In mid-to-early October 1949, the main force of the Z1z Four Fields and the 4th Corps of the Second Field Army under the command of Lin Biao followed Chairman Mao’s strategic deployment of "Great Detour and Encirclement" and marched to Hunan and Guangdong at the same time. The liberation of the Central and South China is just around the corner.
Lin Biao personally commanded the 12th and 13th corps of the four fields to launch the Hengbao campaign in southern Hunan, preparing to encircle and annihilate the main force of the Bai Chongxi Group of the Kuomintang army gathered here, trying to complete the battle. Chen Geng commanded the 4th Corps of the Erye (13th, 14th, and 15th Corps under its jurisdiction) and the 15th Corps of the Siye, together with the Liangguang Column and the Linping Column, a total of 220,000 troops over the majestic Wuling Mountains and entered Guangdong.
Guangdong’s enemy army is mainly composed of Chiang Kai-shek ’s direct line of troops and Cantonese warlord troops. It consists of the 21st Corps (the 32nd and 50th Corps under its jurisdiction), the 13th Corps (the 23rd and 70th Corps under its jurisdiction), and the 12th Corps ( It has jurisdiction over the 10th, 18th Army) and the 39th, 62nd, 63rd, 64th, and 109th Army, a total of 11 corps and 31 divisions. The other is the air force, naval forces and other units such as security, tax police, and traffic police, appointed by Chiang Kai-shek. Yu Hanmou, the director of the Guangdong appeasement commission, and the Cantonese warlord tycoon, Yu Hanmou unified command. In terms of the number of designations, there are indeed quite a few. The size of the 3 corps and 11 corps was no less than the five strategic groups of the Kuomintang before 1949. However, if you are familiar with the history of the War of Liberation, it is not difficult to find that most of the army was annihilated by the People's Liberation Army and rebuilt, such as the 10th and 18th Corps of the 12th Corps. Others were defeated generals of the People's Liberation Army and escaped by chance, such as the 39th Army. Therefore, although Guangdong defends the enemy looks like a lot of names, but most of them are mobs with weak combat effectiveness and incomplete organization. Not only that, Chiang Kai-shek and Li Zongren of the Gui family, Bai Chongxi and also continued to stage Gongdou Opera. It can be said that Guangdong is regarded as the defense zone of the Central China Military and Political Commissioner's Office under Bai Chongxi, and Bai Chongxi also values the Pearl River Delta, the most prosperous area in modern China. In particular, Guangzhou was a municipality directly under the Central Government during the Kuomintang rule. Its level was parallel to that of the provincial government, and its tax revenue was higher than that of the whole province. Taking control of Guangdong, Bai Chongxi's surviving more than 200,000 Gui army soldiers have a relatively reliable source of food and payment. Just before the Battle of Hengbao, the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Western Pacific Fleet, Berger, had promised to bypass Chiang Kai-shek and cooperate with the Gui family alone. He opened his mouth with 75 million US dollars and 40 divisions of beautiful equipment. This is an important reason why Bai Chongxi dared to take the bleeding and fight against Lin Biao in the Hengbao area. Regarding Guangdong’s defense, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi have always advocated the entry of the three armies of the Guangxi family. At the same time, they also worked with Yu Hanmou and to build a "Hunan and Guangdong Joint Defense System."
How can this little Jiujiu of the Gui system allow Chiang Kai-shek, a civil war expert and a foreign war expert, to submit? The party, government, and military powers in Guangzhou are all controlled by Chiang Kai-shek’s personal and direct lineages. Therefore, Jiang Jieshi specifically threatened to change Guangzhou to a provincial city, such as Yu Hanmou, Xue Yue and other Cantonese generals: "Whoever opposes me, I will call whoever will die. On the front." On the issue of Guangdong's defense, Chiang Kai-shek repeatedly passed Li Zongren and directly intervened. Anyway, the Gui-based troops were not allowed to enter Guangdong. As the director of the Guangdong Appeasement Commission, Yu Hanmou, although he prefers to enter Guangdong by the Guangxi army, he dare not offend Chiang Kai-shek. After weighing repeatedly, he adopted a compromise plan. Starting from Lechang, Qujiang, and Nanxiong in the north of Guangdong, passing through Yingde and Wengyuan to Guangzhou, he arranged three lines of defense, each with 2-3 troops. All are Chiang Kai-shek’s direct line troops, and the rest of his old troops are deployed to the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan to the south. From this deployment, it is not difficult to see that once the People's Liberation Army moves south and enters Guangdong, the Jiang forces will bear the brunt, and Yu Hanmou's old army can withdraw to Guangxi or Hainan via the Leizhou Peninsula.
