Classics
The original text of the "Hundred Battles and Strange Strategies" is: Whoever attacks the enemy and retreats without reason must be examined. Fruit exhaustion, optional light sharp tipping. If you return to the teacher, you cannot stop it. The Fa ("Sun Tzu's Art of War and Military Controversy") says: "Return to the division and do not restrain it." ”
According to the Chapter on Return to War, when fighting the enemy, if the enemy retreats for no reason, the reason must be carefully investigated. If the enemy does retreat due to exhaustion of strength and food, it is optional to send lightly armed elite troops to follow the pursuit. If it is a withdrawal of its own troops, do not stop it. As the ancient art of war says, "Do not stop the enemy who withdraws to your own country." ”
Coalition soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk.
Examples
Three years after Emperor Jian'an of the Han Dynasty, Cao Cao besieged Zhang Xiu at Yongcheng (穰城, in modern Dengzhou, Henan), and Liu Biao sent troops to the rescue. Zhang Xiu rushed to Anzhong (安村; northeast of present-day Dengzhou, Henan) to control the dangerous terrain in order to cut off Cao Cao's retreat. When the Cao army was attacked before and after, he dug tunnels at dangerous points at night, pretended to escape, but secretly set up an ambush and waited for Zhang Xiujun to enter the ambush circle. Zhang Xiu did indeed send all his men and horses to pursue, and Cao Cao ordered the ambushed surprise soldiers to attack and break Zhang Xiu in one fell swoop.
On May 10, 1940, the Nazi German army blitzed the four western European countries, leaving the British Expeditionary Force deployed in Western Europe and the four-nation coalition of France, Belgium and the Netherlands in a passive situation. On 21 May, the Rapid Forces of the Nazi German Army divided the strategic front of the Anglo-French coalition forces, blockaded the waters of the Calais Strait north of the English Channel, prevented British reinforcements, and left about 40 divisions of the British, French, Belgian, and Dutch forces under siege in the Dunkirk area on the Belgian-French border, isolated and helpless. Under the auspices of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the British High Command quickly drew up the "Generator Plan", which began to be implemented at 18:57 on May 26, drawing more than 1,000 ships and more than 8,500 civilian ships to rush through the Luftwaffe blockade and rush to Dunkirk. From 26 May to 4 June, more than 340,000 people were evacuated from the Dunkirk area. This is one of the great wonders of the history of war - the Dunkirk evacuation.
Strategic analysis
Judge the situation and determine the situation. In the previous part, it was emphasized that the enemy who "fled" should be suspicious of the truth, observe and then move, that is, to find out the true thoughts and intentions of the other side, and then decide on the actions of the other side. Returning to war specifically refers to operations in which the enemy voluntarily retreats or shows defeat, and the principle that should be grasped in pursuit operations is the same as the battle-by-battle. In fact, the so-called "enemy retreats without reason" is just that I don't know why, and for the enemy, there are naturally reasons, and there are no more than three reasons. First, they scattered and fled, and at this time the enemy's morale was in a state of great confusion, and this "return" was only to avoid being completely annihilated in order to protect themselves; second, they pretended to be defeated and retreated, or set up ambushes to wait for us, or lured us to go deep, and worked for a long time under their control, so that the supply was not good, the army was unstable, and we lost or reduced our combat ability; third, we gave up the strategy and temporarily adjusted the strategic center of gravity, objectives, and tactics to preserve our strength. For these three possibilities, we should judge the true intention of returning to the enemy in advance, and then act after correctly understanding the enemy's situation. At the Battle of Yongcheng, Cao Cao abandoned the siege and retreated with the intention of returning to Xuchang to defend against Yuan Shao, so he believed that Zhang Xiu's failure lay in "curbing my return to the division and dying with me". In fact, Zhang Xiu's failure did not lie in the fact that he led his army to obstruct Cao Cao's "return to the division", but because he lacked specific analysis and correct judgment on the real situation of this "return to the division", and rashly sent troops to pursue, resulting in Cao Cao's false plan of confusing the enemy and setting up ambushes to lure and annihilate.
Grasp the initiative and grasp the fighter. "He who can change according to the enemy is called a god." On the basis of correctly grasping the situation of returning to the enemy, it is necessary to adopt targeted tactics in light of actual conditions, see tricks and dismantle moves, and if the enemy is a real defeat with exhausted strength, we must "pursue the poor and the poor and the poor and fight fiercely." If the enemy pretends to be defeated and falsely "returns" in an attempt to set up an ambush, we should pay attention to the strategy and plan, or not rush forward, or avoid the ambush area, or set up ambush and counter-encirclement; if the enemy vainly attempts to shift the strategy and accumulate energy for the future comeback, he should attack everywhere and blossom in an all-round way, and should not give the enemy the time and space to "stay in the green mountains." No matter what kind of combat method is adopted, the core of it is to grasp the fighter plane and ensure the initiative on the battlefield due to changes in the enemy. Before the Dunkirk evacuation, Britain and France "declared no war" on Germany, hoping for the Maginot Line, but the Nazi Germans first attacked Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and bypassed the Maginot Line and crossed the river from the Sedan area into France. The Anglo-French forces retreated, and on May 21, 1940, nearly 400,000 Allied Forces of the Nazi German Army were encircled to Dunkirk. Although the initiative was temporarily taken, the Nazi Germans made a wrong judgment and failed to prevent a large-scale allied retreat.
Calm and calm, take measure. "Return to the teacher and do not curb it" is one of the eight rules of the use of soldiers by Sun Tzu. Under the conditions at that time, intercepting the "return of the teacher" who did not know the enemy's feelings when returning to China was highly risky and prone to failure, and it was reasonable to emphasize "do not contain" in order to preserve strength. However, as a subject act involving national interests, the ultimate goal of war is to win. As a measure to ensure one's own undefeated, "returning to the teacher and not containing it" does not kill or contain the enemy much, and overemphasizing "do not contain" is obviously not a superior choice. Therefore, in dealing with return to war, it is necessary to distinguish between different situations, different environments, and different objects of analysis and application, and we should be calm and calm not to be held back by the enemy's pretending to be defeated and provoked, nor should we be too conservative, and we should stagnate in order to preserve our strength and delay the fighter. Regardless of whether the enemy really "returns" or not, the initiative is that we are not in the enemy, and through active and effective tactical actions to mobilize and strike at the enemy, so that the war situation will always develop in the direction we have designed, and we will always be able to maintain control over the return to the war with ease. The successful implementation of the "Generator Plan" was due to Hitler's misestimation of the strength of both sides, and in order to preserve the armored forces, he stopped the tank pursuit and relied solely on the strength of the Luftwaffe, leaving the Coalition forces with a chance to breathe. During the Dunkirk evacuation, the allied forces, although their weapons and equipment were discarded, preserved a large number of living forces, most of which became the backbone of the subsequent anti-fascist war. (Pan Jinqiao, Zhang Miao)
Source: China National Defense Daily