Lieutenant General Naosaburo Okabe had a very nourishing day today.

Terauchi Shouichi left, and the base camp did not explicitly dismiss Terauchi Shouichi from his post as commander of the North China Front, so naturally no new commander would be dispatched, and this huge stall in North China was temporarily taken care of by Lieutenant General Naosaburo Gangbu, chief of staff.

Now, Naosaburo Gangbe's words are better. As soon as Terauchi Shouichi's plane flew into the blue sky, Naosaburo Okabe began to give orders at the airport, and sent several telegrams to Tada Jun, King Tsukihiko of Higashijueriya, and the commanders of each division, strictly ordering all units to march quickly and to completely annihilate the main force of the Eighth Route Army.

After returning to the headquarters of the front army, Naosaburo Gangbu met with Wang Kemin and Qi Kuiyuan, and demanded that the puppet provisional political axe of the Republic of China earnestly perform its duties, cooperate with the imperial army to speed up the pace of building political power and local security teams at all levels, and raise more military rations to ensure the needs of the front. At the same time, it is necessary to mobilize businessmen to deposit money in banks and support the construction of the financial system in North China. It is necessary to develop more trade with the Great Empire, Manchuria, and Korea, so that the Pingjin and Qingdao regions can prosper as soon as possible.

In the end, Gangbu Naosaburo asked Qi Kuiyuan to quickly expand the scale of the North China Public Security Army and assist the Imperial Army in maintaining law and order in North China.

After all this, Naosaburo Gangbe called Kinoshita Toshi, commander of the North China Aviation Group, and asked him to report to the base camp again and request that the losses at Jinan Airport be quickly replenished.

Kinoshita Toshiki was cleaned up by Shouichi Terauchi last time, and in addition to breaking twenty gold bars, he also took a few female soldiers. Finally, Terauchi Shouyi left, but Naosaburo Okabe began to point fingers at him again, where can this work?

Kinoshita Toshitoshi stiffened his neck, put his feet together, saluted Naosaburo Gangbe, and then said unceremoniously: "Your Excellency Chief of Staff: The matter of requesting additional aviation troops from the base camp should be raised again by the Front Command. If the airline group makes a request, it will not have a big impact and it will be difficult to get a satisfactory response. ”

Gangbu Naosaburo knew that it was impossible for him to really serve as the commander of the North China Front Army with his qualifications, and he was only temporarily acting as the commander at present, so he could scare Wang Kemin and Qi Kuiyuan, and if he wanted to really command the senior generals of the army, he was afraid that it could only be something that could only be done in his sleep. However, now is the time of the Great War, and there is no room for sloppiness, in case Kinoshita Toshi can't be suppressed, once it spreads, it will affect his authority and affect the command of the battle situation. So, Naosaburo Okabe smiled gloomily, took out a stack of papers, fell on Lieutenant General Kinoshita's face, and said coldly: "Kinoshita-kun, look at your achievements." If you don't do what I say, you'll wait to be court-martialed! ”

Kinoshita picked up the paper and looked at it, only to see that it was full of dense characters, completely recording the losses in every battle since he became the commander of the North China Group, which was simply shocking.

Kinoshita Min wiped the sweat from his face, thought about it, and still held his head high and defended: "Gangbe-kun, I know all these records you gave me, but this is a battle loss, and many losses are caused by poor infantry protection and slow reinforcements, and the base camp is also clear, and the loss of Jinan Airport is very telling." I don't know what Gangbe-kun is trying to illustrate by asking me to look at these numbers? ”

Seeing Kinoshita's hard mouth, Okabe Naosaburo still smiled gloomily, and after laughing, he said coldly: "It shows that you are the most incompetent aviation commander in the history of this army!" Your predecessor once apologized for his crimes, and now you have lost so many fighters and pilots through your hands, you say, if this number is published, what will the people of this empire think of you? ”

As soon as he heard that he had committed suicide by disembowelment, Kinoshita Minden softened, and the unruliness on his face changed to the color of gray stampede, and he muttered in a low voice: "Your Excellency Chief of Staff, it's not that I don't want to report to the base camp again, the problem is that my report can't attract their attention." ”

Seeing that Kinoshita Toshitoshi had softened, it was not difficult for him, so he walked over and patted him on the shoulder, and said softly: "Kinoshita-kun, you also know that His Excellency the Commander has visited Germany, and I am also entrusted to temporarily take charge of the military command in North China. At this time, if I am asked to come forward to negotiate this kind of thing with the base camp, it is easy to have unnecessary misunderstandings. However, we will continue to strengthen our air force in the war in North China, otherwise, once the air force of the Kwantung Army and the air force of the Central China Front Army are withdrawn, our campaign to eliminate Liu Yimin's instructor will be affected. So, I'll give you an idea. You report to the base camp for a quick replenishment, and then you go to see the commander of the Second Army, Lieutenant General Tsukihiko of Higashijuer, who is the uncle of Empress Ryoko and the nephew of His Excellency the Chief of the General Staff. I think he will help you intercede with His Excellency the Chief of the General Staff and His Majesty the Emperor. ”

