The Battle of Laiwu was the most classic battle of the Liberation War, when our heroic People's Liberation Army annihilated 56,000 enemy troops and captured Li Xianzhou, deputy commander of the Second Appeasement District of the Kuomintang Army, alive. However, looking closely at this battle, the victory of the People's Liberation Army was not smooth, and General Su Yu mentioned in his later recollections that Ou Zhen, the commander of the Southern Front Corps of the Kuomintang Army, was not a generalist, and his simultaneous tactics once made Su Yu helpless. According to the history of the Chinese Field and other data, the Huaye Command has revised the combat plan seven times in response to the situation of the national army to adapt to the situation.
What is the truth?
First of all, let's look at the overall layout of the Nationalist army in the Shandong battlefield. In the second half of 1946, the Kuomintang army launched a key attack on the Liberated Areas of Shandong, but the results were repeatedly defeated. Chiang Kai-shek was anxious to turn the situation around and tried to win several big battles to save some face. The Battle of Laiwu took place against this backdrop.
The Kuomintang troops thrown into the Shandong battlefield had two strategic directions, north and south. To the north was the Second Theater of Operations of the Kuomintang Army, commanded by Wang Yaowu, who sent some troops from Jinan to the south.
To the south was the unit of the Kuomintang Xuzhou Appeasement Office, and its commander was Chen Cheng, the number one general under Chiang Kai-shek. The southern troops advanced from Jiangsu to southern Shandong, with Ou Zhen, commander of the Nineteenth Corps, as the commander-in-chief, and aimed directly at Linyi, the capital of the Shandong People's Liberation Army.
The Nationalist army on both sides, from the books, reached 23 integrated divisions and 53 brigades. An integrated division of the Kuomintang army is actually the strength of an army, an army of about 20,000-30,000 people, but at that time the number of troops put into battle was not so much, some integrated divisions did not participate in the front line, some troops were not full, in fact, the number of troops participating in the battle was about 230,000-250,000.
The strategy of attacking the north and south, which looked perfect on the surface, compressed our army in the hilly area between Linyi and Jinan, and finally fought a battle to catch turtles in an urn.
Linyi is the capital of our Shandong Liberated Area, the only big city controlled by our Party in Shandong, and plays a strategic pivot role in the entire Jiaodong Liberated Area, Luzhong Liberated Area, and Lunan Liberated Area.
Although our army claims not to care about the gains and losses of one city and one place, after all, Linyi is the capital, and the enemy will give up as soon as he comes, and the impact on the overall situation of the war is immeasurable.
Therefore, Su Yu, deputy commander of Huaye (actually in charge of Huaye's military command), initially consulted with Commander Chen Yi (concurrently political commissar and the supreme chief of Huaye) and made up his mind to fight, or to save Linyi.
But in this way, it is right in the heart of Europe.
Ou Zhen served as a platoon leader under Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and was subordinate to the Ye Ting Independent Regiment during the Great Revolution, and he was more intelligent in fighting. According to General Su Yu's recollection, Ou Zhen had invested about sixty-five regiments of troops in Linyi at that time. What is this concept? There are about 150,000 people. At that time, Hua Ye also invested fifty or sixty regiments, and the total strength of the troops was slightly less than that of the Kuomintang army.
However, our army's weapons and equipment are inferior to those of the national army, and they are not superior in numbers and cannot fight a war of attrition. Su Yu's original plan was to adopt a frontal confrontation and annihilate his flanks in a mobile battle, destroying several main divisions of the Nationalist army and forcing them to retreat.
But it was not good to play Su Yu.
Ou Zhen was very familiar with the plaster of the People's Liberation Army, and in order to avoid the division and annihilation of the various departments, Ou Zhen ordered that all the departments must maintain close contact, push flat on the first line, cooperate with each other, and form an iron plate, so that Su Yu has no gap to take advantage of.
By advancing little by little, the PLA is bound to fall into a situation of attrition with the Nationalist army. And this is exactly what the national army wants. To fight attrition, the Kuomintang army is not afraid, because there are many people with strong firepower and are not afraid of consumption.
According to General Su Yu's recollection, the Nationalist army also dispatched an air force to indiscriminately bomb Linyi for a full week, so that our defensive forces could not lift their heads.
The southern line is so difficult to fight, what to do, Linyi is not easy to defend, what to do?
This kind of problem in the national army will certainly make the commander sad. It must be to ask Chiang Kai-shek for instructions first, whether to keep or abandon. Chiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, generally did not like to take responsibility and let the front-line generals watch and do it themselves. In the end, in order to avoid accidents, the front-line generals did not retreat, and the friendly forces watched each other and could not save, which eventually led to the total annihilation of the army. The Battle of Huaihai, which occurred later, was lost in this way.
But our party and our army have never had such a burden.
