Campaign in the Eastern Foothills of the Funiu Mountains | |
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1947 | Communist victory |
The Campaign in the Eastern Foothills of the Funiu Mountains was a series of battles fought between the nationalists and the communists during the Chinese Civil War after World War II for the control of western Hubei and the border areas of Hubei, Honan and Shensi provinces. The campaign resulted in the communist victory. The nationalists suffered more than 12,000 fatalities in their defeat, and a total of eighteen cities and towns had fallen into the enemy hands. In addition, the enemy had successfully turned the guerilla base in the Funiu Mountains into a new communist base, furthermore, the enemy was successful in establishing several brand new communist bases and thus further threatened the nationalist reign in the North China Plain. The communist success was mainly due to the correct strategy of first luring the technically superior nationalist opponent into dispersing its forces into many smaller fragments, and then to concentrate overwhelmingly numerically superior force in one battle on a single fragmented nationalist force for annihilation, and eventually, accumulate many small victories into large ones. The result of the communist strategy was that a total of eighteen towns and cities fell into the communist hands, and the communists had established themselves firmly in the border areas of Henan, Hubei and Shaanxi provinces. |