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Chapter 17** National Treasure Returns

At the beginning of February, Kazan entered the coldest time of the year, the whole world seemed to have become a big freezer, the mountains were shivering with cold, the river was frozen stiff, the north wind was howling, like a knife, and the snow was flying all over the sky. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

On the rumbling train to the west, An Mingqi, deputy political commissar of the Central Asian Military District of the Anjia Army, who was heading to Kazan as an observer, looked with some curiosity at Yegorov, commander-in-chief of the Far Eastern Army, who had gathered with several staff officers to discuss the situation of the war. The 56-year-old supreme military commander of the Far Eastern Army had a calm and calm face, and when he issued combat missions, he was clearly organized, and he did not feel any nervousness or uneasiness from him.

Along the way, in the train carriage that was temporarily used as the general headquarters of the whole army after the renovation and addition of radio contact equipment, battle reports were constantly sent from various fronts, and as far as An Mingqi knew, the overall situation at present was not optimistic.

By 5 February, the Soviet troops had advanced more than 200 kilometers on all fronts. In the Kazan direction, a large number of vanguard troops had already broken through the Far Eastern Army's blocking on the Kazan frontal line of defense and began to advance with all their might towards the city of Kazan.

To the northwest of the city, three Soviet armored divisions had advanced to less than ten kilometers from the city, and the two infantry divisions of the Far Eastern Army stationed there, despite their stubborn resistance, were still retreating. To the southwest, four Soviet infantry divisions advanced along the south bank of the Volga River to the Verkhniy Uslon region, and once they seized this area, they could then cross the frozen Volga River and drive straight into the central and southern cities of Kazan. As for the frontal battlefield on the Western Front, the superiority of the Soviet army has not really been shown, after all, the Far Eastern Army has five infantry divisions deployed there, plus anti-tank trenches and powerful artillery positions built in advance, and the fighting is extremely cruel and fierce.

At three o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, Yegorov arrived at the Kazan front.

According to the operational plan of the Soviet high command before the war, it was very important to win the battle of Kazan, not only because Kazan was an important industrial city in the eastern part of the Eastern European Plain, but also because it was an important stronghold for the Volga River and the Urals. If this strategic stronghold of the Far Eastern Army cannot be taken, then there will be a gap in the offensive launched by the Soviet Army on all fronts, and the Far Eastern Army can use this gap to bypass the flank of the Soviet Army and threaten the safety of the Soviet Army's offensive arrows. It can be said that the Soviet army was bound to Kazan.

According to the campaign arrangements of the Far Eastern Army Command, in addition to defending the city of Kazan, the strategic focus this time is to strive to destroy all Soviet troops attacking in the direction of Kazan, that is, to the area where the Volga and Kazan rivers meet, so as to completely break the all-out offensive of the Soviet army.

At the same time, it is necessary to destroy as many Soviet troops as possible that have broken through into the Urals, weaken the war potential of the Soviet army, and create conditions for the next counteroffensive against Moscow.

Under these circumstances, a large-scale strategic concept of encircling and annihilating the enemy was formed: Using the troops in Kazan City and the Kazan area as bait to induce the Soviet army to gradually increase the number of troops attacking this area, and at the same time, to carry out assault operations in depth against the Soviet army with troops from the north and south, and finally encircle and annihilate the salient of the Soviet army in Kazan. 、

In the battle plan of the Far Eastern Army Command, Yegorov, as the commander-in-chief of the whole army, was in danger and acted as a decoy, and his courage was undoubtedly very great.

The tenacity of the troops in the Kazan region will directly determine the Soviet army's investment in this area, and in the north of Kazan, the troops led by the deputy chief of the General Staff of the Far Eastern Army, General Fedyko, at the same time launched a powerful offensive against the areas of Shkalola, Krasnogorsky, and Volzhsky, thus constituting a metro pincer offensive on the right flank of the Soviet army. To the south of Kazan, General Leonid, Chief of Operations of the General Staff of the Far Eastern Army, commanded another unit to attack from Ulyanovsk, bypass Kanash and Tsyvelsk, cut off the main railway line, and then outflank Kazan. The two offensives would eventually form an iron pincer that would hang the Soviet troops advancing in the direction of Kazan.

