On August 27, 1937, under the fierce bombardment of the Japanese invading forces, the Kuomintang army was gradually defeated and retreated, and Shanghai was about to fall. Amid the rumbling of artillery, Li Kenong, director of the Liaison Office of the Shanghai Red Army, led a group of staff members to evacuate Shanghai and rushed to Nanjing to serve as the director of the Eighth Route Army's office in Nanjing, and cooperated with Qin Bangxian and Ye Jianying, representatives of the CPC Central Committee Office in Nanjing.
From left to right: Ye Jianying, Qin Bangxian, Li Kenong
After the Japanese conquered Shanghai, the next target must be Nanjing, which was also actively preparing for war. One morning, Li Kenong, Ye Jianying, and Xiao Zuoyun were invited by the War Department to visit the anti-aircraft artillery positions on Mount Wutai in the west of Nanjing by car. The anti-aircraft guns here have just been imported from Germany, which is quite advanced, and diplomats from the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France have also been invited to visit the mountain.
On the way back, Li Kenong found an old man wearing a torn straw hat on the side of the road, intentionally or unintentionally threw down a paper ball, and deliberately stared at him for a long time before slowly leaving. Sensitive people who have been working underground for many years told Li Kenong that this old man was not an ordinary old man. So he quickly stopped the car, quietly picked up the small paper ball on the ground, spread it out and saw two lines of pencil writing:
If the Japanese agent wants to assassinate Chief Bai, please tell him that you must not be careless.
Bai Chongxi was Bai Chongxi, who served as deputy chief of staff of the National Revolutionary Military Commission in the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. Bai Chongxi was a new Gui warlord, one of the big three, and his anti-communist attitude could be said to be quite stubborn, though
In resisting the Japanese invaders, Bai Chongxi was also quite resolute
。 Before the Xi'an Incident, the warlords of Liangguang had staged a mutiny and played the slogan of "anti-Chiang Kai-shek and anti-Japanese resistance."
During the Battle of Songhu, Bai Chongxi often personally braved artillery fire and supervised the battle on the front line, and he, known as "Little Zhuge Ge", was also quite good at combat, often dealing heavy blows to the Japanese. Because of this, it was not surprising that japanese agents wanted to assassinate Bai Chongxi. But Li Kenong is still very puzzled,
Who is this old man, and why is he sending the information to himself? Does he know himself? Or is there something else going on?
At that time, although cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists had begun, the Kuomintang was still fully fortified against the activities of the Nanjing Eighth Route Army Office. As the influence of the office continued to expand, the Kuomintang side regarded it as a thorn in the eye, and various agents tracked and monitored it, interfering with sabotage. Near the office, there are stalls, shoes and clothes repairers, cigarette sellers, foreign films, small talk and shopping, and various secret agents are frequently active. As we all know, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi's Gui family is also a thorn in Chiang Kai-shek's eyes. Is the sudden appearance of such a mysterious old man and the sending of a piece of information about Bai Chongxi related to the internal contradictions of the Kuomintang?
Returning to Fu Hougang No. 66, where the office was located, Li Kenong pondered bitterly and discussed the matter with several comrades. In the end, it was agreed that it was better to believe in what was there than not to believe in what it did not have. But given the complicated relationship within the KMT, the matter could not be notified to Bai Chongxi through official channels. At this time, the powerful underground intelligence network created by Zhou Enlai and Li Kenong played a role.
Bai Chongxi's confidential secretary, Xie Hegeng, was a secret member of the Communist Party who had joined the Communist Party in 1933.
Xie he and geng and his wife
Xie Hegeng was a native of Guilin, Guangxi, and his father had been friends with Bai Chongxi for many years and had worked in the Northern Expedition. In addition, Xie Hegeng's wife is also a relative of Bai Chongxi's family. With such a deep background, Xie Hegeng was deeply trusted by Bai Chongxi. When Xie Hegeng was studying at peking in 1933, he had secretly joined the Communist Party of China through the introduction of Xuanxia's father, and was ordered to break into the Chahar People's Anti-Japanese Allied Army, successively serving as the secretary of Feng Yuxiang and Ji Hongchang. Later, the Party Central Committee sent him back to his hometown in Guangxi, used his family influence to break into the upper echelons of the Gui warlords, and became a "special secret" underground party member under the direct leadership of Zhou Enlai, Dong Biwu, and Ye Jianying, code-named "Bayi".
