On January 10, 1949, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) won a decisive victory in the Battle of Huaihai after the Battle of Liaoshen, defeating the 800,000 elite troops of the Kuomintang Army in more than 60 days and nights with rudimentary equipment.
The unprecedented scale of the battle was part of three major wars of liberation, with 1.4 million people participating. As soon as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression ended and China's economy had not yet recovered, the Kuomintang dared to tear up the Double Tenth Agreement, triggering a civil war.
Why, then, was the KMT so arrogant when it had not yet recovered? According to the data, the military equipment of the Kuomintang in the war of liberation mainly came from the United States, which explains why they acted so recklessly.
In order to cope with the war, the Communist Party did its best to equip the 600,000 PLA with combat **, and solved the problems of military rations and warm clothing, but a meal and a military coat cost hundreds of millions of yuan.
Under such circumstances, whether to purchase advanced equipment or to ensure the food and clothing of the soldiers has become a difficult problem, and the soldiers without equipment may die, and the soldiers who cannot eat and clothe will also lose their combat effectiveness.
In 1949, under a difficult and difficult environment, how did our army achieve victory in the Huaihai Campaign? In the battle of Guandu that year, Cao Cao defeated Yuan Shao's 100,000 soldiers and horses with 20,000 soldiers and horses, relying on the right time, place and people.
So what do we rely on? ** Marshal once said that the victory in the Huaihai Battle was pushed by the small cart of the people. In September 1948, after the victory of the Battle of Jinan, Su Yu, the commander of the East China Field Army, asked his superiors to lead the army south to continue to eliminate the Kuomintang's Huang Baitao's Seventh Corps.
In order to achieve the victory of the Liberation War as much as possible, the strategic deployment plan for the Huaihai Campaign was carried out for several days from the overall situation. In the end, Su Yu was ordered to complete the Huaihai Battle in three stages, with a view to liberating the entire Central Plains through the Huaihai Campaign.
On November 1, 1948, the CCP decided to send 600,000 soldiers and horses to secretly attack Xuzhou from different directions. After receiving the news, the Kuomintang immediately mobilized the 12th Corps of the Central China Bandit Suppression Headquarters to support Xuzhou, and at this time, the number of troops stationed in Xuzhou had reached 700,000.
Despite the strategic deployment of our army, the battle was not an easy one. On the evening of the 6th, the East China Field Army approached Huang Baitao's strategic points as planned, and then launched an attack.
However, due to the superiority in equipment and geographical location, and the failure of our artillery units to keep up with the large forces in time, this led to a serious shortage of artillery support in our army many times during the battle.
In the first three days of the counterattack, our army not only did not make progress, but suffered serious personnel **. Faced with the threat of an enemy army with advanced equipment and superior troops, the morale of the main army of the Chinese Communists was high.
As early as when the Huaihai Campaign was deploying its strategy, the Chinese Communists made a detailed analysis of the campaign and believed that according to the current domestic situation and the ideological mood of the troops, the chances of our army achieving victory were far greater than defeat.
Although there have been only a handful of battles in history in which the weak defeated the strong, every victory stemmed from the universal support of the people. In the squadron, they are undoubtedly the most popular army among the people, and no matter what they are doing in the first place, they can get strong support from the local people, including in the Huaihai Campaign.
In the Huaihai Campaign, the participation of the masses of the people reached an unprecedented level. ** once said: "The victory of the Huaihai Battle was pushed by the people with small carts." ”
This viewpoint is very accurate, and it can be said that half of the credit for the victory in the Huaihai Campaign is attributed to the People's Liberation Army, and the other half is attributed to the masses of the people. First of all, logistics support is a key issue in warfare.
What is the most feared thing in war? Not dying on the battlefield, but starving and cold. Due to the fact that the grain in the Huaihai area has been looted by the ** stationed there for a long time, coupled with the continuous famine, the local grain reserves are simply not enough to meet the huge expenses of nearly one million troops.
Once the front of the Huaihai Campaign is lengthened, it is very likely that there will be a food shortage crisis in the army.
