The 40s of the 20th century were completely different from the large mechanized army center of the 70s, which was actually a truck, not a tank on the surface, but in the 70s, with the popularization of infantry armored vehicles, tracked armored vehicles, and wheeled armored vehicles, the center of mechanization was transferred to the latter in a real sense.

Tanks are very important, and they will determine the outcome of the war, but in the era of great mechanization, what really determines the long-term victory is the ability to transport war materials and the mobile deployment of large-scale troops.

It was only in the 80s that the core of modern military affairs was transformed into new large military transport aircraft, in fact, several transformations were still a problem, that is, the transport capacity of the troops.

The Empire has the best and largest number of military trucks in the world, with a complete range of light, medium and heavy models.

Unlike in the past, a military half-track truck (similar to the Opel mule in Germany in World War II) can be equivalent to the transportation capacity of 15 horses, which is faster and less expensive, and more than 100,000 trucks can ensure not only the transfer of large-scale materials and troops, but also the combat scale and firepower level of the troops.

Nazi Germany has actually not been able to understand this very well.

The automobile industry of the empire provides the Central Defense Forces with the most comprehensive and advanced military vehicles in the world, and at the same time ensures the abundance of numbers and the strength of production capacity, it is on this basis that the Central Military Department can in a very short time, have a strong confidence to draw up a rapid offensive plan, according to this plan, the Central Defense Forces of the Reich will implement a thousand miles within a month, capture Kazan, annihilate the main forces of the Soviet Red Army in the east, and then annihilate the Soviet garrison deployed in Kazakhstan, to ensure the occupation of the entire eastern part of the USSR and the Kazakh regions of the empire.

…… A few days later, with the approval of Emperor Song Biao, Lieutenant General Chen Jiayou, in his capacity as the chief of the Inner Court, held a press conference in Yanjing to inform the Central Political Axe on behalf of the Central Political Axe that the Sino-Soviet negotiations on Kazakh reading power had broken down, and that China would consider passing a military action resolution within the Asian League to liberate Kazakhstan.

This is the first time that the Inner Court has directly issued a circular on external affairs beyond the central political axe, because the Central Military Department is not suitable to represent the central political axe, and the central political axe headed by Gu Weijun is actually unwilling to issue such a circular.

In the end, the chief of the Inner Court had to come forward and issue this announcement directly, and once the news broke, the whole world was in an uproar, and all countries and politicians knew very well that this meant that China might send troops to attack the Soviet Union.

From the perspective of international politics, China is not an unreasonable aggressor, China is based on the interests of the Asian League, and asked the Soviet Union to allow Kazakhstan to read, but the Soviet Union refused, and finally forced China to decide to promote a military resolution within the Asian League, and after the Asian Union countries voted, jointly send troops to liberate Kazakhstan.

That's just what I said.

Many years later, looking back at the United States and NATO's invasion of North Korea, Serbia and Montenegro, and Afghanistan, in fact, they were all the same means, and justice was always in the hands of the world hegemon as long as there was a suitable reason.

In fact, before the Imperial Court issued this announcement, the Empire had already reached an agreement with the main members of the Asian League, and the Empire's military deployment in Siberia and Central Asia was also launched at the same time.

Preparations for the war began only after the end of the second secret talks between China and the Soviet Union, and preparations for the war were fully launched in July 1940, but before that, the empire had actually been preparing for the war for twenty years.

By the time the resolution of the Reich to promote military action within the Council of the Asian League was passed, the whole country had begun to mobilize on a large scale again, and the 22 army divisions drawn from the central region had arrived in the Siberian Military District and Central Asia as scheduled within a month, bringing the size of the Reich's army garrison in Siberia and Central Asia to the size of 27 armored brigades, 14 tank divisions and 30 mechanized infantry divisions. The Air Force will also reach the size of 13,000 combat aircraft in two months.