Bai Chongxi trusted Xie hehe geng very much, and always brought him with him every time he attended a high-level combat meeting, which was naturally extremely beneficial to him to obtain confidential information, which was not what this article was going to talk about. Li Kenong quickly connected with Xie he geng through the liaison staff, and through him relayed the intelligence information to Bai Chongxi.
Bai Chongxi was very touched when he heard this, he was well aware of his previous anti-communist behavior, but he did not expect that the Communist Party would send him a kind reminder out of the overall situation of the War of Resistance, and at the same time he was impressed by the communists' open mind.
Unfortunately, such a touch and humiliation, Bai Chongxi quickly left his mind behind, and did not let his anti-communist behavior have any restraint. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Bai Chongxi was an active supporter of Chiang Kai-shek's efforts to create friction between the Kuomintang and the Communists, and he was almost always present in the three anti-communist upsurges. Before the Anhui Incident, Bai Chongxi and He Yingqin jointly issued the so-called ultimatum, with a deadline of one month to demand that the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army move north, and instructed the military headquarters to formulate a "Battle Plan for Eliminating bandits south of the Yellow River." In 1943, Hu Zongnan was ordered to sneak into Yan'an, and Bai Chongxi went to Xi'an with He Yingqin to inspect.
Gu Zhutong and He Yingqin, Bai Chongxi
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Bai Chongxi was even more scrupulous and went farther and farther down the anti-communist road. So much so that when Li Zongren, the leader of the Gui clan, decided to negotiate peace, Bai Chongxi became the most resolute opponent, and eventually got closer and closer to Chiang Kai-shek, forcing Li Zongren to go abroad, and he led the Gui forces to make a final stubborn resistance in the southwest. He would rather lead his troops to Fight guerrillas in Guangxi than accept Chairman Mao's goodwill of "letting him command 300,000 troops."
Of course, these are all afterwords, at least at the moment when Li Kenong passed on the information, Bai Chongxi was indeed grateful. subsequently
Bai Chongxi strengthened his guard strength and changed his residence from time to time, which made it impossible for Japanese spies to grasp his whereabouts and delay in doing so.
Bai Chongxi has two residences in Nanjing, one at No. 9 Yongyuan near Yixian Bridge, and the other at No. 1 Qingliangshan, both of which are garden houses. Bai Chongxi's residence in the two places is irregular.
In the process,
Gu Zhenglun, commander of the gendarmerie of the Kuomintang government, offered to send an additional gendarme platoon for protection, but Bai Chongxi resolutely refused.
Because Xie he geng had already told him that Gu Zhenglun had an "ambiguous" relationship with the Japanese spy organization headed by Nanzao Yunzi. Known as Japan's first female spy, Nanzao Yunzi was able to sing and dance, charming and charming, attracted a group of senior Kuomintang officers by her appearance, and stole a lot of important military intelligence from the Chinese side.
The gendarmerie unit that Gu Zhenglun had trained for the Chiang family dynasty was a reactionary military organization that integrated gendarmes and policemen, party affairs and secret agents, and regular and preparedness; as long as the officers and men of the gendarmerie regiment put on plainclothes, they could carry out secret service activities; as long as the secret agents put on the gendarmerie costumes, they could undertake all the open duties of the gendarmerie. Gu Zhenglun and "CC" have a very close relationship, before the outbreak of the War of Resistance, the two sides have been in cahoots, jointly persecuting Communists and progressives, and the reputation of "Gu Butcher" is notorious.
