The Huaihai Battle was the pinnacle of Su Yu's military career, and his name as the god of war was largely because of this battle, creating a war miracle in which 600,000 defeated 800,000.
【Huaihai Battle Paintings】
But in fact, Su Yu in the Huaihai Battle was not sure of victory, and the Kuomintang also had a suitable general candidate to defeat Su Yu, but what was surprising was that this famous general finally chose to watch the fire from the other side and did not become an enemy of Su Yu, why is this?
Su Yu's great enemy
Su Yu is very good at fighting, mainly because he can always create miracles on the battlefield and win battles that seem impossible to win. However, in the Huaihai Campaign, the accident of the situation accounted for a large proportion, and neither Su Yu nor our army was prepared to fight in a big way at first.
【Awahiro】
When Su Yu formulated the battle plan for the Huaihai Campaign, he made it clear that the Huaihai Campaign was a small fight, and its original combat goal was only to defeat part of the troops of Xuzhou Suppression, and he did not think about making a big dumpling.
Su Yu was still relatively conservative in the planning of the Huaihai Campaign, after all, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party had a difference of 200,000 troops, so it was not possible to be cautious. Chairman Mao also agreed with Su Yu's plan, and agreed with the Huaihai Campaign to eat it and then the troops continued to march to northern Jiangsu.
Therefore, whether it is Su Yu or the Party Central Committee, they are all preparing to slowly eat the troops of Xuzhou in the Huaihai Campaign.
【Troop Build-up】
As for why Su Yu gave priority to picking Huang Baitao, in fact, it was also because Huang Baitao's strength was the weakest in the general army, he was a soft persimmon that he could handle, and his garrison position was also relatively critical, and if it was not in the hands of our army, the next stage of the campaign could not be carried out.
According to the Huaihai Campaign, a strategic decisive battle was unexpected, and of course it has to be praised for Su Yu's quick response, and changed the strategy of small fighting to a big fight before the national army.
Su Yu's ability to seize fighters has always been very affirmed, and the evolution of the Huaihai Battle is a clear proof that he involved all the main forces of the Suppression General into the decisive battle, and compared with the People's Liberation Army, the national army did not prepare for a decisive battle at all.
【Awahiro】
But even so, Su Yu cannot be said to be a sure winner, because the main force of the PLA has obvious advantages in weapons and equipment, especially in the technical arms of artillery, air power, and armored units.
More importantly, even though the Xuhuai battlefield has become a pot of porridge, the main force of the national army has not yet poured out, and the two main forces of the Central China Suppression General are still watching the fire from the other side, and the main ground combat units under its jurisdiction are fully seven armies.
Once the Kuomintang put it into the Huaihai battlefield, it was very difficult to say whether it would win or lose, and sometimes the crushing of numerical superiority was really desperate.
[The gap between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in the Huaihai Battle is obvious]
The consequences of factional struggles
The question then arises: Since the Kuomintang has the strength to turn the tables, why didn't it throw these reserve forces into battle when the situation took a sharp turn for the worse? To put it simply, the Kuomintang was again harmed by its own internal factional struggle.
These two corps were the main forces under Bai Chongxi, and the contradictions between Bai Chongxi and Lao Chiang at that time had reached the point of being well known within the Kuomintang.
【Bai Chongxi】
On the battlefield of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party at that time, the hundreds of thousands of troops in Bai Chongxi's hands could play a decisive role, because the main force of the People's Liberation Army at that time had been contained in the major battlefields, and the national army still had these hundreds of thousands of remaining strength.
If Bai Chongxi was determined to save Huang Baitao and Huang Wei's corps, Su Yuhuaye's troops would definitely not be enough, Bai Chongxi's military command level was not weak, why didn't he seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
【Bai Chongxi】
People who knew about the internal struggle at the top level of the Kuomintang at that time once revealed that Bai Chongxi was not unable to save it, but that he saw that there was no need to save the national army at that time.
Bai Chongxi felt that he had saved it in vain, and he might be able to turn the tide tactically, but it was only to delay the demise of the general suppression, and Bai Chongxi was unwilling to waste his efforts.
In addition, he and Lao Chiang did not deal with each other in the first place, and the Americans were also very dissatisfied with Chiang Kai-shek's ability, and Bai Chongxi had also heard rumors of the Kuomintang dumping Chiang before, so of course he would not mobilize his own forces to protect Chiang.
【Chiang Kai-shek】
The idea of factional struggle of the Kuomintang has been used for decades, and it can be said that it is deeply ingrained in the minds of Bai Chongxi and others, but the calculation and calculation also made the Kuomintang finally defeated.
Another key point is that in Bai Chongxi's eyes, the People's Liberation Army is also a warlord force like himself, and he believes that there is no possibility of a unified central power in China at that time, and the warlord division will continue for a long time.
Bai Chongxi misjudged the Communist Party's determination to liberate the whole of China, and was still engaged in the method of preserving strength, and in the end, he was naturally smart but was mistaken by cleverness.
【Bai Chongxi】
This can also be confirmed from the telegram between Chiang Kai-shek and Bai Chongxi at that time, Lao Chiang asked Bai Chongxi to rush to Huaihai, and Bai Chongxi blocked him back with a word.
When Huang Baitao and Huang Wei's corps were under siege, Lao Jiang was busy scolding Bai Chongxi in the telegram, and it was absurd that such a Kuomintang army was not so much defeated by Su Yu as defeated by his own hands.
In fact, many war historians have pointed out that if Bai Chongxi has the slightest view of the overall situation and throws his troops into the Huaihai battlefield, it will be difficult for Huaye to turn it into a strategic decisive battle, and the two sides are more likely to start a strategic confrontation on the Huaihe front.
【Huaihai Campaign】
But history does not allow for assumptions, Lao Chiang relied on gangs to form factions to seize power, and the demise of the Kuomintang regime was ultimately because of factional disputes.
Sources:
[1] Ma Suzheng, Yun Qiancheng. Mao Zedong said: "In the Huaihai Campaign, Comrade Su Yu made the first contribution!" Iron Army, 2007