In the winter of 1937, Peng Dehuai, the deputy commander of the Eighth Route Army, was worried as he looked at the accounts — the supplies captured from the victory at Pingxingguan were only enough to last three months, while the Japanese army was implementing the "Three Alls Policy" in the base areas, and the Kuomintang was strictly blockading the economy. How to feed an increasing number of troops? This problem was more headache-inducing than fighting.

The battle at Pingxingguan was fought decisively, with the 115th Division annihilating over a thousand Japanese troops, capturing over a thousand rifles, dozens of machine guns, hundreds of trucks, and mountains of canned food, flour, and overcoats. But as soon as the battle was over, it was time to tally the accounts: the three divisions of the Eighth Route Army added up to only thirty thousand men, but in less than two months, it swelled to over a hundred thousand, with wounded soldiers, local officials, and guerrilla fighters all needing to be fed. The little captured supplies, when divided among everyone, couldn't even last three months.

What's worse is that starting from early 1938, the Japanese military carried out the "Three Alls" policy in North China, burning villages, looting grain, and killing all humans and livestock, sweeping through the Jin-Cha-Ji, Jin-Sui, and Shandong base areas. The Kuomintang was also busy, with Yan Xishan and Wei Lihuang's troops building one blockade and bunker after another, preventing salt, cloth, and medicine from coming in; even matches became a luxury.

At this time, could we still expect funding from above? It was absolutely hopeless. The Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region government had a fiscal revenue of only more than 7 million yuan in 1940, and after the Kuomintang stopped paying the Eighth Route Army's military salaries, even this little money was about to run out. Later, Peng Dehuai recalled that in those years, the most worrying thing was not fighting, but eating.

The only solution was to think for ourselves.

First, save from the people's bowls. From the end of 1937 to 1938, various base areas successively implemented rent reduction and interest reduction, with rent generally dropping to below 37.5% of the harvest, and usury interest cut to below 1.5%. An ordinary tenant farmer in Junan, Shandong could save three to four shi of grain in a year, and some villages in Jin-Cha-Ji directly refunded the excess rent to farmers. The enlightened gentleman Liu Shaobai donated 300 shi of millet at once, and many small and medium landlords followed suit, donating grain and cloth, which was better than having the Japanese come and ruin the whole family.

The savings were still not enough, so the troops had to farm for themselves. In March 1941, 7,000 men from the 359th Brigade moved into Nanniwan, and over three years turned barren mountains into granaries, delivering up to 1 million jin of grain in a year. By 1944, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region had cultivated 2.6 million mu of land, achieving a grain self-sufficiency rate of 100%. The same was true in the Taihang Mountains, Jin-Sui, and Shandong, where troops farmed while fighting, making the Eighth Route Army truly a "combat team and production team" without neglecting either.

Weapons and ammunition had to be made by themselves. The Taihang Mountain arsenal dragged back the iron rails blown apart by the Japanese army for re-smelting, producing 11,000 rifles and 300,000 grenades in 1944 alone. Without a lathe, they used hemp ropes to manually scrape gun chambers, grinding until their hands bled. Clothing factories, shoe factories, and pharmaceutical factories all got involved, and the "Guanghua" brand quinine produced in Yan'an saved countless soldiers fighting in the front lines.

The blockade line was not impenetrable. The border region trade bureau secretly transported tungsten sand, tung oil, and pig bristles out to exchange for silver dollars, medicines, and machine tools. From 1938 to 1941, just tungsten sand alone exchanged for over 6 million silver dollars. Overseas Chinese were even more hardcore, donating the equivalent of 1.3 billion yuan in national currency during the eight years of the war, with Chen Jiageng alone donating several hundred million.

By the time of the victory in 1945, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army had already reached 1.27 million people, with nearly 100 million people in the liberated areas, self-sufficient in grain, weapons, and clothing. During the Huaihai Campaign, the 600,000 troops were fed and equipped, supported by 5.43 million laborers pushing them out with handcarts, with Northeast farmers averaging 150 jin of grain tax, and no one could hide from it; landlords were all eager to pay more.

To sum it up in one sentence: whoever allows the common people to live a good life, the common people will entrust their lives to them. The Eighth Route Army's few broken guns and cannons, able to grow from thirty thousand to a million strong, relied not on falling pies from the sky, but on the scale in the hearts of hundreds of millions of people.