Gu Zhenglun was deeply valued by Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang Kai-shek's firmness in the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was always questioned. For a long time, the old Chiang Kai-shek had secret channels to hook up with the Japanese authorities, but the conditions were never negotiated. Whether Gu Zhenglun's "ambiguity" with the Japanese spies is related to Chiang Kai-shek, we do not know. What I'm going to talk about here is,
Bai Chongxi did not trust Gu Zhenglun, but used his "little Zhuge Ge" wit to fight with Japanese spies.
Gu Zhenglun
On the night of September 19, 1937, when it was drizzling, the mountain gate of Qingliang Temple had been closed, and the lights in the temple were still flashing. On the road not far away, the street lights did not know whether they had been vandalized, and they were all extinguished.
Seven or eight figures sneaked to Bai Chongxi's villa in two directions, trying to climb over the wall, and suddenly the dog barked.
These uninvited guests saw that their whereabouts had been revealed, and simply did not stop doing anything, and copied the guys and pounced on the villa.
Bai Chongxi's guards were also prepared and immediately returned fire, and the two sides engaged in a fierce gun battle, with casualties on each other. These people were Japanese spies, who realized that the villa had long been defended and did not dare to fight, and fled the scene in a hurry before the patrol troops of the garrison command arrived.
In fact, on the same night, Bai Chongxi did go to the Qingliangshan Villa, but after he made an explanation to the guards, he quietly left through the back door. Escorted by two vehicles of guards, Bai Chongxi secretly went to the Jingjue Temple on Shengzhou Road. Bai Chongxi's whereabouts on his way to Qingliangshan did not know through what channels were known to the Japanese agents, so he launched an assassination that night.
When Bai Chongxi learned the news that the Japanese spy had indeed committed an assassination the next day, he could not help but be glad that he had escaped the disaster, and he was also very grateful to Li Kenong for providing timely information.
It turned out that the intelligence transmitted by the mysterious old man at Mount Wutai that day was quite accurate. Who is that old man? Li Kenong has been puzzled, and has been taking time out of his busy schedule to find out, and then finally figured it out.
The old man's name was Qin Ruiyi, a native of Guangxi, who had participated in the uprising of the Eighth Red Army in The Left River of Guangxi led by Deng Xiaoping and Zhang Yunyi in his early years
After the failure of the uprising, he lost contact with the party and went into exile in Shanghai.
In Shanghai, Qin Ruiyi was still sympathetic to the cause of the Communist Party, acting as an informant for Yang Dengying, the inspector of the concession who was linked to the Central Special Branch, so he met several times with Li Kenong, who was engaged in secret struggles in Shanghai at that time. In 1934, Yang Dengying went to Nanjing to serve in the kuomintang central government, and Qin Ruiyi also followed him to Nanjing to make a living, and he was well-informed in tea houses and taverns for many years.
One day, Qin Ruiyi learned from Miao Fengchi, the big leader of the Chengxi Qinggang who was serving the Japanese spies, that the Japanese spies were going to poison Bai Chongxi. He deeply felt that the matter was very important, but as a civilian, he could not get close to Bai Chongxi, deputy chief of the general staff of the Tangtang, and when he thought about it, he felt that only Li Kenong and other Communists were trustworthy, so he disguised himself and passed on the information.
After Li Kenong learned about the incident, he was very grateful to Qin Ruiyi for his trust and was also very concerned about his safety. Afterwards, Li Kenong sent someone to send him money and advised him to leave Nanjing to avoid Retaliation from the Japanese spies, but Qin Ruiyi refused. It has to be said that although Qin Ruiyi has lost contact with the party for many years, he has always maintained the excellent essence of being a communist party member and has not asked for returns for the country and the people. Of course, although most of the Kuomintang were quite stubborn and extremely cruel to the people at the bottom, in the face of national peril, most of them were still able to uphold a patriotic heart and unanimously go to the outside world, and the same was true of Bai Chongxi.
