During the Liberation War, with the successive victories of our army on various battlefields, more and more prisoners of war of the Nationalist army were captured, including some middle and high-ranking generals. At that time, in order to facilitate management, war criminals were usually detained in Fushun, Xi'an, Jinan, Chongqing and other war criminal management centers for reform in accordance with the principle of proximity. In 1955, according to the instructions of the superiors, the war criminals detained throughout the country were uniformly handed over to the public security department for management.
In order to facilitate the reform work, the superiors decided to transfer some of the senior generals to Gongdelin Prison. The prison, which was only accepted by the People's Liberation Army after the liberation of Peiping, has a total of 17 supervision rooms, more than 350 rooms, and can hold up to more than 1,000 people. However, of the more than a thousand Nationalist generals who were eventually captured, only more than two hundred were concentrated in the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center. So, what level of talent was eligible to enter the Meritorious Forest at that time?
First, according to the original positions of prisoners of war of the Nationalist army, they would be divided into civilian and military positions. Civilian refers to the national government officials who hold administrative positions, and the military position is the general who holds the position of army. Take a more special example, such as Wang Yaowu. He is the chairman of the Shandong provincial government, so he belongs to the civilian position. However, at the same time, he also served as the commander of the Second Appeasement District, so Wang Yaowu also belonged to the military position. Civilian war criminals who can enter Gongdelin need to hold positions at the provincial level or above. However, the number of such war criminals is not large, because those who can achieve provincial level in the national army are basically above the rank of lieutenant general in the army.
However, due to the loose management of the ranks of the Nationalist side, there were dozens of lieutenant generals alone. For example, Du Yuming, deputy commander-in-chief of Xuzhou, Huang Wei, commander of the 12th Corps, and so on. Of course, there is also a group of war criminals who are more special, they belong to the national army secret service system, which includes two lieutenant generals Kang Ze and Zhang Yanfo, as well as several major generals such as Shen Drunk Guo Xu. In short, around 1956, more than 200 Nationalist generals were sent to Beijing Gongdelin for transformation. It was not until 1975, when New China decided to grant amnesty to all detainees, that all of these once-prominent figures were thrown into a new living environment.