Longhai Campaign - Strategies

Strategies

Due to overall numerical and technical superiority, the nationalist commander-in-chief of the theater, Xue Yue was confident that he could wipe out the enemy and destroy their bases. In late July, 1946, Xue Yue revealed his battle plan to Hu Lian (胡琏), the commander of the army-sized nationalist Reorganized 11th Division in his headquarter in Xuzhou: the main battlefield would be the region to the northwest of Xuzhou, with nationalist troops first attacking northward, eradicating the Communists along the Jinpu railway, thus relieving the besieged nationalist strongholds of Lincheng (临城) and Yanzhou. After the Jinpu railway was secured, it would be used to mobilize nationalist troops to destroy the communist Hebei – Shandong – Henan base in the border region of these three provinces, and this would be the job for the army-sized nationalist Reorganized 11th Division. Meanwhile, other nationalist units were tasked to secure the surrounding regions of Xuzhou by eradicating the Communists in the area.

Nationalists were certain of the success of this plan because the main force of the communist Shanxi – Hebei – Shandong – Henan Field Army was still resting, re-supplying and regrouping in the region between Handan and Daming (大名) on the northern shore of the Yellow River, and only its 7th Column was in the southwestern Shandong on the southern shore of the Yellow River. The bulk of other communist force in Shandong was busy fighting nationalists in northern Jiangsu in the Central Jiangsu Campaign, and the rest was besieging the nationalist strongholds along the Jinpu railway. As the Communists were either tied down or needing more time to recover, nationalists would achieve their victory in a preemptive strike thanks to their mechanized forces. Little did the overly optimistic and overly confident nationalists know that as things developed, this plausible battle plan made before the campaign proved to be impossible to materialize afterward, and eventually, it had to be scrapped completely, because they had gravely underestimated their enemy.

To carry out the communist high command’s order of reducing the pressure of communist forces in the Campaign of the North China Plain Pocket and the Central Jiangsu Campaign, Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping decided to launch an offensive against nationalists in the central section of the Longhai (Lanzhou – Lianyungang) Railway, targeting nationalist strongholds between Kaifeng and Xuzhou. Afterward, the Communists would take the region to the south of the railway, destroying the railroad, and thus forcing nationalists to withdraw some of their forces originally deployed in the other two campaigns and redeploying them to face the new threat. The communist force would be grouped into two, with the left group attacking toward the regions of Dang (砀) Mountains and Yellow Mouth (Huangkou, 黄口), and the right group attacking toward the regions of Lanfeng (兰封) and Minquan (民权).