It is said that in the summer and autumn of 1935, the Western allies, which had a strong military power, concluded peace treaties with Britain and the United States, thus ending the war in the Transatlantic region. Pen ~ fun ~ cabinet www.biquge.info In September, because Ottoman Turkey was mired in a civil war and had no time to look eastward, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Soviet Russia reached a consensus on the division of power in the entire Persian region, and the Western Allies agreed to return the Transcaucasian region to Soviet Russia and withdraw their troops from Baku, recognizing Soviet Russia's control of northern Persia, so as to exchange for the guarantee that Soviet Russia would not get involved in southern Persia and the Persian Gulf coast, and would not support the anti-government activities of the Bolsheviks in European countries. The red alert that once terrified all European countries has been temporarily dispelled. In early October, the European coalition composed of armies from Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Ireland, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, and Portugal arrived in Jerusalem, officially opening the prelude to multinational intervention in the Arab Federation. In late October, civil war broke out in Egypt, and German, Italian, and Austro-Hungarian forces landed in Alexandria under the pretext of protecting their expatriates, intending to regain control of the Suez Canal through military operations. These diplomatic and military actions seem to distract the Western allies, but in reality, on the contrary, they can clean up their own backyards so that they can focus on expanding their careers in distant places.

Seeing this, Emperor Showa did not clamore for the complete annexation of China with a wave of attacks, as his brave and ill-sighted generals did. What his country lacks most now is not resources or technology, but time to digest the huge spoils of war and strengthen the "body". When the rear of the Western Allies is stable, they will certainly set their sights on Southeast Asia, which is extremely rich in strategic resources, unless Japan has enough military strength to deter it, otherwise, the cliff will be the next target of their expansion of power, and in the three years since the outbreak of the Great War, the Japanese army has not only failed to take advantage of the opportunity of the great powers to intervene to swallow China, which has a vast land and resources, but has fallen into it, seriously dragging down Japan's economy and finances. Now, now that China's three richest eastern provinces, the North China Plain, the free shipping area, and the southern ports are all in the bag, why waste hundreds of thousands of soldiers and countless military supplies in the hinterland of Central China, where the roads are muddy and the terrain is complicated?

With Showa's shrewd vision, if the Americans were willing to end the war in its current state, he would have accepted the outcome with joy. In a peaceful environment, it will take less than 10 years, perhaps as long, as long as five years, for Japan's economy and industry to develop sublimatedly and become a truly world-class power. However, it is easy to start a war, but it is difficult to stop fighting, and no matter whether or not the Japanese Government accepts the mediation of the Allied Headquarters this time, the problem has not been fundamentally resolved, because the most critical point of disagreement is not in a certain place in China, but in the Hawaiian Islands in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, and its strategic position is so unique that occupying it is equivalent to occupying half of the Pacific Ocean. With the connivance and even instigation of the Western allies, the United States is willing to stop the war only if it has to take it into its pocket, and Japan will not be able to give up the treasure that it has won so easily, no matter from which angle, and since the talks cannot be reconciled, it can only decide its ownership through bloody work -- this is exactly what the Western allies want to see!

“…… If we use the truce with the government of China as a weight in exchange for the support of Western countries, and let them approve of our occupation of the Hawaiian Islands, there will be a breakthrough in this dilemma! ”

At the Imperial Cabinet meeting, the young Emperor Showa whispered a few words that sounded loudly in the ears of the ministers who were approaching or having passed their fateful years. The veteran minister of the Three Dynasties, the Prime Minister Inu Yangyi, nicknamed the "Ghost Fox", then responded:

"What His Majesty the Emperor said is that the economy of China is weak and the people are not in harmony, even if the war is stopped for several years, it will only survive in the southwest, and it will still be easy to defeat them after a few years. The situation of the United States is quite different, its homeland is intact, its economy and industry are not fundamentally damaged, domestic production will soon be restored in the event of an armistice, and the size of its army is limited by the armistice treaty, but it is also correspondingly reduced in the burden of military spending, and it can be expected that the United States will recover rapidly in the coming years, when it will not easily re-provoke disputes with European countries in the east, but will compete with us westward for the territory of the Pacific Ocean, if the Hawaiian Islands remain in the hands of the Japanese Empire, Expansion of the United States is an effective deterrent, and if we return Hawaii to the United States in exchange for an armistice, Hawaii will inevitably become a stepping stone for the United States to conquer the Pacific and threaten the Japanese archipelago...... You should be reasonable! ”

The warlike and combative Admiral Minister Otkaku Zen was an important promoter of Japan's war of aggression against China, the war against the United States and Britain, and the seizure of Southeast Asia, but in the past two years, the invincible performance of the Japanese Navy in the Pacific theater made him very disdainful of the results of the Japanese army invading China at the same time, and then used his influence to compete for as many military resources as possible for the Japanese troops on the expedition to the eastern Pacific, making the Japanese army even more unable to launch a large-scale offensive. Since both Emperor Showa and Prime Minister Inukai believed that the Chinese military should not be worried, and that the time had come for the time to go all out against the United States in order to achieve a final armistice in the most favorable position possible, he immediately agreed.

