Tan Renhao went to help Liao Hanxiang find an office location on the same day, and the next day, the staff officers that Liao Hanxiang went to find arrived at the Navy Headquarters and began to work. Tan Renhao also joined this special team, and soon he realized that these staff officers were either Japanese experts or engaged in intelligence work, and they were all related to the war against Japan anyway, and many of them held the title of Strategic Strike Command. Soon, Tan Renhao also had some understanding of the situation in Japan from these staff officers.

The war against Japan was divided into five phases, and before Tan Renhao left the strategic strike force and returned to the naval headquarters, it was still in the third stage, that is, the stage of strategic bombing. This is preceded by a strategic stalemate and a strategic counterattack. Strategic bombing is the key to the entire war against Japan,://.bsp; Because before that, there had never been a war in which strategic bombing was used to destroy the enemy and force the enemy to surrender, so no one was sure of the effectiveness of strategic bombing, and since the beginning of strategic bombing, this doubt has become smaller and smaller. After Tan Renhao left Iwo Jima and returned to the naval headquarters, the scale and scope of strategic bombing continued to expand, and by the end of '23, almost all of Japan had been bombed into ruins.

The bombing was initially aimed at Japan's military and heavy industrial targets, such as aircraft factories, motor factories, shipyards, steel mills, oil refineries, rubber processing plants, power plants, etc. This is the foundation of the Japanese army, and even Japan as a country, without the support of these factories, the Japanese army will have no weapons and ammunition to fight, the Japanese will not be able to arm, and Japan will be disarmed. At the same time, this is also the most important strategic bombing target, and it is the most important task of the entire strategic bombing, and it can be said that the bombing of these targets has never stopped.

In the early days, Japan's heavy industry was relatively concentrated. However, as the scale of the Tang Empire's strategic bombing expanded, most of Japan's military industry began to evacuate. Initially, it was mainly evacuated to the civilian population, using handicraft workshops to continue the production of weapons and equipment. For example, most of the parts for motives (mainly aviation motives) in Japan are produced in handicraft workshops and then sent to motive factories for assembly. If you just bomb the motive factory, you will not be able to paralyze the motive industry in Japan, and assembly plants can be opened in many places and can be quickly transferred. Then, in order to achieve the goal, it is necessary to expand the bombing area and target those handicraft workshops located in residential areas, that is, to make residential areas bombing targets. The same situation existed in other respects, and as a result, after destroying almost all the heavy industrial factories in Japan, the bombing area was extended to residential areas, that is, to all large and medium-sized cities.

The scale of the bombing continued to grow. However, the Japanese side quickly evacuated the population to small cities. Industry has also begun to evacuate to smaller cities and villages. In order to achieve the goal of destroying Japanese industry, the bombing had to be expanded. Later, even all the man-made buildings were on the bombing list. According to the Tang Empire. The principle that it is better to bomb by mistake than to let it go is that when the strategic strike force has sufficient ammunition, it is natural to increase the scale of bombing.

By the end of '23, thousands of bombers from the two strategic strike armies had carried out more than 50,000 bombing sorties over the Japanese mainland, dropping more than 250,000 tons of bombs and incendiary bombs, of which incendiary bombs accounted for more than 70 percent. In addition, more than 1,000 fighter planes carried out more than 30,000 combat patrol missions over the Japanese mainland, dropping tens of thousands of tons of ammunition. That is, from the beginning of the year with strategic bombing. By the end of the year, Tang Empire fighters had dropped hundreds of tons of ammunition over the Japanese mainland. At that time, Japan had a total population of more than 82oo thousand, and according to this ratio, each Japanese was allocated an average of 3o kilograms of bombs or incendiary bombs!

By the beginning of 24, the scale of strategic bombing had been reduced a lot, and the main reason was not that there was no ammunition left, but that there were no bombing targets. Many fighter pilots on free-hunt missions are even hitting cattle in farmland with expensive rockets and bombing tents hidden in forests. Anyway. As long as you can see buildings and moving objects are on the list of bombs, but in reality, there are not many places in Japan that are worth dropping bombs and incendiary bombs.

