2021 is the 84th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese army in Nanjing to create a tragic massacre, the massacre of more than 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians, but in fact, in the War of Resistance Against Japan, shockingly, in addition to the Nanjing Massacre, there was also a tragedy similar to the Nanjing Massacre that most people did not know, and the death toll was more than twice that of the Nanjing Massacre.
There is a popular song in the Huangpan area, "Old Jiang opened the garden mouth, a load of two baskets to go out, people eat people, dogs eat dogs, rats hungry to chew bricks." This song sings about the tragic situation that occurred after the Yellow River Garden Mouth breach in 1938.
On July 7, 1937, the Japanese army created the July 7 Incident, announcing the beginning of a full-scale invasion of China, and on May 19, 1938, the Japanese army quickly occupied Xuzhou, causing many massacres in and around Xuzhou.
After the occupation of Xuzhou, the Kuomintang army at this time withdrew to the east and south of Henan Province, the Japanese army watched the Kuomintang army stretch the front, suddenly changed the battle plan, decided to directly attack Wuhan, because before the fall of Nanjing, the Nationalist government was forced to move to Wuhan, the Japanese army wanted to directly capture the Kuomintang base camp.
Since we want to attack Wuhan, we must first attack Zhengzhou, which is the hinterland of the Central Plains, Shaanxi in the west, Hebei in the north, and then Wuhan, the stronghold of the Kuomintang.
However, the Battle of Lanfeng because the commander of the 88th Division stationed in Lanfeng, that is, the commander of the old Chiang Kai-shek central concubine, directly gave the Japanese army the opportunity to occupy Lanfeng County effortlessly, after the loss of Lanfeng, the commander of the Eighth Army of Shangqiu also quietly withdrew from Shangqiu, and in just a few days, Lanfeng and Shangqiu were occupied by the Japanese army, which meant that the city of Kaifeng was "sent" to the Japanese army in vain.
Old Jiang knew that Kaifeng was bound to fall, and Zhengzhou was also in danger, and after receiving a telegram from Xue Yue, the former commander-in-chief of the enemy in the First Theater of Operations, he learned that the Japanese army had approached the area from Zhengzhou to Xuchang, so he immediately sent a telegram to Cheng Qian, asking for full efforts to block the advance of the Japanese army and swearing to defend the line from Zhengzhou to Xuchang to the death.
After receiving the telegram, Cheng Qian was worried, if he fought hard with the enemy, he would definitely not be able to defend the line from Zhengzhou to Xuchang, if he did not fight hard, then how should he hold this line? At this time, Yan Xunfu, chief of staff of the First Theater, gave two suggestions, either abandon Zhengzhou or break the Yellow River dam to stop the Japanese attack.
Yan Xunfu's suggestion is not unreasonable, most of the Japanese army is a mechanical unit, once the Yellow River water is opened, the power of mechanical weapons will be greatly reduced, then the Japanese army has no choice but to use light weapons to fight, so the probability of defeating the Japanese army is much greater.
After listening to Yan Xunfu's suggestion, Cheng Qian decided to replace the troops with water and blow up the Yellow River embankment along the line from Zhaokou to Huayuankou, in fact, the method of using water instead of soldiers to prevent the Japanese army from advancing had been proposed for a long time.
In 1935, the German military advisory group Falkenhausen suggested that the old Chiang could use the water of the Yellow River to block the advance of the Japanese army, and during the Battle of Xuzhou, Chen Guofu, director of the Kuomintang Organization Department, also proposed to replace the soldiers with water.
At that time, old Jiang hesitated, after all, once the Yellow River broke the embankment, more innocent people would be drowned, how fierce was the Yellow River water?
The Yellow River is China's "mother river" gave birth to China's five thousand years of civilization, the Yellow River originated from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, affected by China's terrain in some areas of the Yellow River water is extremely turbulent, and the Yellow River governance has always been an important issue of social concern.
In the thousands of years before 1946, the Yellow River flooded a total of 1593 times, broke the embankment more than a thousand times, and each time the embankment would cause a great famine, countless innocent people were drowned, and in 1877, the Yellow River broke the embankment, destroyed two cities, and drowned millions of people, which shows how fierce the Yellow River is.
On June 1, 1938, Lao Jiang held a supreme military conference to discuss whether the combat method of Cheng Qian's use of water to replace the soldiers was inappropriate, and some people at the meeting were worried that the damage caused by the yellow river breach was irreparable, but lao Chiang's attitude was very light and breezy, and the yellow river water breach was pushed off to the Japanese bombers.
After discussion, it was finally decided to blow up Zhao Kou, and this task fell on Shang Zhen, commander-in-chief of the 20th Group Army, and Shang Zhen, who received the order, did not dare to slacken off at all, and immediately arranged to blow up Zhao Kou.
However, the front line did not wait for anyone, the Japanese army was approaching step by step, and old Chiang sent an emergency telegram to Shang Zhen, asking Shang Zhen to quickly blow up Zhao Kou, and Shang Zhen and his troops continued to work hard, but the three times the embankment broke ended in failure.
At this time, Kaifeng has been completely occupied, once Zhengzhou is lost, Henan will completely fall into the pockets of the Japanese army, Wuhan and Xi'an will not be able to escape the clutches of the Japanese army, when the news of the failure of Shang Zhen's three times to break the embankment came, the old Jiang Qi did not fight.
