During the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the total strength of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army under the leadership of the Communist Party of China reached 300,000 at its peak, of which the total strength of the Red First Army and the Red Fourth Front Army exceeded 200,000, accounting for more than two-thirds of the total number of the Red Army.
The two Red Armies have different areas of activity, combat targets, and construction methods, so their operational styles and strategic guiding ideologies are also different. However, the author raises a brain-opening question: Which of these two units has the better combat effectiveness?
Red army. Peak strength: Red is slightly better.
During the Agrarian Revolutionary War, every Red Army had a peak of strength, and although the number of troops could not fully represent the combat effectiveness of a unit, this data was also an important reference standard.
The peak of the Red Army was in the summer of 1933 after the victory of the fourth anti-encirclement and suppression, due to the annihilation of two and a half divisions of the 18th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, the replenishment of tens of thousands of prisoners, and the transfer of more than 4,000 people from the Red 10th Army in Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Soviet regions, the total strength of the front army in the Soviet area rose to 1060 thousand. Coupled with a large number of new automatic ** captured from the 18th Army, it can be said that the soldiers are strong.
The Red Army trained troops with captured light machine guns.
The pinnacle of the Red Fourth Front Army was that after smashing the three-way siege of the Sichuan Army in the summer of 1933, it not only replenished nearly 10,000 prisoners, but also absorbed tens of thousands of poor peasants to join the Red Army, plus more than 10,000 guerrillas from eastern Sichuan who came to join the division, and by the Mumen Conference in July, the Red Fourth Front Army was reorganized into five armies with more than 80,000 people.
Although there were more than 100,000 people when the Red Fourth Front Army withdrew from the Sichuan-Shaanxi Soviet Region in 1935, because it was relatively large in the anti-six-way siege, many of them were family members of the Red Army and local cadres, and the overall combat effectiveness of the troops was inferior to that of the heyday in 1933.
To sum up, judging from the book data, the Red First Front Army was slightly stronger than the Red Fourth Front Army. However, due to too many losses during the Long March, when the two armies met in Maogong, Sichuan, the strength of the Red Front Army was only a quarter of that of the Red Fourth Front Army.
The Red Army was good at movement warfare and ambush warfare.
The following mainly analyzes the operational characteristics of the two armies. The Red Army was mainly composed of the Zhu Mao Red Fourth Army, the Jiangxi Local Red Army and the Red Third Army Corps, and later joined the 26th Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army that revolted in Ningdu.
** and Commander-in-Chief Zhu's operational thinking, which was mainly developed from their experience in guerrilla warfare in Jinggangshan, namelyIf you can't beat it, you can leave, and if you can beat it, you can fight, do not take the initiative to attack the enemy before you are sure enough, and fight a war of annihilation if you want to fight. Under the guidance of this ideology, the vast majority of the military victories of the Red Front Army came from movement warfare and ambush warfare.
** With Commander-in-Chief Zhu in northern Shaanxi.
The first victory of the Red Army in the anti-encirclement and suppression operation was in December 1930 in Longgang, Jiangxi Province, with a large corps ambush battle, annihilating the warlord Lu Diping's basic troops, the 18th Division, Zhang Huizan's Division, a division headquarters and two brigades, with a total of more than 9,000 people. Later, in February 1933, the victory of Huangpi Caotaigang was the largest in the previous ambush battles, annihilating more than 30,000 people in two and a half divisions of the 18th Army of the First Army, which made Chiang Kai-shek's favorite general Chen Cheng lose face.
Once it is detached from the method of concentrating superior forces to fight mobile warfare and ambush warfare, it will be very difficult for the Red Front Army to win. For example, the second storming of Changsha in 1930, the Battle of Xingwei in 1931 and the Battle of Ganzhou in 1932 all suffered heavy losses, and many senior cadres.
In the fifth anti-encirclement campaign, under the demand of foreign adviser Li De to adopt a comprehensive positional defensive war, the Red Front ArmyAt one time, it was reduced from more than 100,000 to only more than 30,000 people left, and it was not able to completely annihilate more than one regiment in the positional battle。The only time during this period, Xu Yongxiang's division of the 8th Brigade of the 3rd Division of the whole annihilation was also obtained by leading the troops to sneak attack at night and forgetting to do fortifications.
Reed. The Red Fourth Front Army was good at positional warfare and strong offensive warfare.
Compared with the Red First Army, the Red Fourth Front Army was relatively late, and its strength exceeded 10,000 at the beginning of 1931, but its composition was relatively simple, mainly for the local Red Army in northeastern Hubei and northwest Anhui, and in the later period, it was mainly based on northern Sichuan. Although its actual controller, Zhang Guotao, has carried out many purges against the officer corps of the Front Army, because Zhang Guotao has always relied on famous generals in military operations, he has also won many battles.
** Although the marshal also fought guerrilla warfare in the early days, when he began to command the large corps of troops, his operational guiding ideology also changed.
When in the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Soviet District,It is mainly based on encirclement reinforcements and frontal assault。For example, in the third anti-encirclement and suppression, ** carried out four large-scale operations in a row in the form of encirclement and reinforcement, and annihilated more than 60,000 people in nearly 40 regiments. In the Battle of Sujiabu, in the form of frontal impact, the 2nd Division of the ** Army was defeated in the first battle.
Townenburg. In the Sichuan-Shaanxi Soviet Region, according to the characteristics of the complex terrain in northern Sichuan, the marshal changed the mode of operation to a "shrinking position" and a timely counterattack in accordance with local conditions, so as to use the terrain to kill and wound a large number of enemies at the minimum cost in a defensive war, and to take advantage of the favorable opportunity to make every effort to counterattack the enemy's weak links.
