The Chinese Communist Party, which has always proclaimed itself as the leader of the war, has been unable to produce a decent war, so it has to fool the Chinese with tunnel warfare, mine warfare and behind enemy lines armed units. However, the Chinese are not so easily fooled. A netizen left a message: watching “Little Soldier Zhang Ga”, “tunnel warfare”, “mine warfare” and the novel “Behind Enemy Lines” in the 1970s, I got the impression that the Eighth Route Army did not fight big battles. How could the Chinese Communist Party, which had never fought a major battle, have beaten back the well-armed Japanese army? And this is just the opposite of who was the mainstay of the resistance.
However, although some Chinese people know that the CCP did not fight any big battles, how many of them know the truth about tunnel warfare and mine warfare? Because in the later propaganda of the CCP, tunnel warfare and mine warfare were given a legendary and romantic color, as if it gave countless heavy defeats to The Japanese army. Is this the true story of tunnel warfare and mine warfare?
“The truth of “tunnel warfare
After 1940, the people in the Jizhong Plain started digging tunnels in their villages to avoid the Japanese, and in some places they even reached the point where villages were connected. The Eighth Route Army and the guerrillas used the tunnels as a way to fight the Japanese and counterfeiters. How effective were they?
A few years ago, the mainland writer Ding Xiaoshan described another tunnel warfare that we did not know about in his book “The Ghosts Enter the Village”. In such tunnel warfare, Japanese troops were unharmed, while ordinary Chinese people were either gassed to death in the tunnels or captured and killed by the Japanese.
Such a tragedy occurred in 1942 in Beitong Village, about 60 miles southeast of Ding County, Hebei Province. Zhao Tiefu, who was the secretary of the county committee in Dingnan County, recalls that they learned of the Japanese “sweep” of Beitong on May 27 and decided to have one of the Dingnan County brigades, along with a small number of militiamen, conduct tunnel warfare to block the Japanese, while sending the second squadron of the county brigade to support them on the outskirts. On the first night the Japanese entered the village, over 300 Chinese Communist soldiers and militiamen began to build fortifications, prepare stretchers, set up obstacles, and plant mines.
Hearing that they were going to fight the Japanese, the people of Beitong Village were excited. Seeing the confidence of the Communist cadres, and backed up by the tunnel warfare, no one left the village, and even villagers from neighboring villages, fearing the Japanese, ran to the tunnels in Beitong.
In the early morning hours of May 27, hundreds of Japanese and fake troops advanced in the direction of Beitong Village. Soon, the Japanese and the Chinese communist outfits exchanged fire. After a fierce battle, the Japanese eventually gained the upper hand and the CCP soldiers had to enter the tunnels to prepare for a tunnel war. The surface of Beitong Village was occupied by the Japanese.
When the guerrillas entered the tunnel, they realized that it was impossible to fight because the tunnel, which was about five feet high and three feet wide, was crowded with people, livestock, and piles of all kinds of things. The Japanese also soon found several tunnel mouths, so they threw in the gas canisters, spreading poison gas and from other tunnel mouths, air holes, so there were more holes were found by the Japanese. The people, who were smoked with tears and snot, began to walk east and west, scrambling to push their way to the holes. Curses, moans, and shouts were stirred into one.
Soon, the poisoned people one by one scratched their hands on their chests, some rolled around on the ground and suffocated to death. Some survivors recalled that those who were smoked to death in the cave were mostly old people, women and children. One is because these people have weaker resistance; the other is because they went down the tunnel earlier and naturally stayed deeper in the tunnel where there was less air circulation. It is said that there were families who died in one piece.
And those who were closer to the hole and less poisoned struggled to crawl out of the tunnel. As soon as the Japanese soldiers at the entrance of the tunnel saw someone climb up, some were bayoneted by hand, while others who were not stabbed to death were imprisoned. However, the end for these men was equally tragic. The next day, the Japanese forced the forty or so men to change into the uniforms of the 8th Route Army, and then killed them to claim credit for their actions.
According to the book, only a very small number of people escaped from Beitong Village, about a thousand people were killed. Some of the old people who went to the village to bury the bodies are still reluctant to recall the tragic events of that year. What the people complained about most was the fact that the Eighth Route troops did not follow the plan to reinforce the village. Zhao Tiefu, who survived the battle, also believes that this was a major reason for the loss of the battle.
Sadly, we have not seen such a tragedy either in the movie “Tunnel Warfare” or in any history book, and again, we don’t know how many times it happened. Probably because it was so damaging to the image of the Chinese Communist Party as a “great and righteous” organization, it was rightly ignored.
“The truth about “mine warfare
The Chinese Communist Party’s “mine warfare” record was also created by the movie. However, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, landmines have killed far more civilians than soldiers. Naturally, China is no exception.
The article “Mine warfare is not romantic” in Miscellaneous Monthly, No. 4, 2004, tells us a different story about mine warfare, based on data from interviews compiled by the January 2003 issue of the overseas magazine Grand Reference.
According to the article, people in the Taihang Mountains who played with landmines during the anti-Japanese war often say with distaste when they mention “mine warfare”: “I don’t like that object either!” (Note: “I don’t like it” is the local word for “hate”)
Why? Why? “Mines must be buried on the road that people walk on, right? That road we men, women and children mules, horses, cattle and sheep several times a day, the devils may come once in ten days and a half months, who do you think it will blow up?”
The mines can not be buried during the day, so they can only be buried at night, before dawn out, otherwise it will blow up their own people. “An elder remembered that he slept one day by mistake, woke up to see the dawn, so scared that even shoes did not wear to the village outside the fierce run, feet were stabbed full of blood. Fortunately, it was raining that day and there were no early risers out of the village, so there was no accident. In other villages, farmers who woke up early were killed and people who went out at night to get a doctor were injured.”
The article also said that the mines at that time were very mixed, American and Soviet ones, and the village cadres neither knew much Chinese characters nor had serious training, so they started fiddling with them when they knew a general idea and were prone to accidents if they were not careful.
Therefore, the final judgment of the people is: during the whole war, the area was not heard of many ghosts were destroyed by mines, but the villagers and militia were injured a lot. In short, “landmines are a net detriment to the people”.
In addition, there are also online articles that say, “the eight-way army let the mines, not to protect the people, but to protect their own. The mines sounded the same as the alarm, the eight road immediately moved, and the devils vicious, if the bombing of their people, they will be several villages around the fire burned. Whenever this time, the eight road and always hide without a trace. How could the villagers not complain?”
Conclusion
As mentioned in previous articles, between July 1937 and August 1945, the ROC Army waged 22 major battles, 1,117 important battles, and 28,931 minor battles. The Army lost 3,211,419 men killed, wounded, and missing. The Air Force lost 4,321 men and 2,468 planes. More than 200 generals were killed in action.
And how many enemies were eliminated by the so-called tunnel warfare and mine warfare? Where is the list of the Communist Party’s dead, especially the list of senior generals? Instead, we see the Communist army grow from less than 20,000 men in 1936 to 1.2 million in 1945, while the National Army fought a bloody battle.
In addition, the “masses” in the film “Mine War” did not worry about food and clothing, did not think about farming and firewood, did not have to get up early and run for business, did not have to call the doctor in the middle of the night to get medicine for injuries and illnesses, etc., but only the needs of the Chinese Communist Party propaganda. If you ask the local people, you will know how many falsehoods the Chinese Communist Party has made.
Movies are not history. The real history is the CCP’s fake resistance to Japan, the real development, its propaganda tunnel warfare, mine warfare is just a cover for the CCP’s fake resistance to Japan.
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