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Chapter 1571 Westward Expansion Strategy

As the Far Eastern Army was mostly concentrated between the Poshet Plain and Vladivostok and Boli, the defense in the north was not stable, and with the rapid westward advance of the Japanese army from the Soviet port, the loss of Komsomolsk was only a matter of time. At the same time www.biquge.info with the successful parachute landing of the Japanese army, there was a major mistake in the Far Eastern Army's defense line in the north of the country, and the prospect of Sakhalin Island was extremely bleak under the tactics of the Japanese army's center blossoming and the north and south attacking.

On the first day of the war, they suffered such a series of major blows, and the top leaders of the Far Eastern Republic were so nervous that they were out of breath, especially Marshal Egorov, chief of the General Staff of the Far Eastern Army, General Fediko, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Far Eastern Army, General Leonid, chief of operations of the General Staff of the Far Eastern Army, and General Smirnov, the chief of the General Political Commissar of the Far Eastern Army, were facing unprecedented pressure and accusations.

At nine o'clock the next morning, an emergency meeting was held in Svidlovsk (present-day Yekaterinburg), a high-ranking member of the Far Eastern Republic, to discuss the response of the Far Eastern government and army in the event that Japan took the initiative to provoke a war, focusing on how to coordinate the eastern and western fronts of the more than 3 million Far Eastern Army after the expansion.

Marshal Blyukher, People's Commissar of the Military of the Far Eastern Republic and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Navy and Air Force, who presided over the meeting, had a grim face:

"Comrades, the situation is even more serious than we thought. Due to the successful landing of the Japanese army in the port of Soviets, Komsomolsk was directly under the attack of the Japanese army. As everyone knows, since we received information that Stalin had promised a huge profit and colluded with Japan that the Japanese army might suddenly invade our coastal areas, we have organized the relocation of factories and enterprises in the region to Mongolia, but so far less than one-third of the enterprises have been relocated. Previously, most comrades believed that after Japan gained vast territory in Southeast Asia, it was unlikely that it would extend its hand to our Far East, after all, the harsh climatic conditions here had brought an indelible impression to the Japanese army during the civil war, and this was the main reason for Japan's withdrawal from the Far East in 22.

"However, war inevitably broke out, and the cunning enemy, instead of deploying troops according to our strategic deployment, turned the finger at us in the back. I have ordered the commander of the Red Banner Army, General Gay, to send three divisions stationed in Boli to rush north, block the passes of the Khotalin Mountains, and buy enough time for the strategic general retreat of Komsomolsk and the cities of Decastry, Fiskoye, Ratsarev, and Nikolaevsk (Temple Street) in the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River.

"As far as I know, the guards and workers' pickets in the cities of Hutu, Tumnin and Gurskoye along the railway line to Komsomolsk have begun to tear down the railways one by one, laying mines on the railway beds and on the main highways, thus slowing down the westward advance of the Japanese army.

"Comrades, the management wisdom told me not to panic, but I am still a little helpless, and here I have a question: what to do with the garrison on Sakhalin (Sakhalin)? We have two divisions near the dividing line between the north and the south, plus the alert troops in the cities of North Kazakhstan, there are almost 40,000 men, and they are now facing the danger of being completely annihilated, but with the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy moving north, the Tatar Strait and the Nevelyek Strait have been blocked by the Japanese army, and our Second Fleet, which was deployed on Temple Street, had no choice but to set off again at midnight last night and move to Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula. ”

There was silence in the room, and the air was so tense that it was almost breathless.

The Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Far Eastern Army, General Fediko, broke the silence and said in an extremely heavy tone: "I served as the commander of the Sakhalin garrison, and I am very familiar with everything on Sakhalin. The disconnection of the sea route, coupled with the absolute air superiority of the Japanese naval and land air forces in the Sakhalin region, practically had no hope of withdrawing the troops on the island. But rest assured, the commanders of the two infantry divisions stationed in Sakhalin were my old subordinates, and when I was the deputy deputy commander of the Red Banner Special Army, they were battalion commanders, and later I was the commander of the coastal cluster, and they were promoted to regiment commanders, and now they are already division commanders. I know their temperament very well, and I believe that they will be able to stick to their ideals and fight to the end. ”

Everyone knew what Fedico meant. The strength of the Second Pacific Fleet was weak, and the First Fleet was blocked in the Amur Bay, so it was impossible to organize ships to rush to transport, and in addition, it was impossible for the air force's transport planes to take off and land under the fire of the Japanese air force, so it was inevitable to give up. However, no one put the words through, and it was enough to say this, and everyone's mood was generally heavy.

