The 70th anniversary of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea ｜ Tian Yiwei： Enlightenment from the contest between great powers in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea
The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, which took place in the early 1950s, was a just war for China people to defend peace and resist aggression. In this war, New China and the United States were the main rivals, and they had a comprehensive contest in military, political, economic and diplomatic fields. The people of China won victory and dignity in the face of serious difficulties in all aspects at the beginning of the founding of New China. Looking back at history, we can get inspiration from it and gain the strength to move forward.
Stick to the bottom line and dare to fight
On the morning of June 25th, 1950, the long-term small-scale armed conflict and friction changed qualitatively on the 38th parallel in the north-south center of the Korean Peninsula, and a large-scale civil war broke out in Korea.
The U.S. authorities openly violated the UN Charter’s stipulation that "no intervention is allowed in matters that are essentially within the internal jurisdiction of any country" and immediately sent armed forces to intervene in the Korean civil war. In the absence of new China and the Soviet Union, it manipulated the United Nations Security Council to pass an illegal resolution to form the "United Nations forces" invading the DPRK. At the same time, naval forces were sent to invade the Taiwan Province Strait. At this point, the new China was founded less than a year ago.
At the beginning of October, 1950, American troops crossed the 38th parallel and advanced rapidly to the border between China and North Korea, which seriously threatened China’s security.
According to the request of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Korean government and the wishes of the Korean people, the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong were far-sighted, scientifically analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of participating in the war, and resolutely made a major strategic decision to resist US aggression and aid Korea and defend the country. On October 8th, Mao Zedong issued an order in the name of the Chairman of the People’s Revolutionary Military Commission of China, "trying to change the northeast border guards to Chinese people’s Volunteer Army, and immediately dispatched them to North Korea, cooperating with the Korean comrades to fight against the aggressors and strive for a glorious victory". Mao Zedong stressed: "In short, we believe that we should participate in the war, and we must participate in the war. The benefits of participating in the war are great, and the damage of not participating in the war is great."
When the United States was at its peak, the people of China dared to meet its challenges. This fearless heroism and courage was unique in the world where the phobia of America was prevalent at that time. Facts have proved that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s decision to send troops is completely correct, which embodies the China people’s will and determination to fight without fear of violence.
Flexible and mobile to meet the weakness
On October 19th, 1950, Chinese people’s Volunteer Army, led by Peng Dehuai, commander and political commissar, crossed the Yalu River from Dandong, Changdian Estuary and Ji ‘an respectively, and marched into the territory of North China, starting the great war to resist US aggression and aid Korea.
Faced with the extreme disparity in equipment between the enemy and ourselves and the situation after the US troops crossed the 38th parallel, Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai made a study on October 13th and 14th before the volunteers were dispatched, and decided that after the volunteers entered the DPRK, they would fight the defensive war first and then the counterattack. However, after the volunteers began to enter the DPRK on October 19, the situation on the Korean battlefield has undergone major changes.
▲ Profile photo: After Chinese people’s Volunteer Army entered the DPRK, Chairman Mao and Peng Dehuai, commander of the Volunteers, exchanged telegrams for many times to analyze the situation. According to the major changes in the battlefield situation in Korea, they decided to change the original plan and annihilate the enemy by means of mobile warfare. The picture shows Peng Dehuai (first from left) presiding over a combat meeting on the Korean front.
The direction of war changes according to the situation. Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai exchanged telegrams for many times to analyze the situation, and decided to change the original campaign plan and annihilate the enemy by means of mobile warfare, "striving for all possible victories on the basis of stability and reliability". At the same time, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the headquarters of the Volunteers judged that the "United Nations Army" headed by the US military was unaware of the dispatch of the Volunteers. MacArthur didn’t take China seriously and didn’t believe that China really dared to resist. He deployed a "triumphant offensive before Christmas" and asserted that "let the troops go home before Christmas." Mao Zedong said at that time that the more arrogant, conceited and ambitious MacArthur was, the better it would be for us.
Subsequently, the volunteers quickly grasped the characteristics of the battlefield, promptly seized the enemy’s misjudgment and weaknesses that did not adapt to our army’s night fighting, melee and encirclement and circuitous operations, and quickly concentrated superior forces in local areas, marching and fighting for 13 days and nights in a row, and repelled the crazy attacking enemy from the Yalu River to the south of the Qingchuan River, killing more than 15,000 people. Volunteers crushed MacArthur’s arrogant attempt to occupy all Korea and end the Korean War on Thanksgiving Day, and won the first battle.
