Menglianggu Campaign - Prelude

Prelude

From March, 1947, nationalists abandoned their original plan of all-out assault on every communist position, instead, they adjusted their strategy to a much more realistic one: concentrating on attacking the communists in northern Shanxi and Shandong. In the Shandong theater of war, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek named Gu Zhutong, the commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army as the commander-in-chief at the front line, setting up his headquarter in Xuzhou. Gu Zhutong had 24 army-sized reorganized divisions totaling more than 60 division-sized reorganized brigades at his command, totaling 450,000+ troops. Out of the 450,000+ troops, over 330,000+ in 17 army-sized reorganized divisions totaling more than 43 division-sized reorganized brigades were deployed on the first line, organized into 3 corpses, the I, II, III Corps, spearheaded by the three crack units of the nationalist forces: 11th Reorganized Division, the 74th Reorganized Division and the 5th Army. Out of the 3 corpses, the I Corps commanded by Tang Enbo was the largest and strongest of all, with near 200,000 troops in 8 army-sized reorganized divisions totaling more than 20 division-sized reorganized brigades, and the I Corps was tasked with main assaults on the communists. Form late March, 1947 to mid April, 1947, nationalists succeeded taking control of the regions along the section of Jinpu railway from Xuzhou to Jinan, and the entire southern Shandong region.

The overconfident nationalists subsequently attacked the mountainous region in central Shandong in late April, 1947 but suffered a setback for their carelessness in Tai'an-Mengyin Campaign, losing over 24,000 troops. However, such setback was rather minor that it could be ignored: a mere 5% loss out of the total force. The nationalist continued their original plan of push the arc-shaped frontline continuously deeper into central Shandong, and force the local communist force, the East China Field Army into a decisive battle in which the communist would be annihilated, or the communists would be forced to cross the Yellow River to flee north if they chose not to engage in such a battle. The nationalist I Corps would attack toward Yishui (沂水) and Tanbu (坦埠) regions, and then join forces with the nationalist II and III corpses to attack northward and eastward, destroying the communist base in Shandong. Five nationalist armies were deployed in the region border by the Qingdao – Jinan Railway, Jinpu Railway and Tai'an in the south to support the three nationalist corpses, and another two nationalist army-sized reorganized divisions were deployed in Yi (峄) County and Zaozhuang respectively as reserves.