After the Kuomintang army experienced gradual defeat and retreat on the frontal battlefield, Guangzhou and Wuhan were lost one after another, and the Nationalist government moved its capital to Chongqing. Wang Jingwei, lured by the Japanese, publicly surrendered. In the second half of 1939, in order to accommodate the fact that Wang Jingwei would establish a nationwide pro-Japanese traitor regime in Nanjing, the Japanese army decided to launch an attack on Nanning.
On November 15, the Japanese Fifth Division, which had been severely defeated by Li Zongren's troops at the Battle of Taierzhuang, landed at Qinzhou Bay, and then marched northward with a three-way column on the land of Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi's hometown. On November 24, Nanning fell.
After the Japanese army occupied Nanning, it immediately carried out counter-insurgency work. Their whimsical vision listed Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi as the targets of rebellion.
Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi
The reason why the Japanese army listed Li Bai and li bai as the targets of rebellion was because they had received reliable information, and before the Japanese army launched a campaign against Guangxi, Bai Chongxi had made a request to Chiang Kai-shek to transfer the Gui troops back to Guangxi to counterattack Nanning. But Chiang Kai-shek eventually refused this request and instead transferred the Central Army to Guangxi.
The Japanese are all too familiar with the contradictions within the Kuomintang, and the reason why they were able to successfully plot against Wang Jingwei was to a large extent precisely because of the contradictions between Jiang and Wang. At this time, they judged that Chiang Kai-shek wanted to take the opportunity to expand his power to Guangxi, which was bound to cause open and secret struggle between Chiang Kai-shek and Bai. As long as the Japanese army provokes them a little, it can aggravate their contradictions and bring great hope for rebellion.
To this end, the Japanese army sent a big sasa named Nakai Shotaro, who had served as a military adviser and instructor in the Katsura army and had a good personal relationship with Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi. When nakai saw Li and Bai, he did his utmost to provoke, proposing that as long as they could overthrow Chiang Kai-shek, Japan could not only withdraw its troops, but also help them expand their troops and establish a government equal to Japan.
Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi and Chiang Kai-shek
Li Zongren scoffed at this, and he told Nakamura that whether or not to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek is our business, as long as the Chinese people are not happy, they can let Chiang step down at any time and choose another talent, just like you Japan replaced the prime minister.
You Japanese have done everything in your power to defeat China, so you use this inferior means to lure and sabotage the War of Resistance.
If you really want peace, you can just withdraw directly from Chinese soil, so why bother?
Bai Chongxi even directly warned Nakai: "We are not unaware of the situation of your Japan's poverty and destitution, and if we continue to fight, China's victory will be a sure victory.
Japan will soon kill itself. If you still want to save yourself, then hurry up and pull back from China completely
, go back to Japan. ”
The Japanese wanted to plot against Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, who were resolutely resisting Japan, but it can be said that they had miscalculated, and Nakai lured him to touch a nose of ash, which was not interesting to himself. After returning home, he became angry and openly telegraphed to try to humiliate Li and Bai. Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi replied: Insults and ridicule do not frighten us, and the only way to beat the jackals who intrude into our homeland is to beat them with a big stick.
Throughout the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Guangxi troops, who were originally good at war, played a vital role in the face of the survival of the nation, under the leadership of Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi. In particular, Bai Chongxi's command and combat ability has been unanimously recognized.
At the end of the Liberation War, Chairman Mao made a serious promise: "Bai Chongxi is very fond of leading the army, his Guangxi troops are only about 100,000 people, the number is not large, and the peace talks will be successful in the future; once the Central People's Government is established to establish a national defense force, we will ask him to continue to lead the troops, ask him to command 300,000 troops, and give full play to his talents. ”
Unfortunately, Bai Chongxi remained obstinate until the end, fantasizing about "ruling by crossing the river," and finally fled to Taiwan and fell under chiang kai-shek's control. As a result, in his later years, he was snubbed and died unclear. I don't know if, when he was lonely in his later years, he would have remembered for a moment that there was once a senior communist cadre who sent intelligence regardless of his previous suspicions and saved his life.