As far as their respective positions are concerned, the Minister of War and the leader of the Imperial Road faction, Sage Araki, is the most reluctant in the cabinet to accept an armistice against China, and if a decisive battle is waged against the US military around the Hawaiian Islands, the Japanese Army, which has millions of elites, will not be of much use, but the current reality is that the Japanese base camp is determined to give priority to the supply of limited resources to the navy and air force fighting in the Pacific theater, and the Japanese army invading China will not only not be able to obtain sufficient troops and material replenishment. In addition, Soviet Russia did not want to see Japan dominate East Asia, and in recent years it has been providing weapons, ammunition and even volunteers to the Chinese army, and several offensives launched by the invading Japanese army in 1934 lacked strength and durability, and the temporary armistice against China was also conducive to the Japanese army to readjust its deployment and accumulate strength. As a result, Sakuo Araki rarely echoed the opinion of the Minister of the Navy, and the proposal approved by Emperor Showa was unanimously approved by the cabinet and then put into practice - Japanese Foreign Minister Kenkichi Yoshizawa, who was attending the Allied summit in Berlin, changed his attitude at a 180-degree degree, and he used various occasions and media to trumpet the great achievements of the Japanese government in bringing modern civilization to Asian countries, declaring that military means were only a necessary means to break down the old perceptions of various countries and achieve cultural innovation. He then expressed his willingness to consider the demands of the Western allies for an armistice against China. Later, on the one hand, he invited the Western allies to organize an observer mission to China to witness the negotiations and contacts between China and Japan, and on the other hand, on the grounds that China had been mired in war for many years, he asked the Western allies to collect humanitarian aid through official and non-governmental channels, and the Japanese side would forward the aid to Chinese civilians.

By early November, under the mediation of the Western allies, representatives of China and Japan arrived in Huaiyin to hold talks on the armistice, which lasted more than four months. During this period, with the exception of a few areas where there were still sporadic fighting, the Chinese and Japanese forces ceased hostilities.

Despite the protracted Sino-Japanese peace talks, and the representatives of the two sides arguing on the basis of reason and refusing to give in to each other, the Western allies still carried out humanitarian relief operations as scheduled. From December 1935 to February 1936, more than 4 million tons of rice flour, cloth, medicine and medical equipment arrived in China. The 1 million Springfield rifles and 1 billion rounds of ammunition supplied by the U.S. military were sent in batches, hidden in the bilges of cargo ships or smuggled by cruise ships carrying observers from the Western Allies, and traveled thousands of miles across the ocean, through the blockade under the noses of the Japanese, and finally delivered to the Chinese army.

The most successful thing about this three-way deal is that it is extremely carefully arranged, Irish officials at all levels, ordinary military officers and even the civilian public do not know that their own government has secretly carried out such an adventure, and the vast majority of Americans did not expect that such a huge number of firearms and ammunition were transported from the mainland, let alone their true whereabouts, as for the side with the highest probability of leaking secrets, the Chinese army that received these arms, was kept in the dark at first. It was not until the direct intervention of the Irish spy and security officials who came to China as military observers of the Allied Powers that the Chinese high-level officials realized what a considerable amount of aid the Irish had provided to them, and they were worried that the peace talks would break down because of the discovery of these arms by the Japanese. Although the Japanese military has strictly examined the materials sent into China by the Western allies in the name of humanitarian aid, and has tried to spy on the true intentions of European countries through the spy network, by the time a high-ranking spy hidden in the Chinese military discovers the clues and reports them, the Japanese military has already lost the opportunity to catch the stolen goods on the spot, and no amount of protest can play a substantive role.

Fast forward to March 1936, when the Japanese base camp had to readjust its strategic deployment in the Pacific due to the loss of the all-important Battle of Hawaii and the resumption of the battle for the islands with the American army. In order to force the Chinese government to make important concessions on the terms of the peace talks and to extricate itself from the quagmire of the war of aggression against China in a favorable situation, the Japanese troops stationed in China transferred air units stationed in the mainland, northeast China, and Southeast Asia, and resumed the war on March 14, launching a large-scale offensive codenamed "Iron Artillery." During this period, the Japanese army invested more than 400,000 troops and more than 300 combat vehicles on the whole line, and its right wing troops broke through the defense line laid by the Chinese army along the Yangtze River and broke through more than 200 kilometers in depth, conquering more than 70 cities and towns......

(End of chapter)