From this point of view, there is no doubt that the initial period of the Battle of Kazan, that is, from February to March, was the most difficult period for the troops defending Kazan due to the freezing of the Volga River. During this period, the attacking Soviet army had an absolute superiority in strength, and the Far Eastern Army could only rely on the passive defense of the city.

According to An Mingqi's understanding, when Yegorov took over the Kazan military affairs, he was able to directly mobilize only three unorganized group armies, with a total strength of less than 150,000, while in front of his battlefield he had to face more than 30 armored and infantry divisions of the Soviet Army, with a total strength of nearly 500,000.

Once these two months are over, the situation will quickly improve due to the improvement of the weather and the entry of the Air Force into the war, and then it will be up to who can grit their teeth and persevere. In a sense, this is a confrontation between the old servicemen represented by Yegorov on the Far Eastern side and the new servicemen represented by Zhukov of the Soviet Union.

At the eastern railway station of Kazan, Yegorov met with the main generals of the three armies who had come to greet him, and immediately went to the headquarters to deploy defenses, and at this point, a decisive battle in Kazan, which lasted for four months, was officially staged.

......

In Paris, on the square outside the Louvre, the five-clawed golden dragon red flag of South China, the swastika flag of Nazi Germany, the blue, white and red tricolor flags of France and the Vichy government flew high on the flagpoles.

In the conference hall of the Louvre, the Prime Minister of the Vichy government of France, Pierre Murphy. Reival, Vice Chairman of the South China Military Commission Yin Jinan, Nazi Germany Polish Governor Reinhard. Heydrich exchanged letters with each other and solemnly signed his name on documents printed in Chinese, German, and French.

There is a circle of cameras around, "crackling" and taking pictures, witnessing the birth of another historical moment.

The purpose of the ceremony presided over by the Nazi government for the return of Chinese cultural relics by Germany and France was to exaggerate the close relations between South China and the Vichy governments of Germany and France, arouse suspicion in Britain and the United States, and further strengthen the influence of the Axis powers. Originally, Hitler was going to attend the signing meeting in person, but as the negotiations with the Turkish military junta were at a critical juncture, Hitler entrusted Heydrich with full responsibility for handling the matter.

Now Heydrich is not only the deputy leader of the Nazi Party, the deputy leader of the SS, and the head of the secret police, but also concurrently serves as the governor of Poland and the commander of naval aviation.

This time, Yin Jinan led a delegation to visit Germany and held closed-door talks with Hitler at the Chancellery for several days. Although no one else knows what the content of the talks was, it is obvious that Hitler was greatly affected, and in his speeches at home and abroad in the past few days, he repeatedly emphasized good-neighborly and friendly relations with South China, saying that Nazi Germany had no intention of fighting for territory in Asia, that the national interests of South China and Germany were completely identical, that there was no possibility of confrontation or conflict, and that there were broad prospects for cooperation.

It was in this spirit that, with Hitler's consent, Heydrich packed up 300,000 Chinese cultural relics collected by major German museums and returned them to China.

These cultural relics were mainly stolen from China by the German team after the Eight-Nation Coalition captured Beijing and at the beginning of this century, in the name of archaeology. From 1902 to 1905 alone, for example, during these three years, the German expedition transported a total of 400 boxes of antiquities in the Turpan and Kuqa areas, including the never-before-discovered portrait mural of Menitz, the founder of Manichaeism, as well as many rare handwritten documents, textiles, coins, etc.

In real history, the museum that houses these artifacts was devastated by the bombing of the Second World War, and there is very little left, but now all this has been avoided in time before it happened, and all the artifacts have been transferred to the territory of Nanhua in time to be stored in strategic warehouses where the northern and central mountains of Nanhua were built.

Under duress from Nazi Germany, the Vichy government in France carried out a thorough inventory of several castles where the Louvre and the Guimet Museum were hidden, and found about 89,000 artifacts, far exceeding the pre-estimated number of more than 30,000. Spurred on by this achievement, Heydrich quickly dispatched a secret police to conduct a thorough search of museums, libraries and churches throughout France, and so far 360,000 artifacts have been seized, and new figures are being set every turn.

These cultural relics are collected in various parts of France, which were illegally looted from China during the modern colonial period. Among them, more than 30,000 pieces of Chinese cultural relics belonging to the Louvre Museum have been transferred, and the collection of painted pottery, Shang and Zhou bronzes and porcelain in the primitive society has reached more than 6,000 pieces, and tens of thousands of Chinese cultural relics transferred by its branch museum Guimet Museum account for more than half of the total number of cultural relics in the museum's collection, and 12,000 pieces of ceramics from previous dynasties, ranking first in the collection of Chinese ceramics in overseas museums.

