was induced by Dai Kasa to surrender himself in Chongqing at that time, and was initially imprisoned in the "White Mansion". A year later, Zhou Fohai was taken to Nanjing and imprisoned in Laohuqiao Prison. In the face of the conclusive interrogation, Zhou Fohai retorted with a straight face that he was not convicted of "conspiring with the enemy country" and "attempting to rebel against his own country", and that he had "conspired with his own country" from the beginning and had a relationship with Dai Kasa.
According to ShengHong, Zhou Fohai did assassinate Li Shiqun, the head of Wang Jingwei's government's big secret service, on the instructions of the Chongqing Military Command Bureau. In addition, in accordance with the instructions of the Chongqing Military Command Bureau, he also released some high-ranking underground intelligence personnel and senior generals of the Chongqing government, such as Li Mingyang and Ma Yuanfang, who had been arrested by the Japanese and puppet authorities or captured on the battlefield, from prison and sent them back to Chongqing.
An opportunist
Why did the traitor Zhou Fohai do things for Chiang Kai-shek in the later stages of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression? This starts at the beginning. Zhou Fohai was born in 1897 to a run-down feudal bureaucratic family, and after the death of his father, he was raised by his mother alone and studied in Japan. Jing Shenghong said that after he joined the Communist Party, he found that the strength of the Communist Party at that time was too small, while the Kuomintang had a solid political power in Guangdong and was very powerful.
At this time, Dai Jitao, the propaganda director of the Kuomintang Central Committee in Guangdong, asked him to serve as the secretary of the Propaganda Department and also serve as a professor at Guangdong University, adding up to nearly 500 oceans of income every month. He and his wife Yang Shuhui lived a poor life in Japan, and in the face of Dai Jitao's invitation, Zhou Fohai, a former "poor boy", was determined to leave the Communist Party and took a road of no return.
In September 1924, Zhou Fohai, who had just joined the Kuomintang, did not receive high-level attention, however, after the Split between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in 1927, Zhou Fohai took advantage of the "favorable" factor that he had previously participated in the Communist Party, and deliberately wrote many articles attacking the Communist Party, which was appreciated by Chiang Kai-shek. Zhou Fohai successively served as deputy director of Chiang Kai-shek's attendant office and deputy director of the second department of the base camp of the National Government.
When the traitor flew yellow Tengda
However, Zhou Fohai's inner political ambitions were not satisfied. Zhou Fohai was ambitious from a young age, wanted to enter the cabinet and worship the prime minister, and became a world-famous great statesman and revolutionary leader, but he followed Chiang Kai-shek for ten years, and although he was trusted and valued by Chiang Kai-shek, he was still only a confidential and aide-director, and a role under chiang kai-shek's command. Wang Xiaohua also said that Zhou Fohai believed that Chiang Kai-shek did not treat him as a human being, which was his attitude towards a domestic slave.
Wang Xiaohua said: After the "Xi'an Incident" in December 1936, Chiang Kai-shek delivered a speech in Lushan, passionately demanding a nationwide war of resistance. At the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Zhou Fohai believed that China could not defeat Japan, so he was pessimistic and disappointed about the future of the War of Resistance. In the face of Chiang Kai-shek's anti-argument that "the outside must first be at home, and instead claiming the war of resistance," he was both confused and helpless.
At this time, political views could no longer be reached, and coupled with his personal dissatisfaction with Chiang Kai-shek, he was secretly determined to leave Chiang Kai-shek. On December 26, 1936, Chiang Kai-shek was freed from the "Xi'an Incident", and when he learned that Wang Jingwei was already on his way back to China, his only instruction was to ask Zhou Fohai, then deputy director of the attendant office, to greet him, and it was this decision that allowed Zhou Fohai, as the head of the wall, to find his new direction in politics.
In January 1937, Wang Jingwei, who had been a dusty servant, arrived in Hong Kong and met Zhou Fohai, and on the long journey back from Hong Kong to Nanjing, the relationship between the two political enemies who had once been "old and dead did not interact with each other" slowly changed. Jing Shenghong said that during the conversation, Zhou Fohai found that he and Wang Jingwei had fundamentally the same political viewpoint: The first was that he could only seek peace and compromise against Japan; the second was that the Communist Party could not establish a second Kuomintang-Communist cooperation, and could only exclude, and could only "take the outside and be safe from within"; the third was that he found that following Wang Jingwei could realize his dream of getting ahead.
In February 1937, Wang Jingwei returned to Nanjing accompanied by Zhou Fohai. Subsequently, the two became more and more intimate, and organized a "low-key club" in the basement of Zhou Fohai's residence to secretly negotiate the signing of a "peace agreement" with Japan, in which Zhou Fohai was very active. In December 1938, Zhou Fohai absconded with Wang Jingwei to Hanoi, Vietnam, and on the 29th of the same month, Zhou Fohai returned to Hong Kong to publish wang Jingwei's "Yan Dian", publicly expressing his attitude of compromise with Japan.