Running when we can't play and looking for opportunities in sports is our biggest strategic advantage.
Seeing that they were about to fall into an unfavorable situation of fighting attrition, Chen and Su immediately suggested to the central authorities that they should not defend Linyi and instead fight the enemy on the northern front. The central government is not ambiguous in the slightest, agreeing!
Up and down, its profit is broken. The resolute support of the central authorities is the reassuring pill for our army to win victory in the Shandong battlefield.
However, the national army is so stupid, can you fight wherever you want?
Opportunities were never delivered voluntarily. Su Yu discovered the fighter after careful and meticulous analysis.
The fighter plane lies in the biggest flaw in the Kuomintang army's north-south confrontation: the south is heavier than the north.
What does that mean?
The troops of the Xuzhou Appeasement Office were the top priority of the Kuomintang army, and there was no doubt that they would not be able to fight well. But the Northern Front Corps was a little carelessly arranged.
The southern front was the main offensive force, but the northern front was a diversionary force, and Wang Yaowu sent Li Xianzhou to command more than 70,000 people to enter the laiwu, Xintai, and Zibo fronts, but did not take the initiative to advance south, nor was it as cautious as Ou Zhen, and there was no close coordination between the various departments. Li Xianzhou led the Seventy-third Army into Laiwu and the Forty-sixth Army into Xintai.
These two counties are two important strongholds south of Jinan, closely relying on the Jiaoji Line, with convenient transportation, and at the same time, like two iron tongs, biting the rear of our Huaye troops. General Su Yu believed that it did not matter much if we lost Linyi, but if we lost the base area in Luzhong, more than 200,000 troops would fall into a dangerous situation without rear combat, so compared with the enemy army on the southern front, which was holding a heavy and steady advance, the arrogant and careless enemy army on the northern front needed to wait for a strict position.
Most importantly, there were also contradictions between the two Kuomintang military-level units in the Second Theater. The Seventy-third Army was Wang Yaowu's concubine, his own son, who took care of a lot. However, the Forty-sixth Army was not a concubine, and Wang Yaowu sent him further south and deep into Xintai, while the Seventy-third Army led by Li Xianzhou was actually the second line. In the event of an exchange of fire with the People's Liberation Army, the forty-sixth Army would be the first to be cannon fodder. The two armies are not closely linked, and there is a possibility of individual breakthroughs.
Su Yu keenly discovered this key point and decided to abandon Linyi and go north to fight two nationalist regiments on the northern front that were alone and deep.
The strategic direction is certainly set, but it is not a good thing to expose the intention prematurely. If Ou Zhen sensed Hua Ye's intentions and attacked jointly with the Northern Front, and did not give Hua Ye the opportunity to annihilate each other, it would really be over, and Linyi would be lost in vain.
What to do? Su Yu suddenly cast a clever hand. He sent troops to build a pontoon bridge on the canal on the Yanzhou line, making a appearance of crossing the river to the west and meeting with The Army of Liu Deng in Nakano. Not only that, Su Yu also actively built a blocking position north of Linyi and made a look of fighting near Linyi.
Sure enough, the Southern Front Corps of the Kuomintang Army found signs of HuaYe's withdrawal. In fact, it is completely impossible for a large army to fight and completely conceal the attempt to fight. And only to a limited extent to mislead or deceive the other party. Su Yu's hand precisely pinpointed the Kuomintang's eagerness to eat Linyi, first showing weakness, conforming to the expectations of the Nationalist army, and then luring the direction.
So how effective is it?
The Ou Zhen Corps judged that our HuaYe force could not be supported, and swung into and occupied Linyi Empty City. At the same time, it actively extended forward in an attempt to pursue and annihilate our army west of the canal, and at the same time opened the Jinpu Line running through the north and south (basically the same as the current Beijing-Shanghai Line), forming a huge encirclement circle, completely occupying the entire Shandong Liberated Area, and annihilating the main force of our Huaye.
But Wang Yaowu didn't think so. Su Yu has always been haunted in battle, and escaping to the canal is not his style. Moreover, at present, the strength of the national army on the northern front is not strong, only three armies can fight, and it is also necessary to separate one army to garrison Zibo to control the Jiaoji Line, with two armies of 70,000 people against 200,000 people in Huaye, which is absolutely a dead end.
Out of caution, Wang Yaowu proposed to temporarily withdraw the northern army. The Forty-sixth Army, which had already advanced south into Xintai, retreated back to Laiwu, and Li Xianzhou's troops, which had entered the south of Laiwu, retreated in the direction of Zibo.
Wang Yaowu was actually not stupid, as a veteran general who had been in the battlefield for a long time, he also felt that the two armies were alone and deep, and it was easy to be caught by the enemy. If the two armies on the northern front retreated, forming a solid defensive posture, under the aggressive attack of the southern front army, Su Yu's battle was indeed not easy to fight.