The deepest roots of the great power of war lie in the people. This was fully embodied in the Huaihai Campaign, where the common people in the liberated areas of East China, the Central Plains, and North China actively donated materials, and even had the slogan of "Asking for people, food, and things, and giving full support to the front."
In order to feed and clothe the front-line soldiers, every family is busy day and night, and some people even have disabled fingers. These efforts have demonstrated the great power of the people's war.
After the supplies were resolved, how to deliver them to the front-line fighters in a timely manner became a new challenge. As the scale of the Huaihai Campaign continued to expand, the number of troops continued to increase, and the problem of food supply became increasingly serious.
According to conservative estimates, based on the calculation of two catties of grain per person per day, the barracks logistics department needs to prepare 12 million catties of grain every day. This is a daunting task, and at least 28 round-trips a day is required for the largest tonnage truck in China.
In addition, due to the rugged and complex terrain in the combat area, the water network, plains, hills and other terrain are intertwined, which makes it more difficult to transport food. In the first stage of the Huaihai Campaign, the troops' military rations mainly came from central and southern Lu, which was adjacent to the theater.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth special areas, as well as the rear of Bohai and Jiaodong, have a total of more than 100 million catties.
** Stressed, "We will do everything in our power to deliver ammunition and food to the front line." ”
In the face of such a huge material transportation task, we thought of the construction of the civilian station in the Shandong Liberation Campaign. The construction of the civil station was established to adapt to the large-scale movement warfare under the new situation, and it is an important central institution for the allocation of manpower and materials.
Some basic stations already have a prototype, but who will transport them? This is not a transportation task that can be solved by hundreds of thousands of people. According to the transportation and traffic conditions at that time, it was difficult to ensure the smooth completion of the pre-support task without a transportation team of millions of people.
As a result, our Party launched a mobilization among the masses. Party members and cadres set an example and took the lead in devoting themselves to the work of supporting the Huaihai Campaign, thus guiding and inspiring millions of people to join the support team.
According to statistics, a total of 5.43 million people were mobilized to support the front in the Huaihai Campaign, including 220,000 standing civilian workers with the army, 1.3 million second-line transit migrant workers, and 3.91 million temporary rear migrant workers.
The peasants organized labor mutual aid groups, and the village saw a spectacular scene of young and middle-aged people going out to support the expedition and the masses in the rear producing at home.
In order to better support the front-line logistics, the CCP expanded on the basis of the aboriginal station, with the main stations separated by 30 miles and the sub-stations set up 15 miles between the main stations. Before and after the Huaihai Campaign, there were more than 100 civilian stations on the Shandong transportation line, all of which were made up of migrant workers working day and night.
Even so, the transport migrant workers still have to travel nearly 1,000 miles to get supplies to the frontline. During the campaign, the migrant workers pushed small carts to the front line in an orderly manner, forming a flowing landscape.
After a desperate struggle with the enemy, our army successfully annihilated Huang Baitao's 100,000 corps in the first stage. At this time, there were constant internal disputes in the Kuomintang, and Chiang Kai-shek was worried about the situation of the Huaihai War, and he was afraid that Li Zongren and others would usurp the throne.
With the successive defeats in the Huaihai battlefield, Chiang Kai-shek had to call Bai Chongxi to command. However, Chiang Kai-shek had offended others many times, and many people inside and outside the party waited to see his jokes, and Bai Chongxi also had a grudge against him, politely refused to go to war, and restricted Chiang Kai-shek from sending troops and reinforcements from central China.
In the second stage of the Huaihai Campaign, the strength of our army increased day by day, reaching an astonishing 1.4 million people. In order to meet the needs of the front-line army for food and other materials, after the liberation of Xuzhou, our army adopted two new ways of transporting grain - automobile transportation and train transportation.
One might ask, why did it take up to this time to use trains? You must know that China's transportation conditions were extremely backward before, and there were no railways in most areas.