Lyuschenkov, Chairman of the Far Eastern High Soviet and General Secretary of the Central Committee, coughed lightly, waited for everyone's attention to be focused on himself, and then said:

"Now we have to think about the way out of the front-line troops in Vladivostok. Previously, our intention was to ensure the absolute security of the Amur Bay and the port of Vladivostok in cooperation with the naval fleet in cooperation with the fortresses and fortresses around the coast, and to try to kill and injure the Japanese troops in as many places as possible and force the Japanese to return to the negotiating table. However, now the Japanese avoided our advance and chose to break through from the Soviet port, which frustrated our strategic intention of a decisive battle with the Japanese in the area around Vladivostok.

"The Japanese army will advance along the railway to Komsomolsk, and the forces in the surrounding areas will inevitably be concentrated in the area of the Sikhot-Alin Mountains to prevent the westward advance of the Japanese army, so that the Nikolaevsk (Temple Street), Chumikan and Shantar Islands will be exposed to the attack of the Japanese fleet, and the Japanese army can land in the above areas at any time and at any time. At the same time, the Japanese paratroopers were put into operation, so that the large rear areas that we considered safe, Khabarovsk (Boli) and the heartland cities of Jambirobi and Oblucci, were also in danger of being attacked by the Japanese army, and the entire northern front was actually opened.

"In this case, the question of whether we will fight firmly in the area around Vladivostok or decisively withdraw to Boli is worth discussing. In addition, if the land war is lost, the arrangement of naval warships is also a big problem. ”

Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee and People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and Propaganda Bukharin:

"The warships are good to say, at present, the main force of the Japanese Navy's combined fleet has gone north, and it is expected that it is the small fleet of the Japanese army that will block Great Peter Bay, and we can choose to break through. Isn't the Republic of South China, our ally, short of naval warships? We dare not guarantee surface ships, but the huge submarine fleet should be able to dive out of the Sea of Japan, and we can sell them all to South China in exchange for strategic material resources. ”

Everyone looked at each other, but they didn't expect Bukharin's to be so crisp.

Chairman of the People's Commissariat Rykov asked with some hesitation: "Is this okay?" After all, the Pacific Fleet of the Navy is the brainchild of the Soviets for many years, and will this attract an attack from Moscow? If they broadcast it on the radio and in the newspapers, we will be discredited! ”

Bukharin waved his hand disapprovingly: "Don't be afraid, the Japanese were originally seduced by Moscow, and we have nothing to blame for doing so." We can also announce to the outside world that due to the surprise attack of the Japanese Navy, our Pacific Fleet was caught off guard and completely annihilated, and it is enough to put the responsibility on the Japanese. The Japanese Navy has the third largest fleet in the world, and it is normal for us to fail, but it is unbelievable to say that the main forces of the Japanese Navy attacked the port of Vladivostok and we lost nothing. In addition, the officers and men of the navy have feelings for their ships, and now we do not need the navy, so we simply give the men and ships to South China, which can be regarded as reserving a little of the seeds of the navy for the Soviets, otherwise we will be trapped in the port of Vladivostok, and sooner or later it will be a 'death'.

"In my opinion, the focus of the contradiction is not on the navy, but on whether it is necessary to continue to deploy heavy troops around Vladivostok, because the entire coastal defense line has fallen into great passivity strategically due to the sudden change of tactics of the Japanese, if we do not come up with a plan quickly, the ten armies deployed in the area around Vladivostok, including one tank army and two cavalry corps, will fall into the encirclement of the Japanese army. However, if this powerful strategic mobile force is withdrawn to Khabarovsk, it will be a good choice for us to rely on the main line of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which can be attacked, retreated, and defended. ”

There was a lot of discussion in the conference room, and many officials and generals exchanged views and exchanged views, but they all agreed that the gap between the Pacific Fleet and the Japanese Navy was too obvious, and it was better to let them break through the siege and seek a way out of the siege than to stay in the harbor and cheapen the Japanese for nothing. As for the supply and supply of thousands of miles to the south, it is not taken into account.

