In January 1938, when the fighting in Nanjing had just stopped, all countries in the world, under the deliberate guidance of the Soviets, set off a wave of actions to denounce the massacre of the people of Nanjing by the Japanese soldiers.

As Li Tie's base camp in the United States, the American people naturally expressed great indignation at Li Tie's motherland being invaded by Japan.

In particular, when the American people, who thought they had a close relationship with Li Tie, discovered that their first ally to stand in solidarity with China was their sworn enemy, the Soviet Union.

The fragile hearts of the American people are strongly stimulated, and they feel that their dignity is being challenged.

The American people, who consider themselves to be the most fraternal, free, and self-respecting in the world, feel the need to set an example for the people of the world in their support for China.

Therefore, after the Soviet Union was the first to denounce Japan, Britain, France, Germany, the United States and other countries issued statements one after another, solemnly denouncing Japan's brutal killing of the unarmed people in Nanjing.

Among them, the American people were the most enthusiastic, and they donated money and materials to the government of the Republic of China, hoping to support them in driving out the Japanese from Chinese soil.

Among these progressives who initiated the action, the famous American scientist Albert Einstein, Russell, Dewey, Romain Rolland and other well-known people launched the most eye-catching movement to aid China.

In many major cities in the United States, a number of strikes and marches were even launched in solidarity with the Chinese people who were being brutalized by Japanese imperialist soldiers.

When the Emperor of Japan, who was far away in Tokyo, saw so many countries condemning Japan's killing of civilians in Nanjing, the Emperor was furious, and at the same time felt extremely aggrieved:

"You only saw that our soldiers killed 50,000 people in Nanjing, but we also had 50,000 elite soldiers in Japan who died in Nanjing, don't you know?

Moreover, as the commander of the attack on Nanjing, General Matsui Ishine was also bombed to death. Tens of thousands of soldiers have suffered a lot of injuries, are my soldiers dying in vain if they are sacrificed, aren't they human beings? ”

The emperor really felt that he was very wronged, but under the strong condemnation of the international community, the pressure on Japan was also very great, and now Japan does not dare to offend so many countries at the same time.

The emperor put all the blame for the Nanjing Massacre on Matsui Ishone, who secretly expanded the scope of the war in disregard of the Japanese emperor's orders and privately launched a military campaign to attack Nanjing.

He privately ordered the massacre of innocent people near Nanjing, and now the Japanese emperor has stripped Matsui of his command and is preparing to hand him over to a military tribunal in Japan.

It is a pity that this executioner, who captured Nanjing and carried out a massacre of the people of Nanjing, was killed in the air raid on Nanjing at the end of December 37.

And the Japanese government deliberately concealed the news of Matsui Ishone's death out of order to protect the morale of its own soldiers, so now that the culprit has been ambushed, everyone should stop holding on to our Japan.

At the same time, Japan expressed its heavy condolences for the city of Nanjing, which had been burned down, and from now on Japan will increase its troops in Nanjing, and it will definitely rebuild the city in the shortest possible time.

Hearing such a shameless explanation from the Japanese, politicians all over the world laughed, and what the Japanese really wanted to do was to intensify their attack on China until all Chinese resistance was eliminated.

At this time, the Japanese army had already occupied the entire northeast, Shanxi and the Pingjin region, and had just occupied Shanghai and Nanjing, as long as it occupied Xuzhou and Jinan further north, it could join forces with the North China Front army that occupied the Pingjin region.

If the Central China and North China Front converge at Xuzhou, Shandong and Jiangsu will all fall into the hands of the Japanese army, and from then on all the developed provinces and cities along the Chinese coast and the most prosperous Jiangnan area in Chinese mainland will fall into the hands of the Japanese army.

At that time, Japan could attack the Lianghu region to the west and the Liangguang region to the south, and be in an absolute strategic advantage.

And the Nationalist Government, which had lost the land of fish and rice and all the developed coastal cities, would fall to the point of surviving, and at that time the Republic of China Government had no other way but to surrender.

Therefore, although the current Japanese army is very tired, and at the same time the Japanese troops are not enough, the emperor thought that as long as he gritted his teeth and persevered a little longer, and took Jiangsu and Shandong, Japan would be invincible.

Emperor Hirohito made up his mind when he thought that one day Japan would completely annex China under his leadership and realize Japan's dream of hundreds of years.

Immediately order the country to send more troops to China. At the same time, in order to quickly open up the Jinpu line, the Central China Front Army moved from Nanjing to the north, and the North China Front Army moved from Tianjin to the south.

In this way, at the end of January 1938, after a short month's rest and recuperation, the Japanese army once again attacked Xuzhou from the north and south when the number of troops was still insufficient.

Among them, the North China Front landed directly from Qingdao and other places with the help of the navy, and occupied Jinan at the first time, and then the army moved south to Xuzhou.

The Central China Front, which had just rested for less than a month, organized its troops to attack southward again, and also wanted to occupy Xuzhou in the shortest possible time.

In this battle, the actual number of Chinese troops participating in the battle was 600,000, and the number of Japanese troops participating in the battle in the early stage was 240,000.

The Japanese side was anxious to unite the occupied areas of Central China and North China, while the Chinese side was desperately trying to prevent the Japanese army from converging, on the one hand, to strive for a large number of Japanese casualties, and on the other hand, to prepare for war in Sichuan and the Lianghu region.

