Chapter 665 Battle of Xuzhou

Hua Shengli heard the news that Han Fuyu, chairman of the party, government and military in Shandong Province, who was "a great official of the feudal territory, was shot dead by Jiang for "not obeying orders and retreating without authorization", and sighed: "The merits and demerits are evaluated by their descendants. However, now that the country is in crisis, the warlords who do not resist Japan, do not resist, and only want to preserve their own strength are very wrong! There is no pity to die, and it can make the people, especially the leading soldiers on the frontal battlefield, stick to the resistance against Japan. ”

Hua Shengli continued to lead his troops to conduct high-intensity military training for the independent brigade of the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army in the Mudanjiang and Hailin areas, and in order to make the new recruits of more than 2,000 people able to come in handy on the battlefield of resistance against Japan, there was no way to show troops here in this winter......

On this day, Bai Junping, who received a telegram from his superiors, reported to Hua Shengli that the Japanese army had attacked Xuzhou......

At the beginning of 1938, in order to open up the Tianjin-Pudong Railway and connect the battlefields of North China and Central China, the Japanese army expanded its aggression and adopted the policy of advancing from north to south and attacked Xuzhou.

After the fall of Nanjing, about 80,000 Japanese troops crossed the river from Zhenjiang, Nanjing, and Wuhu to the north, and went straight to Bengbu along the Jinpu Road. When he reached the Mingguang area, he was stopped by the Kuomintang defenders. The two sides fought fiercely for more than a month, and to the surprise of Yan Junliu, the commander of the Japanese army in central China, he mobilized reinforcements from Nanjing and attacked him.

The 51st Army of the Kuomintang was deployed on the north bank of the Huai River and resisted the enemy's northward advance across the river at all odds. The two sides engaged in a tug-of-war on the Huai River line, forming a situation of confrontation across the Huai River.

On the northern line of Jinpu, Han Fuyu, who had 80,000 troops (now shot by Zhengfa), retreated without a fight in the face of the Japanese attack, abandoning Jinan, Tai'an, Qufu and other places. On 13 January, the 5th Division of the enemy's North China Front and the Japanese marines who had landed in advance jointly invaded and occupied Qingdao. The enemy's 10th Division moved south along the Jinpu Railway, and the 5th Division attacked Linyi along Zhucheng and Juxian, marching in unison in an attempt to join Taierzhuang and open the door to Xuzhou.

The 10th Division of the Japanese Army, which invaded North China, crossed the Yellow River from Qingcheng and Jiyang in Shandong Province, and after occupying Jinan, it advanced to the line of Jining, Mengyin, and Qingdao. In order to open up the Tianjin-Pukou Railway (Tianjin-Pukou) and unite the northern and southern battlefields, the Japanese base camp successively mobilized about 240,000 people from eight divisions, three brigades, and two detachments, which were respectively commanded by Shunroku Hatata, commander of the Central China Dispatch Army, and Toshiichi Terauchi, commander of the North China Front, to advance from north to south, first capturing Xuzhou, a strategic point in East China, then taking Zhengzhou west along the Longhai Railway (Lanzhou-Lianyungang), and then taking Wuhan south along the Pinghan Railway (Beiping-Hankou).

At this time, the squadron was commanded by Li Zongren, commander of the Fifth Theater of Operations, and successively mobilized 64 divisions and 3 brigades, about 600,000 people, to concentrate the main force in the area north of Xuzhou to resist the southern attack of the Japanese army on the northern front, and a part of the force was deployed in the southern section of the Tianjin-Pudong Railway to prevent the Japanese army from advancing north on the southern line to ensure Xuzhou.

Before the Battle of Xuzhou, the squadron basically adopted a simple positional defensive battle, and it was often in a passive position, and its weapons and equipment were inferior to the Japanese army, so it was repeatedly defeated.

After the Battle of Songhu and the Battle of Nanjing, the Chinese High Command accepted the lessons of the past and began to adopt a new policy of offensive defense, that is, to closely integrate the defensive position of positional warfare with the offensive of movement warfare and the attack and harassment of guerrilla warfare.

In the pre-selected battlefield area, hold the position with a part of the force, attract and consume the enemy; guerrilla behind enemy lines with a part of the force, disrupt communications, harass strongholds, and contain the enemy; The main force corps should make a detour to the enemy's flank and carry out a powerful attack, so as to change the internal line of operations into external operations and strive for the initiative in passivity.

