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On the screen, we can often see such images, the Red Army is wearing tattered clothes, holding a worn-out single-shot rifle in his hand, fighting the enemy with difficulty.
The target of the battle was either the Japanese army or the Kuomintang, but as long as the Red Army fought a war, it showed the hardships of the Red Army to the fullest, either unable to eat or unable to wear serious clothes.
In reality, however, the suffering of the Red Army was limited to the early stage of the revolution, that is, before the establishment of the Central Soviet District, before and after the Long March, at the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and just after the entry of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
In addition to the fact that the Red Army had a hard time during these times, the Red Army also fought a rich war at other times, and it was not as poor as the film and television works advertised.
So, when exactly did the Red Army start to get rich, and what about the "millet plus rifle"?
Large-scale military and civilian production
In the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, the Red Army was actually very sad.
At that time, not long after our party arrived in northern Shaanxi, the material conditions were very difficult, not to mention ordinary soldiers and civilians.
Coupled with Chiang Kai-shek's various difficulties, although it was a joint anti-Japanese struggle on the surface, even the transportation of supplies had to be delayed again and again.
Faced with the problem of lack of food and clothing, Chairman Mao finally put forward the call of "do it yourself, have enough food and clothing".
We have already discovered that Chiang Kai-shek's wolf ambitions are completely unreliable, and if our party completely relies on Chiang Kai-shek for food, we may not be able to turn around one day and cut us off food.
Therefore, our party began to be self-sufficient in Yan'an, and if we didn't have food, we would grow it ourselves, and if we didn't have clothes, we would make it ourselves, which was also the prototype of our party's large-scale military and civilian production.
And self-sufficiency, in fact, is the original meaning of "millet plus rifle".
Because Yan'an is located in northern Shaanxi, the main food is millet and wheat, millet for us to eat, and rifles for us to fight the enemy, these two things are the foundation of the Red Army, and we urgently need at that time.
However, the meaning of "millet plus rifle" has been interpreted by some people as "using millet as ammunition for rifles", which is indeed a complete misunderstanding.
If you can really use millet as a bullet, the scientific and technological level of the Red Army back then would be able to crush the world.
However, in the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, our party's life was indeed very difficult, and it was already very good to have millet for rations, and the rifles were not shared by a few people, and the guns that were distributed were still the kind of rags that could only be fired single-shot and jammed at every turn.
It is not so much that this gun is used to kill the enemy, but that this thing is only to cover the charge of the Red Army, and the Red Army mainly uses melee weapons, which is the so-called "big knife to cut off the heads of the devils".
At this time, the food of the national army is much better than ours, even if it is a big soldier, he can eat a lot of good things every month.
But at the end of the Liberation War, the treatment of our army and the Kuomintang was completely reversed.
At that time, the Nationalist Government was completely poor, and the soldiers on the front line could only eat radish and pickles.
And the soldiers of our army can supply at least two catties of meat and 45 catties of vegetables every month, which is simply a heaven and an earth compared with the Kuomintang.
And all of this is actually related to the "military-civilian mass production" at that time.
At that time, our party was mainly responsible for work behind enemy lines, established many anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines, and turned the Japanese-occupied areas upside down in the rear.
The Japanese railway, which had to be bombed by our army every three or five times, and the bombing of the railway meant that supplies could not be sent to the front line.
For the large number of Japanese troops stationed in the Japanese theater, gasoline, food, and weapons were all hard needs.
Therefore, after the supply line was destroyed many times, the Japanese army naturally could not sit still, and they began to carry out a frantic "sweep" of the liberated areas, trying to completely destroy the liberated areas.
And we will not only face the blockade of the Japanese army, but also be stabbed by the Kuomintang.
Therefore, we simply started large-scale military and civilian production, and it is better to rely on ourselves than to rely on anyone, and it is better to develop the productive forces ourselves if we want to ensure that the Red Army does not starve.
Since then, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region has started a vigorous large-scale military and civilian production, and has achieved remarkable results.
Since 1943, the Eighth Route Army has achieved self-sufficiency, and life is getting better and better.
At this time, the Japanese army was already at the end of its strength, and the successive defeats in the Pacific theater made the Japanese troops stationed in China more and more miserable, and finally they couldn't even afford to eat.
There are even many devils who take out the heavy machine guns and howitzers in their hands, just to exchange a bite to eat with the Eighth Route Army.
It is precisely because of the large-scale production of military and civilian that the Eighth Route Army can develop so fast, and even after the end of the Anti-Japanese War, it can compete with the Kuomintang.
