readx; In the eleventh year of Showa, on the eve of the Anti-Japanese War, Dohihara's spy career came to an end, and he was suddenly transferred back to China and reappointed to the military. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 In their view, the Manchurian secret service under the command of Tu Feiyuan is becoming more active and its special role is irreplaceable. Many years later, it was revealed that it was Dohihara's power that made the Tokyo base camp deeply annoyed, so he asked the emperor to transfer him back to Japan. The head of the secret service, who had been reassigned to the military position, was no longer useful, and he was first appointed commander of the Tokyo Guards Division, and then as the commander of the 14th Division as a lieutenant general. Tu Feiyuan's unexpected transfer made his nemesis, Dai Li, the head of the Kuomintang military command's secret service, greatly relieved, and it is said that Chiang Kai-shek had a rare smile on his face when he heard of this, and he actually said three "good" words in a row.

The 14th Division was formed in Utsunomiya City in the central part of the city, also known as the "Utsunomiya" Division. The main force that landed in North China after the "Seven Incidents" was the first to land. At that time, the defenders of North China were mostly miscellaneous teams with weak combat effectiveness, such as the former Northwest Army, the Northeast Army, etc., and Tu Feiyuan, who was born as an agent, commanded the 14th Division to attack the city all the way to the city, and the terrain was like a bamboo, and the victory reports were continuously sent to the North China Dispatch Army and the Tokyo base camp. According to the order, the scope of operations of the Tufeiyuan Division and regiment under the First Army should stop at northern Henan on the north bank of the Yellow River, and its task was to protect the flank security of the Xuzhou operation. Therefore, it was not until the end of the Battle of Xuzhou that the army of 30,000 people slowly arrived at Puyang County at the junction of Henan and Shandong, and at this time they were still hundreds of miles away from the smoke-filled Xuzhou City.

Puyang ancient ferry port is the throat of northern Henan to and from Luxi, and it is also a weak area for the defense of the Chinese [***] team, and the opposite bank of the Yellow River is Heze, an important town in Shandong. Tu Feiyuan raised his binoculars to observe, and he saw that the Yellow River in the dry season exposed a large area of dry riverbed, which was a good time to cross the river and fight. However, the ground in Shandong belonged to the combat scope of the Second Army, and the 14th Division did not receive the order of the commander of the First Army, Kazuki Kiyoji, to cross the river, and had no right to fight across the border, so Tufeiyuan regretfully put down the telescope and ordered to return to Puyang City to rest.

But an emergency telegram changes the direction of the team.

The sender was not the commander of the army, Lieutenant General Kazuki Kiyoji, but the commander-in-chief of the North China Dispatch Army, General Terauchi Shouichi, who was far away in Xuzhou. The commander-in-chief's order was only a short line:

Cross the Yellow River and resolutely occupy Heze!

In the spring of 1938, in the 27th year of the Republic of China, a mysterious visitor visited the heavily guarded Donghu Mansion in Wuchang, and his unexpected visit was destined to become a fuse, which caused Chiang Kai-shek to be furious.

This uninvited guest was the German Ambassador to China, Mr. Taudemann.

Originally, Ambassador Tao was a welcome and distinguished guest, not only the plenipotentiary representative of the German Empire to China, but also a personal friend of Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, and one of the few diplomats in the Western powers at that time who had a friendly attitude towards China. However, at this moment, this old friend of the Kuomintang was not here for friendship, and he had to regretfully note Chairman Chiang that the German political axe had decided to recall the military advisory group in China and unilaterally suspend all cooperation projects between the two countries, including the contracts for the purchase of arms that had already been signed.

Chiang Kai-shek angrily smashed a glass of water on the spot.

For the embattled Nationalists, the betrayal of the Germans was tantamount to a stab in the back. In 1931, the country that brazenly invaded and occupied the three eastern provinces and stood on the side of China to uphold justice was neither the British and American countries that flaunted the model of Ming Cooking, nor the socialist Soviet Union, but Hitler's Germany, which later became the head of the fascist axis of evil. The German political axe gave China full support, not only sending military advisers to help China carry out military reform and improve the combat effectiveness of the army, but also accepting Chinese officials to Germany for training free of charge, selling and providing German-style weapons and arms aid free of charge, and helping the Chinese political axe to formulate a war plan against the Chinese government. Until the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, most of the advanced equipment owned by the Kuomintang Central Army was made in Germany.