As the supreme commander of the Battle of Xuzhou, Li Zongren made a perfect annotation to the "protracted attrition strategy" that had been formulated by the Supreme Command at that time with his successful campaign and tactical actions.

Li Zongren knew that he had given in-depth strategic thinking to the question of how to effectively resist foreign invasion in an ancient, large, and backward country like China. In his "On the War of Resistance in Scorched Earth," he analyzed the backward state of China's industry and communications at that time, and pointed out: "Strategically speaking, if the Japanese aggressors practice upright positional warfare, they will be strong and we will be weak," "Therefore, the enemy's advantage lies in a quick and quick victory," "However, we must avoid our shortcomings and give full play to our strengths, and make use of the conditions of our vast land, the people, the mountains and rivers, and other conditions to carry out a long-term war of attrition that is planned to resist step by step," "when the enemy is penetrated deep into the vast and boundless wilderness of our country," and "we will carry out guerrilla warfare in the areas behind enemy lines." ", so that "the enemy is exhausted, cares about one and loses the other, and falls into the mire".

On January 26, 1938, the 13th Division of the Japanese Army attacked Fengyang and Bengbu in Anhui Province. The defending 11th Army of the 31st Army, after resisting one by one in the area on the west bank of the Chi River, retreated to the west of Dingyuan and Fengyang.

By February 3, 1938, the Japanese army had captured Linhuai Pass and Bengbu. On the 9th~10th, the main force of the 13th Division of the Japanese Army crossed the Huai River at Bengbu and Linhuai Pass respectively and launched an attack on the north bank. The 51st Army engaged in a fierce battle with the Japanese army, suffered heavy casualties, and retreated in the direction of the Lu River and the Huhe River on the 12th.

The Fifth Theater of Operations led by Zhang Zizhong, commander of the 59th Army, rushed to the Guzhen area, and cooperated with the 51st Army to stubbornly resist the Japanese army in the area on the north bank of the Huai River. At the same time, on the south bank of the Huai River, the 48th Army of the 21st Group Army held the Luqiao area, and the 7th Army cooperated with the 31st Army to attack the Japanese flank of Dingyuan in a roundabout way, forcing the main force of the Japanese 13th Division to return from the north bank of the Huai River. The 59th and 51st armies took advantage of the situation to counterattack and restored all positions north of the Huai River by early March. The 21st Army and the 31st Army were concentrated from the south bank of the Huai River to the north bank. The two sides confronted each other across the river.

In late February, the Japanese 2nd Army began to split its way to the south. The 5th Division of the East Road went south from Weixian County, Shandong, and fell into Yishui, Juxian, and Rizhao in succession, and went straight to Linyi. The 3rd Army Corps, the 40th Army and other units resisted step by step.

The 59th Army was ordered to rush to the rescue, and on March 12, it arrived on the west bank of the Yi River in the northern suburbs of Linyi, and cooperated with the 40th Army to carry out a counterattack, fighting fiercely for 5 days and nights, inflicting heavy losses on the Japanese army, and forcing it to retreat to Juxian.

The Commander Detachment of the 10th Brigade of the Japanese Army on the West Road crossed the canal from the west of the Jining area and attacked Jiaxiang, but was stubbornly resisted by the 3rd Army and the attack was frustrated; The Seya detachment advanced south along the Jinpu Railway, and on March 14 attacked Tengxian from Liangxiadian, south of Zou County.

The 41st Army of the 22nd Group Army of the Chinese defenders resisted bravely, suffered heavy casualties, and fought hard until the 17th, when Wang Mingzhang, commander of the 122nd Division of the army defending the city, was martyred, and Tengxian County was lost.

In the battle of Tengxian, the squadron used 7,000 troops to deal with tens of thousands of well-equipped Japanese troops, and did not hesitate to make heavy sacrifices to prevent the Japanese army from moving south, delaying the pace of the Japanese army's southward invasion, and winning time for the strategic deployment of mobilizing troops to defend Taierzhuang.

After the Japanese army occupied Teng County, they were extremely arrogant and did everything they could, and went straight to Taierzhuang. The Japanese army had more than 40,000 troops, 70 or 80 tanks, more than 100 mountain artillery and heavy artillery, and wanted to use a large number of planes to help the battle, and rushed to the north mud ditch of Taierzhuang with great momentum......