1. Tang Shengzhi was a Chinese warlord during the Warlord Era, a military commander during the Second Sino-Japanese War and a politician after World War II.
17 Facts About Tang Shengzhi
1. 2.
Tang Shengzhi participated in the National Protection War and the Constitutional Protection Movement.
3.
Tang Shengzhi was appointed commander of the Hunan Fourth Division and came into conflict with the governor, Zhao Hengti.
4.
Tang Shengzhi was defeated and forced to withdraw from Changsha.
5.
Tang Shengzhi decided to join the Northern Expeditionary Army and was given command of the Eighth Army of the National Revolutionary Army.
6.
Tang Shengzhi sided with Chiang Kai-shek and helped him to secure control of northern Beijing and the Tianjin region by removing Bai Chongxi, a Guangxi warlord who was in actual control of the region but ostensibly allied with Chiang Kai-shek.
7.
Later Tang Shengzhi commanded armies to fight other warlords for Chiang Kai-shek with great success.
8.
Some writers pointed out that it was Tang Shengzhi who volunteered to serve as the commander of the Nanjing garrison and promised to fight until his death without any pressure from Chiang Kai-Shek.
9.
Tang Shengzhi was now in charge of defending Nanjing against the Japanese attack.
10.
Tang Shengzhi gathered about 100,000 soldiers, mostly untrained and including a few defeated troops from the Shanghai battlefield, to defend the capital.
11.
Tang Shengzhi placed the 35th and 72nd divisions at the port to prevent people from fleeing Nanjing, as instructed by Chiang Kai-shek's general headquarters at Wuhan.
12.
Tang Shengzhi ordered Tang to continue the hopeless fight long enough to save face, and then he would have the prerogative to decide to withdraw.
13.
Tang Shengzhi was now in the very difficult position of trying to conduct a defense that he knew was futile would be abandoned in the near future.
14.
The tension was palpably obvious at a press conference Tang Shengzhi held to boost morale prior to the siege of Nanjing.
15.
Tang Shengzhi lived a more or less retired life and devoted his time to studying Buddhism.
16.
Tang Shengzhi refused to flee China, disguising himself and hiding in different places to avoid being captured by the Nationalist forces, breaking one of his legs in the process.
17.
Tang Shengzhi became a commander and governor in Hunan after 1949.