The tragedy of the British Empire seems to have just begun.

Britain has long adopted a policy of supporting and containing China, the United States, and Russia, and this is a British alliance policy that Britain is proud of, and now they will pay the price for it.

Britain was the architect of warship diplomacy, and now it is also paying the price.

Beginning in the second half of 1940, Gu Weijun's cabinet obviously adjusted its foreign policy, through consultations with the military department, on the grounds of safeguarding the collective interests of the Asian League, and sent more troops to the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia in the name of the Asian League, secretly and explicitly supporting Iran and other Islamic countries to resist Britain's colonial righteousness, and Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and other countries put forward the Pakistan and Malaya reading policies, demanding that Britain completely withdraw from Southeast Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East.

While the member states of the Asian League were actively anti-British, the Gu Weijun cabinet showed a relatively stable foreign policy toward Britain and advocated gradually guaranteeing the free autonomy of Asian countries through negotiations.

During this period, the foreign policy of the Empire was clearly more inclined to align itself with the member states of the Asian League, to the political activities within the Asian League, and to expel the power of the British Empire by coordinating and leading the Asian League.

At the same time, the empire also has a lot of two-faced principles.

In the second half of 1940, the Empire passed a parliamentary bill to officially establish the Ryukyu Islands, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji Islands, Society Islands, Marshall Islands, Palau, Nauru, the Andaman Islands, Northern Madagascar, and Rose Island as Imperial Overseas Provinces.

At this point, the empire's territory officially exceeded 20 million square kilometers, and if the Kachin State merger vote passed, the empire's area would increase to 20.15 million square kilometers, continuing to hold the throne of the world's largest empire.

In October, in order to concentrate more forces on dealing with the British, the Soviet Union, and the new problems that might arise on the Soviet and German sides, the Gu Weijun cabinet reached a compromise agreement with the United States on mutual exchange and concession, transferring the suzerainty of the Polynesian Islands to the United States in exchange for complete ownership of Guam, and China and the United States reached an agreement on equal ownership of the Pacific Ocean, with the two sides demarcating the boundary by the middle sea line between Wake Island and Midway, with the western Pacific Ocean on the west side under the sphere of influence of the Imperial Navy and the east side under the sphere of influence of the US Navy.

In order to reach this agreement, Gu Weijun's cabinet gave up its disputed claim to the Aleutian Islands and recognized that the United States has sovereignty over the entire Aleutian Islands, and that the Comandor Islands belong to China.

After demarcating the boundary between the two sides with the United States, Gu Weijun actively maintained his dominant position in the prime minister's election and the congressional ruling party election, and at the same time actively promoted the activities organized by the Asian League, and forced Britain to make continuous concessions through the Asian League.

With regard to the Soviet Union and Germany, Gu Weijun's cabinet also adopted a diplomatic strategy with the Asian League as the main body, demanding that Kazakhstan, as an Asian country, leave the Soviet Union and join the Asian League in order to obtain the protection of the Asian League.

The Soviet-German war continued.

Unable to reach an agreement with China and stubbornly believing in the strength of the Soviet Union itself, Joseph Brown was a stubborn believer in the strength of the Soviet Union. Stalin was being forced to face the fact that, despite the German army's erroneous decision to divide its forces in two directions, the German occupation of Stalingrad was moving very smoothly.

The Soviet Union was forced to reinforce Stalingrad with the entire Eastern Army Group in Chelyabinsk and the Kazakh region, gambling with all its strength, and no longer caring about the threat of the Chinese Army.

Even so, the Soviet Union failed to withstand the invasion of the combined forces of Nazi Germany and Poland.

Once a comrade-in-arms and close friend together, Artur. Führer Martos had become a close comrade-in-arms of the Nazi demon Adolf Hitler, and the Polish Wehrmacht under his command was certainly much more powerful than the Italian army, and Poland's overall strength was the strongest among Eastern European countries in China's long-term assistance, and its Wehrmacht was not only well-equipped but also well-trained.

In Artur. Among the Führer's faction, there were many senior commanders who served in the Second Bureau of the Imperial General Staff and participated in the Sino-Sino-Soviet War, the Sino-Soviet War, and the First World War.

