The indisputable historical facts have long told us that the mainstay of the war against Japan was not the Chinese Communist Party, but the Nationalist Army led by Chiang Kai-shek. It is indisputable that in the eight-year war, while the Chinese Communist Party generals were resting in northern Shaanxi, or fighting a small “war of resistance” to expand their own territory, the national army generals were the first to fight a big, hard battle against The Japanese army, which was far stronger than their own strength and equipment. Not to mention how many soldiers of the National Army died on the battlefield, the senior generals of the National Army alone had more than 200 people killed in action. In contrast, very few senior generals of the Chinese Communist Party died on the battlefield.
Among the more than 200 senior generals who died in the line of duty, eight were posthumously named admirals: Tong Linge, Zhao Dengyu, Hao Mengling, Rao Guohua, Wang Mingzhang, Zhang Zizhong, Tang Huaiyuan and Li Jiayu. Faced with the heavy responsibility of defending the country, they and other generous generals of the national army died for national justice, and their spirit still shines on the Chinese land.
Eight generals of the National Army died in the line of duty
Tong Linge was the first senior general to die after the outbreak of the war. When the Japanese attacked Beiping in July 1937, it was Tong Linge’s 29th Army, which was under the jurisdiction of Lieutenant General Deputy Chief of Army and Head of the Officer Training Corps, that was stationed in Beiping. Long before the Japanese invasion, he used to say to his soldiers, “If the Central Government orders the resistance to Japan, if Linge does not take the lead, you can execute to Tiananmen, gouge out my two eyes and cut off my two ears.”
When the Japanese army began to attack Beiping, when Tong Linge’s father was seriously ill, his family repeatedly urged him to return to Beiping city apartment to visit, but he thought that the war is changing rapidly, can not leave the troops, is to write to tell his family: “the enemy is at hand, this move filial piety for loyalty, I can not personally serve the soup, please on behalf of the.” Soon, in the battle with the Japanese, Tong Linge leg and head have been shot, died a heroic death, at the age of 45.
Tong Linge and the same day martyrdom and the Twenty-ninth Army, a 32nd Division Lieutenant General Division Commander Zhao Dengyu. Faced with the fierce attack of the Japanese, Zhao Dengyu led his division to resist tenaciously. When he was wounded and the orderlies wanted to carry him off the battlefield, he said, “Don’t mind me, it is the duty of a soldier to die in battle, there is nothing to be sad about. There is still my mother in Beiping, tell her that since the ancient times, loyalty and filial piety could not be reconciled, her son died for the country, it is also worthy of the ancestors! After saying that, he continued to command the troops. Later, during the breakout, he was shot again in the chest by a Japanese machine gun and was immediately martyred at the age of 39.
After the Japanese captured Beiping, they continued to move south. The Nationalists and the Japanese started a rendezvous at Xinkou. Lieutenant General Hao Mengling became the commander-in-chief of the Central Corps and controlled four armies, namely the Ninth, Nineteenth, Twenty-first and Thirty-fifth, to block the Japanese in the main frontal position at Xinkou. Before leaving for the battlefield, Hao Mengling passed through Wuhan and went home to say goodbye to his family. When he said goodbye, he left a will to his sons and daughters, which said: “This time to go north to resist the Japanese, hold the sacrifice, in case of death, you have to listen to your mother’s teachings, filial piety to your grandmother’s boss. As for your schooling, I personally do not have the money, the future national victory, you can enter the school of the legacy. Leave it to Huiying, Huilan, Yinnan, Yinhuai, Yinsen five children cloud.”
Before the duel on October 10, Hao Mengling wrote a will to his wife with the following words: “Determined to sacrifice, not to succeed is to become benevolent.”
In the duel, Hao Mengling took the lead and led the officers and soldiers to fight a bloody battle with the Japanese. Later, when he and Liu Jiaqi, commander of the 54th Division, went to a forward position to command the battle, they were both shot and killed. Hao Mengling was 39 years old. At that time, there was a saying: “Three heroes in the western battlefield, Hao, Liu and Zheng who served their country faithfully.” (“Zheng” refers to Zheng Tingzhen, then commander of the Fifth Independent Brigade, who was shot dead on the same day in South Huaihua Heights) and Hao Mengling was the highest-ranking Chinese general martyred in this battle.
