[Anti-Japanese Iron and Blood King] Chapter 469: The Overall Situation of Shandong (Ask for a subscription, ask for a monthly pass, ask for everything!) ）

Although Wang Dechuan had only arrived in Luxi a week earlier than Ma Zheng and the others, he and the more than 50 intelligence officers he had brought with him had already inquired about the situation in Shandong.

According to the intelligence department's investigation, the Japanese army in the entire Shandong region is now the largest establishment of the army, and now Shandong is stationed in Shandong with four divisions of the 12th Army of the Japanese Army, three mixed brigades, an unknown number of cavalry, and more than 10 independent garrison brigades, and the supreme commander is Otaka Kamezo, with the rank of lieutenant general.

At the same time, there were about 50,000 puppet troops in Shandong, which were organized into 9 divisions, 11 brigades, and 32 regiments. In addition, the bandits and Daomen forces controlled by the Japanese army are also unknown, and these are all hostile forces that Ma Zheng's subordinates need to eliminate, and it is conservatively estimated that the total number of Japanese puppet troops in the entire Shandong region has reached 18 to 200,000, and if you count the Daomen forces that have defected to the Japanese army, this number is at least 300,000 or more, or even more.

Wang Dechuan also sorted out some of the characteristics of the Japanese puppet army's rule in Shandong and reported it to Ma Zheng, and through the investigation of their intelligence department, it was learned that the Japanese army in Shandong mainly relied on several railway lines and inland waterways that crisscrossed Shandong to turn Shandong into several ruling areas, and like the Japanese army in other regions, the Japanese army in Shandong was relatively strong in the big cities and the surrounding areas, and neither the regular troops of the Nationalist Government nor the guerrilla troops of the Eighth Route Army could compete with the Japanese army.

However, in the vast majority of rural and mountainous areas, the strength of the Japanese puppet army was very weak, except that the Japanese army was limited in strength and could not eliminate or eliminate all the Chinese forces in Shandong, and the most important thing was that Shandong originally belonged to the territory of the warlord Han Fuqu, and Han Fuqu was shot by the chairman of the committee after abandoning Shandong without firing a shot.

However, the forces in the hands of Han Fuqu were not fully absorbed by the Nationalist Government, and there were still many troops scattered all over Shandong, either occupying the mountains as kings or wandering to commit crimes, and these people neither defected to the Communist Party nor accepted the reorganization of the Nationalist Government, and at the same time fought devils. Since most of these people are native of Shandong, they are familiar with the terrain and can easily get help from their natives, so there are such rout activities in most remote areas of Shandong.

In addition, the Shandong region has been a thriving area of Taoist forces since ancient times, and there are countless miscellaneous forces of this Taoist and that sect, with 180 core members in the small Daomen, and tens of thousands of core members in the large ones, and more than 100,000 villagers who are dependent on the faith.

Such forces, whether they were traitors, landlords, or the Japanese behind them, were unwilling to provoke, and as long as these Daomen forces agreed not to oppose the Japanese army, and at the same time did not help either the Eighth Route or the Kuomintang, the Japanese army would not send troops to exterminate them. Therefore, at this time, Shandong seemed to be an area ruled by the Japanese puppet army and the local Taoist gangs in China, in short, this place did not have China's regular national defense force.

At the same time, in the telegram compiled by Wang Dechuan, it was specifically mentioned that what the Japanese army was most concerned about in Shandong was the railway line that ran through Shandong, especially the three main economic arteries of the Jiaoji Line, the Jinpu Line, and the Longhai Line, which connected the Beijing-Tianjin region with northern Jiangsu.

However, due to the powerful blows of the guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army, the Japanese army had to send heavy troops to escort each military column. It greatly occupied the mobile strength of the Japanese army, so although the Japanese army had 100,000 people in Shandong, it was still short of troops.

Because of this, the Japanese army only needs to collect taxes on time in the vast rural areas, and the vast majority of these places are managed by the local maintenance associations and puppet armies, and as long as there are no major things, the Japanese army will not take care of them.