In July 1939, the Kuomintang decided to expel Zhou Fohai forever. In March 1940, the Wang puppet government was established in Nanjing, and in addition to Wang Jingwei, Zhou Fohai was the most powerful figure. Although Zhou Fohai served as vice president of the puppet Executive Yuan, he sat in the third chair, and his position was inferior to That of Chen Gongbo, but his real power was not under Chen Gongbo. He not only held the financial and economic power as the "minister of finance", but also the "minister of police", and directly controlled the secret agents and police agencies of the Wang puppet regime.
God did not pardon him
Jing Shenghong said: With the tremendous changes in the international and domestic situations, Zhou Fohai, who was very clever-minded, immediately became sensitive and aware that the situation of China's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression had changed. The opportunistic, cunning and changeable Zhou Fohai thought about it again and again, and for the sake of his own life and future, he decided to return to Chiang Kai-shek's side.
Wang Xiaohua said that he first looked for Dai Kasa's line, but he could not find it, but he did not expect that Cheng Kexiang and Peng Shou under his hands were suddenly arrested by Li Shiqun's No. 76, and a confession was that they were Dai Kasa's people. Zhou Fohai said in his diary: I was worried that I couldn't find Lao Dai, and I didn't expect his people to be by my side. So he bailed the two men out and wrote a letter expressing his allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek. As a result, Zhou Fohai re-established contact with the Chongqing government.
After Japan's surrender in 1945, there was nowhere for traitors to hide. In order to win public opinion and conform to the will of the people, Chiang Kai-shek ordered a nationwide crackdown on rape, and Zhou Fohai was trapped. In order to survive, Zhou Fohai let people move around. Wang Xiaohua said that looking at his own diary, it seemed that more than 50 gold bars were taken out at that time, but in fact, Mao Renfeng set up a bureau to defraud Zhou Fohai's money. They first took Zhou Fohai's wife as a hostage to Chongqing, and then took her to Shanghai, forcing him to hand over all his family wealth. After handing over a batch of no, and constantly extorting money, and finally Zhou Fohai's wife really had no way, swallowed gold and committed suicide, and finally was rescued.
The traitor Zhou Fohai was finally put on the trial bench of history and sentenced to death. The news brought his wife, Yang Shuhui, to the brink of a nervous breakdown, and she hurried to find the last "straw of life" that Zhou Fohai had given her a few days earlier—Chiang Kai-shek's handwritten letter. Zhou Fohai argued that he had worked for the National Government of Chongqing in the last years of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and contributed to the War of Resistance Against Japan.
Jing Shenghong said that according to his years of research, this was not a handwritten letter from Chiang Kai-shek, but probably a handwritten letter written by Dai Kasa, director of the Military Command Bureau of the National Government in Chongqing at that time. He wrote to Zhou Fohai, agreeing to his repentance and returning to the anti-Japanese camp, asking him to secretly work for the Chongqing government, and the letter was nodded by Chiang Kai-shek.
Just when Zhou Fohai thought that the trump card in his hand, Chiang Kai-shek's handwritten letter, could allow him to survive this disaster safely, the news that the verdict of the trial could not be changed was transmitted, which was like a slap in the face for Zhou Fohai. Just when Zhou Fohai was on the verge of despair, an important piece of information reached his ears and gave him a glimmer of hope for survival.
Wang Xiaohua said: When Zhou Fohai was Wang's pseudo-"minister of finance," he had a number of puppet armies in his hands, and Chiang Kai-shek wanted to recruit these people again. Zhou Fohai's former confidant Hao Pengju was ostracized by the Kuomintang Huangpu people, and finally led 20,000 people to surrender Chen Yi's troops. Zhou Fohai wrote a letter to Chiang Kai-shek, saying, "I can still play a role, and if you want to shoot me, there will be no way." As a result, he wrote a letter to Hao Pengju, and sure enough, on January 22, 1947, Hao Pengju and his men surrendered to Chiang Kai-shek again.
In March 1947, when the Supreme Court rejected the appeal of Zhou Fohai's wife, Yang Shuhui, Chiang Kai-shek, in his capacity as chairman of the Nationalist government, issued a pardon order, using his power to adjust the Supreme Court's judgment from immediate execution to life imprisonment. But man is not as good as heaven, Chiang Kai-shek pardoned him, God did not, just after being pardoned for nearly a year, Zhou Fohai had a heart attack and died in Nanjing Tiger Bridge Prison. ("The End of the World"