However, this kind of international assistance does not mean that Germany is a country that upholds justice, and that there is no right or wrong in international exchanges, still less an eternal position, and that the only principle is that interests dictate. At the beginning, the Germans opposed the invasion of China, not to uphold justice, but to avoid "developing their strategic ambitions in a wrong direction", that is, to hinder the global strategic plan of the future Axis alliance, so when the "Lugou Bridge Incident" broke out, the German ambassador immediately devoted all his efforts to mediation, and it is said that Hitler personally sent a message to Emperor Saimoto, trying to persuade him not to expand the war in China, but to devote his attention to dealing with "the dangerous enemy from the north -- [***] Soviet Russia."

Ambassador Tao has always carried out shuttle diplomacy between Tokyo and Nanjing as an ally of the two sides, and the mediation once dawned on peace, and Tokyo agreed to an armistice and withdraw troops, and the peace talks were about to succeed.

But all these efforts came to naught with the fall of Nanjing.

In fact, Chiang Kai-shek was not necessarily unprepared for the betrayal of the Germans, and secret intelligence showed that "VII. Before the Seven Incidents, Germany secretly signed the "Berlin Agreement" with Yu Ben to prevent communism, and with Italy's accession to the Triple Alliance, it gradually took shape, so that Yu himself came from behind, squeezing out China on the balance of Germany's global interests, making the national political axe the first victim of the Axis Alliance Treaty. The humiliation and grief made the chairman of the Chinese National People's Congress lose control of his emotions for a while, and he wanted to throw the water glass in his hand at the German ambassador, but at the last moment, the object changed direction and fell to the floor, and the loud popping sound of the cup fully conveyed the irrepressible anger and protest of the Chinese leader.

Of course, such a gaffe in a diplomatic setting is not a sign of strength, because any words or actions that do not conform to diplomatic etiquette will be regarded as an affront and a blasphemy against civilization. In fact, Chiang Kai-shek knew very well that the departure of the Germans was only a signal that China's situation in the future international community would become more and more difficult. The international community reacted indifferently to the treachery of the Germans in tearing up the contract, and a British diplomat who was drinking afternoon tea commented in a lazy tone: Is it? Why did Hitler do the Chinese a favor, they should have left a long time ago.

Weak countries have no diplomacy, backward countries will be beaten, the international community has no justice at all, and the aggressors themselves have not been sanctioned, on the contrary, they are still respected everywhere, and they have smoothly procured urgently needed war materials and raw materials from Britain, the United States, and Western countries. At the same time, Western countries refuse to sell arms to China for the sole reason that they fear that the failing national axe will not be able to repay its huge debts.

According to documents released after the war, in 1937, before the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, China's political budget was only $400 million, less than $1 per capita for a population of 450 million. With a population of less than 100 million, the country's GDP is $6.66 billion, more than 15 times that of China, and 70 times that of China per capita! Among them, military spending alone amounted to $920 million, more than twice the total budget of China's political axe! The steel output is 200 times that of China, the oil refining is 150 times that of China, and the annual production of nearly 2,000 aircraft is zero. 744 large-caliber artillery, zero in China; It has 330 tanks, 9,500 automobiles, a shipbuilding capacity of 470,000 tons, 50,000 tons of warships, and more than 200 warships, including six large aircraft carriers, ranking third in the world, and so on.

The comparison of China's national strength can be seen from this.

In 1938, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Chonghui went to the White House to meet with President Roosevelt. At that time, the United States had just emerged from the shadow of the Great Depression of the thirties, and in a sense, the war of aggression launched by Ben against China happened to be a powerful lever to accelerate the economic recovery of the United States. The Chinese foreign minister expressed strong dissatisfaction with the long arms sold by the United States political axe, as well as the huge amount of scrap steel, oil, and strategic materials to him, and President Roosevelt replied to the Chinese guests with his usual wisdom and serene expression: "Your country is welcome to participate in the purchase, and we Americans have never treated everyone equally in doing business." The Chinese Foreign Minister said: But we don't have dollars, can Mr. President lend money to the national government, or agree to offset it with agricultural products? Roosevelt laughed and said:

"It doesn't matter if you don't have a dollar, the silver dollar is also a hard currency."

History has punished selfish Westerners.

Only a year later, World War II broke out, and three years later, the Pacific War broke out, and the Western powers' policy of "appeasement" at the expense of others and self-interest finally forced them to swallow the bitter fruit they had planted.