In addition, the complicated situation in Shandong was far beyond Ma Zheng's expectations, and in accordance with the policy of the Eighth Route Army, all forces that could be united should be united and everything should serve the anti-Japanese national united front. Therefore, at this time, Ma Zheng could not take action against those bandits and Daomen forces for the time being, otherwise he would have violated party discipline and military regulations, unless there was definite evidence that these forces colluded with the Japanese. However, some of these evidences can be found in a day or two, so it is even more difficult for Ma Zheng's department to open up the situation in Shandong.

Compared with the strength of the enemy, and now the Chinese defense forces in the entire Shandong region have almost been lost, except for the railway guerrilla force in Weishan Lake, which is relatively complete, there is no longer a complete Chinese/army in the entire Shandong region.

The most infuriating thing is that Sun Liangcheng, the chief director of the Luxi Administrative Office of the Nationalist Government, had already led his troops to flee before the Japanese army hit Luxi, but on the way he was intercepted by a dissatisfied infantry brigade of only 800 Japanese troops, and the huge regular army of more than 15,000 people was actually blocked by an infantry brigade of less than 800 people for six hours, leaving behind more than 3,000 corpses and more than 1,000 wounded before rushing out Yes, less than a third of the more than 15,000 people arrived in Henan, the rest were either killed in battle or captured, and some even got lost inexplicably while walking.

Sun Liangcheng's escape directly led to the fact that China's already small national defense force was only a few infantry brigades of the Eighth Route Army, with less than 20,000 troops resisting, but the Eighth Route Army in Shandong was not as rich as the Eighth Route Army in the Suicha Military Region, and its combat effectiveness was far from that of Ma Zheng's subordinates.

Some time ago, the Japanese army's law and order operations had a great impact on the Eighth Route Army in Shandong, and under the joint suppression of the Japanese puppet army and the Daomen forces, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army stationed in Luxide and the Shandong Column of the Eighth Route Army in the Lunan area suffered heavy losses, in addition to the annihilation of some troops, a large part of the forces were directly driven out of Shandong, and even the main leaders of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee were seriously injured.

According to the information collected by Wang Dechuan and others, the Japanese army had been planning a long-planned siege and killing during the operation of Zhi'an and Zhengzheng. The intelligence of the Japanese army was extremely accurate, and almost all the Japanese troops stationed in the headquarters of various units in Shandong knew that the Japanese army was doing everything possible with aircraft, artillery, special forces, poison gas bombs. It only took more than a month to wipe out Sun Liangcheng's troops and the troops commanded by the Shandong Provincial Committee of the Eighth Route Army, who had no time to escape.

The general trend of Shandong is almost like this, but compared with the general trend in Shandong, Ma Zheng is more concerned about the enemy in the Luxi area, and after investigation, the Japanese army stationed in Liaocheng is the 10th Brigade of the Japanese Army, which was formed in Kurume, Japan in early 1939, and the brigade commander is Major General Nobu Mizuno. It has more than 6,300 independent infantry brigades, artillery brigades, engineer brigades, and signal brigades under its jurisdiction.

A month earlier, the Mizuno Brigade had boarded a ship from Kurume, arrived in Qingdao, Shandong Province, and was then transferred to Liaocheng to garrison seven or eight counties in the western part of the country.

After listening to Wang Dechuan's report, Ma Zheng couldn't help but be surprised, this independent mixed 10th brigade has not been formed at this time in history, and even after arriving at the Chinese battlefield, its station should be in Zhangdian in Zibo, not Liaocheng in Luxi. If the historical Japanese garrison is assigned, Liaocheng should be stationed by the independent mixed sixth brigade.

However, Ma Zheng immediately stopped dwelling on this time, thinking about the entire history of the Anti-Japanese War that had been changed beyond recognition by him, and the garrison of a brigade was a trivial matter. So Ma Zheng didn't go into it, anyway, it was just an independent mixed brigade, but only six or seven thousand people.

Moreover, the Japanese army only changed the name of the garrison, but the strength of the army did not increase or decrease much, and it did not have much impact on the course of the entire history.

The most important thing now is to further find out the enemy's movements and strength, and find a way to get rid of them and open up the situation. Only the battle can turn the more than 1,000 troops under his command from stagnant water to living water, and as long as he has a firm foothold in Luxi, then it is possible to carry out the next mission. (To be continued.) )