It was thought that the cause of the war was that the Soviet Union did not agree to allow Kazakhstan to read, but in fact it was clearly not the case, the Soviet Union agreed, but not the kind of unconditional reading power that the Reich emphasized, and the Reich never really asked the Soviets to let Kazakhstan read unconditionally.

In several rounds of secret talks between China and the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union initially did not agree to let the Kazakh region read power, and at the same time demanded that China continue to supply strategic materials and military equipment and transfer military technology, because the Soviet Union believed that it was helping China defend itself against Nazi Germany, and the negotiations broke down.

Subsequently, the Soviet Union began to agree to the Kazakh region, and in exchange, China had to meet the military, technical and material assistance demanded by the Soviet Union, and the negotiations continued to break down, in essence, China did not veto giving the Soviet Union sufficient support, but demanded more territorial transfers, which was completely unacceptable to the Soviet Union.

…… Events were moving so rapidly that neither Germany nor the Soviet Union had time to react.

On September 15, 1940, 10 days after Lieutenant General Chen Jiayou made a circular on behalf of the Imperial Court, the Council of the Asian League passed a delegate vote resolution in Yanjing to establish the Northern Alliance Army of the Asian League, appoint Army General Zhao Tingzhu as the commander-in-chief of the Northern Free Alliance Army of the Asian Alliance, and authorize the General Headquarters of the Northern Alliance Army to liberate the Kazakh region.

During this period, the secretary general of the General Office of the German Nazi Party, Martin Brown. In his capacity as the Führer's special envoy, Boulman made an urgent and secret visit to China to negotiate the bottom line of China's dispatch of troops to the Soviet Union, and Germany was very ambivalent about this, welcoming China's troops and fearing that China would quickly occupy the eastern part of the Soviet Union and steal the territory that should have belonged to Nazi Germany.

Before the official dispatch of troops, the empire still sent Lieutenant General Chen Jiayou, the chief of the Inner Court, to cooperate with Martin. At the meeting, Bowerman solemnly promised that the goal of the empire was only to liberate Kazakhstan, and at the same time to ensure that the members of the Asian League would no longer be eroded by Sovietism.

At the same time, the Soviet Union hastily reaffirmed its willingness to negotiate with the Asian League on Kazakhstan's reading power, but during this period, all the information that the Soviet Union sent to the Reich was nothing more than a piece of waste paper, and no one cared about it.

The empire can also be said to blindly believe in force, the problem is that the empire does have the force to solve all problems, and the ambition of the empire is by no means as simple as Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union itself is very clear, and the goal of the empire is to completely divide the Soviet Union into two and completely expel the Soviet Union from the territory of Asia.

After a vote was passed within the Council of the Asian League and all military powers were granted to the Northern Coalition Forces, the development of events was completely free from the constraints of political forces.

…… Omsk.

The city of the Northwest of the Empire.

On the map of the empire, it is clearly marked as a city of military fortifications, and the whole city looks like an imperial fortress of unprecedented proportions, as Chen Qicai once said during his visit to Omsk in 1933 that it could withstand an army of one million even without an army.

This is the value of Omsk.

Over the past two decades, Omsk has gradually become an authentic Chinese city, with ethnic Russians now making up only one-seventh of the total number of residents, most of whom are new residents from Shanxi and Shaanxi.

Omsk has a certain amount of oil reserves, but the extraction is not large, because it is located in the border area between China and the Soviet Union, the local trade and industrial economy has always been prosperous, and various Soviet political institutions have set up procurement offices here.

In the surrounding Siberian province, more than 110 million acres of arable land provide a good foundation for the grain processing, textile and machinery industries in Omsk, and it is also one of the largest oil industrial cities in China.

In just two decades, it has become the most prosperous city in Novosibirsk.

General Zhao Tingzhu has been living here for three years, and for the past three years, he has been secretly in charge of preparing for the war against the Soviet Union.

General Zhao Tingzhu prefers life in Omsk to life in Yanjing, because the land is sparsely populated, and Omsk has been the largest city in China since its founding, with wide roads and an outrageous high greening rate. The climate here is similar to that of the Northeast, and it is even more suitable for General Zhao Tingzhu, so much so that he wants to work here until he retires.

