In 1936, the Xi'an Incident shocked the world. The Chinese nation has united unprecedentedly in the plight of internal and external troubles and condensed into a great force of the anti-Japanese national united front. With the Lugou Bridge Incident, the whole country fell into war.
After eight years of bloody struggle, the Chinese nation finally defeated the Japanese invaders. In the course of counter-aggression, the Eighth Route Army fought bravely in the battlefield behind the enemy's lines, maneuvered with the enemy, and used various strategies and tactics such as guerrilla warfare and position warfare to greatly contain and consume the enemy behind the enemy lines, and won more initiative for the frontal battlefield.
But to this day, there are still many malicious rumors that slander the contribution of the Eighth Route Army in the War of Resistance Against Japan, saying that the Eighth Route Army has done nothing.
At the beginning of the all-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Chinese army successively engaged in ten large-scale contests with the Japanese army, known in the history of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression as the Ten Great Battles of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (the Battle of Songhu, the Battle of Nanjing, the Battle of Taiyuan, and the Battle of Xuzhou in the frontal battlefield in 1937, the Battle of Wuhan in 1938, the Battle of Changsha in 1939, the Battle of Guinan in 1940, the Battle of Shanggao in 1941, the Battle of Western Yunnan in Burma in 1943, and the Battle of Xiangxi in 1945). Since the Kuomintang, headed by Chiang Kai-shek at that time, represented China in coordination with the anti-fascist countries of the world, the Kuomintang represented the country, and the frontal battlefield was naturally dominated by the Kuomintang army.
From the fall of northeast China to the fall of north China, and then to the fall of central China and south China one after another, the frontal battlefield was gradually defeated and fell into a stalemate between the two sides. The Nationalist government could only find another way to break the deadlock in its activities behind enemy lines. So Chiang Kai-shek sent the Eighth Route Army, which he regarded as a miscellaneous army, behind enemy lines to harass and try to break the deadlock by attrition of the enemy.
After the Red Long March, the strength was reduced. After the formation of the anti-Japanese national united front, the former Red First, Second and Fourth Armies were reorganized into the Eighth Route Army. Although the frontal battlefield is extremely dangerous and requires very strong combat effectiveness, it is also a good way to temper the army's experience in actual combat and to collect resources, and Chiang Kai-shek naturally cannot leave such a good opportunity to his old rival, the Communist Party, and naturally send the Eighth Route Army behind enemy lines.
The frontal battlefield was in a defeated position in the early stage, and in the later stage, there were not too many Eighth Route Army participating in the battle, so from the frontal battlefield, it seemed that the Eighth Route Army had no other achievements except for the flat-type Guan Dajie at the Battle of Taiyuan. However, the Victory of Pingxingguan smashed the japanese-fearing sentiment in the country in one fell swoop, greatly enhanced the confidence and determination of the whole country to resist Japan, and also forced the Japanese aggressors to adjust their arrangements and win valuable opportunities for the nationwide War of Resistance.
However, Chiang Kai-shek's wishful thinking was wrong at the beginning; he used the frontal battlefield to deplete other factions within the Kuomintang, retained the strength of his own troops, and took advantage of the complicated situation behind the enemy lines to consume the Eighth Route Army, but ignored that during the period of the agrarian revolution, the Eighth Route Army had been fighting for a long time in areas such as mountainous plateaus with complex terrain, and had rich combat experience, and the sixteen-character policy of guerrilla warfare was even more full of fire in practice and application.
The Eighth Route Army is deeply rooted in the masses and is deeply loved by the masses. In less than three years, it has grown from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. In the Second Battlefield opened up by the Eighth Route Army behind enemy lines in the War of Resistance Against Japan, the enemy was caught off guard, greatly cooperated with the frontal battlefield action, and played a great role in the War of Resistance Against Japan, such as the most famous and well-known "Battle of the Hundred Regiments.".
The "Battle of the Hundred Regiments" began in August 1940 and lasted for nearly four months, divided into three major stages. The central task of the first stage was to advance behind enemy lines in the occupied areas of North China, disrupt communication lines, penetrate deep into Japanese strongholds, and counterattack and sweep.
The Eighth Route Army braved the bad weather of rain, crossed the valley river, avoided the Japanese stronghold, and went straight to the Zhengtai Railway, where the sudden attack caught the Japanese by surprise and successfully blew up the Zhengtai Railway.
The Eighth Route Army blew up many sections of the railway one after another, causing the enemy to retaliate fiercely, but Peng Dehuai, commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army, had already anticipated the enemy's movements and was ready for a small detachment to clamp down on the enemy's counterattack, and at the same time launched the second stage, which was to continue to destroy the communication line and destroy the enemy's strongholds and carry out a battle of annihilation.
A total of 1824 battles were fought in the "Hundred Regiments War", which greatly damaged the enemy and made the Eighth Route Army spread by the Kuomintang side "swim without attacking" into nonsense. According to historical records, during 1940, the Japanese army fought more than 4,000 battles in the occupied areas of North China alone. This proves that the Eighth Route Army, behind the enemy's lines, fought many battles against the enemy, rather than "swimming without attacking."
However, the initial victory of the "Hundred Regiments War" also caused the enemy to start a large-scale sweep against the rear, and the Eighth Route Army was forced to start the third stage of anti-"mopping- operations just after the battle was too late to rest. During this period, zuo Quan, a famous anti-Japanese general, was unfortunately killed when he commanded his troops to cover the breakthrough and transfer of core organs such as the Central Northern Bureau and the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army.
At the same time, the rapid development of the Eighth Route Army aroused Chiang Kai-shek's jealousy; when the Red Army was initially reorganized into the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army, there were only three divisions and twelve regiments, but the Eighth Route Army was active behind enemy lines and was deeply loved by the people, and many people spontaneously joined in wherever they passed, and the ranks of the Eighth Route Army grew rapidly, so that Chiang Kai-shek single-handedly concocted the "Anhui Southern Incident" to smear the Communist Party in disregard of the overall situation of the Anti-Japanese Resistance.
However, history and practice have finally proved that only the Communist Party, which seeks happiness for the Chinese and the people, and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation, can win the support of the people and be chosen by history.