Dingtao Campaign

Part of the Chinese Civil War

Date	September 2, 1946 – September 8, 1946
Location	Shandong, China
Result	Communist victory

Belligerents

National Revolutionary Army

People's Liberation Army

Commanders and leaders

Liu Chih

Xue Yue

Liu Bocheng

Deng Xiaoping

Strength

140,000+

70,000+

Casualties and losses

5,000 killed
12,000 captured

3,500 total

Dingtao Campaign (定陶战役) was a series of battles fought between the nationalists and the communists during Chinese Civil War in the post World War II era, and resulted in the communist victory.

After the defeat of Longhai Campaign, the original nationalist plan of completely annihilating Li Xiannian’s communist force in the North China Plain pocket was disrupted and the scheduled completion had to be postponed due to the need to redeploy nationalist forces to eradicate communist forces under the command of Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping in southwestern Shandong. The nationalists concluded that the overwhelming numerical and technical superiorities over Li Xiannian’s communist force in the North China Plain pocket was sufficient enough to withstand a troop reduction, so three army-sized reorganized divisions originally deployed in southern Shaanxi and western Henan were redeployed to the region where Dingtao Campaign was about to take place. Additionally, two army-sized divisions from Xuzhou and another army from Huainan were also redeployed to the region. The eight army-sized nationalist reorganized divisions already stationed here in the regions of Zhengzhou, Xinxiang, and Shangqiu were reinforced by these additional six units, totaling more than three hundred thousand troops, and the nationalists were confident that the enemy would be annihilated quickly and their bases overran.

Although the total strength of the nationalist in the region exceeded over three hundred thousand, only half of the total force was deployed for the Dingtao Campaign, the nationalist commanders obviously felt that this was enough since it was already twice the size of the troops enemy could field, not mentioning the technical superiority the nationalists enjoyed. This miscalculation provided the numerical and technical inferior enemy an opportunity to concentrate its forces locally, achieving local superiority over the nationalists in the area where the campaign was fought, thus achieving the final victory.

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