Kinoshita Min felt a chill in his heart, and he wanted to take a roundabout route by himself, and this kind of method would simply damage the dignity of the Emperor [***]! But on second thought, this is really a solution, at least it is worth trying. So, Kinoshita Min thanked Lieutenant General Naosaburo Gangbe, and the two old devils got together and conspired for a long time, and Kinoshita Min left happily.

After dealing with all this, Naosaburo Gangbe got in the car and went around Beiping Street again, put on civilian clothes at night, took the guards to the streets of Beiping to eat a snack, and went to the teahouse to drink tea and listen to music. Tossed until ten o'clock in the evening, then Shi Shiran returned to the headquarters, and asked people to find the courtesan brought back from Tianjin by Shouichi Terauchi, and went to bed to get over the addiction of the commander of the North China Front.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and the staff officer on duty still pulled Naosaburo Gangbu up from his sleep and reported that Lianyungang had been attacked.

When Gangbe Naosaburo heard the report, it was like five thunderbolts, and he couldn't care about the longing courtesans on the bed anymore, so he stumbled to the war room, opened the map and looked at it carefully for a while, and immediately understood that there was a big problem in Lianyungang.

By the time the telegram from the commander of the 116th Division, Kishige Shimizu, requesting instructions on the operational strategy, Naosaburo Gangbe, Jun Tada, and Lieutenant General Tsukihiko of Higashikuernomiya had already exchanged views with each other, and it was basically determined that it was the main force of the Eighth Route Army instructor who was attacking Lianyungang.

To say that this Gangbu Naosaburo, Tada Jun, and Dongjiuer Palace Tsugahiko King are really not stupid people, they can so quickly determine that it is the main force of the instructor who attacked Lianyungang, mainly because Liu Yimin likes to attack the supply base of the Yue army the most, and Tianjin and Qingdao are all like this. At the same time, several people were also senior generals of the Yue army, and as soon as Lianyungang was attacked, they immediately realized that they had been deceived, and Liu Yimin fought in Luzhong and Ludong, the purpose of which was to mobilize the southern line group to go north, so as to create conditions for him to capture Lianyungang.

Gangbe Naosaburo is so ashamed that he wants to find a crack in the ground to get into, he and Terauchi Shou have mobilized such a huge force, and they have also thought about driving Liu Yiming out of Shandong, but why didn't he think that Liu Yimin would hide the main force and attack Lianyungang? It's too late to say anything now, the Combined Fleet is in the sea near Qingdao, and the Fourth Fleet of the Chinese fleet is near the mouth of the Yellow River, and no one can save Lianyungang. The large amount of ammunition and baggage hoarded in Lianyungang now became the Eighth Route Army. If this continues to be fought, won't the Imperial Army become the transport team of the Eighth Route Army?

The top priority is to quickly consider what Liu Yimin will do next!

Okabe Naosaburo looked at the map again and again, and the more he looked at it, the more he felt that the remaining troops of the 116th Division would soon become the meat in the mouth of the Eighth Route Army. The more I look at it, the more I feel that Xuzhou is dangerous! Now we must ensure the safety of Xuzhou, if Xuzhou is lost, then the face of the imperial army will be lost!

Gangbu Naosaburo reported to the base camp the news of the attack on Lianyungang and the shattering of the 119th Brigade as quickly as possible, and then asked the base camp to authorize the 130th Brigade of the 116th Division to quickly withdraw to Xuzhou, assist the 10th and 6th Divisions to hold Xuzhou, and wait for the heavy army group in Jiaodong to go south for reinforcements.

Although it was the middle of the night, the army's advanced means of communication helped Naosaburo Gangbe, and the culprits of the invasion of China in the base camp were all awakened in their sleep, and even Terauchi Shouichi, who had just arrived in Tokyo, and Nishio Shouzo and Kazuki Kiyoshi, who had stepped down from the North China Front, were also called to the staff headquarters. After a group of extremely shocked old devils circulated the telegram of Naosaburo Gangbe, they asked Terauchi Shouichi to report in detail on the situation of the Eighth Route Army Instructor, and the leaders of the base camp realized that the Eighth Route Army Instructor was no longer a division, but a well-equipped strategic group with 100,000 troops.

