Chapter 7 Northeast War

Who lost the Northeast?Chiang Kai-shek, Zhang Xueliang, or someone else.This is a rather torturous question, which has become a knot in Zhang Xueliang's life, and Chiang Kai-shek has always been involved. When the "September 18th" incident happened, Chiang Kai-shek was not in Nanjing.That night, he traveled up the Yangtze River on the warship Yongsui, on his way from Nanjing to Nanchang, Jiangxi to supervise and suppress the Red Army.In the early morning of the next day, he received a telegram from Zhang Xueliang from Nanjing in Nanchang, reporting that the Japanese army had occupied Shenyang. At two o'clock in the afternoon on the 21st, he flew back to Nanjing to deal with the crisis.At this moment, an ominous premonition had risen in his heart, and he left the words "uneasy, like mourning a concubine" in his private diary. On the 23rd, the National Government issued a statement to inform the people of the serious crisis in the Northeast: "The nature of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in the Eastern Province is so serious that it has never been seen before. This kind of incident has a great impact on the survival of our country. relation."

There is still much debate as to who gave the order not to resist first.So far, no evidence of Chiang Kai-shek's order has been found.It is said that the telegram was kept in the hands of Zhang Xueliang's wife, Yu Fengzhi, as strong evidence to clear Zhang Xueliang's responsibility, but no one has seen it, and Chiang Kai-shek did not get the information in time that night. The word "non-resistance" is like a heavy cross, carried by Zhang Xueliang.It was not until the Xi'an Incident that his image among the people was reversed. Zhang Xueliang directly ordered and resolutely implemented the non-resistance policy. He has carried the notoriety of "general non-resistance" for several years.This tragic event affected his entire life.He often faces countless questions from himself and others: Why not resist?Why take the dishonorable, terrible and stupid decision of "non-resistance"?

In 1990, 59 years later, Zhang Xueliang, who was nearly 90 years old, admitted in an interview with a reporter from Japan's NHK TV station that he had made a mistake in his judgment.When the incident happened, he believed that the war was not in the interests of Japan, and the Japanese government would not approve of sending troops to invade China. The incident was only the work of some careerists in the Japanese military and the Kwantung Army.Based on this judgment, he believed that the Japanese government would definitely restrain the Kwantung Army's aggression; if the Northeast Army under him did not resist and avoid conflicts, major incidents would be reduced to minor ones.If Zhang Xueliang could find out early that the "September 18th" incident launched by the Japanese army was not an "ordinary event" but intended to annex the entire Northeast, he might have made a completely different choice.But his initial judgment was obviously wrong.

Zhang Xueliang's initial judgment has his experience and reasons. In 1928, he encountered a crisis of a more serious nature.In June of that year, Kawamoto Osamu, a senior staff officer of the Japanese Kwantung Army, caused an explosion in Huanggutun, murdered his father Zhang Zuolin, and wanted to take advantage of the chaos to occupy the Northeast.At the critical moment of losing his father, he calmly dealt with the past, and soon succeeded in taking over the supremacy of the Northeast.He insisted on changing the flag in the northeast and unifying the country, and he also experienced various provocations from the Japanese.In the above two unprecedented crises, he relied on his alertness to ease the dangerous situation. During the "September 18th" incident, he did not expect that Japan dared to openly occupy the Northeast by force, and still wanted to calm things down as before, which resulted in the rapid fall of the Northeast.

But no matter what the truth is, there is no doubt about one thing. Like Zhang Xueliang, Chiang Kai-shek decided to avoid armed resistance from the very beginning to prevent the situation from expanding.According to Chiang Kai-shek's own statement: "At that time, the national strength was not enough to resist Japan. If a major war broke out, the country would be destroyed. Therefore, he endured the humiliation and avoided the war." He even warned the people more sensationally that China would perish if it resisted for three days.