In addition, the number of Chinese cultural relics in museums in Paris and other cities is comparable to that of the Louvre. The National Library of France has a collection of more than 10,000 Dunhuang cultural relics, including silk manuscripts from the Northern Wei Dynasty, gold manuscripts from the Sui Dynasty, silk embroidery books from the Tang Dynasty, golden books from the Tang Dynasty, Wanli engravings from the Ming Dynasty, maps of the 10,000-year period of the Qing Dynasty, and 40 poems from the Old Summer Palace. Among them, the three kinds of Tang rubbings of Dunhuang calligraphy and painting are unique and rare treasures.

Yin Jinan never expected that the Germans would be so generous, and the delegation was inexplicably surprised by the German gift package, and their favor for Nazi Germany doubled.

After the signing ceremony, the representatives of the three countries came to the conference hall to attend a news conference held there, and the three of them spoke one after another.

Heydrich declared that the war that Germany was engaged in was a just war against colonialism and hegemonism, and its purpose was to break the shackles of centuries of colonial rule, bring fairness and justice to the world, and replan the new international political order, so that the people could enjoy peace for a long time. The German-led return of South China cultural relics is an excellent proof of this.

On behalf of the Nazi Party and the German government, he urged the British and American governments to come to the negotiating table and discuss the armistice together to determine the spheres of influence of each country under the new situation.

The Prime Minister of the Vichy Government of France, Pierre. In his speech, Reival talked about the Second Opium War and the Eight-Nation Alliance's war of aggression against China, saying that relying on such means to obtain cultural relics from other countries is undoubtedly a shame for the French people who advocate freedom and democracy. On behalf of the French government, he apologized to the Chinese people and said that in the future, under the leadership of Germany, France will defend the new European and world order under German leadership.

In his third speech, Yin Jinan, in front of many reporters, spoke eloquently in Chinese: "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to the Louvre to witness this historic moment. China is an ancient civilization with a history of 7,000 years, and it is the only country whose civilization has never been interrupted since written records. In the Opium War, the British colonists used cannons to unveil the mystery of China, so in the following time, China has been frantically plundered by foreign powers, and countless cultural relics have been lost.

"I would like to talk about my feelings at this moment, yes, I am personally very grateful for the generosity of Führer Hitler and Field Marshal Petain, and it is their position of fairness and justice that has led to the appearance of today's ceremony for the return of cultural relics, and many cultural relics that have been lost abroad for many years can be returned to their roots. I think that thousands of miles away in the East, in China and in South China, hundreds of millions of people are applauding the decision of the two heads of state, and regard this move as a friendly gesture to the people of Chinese!

"I do not want to discuss the correctness of these accusations, but I will only say that if the British government considers itself righteous, why can't it follow the example of the German and French governments and return the cultural relics plundered from China?

"According to our investigation, the major museums and libraries in the United Kingdom currently have a total collection of about 1.3 million pieces of Chinese cultural relics from the past dynasties, almost all of which were illegally looted from China by the British during the period of modern colonialism. Among them, the British Museum has a collection of more than 30,000 pieces of rare national treasures such as Chinese paintings and calligraphy, ancient books, jade, pottery, porcelain, bronzes, and carvings. These artifacts cover nearly 7,000 years of Chinese history, many of which are unique pieces that have never been seen. For example, Gu Kaizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty collected treasures for the court of the past dynasties, the Tang Dynasty facsimile of Gu Kaizhi's "Female History Atlas", the "Green Landscape Map" of Li Sixun, the son of Li Xiaobin of the early Tang Dynasty, the "Green Landscape Map" of the general Zuo Wuwei of Li Xiaobin, the "Dense Forest Stacking Map" of Ju Ran, a representative of the Jiangnan School of Painting in the early Song Dynasty, the "Visiting Friends with the Qin" of Fan Kuan, one of the three great masters of the Northern Song Dynasty, the "Huayan Disguised Picture" of Li Gonglin, an Anhui native who is known as the Longmian Layman, and the "Ink and Bamboo Picture" of Su Shi, a great writer of the Song Dynasty. In addition, there are Shang Dynasty bronze double sheep statue, Western Zhou Dynasty Kanghou bronze Gui, Xinghou Gui, Dunhuang murals, Han Dynasty jade carving dragon, Tang Dynasty topaz sitting dog, etc., these have also become the treasure of the museum.