Seeing that everyone was unanimous, Blyukhel asked the clerk to record the resolution and immediately send someone to the South China side, whether he was interested in purchasing the warships of the Pacific Fleet? Worried about the mood of the commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Viktrov, and the commissar of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Kireyev, Blyukhel sent another telegram to the two and asked to rush to Svidlovsk to attend the military-political meeting.

At this time, the Minister of Soviet Economy, General Hulin, stood up anxiously:

"Comrades, there is a question that we must face up to seriously. Previously, all of our oil supplies came from Sakhalin, but now that the fighting in Sakhalin has fallen into an extremely unfavorable situation, the interruption of oil supplies will be inevitable, and the direct consequence will be that the oil stocks will become less and less until they are exhausted, and then our huge mechanized troops will become fixed batteries. Of the areas under our current control, only the Ishimbay region in the Ural Mountains has oil fields, but this oil field with an annual output of 200,000 tons of oil will be under attack by Moscow at any time. We have to solve this problem quickly, otherwise it will be difficult for the war to continue. ”

The expressions of the crowd were grim and relatively speechless.

Marshal Yegorov, Chief of the General Staff of the Far Eastern Army, finally could not sit still, stood up and took the initiative to admit his mistake: "I'm sorry, comrades, it was a mistake in the operational plan of our General Staff that led to the emergence of the current set of problems, for which I am willing to take all responsibility. ”

"Sit down, don't take any responsibility on yourself!"

Blyukhel glared at Egorov: "Who said you are responsible?" Whoever makes the plan is the same, our forces in the Far East are limited, and we can't take care of the tail, and we can't take care of the tail. Sakhalin Island is separated from the mainland by a strait, and once the Japanese army blockades it, no one can do anything about them!

Speaking of this, Blyukhel hesitated a little, thought about it and said: "Comrades, I have a not very mature idea, if it succeeds, it will reverse the current unfavorable situation in one fell swoop, but if it fails, we will lose very badly"

Seeing Blyukher's stumbling appearance, Radek, chairman of the Comintern in the Far East, frowned: "Say what you want!" At this critical juncture, if there is any way to put it forward, everyone will help the staff and staff, implement the good ones, and abandon the bad ones, and there will be no less meat! ”

Blyukhel said: "That's the case, I pondered that instead of putting a large number of troops in the Far East and fighting with the Japanese army, it is better to shrink the defensive line and retreat strategically, think about it, there are 800,000 troops in the Far East, we can shrink the defensive line to the Baikal line, destroy all the railways and highways, and leave 200,000 troops in that mountainous and forest area to block the operation, the Japanese army will gradually lose its vigor because of the long battle line and the difficulty of supply, and the pressure on our troops will be much less, and we will have 600,000 more fresh troops on hand at once."

"We have 1.2 million troops in Central Asia, and now that the battle situation is basically clear, we can safely hand it over to our allies, the South China Army, who will clean up the mess, and this part of the mechanized army will be our powerful strategic decisive force after shrinking. In addition, we have 1.5 million troops on the Urals front, so that we can use more than 3.3 million troops.

"Under the influence of the Great Purge, the army controlled by Moscow has been inactive for more than a year, and the level of officers at all levels is uneven, and we admit that there are some genius generals among them, who have been promoted and reused to occupy high positions, which has greatly stimulated the vitality of the troops under their leadership, and made the troops full of vitality, but many of the commanders are people who have nothing to do, and the troops led by these people are confused in guiding ideology, and their thinking and training are in a mess. For example, the more than 3 million troops on the front line of the Urals who were put on the offensive were not strong in combat effectiveness, and they attacked our army's defense line for more than 20 days with twice the strength of our army, and did not advance an inch of land.

"Just now Comrade Hulin said that with the blockade of the strait, our oil supply will face the dilemma of cutting off, but comrades, it is not that there is no oil, and the line from the Urals to the Volga River that we are fighting on is the second largest oil-producing area in the Soviet Union, and this area has large oil wells such as Romashkino, Orenburg, and Duymaz, with an annual output of 8 million tons of oil, which is much stronger than Sakhalin.

"My opinion is to go west at all costs, all the way to Moscow, anyway, if the situation is bad, it is just a death, all of us here have experienced the test of the Great Purge, I believe that life and death have long been put aside, why don't we fight? What if you were lucky enough to take Moscow and force Stalin to surrender? At that time, we will concentrate the strength of the whole Soviet Union, and it will be easy to expel the Japanese, even in Central Asia, we can get it back from South China through negotiations, although An Yi is a student of me and Liushenkov and Hulin Whampoa, but in the face of the general interests of the country and the nation, there is no room for the slightest affection. ”

When everyone heard Blyukhel's proposal, there was a lot of discussion, and the conference room once again resounded with the sound of "buzzing" discussions.

Yegorov's eyes lit up, pondered carefully, and stood up again: "I support the opinion of Comrade Blyukher. Since Moscow can openly lure the wolf into the house and want us to be caught in the embarrassing situation of fighting on both the eastern and western fronts, why can't we take the initiative to choose to give up? I don't know if you have read the military textbooks of the Nanhua Syrian Non-commissioned Officer School, but I borrowed it from Comrade Lyuschenkov and read it, and one of the sentences in "Tactics" left a deep impression on me: If you lose land, you will save people, and if you lose people, you will lose people, and if you lose people, you will lose people. This well illustrates the importance of mobile warfare and shows that it is extremely irrational for the enemy to stubbornly defend and fight a war of attrition with superior forces. Under the current situation in which the Japanese army has all-round superiority in the sea, land, and air, it is the best policy for the Far East to appropriately abandon and lengthen the front line to eliminate the enemy's superiority, preserve its vital forces, and wait for an opportunity to destroy the enemy.

"Comrade Blyukher's proposal that we take advantage of the situation to attack Moscow is a stroke of genius. What are we missing? Petroleum! Where is the oil? The line from the Urals to the Volga, where we are now the main battlefield, the 700,000 square kilometers of underground are all oil. If there is oil, and we need it, why not take the initiative to go for it? Siberia, which we occupy today, has a complete oil refining industrial system, and after getting oil, it can be immediately converted into the fuel we need, and only then can our tanks, planes, trucks, and the cars in which our comrades ride have the motivation and the guarantee of victory in the battle; otherwise, the battle will only become more and more difficult, and the more we fight, the more we lose confidence, and it will be a matter of time before it collapses. ”

The Chief of Operations, General Leonid, was extremely excited: "That's right, to the west, to the west!" If Stalin does not give up the fight for a day, we will fight all the way to Leningrad, to the Baltic coast. Previously, we all entered a misunderstanding in our thinking, believing that Moscow has absolute superiority in manpower and material resources, and we can only take a defensive position, and we have not realized at all that it is impossible to prevent it by simply defending, and only by unswervingly fighting out, hurting the enemy, and disrupting the enemy's strategic deployment can we fundamentally reverse our fate.

"Our Far East has always insisted on modernizing the army and expanding our armored forces, and we have not fallen behind in training for a single day, while the army on the Moscow side has experienced confusion in thinking and understanding, and so far the establishment of the tank army has not been restored, and the current balance of forces is not that we are at a disadvantage, but our opponent!"

The General Political Commissar of the Far Eastern Army, General Smirnov, who had been in battle for a long time, also made a timely statement:

"Fundamentally, we are of the same ethnicity and belief as the Muscovites, and it is easier for us to gain the approval of the Soviet population. Our political department sent people to follow the South China side to implement land reform in Central Asia, and the joy of the people there after obtaining the land left a deep impression on our cadres. Although agricultural collectivization can greatly stimulate industrial development, it is too cruel for the peasantry, and if we want to gain power, we must grasp the fundamental thing - the people's will, and agrarian reform will be the key to helping us win the people's heart. ”

"That's right, it's the land!"

As soon as he heard that there was an opportunity to enter Moscow, Bukharin also came to his senses and exclaimed: "We can use our planes to spread all over the Eastern European Plain the document made by Comrade Lenin in 1918 on the equal distribution of land among all the Soviet peasants, promising that once we get rid of Stalin and his lackeys, we will carry out Comrade Lenin's decision, so that we can draw the broad masses of peasants to our side." As for the workers, we can raise wages and increase the supply of goods in the market, so that our people can truly enjoy the benefits of socialism.