After several culprits of the invasion of China understood the strength of the instructor, they all thought that Gangbu Naosaburo's judgment was reasonable, and since Liu Yimin's troops were so strong, it was very likely to take advantage of the situation to attack the 130th Brigade, or even attack Xuzhou in the west, and then attack the 27th and 39th Divisions in eastern Henan, or they could also go directly south and threaten Shanghai and Nanjing. It is necessary to order Shimizu to quickly withdraw the 130th Brigade to Xuzhou, assist the 10th and 6th Divisions to jointly hold Xuzhou, and together with the troops in eastern Henan, form a heavy army group and wait for reinforcements.

The old devil of Prince Zairen of Xianyuan Palace now knows that he has always underestimated the strength of the Eighth Route Army Instructor in the past, and has been led by Liu Yimin. After all, he has been in battle for a long time, and he understands that no matter what, he can't let the instructor capture Xuzhou and completely eliminate the 116th Division and the 106th Division, in that case, not to mention Shandong, even Jiangsu and Anhui may appear as the base of the Eighth Route Army. With [***], the Eighth Route Army is good at demagogizing the people and rapidly increasing its strength, and it is bound to be big in the future. Since the Jiaodong Eighth Route Army is Liu Yimin's luring army, it can be temporarily ignored now and blockaded and besieged with a part of the force. The rest of the main forces should quickly turn around and move south, first consolidate the Xuzhou defense line, recapture Lianyungang, and then seek and annihilate the main force of the Eighth Route Army in the Huanghuai Plain.

Terauchi Shouichi already regretted it very much at this time, and mainly regretted that he should not have engaged in a three-way siege in the first place and let Tada Jun's southern line group go north. If the Tatian Junnan Line Group relied on the Xuzhou Defense Line and the Jinpu Road Defense Line to carry out repeated crackdowns on Lunan and Shandongnan, the main force of Liu Yimin's troops would be exposed, and it would be too late to say anything. However, this old devil proposed that since Liu Yiming had arrived near Xuzhou, he should be completely driven to the Huanghuai Plain to consolidate the situation in North China in an all-round way. In this way, as long as the Central China Front Army is further strengthened and the Yangtze River defense line is firmly defended, the two major front armies can be flanked by the north and south. It is better to drive Liu Yimin's troops to Anhui and Henan, which are occupied by Chiang Kai-shek's troops, and give a little time, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party will inevitably fight over a series of issues such as soldiers, food, and political power, and internal strife will break out, breaking the current situation in which the Kuomintang and the Communist Party join hands and echo each other.

Shanshanyuan also put forward his own idea, that is, once the situation in Shandong is stable, Liu Yimin's troops can be ignored and let them toss in northern Jiangsu. Concentrate the main forces to quickly launch the Battle of Wuhan, capture the current military, political, and cultural center of China's political axe, completely defeat Chiang Kai-shek's main force, force Chiang Kai-shek's national political axe to surrender, or set up another regime with a national surname, completely disrupt China's political situation, and form a situation in which Chiang's political axe, [***] political axe, and pro-political axe coexist. In this way, Chiang Kai-shek's political axe will be reduced to a local political axe, and neither the Kuomintang nor [***] will have the ability to rule the whole country, so that the Chinese do not know who to listen to. In this way, the main forces of the imperial army concentrated their forces on striking Chiang Kai-shek's troops, lured down a number of political axe troops, armed them, and acted as the imperial army, allowing the Chinese to fight the Chinese, and the imperial army could free up its hands to carry out various defeats against the Eighth Route Army. In the end, it is necessary to form a situation in which the Imperial Army, the Imperial Allied Army, and the Kuomintang Army all attack the Eighth Route Army, and completely eliminate the [***] and Eighth Route Army.

Shanshanyuan, this old guy usually wilts, but this strategic concept put forward is extremely poisonous, Prince Zaihito of the Idle Yuan and Shouichi Terauchi both applauded again and again, thinking that it should be used as the guiding ideology for future battles. Several people entered the palace overnight and asked Emperor Hirohito to summon him urgently, and after conspiring for a while, the monarch and the ministers decided to further expand the army, and then set up a group of garrisons to go to North China and Central China, strengthen the garrison forces of the Mongolian army, Shanxi, Shandong, Hebei and Central China, mobilize the main force in North China to move south, and immediately launch the Battle of Wuhan on the premise of guarding the Jinpu Road and Longhai Road.

