The Kuomintang tore up the peace agreement, brazenly launched a civil war, and once again led the suffering Chinese people into the abyss of war. At the beginning of the full-scale civil war, there was a huge disparity in strength between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, with the Kuomintang army not only having 4.2 million elite troops, but also a large naval and air force, while the PLA had only 1.2 million light infantry. But it was under these circumstances that in just three years, the strength of the two sides reversed, and the People's Liberation Army, which had an absolute disadvantage, drove the remnants of the Kuomintang to the island of Taiwan.
During the War of Liberation, the PLA captured millions of Kuomintang officers and soldiers, including thousands of senior Kuomintang generals and more than 100,000 middle- and lower-ranking Kuomintang officers. The vast majority of the low-level soldiers of the Kuomintang army were forced to join the Kuomintang army, and most of them came from humble backgrounds, and most of them were ordinary peasants, so it was very easy to reform them, but these Kuomintang officers, especially the middle and high-ranking officers of the Kuomintang, were very stubborn in their reactionary ideas, and it was very difficult to reform.
In the early days of the War of Liberation, our army attached great importance to the high-ranking generals of the Kuomintang army who had been captured, and readjusted the policy of dealing with Kuomintang officers several times. At the beginning of the civil war, the People's Liberation Army was at an absolute disadvantage in terms of both strength and equipment, and in order to weaken the military strength of the Kuomintang army, the PLA adopted a policy of releasing all captured Kuomintang officers, and dispersed them to various localities and military regions to take care of them.
After the outbreak of the all-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order to further disintegrate the Kuomintang army, the People's Liberation Army still did not release captured Kuomintang officers on a large scale. Because the Kuomintang army also lacked excellent officers, once these captured Kuomintang officers were released, they would continue to organize their troops and plunge into the civil war again, seriously hindering the progress of the liberation war. However, the PLA will give special preferential treatment to captured Kuomintang officers at and above the brigade level, and strive to do a good job in propaganda and appeal. After training and education, all officers below the regimental level will be released, except for those who can be retained.
With the progress of the war of liberation, more and more Kuomintang officers were taken prisoner, and the prisoner of war camps in the major liberated areas were full of people, occupying a lot of manpower and material resources. To this end, the PLA began to adopt a policy of combining mass releases with selective releases. After three months of training, middle and lower-ranking officers, in addition to those who volunteered to join our army, were released en masse. After half a year of study and education, the generals will be released for good performance.
However, these high-ranking Kuomintang generals have followed Chiang Kai-shek for many years, and most of them are close associates of Chiang Kai-shek, who are familiar with the political, economic, and military organization of the Kuomintang army, personally participate in war decision-making, and know a lot of confidential information.
The Gongdelin War Criminals Administration Office was a temple during the Qing Dynasty, and in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, it was built into a labor reform institution. ** Period, Gongdelin was successively renamed Wanping Prison, Jingshi No. 2 Prison, Hebei No. 2 Prison, covering an area of nearly 100 acres, and the prison can accommodate thousands of people.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Institute was directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Security. The high-ranking generals of the Kuomintang army who were able to enter here were not ordinary people, such as Lieutenant General Du Yuming, commander of the Kuomintang Northeast Security Chief's Command, Deputy Commander of the Xuzhou Suppression Command, Wang Yaowu, Lieutenant General of the Kuomintang Second Appeasement Zone and Chairman of Shandong Province, Song Xilian, director of the Kuomintang Sichuan-Hubei-Hunan Border Region Appeasement Office, Huang Wei, commander of the Kuomintang 12th Corps, Liao Yaoxiang, commander of the Ninth Corps of the Kuomintang Army, and Shen Zui, major general of the Yunnan Station of the Kuomintang Secret Bureau, and other well-known Kuomintang generals in modern history were later imprisoned here.
They were shocked when these once powerful senior generals of the Kuomintang Army were transferred from prisons, farms and detention centers across the country to the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center. Because many of them have worked together, they are not only comrades-in-arms, but also some are very good friends, even relatives, they did not expect to live to this time, let alone meet each other.
After the war criminals gathered at Gongdelin, some people said with emotion: "Even in the Kuomintang Ministry of National Defense, I am afraid that so many people will not be able to gather." Someone else joked: "If the old man (Chiang Kai-shek) also comes, then it will be all together." ”
The treatment of the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center is also very good, with a living allowance of 16 yuan per person per month, and the food is one meat and one vegetable per meal, which is quite a lot, which is higher than the food and salary of the political commissar of the director of the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center. There are also multiple sets of clothes for each person, as well as special toiletries. In order to take care of the dignity of these captured high-ranking generals, the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center asked all war criminals to call each other by the names of their classmates.
The high-ranking generals of the Kuomintang Army held in the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center had committed considerable crimes during the Liberation War, and none of them imagined that they would be alive after being captured, let alone that they would one day be able to get out of prison alive and regain their lives. However, the nascent people's power gave them the opportunity to become human beings anew, granting amnesty to these war criminals at different times.
The first batch of well-reformed Kuomintang war criminals were released. This amnesty caused a great shock at home and abroad, and no one expected that these high-ranking Kuomintang war criminals would be released. In the years that followed, many more high-ranking Kuomintang war criminals were pardoned, but there were still a few Kuomintang diehards who were unwilling to admit their mistakes, the most representative being Huang Wei, commander of the 12th Corps.
Huang Wei was born in a poor family and graduated from the first phase of Whampoa, he was deeply influenced by ancient Chinese traditional thought, believed in the loyalty and filial piety of ancient soldiers, and was always unwilling to betray Chiang Kai-shek. Huang Wei's wife Cai Ruoshu was born in a famous family and was very beautiful, when Huang Wei was captured, the Kuomintang claimed that Huang Wei committed suicide, but Cai Ruoshu did not believe it, and took several children to Hong Kong from Taiwan, and then found Shanghai from Hong Kong, and finally Shanghai came to Beijing, and finally got Huang Wei's news through Fu Zuoyi's wife.
After Cai Ruoshu got Huang Wei's news, he immediately persuaded him to admit his mistake, but Huang Wei not only did not admit his mistake, but reprimanded her. Since then, Cai Ruoshu has stayed in Beijing, working to take care of the children, while waiting for news from Huang Wei, and this has been waiting for nearly 30 years.
There is also the Kuomintang Xuzhou Deputy Chief of General Staff **, this person is also a very legendary figure, this person has a very deep background, and also participated in the Northern Expedition and the Nanchang Uprising, served as the commander and political commissar of the Red First Division, and later joined the Kuomintang for various reasons. During the period of the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center, **'s attitude was very tough, and he was unwilling to write ***, so he was not granted amnesty for a long time.
There are also hundreds of high-ranking Kuomintang generals who have not been granted amnesty. This year, ** issued instructions for the release of all Kuomintang war criminals, and demanded that everyone be given 100 yuan of pocket money when released, and those who are willing to return to Taiwan can go back to Taiwan, and they will be given travel expenses, and those who are sick will enjoy publicly-funded medical treatment.
A total of 293 Kuomintang war criminals were pardoned in the last batch, including 219 former Kuomintang army officers, 21 Kuomintang party and government personnel, 50 spies, and 3 war criminals during the puppet Manchurian period.