Chapter 7 2. Crisis

The Japanese army opened up the communication line between Guangdong and Han at the end of 1944. On December 10, their 22nd Division joined the 21st Division going north from Vietnam in Tuolu.But both the Japanese base camp and the Chinese dispatched army knew that this line of communication on the mainland could no longer save the fate of the Great Japanese Empire.The only hope is to achieve victory in the Chinese theater as soon as possible, with the Chinese mainland as the support or base, and the Allied forces will fight decisively. Neiji Okamura served as the commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Army, and he always wanted to do something for the Great Japanese Empire. If he could wipe out the Chinese army as soon as possible during his tenure, he would be able to spare millions of troops to deal with the Allied forces. Solve the local crisis.

The Japanese base camp has long had this wish. If this is the case, China's resources and manpower can be used to fight a decisive battle with the US army in China's territory, and the war situation will undergo a major reversal. Of course, Yokoyama also knows the heavy responsibility he shoulders.So when the 11th Army occupied the main cities of Guangxi, it turned to pursuit. The 13th Division marched west along Qiangui Road and successively captured Yishan, Hehui and Nandan in the westernmost part of Guangxi. On December 2, the 1st Battalion of the 104th Regiment of the Japanese Army marched murderously to Dushan County, the end of Qiangui Road, and completely occupied Dushan that day.As a result, they began to shell Duyun, an important town in southern Guizhou, with the potential to approach Guiyang and threaten Chongqing.

The Japanese army went deep into Guizhou and shocked Guiyang, causing an uproar in Chongqing.At dawn on December 3, Chiang Kai-shek received a call from He Yingqin from the front line, and later received a call from Tang Enbo from Guiyang.The battered Chiang Kai-shek faced fierce attacks from the Japanese army on the front, contempt and accusations from the United States on the right, the threat of the Communist army on the left, and a group of Kuomintang troops who had been defeated repeatedly behind him. He was in a besieged situation on all sides.Guizhou cannot be lost, once Guiyang falls... Chiang Kai-shek shuddered, he didn't want to have such a hypothesis, even if it was just a thought.

In a fit of rage, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Sixth and Eighth Theaters to mobilize heavy troops to deploy defenses from Huangping to Zhenyuan in Guizhou, and from Guiyang to Machangping.He Yingqin and Tang Enbo commanded the Chinese army in Guiyang, and they wanted to regain the lost ground at all costs.Chiang Kai-shek issued a death order to them. The Japanese attacking force was only 120 kilometers away from Guiyang. However, their follow-up troops could not keep up. After all, after more than half a year of continuous fighting, the Japanese army's combat effectiveness had dropped sharply, and it was now at the end of its battle.General Sun Yuanliang of the Kuomintang Army was the deputy commander-in-chief of the 28th Army and the commander of the 29th Army.After receiving a phone call from Chiang Kai-shek and He Yingqin, he was ordered to take the lead with more than a thousand troops and fight a bloody battle with a brigade of the Japanese army.With the support of follow-up troops, Dushan, Nandan and other places were recovered, and the Japanese army retreated from Guizhou.

General Sun Yuanliang was the Kuomintang general who received the most medals during the War of Resistance Against Japan.As early as February 1932, he led his troops to participate in the "January 28th" Songhu Anti-Japanese War. He was awarded the Baoding Medal for his meritorious service in the battle. Awarded the Yunhui Medal by the Kuomintang government.This time he regained Dushan, Guizhou, and was awarded the Blue Sky and White Sun Medal, and served as the commander of Chongqing Garrison. If any playwright has the heart, he can write a TV series based on Sun Yuanliang's legendary experience. The title of the film is "The Adventures of Sun Yuanliang", which is guaranteed to be a hit. At the end of 1937, he led his troops to participate in the defense of Nanjing.After the fall of Nanjing, he disguised himself as a refugee and hid in Nanjing for more than a month. He also dressed up as a beggar and begged for food from the Japanese soldiers with a dog-beating stick.Later he escaped and was dismissed by Chiang Kai-shek.

During the War of Liberation, he followed Chiang Kai-shek to fight against the Chinese People's Liberation Army. He served as the commander of the 16th Corps and participated in the Huaihai Campaign. He was one of the five main corps of the Kuomintang troops participating in the war.After being surrounded in Chenguanzhuang, Yongcheng County, Henan Province, he led the 16th Corps to break through alone, but the whole army was wiped out.Sun Yuanliang repeated his old trick, smearing his whole body with earth and black charcoal, his hair and face were unkempt, and a real beggar dared to ask the soldiers of the People's Liberation Army for directions.Afterwards, return to Nanjing via Xinyang and Wuhan.After escaping to Taiwan, he began to write books and published many works such as "A Moment of Hundreds of Millions of Light Years".You say Sun Yuanliang is legendary or not?

Of course it's legendary. Faced with military defeats, diplomatic difficulties, and public criticism, Chiang Kai-shek has repeatedly expressed his desire to work hard and strive for strength.Everyone knows honor and disgrace, and Chiang Kai-shek is no exception.The military defeat made the whole world look down on it, and did not take a great country seriously. This was a great shame in Chiang Kai-shek's heart.Chiang Kai-shek himself said that this kind of spiritual humiliation is more uncomfortable than the Japanese invaders occupying the country, attacking us with force, and humiliating us.After all, Japan is an enemy, but the Allies are friends.Who is responsible for this shame, of course it is ourselves.

