Chapter 3 Hayao Tada set up a "cage", and our army responded with a raid

On this day (July 22, 1940), Peng Dehuai, deputy commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army, signed the "Preparatory Meeting on Breaking the Battle of Zhengtai Road" signed by Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, and Zuo Quan.Zhengtai Road is the lifeline of transportation for the Japanese army to control Shanxi and Hebei. Launching a raid on Zhengtai Road will be an unusual and major decision. Why did the Eighth Route Army launch a major battle?This has to start with the new thinking of Hayao Tada, the commander of the Japanese North China Front Army, in ruling the occupied area - "cage".

Tada Hayao is the cradle of Japanese military officers - the 15th student of the Army Non-commissioned Officer Academy, one period earlier than Okamura Ningji, and graduated from the Japanese Army Non-commissioned Officer Academy in 1903.After that, he entered the Army University for further study and graduated from the Japanese Army University in 1913.In the early years, he served in the General Staff Headquarters. After the founding of the Puppet Manchukuo, he served as the supreme advisor of the Kwantung Army Military Advisory Group. In 1935, he took over as the commander of the North China Garrison Army, and shortly thereafter he became the commander of the 11th Division.After the July 7th Incident, he advocated that the war against China should not be expanded indefinitely, and became a representative of the non-expansion faction. He disagreed with the mainstream opinion of the Japanese army, and was transferred back to China to serve as the deputy chief of staff. In 1939, Tada Hayao, who had been dormant for two years, returned to China and served as the commander of the North China Front Army.

When Tada Hayao took office, he played new tricks, advocating that the Japanese army divide and blockade the Shanxi-Hebei-Henan base areas by means of strengthening transportation, in an attempt to strangle and destroy the base areas, which is the so-called "cage policy". At the beginning of 1940, the enemy's conspiracy began to be fully implemented. They stepped up the construction of railways and roads, oppressed the base area from both inside and outside, surrounded it tightly, and wedged in the hinterland step by step.In the Southern Hebei Plain, relying on the Pinghan Road to expand eastward, the main roads and many branch lines such as Shijiazhuang to Nangong, Neiqiu to Julu, Xingtai to Weixian, Handan to Daming and many other roads were successively built, dividing southern Hebei into many small pieces.The enemy also plans to build the Deshi and Hanji railways to connect the two major traffic arteries of Pinghan and Jinpu.In the Taihang and Taiyue mountainous areas, the Baijin Railway was rushed to be repaired, and the Lin (Fen) Handan (Dan) Railway was planned to be built in order to divide the Taihang and Taiyue areas into four.At the same time, actively build more strongholds and roads on both sides of Pinghan Road to block the traffic between Taihang and southern Hebei.

In these places, the enemy recruited people to collect road construction materials, transported railway tracks and road construction machinery from the occupied areas outside Shanhaiguan, and concentrated manpower and material resources to rush to repair railways and roads. Facts have proved that Hayao Tada's "cage policy" quickly paid off. In the autumn of 1939, there were nearly a hundred counties in the North China Anti-Japanese Base Area, but in the summer of 1940, only a few small counties in remote mountainous areas remained.The Eighth Route Army's activities were difficult, supplies were scarce, and the situation suddenly became tense.