And the rich battles fought by the Red Army were far more than that.
Rich battles fought by our army
On October 7, 1948, the Battle of Jinzhou broke out, which was also the first super rich battle fought by our party in the War of Liberation.
Jinzhou is an important town in Liaoning, and it is also an important town and gateway in the entire Northeast, as long as Jinzhou is broken, it is only a matter of time before Lao Jiang's remaining isolated cities in the Northeast are breached.
The walls of Jinzhou were tall and strong, and the Kuomintang troops on the periphery were constantly trying to support.
Therefore, the rapid capture of Jinzhou has become the top priority in the liberation of the entire northeast.
What do you use to fight if the walls are tall? Our army does not have an air force, so naturally it can only use artillery fire, and in this battle, our army has finally passed the addiction of firing 10,000 artillery at once.
After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan, our army had actually captured a lot of heavy weapons of the Japanese army, but unfortunately, because the Soviet Red Army supported the Northeast at that time and defeated the Kwantung Army, all the weapons and equipment of the Kwantung Army were basically taken away by the Soviet Union.
And what the Soviet Union didn't want was basically some rags that could not be used.
But for our army, this is also a rare supply, our army's "artillery marshal" Zhu Rui led people around Changchun to pick up weapons and parts, and finally made up the prototype of the PLA artillery.
According to historical records, before the Liaoshen Campaign, the Northeast People's Liberation Army had a total of 253 rocket artillery, 121 anti-tank guns, 127 infantry guns, 324 mountain artillery, 54 anti-aircraft guns, 108 machine guns, and 92 howitzers.
There are a total of 871 high-power guns, and there are thousands of small guns such as mortars.
In the Battle of Jinzhou, we mobilized more than 900 guns and used up a full 500,000 shells in 30 hours of siege.
It can be said that the reason why Jinzhou was able to fight so quickly was entirely because of this "battle of prosperity".
After the start of the battle, the artillery positions of our army fired thousands of cannons, and the defenders of Jinzhou City could not raise their heads.
You must know that when the Huaihai Battle first began, there were few cannons and shells in the entire Huaye, and the average number of shells fired one or two shells per cannon was gone.
As the saying goes, the poor are interspersed with detours, and the rich are covered by firepower, and after this addiction, we also realized the importance of firepower.
The combat effectiveness of the PLA is already extremely strong, and if the logistics and supply can keep up, we can say that we are not afraid of any army in the world.
After the Liaoshen Campaign, the Northeast Field Army also became completely rich, and Lin Biao's troops became the best-equipped troops in the entire PLA.
After the end of the War of Liberation, the strength of our army has been thoroughly developed by leaps and bounds.
After the outbreak of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, although the mainland was still poor, at least there was no shortage of guns.
However, in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, our army also fought several rich battles in which ammunition was not worried and supplies were sufficient, and the Americans were beaten so that they could not find it in the north.
In the Battle of Maleangshan, we used the Katyusha supported by the Soviet Union, and Commander Zeng Siyu also patted his chest proudly and said: "This time we have enough shells."
In fact, this is not only because of the support of the Soviet Union, but also because the rear of the mainland has completely transformed into a wartime state at this time, and material resources are constantly being produced from the industrial base in the northeast and transported to the front.
And with the passage of time, we have also mastered the law and power of the bombing of US aircraft, coupled with the railway soldiers of our army who are not afraid of death, and our supplies can finally keep up.
By the time of the fourth and fifth battles, the supplies of the volunteer army had completely kept up, and sometimes they could even eat meat sent from the rear.
In the last Battle of Jincheng, the Volunteer Army once again used the "10,000 artillery guns" method of fighting, and 700,000 shells directly bombarded the US-South Korean coalition army.
However, this Van Vleet is still a little stretched to the top of the 3.8-square-kilometer Shangganling Mountain, which uses 1.9 million rounds of artillery shells.
Moreover, in the entire campaign to resist US aggression and aid Korea, the volunteers did not fight several such rich battles.
Although we still won the war, it also gave us a "phobia of insufficient firepower".
At that time, the People's Liberation Army had an almost obsessive love for large-caliber equipment, because we were indeed afraid of being bombed by the US military, not to mention that the level of their army was not very good, but every time the saturation bombing before the war really made us envious.
At that time, if we had the equipment of the US military, we would not have been bullied at our doorstep.
So, when did our army really start to fight the "war of prosperity" casually?