In the bombing that lasted for nearly a year, 53 large cities with a population of more than 50,000 in Japan had been bombed into ruins, and Tokyo was bombed eight times, with a total bombing volume of more than 15ooo tons. In these eight large-scale bombings, a total of 120,000 Tokyo citizens were killed or burned (some were severely burned and died after days or even months), more than 100 square kilometers of urban areas were destroyed, millions of Tokyo citizens were forced to evacuate to the surrounding countryside and forests, and even the Japanese government moved to Utsunomiya in the north.

Osaka was bombed six times, and more than 14ooo tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city, killing or burning hundreds of thousands of citizens, forcing more than 2 million citizens to evacuate, and burning dozens of square kilometers of urban areas to rubble. Nara was bombed four times, and more than 200,000 people were killed or burned. Nagoya was bombed four times, killing more than 200,000 residents. Kobe was bombed five times, and more than 300,000 residents died. Hiroshima was bombed three times, killing more than 200,000 people. In addition, the cities of Nagasaki, Tomioka, Shimonoseki, Yokohama, and many others were devastated.

When Tan Renhao saw this series of lists, on the one hand, he was amazed at the huge damage caused by strategic bombing, and on the other hand, he was also sighing, how could the empire's intelligence department be so powerful when collecting this information? Even the number of Japanese killed in the bombing is accurate to a single digit, and perhaps the data itself is not too reliable. It is undeniable that the effects of the bombing have already come out, and in addition to more than 50 large cities, hundreds of small and medium-sized cities have also been destroyed, more than eighty percent of the Japanese have been evacuated to the countryside, and at least 50 million Japanese have taken refuge in the mountains and forests.

After months of continuous bombing, not only Japanese industry was destroyed, but also agricultural production was destroyed. Fighters on free-hunt missions barely left the skies over Japan, and before the autumn harvest, the Strategic Strike Force carried out several concentrated bombings, mainly to destroy Japanese farmland (which was too cost-effective if economically speaking) to burn down the food crops on which the Japanese depended.

At this point in the war, Japan was actually finished. It was only when Tan Renhao saw the next few reports that he realized. Japan has been bombed back into a primitive society.

In the winter of 23, at least five million Japanese were starved to death, or froze to death. At the time of spring ploughing, because the bombing still did not stop, more than half of the farmland could not be planted. By April, there was a phenomenon of cannibalism in Japan. At that time, the intelligence services of the Reich had not yet obtained exact data, but it was estimated based on the situation last winter. By April '24, at least fifteen million Japanese had died of starvation or bitter cold. This is still a very conservative figure, because according to the pre-war situation, it is impossible for Japan's grain reserves to support until the fall of '24.

Even before the outbreak of the war, Japan had been expanding its grain reserves. Because Japan had always been an importer of grain, and the food it produced was not enough to feed all its citizens, it was extremely important for Japan to have food reserves before the war. Before the war, there were two main channels for Japan's grain imports, one was the United States and the other was the Tang Empire. From 2o. The Tang Empire reduced its grain exports to Japan (the Tang Empire had been one of the world's largest grain exporters), and Japan began to get more grain from the United States and other places. By the time the war broke out, Japan's strategic grain reserves were about a year. Other than that. During the first two years of the war, Japan also imported grain to the United States. Thus, by the time the strategic bombing began in '23, Imperial intelligence estimated that Japan's strategic grain reserves would probably be able to hold out until the spring of '24.