Artur. Führer Martos's years of management and efforts were vividly demonstrated throughout the Soviet-German war, and many of the elite armies under his command were not inferior to the German army, but his forced cooperation with Germany's anti-Semitic stance and orders would also be destined to become a hard wound in his life's honor.

Militarily, Artur. Führer Martos was much wiser than Führer Hitler, although he thought that the German-Polish Alliance's decision to divide troops to attack the northern and eastern fronts of the Soviet Union was not wise, but he still personally planned the offensive of the entire Battle of Stalingrad, cooperated with the decisive battle of the German army in Moscow on the northern front, and adopted the strategy of besieging the city and sending reinforcements to contain the main force of the Soviet Eastern Army.

The country's reputation and diplomacy always relied on military strength, and its military prominence made Hitler and Nazi Germany rely more on the alliance with Poland, but did not organize Hitler's idea of a further alliance with Italy.

According to Hitler's concept, the German-Italian-Polish steel alliance would sweep across the entire European continent, Poland would occupy Belarus, Ukraine and the Balkans, Germany would occupy the wider western mainland of the Soviet Union, and Italy would work with Germany and Poland to divide the entire Balkan Peninsula.

Next, if all goes well, Hitler wants to enter North Africa, occupy the French colonies, and join forces with the Chinese Empire to destroy Britain and divide the British colonies.

He realized that he would build a great Third Reich, standing at opposite ends of the Eurasian continent with the Chinese Empire, and dividing the whole world equally, his vision was wonderful, but his only mistake was to misjudge the bottom line of the empire.

For the Chinese Empire, the only bottom line is that no country will be allowed to challenge the Empire's world supremacy.

Britain can't, the Soviet Union can't, the United States can't, Germany can't.

Strategically, the German-Polish forces were not able to effectively cut off Kazan and the upper reaches of the Volga River, so that the Soviet Red Army still had a large space for mutual support, and the Soviet military industry was also transferred to the Kazan area on a large scale, and the rich resources of Kazakhstan and the western part of the Soviet Union were used to engage in a brutal battle for positions with the German-Polish forces.

This long-term war of attrition was certainly even more disadvantageous to the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union was isolated and helpless in the international community at this time, especially after recklessly and arrogantly rejecting China's terms of deal, completely declaring that the Soviet Union had lost its last foreign aid.

During this period of time, China completed the circular blockade of Yueben, using Korea, the Far East and the Ryukyu Islands as air bases to carry out large-scale bombing of Yueben, with an average of more than 1,000 bombers carrying out bombing missions over the city itself every dayTransportation facilities were also largely destroyed, and the entire country returned to the Meiji era. Such a policy led to the impoverishment of the entire country's resources, and not only was there no resources for war, but the country was also facing the threat of mass famine, which was exactly what the empire needed to achieve.

In April 1941, the Imperial Central Military Department decided to start an early attack on Kobe on the territory of the Empire, for which more than 3.5 million elite troops and 700,000 marines would be invested, and the new goal of the empire was to completely eliminate the remnants of the Japanese army, overthrow the Emperor system and establish a new republican system before the end of the Soviet-German war.

At 4 a.m. on April 20, 1941, the Imperial Army and 14 divisions of marines set out from Busan, North Korea, to carry out a landing operation on the northern coast of Shimonoseki.

Half an hour before the offensive of the Imperial Army and Marine Corps, the Imperial Strategic Forces again fired more than 3,000 short-range ballistic missiles from more than forty temporary missile bases throughout the Korean Peninsula, and at Pusan, a large number of rocket artillery shells were fired, and the Imperial Air Force and Naval Air Fleet then carried out covered air strikes on the coast.

Before the Empire launched the attack, the Central Empire had been engaged in a tug-of-war that lasted for half a year on the coastal fortifications of Shimonoseki Fujiang, and the Empire continued to repair the fortifications, while the Empire repeated bombardments to ensure that the defense of the Japanese army in this area was not enough to threaten the entire landing operation.

…… Chen Wu was the commander-in-chief of the Xiaguan landing battle.

As one of the few people in the army who has the title of senior army general, Chen Wu has the kind of honor that should have belonged to him at this time, senior army general is an honor, not a military rank, and the highest military rank is only an army general.

Chen Wu did not sit on the shore to command, he boarded a Luoyang-class command cruiser, and through the radar communication and command system on this Luoyang-class command cruiser, he immediately collected all kinds of battlefield information and commanded the whole army on the ship.

