On May 26, 1958, the enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission was held in Beijing. As usual, Su Yu, as the chief of staff, rushed to Jurentang, Zhongnanhai to attend the marshal's meeting.

On May 26, 1958, the enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission was held in Beijing. As usual, Su Yu, as the chief of staff, rushed to Jurentang, Zhongnanhai to attend the marshal's meeting. However, at this meeting, Su Yu never expected that he would become the center of the meeting.

Su Yu

Because, in the next two marshal meetings, the meeting concentrated on criticizing Su Yu. This unstoppable criticism made Su Yu extremely aggrieved and inexplicable: Why did he criticize himself at the meeting and be ordered to review?

This criticism even some marshals felt very sudden. When asked a comrade of the General Staff, Marshal Ye Jianying said: I think Su Yu is a question of pride at most, right?

However, the subsequent criticism of Su Yu was fully launched, and the criticism of Su Yu was also expanding again and again. From military or above to division or above, the number of participants has also increased from more than 400 to more than 1,000.

In the end, this criticism ended with Su Yu writing a letter of review against his will and being dismissed from the position of Chief of General Staff as deputy minister of the Ministry of National Defense and vice president of the Academy of Military Sciences.

And since then, Su Yu completely left the front line troops and kept this heavy burden, and even did not untie it when he died.

Su Yu

At that time, after Su Yu was criticized and removed from his post as Chief of Staff, his mistakes about Su Yu were also verbally conveyed to the level of the military regiment and the local prefectural committee. Why was the number one general of our army, who is talented and has great military achievements, suddenly criticized?

In this regard, Yang Shangkun later said: I know Comrade Su Yu’s incident in 1958. At that time, I was the Director of the General Office of the Central Committee. His affairs were very simple, just offended two and a half marshals.

Yang Shangkun

So, who are these "two and half marshals"?

The first marshal was Su Yu's direct superior, Marshal Peng Dehuai.

After being transferred by Chairman Mao to Beijing as the deputy chief of staff in 1951, Su Yu was directly under the leadership of Marshal Peng Dehuai, who presided over the Military Commission.

However, for the position of Chief of Staff, Peng Dehuai actually favored General Huang Kecheng, whom he was more familiar with, for this purpose, he also specially set up the position of Secretary-General of the Military Commission for General Huang Kecheng.

Therefore, after taking office as Chief of Staff, Su Yu's work was greatly constrained. At the same time, the two commanders with great military achievements also had different opinions on many views on their work.

For example, Su Yu believed at the time that in order to deal with emergencies, it was recommended to draw several armies as strategic reserves for command headquarters . These armies are not included in the combat sequences of each military region, but are uniformly commanded by the command headquarters. The suggestion of

is actually very visionary and can deal with emergencies well. However, Marshal Peng Dehuai disagreed with this, believed that it was completely unnecessary, and rejected Su Yu's suggestion.

However, a few years later, the Military Commission, which was no longer Peng Dehuai, still established such a force from a strategic perspective, which obviously coincided with Su Yu's suggestion back then.

Peng Dehuai

At the same time, due to the completely different personalities and Marshal Peng Dehuai's sexuality is as fierce as a fire, the two of them have conflicts many times over their work.

For example, Chairman Mao asked Su Yu to report to him something. In order to let Chairman Mao know the situation in the military in a timely manner, Su Yu reported to Chairman Mao once a week as required. Marshal Peng Dehuai was very dissatisfied with this.

Peng Shuai believes that it is inappropriate to report directly to his superiors through himself. After hearing this letter, Su Yu was very embarrassed and reporting to Chairman Mao was Chairman Mao’s request. Of course, he had to report it, but Marshal Peng Dehuai had another objection.

So, Su Yu wrote in his report to Chairman Mao that "Vice Chairman Peng forwarded Chairman Mao", but this once again made Marshal Peng Dehuai very angry. He said: I am not your correspondent! However, if you don’t write this sentence and report it directly, Marshal Peng Dehuai will say: Why, you want to file a complaint again?

In this case, Su Yu, who is not good at adjusting internal relationships and dealing with people and things, is in a dilemma.

Another dissatisfied marshal is Marshal Nie Rongzhen. From 1951 to 1952, Nie Rongzhen served as the deputy chief of staff, actually in charge of the work of the General Staff, while Su Yu was the second deputy chief of staff.

Martyman Nie Rongzhen

During his work, Nie Rongzhen was worried that Chairman Mao was too busy, so he had some control over the documents submitted to Chairman Mao. Of course, this also includes the report Su Yu gave to Chairman Mao.