The defensive loopholes caused by the fierce struggle within the enemy provided our army with valuable fighters.
On September 28, 1949, the 200,000 troops of Chen Geng's 4th Corps and Deng Hua's 15th Corps officially embarked on their march into Guangdong. It was at this time that the curtain of the Battle of Hengbao was slowly opened. The three Guangxi troops that were originally concentrated on the border of Hunan and Guangdong were transferred to the north, which once again provided convenience for our army to go south to Guangdong. And where is the rabble of Kuomintang troops deployed in northern Guangdong that are the opponents of the PLA? Most of them fled before fighting. The Chen Geng Corps and Deng Hua Corps went all the way south, basically they didn’t encounter anything likeThis kind of battle had broken through Yu Hanmou's two lines of defense by October 10 and approached Guangzhou.
But just as Chen Geng and Deng Hua were in a state of turmoil, the Kuomintang army was crushing thousands of miles away, and Guangzhou was just around the corner, a telegram from Lin Biao was sent to Chen Geng’s desk from Wuhan, thousands of miles away, and he asked Chen Geng’s regiment to stop south. Entered Guangzhou, moved west and entered Guangxi, occupied Guilin and Liuzhou, cut off the Bai Chongxi Group's retreat from Hunan to Guangxi, and cooperated with the 12th and 13th Corps of the four fields to encircle and wipe out the Bai Chongxi Group's main force in the Hengbao area.
The reason why Lin Biao urgently stopped the liberation of Guangzhou was that he believed that the main enemy in the Central South battlefield was the strongest Bai Chongxi Group. After annihilating the Bai Chongxi Group, the military mission in Central South would be over.
Friends who are familiar with military history should be very clear that in the long revolutionary war years, the main operational principle of our army is to preserve our own viable strength and destroy the enemy's strength, regardless of the gains and losses of one city and one pool. In the era of the Red Army when the enemy is strong and we are weak, during the War of Resistance against Japan, and at the beginning of the War of Liberation, how to effectively preserve oneself is the prerequisite, followed by destroying the enemy. The situation is different now. The enemy's vital power is lost, and the remaining parts are lingering. If effective preservation of oneself is no longer a prerequisite, rapid annihilation of the enemy is the most important task. From a military point of view, Lin Biao's proposition is not useless.
But Lin Biao ignored another task parallel to the military task-the political task. In the revolutionary war of the previous 20 years, our army was both a combat team and a work team. Because of the situation, the main political tasks of the whole party and the whole army were concentrated in the countryside. According to the development of the war process, the Xibaipo September Conference in 1948 proposed that "the army should advance and production will grow by one inch", implying that the focus of the party's work has begun to shift from rural to urban areas. In 1949, the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee formally established this work. Millions of troops crossed the Yangtze River south, while hundreds of thousands of local cadres followed.
When the four wilds marched into Central South, especially before entering Guangdong, the Central Committee of the Party set up a South China branch with Ye Jianying, Zhang Yunyi, and Fang Fang as the first, second, and third secretaries. It was mainly responsible for liberating Guangdong and operating the work of Guangdong and Guangxi. Guangdong’s 4th Corps and 15th Corps were under the dual leadership of the Fourth Field Army and the South China Branch, while the logistics of the hundreds of thousands of troops were all undertaken by the South China Branch. If it is placed in a liberated area that has been operating for many years, such a large-scale previous work is not an easy task. What's more, the Guangdong region has long been the territory of reactionary forces at home and abroad. The difficulty of carrying out such a large-scale work can be imagined. To ensure the smooth logistics supply of the army, it is inevitable to liberate the Pearl River Delta region with Guangzhou as the center as soon as possible.
Therefore, when Lin Biao's telegram arrived, the party, government and military leaders represented by Ye Jianying and Chen Geng were very surprised and puzzled. On the same day that the Lin Biao telegram arrived, on October 11, five people, including Ye Jianying, Chen Geng, Deng Hua, Fang Fang, and Lai Chuanzhu, jointly called Lin Biao and elaborated on the significance of liberating Guangzhou. They first resolutely supported the Military Commission and the four wilds' policy of annihilating the Bai Chongxi Group on the borders of Hunan and Guangxi, but thought that it was inappropriate for the 4th Corps to enter Guilin westward because the distance was too far (1300 miles by land) and time wasted. After taking down Guangzhou, it is more appropriate to take Wuzhou to Nanning directly by water transportation. More importantly, the enemy in Guangdong has not been completely wiped out. The 4th Corps went west at this time, leaving only the two armies of the 15th Corps under great pressure.
