During the warlord era before World War II, the region was ravaged by the continuous fighting among the warlords of various provinces, and warlords from Guangxi and Hunan caused most damages, and was thus mostly hated by the local populace. Of course, none of the warlords had ever specifically targeted the local regions for destruction, but due to the strategic location of the area, it was destined to become the battlefield whenever the warlords were embroiled in fights for more turfs. Instead of deploying his own troops which would certainly rally more support for the nationalists, Chiang Kai-shek deployed the troops belonged to the most hated warlord cliques by the local population, Guangxi and Hunan, and allowed these warlords to dominate the region after the campaign. As a result, when the two previous nationalist blunders on the time of the offensive and the location of the offensive had turned the local populace from alienation to resentment, this third blunder had certainly turned the local population against the nationalists by driven their support firmly to the enemy side, and not only this contributed to the nationalist failure of this campaign, but it also paved the way for another nationalist defeat in the Campaign of Marching into the Dabie Mountains when enemy returned to the region a year later.