Soon, the Song-Shanghai Battle, which lasted for three months, also had its result, the Japanese army captured Shanghai and the capital Nanjing was in a critical state. The 145th Division of the Army’s 21st Army, under the leadership of Lieutenant General Rao Guohua, who was attached to the 23rd Army Group, was ordered to set up defenses in Guangde, a military stronghold in Anhui Province, to hold back the Japanese. In the face of the superior enemy, Rao Guohua led his troops to hold the city and fought hard. After three days and nights of fierce battles, he inflicted a lot of casualties on the enemy and suffered heavy casualties himself. When the war between the two sides was in a stalemate, the head of the department Liu Ruzhai violated military orders and retreated without permission, which eventually led to the loss of Guangde and forced Rao Guohua to retreat to Xuancheng County cross store with only one battalion of troops.
Rao Guohua thought he was responsible for the defeat of Guangde, so he wrote a suicide note and raised his gun to kill himself at the age of 43. In the suicide note, he wrote: “Guangde is located in the key, Yu can’t bear to see fall into the hands of the enemy, so he decided to survive with the city, to report the grace of the country’s training and the love and care of the officers at all levels. In the future, I hope that our officers and soldiers will fight bravely to kill the enemy, drive the invaders out of the country, return our soul, and complete my unfinished business.”
From December 1937 to March of the following year, the national army and the Japanese army fought in Zouxian and Yanzhou in Shandong. Tengxian was guarded by Wang Mingzhang, a lieutenant general of the 42nd Division of the Forty-First Army. He said to his men, “As soldiers, sacrifice is our natural duty, and now we have to sacrifice everything to complete our mission, even if we don’t have a single soldier left.”
On March 16, 1938, in the face of indiscriminate bombing by the Japanese, Wang Mingzhang led the defenders to repel their attacks three times, and after the Japanese attacked and engaged in street battles and close-range fights to the death, the battle scene was exceptionally tragic, some companies fought to only 10 people left, some company officers and soldiers were all killed, and Wang Mingzhang was also shot and killed.
It can be said that the battle of Teng County defended the Japanese Tenth Division, which suffered a heavy blow and won time for the Chinese army to assemble around Xuzhou, creating favorable conditions for the subsequent victory at Taierzhuang. Li Zongren, the supreme commander of the Xuzhou Battle and the commander of the Fifth War Zone, later said highly of the battle: “Without the hard defending of Tengxian, how could there have been a great victory at Taierzhuang? The results of the battle of Taierzhuang were actually caused by the martyrs of Teng County!”
Among the senior generals of the National Army who died, the martyrdom of Zhang Zizhong, commander of the 59th Army, had the most profound impact. Chiang Kai-shek once expressed his feelings after his martyrdom: “Now the strong enemy has not been razed, but the general has fallen first, destroying my brawn and losing my strength, not only the personal pain of Zhongzheng alone, but also the pain of my 3 million compatriots who cried with one voice.”
In the Battle of Linyi in March 1938, the 59th Army fought the Japanese Sakaki Division, known as the “Iron Army,” for seven days and nights, with more than 3,000 Japanese casualties. In the subsequent battles of Xuzhou, the Battle of Duchuan, the Battle of Wuhan, the Battle of Changshoudian, the Battle of Zao, the Battle of Xiangfan, Zhang Zizhong led his troops to defeat the enemy repeatedly, the successes were frequently reported, and he was commended by the National Government for many times, Zhang’s troops were called “the best troops”, and his defense area was known as the “model battlefield “Zhang Zizhong himself became a famous anti-Japanese general known and feared by the Japanese army. Due to his outstanding achievements, Zhang Zizhong was promoted to be the commander-in-chief of the 33rd Army Group in October 1938, and was appointed as the commander-in-chief of the Right Wing Corps by the 5th War Zone from November of the same year, commanding the 29th and 33rd Army Groups and a group of miscellaneous armies of about 200,000 troops, becoming the commander-in-chief of one side.
At the beginning of May 1940, when blocking the Japanese army in Yicheng County, Hubei Province, Zhang Zizhong’s division fell into a heavy Japanese siege, but he led all his officers and soldiers to fight to the last man, giving the enemy a great killing and wounding. Zhang Zizhong was shot several times and died a heroic death.
