Chapter 292 10. Establishment of the General Front Committee

Xibaipo. Zhou Enlai took a folder and walked towards Mao Zedong's residence.There are two documents in the folder, one is the report on the Huaihai Campaign, and the other is written to Liu Chen Deng Su Tan (Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping, Su Yu, Tan Zhenlin; Tan is the deputy political commissar of the East China Field Army) and the East China Bureau, A telegram from the Central Plains Bureau. After reviewing these two documents, Mao Zedong then issued the following instructions: ... The Central Plains and East China armies must fight in the current area for 3 to 5 months. Our army will reach 800,000, including the food and prisoners. about.Everything should be coordinated from this point of view.Five comrades, Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping, Su Yu, and Tan Zhenlin, organized a general front committee to organize the overall leadership. When possible, a five-member meeting was held to discuss important issues. Among them, Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, and Deng Xiaoping were the standing committee members. Committee secretary.Enlai, after discussing with Zhu De, Shaoqi, Bishi, and Jianying, telegraphed Liu Chen, Deng Sutan and the Central Plains Bureau and East China Bureau.

After everyone's research, they unanimously agreed with Mao Zedong's opinions on the establishment of the General Front Committee of the Huaihai Campaign and its participants.Zhou Enlai also drafted a telegram to Liu, Chen, Deng, Sutan, the Central Plains Bureau, and the East China Bureau, and asked Mao Zedong to sign and issue it.Mao Zedong signed after reading the telegram: Mao Zedong November 16, 1948. The General Front Committee is the first in the history of our army.Why was the General Front Committee established? According to expert analysis: Su Yu once suggested that the Huaihai Campaign should be under the unified command of Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping.The war concept at that time was: Huaye and Zhongye cooperated with each other to conduct operations in Huaihai and Xubeng respectively;

After the battle was launched, the war situation showed a complicated situation.The Chiang Kai-shek Group of the Kuomintang drew up a plan for the Xu Bang battle. Not only did the enemy forces near Xu Bang move closer to Xu Bang, but they also deployed troops from the Northeast and Central China battlefields to reinforce the Xu Bang battlefield, posing a strategic posture for Xu Bang's decisive battle. In order to adapt to the strategic situation of the Kuomintang army's Xu Bang decisive battle, Mao Zedong formulated the general operational policy of the Huaihai Campaign, which is: "cut off Xu Bang and annihilate Liu Zhi's main force."

To cut off Xu Bang, Su County must be captured.Su County is 75 kilometers north of Xuzhou and 90 kilometers south of Bengbu. It is the hub of the Xuzhou-Bengbu section of Jinpu Road and the gateway to Beijing and Shanghai for the Xuzhou "Suppressing General". The Kuomintang Xuzhou "Suppressing General" has a large number of weapons here. Military supplies such as military supplies, ammunition, clothing, and equipment are their important rear supply bases, and their strategic position is extremely important.After the Longhai Road was cut off by East China, the Xubeng section of the Jinpu Railway became the only land passage between Xuzhou's "Suppression General" and the Nanjing government's headquarters.When our army captured Su County, it cut off the Xubang Line, thus putting the Xuzhou Liuzhi Group in a desperate situation with both food and ammunition shortages and no way out.

Therefore, while the East China Field Army was actively preparing to encircle and wipe out Huang Botao's corps, Mao Zedong ordered Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping to lead the Central Plains Field Army's 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 9th columns to the east of the Xubang Line to carry out operations on the Xubeng Line.In order to contain the enemy army in Xuxi, strategically cooperate with Huaye's Xudong to fight. Just as determining the general operational policy of the Huaihai Campaign and making the Huaihai Campaign develop from the "Little Huaihai" to the "Great Huaihai", the Central Plains Field Army captured Su County and cut off the Xubang Line, so that the Central Plains Field Army's position in the Huaihai Campaign was strategically aligned with the East China Sea. The field army's operations developed into a coordinated operation with the East China Field Army in terms of campaigns, that is, the two field armies formed a whole in terms of campaigns.This is an important basis for the establishment of the General Front Committee of the Huaihai Front.

The two field armies need a unified leadership core for their coordinated operations. This is the actual requirement for the establishment of the General Front Committee of the Huaihai Front. For Mao Zedong, who was well versed in the ancient art of war, he attached great importance to the unified command in combat.He believes that the military command organization must have a core, especially when several corps cooperate to complete the same combat mission, this core is even more indispensable. The expansion of the scale of the war led Mao Zedong to expand the scale of the support front, requiring "the East China Bureau, the Northern Jiangsu Working Committee, the Central Plains Bureau, the Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu Branch Bureaus, and the Party Committee of the Hebei, Shandong and Henan Districts to coordinate and solve the problem" ("Mao Zedong Military Collection" Vol. 5, No. 230), the severity and protracted nature of the war made Mao Zedong realize that it is necessary to organize an overall command and leadership organization with unified leadership and unified arrangements to ensure that the logistics work can keep up with the progress of the war and ensure the victory of the war.

In other words, the establishment of the General Front Committee of the Huaihai Front was the need for the successful development of the Huaihai Campaign.