Prince Zaihito of the Kanin Palace immediately sent a telegram to Naosaburo Gangbe, Tada Jun, King Tsugahiko of the Higashijuer Palace, and Shunroku Hata, ordering the 116th Division to quickly withdraw to Xuzhou to hold on, ordering the Central China Front to strictly hold the defensive line, and ordering the Combined Fleet to urgently replenish the Tada Jun Group, and the 3rd, 9th, 13th, 15th, and 17th Divisions under the command of Tada Jun were immediately transported south by ship from the Combined Fleet to recapture Lianyungang and consolidate the first-line defense line in Xuzhou. The commander of the Second Army, Lieutenant General Dongjuergong Tsukihiko Wang, was ordered to command the 5th, 6th, 14th, and 16th Divisions to quickly withdraw to Jinan, and from Jinan to the south along the Jinpu Road to the Xuzhou line. The 108th Division was ordered to command the 33rd Division, the 1st Brigade and the 7th Brigade to besiege and sweep the Jiaodong Eighth Route Army. The 5th Brigade of the Reading Mixed Brigade in Tianjin was ordered to hand over the defense to the Tianjin garrison, and quickly moved south to Jinan to join the 35th Division, and the 35th Division handed over the defense to the Jinan garrison, and directed the 5th Brigade of the Reading Mixed Brigade to move east to the southeast of Shandong to form the southeast of Shandong garrison. Lieutenant General Osamu Maeda, commander of the 35th Division, served as commander of the southeastern garrison. The Fourth Fleet was ordered to go directly south to the Yangtze River waterway near Hangzhou, return the formation of the Chinese fleet dispatched, strengthen the garrison in Central China, and prepare for the operation against Wuhan. After ordering the Combined Fleet to escort the Tada Jun group to Lianyungang, it will make every effort to cover the landing operation of the Tada Jun group.

After issuing the order for the transfer of troops, Prince Zaihito of Xianyuan Gong directly sent a telegram to Shimizu Kishi, the commander of the 116th Division, ordering him to secretly concentrate troops overnight, not to stop for a moment, and to quickly retreat to Xuzhou, and ordered the 106th Division to send troops to respond.

After all this, Prince Zaihito of the Idle Palace, Shouichi Terauchi, Sugi Sugimoto, Nishio Shouzo, and Kazuki Kiyoshi also lost their sleepiness and sat together to continue to discuss the battle situation.

One of the hidden reasons why Terauchi Shouichi was in a hurry to negotiate in Germany was that he was afraid of another defeat. Now that this is the case, he is already relieved in his heart, because no matter what, Lianyungang was lost after he left.

Nishio Shouzo has always been haunted by his dismissal as commander of the Second Army, and he always wants to return to the battlefield in his heart. At this time, seeing that Terauchi Shouichi was going to Germany to negotiate, he knew that this old guy was indeed planning for the country on the one hand, and on the other hand, he was also trying to avoid the war in North China. So he revisited his understanding of the Eighth Route Army.

In Nishio Shouzo's view, no, Nishio Shouzao said that he borrowed from Xiangyue Qingsi's view, and the problem in North China is the problem of [***] and the Eighth Route Army. This unit has a strong fighting spirit, a tenacious will to fight, and a very flexible tactic. These are not terrible, and the Imperial Army also has this kind of point. The terrible thing is that the Eighth Route Army is the best at getting along with the common people, and it is very difficult to distinguish them from the common people. The most terrible thing was that the Imperial Army was fighting Chiang Kai-shek's troops in front, and the Eighth Route Army quietly infiltrated from behind. Once the Eighth Route Army enters an area, it is difficult to drive them out. At the same time, the Eighth Route Army and Chiang Kai-shek's [***] contradictions are numerous, and the main reason why they can still unite now is that the attack of the imperial army is too strong, and they are unprecedentedly united under the high pressure of the imperial army. In view of this situation, it is necessary to continue to refine the operational strategy, and never attack Chiang Kai-shek's political axe army when fighting against the Eighth Route Army, so as to prompt Chiang Kai-shek's troops to watch the fire from across the strait. When fighting against Chiang Kai-shek's political axe army, he took a defensive position against the Eighth Route Army and resolutely did not attack, so that the Eighth Route Army thought that it had a rare opportunity to recuperate and paralyze them. In this way, they can be divided and broken. Especially at present, it is necessary to quickly end the battle against the Eighth Route Army, concentrate on launching the Battle of Wuhan, completely defeat Chiang Kai-shek's will to resist, and let China fall into a struggle between surrender and counter-surrender. At the same time, we can also adopt a divisive strategy, thinking about the relationship between [***] and the Kuomintang, and the relationship between the generals and the political axe. For example, the Imperial Army can disguise the Eighth Route Army to sneak attack Chiang Kai-shek's local power and armed forces, or it can disguise Chiang Kai-shek's political axe army to sneak attack [***] and the local political power and armed forces of the Eighth Route Army, creating a tragedy, making them accuse each other, suspicious of each other, and deviate from morality. In this way, things will be easier for China.

(To be continued)