Facing the "cage" set up by Jun Tada, Liu Bocheng, Deng Xiaoping, and the leaders of the Eighth Route Army conducted in-depth thinking and research for several days, preparing to come up with an effective countermeasure. One day, they convened a meeting of relevant personnel to discuss ways to deal with the enemy and strengthen transportation. Liu Bocheng first thoroughly analyzed the significance of the traffic struggle to both the enemy and ourselves.He believes that the comprehensive strengthening of transportation by the Japanese army is an inevitable policy to try to solve the contradiction of the war against China, but it also poses a new struggle for us.Traffic struggle is originally a major form of our fighting against the enemy.Since our guerrilla warfare and mobile warfare are characterized by agility, secrecy, and suddenness, whether the Japanese army is attacking our army or reinforcing the troops attacked by our army, it must have fast and sensitive means of transportation and mobilize considerable troops at the right time. It takes pains to maintain and improve its railways and roads.In order to delay and contain the enemy's actions and create the enemy's weaknesses, our army must do everything possible to destroy its railways and highways. This is the main content of the enemy's transportation struggle.The railways and highways previously occupied by the enemy, regardless of their development from a dotted line to an entire area, are surrounded and attacked by our vast anti-Japanese base areas. Instead, they are now trying to form a network of strongholds, railways, and highways against our large base areas. , Entangling the soldiers and civilians of the Anti-Japanese War.To use a metaphor, the enemy wants to use railways as pillars, roads as chains, and strongholds as locks to build a cage, and they want to put us soldiers and civilians in it, and execute them immediately.His "cage policy" is indeed insidious enough, and we need to deal with it seriously.

Secondly, Liu Bocheng comprehensively analyzed the strategic purpose of the Japanese army's traffic warfare. He elaborated: The "cage policy" currently implemented by the enemy is considered from a strategic point of view.It has the nature of "a total national power war", and its attempts are not only in the military, but also in politics, economy, culture and other aspects.Politically, the enemy's anti-Communist public security policy also relies on transportation. Without transportation, there is no public security, and it is impossible to prevent the Communist Party.Economically, the enemy first applied a soft policy to the occupied areas, and then carried out the most brutal exploitation, inflicting the greatest economic devastation on the base areas.The enemy uses railways as major blood vessels and roads as small blood vessels, and uses China's bones to squeeze China's oil.Culturally, the enemy relies on transportation to deliver newspapers, textbooks, and idols to anesthetize the national consciousness of the Chinese.The railway plays the role of a large toxin tube, the road is a small toxin tube, and the stronghold is a poison injection.All in all, it is to create a cage of traffic to rely on to launch its total force war, that is, to rely on the traffic network to realize the military war of transferring heavy troops and repeated "mopping up", the political war of suppression and separation, and the extraction, blockade and destruction. Economic warfare, anesthesia, enslaving propaganda and ideological warfare.

Then, Liu Bocheng confidently pointed out the policy and strategy of the anti-Japanese military and civilians to carry out the traffic struggle, which is to use their own way to deal with their own body.The Eighth Route Army must actively carry out an all-out traffic battle to deal with the "cage policy" of the Japanese aggressors.This requires strengthening a comprehensive, all-out, and unified struggle, with the military as the core and political offensive as the mainstay, combining the power of the party, the government, the army and the people, correctly implementing policies, and isolating the Japanese aggressors.The key here is to fully mobilize the masses. As long as the anti-Japanese soldiers and people can deeply understand the importance of the transportation struggle, they will be able to resolutely and thoroughly destroy the enemy's railways and highways, and also make their blood vessels inoperable. Circulation, hands and feet can not move, and until sleepy.

After Liu Bocheng finished speaking, Deng Xiaoping continued to speak.With a serious expression, he said one word at a time: Although the situation is serious, as long as the army and the people in our base areas unite and fight with one heart and one mind, the "cage policy" of the Japanese aggressors can be completely defeated.From now on, we propose a slogan: Facing traffic lines.Combining the main force, the local army and the broad masses of the people, combining focused attacks with comprehensive attacks, major attacks with regular small attacks, extensive and in-depth transportation struggles, and counterattacking the "cage policy" of the Japanese aggressors.

During the traffic struggle in the spring and summer of 1940, the Japanese army tried their best to recover while being hit, strengthened railways, roads and strongholds, and continued to implement the "cage policy".They strengthened the defense of the Ping-Han and Zheng-Tai railways, sealed off along the lines, and cut off the connection between the Taihang Mountains, the Southern Hebei Plain, and the Jinchaji strategic area.In southern Hebei, the road network was repaired and expanded, and strongholds were added, causing the military and civilians in the base area to "go out on the road and look up to see the bunker".