At this moment, Jiang Zaizhen stood up and solved the urgent need of the old Jiang, he had a way to break the yellow river water, so on the morning of June 7, from blowing up Zhao Kou to blowing up the Garden Mouth.
Jiang Zaizhen selected 800 soldiers to be divided into five groups for alternating excavation, under the command of Jiang Zaizhen, the embankment breaking work was smooth, at 9 o'clock on the 9th, the garden mouth excavation was successful, and the Yellow River water broke the embankment successfully.
But the mouth is too weak, can only be bombarded with cannons, expand the breach, but who can think of the breach is not controlled, bigger and bigger, when the garden mouth was blown up, the breach has been expanded by seven or eight meters, but this time it suddenly rained heavily, the Yellow River water rose violently, and the mouth is also expanding.
Many soldiers and generals were overjoyed when the Yellow River broke the embankment, but Jiang Zaizhen was still not happy, looking at the rushing Yellow River water in front of him, Jiang Zaizhen did not know how much the artificial breach of the embankment would lose this time, and then looked at the Yellow River water, which was already submerged crops and livestock.
After the Yellow River dam burst the embankment, the water in the west joined the Huai River, and the water in the east also entered the Huai River, and then these turbulent Yellow River water poured into Hongze Lake, and the danger came instantly, the population of 44 counties in Shandong, Jiangsu and Henan provinces did not escape the swallowing of the Yellow River water, and the area swallowed by the Yellow River water was as high as 290,000 square kilometers, in addition to which more than 19 million mu of crops did not escape the claws of the Yellow River.
Unfortunately, since the time when the Kuomintang army was preparing to break the Yellow River Dam, the Japanese army had learned the next move of the Kuomintang army through reconnaissance aircraft, taking advantage of the gap between the two armies to take the lead in occupying the high place, and after the Yellow River water successfully broke the embankment, the Japanese Fourteenth Division, with the help of reinforcements, fled Zhongmu County, and the losses of being swallowed up by the Yellow River water were small.
However, the Japanese 16th Division, located at the center of the Yellow River water outbreak, was drowned more than 1,000 people, and the Kuomintang army took advantage of its lack of preparation to basically eliminate the Japanese army east of Henan, plus more than 1,000 people drowned in the Yellow River, and the Japanese army injured more than 7,000 people in this garden mouth bombing.
On the contrary, China suffered serious losses in this garden mouth bombing incident, after the garden mouth was blown up, on June 12, The opening of the mouth also broke the embankment, the two turbulent water flows merged into one, the water depth was as high as two meters, and Baisha Town could not escape the washing of the Yellow River.
On the 13th, the Yellow River expanded through the area, all the villages along the way suffered, in late June, the Yellow River water still did not reduce the original rapidity, Anhui, Jiangsu territory also suffered from the Yellow River water attack, along with the Japanese army built huai river shovel was submerged.
In July, the area flooded by the Yellow River was still expanding, and the Nationalist government realized that the yellow river water only helped to block more than 1,000 Japanese troops, and the rest of the victims were all civilians and crops.
Seeing the unmanageable mess, the Kuomintang planted the Yellow River water breach embankment to Japan, and on June 13, the Central News Agency published an article claiming that the Japanese army dropped bombs on the Yellow River, and a single dam was blown up, causing the Yellow River to burst the embankment.
According to statistics, in the incident of the destruction of the garden mouth, the people were homeless, all the livestock were drowned by the Yellow River, and the crops disappeared with the Yellow River, 12 million people were displaced, 890,000 people were drowned by the Yellow River, 3.9 million people fled, and the economic damage reached more than 1 billion US dollars.
Not only that, in the provinces and cities around the Yellow River, especially in Henan Province, more than 9 million mu of crops were destroyed by the Yellow River, 1.4 million houses were washed away or destroyed by the Yellow River, and Zhongmu County was drowned by the Yellow River water.
In the face of its irreparable damage, the Kuomintang only allocated 500 million French dollars to the disaster areas, equivalent to about 3 million yuan now, but the Yellow River flooded the embankment and took away the homes of the people, and these disaster relief fees were of no use to them.
The Yellow River flood incident indirectly caused a famine in Henan, the province has not rained for many years, the National Government is not concerned about the catastrophe, resulting in 30 million people suffered from famine and 3 million people starved to death.
After losing their homes, even the basic food and clothing were gone, the crops had been eroded by the waters of the Yellow River, and they could not grow any crops, coupled with famine, the people's lives were more difficult, and the people were not happy.
The blow-up of the Garden Mouth indirectly delayed the pace of the Japanese invasion of China, for many years Lao Jiang treated the Garden Mouth blown up caused by the Yellow River water breach, did not mention, in 1945, after the Japanese invaders surrendered, old Chiang took the excuse of the people of the Huangpan Area to build the Garden Mouth, on March 15, 1947, the Garden Mouth was successfully built.
Although the destruction of the Garden Pass caused the Yellow River to burst its banks delayed the Japanese invasion of our country, our country paid a tragic price, more than the death toll of the Nanjing Massacre, which has been closed, the liberation of Nanjing, the fall of the National Government, and the victory of the War of Liberation.
Realizing his defeat, Chiang retreated to Taiwan, and it was not until Chiang's death in 1975 that the Kuomintang gradually acknowledged that the Garden Mouth breach was the work of the Kuomintang.
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