Get really rich
On July 27, 1953, the Korean War officially ended, and although the Volunteer Army won the battle, it was definitely a crushing victory.
As the most powerful country in the world at that time, the United States spent hundreds of times as much on its military expenditure, so it was impossible to fight completely useless.
The U.S. military will bomb before the war, there will always be planes in the sky, and there will be tank and armored vehicle formations everywhere they go.
Moreover, almost everyone in the U.S. military is a fully automatic rifle, which is a dimensionality reduction blow compared to the tattered bullet of the last shot we used.
Not to mention how the war went, at least these weapons and equipment really made the volunteers greedy.
Therefore, after the volunteers returned to China, the Kazakh military industry also began to develop rapidly under the leadership of General Chen Geng, vowing to produce weapons and equipment for China that are comparable to the old and the United States.
Because the world was in the Cold War period and the world situation was tense, the number of PLA troops remained high, and weapons and equipment were produced in waves after waves.
Like what kind of earth mines, 40 fires and other weapons, we have produced countless ones.
Around the 70s, the situation around China became more tense, and we have been stepping up the production of weapons and equipment.
But this has a problem, that is, after China's reform and opening up in the 80s, the economy has grown directly by a blowout, and these weapons have become obsolete goods.
This is similar to the previous Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the planes and warships in the US military arsenal were all equipped with equipment, even if the number of US troops increased by three or five times.
However, compared with the U.S. military, our equipment at that time was still somewhat backward.
Because the impact of economic development on military development has a certain lag, many of our troops today are still using Type 95, which can also see how rich we were back then.
Inventory can't always rot in the warehouse, so in the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, we have always been fighting a rich war, and during the entire Liangshan round war, we have never felt sorry for the equipment.
The reason is also very simple, China at that time was rich, and it didn't look down on the mountains of tatters in Curry.
It is better to send them all to Vietnam to make room for our subsequent development of the military industry.
You know, at that time, we had 270,000 guns and more than 10,000 guns just to support Vietnam, and we sent them 200 million rounds of ammunition and more than 2 million shells.
It can be said that the white-eyed wolf of Vietnam was armed by us for the whole army back then, but they wanted to fight us in turn.
But this can also reflect on the side, how exaggerated China's military production capacity was back then, although it was far from being powerful, but the technology was not enough, and we could use the quantity to make up.
In the Battle of Lang Son in the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, in less than 30 minutes, we fired tens of thousands of artillery shells.
In the subsequent battle of the two mountains, we were even more stingy, and once used up 1.06 million shells in less than a month.
The reason for fighting this kind of war of affluence is also very simple, that is, the inventory is already full, and there is no place to store the advanced shells in the back, so it is right to treat Vietnam as a garbage can for training.
If the money is left in the hand and not spent, it is worthless, and if the weapon is left in the hand and not used, it is equivalent to nothing.
In the subsequent Sino-Vietnamese 712 artillery battle, we used up 34,000 tons of artillery shells in another day, and many Western countries thought that China was crazy, so they poured shells but did not kill a few Vietnamese people.
In fact, only experts in the arms race like the United States and the Soviet Union know that China's inventory cannot be exhausted.
After the self-defense and counterattack war against Vietnam, China's borders finally ushered in stability, reform and opening up came as scheduled, and China completely entered the ranks of world powers.
Today, China's military production capacity is also extremely strong, and its technological content has reached the world's ceiling level.
What is the domestic 10,000-ton drive 055, 1130 close defense artillery, is basically the ceiling of human attainments in this field.
And combat drones produced in China have begun to be sold all over the world.
You can say that others don't know the goods, but the most important thing that the local tyrant Saudi Arabia lacks in this life is money, and it is impossible for them to buy things that are not good, right?
Saudi Arabia not only bought a large number of rainbow drones from China, but also directly moved the production line of twin-tailed scorpion drones, and hired many professionals in this area to help them produce them with high salaries.
This is also the best proof of the strength of China's military industry.
Nowadays, we once envied the bombing of war, and the country can easily do it, and China is now firmly ranked among the top three in the world in terms of military capacity and military industrial capacity.
If we don't count such things as nuclear submarines and nuclear weapons, our military strength and military industrial capacity are second only to the United States.
However, military development is closely related to economic development, and there is a certain lag, and a wave of military dividends after our reform and opening up did not begin to break out until 2010.
This wave of outbreaks has also directly transformed China from a weak naval country to a three-aircraft carrier naval power.
Therefore, we will wait and see to what extent China's military industry can develop in the future, and whether it can truly surpass the United States!
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