The diplomatic meeting ended in an awkward end, and the German ambassador was humiliated, for which he lodged a corresponding verbal protest. But then something even more embarrassing happened, Chiang Kai-shek spat on the spot, cursed the famous foul language, and then threw down the guest and walked away. The meeting almost turned into a diplomatic incident. Fortunately, the Germans were the first to be treacherous, the first to tear up the contract, the first to be despicable and shameless, and the two countries could no longer be friends, and it didn't matter if Chiang Kai-shek behaved uncivilized and impolite.

On the night of the departure of the German ambassador, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs urgently met with Western diplomats from Britain, the United States, France, and Italy, and reiterated to the international community the three principles of China's political axe war of resistance: it will never accept any foreign mediation; Never stop fighting; No armistice will ever be concluded unless the army withdraws from the "VII. Seven incidents" before the ceasefire line

Built in 1905, the Longhai Railway starts from Lanzhou, Gansu Province in the west to Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province in the east, with a total length of 1,214 kilometers, and intersects with the Jinghan Railway, another major artery that runs through the north and south, in Zhengzhou, thus forming a large pattern of crisscrossing modern Chinese railways with Zhengzhou as the hub. Zhengzhou, the Central Plains, which has been a battleground for soldiers since ancient times, has added significant strategic significance due to its status as a railway hub.

When the Anti-Japanese War broke out, he said that he was ferocious in his offensive, occupying the entire territory of Hebei and Shanxi one after another, and then threatening Zhengzhou, and the Yellow River railway bridge located at the entrance of Huayuankou in the north of Zhengzhou City became the only choke point to hold the Jinghan line. The Yellow River Railway Bridge is nearly 5,000 meters long, with as many as 100 piers and an all-steel frame structure, designed and built by a Belgian company, known as "the first bridge in the world". If the bridge is captured by the enemy, not only will there be no danger in opening the gate of Zhengzhou, but the enemy will also go straight to Wuhan, the heart of China's Anti-Japanese War, along the Jinghan Railway, so the base camp ordered a Guizhou unit called the New Eighth Division to rush to Zhengzhou to serve as the bridge garrison.

One morning in early spring, a train came from Zhengzhou, and when the locomotive spewing steam slowly stopped at the bridgehead, a group of serious officers in yellow coats walked down from the carriage and went straight to the bridge to inspect. When Commander Jiang, who got the news, hurriedly caught up with the bridge, the crowd had already walked to the center of the bridge and pointed. A middle-aged man with a thin face, Reading Liqiao, stood still, and the strong river wind lifted his yellow tweed cloak from time to time, making his back look like a statue.

Jiang Zaizhen recognized him as the formidable Chairman Chiang.

It turned out that Chiang Kai-shek made a special trip to inspect the Yellow River Iron Bridge. Due to the secrecy in advance, many of the generals of the First Theater were kept in the dark, and they followed closely behind the chairman of the committee, and they could not help but think about the chairman's intentions. They speculated that the sudden arrival of the chairman must have something to do with the situation in the northern battlefield and perhaps the fate of the bridge under their feet. But the answer was not written on the leader's face, because the chairman, in addition to his intimidating stern expression, was as unfathomable as ever.

At this time, an unexpected enemy situation suddenly happened.

A low-flying enemy plane roared past the bridge beams, and the huge air currents set off by the wings of the plane actually swept a sentry down the river. Fortunately, this was a reconnaissance plane, and there were no air strikes and strafing bombs, which caused a false alarm among the people on the bridge. The crowd immediately gathered around the chairman and returned to the bridgehead. At the headquarters of the new Eighth Division, Chiang Zai-zhen made a brief report, but the chairman of the committee did not give instructions, but He Yingqin, chief of the general staff, raised several questions about the enemy's activities in the north of the bridge, and division commander Chiang answered them one by one. Chief He is a native of Guizhou, he heard Master Jiang's authentic Guizhou accent, and when he learned that the new Eighth Division was from his hometown in Guizhou, his attitude immediately became warm, and he patted Master Jiang on the shoulder and said some words of encouragement before leaving.