In the battle of Zhongtiao Mountain in May 1941, the defense of the western front position was led by the Third Army under the leadership of General Tang Huaiyuan. The battle was so fierce that the position changed hands several times, but eventually the Third Army was forced to break out due to lack of backup. Tang Huaiyuan personally led a regiment to break out, but encountered layers of Japanese interception, and was trapped in the eastern part of Xia County, hanging mountain area. Seeing heavy casualties and running out of ammunition and food, Tang Huaiyuan killed himself and died, fulfilling his vow of success or death.
In April 1944, the Japanese army gathered four divisions and five brigades with about 150,000 troops to launch the battle of Yuzhong, attempting to open up the Ping-Han Road and occupy Luoyang and the vast area west of the Ping-Han Road through a north-south attack. Li Jiayu, then commander-in-chief of the 36th Army Group, took the initiative to undertake the task of rearguard to cover the transfer of the large forces. In the battle with the Japanese, he was killed by several bullets. He was the second senior general to die during the war, after Zhang Zizhong, at the level of commander-in-chief of the group.
Undoubtedly, ink and pen cannot write all the martyrdom of these generals and the generals of the Kuomintang who were not shown in this article, but their light of upholding their vocation as soldiers and defending their country to the death has been immortalized in history.
The “leisure” of the marshals and generals of the Chinese Communist Party
After the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, ten marshals and ten generals were awarded. The ten marshals were Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Lin Biao, Liu Bo Cheng, He Long, Chen Yi, Luo Rong Huan, Xu Qianqian, Nie Rongzhen and Ye Jianying; the ten generals were: Su Yu, Xu Haidong, Huang Kecheng, Chen Geng, Tan Zheng, Xiao Jinguang, Zhang Yunyi, Luo Ruiqing, Wang Shusheng and Xu Guangda. According to the CCP’s consistent statement, China’s war against Japan was led by the CCP, and “the CCP army was the mainstay of the defeat of the Japanese army”. According to this logic, the ten marshals and generals of the CCP must have commanded the army in the war against Japan and “fought in blood”, otherwise they would not have won such an honor.
However, compared to the more than 200 generals martyred by the Kuomintang, how did the ten marshals and generals of the Chinese Communist Party ever have any glorious achievements in the war of resistance? They were supposed to defend the country, but their achievements were only reflected in the subsequent fight against the national army.
It might be a good idea to look at the military ranks of some of their main characters at the time. Zhu De, known as “General Zhu”, was appointed Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China and Commander-in-Chief of the 18th Army Group of the National Revolutionary Army (customarily called the “Eighth Route Army”), which was reorganized from more than 40,000 Chinese Communist troops, after the military coup in Xi’an and the unification of the Communist Party of China against Japan, with Peng Dehuai as Peng Dehuai was the deputy commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army. The Eighth Route Army has three divisions, Lin Biao and Nie Rongzhen were the commander and political commissar of the First 15 Division, then Luo Ronghuan was the political commissar and acting commander of the First 15 Division, He Long was the commander of the First 20 Division, Liu Bo Cheng and Deng Xiaoping were the commander and political commissar of the First 29 Division, Xu Qianqian was the deputy commander of the First 29 Division and commander of the First column of the Eighth Route Army, Ye Jianying was the chief of staff of the Eighth Route Army and chief of staff of the Central Military Commission, Chen Yi was the commander of the New Fourth Army Chen Yi was the commander of the Jiangnan Command and the North Jiangsu Command, and the acting commander of the New Fourth Army (note: the New Fourth Army was also the National Revolutionary Army reorganized from the Chinese Communist Army).
Obviously, the ten marshals after the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, except Chen Yi served in the New Fourth Army, all held military positions in the Eighth Route Army, and the ten generals were no exception, except that their military ranks were lower at that time. For example, Zhang Yunyi and Su Yu were successively deputy army commanders of the New Fourth Army.
It is undeniable that both the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army were nominally subordinate to the National Government Army and were initially provided with food and pay by the National Government. Based on this, in the war against Japan, they should have cooperated with the Kuomintang to defend against foreign invasion and obeyed the military command of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang in terms of combat arrangements.