Here, his work with Wei Lihuang was somewhat like that of Field Marshal Hindenburg and Chief of Staff Ludendorff in Germany in World War I, who delegated most of the work to the energetic Wei Lihuang, who almost only signed papers.

That's what the words say.

After all, Zhao Tingzhu is a senior army general who fought all the way in the rain of bullets, he is too familiar with the war, familiar with it like an old farmer farming, he doesn't need to attend too many meetings, as long as he sees the report submitted by Wei Lihuang, he can make a correct judgment.

The most important point is that he has been preparing for this war for too long, and he has been thinking about it for the past twenty years, and after countless reflections, he has come to an extremely simple conclusion - speed and efficiency.

Nothing else matters, as long as there is maximum speed and efficiency, the Empire will easily win this war.

Speed and efficiency were precisely the central guiding principles of the Great Mechanization Revolution of the Imperial Army, and it was all too easy to defeat the Soviet Red Army again at the level of the Reich today.

It is precisely because of this that General Zhao Tingzhu can appear a little casual, leaving the General Headquarters in a jeep at 10 o'clock in the morning, handing over the annoying and trivial work of the headquarters to Wei Lihuang, while he goes to inspect the troops below.

Novosibirsk in October has already begun to get cold, about the same as Yenching in November, and by December, it will be cold here and the Soviet Union for large-scale military operations, so there is only one and a half months left for the Northern Alliance.

Omsk's roads are in excellent condition, the asphalt roads are wide, and thanks to the local chemical industry, the cost of building roads in the region is indeed very low.

The journey was very smooth, and General Zhao Tingzhu soon arrived at his destination, the First Armored Division.

This was the unit he founded.

He can still remember the situation when the First Division was first established, when it had just been dismantled from the framework of the Manchurian Infantry Division, and he completed a series of anti-bandit battles in Changchun and Jilin, and on this basis, he absorbed veterans who had participated in the Liaoyang Campaign, and formed the First Infantry Division in Northeast China, which then became the First Infantry Division of the Empire, and then reorganized from the First Infantry Division to the Mechanical Division, and finally became the First Armored Division in the hands of Wei Lihuang.

The Panzer Division is currently the main strength of the Imperial Army.

In the establishment system of the Imperial Army, armored divisions are usually assigned to 1 tank regiment, 2 armored infantry regiments, 1 self-propelled artillery regiment, 2 air defense battalions directly under the jurisdiction, and other command battalions, reconnaissance battalions, and chemical defense battalions.

In wartime, the strength of each division is generally doubled, and the situation of the 1st Panzer Division is no exception, the regimental establishment is still the same as in the past, but the average number of companies under each battalion has doubled, and the MBT33 tanks equipped by the tank regiment have also become the new MBT35 main battle tanks, and the number has increased from the original 332 to 664.

For armored divisions, armored infantry regiments are the main combat force.

As the core force of the revolution of the empire's large-scale mechanized army, the armored infantry regiment is equipped with a large number of infantry fighting vehicles and a small number of tanks, and is systematically equipped with tracked infantry fighting vehicles, armored reconnaissance vehicles, demining vehicles, command vehicles, air defense vehicles, tank destroyers, armored transport vehicles, radar warning vehicles, and even cooking companies and medical companies have special field logistics vehicles.

Through a large number of exercises and tests, the main operational ideas and tactics of the Imperial Army at present are to require a more concentrated use of tank units, and in each war, several tank divisions or tank brigades will be used as charging forces to tear through the opponent's defenses, while armored infantry regiments will advance in coordination with the cooperation of tank regiments and tank companies under each battalion of the regiment.

On the frontal battlefield, armored infantry fighting vehicles must cooperate under the protection of tanks, and the task is to cooperate with tanks, rather than assume the center of operations, but in the entire battle, a large number of armored infantry fighting vehicles must play a key main role.

Tactically, the infantry is not the center, and in the campaign, the infantry is the main force.