The current government of the Republic of China has clearly realized that it is impossible to defeat the Japanese army in a short time, and can only find ways to delay the Japanese army as much as possible.

And the direction of the Japanese army's attack was led inland, exchanging space for time, increasing and lengthening the Japanese army's battle line, increasing the difficulty of the Japanese army's supply, and then inflicting a large number of casualties on the Japanese army inland, and finally containing the Japanese army's attack.

Then, with the advantage of China's vast land and vast resources and huge war potential, the Japanese army was slowly dragged to death. I have to say that this tactic was recognized by the majority of people at that time.

In the absence of a unified military leadership and the various warlords fighting their own battles, they can only adopt this passive method of resistance to the war.

Fortunately, in the 38th year, reinforcements from all over the country were basically in place, including Li Zongren's troops in Liangguang and Liu Xiang's Sichuan army.

At the beginning of January of the 38th year, the Battle of Xuzhou, which China calls the longest and widest front, began. In this life, it may be because Liu Xiang received Li Tie's help, Liu Xiang did not die of stomach bleeding in late January like in the previous life.

At this time, Liu Xiang was in good health and in the prime of life, when he heard that Commander Chiang had appointed Li Zongren as the commander of the Fifth Theater and was fully responsible for the Battle of Xuzhou.

Liu Xiang also jokingly said that Commander Jiang looked down on their impoverished Sichuan Army. Although their Guangxi soldiers can fight, they are not necessarily better than the Sichuan army, and now there are 400,000 soldiers in Sichuan, of which Liu Xiang's relatives have nearly 100,000.

And these 100,000 elite soldiers have been strongly supported by Li Tie and deliberately cultivated by Liu Xiang in the past few years, and their combat power is quite strong.

It's just that in the past few years, under Liu Xiang's painstaking management, Sichuan has made the people live a lot richer, and it is no longer a bitter cold place. Therefore, there were very few wars, and the warlords all over the country did not know that the Sichuan army also had strong troops at this time.

However, Commander Chiang, who was afraid that Liu Xiang's family was dominant, forcibly divided the large Sichuan army into four, and a part of it was transferred to the Xuzhou battlefield, and one unit was transferred to the south of Shanghai to prevent the Japanese army from attacking south.

Some of them were transferred to Wuhan to defend Wuhan, and the last part of Liu Xiang's 100,000 pro-troops was transferred to Shandong by Commander Chiang, in order to fight the Japanese army in North China moving south.

And Liu Xiang was very dissatisfied when he saw Commander Jiang supporting the Sichuan Army so much, and it was time for Commander Jiang to play the game of eliminating dissent.

After Commander Jiang saw that Liu Xiang was dissatisfied with his arrangement, he immediately succeeded Liu Xiang as the commander-in-chief of the 23rd Group Army, and at the same time appointed Liu Xiang as the commander-in-chief of the Seventh Theater, which no longer existed.

The Seventh Theater had been canceled as early as the Battle of Songhu, depriving himself of all his troops and horses, and only arranging an empty commander-in-chief of the Seventh Theater for himself, which shows that Commander Chiang was in the crooked mind of annexing the Sichuan army.

Liu Xiang was very disappointed to see that Jiang ordered to snatch his military power in this way, if other generals would have pulled Commander Jiang's hind legs, but Liu Xiang, who knew the righteousness, did not do that.

Since Commander Chiang didn't want him to lead the troops, he simply went back to Chongqing to be his provincial chairman. So Liu Xiang, who understood the righteousness, handed over the command of the Sichuan Army and returned to Chongqing alone.

In order to better support the front line in Chongqing, Liu Xiang urged production day and day, raised grain and grass, and supported the front war.

In mid-January of 38, the battle of Japan's north-south attack on Xuzhou had begun. Because this time, the government of the Republic of China was supported by Li Tie's 200 bombers and 100 fighters.

The Battle of Xuzhou was fought much better than in the previous life, not only the results of the Battle of Taierzhuang were richer than those of the previous life, but even the results of several other battlefields were much greater.

However, the inertia of the wheel of history has always been very large, although Li Tie has paid great attention to Han Fuqu, who has 80,000 troops but fled without a fight.

However, in this life, he still did not prevent him from leading his troops to escape, and as a result, the victory of Taierzhuang, which had just achieved the elimination of more than 20,000 Japanese troops, was in vain.

Because Han Fuqu once again took advantage of the confrontation with the Japanese army to flee without a fight, the Japanese army had to seize hundreds of thousands of defenders in the Xuzhou area.

Fortunately, history has not changed much, and hundreds of thousands of Xuzhou defenders finally took the initiative to enter the mountains to escape from the encirclement of the Japanese army and retreat to Henan and other places.

After nearly half a year of fighting, the Japanese army finally occupied Xuzhou. The Japanese army in Central and North China completed the strategic intention of uniting together.

However, the Chinese army also completed the strategic intention of annihilating the Japanese army in large numbers and luring the Japanese army to attack inland.

In the final Battle of Xuzhou, the Chinese soldiers suffered 80,000 casualties and the Japanese suffered 40,000 casualties, and the battle loss ratio between China and Japan was getting closer and closer.