He said to the military generals under his command that if we don't arouse our conscience and avenge our shame so that our army can keep pace with other countries in the world, it will be tantamount to betraying our own country.Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek has also conducted some reflections on the defeats in recent years. The main sticking point is the corruption of the Kuomintang army. Chiang Kai-shek is quite familiar with the real situation of the Kuomintang army.He said this at a military meeting: Our army was surrounded and attacked by the people along the way, and disarmed. This situation is almost the same as that of the White Russian army in the imperial Russian era. Of course, such an army can only fail!All the vehicles and horses in our army do not carry weapons or ammunition, but only carry smuggled goods and private property.When it was critical, the goods were either snatched by the people, or it was too late to transport them away, and they were abandoned by the side of the road and then transported their families in vehicles. Later, when the people and horses were exhausted, they were killed by the people before they could withdraw at the end!The officers and soldiers of the army harassed everywhere, even raped and looted, making the people miserable!

Chiang Kai-shek's vivid description of the Kuomintang army made most of his generals feel ashamed, especially senior generals like Tang Enbo, who felt ashamed when they heard this.This is the case with his troops in Henan. The people of Henan hate Tang Enbo more than they hate floods and locust plagues.When they were driven away by the Japanese devils, many people in Henan also shot at Tang Enbo's troops.Without the support of the Chinese people, it is better not to form such an army. The Kuomintang army was cultivated by Chiang Kai-shek, and the vices, arrogance and corruption of this army were also pampered and indulged by Chiang Kai-shek.When the Kuomintang army was defeated one after another, President Roosevelt of the United States wanted to seize the military power of Chiang Kai-shek. Various forces in the country called for the reform of the national government.

Angry and anxious Chiang Kai-shek, in order to maintain his ruling position, also thought of reforming the Kuomintang regime, but he lacked the boldness and measure that Sun Yat-sen had when he reorganized the Kuomintang. When he heard the call for expanding democratic rights and reforming the government, he thought of Among them must be the fanning of the Communist Party.His hostility to the Communist Party gave him an illusion when dealing with domestic and intra-party conflicts, which led to his fundamental mistakes. In fact, in order to fundamentally reverse the military defeat, we must implement political reforms and win the broadest support of the people across the country.However, due to class limitations, Chiang Kai-shek did not dare to touch the political foundation. Instead, he used power and interests to buy and win over the upper social forces and the army. In this way, he was bound to be unable to manage the arrogance and corruption that pervaded it.To fight against Japan, relying solely on agitating nationalist sentiment is definitely not a long-term solution.

Chiang Kai-shek's tactics, he thought he was clever, seemed to have stabilized his dominance, but in fact it did not solve the fundamental problem.His rule, and even his army, have gradually lost the trust of the Chinese people at the bottom. This price is indeed too great.What is even more sad is that Chiang Kai-shek didn't see the stakes in it at all, and he didn't know how he failed in the end. Mao Zedong had a relatively in-depth understanding of Chinese society, and the experience of Chinese history told him that those who win the hearts of the people win the world.In the revolutionary base area led by the Communist Party, he resolutely practiced democratic politics, expanded democratic rights, and shouted: Soldiers and people are the foundation of victory!The political views of the Communist Party have not only won the sincere support of the people at the bottom of China, but also won the approval of people of social justice and soldiers with a sense of justice in the army.From the commander-in-chief of the Communist army to the army commander, division commander, regiment commander, and soldiers, tens of thousands came from the Kuomintang army.For this group of military elites, Chiang Kai-shek's bribes and win-overs are worthless, and what they pursue is justice. Today, far away from war, future generations are often confused by a phenomenon.That is the regular army of the Kuomintang, which can be said to have performed well in the anti-Japanese battlefield, and can even be called heroes, such as Zhang Lingfu, Liao Yaoxiang, Qiu Qingquan, Pan Yukun, Hu Lian, and the reorganized 74th Division, New 6th Army, and 5th Army commanded by them , the New 1st Army, and the 18th Army, known as the five main forces of Chiang Kai-shek's direct ace, but once they encounter the Eighth Route Army with millet and rifles or the later People's Liberation Army, they will be defeated.Why is this? The root cause is the closeness of the people at the bottom of Chinese society, which is the gain and loss of the largest group of people, the masses. Even in this extremely difficult environment, Chiang Kai-shek did not ignore the deepest and most fundamental threat, that is, the power of the Communist Party, which continued to grow and grow during the War of Resistance Against Japan.When he learned that when the Kuomintang army suffered a major defeat and the most difficult time, the army led by the Communist Party and the anti-Japanese base areas had overcome the difficulties and had recovered and developed. Chiang Kai-shek realized that Mao Zedong was a formidable opponent.He has no doubt that his "a spark can start a prairie fire", and now what he ignites in the countryside is a prairie fire.Therefore, from the moment Chiang Kai-shek came to power, he continued to massacre the Communist Party and carry out heavy "encirclement and suppression" against the Red Army. Even if Japan occupied the three eastern provinces and foreign enemies invaded the house, he would not give up his policy of "safety inside".Chiang Kai-shek's biggest headache is actually not Japan, especially now that Japan's defeat is only a matter of time, and foreign aggression is no longer a top priority.The most important thing to consider now, and the most urgent thing to solve, is the revolutionary forces led by Mao Zedong. The Japanese aggressors committed a heinous crime. In the eyes of Chiang Kai-shek, the crime was not the loss of the country, but the Japanese disrupted his plan when the spark was about to be extinguished, causing the spark to spread across the land of China. .In order to extinguish this prairie fire after the war of resistance against Japan, we must win the support of the United States, rely on the power of foreign aid, and fight against the Communist Party for the world. On the eve of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Chiang Kai-shek's goal of seeking foreign aid was not to completely defeat the invasion of Japanese militarism.The defeat of the Japanese army was accomplished by the allied forces.Therefore, it cannot be said that Chiang Kai-shek's military failure in 1944 was not caused by this consideration.