However, sadly, the only time the Eighth Route Army cooperated with the Kuomintang in the war was at the Battle of Pingxingguan in the Taiyuan Campaign, and the battle was fought against the Japanese supply train units, and the so-called “Great Victory at Pingxingguan” later by the Chinese Communist Party was entirely its own boast, which was regarded as a desertion by the Kuomintang generals. Another battle boasted by the CCP, the “Hundred Regiment Battle”, did not actually result in a heavy blow to the Japanese as propagated by the CCP, but rather in a small loss to the Japanese and a large loss to the CCP, and caused many “sweeps” by the Japanese, making the CCP’s two or three years of hard work to build up the so-called “resistance”. The so-called “anti-war bases” that the CPC had painstakingly built up over the past two to three years were nearly swept away, resulting in many innocent people being killed by the Japanese. As a result, many innocent people were killed by the Japanese. Peng Dehuai was later criticized by Mao as “a great sin in carrying out the surrenderist line”. (See “The Truth About the Communist Party’s Boast of the Pingxingguan Victory and the Hundred Regiment War”)
In the 21 subsequent battles and important battles of the Kuomintang, the CCP did not even see a single shadow. Of course, there is one more point to mention: the non-resistant Eighth Route Army, under the command of Zhu De and Peng Dehuai after the Battle of Ping Shanguan, took the opportunity of the KMT resistance to start expanding in Jin, Cha, Hebei and Lu Yu, establishing base areas one after another. And what is even more abominable is that the non-resistant Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army also sneak attacked the Nationalist Army.
After the “Hundred Regiment War”, some units of the Eighth Route Army retreated to Yan’an, and Zhu De also returned to Yan’an to participate in the “Great Production Movement”. Under Zhu De’s orders, the 359th Brigade of the 120th Division, led by Brigade Commander Wang Zhen, went to Nanniwan to carry out military reclamation and cultivation, planting a large amount of opium and selling it to the Japanese and Nationalist areas, which provided financial security for the survival of the Chinese Communist Party.
Zhu De, who was in Yan’an, began to care about literature and art, and was not only invited to give a lecture at Lu Yi, but also “expressed profound opinions” during the Yan’an Rectification Campaign in 1942, which was supported by Mao Zedong. His view was that “literature” and “martial arts” were the right and left wheels of the revolutionary chariot, and that one was indispensable, and that revolutionary literature and art had to cooperate with the war of national liberation. In addition, Zhu De also watched many literary performances and had the leisure to compose more than 30 poems, among which the “Tour of Nanniwan” was full of praise.
After Zhu De returned to Yan’an, Peng Dehuai acted as the secretary of the Northern Bureau in Shanxi, and was later criticized by Bo Yibo during the rectification campaign, Peng Dehuai and Luo Ruiqing refused to accept the criticism, and both were transferred back to Yan’an to rectify the situation.
Lin Biao, who was then the commander of the Fifth Division of the Eighth Route Army, went to the Soviet Union on March 2, 1938 to recover from a spinal nerve injury sustained by a Nationalist sentry, and only returned to Yan’an in February 1942. In November 1937, Nie Rongzhen, the political commissar of the 15th Division, was appointed by the 8th Route Army Headquarters as the commander and political commissar of the Jinchaji Military Region, and led 3,000 men to create the so-called “anti-Japanese base area” in the Wutai Mountains. This was once again the capital of the CCP. But how does this compare to the 126 Japanese generals killed by the Nationalists? Compared with the Nationalist Army’s direct confrontation with the Japanese in one big battle after another, what is there to say about such a strategy of “swimming around” and running away if you can’t beat them?
After that, Luo Ronghuan, who replaced Lin Biao and Nie Rongzhen as the political commissar and acting division commander of the 15th Division, continued to lead his troops to establish base areas in the Luliang Mountains and did his best for the expansion of the Chinese Communist Party.
