Tang Shengzhi

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Tang Shengzhi (唐生智), Tang Sheng-chih , (1889-April 6, 1970) was a Chinese warlord during the Warlord Era, a military commander during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and a politician after World War II.

During the warlord era, Tang first sided with Chiang Kai-shek and helped him to secure the control of northern Beijing and Tianjin region by removing Bai Chongxi, a Guangxi warlord was in actual control of the region and was ostensively allied with Chiang Kai-shek. Later, Tang commanded armies to fight other warlords for Chiang Kai-shek with great success. However, after these potential rivals were defeated, Chiang Kai-shek enraged Tang when he attempted to remove Tang, and as a result, Tang defected to warlords in Guangxi and Guangdong to help them to fight Chiang Kai-shek.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, most warlords in China begun to nominally unite against the Japanese invaders and Tang became an important member of Chiang Kai-shek's national defense committee. After repeated plea by Chiang Kai-shek, Tang finally accepted the command of Nanjing during the city's siege in December 1937 by the Japanese, and promised to fight the Japanese unto his death. However, the defense of Nanjing was far from what had planned by Chiang and Tang. Soldiers from previous defeats fled back to the capital and refused to obey any orders, even to the point that some regimental commanders of the units defending the capital were shot and killed by the fleeing company commanders of previous defeats simply because the former refused to moved out of the way of the latter so that the latter would have quicker ways to escape further from the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek, who had already left for Wuhan, granted Tang the right to shoot anyone who disobeyed his order on spot, but Tang was in a very difficult position to carry it out because there were hundreds of thousands fleeing troops from previous defeats were gathering at Nanjing, and should Chiang Kai-shek's order be carried out, there would be a greater battles among the nationalist troops themselves at Nanjing before the Japanese assault on the city.

As it became obvious that the plan was falling apart due to the fact that troops only wanted to escape and disobeyed their orders, Tang realized the city had to be abandoned, a fact that was even agreed by staffs of Chiang Kai-shek and even Chiang himself. However, Chiang was extremely reluctant to give up the capital without a fight and nobody else would dare to make such decision and face the angry Chinese public either. At the same time, Chiang was also extremely grateful to Tang for taking his place and thus avoiding such dilemma himself, so as a result, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Tang to continue the hopeless fight for symbolic meanings at least for a while and then the decision to withdraw would be up to Tang's headquarter at Nanjing. Tang Shengzhi was therefore in a very difficult position in which most Chinese commanders including Chiang Kai-shek were trying to avoid, and this was obvious at a press conference to boost morale prior to the siege of Nanking, it was noted by reporters that Tang was extremely agitated. He sweated profusely that someone handed him a hot towel to dry his brow.

While the Japanese army were dropping leaflets ordering the city to capitulate, Tang had pubicly expressed his outrage. Privately, however, Tang negotiated for a truce. Despite his original promise to fight to the last man, he seemed eager to do anything to avoid a showdown in the city in order to save the capital and its inhabitants. At the same time, he also had to carry on the hopeless symbolic fight to defend the capital for the Chinese government to face the Chinese public. Once the news of several units abandoned their positions and escaped against orders reached Tang's headquarter, the general retreat was inevitable, and these meant that whoever gave the order to retreat would be blamed for losing the capital and face a very angry Chinese public, Tang was very reluctant to share the responsibility and the consequent blame alone, so he called a meeting that included every divisional commander and those with higher ranks, and he showed them Chiang Kai-shek's permission to retreat when needed, a decision to be made by Tang's headquarter. As Tang asked everyone's opinion and got the answer he was waiting for, which was unanimously concurring to retreat, Tang made everyone to sign their names on Chiang's order before giving out the general retreat order.

However, the general retreat did not turn out to be as planned, just like the way the defensive battle did not turn according to the plan. In the chaos, what supposed to be an organized retreat turned into a disorganized flight. Many commanders simply abandoned their troops and fled on their own, without giving any orders to retreat. Of the 100,000 defenders of the capital and thousands more Chinese troops fled back to the capital from the previous battles, only two regiments managed to have successfully retreated according to the original plan, and both were saved, and all other units that did not retreat according to the original plan became the victim of the enemy. Tang Shengzhi himself almost did not make it either: later when he attempted to flee the city by car to the docks, he miraclously survived the entire ordeal when a Japanese soldier decapitated the man directly in front of Tang, the victim's body fell against Tang's shoulder. In keeping with the corpses momentum, Tang also toppled backwards and dropped, together with the body, into a pit. No one noticed. He was later rescued by two colleagues. Despite Chiang Kai-shek's support and protection, Tang was blamed for the failure which resulted in the consequent Nanjing Massacre.

After World War II, Tang Shengzhi was not noticed until the fall of the Kuomintang regime, when Bai Chongxi asked Tang to go with him as the nationalist force withdrew further south. Tang refused to flee China, disguising himself and hiding in different places to avoid being captured by the nationalist forces, breaking one of his leg in the process. He became a commander and governor in Hunan after 1949.

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