Today in Sasha's history.
Author: Sasha
This article was originally written by Sasha and is not allowed to be reproduced by any media
Why did Chiang Kai-shek take the initiative to disarm millions before the outbreak of the civil war? October 10, 1945: Wang Shijie, a representative of the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China and the Chinese Kuomintang, and Zhou Enlai, a representative of the Communist Party of China, signed the Double Tenth Agreement in Chongqing.
Because of political issues, many people don't know a piece of historical knowledge.
At the end of the Anti-Japanese War, Chiang Kai-shek once disarmed the Nationalist army as many as 1.6 million people.
Sasha to start at the beginning.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Chiang Kai-shek decided to disarm for three main reasons.
The first is that the pressure on military spending is too great for the people to bear.
When the all-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out in 1937, there were only 69 armies and 182 divisions of the various factions of the Nationalist Army, with a scale of about 2 million.
Even so, the state finances were already overwhelmed, and even the central army troops often fought in straw sandals.
In the later stage of the Anti-Japanese War, with the sharp increase in the number of Japanese troops invading China, the national army was also forced to expand to 124 armies and 354 divisions, with a scale of about 6 million.
If China is the world's military power, 6 million troops is not a big deal.
Several major countries mobilized tens of millions of troops to participate in the war in World War II, and the total number of dead and missing soldiers in the Soviet Union was more than 9 million.
At the end of World War II, the Japanese army had 8 million, the Soviet army was 13 million, the American army was 12 million, and the total number of United Kingdom and Commonwealth troops exceeded 10 million.
Germany mobilized 17 million troops in World War II, with a total of about 20 million volunteers from other countries. At the end of 1943, the German army had 10 million troops, but with the intense attrition of the war, it fell to 7 million at the end of 1944, and by the beginning of 1945 only 3.5 million to 4 million remained, and a few months later it was defeated and surrendered.
China is a poor agrarian country and cannot afford such a large army.
In 1945, the government's fiscal deficit was as high as 79 percent, of which military expenditure accounted for 76 percent of the government's fiscal expenditure, which was very staggering.
For example, the tax revenue of the national government in 1939 was only about 430 million yuan, which was 60% less than the actual revenue of 1.041 billion yuan in 1936 before the outbreak of the all-out war of resistance, while the military expenditure of this year required 1.6 billion yuan, a gap of 1.17 billion yuan.
Military spending remains high, and the government has a serious fiscal deficit and no good solution, so it can only print money to quench its thirst, causing huge inflation.
By the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the issuance of fiat currency was 400 times that of the pre-war period, the currency depreciated seriously, prices soared, and the people's daily life was difficult.
Here's a joke.
During the Anti-Japanese War, in order to bring down China's currency, Japan spent huge financial and material resources to make counterfeit fiat currency banknotes, and also printed counterfeit fiat currency banknotes of up to 4 billion yuan.
Originally, these 4 billion counterfeit currency were enough to collapse China's economy, because on the eve of the Anti-Japanese War in 1937, the total amount of legal tender issued was only 1.4 billion yuan.
The dark joke is that on the eve of Japan's surrender in August 1945, the issuance of fiat currency had reached 556.9 billion yuan.
In other words, the 4 billion yuan of counterfeit money printed by the Japanese invaders with all their might is simply a drop in the bucket and is of little use.
In this financial predicament, disarmament seems to be the most direct and effective approach.
Second, the demand for a peaceful truce.
After the end of the Anti-Japanese War, although Lao Chiang knew that there would be a war with the CCP, whether it was the allies Britain and the United States, other parties in China, Kuomintang insiders, and countless Chinese people, they all hoped that there would be no civil war and that internal problems would be resolved peacefully.
What is particularly important is that United States special envoy Marshall came out of nowhere, and took a tough attitude of using US aid materials as a threat, demanding that Chiang Kai-shek vigorously disarm and reduce the scale of armed confrontation with the Chinese communists.
