Su Yu and Xu Shiyou had disagreements during the war, but both generals had great ideals, and they soon turned from hostility to friendship. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Su Yu's mother lived alone in Nanjing, with no one to take care of her, and Xu Shiyou reached out to show the great revolutionary friendship between the two generals. Regarding the reason for the dispute between the two back then, you can give a brief introduction. In the early days of the revolution, Su Yu was in the Red First Army, while Xu Shiyou was in the Red Fourth Front Army, and when the two major front armies met on the Long March, Su Yu stayed in the south and insisted on guerrilla warfare and did not participate in the Long March. During the Anti-Japanese War, Su Yu was active in the New Fourth Army, and Xu Shiyou fought in the Eighth Route Army.
It was not until the Liberation War that Su Yu went north to Shandong to serve as the deputy commander of the East China Field Army, and Xu Shiyou became his subordinate, and the two began a cooperative career. In terms of personality, Su Yu is deep and introverted, while Xu Shiyou is straightforward and bold, which can be said to be the opposite of each other. In terms of combat style, Su Yu is determined and then moves, and is good at winning by surprise, while Xu Shiyou believes in "one force to ten meetings", is good at tackling tough battles, and is unstoppable. These differences in personality and combat style also determine that the two will inevitably have some differences on the battlefield. During the War of Liberation, the two did have some arguments, mainly focusing on the two battles. The first is the Battle of Menglianggu.
At that time, Chiang Kai-shek no longer used the tactics of long-distance drive, but relied on key elite troops to carry out key attacks, leading other troops to respond sideways, in case they were annihilated by each other. Our army was not adapted to this tactic at first, and tried many methods but it was difficult to shake the enemy's formation. In the end, Su Yu proposed the tactic of large-scale transfer, swaying from side to side, the so-called "dragon lantern" tactic. As a result, the Kuomintang army was helpless, dragged to the point of exhaustion, and retreated one after another. While the tactics were successful, there were divisions within the troops. The soldiers went back and forth, but they failed to fight, and not a single enemy was destroyed, which frustrated everyone, especially for Xu Shiyou.
** Severely criticized Xu Shiyou, asking him to obey the command and not be emotional. However, in fact, in the Battle of Menglianggu, he was very decisive and became the hero of the victory in the battle. The second controversy took place in the Battle of Jinan. Su Yu's plan was to divide the Jinan campaign into two phases, one was to capture Jinan, and the other was to wait for an opportunity, and besides, the capture of Jinan was just a decoy, what really mattered was the other part. Su Yu concentrated most of his military forces in places where he was waiting for an opportunity, and the military strength to capture Jinan was obviously insufficient. Xu Shiyou asked Su Yu for reinforcements, but was ignored.
Xu Shiyou was very angry, and during the siege of the city, he changed his deployment without authorization, insisting on striving for victory, and as a result, it took only 8 days to successfully occupy Jinan. However, due to the speed of his attack, the opportunistic forces of our army did not achieve the expected goal. This made Su Yu very annoyed, and he later transferred Xu Shiyou away from the front and did not participate in the more important Huaihai Campaign. However, the reason why Xu Shiyou did not participate in the Huaihai Campaign was not because of contradictions with Su Yu, but because he also had an extremely important task, that is, to defend Jiaodong and prevent the US army from landing on the coast of Jiaodong.
Later history proved that it was precisely because of Xu Shiyou's deterrent effect in Jiaodong that the US military did not dare to attack in the region and ensured the smooth progress of the Huaihai Campaign. Therefore, the two differences between Xu Shiyou and Su Yu are actually not as serious as people think, they are both right things and not people, and there is no contradiction between them. This was the revolutionary friendship between the two generals, official affairs and private discussions, and the two disputes between them did not affect the friendship between them.