"Isn't it the act of hooligans and robbers for a country that takes pride in exhibiting what it has looted in public and taking pride in it? Here, I urge the British government to respond positively to my doubts today and show its innocence with concrete actions.

"Finally, I would like to thank once again the German and French governments for their decision. There is a saying in China that the grace of a drop of water should be reciprocated by a spring, and we will actively respond to the righteous deeds of the two countries, actively adjust our national policies, and make our own contributions to the construction of a new international political order! ”

Yin Jinan's speech triggered an exaggeration.

American reporter James was the first to ask: "General Yin Jinan, we know that your country has just rescued 50,000 American and Philippine troops on Luzon Island in the Philippines, and has won the respect of our American people. But does the fact that today you have expressed great affection for Germany mean that you will abandon your friendship with the United States and join the Axis powers? ”

Yin Jinan had been prepared for a long time and replied without thinking:

"I'm just talking about the facts, and I'm not involved in specific national decision-making. However, I believe that people's hearts are flesh and blood, and if some countries do not correct their attitudes and still show some hostility towards the Chinese people, our South China government will not rule out choosing its own allies. ”

Irish journalist Cameron stood up and asked:

"General Yin Jinan, as far as we know, has more than 1,000 large and small museums, a total collection of nearly 4 million pieces of Chinese cultural relics, the vast majority of which were taken out of the country by the invaders in modern times by looting, smuggling, etc., only the Tokyo National Museum has a collection of more than 90,000 pieces of Chinese cultural relics and treasures, including countless treasures and unique pieces, far more than ordinary museums in China, such as the famous painter Ma Yuan of the Southern Song Dynasty, "Hanjiang Solo Fishing Map", which is still detained; In addition, Wang Xizhi's "Sister to Post", "Dingwu Lanting Preface", "Seventeen Posts", "Jiwang Shengjiao Preface", as well as the "Li Baiqi Manuscript" of the Qianliang era, which are stored in different museums, are also rare cultural relics. Why do you only target the United Kingdom and turn a blind eye to the atrocities of ***? ”

Yin Jinan laughed: "This reporter should be remembered by the British media, right?" For example, so far, the United States, Germany, and Italy have not declared war on each other, and we and *** have been in a state of war since the 918 incident, and they did not officially declare war with *** until the beginning of this month. Here I emphasize one point, even if we are friendly with Germany in the future, but we will still be in a state of war with ***, there is no possibility of reconciliation with each other, *** government and private collection of cultural relics, we will naturally come to the door to request, when the time comes, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and other places of cultural relics, will be returned to the mother country, we don't have to fake other countries at all, so there is no need to mention it separately! ”

After listening to Yin Jinan's words, some reporters who were biased towards the allies were a little relieved, but several *** reporters in the audience were so angry that their faces were flushed. One of the journalists, Masuda Maruzo, asked Heydrich loudly without permission:

"Your Excellency the Deputy Führer, the tri-national axis of Germany, Italy and Japan is sacrosanct, and our great *** empire will never allow a country hostile to the empire to join this axis! At present, the Imperial Team has swept the Pacific Ocean, and it won't be long before the entire Pacific Ocean will become an inland sea of the Great Empire. At such a critical time, what is the purpose of your country to make friends with the enemies of the Great *** Empire? ”

Heydrich frowned and replied with a sneer: "Is the decision of the German Empire child's play?" As the deputy Führer, I am responsible for the future of the Germanic peoples, not for such a small role as you! If you have any questions, you can react through your country's diplomatic department, instead of making a big fuss here! ”

Speaking of this, Heydrich waved his hand: "Come on, I suspect that these *** reporters are spies sent by the British, arrest them, and interrogate them severely." ”

The faces of several *** reporters changed, and then they remembered the identity of the head of Heydrich's secret police, and hurriedly shouted that they were *** embassy staff with diplomatic immunity, but the wolf-like Gestapo had already swarmed up and dragged these little devils down.

With this episode, the reporters' questions converged a lot, and it didn't take long for the press conference to end hastily, and soon the rumors that South China might join the Axis powers spread to Britain and the United States, causing a huge shock.