Chapter 95 3. The attack plan was shelved

At the beginning of 1940, China was in an extremely serious situation where there was an unprecedented danger of surrender and unprecedented difficulties in the war of resistance. Japan stepped up its efforts to induce the Chiang Kai-shek clique to surrender.The Eighth Route Army went deep into the enemy's rear and persisted in the war of resistance, and its strength continued to grow. It became an important obstacle to the Japanese imperialists' plan to "destroy China" and become the hegemony of Asia and the Pacific. In order to remove this "obstacle", after occupying Wuhan and Guangzhou, the General Command of the China Expeditionary Army adjusted its policy of invading China and sent more troops to North China. According to the plan, before the launch of the Hundred Regiments War, the deployment of the Japanese Army's North China Front Army was as follows:

Front Army Command, stationed in Beiping, governs 3 armies: The 1st Army, headquartered in Taiyuan, governs 3 divisions and 4 independent mixed brigades: the 36th Division, stationed in Changzhi, Shanxi; the 37th Division, stationed in Yuncheng; the 41st Division, stationed in Linfen; the independent mixed brigade The 3rd Brigade, stationed in Nao County; the independent and mixed 4th Brigade, stationed in Yangquan; the independent and mixed 9th Brigade, stationed in Taiyuan; the independent and mixed 16th Brigade, stationed in Fenyang. The 12th Army, headquartered in Jinan, has jurisdiction over 2 divisions and 3 independent mixed brigades: the 21st Division, stationed in Xuzhou; the 32nd Division, stationed in Yanzhou; the independent mixed 5th Brigade, stationed in Qingdao; the independent mixed brigade The 6th Brigade, stationed in Ju County; the independent and mixed 10th Brigade, stationed in Tai'an.

Garrisoned in Mongolia, the headquarters is stationed in Zhangjiakou, governing 1 division, 1 independent mixed brigade and 1 cavalry group (owing to the 4th brigade): the 26th division, stationed in Datong; the independent mixed 2nd brigade, stationed Zhangjiakou; Cavalry Group (owed to the 4th Brigade), stationed in Baotou. The 27th Division directly under the Front Army is stationed in Tianjin; the 35th Division is stationed in Kaifeng, Henan; the 110th Division is stationed in Shijiazhuang; the independent and mixed 1st Brigade is stationed in Handan, Hebei; the independent and mixed 7th Brigade is stationed in Huimin, Shandong; The 8th independent mixed brigade was stationed in Shijiazhuang; the 15th independent mixed brigade was stationed in Peiping; the 4th cavalry brigade was stationed in Shangqiu.

The above-mentioned Japanese North China Front Army consisted of 9 divisions, 12 independent mixed infantry brigades, and 1 cavalry group, with a total of 250,000 people, with an average of 0.36 people per square kilometer.The 12th Army alone is stationed in more than 800 strongholds in Shandong and northern Jiangsu, with 20 people stationed in one stronghold 18 kilometers apart on average.In addition, there are about 150,000 puppet troops in North China. At the same time, the anti-Japanese base areas in North China were in a difficult and dangerous situation, and the diehards of the Kuomintang continued to create "friction" incidents in North China in an attempt to "recover" lost ground from the Eighth Route Army and set off the first wave of anti-communism.

The North China Eighth Route Army was in a period of attack by tigers and wolves.On the one hand, the "friendly troops" inside the anti-Japanese camp continued to attack, trying to put the Communist army to death; Like a huge net is being closed to each base. At the end of March, after the Eighth Route Army Headquarters put forward a large-scale raid plan, and was in full swing to implement it, Zhu De and Peng Dehuai received two telegrams from Yan'an. One was the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Central Military Commission. ", one is an urgent telegram from Mao Zedong and Wang Jiaxiang to Zhu De and Peng Dehuai about sending troops from the Eighth Route Army to reinforce the New Fourth Army and suing Liu Shaoqi.

The two telegrams were about the same thing.The Central Committee told Zhu De and Peng Dehuai that the anti-communist diehards of the Central China Kuomintang were madly attacking the New Fourth Army. Sufficient force went south to central China to reinforce the New Fourth Army, repelled the attack of the Kuomintang anti-communist diehards, wiped out the anti-communist forces that surrendered, and established a new anti-Japanese base.The telegram said: "The current situation is quite serious. Chiang Kai-shek seems to have made up his mind, that is, to hang up the banner of resisting Japan and implement the reality of suppressing the Communist Party. At present, the two points that threaten me the most are Suide and Eastern Anhui." The telegram instructed Peng Dehuai and He Long In order to use the main force to deal with the 90th Army of the Kuomintang that threatened Yan'an, Peng Dehuai was required to send troops south to Central China in addition to the 344th Brigade, to open up contact with the Chen Yi Department of the New Fourth Army, so as to relieve the siege of eastern Anhui.

The meaning of the central government does not agree with Zhu De and Peng Dehuai, but Zhu De and Peng Dehuai must obey the central government.Therefore, Zhu and Peng's attack plan was temporarily put on hold, but they did not give up. On April 2, Mao Zedong telegraphed that he hoped that Zhu De would leave for Luoyang as soon as possible, negotiate with Wei Lihuang, who was friendly with the Communist Party, to stop the friction between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and then secretly return to Yan'an to attend the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of China. In this stalemate, the situation of the Eighth Route Army became more and more difficult.Peng Dehuai said worriedly, this is fighting a tiger by the front door and entering a wolf by the back door.Although the Kuomintang anti-communist "friction expert" Zhu Huaibing has been defeated, the Japanese ambitions are growing.Peng Dehuai finally decided that although the campaign of concentrating all the corps to carry out a general attack on Japanese traffic could not be organized for the time being, since the Japanese army was stepping up their efforts to build roads in order to implement the "cage policy", the attack by the corps as a unit must be carried out.

On April 25, Peng Dehuai issued a telegram of instructions to the heads of the corps in the name of Zhu De and him in accordance with the opinions he had discussed with Commander-in-Chief Zhu De many times in advance: