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"The specter of war has not yet reached Europa since the Paris Peace Conference, and the Treaty of Versailles was dissolved when Germany cried out for normal national treatment and annexed Austria with its iron heel. Nivelle (Chamberlain's) stupidity and cowardice in Munich humiliated England, and henceforth the sight of the sun never setting could only exist in oil paintings. ”

"He stepped off the plane, his feet trembling and waving the agreement in high spirits, shouting that the peace of an entire generation was secured, and when he shouted for us to go to bed and sleep in peace, he forgot that Japan in the Far East was still grinding its teeth."

"They call it a policy of appeasement, but I think it's a paranoid policy conceived by a paranoid little old man, and when we betray the Czechs and cede the Sudetenland in disregard of the free choice of the Austrian people, freedom is actually dead! Europe is already shrouded in dictatorship. From now on, we can no longer tell the world how to pursue democracy and freedom, nor can we treat the Soviet Union harshly, because it is we ourselves who have thrown freedom and democracy into hell. ”――

Famous political commentator of The Times of London, Gregory Alver.

On the last day of September 1938, news came from Munich that shocked the world. Chamberlain's appeasement policy reached its peak, and the image of Britain and France abandoning their allies in the face of war in public made countless people and countries sleepless.

The name Neville Chamberlain was recorded in history when he shouted at the airport to bring peace back to England, unaware that his political career and the future of the entire British Empire had been buried.

Germany shouted victory, and Hitler's prestige was no longer shaken. But no one imagined that the German army, which was still weak at this time, would become so strong after the annexation of the Sudetenland, and the famous Škoda company was officially tied to the Nazi tank. And this is only on the surface, three days after Germany won the Sudetenland, the GC International, which has always been known as an anti-Nazi vanguard, suddenly changed its face. It not only created momentum for Soviet-German friendship, but also asked the GC international organizations in Spain, Austria and the Czech Republic to cooperate with the German occupation and call on the GC party members in the occupied areas to actively resume production.

At the same time, the Chamberlain government, which had just resolved the Sudetenland crisis but had been criticized for appeasement, suddenly picked up its spirits and began to put pressure on Japan in the Far East. Chamberlain, who had groveled before Germany, suddenly changed his face and demanded in stern terms that the Japanese government should immediately withdraw from the Dutch East Indies and that Whitehall be prepared for armed expulsion.

Shortly after the Prime Minister's order, the British War Office mobilized three infantry divisions from Burma, India and the Persian Gulf. At the same time, the Royal Navy, which had been thrown into the continuous stream of appeasement, also sent the battlecruiser Prestige to support the Far East Fleet, and at the same time ordered the Malaya to withdraw from Singapore to Colombo to garrison, taking the initiative to distance itself to prevent a Japanese sneak attack.

On October 5, the Japanese envoy Mamoto Morishima arrived in Beijing. After five days of negotiations, Japan promised to hand over the Riau Province of Sumatra to the Chinese side, and promised to ensure the security of the Strait of Malacca and the security of the Chinese in West Borneo and Nanyang, and that Singapore and the French East Indies would not be allowed to cross the border between Singapore and the French East Indies, but because Yang Qiu was not in Beijing. Japan did not respond immediately.

On 7 November, the belated Japanese delegation arrived in The Hague, the Netherlands, to begin negotiations with Britain and the Netherlands to resolve the Dutch East Indies question. As soon as the Japanese delegation, which was deliberately trying to buy time for the domestic transfer of troops, it demanded that the Dutch government cede to Japan all the Dutch East Indies except for the island of Java. At the same time, Japan was allowed to station troops in Batavia.

Of course, Britain and the Netherlands could not agree to such a demand for surrender, but Chamberlain obviously lacked confidence and was worried about a full-scale war with Japan, so he proposed to exchange the island of Dutch New Guinea for the withdrawal of Japanese troops.

The negotiations were deadlocked.

