The Battle of Shanghai, the Battle of Nanjing, and the Battle of Xuzhou all lacked one person in these three battles, and the culprit of the Japanese army during the War of Resistance Against Japan was Kenji Toihara. What were his troops doing during this time?
The Fourteenth Army of the Battle of Xuzhou, Kenji Toihara, did not come to the frontal battlefield. At 2 a.m. on May 12, a week before the fall of Xuzhou, Kenji Toihara, with his troops, began smuggling, appearing on the south bank of the Yellow River at the cost of 40 casualties and then plunging straight into Lanfeng in eastern Henan.
According to the orders of the North China Front, the 14th Division regiment belonging to the 1st Army was called, and after crossing the Yellow River, it marched non-stop to assist the 16th Division of the 2nd Army, encircling Guide, which was very valuable to the Chinese army.
However, the operational staff officer of the 1st Army, Yujin Miharu, did not heed this order at all, but directly ordered Kenji Toihara to directly attack Lanfeng after crossing the Yellow River and maintain the offensive against Kaifeng, the capital of Henan Province.
On May 24, after the 14th Division of Kenji Toihara took Lanfeng, the Battle of Xuzhou was over. The Chinese army had withdrawn to the Yuwan Border Region, and by this time, Kenji Toihara's forces were attacked by 12 Chinese divisions.
And the Chinese general of this unit is Xue Yue.
After the Battle of Songhu, he almost died on the battlefield. At that time, Xue Yue's left-wing army headquarters was located in Anting Town, Shanghai, and just as Xue Yue was talking to Huang Wei, commander of the 60th Division, the Japanese army had arrived near the headquarters, and the special service battalion around Xue Yue had already handed over fire to the sneaking Japanese troops.
Xue Yue was directly stuffed into a jeep by the staff and guards of the headquarters, and it did not take long for the Japanese bullets to clang on the car, the driver, adjutant, and staff officer died on the spot, xue Lecheng rolled under the car in the night, lurked in the field next to it, and then there were many rivers, and then rescued by the passing 54th Army.
Facing the Tufeiyuan Division, Chiang Kai-shek thought of Xue Yue again.
As a general in Guangdong, Xue Yue had a very delicate relationship with Chiang Kai-shek, and he was able to follow some anti-Chiang kai-shek politicians and carry out anti-Chiang kai-shek activities, and once idle after his failure. Later, Chiang Kai-shek repeatedly failed in besieging the Red Army, and through Chen Cheng's protection, Xue Yue once again appeared on the battlefield.
As soon as he went to the battlefield, Xue Yue achieved great results. It was not until this time that Chiang Kai-shek changed his prejudices and truly discovered that Xue Yue was indeed a military talent, and gradually became kind to him.
But the two have always been in a very delicate relationship.
For Chiang Kai-shek, Xue Yue, who was born stubborn, had both respect and gratitude for him, and at the same time had a kind of untamed strength. Chiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, trusted, let go and helpless to him.
In fact, there are still many contradictions in this, for Chiang Kai-shek, on the one hand, he hopes that the students and generals will obey him, on the other hand, he also hopes that they will have edges and corners, and use troops to strategize superiorly, which obviously belongs to the latter category of representatives.
After the Battle of Songhu, Xue Yue was appointed commander-in-chief of the Third Theater and reorganized the troops in the southern Anhui region. On May 10, Chiang Kai-shek sent an urgent telegram, sent a special plane to take Xue Yue to Wuhan, followed by another to Zhengzhou, after meeting the commander of the First Theater of Operations Cheng Qian, directly let Xue Yue serve as the commander of the Yudong Corps, intercepting the Japanese 14th Division, which was also advancing alone.
Kenji Toihara had been hiding in the shadows before, and after the Sino-Japanese war, he became the commander of the division with troops on the front line. Although he came from an intelligence work background, he was indeed a lucky general, and after landing in Tianjin Tanggu, he traveled to Hebei, Shandong, and Henan, and basically encountered no resistance along the way.
In this way, Xue Yue and Kenji Toihara were paired.