Flexible strategy and tactics are the magic weapon for our army to win and the powerful weapon for China people to defeat the world’s number one military power with inferior equipment in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. History has proved that to compete with a strong enemy, we must avoid its sharp edge, attack its soft spot, change according to the situation, make full use of our strength, give full play to our strengths, and strike and consume the enemy with the local advantages of rapid gathering until victory is achieved.
Active layout to reverse the war situation
The victory of the first battle of the volunteers into the DPRK did not greatly change the whole battlefield situation, and the volunteers still did not gain a foothold in the DPRK. The "United Nations Army" led by the US military has not been hit hard to the point of passive defense, and will launch a large-scale attack on the volunteers at any time.
On November 4, 1950, Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai were in the rear and in the front, at the same time, they realized that the United States might carry out a powerful counterattack and telephoned each other to discuss their coping strategies. The battle plan studied by Peng Dehuai and the leaders of the headquarters of the Volunteers shows that the Volunteers are prepared to take the initiative to lay out the battlefield, withdraw the main force to the familiar areas after the first battle to rest and build a counterattack position, lure the enemy into depth and ambush and panic in the air. This strategic consideration is the development of Mao Zedong’s thought of establishing a defense line in the south of Tokugawa and Ningyuan highway lines before the volunteers entered the DPRK, with the aim of fundamentally reversing the Korean war situation and mastering the strategic initiative.
After the US military occupied Pyongyang, the United States was immersed in the joy that the Korean War was about to "win". At this time, "Americans can only listen to the sound of victory." When the "United Nations Army" was suddenly and quickly attacked by the volunteers in the first battle, they were unwilling to admit the fact that the volunteers participated in the war, thinking that the Koreans who appeared in North China were probably sporadic volunteers.
After several discussions, the US military and political authorities made the wrong decision to occupy the whole of China by force, even though they were not sure about the intention of the Volunteers to participate in the war. Bradley, chairman of the American Chiefs of Staff, later said in his memoirs: On the important days from November 2 to 9, "we looked through the materials and sat down to think carefully, but unfortunately we made ridiculous conclusions and decisions." On November 24th, MacArthur ordered a "general offensive" and publicly announced his general offensive plan to the press, saying that the goal of military occupation of all Korea could be achieved immediately. However, what he didn’t expect was that the volunteers had quietly surrounded his troops.
On the evening of November 25th, the volunteers on the western front suddenly launched a counterattack against the enemy. At first, they aimed at the weak links of the Eighth Army of the United States, concentrated their efforts to encircle and annihilate the two divisions of the Second Army of South Korea, which had weak fighting capacity in attacking the right wing, and opened the battle gap. Then, they concentrated the 38th Army and the 42nd Army, and made a detour to the rear of the Eighth Army of the United States, cutting off the retreat of the Ninth Army of the United States from the south, and surrounded its main force on three sides by the Qingchuan River centered on Guichuan and Junyuli. MacArthur couldn’t figure out where so many volunteer troops came from, and the "United Nations Army" he played was confused, which made his plan to annihilate the volunteers and hit the Yalu River burst in an instant, and turned to anxiously command the troops to escape from the encirclement of the volunteers.
The second campaign completely shattered MacArthur’s "last" offensive to end the Korean War and return to China at Christmas, repelled the frenzied enemy to the south of the 38th parallel, recovered Pyongyang and annihilated more than 36,000 enemies. Bradley wrote in his memoirs: From October 31 to the end of December, "these 60 days are the most severe test moment of my professional military career … … The Korean War unexpectedly changed from victory to humiliating defeat — — The most shameful failure in the history of our army. " MacArthur determined that "the attack must be transferred to the defense".
The failure of the "United Nations Army" is fundamentally the failure of the decision-making of the military and political authorities in the United States. It is that they regard their national strength and military power as powerful and blindly use force to subdue bring disgrace to oneself in China. The key to victory is that the people of China can turn the tide of the war, not be afraid of powerful enemies, take the initiative to set up the battlefield in the theater they are familiar with, confuse the enemy with superb strategies and tactics, and lure the enemy into our preset grand strategy of encirclement and suppression of the battlefield. History has proved that we can’t deal with a strong enemy passively. On the basis of in-depth study and grasping the characteristics and laws of the enemy and ourselves, we must take the initiative to set up a game, "invite you to the urn" and gather the best to annihilate the enemy.
Despise arrogance to promote talk.
By June 1951, after five battles, the battlefield forces of the enemy and ourselves had tended to be balanced, and the front was stable in the north and south of the 38th parallel, resulting in a stalemate in the war.