After eight years of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, China has beaten the already poor and backward countries to pieces, and both the government and the military are in great need of United States assistance.
As far as the army is concerned, the most effective unit of the national army is about 600,000 men equipped with 39 American mechanics. Since U.S. weapons are often mixed with domestically produced or Japanese-style weapons in the national army, there are about 80 to 1 million national troops using U.S. weapons.
These U.S. weapons are characterized by very high ammunition consumption and are very dependent on United States supplies. If ammunition assistance is cut off United States, the combat effectiveness of these 1 million US and semi-US armament units will be greatly reduced immediately, or even unable to fight effectively.
Later, Marshall did impose an arms embargo on the Nationalist Government in July 1946, which was not lifted until May 1947, but the American-style arms shipments were delayed for several months, and the first shipment did not reach China until December 1947. The past year or so happened to be the climax of the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
Regarding the United States arms embargo, a national army general said very highly: It is equivalent to directly disarming half of the US weapons troops.
Third, the will of the people.
No normal nation can be willing to fight, and the Chinese are especially so.
Strictly speaking, after 14 years of fighting the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, hundreds of millions of people in China from the south to the north were devastated, and the common people really did not want to fight anymore.
During the War of Resistance, even Chiang Kai-shek's ex-wife, Mao Fumei, Chiang Ching-kuo's biological mother, was killed by Japan planes, and the pain of the war is vividly remembered.
Chiang Kai-shek, who regarded himself as the leader of the people, of course could not completely ignore the opinions of the people, and could only disarm and act for peace.
The post-war disarmament programme was made as early as January 1945, when a third of the disarmament, or more than 1 million people, was proposed.
At the end of 1944, due to the crushing defeat in the Battle of Henan-Xiang-Gui, the strength of the national army dropped to a total of 119 infantry and cavalry corps and 347 divisions.
In 1945, the Nationalist Army first abolished 34 corps, but created 4 new corps, maintaining the size of the army at 89 corps.
As a result, the Nationalist Army abolished 104 divisions, built 13 new divisions, and retained the size of 253 divisions.
The disarmament of the combat forces, coupled with the drastic reduction of military organs, eventually reduced the size of the national army from 5.9 million to 4.9 million, and the entire number of troops was reduced by 1 million.
Of the units that were retrenched, soldiers were paid severance pay to find their own way out, and officers were placed by the government, and more than 50,000 officers were housed that year.
And that's not all.
Beginning in January 1946, the Ministry of Military Affairs of the Nationalist Government formally formulated a plan for the disarmament of the army, calling for the disarmament of the army to 89 divisions.
Many of the 1 million people who were laid off in the previous year were civilian members of the military organs, or miscellaneous troops who were not related to them, and even some soldiers who did not have empty salaries. Then, in 1946, it was the real old Chiang's backbone army that was dismantled.
Only 89 corps were left after the previous year's dismantling of troops, and now they will be reduced to 89 divisions (later one division was added to 90 divisions).
The specific method is to directly reduce the general's strength to divisions, so as to reduce the strength by one-third.
That is to say, the original army had 3 divisions and 9 regiments under its jurisdiction, but now it has been reduced to 2 brigades and 6 regiments under the jurisdiction of one division. Originally, there was an army with 2 divisions and 6 regiments, but now there are only 2 brigades and 4 regiments left.
The units to be disbursed this time are all units of the lineage of the Central Army, and many veterans and non-commissioned officers of the Central Army who have experienced a hundred battles have been directly dismissed.
However, this plan was not fully realized, and after a part of it was carried out, a civil war suddenly broke out.
In July 1946, Chen Cheng, who was in charge of disarmament, issued a statement saying that the disarmament plan had been completed in two phases, and that the final third phase had to be suspended due to the outbreak of war and the need for relevant troops to participate in the war.
So, how many people were laid off during this time? Chen Cheng claimed that 60 percent of the disarmament plan had been completed.
