Chen Cheng did three major things in the Northeast: first, he killed Chen Mingren; the second is to reorganize the local security regiment into a temporary division; The third is to merge the main forces with the provisional divisions.
He was selected by President Chiang as the military commander under the extremely dangerous situation in the northeast. Although Chen Cheng's military talent was not outstanding, his officialdom was incorruptible and he was a popular man around Chiang Kai-shek.
Chen Cheng was also chosen because he was very obedient. During his tenure as director of the Northeast Expedition, he was faced with the grim situation of Du Yuming's failure to prevent the northern and southern Manchurian armies from joining forces, as well as the Dongye Summer Offensive that led to the loss of all the outlying strongholds of the ** defensive line.
This is a map of the situation between the enemy and us before the summer offensive.
This is a map of the enemy's situation after Higashino has made progress in the summer offensive.
After Chen Cheng took office as the director of the Northeast Expedition, he took advantage of the situation of scattered troops on the Northeast Front and thin garrison troops to carry out a fierce counterattack. From the end of the three Jiangnan and Sibao Linjiang, the three major offensives of Dongye in summer, autumn and winter successfully swept away the defense line of the first country, which cannot be replicated on any battlefield in the country.
Although the ** had smashed the Huanglong-style crushing in the early stage, it was still unable to resist Dongye's attack in the end. In order to make a difference in the northeast, Chen Cheng strengthened the deployment of troops on the strongholds of the defense line, not only brought Wang Tiehan's 49th Army from the East China Battlefield, but also carried out a comprehensive reorganization of the regular ** and local security regiments in the Northeast Battlefield.
Despite the controversy surrounding this reorganization, there is nothing wrong with it, as it is a basic operation that all units must carry out at all times.
In the Northeast Battlefield, Chen Cheng's large-scale reorganization of troops led to the splitting of the ace corps that originally had absolute superiority into fragments, such as the new 1st Army and the new 6th Army, which had strong combat effectiveness.
If you were Chen Cheng, would you use these security regiments to go to the battlefield in the face of a shortage of troops and security regiments moving around in different places? Of course they will, and in order for these security regiments to form combat effectiveness, they can only be supplemented to the units that already have combat effectiveness for training.
However, any unit needs time to hone and improve its combat effectiveness, and under the great offensive of our army in the northeast battlefield, Chen Cheng could not get enough time, and it was even more difficult to see the moment when his troops became the ace army.
The Northeast basic plate that Chen Cheng took over was formed under the leadership of Du Yuming. During Du's time, the local security corps was seen as a brutal force in the administration of local power, and there were complex interpersonal relationships between these forces and Du.
As a result, Du Yuming took a laissez-faire attitude toward these forces that invaded the civilian population, and even demanded that they not participate in the war in some cases.
After Chen Cheng took over the northeast, he adopted measures to reorganize the army, reorganizing the security regiment into a temporary division and then allocating it to the regular army, which was a regular practice of expanding the troops. This practice is similar to the process of a modern recruit getting off the company.
However, the root cause of the great reversal in the Northeast Battlefield lies in the superiority of the Eastern Field and the growth rate of the field army, which makes it impossible to change the situation in any troop allocation and reorganization.
Chen Cheng mentioned in his memoirs that his approach was to rectify the interior, enrich the people's livelihood, and cultivate combat effectiveness. In his view, the so-called "normalization" is to correct the abnormal phenomenon at that time and bring it back to normal.