Later, Chiang Kai-shek and his entourage came to the bridgehead on the south bank of the Yellow River, where there is a cast iron monument in the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, which is engraved with the text of the monument: built by the Great Qing National Railway Corporation. Jinghan Railway, assisted by Biguo Company. The completion of the work said, the imperial court sent the crown prince Shaobao, the former Ministry of Industry Zuo Lang Sheng Xuanhuai, a product top, acting Ministry of Commerce Zuo Cheng Tang Shaoyi to the ceremony, I would like to engrave the will. It was October 16 in the 31st year of Guangxu. Chiang Kai-shek's expression was heavy, and he stood in front of the iron monument for a short time, and then boarded the car and left.

Soon the base camp gave the order to blow up the bridge, and people's speculation was partially confirmed that the chairman was really determined to abandon the area north of the Yellow River, and that he had come to bid farewell to this "first bridge in the world." A team of sappers planted a new type of "TNT" explosives on the piers, but the piers were so strong that the first blast did not collapse. The sappers had to blast again to completely blow up the Yellow River Bridge. The New Eighth Division, which had no bridge to defend, was temporarily on standby, and the division commander Jiang Zaizhen immediately left Jingshui Town, where he was stationed, and went to Wuhan to recuperate.

Just after the Qingming Festival in the 27th year of the Republic of China, the eternal tranquility that shrouded Ximazhai in the Dabie Mountains was broken by a huge explosion. A sheep herder saw a plane with plastered wings like a big black bird skimming the bright sky, and then dragging its long tail and crashing into the mountain. When the villagers who got the news arrived at the back mountain, the plane had already fallen to pieces, and the woods were littered with large and small aircraft fragments. The villagers found the bodies of the two pilots, both of whom were blurred with flesh and blood, but one of them had an iron chain firmly attached to his wrist, and to the chain was an intact black leather bag.

The villagers were amazed and excited, if they hadn't fallen to their deaths, they should have told everyone something, for example, why did the plane fall from the sky? Where are they going? Why is that black leather bag locked on the wrist? And all that. When a villager cut the chain in public, the people were disappointed when he opened the mysterious black leather bag, which contained nothing but a few pieces of thin paper with the words zigzag like earthworms written on them.

The news of the plane crashing into the mountain soon reached the Yamashita Township Office, and the township chief himself rushed into the mountain on a sliding pole, and he ordered the villagers to send the dead and the spoils of war to the county. Ximazhai is a day's journey from the county seat, and the villagers spent a lot of effort to carry the dead man and an airplane tail out of the deep mountains and old forests.

The villagers received a bonus for fighting the war.

After discovering that the plane was missing, he immediately dispatched a reconnaissance plane to search for it, but they never found the whereabouts of the wrecked plane.

The 100,000 people in the Wuhan base camp urgently sent experts to inspect this gift that fell from the sky, and they were overjoyed to find that the plane that crashed by accident turned out to be a messenger plane. At the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, radio communications were easy to be intercepted and deciphered, and important documents were often transmitted by flying messengers, and the person who locked himself with his briefcase was a flying messenger from Tokyo. At that time, the Battle of Xuzhou was still raging, and the Tokyo Base Camp issued a top-secret order to the Chinese front, stating that after the Battle of Xuzhou, the two major dispatch armies would each consolidate the front and no longer expand the battle area.

The documents were rushed to Wuhan.

China's base camp is like a treasure. After analysis and appraisal by the intelligence agencies, it was confirmed that the documents were true, and the possibility that the enemy had sent false information was ruled out. The strategists unanimously agreed that the Tokyo order indicated at least the following two problems: First, the army was unable to launch a new offensive for the time being because the front was too long and its combat strength was weak. The second is that the possibility of peace talks cannot be ruled out, indicating that there are still voices at work within the peace talks. This latest trend has undoubtedly brought all kinds of variables to the Chinese battlefield where the fierce fighting is raging, revealing a subtle sign that the war is slowing down, and China's top leaders have seen a glimmer of hope for an armistice through the smoke of gunpowder, and some people have even begun to regain an optimistic attitude toward the prospects of war.

The Battle of Xuzhou was not yet over, and Chiang Kai-shek flew to Zhengzhou to convene a military meeting.

The meeting was presided over by Cheng Qian, commander-in-chief of the First Theater, and He Yingqin, chief of the general staff, announced the "Wuhan Battle Outline" on behalf of the base camp. The generals attending the meeting were all from various battlefields in the north, and they couldn't help but look at each other in bewilderment, and wondered why the Wuhan Theater was not chosen in the south but in the Zhengzhou Theater in the north, otherwise it should not be called the "Central Plains Battle."

(To be continued)