According to the records of the Nationalist Government, in 1946 a total of 55 corps were reduced to divisions and 143 divisions to brigades.
In March 1947, Chen Cheng announced at the Central Committee of the Kuomintang that by February, a total of 57 divisions would be dismantled, and a total of 2 corps, 12 divisions, and 171 regiments would be reduced.
According to Chen Cheng, the Nationalist Army should be reduced from 2.59 million to 1.44 million. Obviously, the number of Chinese troops in the civil war was not so small.
Taiwan scholars believe that the number of disarmaments in 1946 should be several hundred thousand, but the specific number cannot be calculated in detail due to war casualties and other factors.
Most scholars believe that the number of disarmaments in 1946 may have been around 600,000.
Even so, in just two years in 1945 and 1946, the Nationalist Army reduced 1.6 million troops, although less than one-third, which is not trivial.
Most of the senior generals of the national army strongly disapprove of this kind of disarmament.
They believe that the PLA on the other side has not been substantially disarmed, but the national army is stupidly cutting off its hands and feet, and this is not self-destruction.
Some generals even privately angrily denounced Chiang Kai-shek for being old and mediocre and being teased by others.
Bai Chongxi and others bluntly said: Whether a soldier speaks hard or not depends on how many guns he has. Seeing that a big battle is about to be fought, it is too late for people to desperately expand the army, but Lao Jiang is engaged in some disarmament, is this not perverse?
Except for some backbone units of the Central Army, the establishment of no substantial changes, most of the Central Army was reduced from the 3rd Division and 9th Regiment to the 2nd Brigade and 6th Regiment.
Many generals believe that on the surface there are only three regiments missing, but in fact the loss of combat effectiveness is very large.
3 divisions and 9 regiments are equivalent to three feet, and there are enough troops to stand firm. In actual combat, 6 regiments are usually used, and officers with 3 regiments in their hands will be able to play with ease and not panic.
Now that the reserves are all gone, and all 6 regiments are directly pulled up, if you don't do it, the whole army will collapse and be defeated, and there will be no room for recovery.
As for the downsizing from the 6th Regiment of the 2nd Division to the 2nd Brigade and 4th Regiment, it is even more bitter. In the eyes of these generals, one brigade needs at least three regiments, and if there are only two regiments, they can only use one regiment to stand on the front line, and they can often only be beaten passively, and they have no ability to counterattack at all. But if you want to put 2 regiments directly, there will be no defense in depth, and if the enemy breaks through from one point, the whole army will collapse without a fight.
In December 1946, Chiang Kai-shek finally discovered the problem and wrote to Chen Cheng and Bai Chongxi to discuss it.
However, the gradual restoration of the national army to its previous establishment began slowly in 1947.
It was not until July 1948 that the Nationalist Army completely restored its organizational strength and abolished all previous disarmament measures.
At this time, there were only 2 months left before the outbreak of the Liaoshen Campaign, and it was not far from the complete rout of the national army to Taiwan.
In addition to the issue of military operations, the generals of the national army agreed that disarmament had a heavy impact on the morale of the army, especially on officers.
In 1945 and 1946, the national army continued to disarm on a large scale, and ordinary soldiers could accept it, but they just continued to return to their hometowns to farm, and some professional soldiers simply turned their heads and joined the PLA.
And the officers of the national army who can serve as officers in the Anti-Japanese War are basically military ranks in exchange for their lives.
They usually fought for many years, and it was not a matter of birth and death, and there were many deaths. Not to mention the low-level officers, in the eight-year all-out war of resistance, the national army sacrificed 206 generals at or above the division level, including 2 commanders-in-chief of the group army (Zhang Zizhong, Li Jiayu), 8 army commanders (Hao Mengling, Wu Keren, Feng Anbang, Chen Anbao, Tang Huaiyuan, Wu Shimin, Wang Jiaben, Wang Mingzhang), two deputy army commanders (Tong Linge, Zheng Zuomin), 20 division commanders, 13 deputy division commanders, and 17 brigade commanders.