The Empire's army operational thinking is actually very simple, and it can be summed up in one sentence that "armored vehicles should be systematically used to carry out comprehensive operations, and tanks and artillery should be used as intensively as possible to focus on operations." At the same time, the higher the mechanization rate, the faster the speed of the operation, and the higher the efficiency.

The depth and refinement of the mechanization comprehension, both the Soviet Red Army and the Nazi German Army, were far from reaching the level of the Reich CSKA.

In the view of Zhao Tingzhu, a strong supporter of the reform of the large-scale mechanized army, the mechanization work of the Soviet Red Army was really very ordinary, and although the number was quite large, it was actually still at a relatively low stage.

General Zhao Tingzhu is also very satisfied with the new MBT35 main battle tank, which is based on the MBT33 main battle tank, which has been upgraded and improved on a large scale on the basis of the MBT33 main battle tank, with a more powerful engine and a more flexible gearbox, as well as a more stable torsion bar suspension system, a more novel and larger caliber rifled gun, including a sharper armor-piercing shell.

Compared with the latest MBT40 tank, there is definitely a big gap, the advantage is that the cost is moderate, the production capacity is huge, if the empire is fully promoted, the annual output of the MBT35 main battle tank is likely to exceed 30,000 units, even at this stage it has reached a high-speed level of 12,000 units / year.

This huge advantage in production capacity means that the Northern Coalition now has 5,870 MBT35s, as well as more than 7,700 MBT33s and no less than 4,000 MT22 light tanks.

At present, the Northern Coalition Army has 22 tank regiments, as many as 73,000 armored vehicles of various types, a total of 114,000 military trucks, and a total of nearly 2 million troops, and according to the standards of the Imperial Army, the total mechanization rate of the coalition forces is close to 75%.

This was the basis for the Northern Coalition Army to carry out a thousand-mile operation in one month.

As for the understanding of the war, Zhao Tingzhu is like an old farmer who knows the quality of the crops very well, and he knows very well what his troops can and cannot do.

After the Battle of Busan, Huang Baitao withdrew from the Korean battlefield with the Fourth Armored Division and was transferred to the Novosibirsk Military District.

Wei Lihuang, who was transferred to the Novosibirsk Military District at the beginning of the year, put forward a new tactical concept of a "comprehensive combat reorganization regiment" after withdrawing from the Korean battlefield, which is similar to the theory of synthetic battalions developed by modern military development in the 70s, but Wei Lihuang has not considered it that far, and moreover, the theory of synthetic battalions is not suitable for the operations of large-scale mechanized corps.

Many lessons learned from the Korean War have made Wei Lihuang realize that the large-scale mechanical military must continue to be refined, and that simple tank brigades, tank regiments, and armored infantry regiments not only have a single function in actual combat, but are also easily restrained.

Although only a small number of well-equipped elite divisions posed a threat to the Imperial Army during the entire Sino-Chinese War, the overall equipment level of the Imperial Army was still incomparable with that of the German Army and the Soviet Union.

His solution was based on the foundation of General Chen Wu, continuing to refine the mechanization reform and preparing to build some regimental-level combat units with comprehensive combat capabilities, and on the Korean battlefield, General Chen Wu's Northeast National Defense Force had already implemented the reorganization and testing of composite battalions with the approval of the Central Military Department, and the results were very good.

Unlike the situation on this battlefield, the scale of the decisive battle of the corps on the Soviet-German battlefield was even larger, and the combat scale of the composite battalion was too small to pose a direct threat to the enemy, which made Wei Lihuang consider implementing major changes to the military command units at the regimental level.

In order to ensure the coordinated operation of armored fighting vehicles and infantry and tank units, and at the same time to ensure the concentrated superiority of tank units in large-scale tank decisive battles, the Imperial CSKA has always adopted the establishment of armored divisions and auxiliary tank brigades, but it has been proved in the practice of the Chinese war that it is very difficult for armored divisions and tank brigades to coordinate operations.