At the critical moment, the top level of the Kuomintang helped a lot. Chen Cheng, chief of the general staff of the Nationalist Army and director of the Xuzhou Appeasement Office, was earnest in his efforts, believing that HuaYe had previously fought against the Nationalist army in the battles of Subei and Lunan, especially the Lianshui Campaign, which was very attritional, and now it was indeed unable to fight again. The nationalist army's north-south advance has extremely compressed Huaye's living space, and crossing the canal in the west and sneaking into Henan seems to be Chen Su's only choice.
Chen Cheng ordered that the Northern Front Corps should not retreat, but should occupy the two key points of Xintai and Laiwu, and cooperate with the Southern Front Corps in an effort to annihilate Huaye in the Yimeng Mountains.
That's great. The fighter planes are fleeting. In order to prevent the Nationalist army from changing again, Su Yu gave up his original intention of eating the seventy-third and forty-sixth armies in one fell swoop, because such a blow, while stretching out two fists at the same time, was confident of eating the Nationalist army, but the time was definitely too long, which would cause a fierce counterattack from the Nationalist army on the southern front. In order to ensure absolute victory, Su Yu once again changed the battle plan, narrowed the battle objectives, and only attacked Li Xianzhou's Seventy-third Army.
Wang Yaowu was still uneasy about the situation on the northern front, and sent planes to reconnoiter Huaye's movements, and he suddenly found that the PLA troops had quietly moved to the west of Laiwu and waited in place for two days. This is an extremely sinister signal.
If the People's Liberation Army really wants to cross the canal in the west, there is no reason to stop in the west of Laiwu, and there is no shop after the village. The only explanation is that Su Yu wants to cloth the pocket array again!
And this big pocket to hold who can not be more obvious, Laiwu only Li Xianzhou!
Wang Yaowu was stunned, in order not to let the Seventy-third Army be surrounded by Huaye, he did not care about the orders of the Ministry of National Defense and the chief of the general staff, and urgently ordered the Forty-sixth Army in Xintai to quickly move closer to Laiwu and gather with Li Xianzhou's troops.
At the same time, he also ordered Li Xianzhou's vanguard troops to quickly withdraw all of Laiwu City from the south of Laiwu, and ordered the Twelfth Army in the northeast of Laiwu to be ready to receive and be ready to withdraw its troops from the Jiaoji Line to the base camp.
It's just too late.
General Su Yu later recalled the Battle of Laiwu and praised Wang Yaowu's judgment, saying that this nationalist general really had a unique vision, and his conclusion was completely consistent with Hua Ye's determination to fight.
However, Li Xianzhou's troops advanced and retreated several times, two in and two out of Laiwu, the troops were very tired, and the will to fight was seriously reduced. Moreover, although Li Xianzhou was named the commander-in-chief of the Northern Front Corps and the deputy commander of the Second Theater of Operations, his command power was actually very limited. Except for the headquarters of the Seventy-third Army, the other two corps, he could not command.
The Forty-sixth Army was a Gui army and an old subordinate of Bai Chongxi. The Twelfth Army was reorganized from the Northeast Army. Even Wang Yaowu could not completely decide on the personnel of these two armies, and his command was only superficially obedient, and many major matters in the face of war were almost decided by the two armies themselves. Not to mention that Li Xianzhou was just a deputy commander.
In addition, Han Liancheng, commander of the Forty-sixth Army, had long been plotted against by our Party, and the Forty-sixth Army had played almost no supporting role. Li Xianzhou almost led the Seventy-third Army in a single fight.
In the early morning of February 20, 1947, Huaye's troops had been able to cover their ears and successively conquered Boshan, Jinyang Pass, Kouzhen and other places. Why hit these places? Attacking Boshan cut off the seventy-third army from the twelfth army, making it impossible for Li Xianzhou to escape to the Jiaoji line. The attack on Jinyang Pass cut off Laiwu's connection with Jinan, preventing the enemy from the direction of Jinan from passing. Hitting the town of Dakou was to cut off the last living eye on the north side of Laiwu, causing Li Xianzhou's headquarters of the Seventy-third Army to completely fall into the pocket array.
At this point, Su Yu's pocket array was completely laid out.
Li Xianzhou's troops were in disarray, and his troops were more than 60,000, less than 70,000, and they were completely inferior in terms of troops. Calling for rescue from all departments is also calling for the heavens and the earth. By February 23, tens of thousands of people were crowded in the narrow city of Laiwu, where they were bombarded by Huaye's cannons, killing and injuring countless people. Li Xianzhou led his army out of the city in an attempt to move closer to Kouzhen. As a result, they were surrounded and annihilated by the People's Liberation Army during the movement. The headquarters of the Seventy-third Army is finished. Li Xianzhou himself became a prisoner.