Japan's mobilization is getting faster and faster. Every day, soldiers waving national flags embark on warships and head to the South Seas, which are said to be rich and beautiful. They. It's like a group of unconscious moths, frantically devoting themselves to the dream of the great cause of the imperial kingdom. Not to be outdone, the British and the Dutch landed three army divisions across the Strait of Malacca in Jambi, Sumatra, and set up a defensive line in Jambi, less than 50 kilometers from the Palembang oil fields.

In Afghanistan, where fighting was also fierce, and after a summer of maneuvering, the National Defense Forces (IDF), which had been on a halt for some time, suddenly regained the provinces of Badghis and Ghor before the winter of 25 October, and was only a stone's throw away from the important province of Herat.

On December 1, for the first time in 17 years, the Ministry of National Defense in Beijing ordered the conscription of conscripts in an abnormal state and reorganized 25 army divisions.

The tense situation in the Far East has caused many people in China to have doubts and differences about Yang Qiu's immobility, and many people also maliciously believe that after ruling the country for more than 30 years, the president, who has always appeared in front of the world with iron and blood, has retreated.

Shanghai.

Busy workers and citizens can finally breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy the New Year's holiday, the train station is crowded with migrant workers returning to their hometowns for the New Year, and the department stores along the street are full of customers, even if the external environment is not good, but in the face of the annual Spring Festival, the Chinese people have temporarily forgotten their tension and troubles, and are in full swing to organize the New Year.

"Brother Zhaoming, what do you mean by president? Negotiations with Japan have been going on for almost three or four months, right? This clearly shows that Japan wants to take action against Britain, but it is still procrastinating, building this and that all day long, and the factories of the whole country are about to be taken over by the army! Warships were launched one after another. Only one aircraft carrier was delivered in Qinzhou last month, and today Jiangnan will deliver a second one. The new ship launched from last year to the present is even more requisitioned by the Navy! You say, if you don't do anything, do you have to watch millions of Nanyang compatriots fall into fire and water? In the Song Mansion in the western suburbs of Shanghai, Song Ziwen, a member of the Democratic Party of Guangdong Province who came to the meeting, crossed his feet and rolled up the English newspaper in his hand, revealing his dissatisfaction with the current politics.

After the crisis in the Dutch East Indies intensified, Yang Qiu asked Wang Zhengting to preside over the negotiations with Japan, but he was mostly busy running in the manufacturing industry and inspecting the war readiness. In order to make up for the shortcomings, 300,000 sets of machine tools in stock were allocated from the warehouse to be distributed free of charge to capable private family workshops, and enterprises were mobilized to teach these family workshops to manufacture standardized spare parts. Even the dozens of textile factories and light industry factories invested by the Song family in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other places were all included in the list of armament enterprises.

Don't look at the fact that you can get stable orders by becoming an armaments enterprise, but in fact, armament profits are much thinner than usual. This is a huge profit for under-run small factories and family workshops. But for a prosperous business like the Song family, it is not very cost-effective. But now that people have big fists, and now the situation outside is tense, who dares to oppose a sentence of armament? Therefore, a big domestic boss like Song Ziwen is actually very dissatisfied with the armament economy, and if there is a war, they have nothing to say, but now that they are not fighting, why should they be nervous and transferred to the armament system so early? Therefore, I took the opportunity of the Democratic Party's national congress in Shanghai to express my dissatisfaction in front of Wang Zhaoming and others.

A new election will be held next year, and the Democratic Party, which has been suppressed for decades, also wants to take advantage of Yang Qiu's last term to accumulate some capital. Therefore, Soong Ziwen's words immediately attracted the echo of many KMT legislators. Wang Zhaoming naturally wanted to see the Democratic Party turn around under his leadership, but after all, he knew better than Song Ziwen and others that the situation was difficult, and said: "Do you think the president doesn't want to fight? He doesn't have enough troops! The Soviets have nearly one million troops in the northwest, and before I came out, I heard Zhang Xiaozhun say that in addition to the Tenth Army in Afghanistan. The Northwest has already dragged our 8 armies! Now the president can only fight 20 armies in his hands, North Korea and Northeast China need 4 armies, Shandong to the coast of Jiangsu and Zhejiang need 2 armies, Fujian and Guangxi also need 2 armies, so there are only 3 armies left in his hands, so Song Ziqing was in a hurry to build another 10 armies before I came out. ”

"If you know that there are not enough troops, why didn't you do it earlier?"