Similarly, Liu Bocheng, the commander of the 129th Division, Xu Qianqian, the deputy commander, and Deng Xiaoping, the political commissar, established the “anti-Japanese base” in the Taihang Mountains in Jin, Hebei, and Lu Yu. According to the book “The Enemy Within” written by British Fathers Lei Chen Yuan and Lei Ming Yuan, in March 1940, 10 months before the “South Anhui Incident”, the Eight Road Army, entrenched in the junction of Hebei and Henan, played a conspiratorial trick to raid and wipe out the three armies of the anti-Japanese National Army, totaling more than 60,000 men, but did not move the Japanese army 50 miles away. Chiang Kai-shek, however, in order to save the face of the Chinese in front of the Allies without internal coercion, the matter was not announced. It is reported that it was Liu Bo Cheng’s division that attacked the National Army.
It is also recorded in the book that Father Lei Ming Yuan had been captured by the Chinese Communist Party, and when Chiang Kai-shek asked the Eighth Route Army to release him, the Chinese Communist Party denied it, and later Chiang threatened Zhu De that if he did not release him, he would send troops to attack Liu Bo Cheng’s ministry, so that Zhu De had to order Liu Bo Cheng to release Father Lei. Because of the mistreatment he suffered after being captured, Father Lei died shortly after being picked up by Chiang Kai-shek’s special plane and returned to Chongqing.
In 1939, in the battle of Qihui, He Long’s 6,000-strong force failed to defeat the Japanese, who had only 800 men, but suffered nearly 2,000 casualties, with more than 100 Japanese escaping from the encirclement, and He Long himself was wounded in the battle by a Japanese gas bomb. Due to his poor tactics and ineffective expansion, in 1942, he was transferred back to Yan’an and took up an idle post: commander of the Shaanxi-Ganjin-Jinsui United Defense Force.
Then look at Chen Yi. He stayed in the south to fight guerrilla attacks during the fifth Nationalist encirclement and the CCP’s escape northward, and was appointed acting army commander after the South Anhui Incident. Chen Yi continued to uphold the CCP’s idea of not resisting the Japanese and devoted himself to expansion and development, and his 10,000-strong army actually reached 300,000 by the end of the war. The New Fourth Army became even more of a staging ground for secret negotiations between the CCP and the Japanese in the later stages.
Finally, Ye Jianying. As the chief of staff of the Eighth Route Army, Ye Jianying became the representative of the Chinese Communist Party office in Nanjing after the outbreak of the war. In November 1937, with the Japanese approaching, Ye Jianying evacuated Nanking to Wuhan and worked with Zhou Enlai, Wang Ming and others to encourage the youth to go to Yan’an, and also used various opportunities to turn against the Kuomintang army and generals.
In 1939, Ye Jianying came to Hengyang and lobbied the Kuomintang to hold a guerrilla training course in Nanyue, and took the opportunity to promote the CCP, which made some participants who did not know much about the CCP feel good and fantasize about it. In response, Kuomintang general Tang Enbo said at a “meeting” of the trainees, “Chairman Chiang is completely sure of defeating Japan, but there are various signs that it is doubtful whether the Communist Party will be able to obey the leadership of the Kuomintang in the future.” Ye Jianying, on the other hand, said that the CPC had “faithfully fulfilled” its promise of cooperation with the Communist Party and was “unswerving” in practicing Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s idea of saving the country.
After the South Anhui Incident, Ye Jianying also loudly criticized the Kuomintang.
In 1941, Ye Jianying returned to Yan’an and became Chief of Staff of the Central Military Commission. Under his advice, an intelligence network was established throughout the CCP. During the Rectification Movement, he firmly supported Mao and criticized Wang Ming. Later, he also promoted the CCP and denigrated the Kuomintang to the visiting Western press corps and the U.S. Army Observation Group.
Concluding Remarks
While Zhu De was showing his personal preference in literature and art, while Nie Rongzhen, Liu Bo Cheng and others were trying to expand their positions behind the Japanese, and while Ye Jianying was accusing the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek to their faces, the Kuomintang’s resistance to Japan was still in full swing: the Battle of Zaoyi, the Battle of Suizao, the three battles of Changsha, the Battle of Hengyang, and the Battle of Yunnan-Burma …… The Nationalist soldiers are writing a song of sadness! And the words and deeds of those Kuomintang generals who died in the line of duty are enough to make the Chinese Communist Party’s marshals and generals sweat!
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