The telegrams sent by the leaders of the two sides were also transmitted to Chairman Mao. This approach is not a leapfrog report, but a basic system-the reporting system formulated by the Party Central Committee in the late period of the Liberation War in order to comply with the development of the situation, strengthen the discipline of the whole party and the whole army, and promote scientific and regularization. There are three specific requirements: the central bureaus, sub-bureaus, and former enemy committees must also send a copy to the central government for all policies and tactical instructions and replies issued by the central bureaus, sub-bureaus, and former enemy committees; the policy and strategic reports made by the lower levels to the superiors are also The Central Committee needs to be notified; each member of the Central Committee and alternate members of the Central Committee has the obligation and right to report the situation and state opinions to the Central Committee or the Chairman of the Central Committee at any time.
Therefore, in terms of organizational procedures, although Ye Jianying and Chen Geng are under the leadership of the Fourth Field Army and the South China Bureau under the leadership of Lin Biao, they are also members of the Central Committee and alternate members of the Central Committee. It is not a violation of directly reporting problems to Chairman Mao.Anti-principle.
Because of distance, Lin Biao was the first to receive a telegram from Ye and Chen. At this time, the Battle of Hengbao was coming to an end, and Bai Chongxi's four main divisions were in danger, but Bai Chongxi himself still continued to retreat to Guangxi. Lin Biao, who breathed a sigh of relief, still suggested that the Chen Geng Corps not attack Guangzhou for the time being (because he was worried that the enemy in Guangdong would flee to Guangxi, causing the enemy to concentrate their forces), but he did not say anything to death. Instead, he proposed to wipe it out. Views on the liberation of Guangzhou under the premise of the enemy.
Before Ye Jianying and Chen Geng could reply, Chairman Mao’s reply regarding the first telegram arrived, expressing agreement with Lin Biao's opinion that the Fourth Corps entered Guangxi early. Obviously, Chairman Mao and Lin Biao coincided with each other on the issue of annihilating the enemy's vitality. But Chairman Mao is a great leader who is good at controlling the overall situation and looking into the situation. He agreed with Lin Biao's opinion because the victory or defeat in the Battle of Hengbao was still between the two. In the early morning of the second day after the Battle of Hengbao, Chairman Mao’s mind changed. His telegram to Lin Biao also elaborated on the possible adverse consequences of the Chen Geng Corps’ not attacking Guangzhou and going westward to Guangxi, basically the same as before. Ye Jianying and Chen Geng agreed. In fact, Chairman Mao was very prescient in formulating the "Great Detour and Encirclement" strategy and pointed out that the annihilation of the Bai Chongxi Group was nothing more than Hunan, Guangxi, and Yunnan, and Guangxi was the most likely. Annihilating the enemy in Hunan is of course the most ideal for our army, but the conditions are severely lacking. Annihilating the enemy in Yunnan, our army will work hard on an expedition, and it will cause trouble to the main force of the Second Field Army marching into the southwest, which is considered the least ideal. However, Bai Chongxi and his hundreds of thousands of Guijun were born and raised in Guangxi, and would not leave easily. The possibility of annihilating the enemy in Guangxi is the greatest. Z3z
The main frontline generals have disagreements on major strategic issues. This is normal and a serious problem. This is a very test of the leadership wisdom and leadership skills of the top leaders and the responsibility between the lower leaders. Fortunately, the middle and senior leaders of our military have such capabilities, wisdom, and foresight. In the telegrams Ye Jianying and Chen Geng sent to Chairman Mao and Lin Biao, in addition to expressing their own views, they also expressed a resolute obedience attitude at the end, "Maybe this is a partial view. You plan to consider the overall situation as necessary. Once the order comes, We resolutely implement it.” Chairman Mao also expressed his respect for Lin Biao’s opinion in the telegram to Lin Biao. “How Chen Geng’s regiment will act in the end must wait for Lin Biao’s consideration before making a decision.”
Finally, Lin Biao gave up on himself. He called Chen Geng, "I want the Corps to continue to advance to Guangzhou."
While Chen Geng lived up to expectations, he commanded the 4th Corps to pursue and fight for ten days and nights, not only liberating Guangzhou, but also the Kuomintang army that escaped from Guangzhou has the most combat effectiveness. More than 40,000 troops from the 21st Corps annihilated the Yangjiang area between Guangzhou and Leizhou Peninsula.
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