The "Dismantling The Wall" Movement In Hunan’s Battlefield During The Anti-Japanese War

In ancient China,the metropolis were surrounded by the city wall,they not only had the military and flood control,they also were the symbol of feudal ruling order.At the beginning of modern times,with the collapse of the Manchu government,the imperial dictatorship system in China was overthrown for thousands of years.As a result,the city wall lose the feudal imperial defense.Under the influence of the western modernization trend,lots of domestic city walls had been demolished,the ancient China started a "demolition of the city" boom.Until the September 18th Incident,Japan launched armed aggression against China,the Sino-Japanese national contradictions rose.Yang Jie as the representative of the Nationalist Government senior generals put forward the "city wall against the enemy" strategy,then,the Nationalist Government adopted his strategy and introduced the "protection of the city wall" of the relevant decree.The boom was contained.After the July 7th Incident,the Japanese invaded China and the Sino-Japanese war broke out.In 1938,with falling to enemy occupation of Wuhan and Guangzhou,the anti-Japanese war was into the stalemate.In the long-term Sino-Japanese war,the Nationalist Government summed up the experience,in order to win the victory of the war,need to mobilize the people fully,strengthen the defences and clear the fields,break the strategy of enemy who want to support war by invading others.In the past operations,the wall was not conducive to me,which was listed in the strategy of strengthening the defences and clearing the fields.So the wall must be pulled down through the country.When the decree issued,the major theater of operations and the provincial government had implemented.When the demolition of the decree issued,the Japanese was launching the next round of offensive,trying to occupy Changsha.Therefore,the decree would be conduct in the ninth war zone,mainly in the Hunan Province.Before the war,due to the influence of the times,parts of walls of the Hunan province had been demolished.From June 1939 to the first half of 1940,due to the need of war,Hunan Province carried out a wide range of demolition movement in the north and Dongting Lake area.With the development of the war,the Japanese had into the around of Changsha.That let the government value highly and develop a strategy to expand the combat area.Thus,the demolition area from the north of Hunan had spread to Xiangxi and Xiangnan.And here was roughly formed a line "Chaling-Hengyang-Shaoyang-Zhijiang".These walls that located in the north of the line must be destroyed.Then,the first Changsha battle ended.Thus,The emergency of the demolition of the walls had been weakened.But that was not the end,until last year to the first half of 1940.The demolition of the wall was related to military affairs.The Department of Hunan Province forced to demolish the wall by government decrees.So even though some county governments had objections,but the decrees still to be implemented.The main reason for county governments objected to demolish the wall was city wall had two important functions:flood control and against bandits.Besides,for the demolition of the wall,every county were levied a large number of migrant workers to do the work.At the same time,they costed many"very reserve fee",the Valley and other things to make up for the lack of funds.Overall review the "demolition wall movement" of the Hunan province,we found that the demolition of the city wall did not brought significant improvement to the striker war.Therefore,whether the demolition of the wall benefit for the recover the ground need to be further considered.On the contrary,in the actual war,the demolition of city wall was also inconvenient for our army to fight and brought a lot of trouble for the county waterproof and against bandits.In addition,the local counties forced a large number of people engaged in the demolition work by government decree,which had put too much pressure on people and damaged the legitimacy of government.The military political higher than the civil administration for a long time,led to the failure of the national government at some extent.