As an army general, Chen Wu was also the first time to command operations on a naval ship.

The Luoyang-class command cruiser represents an extreme direction of the imperial armored cruiser, this class of armored cruiser has a relatively balanced configuration in armor, mobile ability, and artillery, and is equipped with the highest level of high-power large shipborne radar in China, and has perfect air defense and anti-submarine systems, and has the ability to command surrounding aircraft, submarines, and ships to coordinate operations, and is usually used as the central force of a small-scale fleet.

This class of cruisers is probably the largest in the world, and it is in service with several member states of the Asian Union at the same time, with Iran alone having three.

In the past two days, Chen Wu has been living on this Xiangyang-class Luoyang-class command cruiser, and he has adapted to the life characteristics of a navyman, whether he eats or sleeps every day, he is always in a slightly shaking feeling.

Several of the more than a dozen army staff officers who accompanied him vomited very badly, but Chen Wu did not react too strongly.

On this cruiser, Chen Wu could at any time communicate closely with Admiral Yan Houhua and Admiral Chen Renqi of the Air Force, who were coordinating the command of the operation, and coordinate the operational planning with each other, and the navy undertook the most important task in this landing operation.

The Imperial Navy deployed 11 battleships and 7 aircraft carriers to participate in the operation, plus 24 cruisers, to carry out large-scale artillery cover before the landing of Marine amphibious forces, naval air force was responsible for air supremacy and shore suppression, and air force was responsible for large-scale depth and high-explosive bombing.

In the course of the entire landing operation, the Marine Corps was also the main force, and Chen Wu's First and Fourth Group Armies of the Northeast National Defense Force then landed and operated, and this operation also used helicopters on a large scale for the first time, and the helicopters in this operation were officially equipped with rocket launchers, which could carry out rocket attacks on targets within three kilometers to cover the landing of ground troops.

The Imperial Navy put in about 1,400 amphibious tanks PT30 and more than 2,000 amphibious tracked armored infantry fighting vehicles at one time, and as many as 5,000 large-scale landing ships.

Under the cover of naval artillery and air force, coupled with the previous missile attacks, the frontline positions of the Japanese army have been tragically damaged in many rounds, and the coastal fortifications have also been largely destroyed, and the Imperial Marines have easily broken through the coastal defense line.

At 10 a.m., two amphibious armored divisions of the Marine Corps seized control of the coastal defense zone in Xiaguan, and at 10:30 a.m., the 1st and 4th Airborne Divisions of the Air Force arrived in the northwest of Xiaguan one after another, cut off the advance route of the headquarters of the Chinese Army to support Xiaguan, organized fortifications on the spot, and occupied many high ground of the Chinese Army.

After confirming this news, Chen Wucai continued to arrange for the landing of the First Army of the Army in Xiaguan.

The goal of the Shimonoseki operation was not to directly occupy the whole of Shimonoto, but to seize a fulcrum of the imperial attack on Yoben, to establish the first large-scale supply center at the port of Shimonoseki to supply the expeditionary force, and at the same time to cut off the route of the mainland to support Kyushu Island.

After occupying the entire island of Kyushu, the empire will continue to plan a landing operation in Hakuyama Prefecture, occupy the Nagoya area by a detour, divide the entire city of Kyomoto into two, adopt a battle plan of cutting off one piece and sweeping one section, gradually raze the city, and finally send troops to occupy Tokyo based on Nagoya and destroy the entire Japanese army.

Even if the Central Military Department hoped to end the war within two years, he still laid out according to his own ideas, and his goal was to defeat the resistance of the entire Yueben step by step at the lowest cost.

Chen Wu has always been very supportive of Liu Gengyun's planning, and the two have been old partners for decades after all.

On the Xiangyang command cruiser, after confirming that the Marine Corps had taken control of the coastal defense area, Chen Wu also breathed a sigh of relief, he knew that this was a good start, and it would not be difficult to win the entire Yueben with the combat level and scale of the Northeast Defense Force.

With an old partner like Liu Gengyun continuing to serve as chief of staff, General Chen Wu is always much more relaxed, he can sit across from Liu Gengyun's desk, drink tea calmly, and enjoy the moment of success.