"With a military victory and a follow-up of propaganda, we will be able to deploy a small number of troops in the liberated areas, with little or no troops, concentrate all our troops, and force Moscow with all our might! When Moscow is taken, we will take the absolute initiative, and then the Stalinist regime will definitely collapse, and all the difficulties will be solved! ”

The conference room was lively, and everyone was talking about their opinions. Originally, everyone was pessimistic about the battle on both the eastern and western fronts, believing that the fall of the Far Eastern Republic was only a matter of time, but now that we look at the problem beyond the constraints of our homeland, many problems that have been plagued for a long time have suddenly taken a turn for the better and have been solved.

With the population of the present Far Eastern Republic, even if it were all concentrated in the Siberian Plain, it can still be described as vast and sparsely populated, and such a concentration can make the troops wasted on defending the long border integrate into a huge fist and slam it outward. Moscow seems to be powerful, can mobilize and build tens of millions of troops, but they need a long border deployment of troops, the Soviet Union most of the territory inherited from Imperial Russia, and the territory of Imperial Russia, almost all of them through the skilful seizure of neighboring countries, once the Baltic Coastal Military District, the Belarusian Military District, the Carpathian Military District, and the Odessa Military District troops, the emptiness of the border defense will inevitably attract the surrounding countries to encroach on it, and may even cause Germany to covet it. Once Germany took advantage of the chaos to launch an attack from the Western Front, it would be really over, so in any case, Stalin did not dare to move the forces of the Western Front, so that the Soviet Union could only organize four or five million troops to the Western Front.

In a contest of group army group scale, as long as the difference in numbers between the two sides is not too great, the overall quality of the troops will determine the outcome of the battle; after all, the number of those who are close to each other and directly face to face is about the same; if the training level of one side is too poor, it will collapse and waver in a short time, and it will inevitably lead to a rout of the overall situation, while the victorious side will be like a rainbow and take advantage of the situation to pursue, and the result will be self-evident.

At present, the Far Eastern Army has a huge advantage, that is, they do not need to be distracted at all to grab territory; because almost all of the top leaders in the Far East are revolutionaries of the older generation who know the Soviet people well, and many of them are still prominent figures who have spoken at many national congresses as the main leaders of the country, and the Soviet party newspaper "Pravda," the government's "Izvestia," the army's "Red Star," the "Labor Daily" of the General Labor Union, and so on. The Far Eastern Army only had to march on Moscow with one heart. As long as he could reach Moscow, Stalin would inevitably be overthrown because of a series of major mistakes made during his tenure as the country's leader, so from this point of view, the future of the Far Eastern Army was still very bright.

Lyuschenkov hesitated a little: "Then the industrial facilities transferred from Vladivostok, Komsomolsk, Khabarovsk, etc., will be relocated to Siberia, right?" ”

"It's a no-brainer!"

Pidakov, chairman of the Far Eastern High Economic Committee, took over the conversation: "In the future, the war between us and Japan will start in the area around Lake Belga, the main railway line from Mongolia to Siberia will be demolished, our production base will be located in Mongolia, and we will face major problems in the transportation of materials. In addition, the industrial base of the Western Siberian region is good, and during the First and Second Five-Year Plan periods, in order to change the problem of uneven industrial development in the whole Soviet Union, the High Soviet carried out a key development of the Western Siberian region, and a large number of military and heavy industrial bases were settled in Svidlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Siberia, Barnaul, Omsk, Tyumen, Kemerovo and other cities, from airplanes and artillery to tanks, armored vehicles, trucks, all can be manufactured, if you add the enterprises relocated from the Far East, There will be no problems with the replenishment of our armaments, and the time to equip the troops will also be significantly reduced due to the proximity of production and replenishment. ”

Later, many officials and generals spoke, and Lyuschenkov always felt that something was wrong when he heard it, but when he saw that everyone was in high spirits, he did not think about it.

After the meeting, it was resolved:

The armies of the Far Eastern Republics, located in Central Asia, will be transferred north in the coming week; In the Far East, troops assembled in the Vladivostok region will be transported to Western Siberia in a planned manner, but it must be ensured that the Vladivostok defense line will not collapse within half a month, and the troops that will be withdrawn after that will be left in Eastern Siberia to undertake combat missions on the Eastern Front; In the Komsomolsk direction, the troops had to make every effort to block the westward advance of the Japanese army and gain valuable time for the transfer of factories, enterprises and people.