In January 1949, Fu Zuoyi, the military leader of the Kuomintang in Beiping, led more than 200,000 troops to declare an uprising against the Northeast Field Army and the troops of the North China Military Region, and drove the subordinate Sui Army and ** Army troops out of the city to accept the reorganization of our army, which was the greatest contribution made by Fu Zuoyi during the Liberation War.
When he learned the news that Fu Zuoyi took the initiative to surrender his gun in Beiping, Yan Xishan, the "soil emperor" of Shanxi, who was not far from him, was furious and publicly commented that Fu Zuoyi's approach was "impersonal." Why was Yan Xishan so angry? Although Yan Xishan and Fu Zuoyi were both generals of the Kuomintang army at that time, in terms of the characteristics of warlords and their sphere of influence, he did not belong to the same military system as Fu Zuoyi. Yan Xishan is not Lao Jiang, so it stands to reason that he would not have such a big reaction.
Fu Zuoyi was the leader of the Sui army warlords, and in his early years, he was also a subordinate of Yan Xishan and a general of the Jin army. However, since the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, Fu Zuoyi had his own descendant troops, and he had no direct relationship with Yan Xishan; In the middle and late stages of the Liberation War, his official position was even greater than Yan Xishan, and he became the commander of the Kuomintang's North China Suppression General Headquarters, directly and indirectly controlling nearly 600,000 troops, and was the highest commander in North China.
Before the liberation of Taiyuan in 49, although Yan Xishan had only a hundred thousand troops in his hands, Shanxi Province had been under his control for more than 30 years, and many areas were fortified and fortified. Before Fu Zuoyi's uprising, most of Shanxi had been defeated by the 1st Corps in North China led by Xu Shuai, and Yan Xishan only had an ancient city in Taiyuan in his hands, and the situation was very unoptimistic. In this context, although our army has a good chance of winning by storming Taiyuan, it is bound to pay a great price.
The main reasons why Yan Xishan wanted to scold Fu Zuoyi angrily and accuse him of having no personality are the following reasons. First of all, North China includes Shanxi Province, Beiping and Shanxi are very close, Fu Zuoyi's hundreds of thousands of troops surrendered without a fight, so the PLA naturally has more troops concentrated to attack Taiyuan. Originally, the strength of the North China army was limited, and only one corps besieged Taiyuan, and Xu Shuai's 1st Corps came from a weaker local force. Therefore, Yan Xishan's military pressure is not small, but he can barely hold on to each other. In fact, Yan Xishan originally had a defensive advantage, and there were heavy troops in southern and central Jin, but because of the gap in military command, Xu Shuai took more than 60,000 officers and soldiers who originally only had the task of containment, and brutally defeated the main force of the Jin army, and fought all the way from south to north to Taiyuan, which Yan Xishan did not expect before.
Fu Zuoyi surrendered his guns in Beiping, and the more than 800,000 Northeast Field Army, which was originally used to deal with Fu Zuoyi's army, and the other two corps in North China, could be flexibly maneuvered. In this way, Yan Xishan's Taiyuan City will definitely not be able to be saved, and purely from a military point of view, Yan Xishan will naturally be angry at Fu Zuoyi's actions. In addition, most of Shanxi has been liberated, Taiyuan has been besieged by the People's Liberation Army, military supply is very problematic, and the main materials rely on air transportation and air drops to solve. Beiping is the closest big city to Shanxi and its main material transit point, now that Beiping has been liberated and the airport cannot be used, the supply problem of Yan Xishan's troops has become more serious. Even a simple siege without attacking could trap the Taiyuan defenders, which made Yan Xishan feel angry and desperate.
However, the irony is that although Yan Xishan behaved very "backbone" in front of foreign reporters and ordinary people in Shanxi, and was not as "impersonal" as Fu Zuoyi, he was completely putting on a show. He knew that after the liberation of Beiping, it was only a matter of time before the war situation in Shanxi collapsed, so he secretly prepared an escape plan, and also publicly informed his generals and the people of Taiyuan that he would live and die with Taiyuan. Yan Xishan did not forget to find some American reporters and showed them the *** medicine he prepared and a large coffin, which means that he will never leave Taiyuan City, and will take the initiative to "die in the line of duty" as a last resort. After all the arrangements were made, he left Taiyuan by plane, and got out of danger under the pretext of going out for a meeting at the request of the state government, and never returned.
Before Taiyuan was liberated by our army, Yan Xishan's troops suffered a devastating blow in the Battle of Jinzhong, losing 100,000 main forces. During the Battle of Jinzhong, the commander he appointed, Lieutenant General Zhao Chengshou, was captured by our army. Xu Shuai, Zhao Chengshou and Yan Xishan were originally Shanxi villagers, and Xu Shuai and Yan Xishan's hometown was only separated by a river. Xu Shuai was very polite to Zhao Chengshou, he sat down with Zhao Chengshou about the previous battle, and then asked modestly: General Zhao thinks there are still any deficiencies and mistakes in the command and arrangement of our army? Zhao Chengshou heard Xu Shuai say this, and felt ashamed: The general of the defeated army, how can you still see any flaws in your army?
Zhao Chengshou deeply felt the preferential policy of the People's Liberation Army and was determined to abandon the darkness and turn to the light, so he wrote a letter to persuade his old boss Yan Xishan to surrender as soon as possible and seek a way for the soldiers to survive. As a result, after Yan Xishan received the letter, not only did he not listen to persuasion, but scolded Zhao Chengshou for "no dignity", which was the same as when he later evaluated Fu Zuoyi. In fact, before our army's general attack on Taiyuan, in order to reduce the number of officers and soldiers on both sides and the common people, Xu Shuai had planned to send a representative of the peace talks to negotiate the uprising with Yan Xishan in Taiyuan City, hoping to win over this fellow at the last moment, and promised to give him generous security and political status.
Zhao Chengshou once took the initiative to ask Ying to be this peace messenger, but Xu Shuai refused General Zhao in consideration of security considerations. The one sent to the city by our army was Yan Xishan's teacher when he was a teenager. The result was unexpected, the teacher didn't say a few words, and was angrily ordered to be shot by Yan Xishan, and the old man was over 80 years old at the time, and Yan Xishan's actions were very cruel. When Xu Shuai learned about it, he said three words angrily: Enter it!
In contrast, Fu Zuoyi's uprising at least took into account the safety of hundreds of thousands of subordinates, and did not let Wang Jingguo, the general of the Jin army, and others defend Taiyuan like Yan Xishan, but he found an opportunity to escape in advance. From this point of view, General Fu Zuoyi is more upright and understands righteousness.