Food is not an industrial product, but it is definitely the most important strategic material. The army cannot fight without weapons and ammunition, and if there is no food, it will be difficult to survive. For the Tang Empire, the United States, a major grain exporter, perhaps this is not a problem. After the last war. The Tang Empire strengthened the system of strategic grain reserves, raising them from one year to two years, and later to three years. That is to say, at the time of the outbreak of war, the Tang Empire's reserves of grain in the strategic granary were enough to support the living needs of all subjects of the empire for three years (distributed according to the wartime ration system), so the Tang Empire itself did not have the problem of food shortage, and it has been exporting grain to the Persian Empire and the German Empire (the Persian Empire and the German Empire can be self-sufficient in peacetime, but under wartime conditions). You have to rely on food imports) But for a food-importing country like Japan, if you don't have food, it means death.

It may not be the incendiary bombs or the destroyed factories that really destroyed Japan, but the grain. Throughout the strategic bombing, the destruction of Japan's strategic granaries has always been the focus of the bombing. By the end of '23, there was actually only enough grain left in Japan to hold out until January '24. In other words, Japan simply did not have enough food to support the moment when the United States won the victory of the counterattack and opened the sea route with the Japanese mainland.

When the war came to this point, the Japanese relied on only a little hope. The outcome of the Battle of the Mariana Islands was a heavy blow to the United States and at the same time destroyed the last bit of hope for the Japanese. The Imperial Army is sweeping the archipelago, and the U.S. military on the mainland of Guam has only a chance to breathe. The outcome of the Battle of the Mariana Islands was disastrous for Japan. If the U.S. military can launch a counterattack in mid-24 and sweep away Iwo Jima and Ogasawara Islands, then there is hope for Japan, but now it is a question whether the United States can organize a counterattack in 25 years.

In fact, Japan's hopes have been dashed, and no matter how you look at it, it is impossible for Japan to hold out until the end of '24, let alone '25. Surrender was Japan's only option, but the problem now was that even if Japan wanted to surrender, the Tang Empire would not necessarily accept Japan's request to surrender.

"The Tehran Declaration is a double-edged sword for us."

Liao Hanxiang has been reading documents in this regard for the past few days. "If it had been 2o years ago, we had already accepted the surrender of Japan, of course, in order to reduce the pressure on the empire, and even accept some of the conditions offered by Japan, which would be better than one more opponent. But now, we cannot unilaterally accept Japan's surrender at all, and we must agree to it within the entire Allied bloc before we can accept it, and it is obvious that neither Germany nor Persia will agree to Japan's surrender after making conditions. Trouble! ”

Tan Renhao smiled and shook his head, although the troops used by the empire to fight against Japan are now much smaller, there are still hundreds of thousands of soldiers, especially most of the strategic strike forces are concentrated on the battlefield against Japan. As the scale of the war between the Empire and the United States grew, these hundreds of thousands of troops were of great use, and if they could be drawn out and put into the Pacific theater, it would certainly be of great help.

"However, Japan's defeat is only a matter of time."

Liao Hanxiang took out a cigarette, "I have considered several methods, so I will ask for your opinion first." To put it bluntly, there are only two endings, one is that Japan will announce its unconditional surrender now, so that we will get the support of other allies, and Japan will withdraw from the war, and then we will send the occupation army to occupy the Japanese mainland, and other countries will symbolically send the occupation force over. Second, Japan continues to resist, we do not accept Japan's conditional surrender, and then plan an anti-government factional uprising within Japan to form a puppet government. Of course, the war will continue, but in the future, we can use the Japanese to fight the Japanese, and the troops we have invested can be withdrawn and used on other battlefields. ”

"Maybe the second option is more feasible."

Tan Ren Haoxun thought about it, he didn't go to get the cigarette, "If that old stubborn Tojo wants to surrender, then he will surrender four months ago, not until now." In addition, surrender means destruction for him, and we can spare Japanese civilians, but the attitude towards war criminals is very strict, even if they think about it for their own sake, they will not easily decide to surrender unconditionally, anyway, now that the emperor is dead, he does not need to be loyal to anyone. ”

Both of them sneered, after the Japanese emperor was finished, things became more complicated, and it was obvious that this was beyond the scope of what they could solve as soldiers.