Under different establishments, it is difficult to coordinate how the infantry of an armored division can continue to cooperate with the tank brigade in the process of following the combat vehicle and the coordinated command between the combat units at the regimental level at the corresponding levels.

Therefore, Wei Lihuang decided to split the tank brigades of the Northern Coalition Army into attached tank battalions and assign them to various armored infantry regiments, with the commanders of the armored divisions at all levels directly commanding the tank troops, and the tank units must cooperate with the armored infantry units to carry out tactical offensives.

Tanks are a specialized branch of the army, more complex than artillery, and it is difficult for front-line commanders with only experience in commanding armored infantry units to properly command tank operations.

After arriving at the station of the First Armored Division, General Zhao Tingzhu met with Wei Lihuang and Huang Baitao, who were actively preparing for the new-style coordinated combat training, and after shaking hands with them, the three of them went to the training site together after a brief conversation and a few words, and watched the troops carry out the coordinated combat training from a distance.

In the past few days, Wei Lihuang has been conducting a coordinated combat training test within the integrated armored regiment.

Wei Lihuang has also been promoted to army general, and served as the chief of staff of the Northern Coalition Army, with the support of General Zhao Tingzhu, he is energetic and shrewd and keen, and he is more in charge of the operation of the Northern Coalition Army.

Although there is still a large distance from the theory of the integrated regiment he envisioned, it is already a very big tactical change within the Imperial Army, and the efforts to directly change the establishment to an integrated combat armored regiment in the 1st and 4th Armored Divisions are also advancing rapidly, and these two divisions will be the two most important pilot divisions of the Reich Army for reform.

The Central Military Department and General Zhao Tingzhu have paid great attention to this kind of reform, and at the same time, they are also closely exchanging information on relevant reform experiments with the Northeast Defense Army; if Wei Lihuang's reform in the Northern Coalition Army succeeds and effectively solves the problem of coordinated operations between divisions and brigades, this kind of reform will very well be extended to the whole army, and it will become the third major change in the history of the Imperial Army.

After watching the training of the 1st Armored Division's coordinated combat exercise, General Zhao Tingzhu nodded appreciatively, and praised Wei Lihuang: "This change you have led is indeed very important. ”

Wei Lihuang was silent for a moment and replied: "On the Korean battlefield, we have found that the deployment of tanks too closely will lead to a significant reduction in the combat range covered by the tank division, which will curb the deterrence of the tank force and the ability to assault the defense line, but if the density of the deployed tanks expands, exceeding 140 meters, the battlefield will be full of small-scale enemy troops, resulting in tank troops being easily destroyed by small-scale enemy firepower weapons." 140 meters is the effective range of the M35 assault rifle's most effective intensive fire, in other words, the advance space of the tank unit should be filled by a large number of infantry, and the firepower of two infantry squads can ensure the safety of a tank within a range of 200 meters around the perimeter. If we can further promote this kind of change, so that all regiments under the armored division can generally become integrated combat regiments and achieve effective control of the battlefield at the regimental level, it will greatly improve the tactical value of our army in coordinating command and advancing and penetrating defenses, and raise the offensive level of our army. In fact, no matter how many tanks we put into a large-scale campaign, it is unlikely that there will be a situation in which one tank brigade will face off against another. ”

General Zhao Tingzhu is still in a noncommittal stage for such an inference, he just trusts his chief of staff, and is willing to bet on his reputation and achievements to give the other party's talent enough room to display, of course, many recent tests have indeed verified Wei Lihuang's judgment, especially on the Soviet-German battlefield, the large-scale German army was frequently restrained in the relatively stable coordinated operations of the Soviet Union, and the number of tank damage increased sharply, and more than half of the tanks were not destroyed by the tanks of the Soviet Red Army.

In General Zhao Tingzhu's understanding of military affairs and war, war is like this, every battle destroys more enemies than the other side, saves more enemies, captures more materials, and harvests more materials, and finally it will evolve into an irreversible absolute advantage.