Under the guidance of this ideology, the Red Fourth Front Army successively won victories in the anti-third-way and anti-six-way sieges, killing and wounding more than 120,000 Sichuan troops.
However, frontal combat is also extremely risky, and if you can't break through the enemy army in one battle, it may affect the situation of the battle. In the fourth anti-encirclement and suppression, the Red Fourth Front Army failed to break through the first position in two large-scale strong attacks at Fengshouer and Qiliping, and finally had to give up the base area to break through.
In the Battle of Baizhang Pass in 1935, the Red Army also failed to break through the defense line of the Sichuan Army, but lost more than 10,000 of its own, and was finally forced to withdraw its troops to the north.
Baizhangguan Great War Monument.
The Red Army fought against the ** Army for a long time.
Before the Anti-Japanese War, the combat effectiveness of the various units of the National Revolutionary Army was uneven, and Chiang Kai-shek, in order to eliminate dissidents, used a large number of miscellaneous troops in the first three encirclement and suppression of the Red Army, and as a result, these units became the Red Army's personnel and equipment logistics supply department.
In the first three anti-encirclement and suppression operations, most of the 70,000 ** annihilated by the Red Army were these miscellaneous armies, and only the only time was a tie with the 19th Route Army whose combat effectiveness was comparable to that of the ** Army in the field positional battle.
During the two years of the fourth and fifth anti-encirclement campaigns, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized a large number of descendant troops to attack the Red Army, and in addition to the air force to assist in the war, he even used German-made 75mm field guns and amphibious armored vehicles.
Hawker 2 fighters involved in the encirclement and suppression of the Red Army.
In February 1933, in the victory of Huangpi Caotaigang, the Red Army completely annihilated the 18th Army Division of the ** Army and severely damaged its 11th Division, the backbone of the army, and the gold content of this battle was undoubtedly the highest during the Agrarian Revolutionary War.
In the fifth anti-encirclement and suppression operation, although the Red Front Army did not completely annihilate more than one regiment in the position, it also caused a large number of casualties to the troops of the first and half descendants who participated in the battle. In the positional battle between Ganzhu and Guangchang in Jiangxi, the 18th Army of the ** Army reduced the number of each division by more than 1 4, and the 36th Division of the ** Army was seriously wounded by the Red Army's heavy machine ** in the battle of Baiyi Yangling in Fujian.
Due to the long-term struggle with the ** army, by the time the Red Army embarked on the road of the Long March, its strength had been greatly weakened, 8Of the more than 60,000 men, 50,000 were recruits with little combat experience. Despite this, the Red Army withstood the four-way siege of the Hunan Army and the Gui Army in the Battle of the Xiangjiang River, and inflicted heavy losses on the 59th Division of the Guangdong Army and the 93rd Division of the ** Army in the Battle of Zunyi in the form of movement warfare.
* Commander of the 36th Division, Song Xilian.
The Red Fourth Front fought against the motley army for a long time.
Compared with the Red First Army, although the number of enemies destroyed by the Red Fourth Front Army is good-looking, the gold content is not so high. For example, in the third four major anti-encirclement and suppression campaigns that annihilated 60,000 enemies, most of the objects were miscellaneous armies adapted from the Beiyang remnants and local people's armies, and their combat effectiveness could only be regarded as third-rate at most. In the Battle of Sujiabu, although the Red Army broke out the 2nd Division of the ** Army, it did not pursue it, and there were not many enemies annihilated.
In the two counter-siege operations that annihilated 120,000 enemy troops, the Sichuan Army, the opponent of the Red Fourth Front Army, was even less combative. The Sichuan army not only seriously lacked support artillery fire and light and heavy automatic **, but the rifles were also mainly old models, which were far less advanced than the large number of automatic ** captured by the Red Army in the fourth anti-encirclement and suppression.
In addition, most of the soldiers of the Sichuan army were double-spearmen, one rifle and one smoking gun, and their combat effectiveness was extremely poor, and they basically collapsed as soon as they rushed. ** The Marshal's ability to successfully implement the policy of positional defensive warfare has a lot to do with these two reasons.
**Marshal. Once the opponent is replaced by the ** army, it will be more difficult for the Red Fourth Front Army to make progress. In the fourth anti-encirclement and suppression operation, the main force of the Red Army attacked the 6th Column Wei Lihuang Department and the 2nd Column Chen Jiji Department in the Fengshouer and Qiliping areas respectively.
After leaving the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Soviet Region, it was not until the Battle of Baozuo in 1935 that the Red Fourth Front Army fought again with the ** Army. This time, due to the paralysis and carelessness of the opponent's 49th Division, the Red Army used the terrain to ambush the whole annihilation, which was also the only time that the Red Fourth Front Army completely annihilated a formed unit above the ** Corps.
* The 6th Column commanded Wei Lihuang.
On the whole, the Red Army can ambush and annihilate several divisions of the ** Army in the field, and can also resist the attack of the light infantry division of the ** Army in the positional defensive battle, but the ability to attack the fortification is weak, even if the opponent is a miscellaneous army with weak combat effectiveness.
The Red Fourth Front Army had fewer opportunities to fight with the ** Army, and although it could annihilate a large number of miscellaneous armies in a variety of ways, it could not annihilate the lightly armed infantry divisions of the ** Army with fortifications in the field. This shows that the combat effectiveness of the two units at that time was equivalent to the level of the first-class light infantry division.