However, the successful opening of train transportation this time was all due to the fact that the former migrant workers worked day and night to build the railway tracks. After the new mode of transportation was put into grain transportation, in just 16 days, the former migrant workers successfully transported more than 4 million catties of grain from Xuzhou to Xiao County, and successfully completed the task of grain for the pursuing troops.
After the end of the second phase of the Huaihai Campaign, Su Yu, Chen Shiyu, Zhong Qiguang, Zhang Zhen and other Huaye generals considered that the front-line troops fought continuously day and night, and often could not eat oil and salt, so they should take good comfort, so they suggested that the East China Bureau organize condolences.
After the Central Military Commission learned about this incident, Vice Chairman Zhou personally called the East China Bureau, saying that all the troops participating in the war in East China and the Central Plains would be offered 5 packs of cigarettes and 1 pound of pork.
For fighters who do not smoke, other items of equivalent value are also given as a consolation.
In the Huaihai Campaign, the troops of Nakano and Huaye had increased to more than 800,000 people, each with a pound of pork and five packs of cigarettes. While cigarettes can be self-sufficient, pork is a big problem.
In order to raise 800,000 catties of pork, the East China Bureau adopted a variety of measures, including organizing cadres to purchase pork in a unified manner, and exchanging four catties of wheat for one catty of pork at the market.
In this process, many people voluntarily donated pork, and some even preferred not to eat pork themselves but to give pork to the soldiers on the front line. After more than ten days of hard work, 800,000 catties of pork were finally raised and successfully transported to the front-line trenches, allowing the soldiers to have a good year.
The victory of this battle was inseparable from the unity and cooperation of the army and the people, as well as the suppression of the Kuomintang by the people from all walks of life. In addition, the Kuomintang's patron father, the United States, also lost confidence in Chiang Kai-shek and refused to provide any further assistance.
The morale of the Kuomintang soldiers was low, and there was even a phenomenon of losing their armor and abandoning it.
With the extension of the battle line, the reserves of ** gradually became tight, and each person could only receive a small part of the grain per week. There was even infighting over the only food available.
The campaign entered the third stage, and the Kuomintang had no chance of turning over, and they were defeated by the People's Liberation Army, the broad masses of the people, and themselves. At that time, the Communist Party had already eliminated 34 divisions and surrounded the 22nd Division of Qiu Qingquan's Second Corps and Li Mi's 13th Corps.
In order to cooperate with the division and encirclement of Fu Zuoyi's group in the Pingjin Campaign, the Communist Party decided to temporarily suspend the attack on Du Yuming's troops and rest for 20 days. In the end, the besieged Du Yuming's troops were captured on January 10, 1949 due to the depletion of food and ammunition and low morale, and the Huaihai Battle was declared victorious.
10 days before the end of the Huaihai Campaign, ** personally went to the support station - Shangqiu, Henan, and was full of support materials, such as shells, explosives, food, cloth, clothing and military shoes.
Looking at these large pieces of materials from the warehouse to the station platform, ** couldn't help but smile from ear to ear.
As the old saying goes: "Those who win the hearts of the people win the world." "*'s defeat is not just a defeat on the battlefield, and even with U.S. assistance, the fruits of its victory will not last long.
According to Yang Botao, commander of the 18th Army of the Kuomintang, when he appeared as a prisoner of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), he saw the market crowded with traffic and pedestrians, and the PLA and the local people were talking and laughing.
However, when he led his army through these places, there was not even a handful of pig hair there. When the people see **, it's like seeing a wolf, hiding far away, and they don't dare to come out.
Who would want to follow such a leader who leads the country? "Whoever wins the hearts of the people wins the world. "Only by putting the interests of the masses of the people in the first place and serving the people sincerely can we give full play to the strength of the masses of the people, just like the victory pushed by the small cart in the Huaihai Campaign.
The Communist Party has always been the strong backing of the masses of the people, and the masses of the people are also the source of strength of the Communist Party. Everything is for the people, everything depends on the people, and I hope that the spirit of "small cart" will live forever.