These officers made great contributions to the war of resistance, but they were about to be discharged from the army in the blink of an eye.
The point is that most of the officers have no other skills other than commanding the troops, and for a time it is equivalent to cutting off their livelihoods.
The Nationalist Government had a variety of solutions, mainly from September 1945 to early 1946, when 31 officer corps were set up to accommodate more than 100,000 retired officers.
These officers are paid 80 percent of their salaries when they enter the officer corps, that is, they are temporarily given a place to eat.
These officers have the option of demobilization, discharge, and retention.
Changing jobs is to go to the government department to work as a clerk, but you have to pass cultural exams and various interviews, and you need to be repeatedly selected, and most officers will not be selected. Even if they are selected, officers are often not qualified for such positions as transportation (railways, highways, postal services, shipping), administration, accounting, culture and education, health, fisheries, agricultural reclamation, industrial and mining management, voluntary labor, and so on.
As a result, many officers choose to join the police force, to serve as police officers in the provinces, or to join the local security forces.
However, these officers who were able to change careers were in the minority, and most of them could only be discharged.
Retired officers, if they have the rank of second lieutenant or above and are over 38 years old, can be paid a settling-in allowance (calculated according to the length of service, generally one year's service is paid one month's salary), and then return to their hometowns to find their own jobs.
The government will pay a monthly discharge allowance, initially half of the salary, and then slowly adjusted.
As for retaining officers, it is more difficult than changing jobs. The officers who can be retained are usually officers with extremely high military quality or special talents in certain areas, and they are also young and strong, and they are basically from the Huangpu family. These officers were selected several times, re-recruited after examinations, joined the ranks of the follow-up officers, and returned to service in the army.
It can be seen that the status of officers, whether professional or discharged, is greatly reduced. In particular, although the retired officers are paid settling-in allowances and stipends, the banknotes are seriously inflated, and as long as these settling-in allowances are not used in time, they will soon be worthless.
The so-called allowance is also due to inflation, and it is barely enough to survive on his own, let alone support his family.
Once an officer is unable to find a job for a long time and has a family, family life will be miserable.
In 1947, when the officer corps selected and sent the general class of the Nanjing Central Training Corps, more than 400 high-ranking generals went to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum to weep at the mausoleum to vent their dissatisfaction and cause an uproar in public opinion.
People say that the rabbit dies and the fox is sad, even if the officers who have not been laid off see this scene, their hearts are half cold, where is they still in the mood to fight.
Such a vague disarmament was also one of the reasons for the defeat of the Nationalist Government in the civil war.
Even the local warlords of the Republic of China know that the barrel of a gun is more important than a wife. It is better to borrow his wife than to borrow his troops.
In the history of the Republic of China, the central government once forced local warlords to disarm, and the latter, without exception, used various means to confront them, and they would not dismiss a single soldier.
Taking the Sichuan warlords as an example, Chiang Kai-shek used the Red Army's Long March to drive the Central Army into Sichuan and forced the three giants of the Sichuan army, Liu Xiang, Liu Wenhui, and Yang Sen, to disarm. This group of people is full of tricks. Some changed their numbers indiscriminately, and some temporarily listed the troops as local security forces, in short, they did not cut them.
What's more, even Commander Hu of "Shajiabang" knows that "Lao Tzu's team has just opened, with a total of more than a dozen people and seven or eight guns", "Heroes in troubled times rise from all directions, and if there is a gun, he is the king of grass". Relying on these seven or eight guns, Hu Chuankui finally became Commander Hu, dominating one side, and the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and even the Japanese puppets came to win him over.
And Chiang Kai-shek, no matter what the reason, used disarmament to cut off his arm, which also violated the most basic rules of the game of the Republic of China.
A series of common sayings come to mind here: mercy does not lead soldiers, righteousness does not raise wealth, kindness does not serve as officials, love does not stand up for things, and benevolence does not engage in politics.
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