During the period of the Reich's attack on the Soviet Red Army, as long as one more tank of the opponent was destroyed each time, one more infantry squad was eliminated, one more main battle tank was saved, and one more new tank was received from the rear military industrial base of the country, a month later, the Northeast Coalition Army would annihilate the Soviet Red Army in the Kazan area with absolute superiority in quantity and quality.

This is the common axiom of all wars, as it was in the Second and Third Sino-Soviet Wars, and in the First Sino-Soviet War.

General Zhao Tingzhu spent two hours at the station of the First Armored Division observing the coordinated combat training of the unit's comprehensive combat regiment, and he was quite pleasantly surprised by the results, the overall speed and efficiency of the advance were indeed greatly improved, and an armored regiment could easily take the positions of the opponent's three infantry regiments by using the advance and breakthrough of the only subordinate tank battalion and using a large number of infantry fighting vehicles and infantry to carry out coordinated operations, and the probability of the tank being attacked was also greatly reduced.

After watching the exercise, General Zhao Tingzhu, together with Wei Lihuang and Huang Baitao, returned to the headquarters of the First Armored Division and returned to the office of the division headquarters, where Zhao Tingzhu got reports on many recent training exercises.

Judging from the report alone, the effective integration of integrated combat regiment tactics at the regimental level to ensure the efficiency of coordinated operations has been quite successful, and the number of tanks destroyed has been greatly reduced.

There were only three people in the conference room of the division headquarters: Zhao Tingzhu, Wei Lihuang and Huang Baitao.

General Zhao Tingzhu smoked a willow black pipe while reading all the exercise reports one by one, and after a long time, he said to Wei Lihuang: "It's a pity that we tossed a little late, the military department has already made the final deadline for the final dispatch of troops, in short, before October, we need to make all preparations, and it is too late to continue to rectify the time." ”

Wei Lihuang was not in a hurry, and replied: "Then let's change while fighting, only a real war can test the correct surnames and shortcomings of tactical changes." ”

General Zhao Tingzhu said: "Isn't that the truth! ”

He also really admired the kind of large-scale military change that Chen Wu had made in the Northeast National Defense Force, and the reduction of the basic command unit for comprehensive operations to the battalion level was really a big change, and the effect was indeed obvious.

Their Northern Coalition Army is too late in time, and can only carry out changes at the level of composite regiments, which also need to gradually change the system at night during the war, and in terms of changes at the division level, the Imperial Army has done a relatively complete job, and now the pure tank brigade has been basically dismantled.

It is not that the pure tank brigades are bad, but the advantages and disadvantages are too obvious, and a small amount can be retained, and most of the tank brigades are divided into regiments and battalions, and assigned to each armored division as a directly administered force.

Of course, the artillery unit is still mainly engaged in group operations, especially the heavy artillery and self-propelled artillery units of the Empire, and large-scale artillery divisions can still become the central force of the Imperial Army, and the same is true for the Soviet Union and Germany, this time it is destined to be a decisive battle between the world's largest artillery empires!

It is said that China was the first to come up with a tank brigade, because China was the earliest and most courageous on the road of large-scale mechanization, and the Soviet Union and Germany really copied the model of the Chinese Army, but China is also quick to introspect, and there are only three pure tank brigades left in the Northern Coalition Army.

The Soviet Red Army acted in the opposite direction, expanding tank divisions and tank armies from the initial tank brigade establishment, and its 3rd and 6th tank armies were really large-scale mechanized combat forces of unprecedented scale, and it can also be said that the Soviet Union's steel torrent tactics were brought into full play.

Whether the extreme model of the Soviet Red Army is more combative, or whether the Imperial Army's integrated combat armored division at this stage is more combative, this needs to be tested and answered by war.

One thing is certain, that is, the number of artillery, tanks, armored vehicles and trucks of the Reich is really completely overwhelming the Soviet Red Army, not only in terms of quantity, but also in terms of quality, and it can be called the well-deserved king of the world's mechanized army.

(To be continued)