At that time, according to Marshal Nie's request, Su Yu changed to report it to Chairman Mao once every half month. The frequency was reduced, so the content naturally had to be reduced. Chairman Mao was very angry about this. General Zhang Zhen mentioned this scene in his memoir:

Chairman Mao said seriously: In recent times, I felt that the dishes of workers, peasants and young women were placed on a large table, and I couldn’t eat them. However, there are too few dishes in the military system, and I am so hungry. Why are you blocking me?

Chairman Mao’s criticism forced Nie Rongzhen to make a written review. As the second deputy, Su Yu believed that Magistrate Nie had reviewed and he should also bear the responsibility, so he also made a written review with Chairman Mao.

After receiving the review letter, Chairman Mao made a special instructions on Su Yu's review: The review is very good, and Chairman Mao also compared Nie Rongzhen's work, affirmed Su Yu's work, and took the opportunity to criticize Nie Rongzhen.

Nie Rongzhen

Although Su Yu's review was entirely from the perspective of work responsibility, Chairman Mao's instructions and circulating still caused misunderstandings between Nie Su.

The remaining "half marshal" is Chen Yi marshal who has been working with Su Yu for a long time. At that time, some people criticized Su Yu for "responding to Chen", "Rao" refers to Rao Shushi, and "Chen" refers to Marshal Chen Yi.

Since the War of Resistance Against Japan, Su Yu has been partnering with Chen Yi for a long time. Chen Yi is responsible for the overall responsibility, while Su Yu is actually responsible for military command. The two of them cooperated in close cooperation and fought countless brilliant victories.

Of course, during work, two people will inevitably have differences in opinions on business. However, some people fabricated facts and even labeled Su Yu as "Rao Shushi's accomplice."

However, the so-called "offending" of these three marshals is actually a total work disagreement. As we all know, although Su Yu is very talented in military affairs and has great military achievements, his personality is extremely low-key, neither fighting nor robbing, and not good at talking.

Moreover, because of his low-key and restrainedness and humility, Su Yu has been fighting for a long time in the hearts of the enemy far away from the central government, he is better at facing a complex environment to defeat the more with fewer and weaker, but he has no understanding of the struggle within the party.

Martyman Chen Yi

It is precisely because of this kind of bad-hearted struggle, lack of understanding of struggle, and too low-key personality that most marshals do not understand this number one general in the army. In addition, Su Yu is too low-key and his job is a very critical and easy-to-offend Chief of Staff. It is inevitable that he is prone to conflicts with others at work.

For example, for Marshal Peng Dehuai, the two did have conflicts due to their personality and work reasons. Even at the 1958 Critical Conference, Marshal Peng Dehuai had a clear criticism of Su Yu.

But in fact, these are all due to conflicts in personality and work, and the two have no personal grudges. In fact, after being criticized, Peng Dehuai also reflected and regretted this history. He once said to his nephew and nephew Peng Qichao:

I have made many mistakes in my life. The anti-dogmatism of the entire army in the spring and summer of 1958 was a mistake. Looking back now, the criticism and handling of Comrade Liu Bocheng, Comrade Su Yu, Xiao Ke and other groups of comrades were too overstated, and they were wronged. Although it was not my intention, I was the conference host and I had a mistake.

As for the conflict with Marshal Chen Yi, it is more because of the fanning of the flames by people with ulterior motives. In fact, Chen Yi always held a positive opinion of Su Yu.

Chen Yi

For example, after Su Yu reviewed at the meeting, Chen Yi walked forward, held Su Yu's hand and said: He spoke very well, and took the lead in applauding.Moreover, at the second day of Su Yu's review, Chen Yi spoke at the conference again:

Yesterday I thought his review was very good, and I personally welcome it. In the past, he made great contributions to the Third Field Army military, which cannot be erased. The battlefield command is mainly due to winning battles.

As for the lack of communication and misunderstandings in work with Nie.

Therefore, Su Yu was wrongly criticized in 1958, more because of the drastic changes in the international and domestic situation, including Su Yu's own personality and other reasons.

The modest and low-key Su Yu is not good at dealing with internal relationships. When facing complex on-site struggles, his overly straightforward personality and practices always offend others intentionally or unintentionally.

Coupled with the influence of left-leaning errors at that time and the Zhukov incident that broke out in the Soviet Union in the international community, Su Yu mistakenly became the target of criticism at the enlarged meeting of the Military Commission. Of course, in 1994, after the 10th anniversary of Su Yu's death, the unjust case that lasted for 38 years was finally rehabilitated.