Unlike middle-aged generals like Fu Zuoyi, Chen Wu has already been full of honor, as long as he restores the honor of a senior army general, he is really satisfied, so he does not have any anxiety, which is why he and Liu Gengyun strongly suggested that the Central Military Department should not set too much time for the complete end of the war.

Admiral Strikes.

At this time, Chen Wu could still remember that when he was studying in the first phase of the Far East Military Noncommissioned Officer School, Liu Gengyun, who served as a lecturer, once said that the goal of military affairs is to destroy the opponent's will to resist, not just military strength.

Only such a victory is a real victory, the ultimate victory.

That's exactly what they're going to do now.

It is precisely for this reason that Chen Wucai invested a large amount of military resources in bombing civilian facilities in Yueben, including textile mills, farmland and water conservancy facilities, coal mines, oil storage stations, and power facilities, thus fundamentally destroying Yueben's industry and causing the economy to collapse and cause a serious shortage of food.

The reason why he and Liu Gengyun did this was to torture the people of Yuben, torture the political axes and the army of Yuben, and make them gradually lose their ability to resist.

After the start of the landing war, in addition to a large amount of ammunition, the Northeast Defense Force also prepared other offensive resources -- food.

Once the area is occupied, the troops will distribute large quantities of relief food as needed.

Now is not the time to celebrate victory.

Chen Wu recalled the past in his heart, he inadvertently remembered the battle of Shenjiabao, the battle of Heigoutai, the battle of Liaoyang, and the beginning of his military career.

Without the emperor there would be no him.

Over the years, he has been working hard to restore his honor, not simply for himself, everyone living in the world needs to prove their worth, and he only needs to prove his worth to His Majesty the Emperor, as long as the Emperor knows that he is still useful and willing to use him, he feels satisfied.

His life has meaning.

So at this moment, he is very happy and proud, but after all, he has experienced so much, and he is no longer the young man who was too easy to put anger on his face back then.

The years burned his youth, and the bumpy experience also made him a confident old handsome.

He was thinking about a lot of things in his heart, and all things revolved around China, and he was evaluating the characteristics of the country and the nation by himself, making his own judgment, and once again confirming that his choice was correct.

He believed that he had been well prepared militarily, and militarily, it would not be very difficult for him to eliminate the Yue army, even if the mountainous situation in Yuben was more complicated than in the southern part of Korea, and the only thing he was sure about now was whether the pacification policy of the Northeast Defense Force would take effect and whether the ordinary people of Yuben would give up resistance.

His years and experience in the Northeast told him that he was a very crazy nation, with a very crazy culture, and also had a very strong and stubborn ambition to become a world power, and these factors made it very crazy and difficult to land on Yuben and fight.

During this time, he has been reading the history of the Warring States Period, reading the biographies of some characters in the book, and wants to have a deeper understanding of the history and national characteristics of the book.

Liu Gengyun's judgment on this was that "the resistance at the beginning will be very stubborn, but it will not last long, because he himself is very complicated and has two surnames, and he is crazy to save face and dare not challenge authority." In other words, as long as the Northeast Defense Forces can establish a reliable order in Yueben, the occupation in Yueben will be relatively smooth, but the anti-occupation resistance before that will be very crazy.

Every soldier needs very good weaponry and is well trained, and each squad needs a large and comprehensive firepower output and excellent tactical execution ability.

This is a common judgment of Chen Wu and Liu Gengyun, they do not necessarily need larger troops, but they must be elite, which is the reason why they take a gradual offensive, so that they can have more time to train some new troops and recruits in North Korea, and ensure that each unit can be fully prepared.

Liu Gengyun has been dealing with the problem of coordinated operations of various troops, and finally rested, he also brought a cup of tea to Chen Wu and sat down, and sighed with Chen Wu: "The most difficult moment is coming, and it is really not difficult for us to attack now." ”

Chen Wu nodded steadily, and replied nonchalantly: "The soldiers are coming, the water is coming, the water is coming, let him go, there is always a road before the car reaches the mountain, just fight like this." ”

Liu Gengyun smiled and said, "What you Lao Chen said is easy, and our preparations are very sufficient, as for the rest of the matter, we can only say that we can take one step at a time." ”

Chen Wu continued to nod his head and did not answer anything.