The American military and political authorities found that by May 1951, the United States had paid more than 100,000 casualties and more than 10 billion dollars in direct war expenses for this war, but it was a very difficult situation. In order to ease the contradictions between the United States and its allies and safeguard the key interests of the United States — — In the interest of Europe, on May 16th, the National Security Council of the United States met and adopted a policy memorandum on North Korea, which determined that the ultimate goal of the United States in North Korea was to establish a favorable defense line in the 38th parallel and seek to conclude an armistice agreement.
The CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong decided to implement the policy of talking while playing, and to carry out political struggle and military struggle simultaneously. On the one hand, they were prepared to hold negotiations with the United States to strive for a truce and withdrawal with the 38th parallel as the boundary; On the other hand, they have no illusions about the success of the negotiations. They must make long-term and lasting military plans and smash any attack by the "United Nations Army" with resolute military strikes to cooperate with the smooth progress of the armistice negotiations.
On August 18th, the "United Nations Army" started an air offensive and a ground offensive against me to cooperate with the negotiations on the military demarcation line. In the summer and autumn defense campaign in 1951, the Volunteers and the Korean People’s Army killed and wounded more than 157,000 prisoners of the "United Nations Army", and the Volunteers suffered more than 33,000 casualties. The "United Nations Army" only occupied 646 square kilometers of land at the cost of heavy casualties, far from achieving the goal of demanding that the volunteers and the Korean People’s Army withdraw from 12,000 square kilometers during the negotiations. Therefore, the "United Nations Army" had to return to the negotiating table for negotiations.
On November 23, after the DPRK-China representative put forward the plan of military demarcation line, the two sides reached an agreement based on the DPRK-China plan to "take the existing actual contact line of both sides as the military demarcation line, and each side retreated 2 kilometers to establish the demilitarized zone during the military armistice". On October 8, 1952, the United States unilaterally announced that the armistice negotiations would be adjourned indefinitely.
At the end of 1952, after dwight eisenhower was elected president of the United States, the American authorities were planning a large-scale military adventure. In order to prevent the "United Nations Army" from landing in the north of Korea, the Volunteers and the Korean People’s Army made large-scale anti-landing preparations. On the frontal front of the east and west coasts of Korea, they dug 8090 tunnels and 720 kilometers, dug trenches and traffic trenches for 3100 kilometers, and built anti-airborne and anti-tank positions, completely changing the fragile situation of the fortifications on the east and west coasts of Korea. It urged the American authorities and the "United Nations Army" to abandon the attempt of large-scale landing adventure and resume the armistice negotiations unilaterally interrupted for half a year on April 26, 1953.
On June 8, the chief representatives of the two sides formally signed an agreement on the repatriation of prisoners of war. By June 18th, all the preparations before the armistice had been completed. However, on the 18th, the South Korean Li Chengwan Group forcibly detained the captured Korean People’s Army personnel in the name of "on-the-spot release", thus undermining the armistice agreement and arousing strong international repercussions.
On June 20th, the DPRK-China delegation called for an adjournment of the talks to protest against Li Chengwan’s sabotage. At the same time, from June 24th to July 27th, the Volunteer Army and the Korean People’s Army launched an attack on the front 25km position defended by the South Korean Army, killing more than 78,000 people and recovering 192.6km2 of positions, severely punishing the Li Chengwan Group and deepening the internal contradictions in the United States. Next, Eisenhower put pressure on Li Chengwan, and mark clark, the third commander-in-chief of the United Nations Army, gave up. On July 27th and 28th, 1953, Clark, Kim Il Sung and Peng Dehuai signed the armistice agreement in Wenshan, Pyongyang and Kaesong, and the Korean armistice was realized. At this point, the armistice negotiations that lasted for two years and one month came to an end, and the China People’s War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea that lasted for two years and nine months ended successfully.
Clark wrote in his memoirs: "I became the first commander of the U.S. Army who signed an unsuccessful armistice treaty in history, and I felt disappointed and painful. I think my predecessors, General MacArthur and General Li Qiwei, must feel the same way. "
What you can’t get on the battlefield, you can’t get at the negotiating table. Talking while fighting makes the United States feel that the war will only bring more losses to itself if it drags on. They had to formally sign a military armistice agreement with the DPRK in Panmunjom.History has proved that we can’t get any luck in fighting a strong enemy, and we must abandon our illusions in order to force the enemy to go to peace talks with unbearable losses.(The author is the political assistant of the Evaluation and Demonstration Research Center of the Academy of Military Sciences)