Liu Bocheng felt that to fundamentally change this passive situation, it was not enough to rely solely on the strength of the Shanxi-Hebei-Henan base area itself. The main railway line was completely and completely destroyed, which made the Japanese army fall into a strategic passive position. After the Battle of Baijin, Nie Rongzhen led the Jinchaji advance detachment back north.Before the departure, Peng Dehuai and Zuo Quan hosted a banquet at the headquarters to see Nie Rongzhen off.Liu Bocheng, Deng Xiaoping, Li Da, Chen Geng, Chen Xilian and others attended the ceremony.During the meal, everyone talked about the war in North China and the cooperation between the two districts. They believed that Zhengtai Road, which traversed the two districts, was the lifeline of traffic for the Japanese army to control Shanxi and Hebei, and it was also a major obstacle blocking the connection between the two districts.If Zhengtai Road is cut off, it will not only make the Japanese army's transportation and supplies in Shanxi lose reliable guarantee, but also help the two regions to support and help each other in military and economic aspects.Therefore, everyone agreed that a large-scale attack on Zhengtai Road should be carried out at an appropriate time.

After that, the Japanese army actively prepared to implement the policy of advancing southward, gathered troops on the frontal battlefield, and threatened to launch an attack on Chongqing, Kunming, and Xi'an in an attempt to use the dual means of military oppression and political inducement to urge the Kuomintang government to surrender in order to draw troops to join the Pacific battlefield. . On June 15, the Japanese army captured Yichang, strangled the throat of entering Sichuan, and then bombed Chongqing on a large scale; at the same time, they secretly launched "peace talks" activities with Chiang Kai-shek through the so-called "strategic work", and used the Wang Jingwei group that had fallen to Japan to carry out the "peace talks" in the Kuomintang camp. Propaganda and instigation.Faced with this situation, the Kuomintang became even more vacillating, and the danger of compromise and surrender was unprecedentedly serious. After Chiang Kai-shek instructed Hu Zongnan, Yan Xishan, Zhu Huaibing, Shi Yousan and others to set off the first anti-Communist upsurge was crushed, the diehards of the Kuomintang wantonly spread rumors, saying nonsense that "the Eighth Route Army swims but does not fight", "only fights friendly troops, not Japan", etc. , so that some people who don't know the truth have doubts about the Eighth Route Army. At the same time, as far as the enemy situation in Shanxi is concerned, part of the Japanese army guarding Zhengtai Road was sent to Central China to participate in the Yichang battle, and its defense strength was weakened. Under such circumstances, Peng Dehuai and Zuo Quan studied and decided that in order to strive for a more favorable development of the war in North China, influence the situation of the War of Resistance across the country, and overcome the danger of the Kuomintang’s surrender, it was necessary to launch a large-scale attack on enemy-occupied lines of communication and strongholds in North China. battle. In mid-July, Zuo Quan came to the headquarters of the 129th Division to convey Peng Dehuai's above-mentioned ideas.He told Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping that in order to crush the "cage policy" of the Japanese aggressors, inspire and strengthen the confidence of the army and people in the base areas behind the enemy and the victory of the whole country, stop the Kuomintang's surrender activities, and contain the Japanese army's southward advance and westward invasion, Deputy Commander Peng prepared to Organize and launch an offensive campaign to attack the main traffic lines and strongholds of the Japanese army. All lines in Beining cooperated with each other.The 120th Division and troops along the railway lines participated in the battle.Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping readily expressed their appreciation. After more than a month of deliberation, the "Preliminary Order Concerning the Attack on the Zhengtai Road Campaign" was issued.Subsequently, the Eighth Route Army headquarters officially held a military meeting, attended by Yang Shangkun, Secretary of the Northern Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The meeting formally decided to launch a large-scale sabotage campaign.