The soldiers still rely on their actions to speak, and the rest of the thing is to fight day by day, to put it bluntly, they will kill him hundreds of thousands of people first, and then say, Chen Wu still has such domineering.

…… As Chen Wu and Liu Gengyun had predicted, the resistance of the Yue army was very tenacious, and in the coastal area, because the imperial attack was completely saturated, the Yue army was too badly damaged to organize any threatening counterattack, and after the imperial army came ashore, the defensive positions of the two armies around Xiaguan soon began a fierce battle.

Air superiority could not guarantee the smooth advance of the Imperial Army, and it was still a positional war, and the army was still short of troops and ammunition, at least the rifle ammunition was barely enough, the number of anti-aircraft guns and mortars was sufficient, there were not many heavy artillery, and the number of armored vehicles and tanks was very small.

In the past year, the gap between the Soviet-German war and the two sides in terms of military equipment is still very low, which is of course related to the role played by China in the past, and the Soviet Union has also invested a lot of resources and manpower in the development of heavy industry and military industry in the past 30 years.

China said that the war has reached the point where it is today, and the gap between the two sides in terms of equipment is already very large, and the gap in the quality of soldiers and front-line commanders has finally widened.

This battle was indeed very tragic, but it was more for the army.

The army did not hesitate to defend its position, recapture the position, and even attacked the amphibious tanks and armored vehicles of the Imperial Army at the cost of human lives, while the Imperial Army did not hesitate to use ammunition and heavy artillery to rain, and a large number of tanks and armored vehicles were thrown into the offensive and defensive battles in Xiaguan, where heavy artillery gathered and bullets rained down like a storm.

It took only three hours for the Northeast Defense Army and the Imperial Marines to seize the defense line of the Fujiang River in Xiaguan of the Yue Army, but it took only three days to capture the western part of Xiaguan County, and the casualties were heavy, and the casualties of the Yue Army were even worse.

In particular, in the mountains and forests around Xiaguan and in the towns and cities of Xiaguan, the soldiers of the Chinese army hid everywhere, and they continued to engage in small-scale disturbance operations with the Northeast National Defense Force, making it impossible for the Northeast National Defense Army to defend against it.

However, in any case, Chen Wu still accomplished his strategic objectives at all costs, occupied the port of Shimonoseki, took control of the urban area, and began to transport troops on a larger scale, and more than one million troops of the Northeast Defense Force completed the landing in three days, gathered in the Shimonoseki area, and advanced like a tide towards the eastern part of the main island.

At this time, the base camp of the Chinese army shrank its main forces to the vicinity of Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kyoto, because the army also knew very well that it was an impossible task to organize a large-scale landing operation of the Chinese army, and its hope was to force China to sue for peace with a brutal war and huge casualties.

The hope of the Chinese Central Military Department is that it is best to end the war within a year, but if the war cannot be successfully ended, the Central Military Department will also have enough patience to advance layer by layer, and destroy the Yue army and the resistance forces of the Yue Ben at all costs.

The entire Xiaguan Campaign was basically over in mid-May, and the losses on both sides were very heavy, with the Chinese army losing four newly organized divisions and two infantry brigades, with a total casualties of more than 70,000, which meant that half of the soldiers were killed or seriously wounded, and the total casualties of the Northeast Defense Army and the Marine Corps were also close to 20,000.

In late May, relying on the stronghold of Shimonoseki Port, the Northeast Defense Force and the Marine Corps again launched a new round of large-scale landing operations against Koga, Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu Island, and after the completion of the Koga landing, the Tohoku Defense Forces took control of both sides of Shimonoseki Port, and more than 20 divisions of troops were stationed on Kyushu Island to carry out extermination operations against the Japanese army on Kyushu Island.

At this time, there were still 6 divisions in the Yue army on Kyushu Island, and in the face of more than 600,000 troops of the Northeast Defense Force and more than 100,000 marines, as well as two airborne divisions, in fact, there was not much ability to defend and fight, but the Yue army was also very tenacious on Kyushu Island, and held every position as much as possible, so that the Imperial Defense Force also paid a relatively heavy price.

In July, as the Northeast Defense Force basically wiped out the Japanese troops on Kyushu Island, a new issue surfaced, that is, how to control the occupied areas of Kyushu.

(To be continued)