"Do it early? Do you still have the heart to talk and laugh here? Li Liejun, who was sitting next to him, was not interested in this kind of small talk. Although he is also a Democratic Party boss, he understands the harm of army expansion to the economy better than these people, and said coldly: "By our country's standards, one army has five divisions. From the formation to the possession of combat effectiveness, it will cost 300 million yuan, and even if there is no war, it will cost 50 million yuan a year just to raise an army. In the past 28 years of the Republic of China, if it had not been for suppressing the number of troops and saving military spending. If all the money is used for national construction and supporting industry and commerce, where is today's status? If it weren't for the president's single-minded focus on putting the country at a disadvantage. Britain, France, and the United States, which can allow us to develop slowly? ”

Li Liejun's words made Song Ziwen speechless, but he was unwilling to give up this opportunity to be in the limelight, and avoided the topic and asked Wang Zhaoming: "Brother Zhaoming, next year is the election year, what should we do?" ”

Yang Qiu's first two terms were extremely stable, and the Democratic Party only accompanied the prince to study, but as the third term was about to begin, Song Ziwen and others moved their minds. After all, the constitution stipulates that the presidential term is up to three terms, and it is impossible for Yang Qiu to hold on to the throne, but the Kuomintang has a solid foundation, and the Democratic Party is much weaker than the Kuomintang in the military and political system, and it is not an opponent at the same level even in industry and commerce, so they all want to use the war to do something to attract the attention of voters and strive to turn the tables after Yang Qiu leaves office.

Seeing that everyone was talking about Yang Qiu's third term, Li Liejun didn't want to listen to it anymore, he didn't want to get involved in this matter, and seeing that the launching ceremony of the Jiangnan Plant was about to begin, he took the lead in resigning to participate in the aircraft carrier delivery ceremony. But when they arrived at the Jiangnan factory, they found that Yang Qiu, Song Ziqing and others who had originally come to participate in the delivery ceremony were all gone, and even Chen Shaokuan and other senior naval officers had disappeared, leaving only the president's wife Miao Luo and Yang Tiancheng, the second son of the Yang family, to attend the delivery ceremony as representatives.

"Uncle Lee."

The children of the Yang family are relatively low-key, the eldest Yang Tianlei has graduated from the National Defense University and served as a company commander in the First Armored Division, the second is a naval reserve officer, the eldest daughter Yang Sisi is studying for a master's degree in electronics at Harvard University in the United States, and the remaining son and daughter are studying at a young age. "Hehe, I haven't seen all of them as naval officers for a few years, are you going to be assigned to an aircraft carrier?" Li Liejun patted Yang Tiancheng with a smile, and asked a few words about the assigned things before asking, "What about the president and General Chen?" ”

"Just now I sent a telegram saying that the negotiations between Britain and Japan have broken down, and Chen Hua and Ziqing have already taken a plane back to Beijing first." Miao Luo was still looking at Yang Tiancheng when he spoke, obviously knowing that the war was about to break out, so he was a little worried about the child.

Li Liejun didn't pay attention to Miao Luo's eyes, and his head banged. Although he had already guessed this result, he was still a little depressed when he really came, and he sighed unconsciously in his heart when he looked at the huge Liaoning aircraft carrier on the river.

War, or coming!

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On Chinese New Year's Eve of 1939, the day the Anglo-Japanese and Dutch East India negotiations broke down, a huge fleet had been assembled in the military port of Rabaul Fortress, far from the range of Sino-British reconnaissance.

Battleship Ise (remodeled from the British Lion), Battleship Hyuga (remodeled from the British Lion), Battleship Kongo, Battleship Hiei, Battleship Haruna, Battleship Kirishima, Heavy Cruiser Aoba, Heavy Cruiser Kinugasa, Heavy Cruiser Furutaka, Heavy Cruiser Kako, Akagi Aircraft Carrier, Kaga Aircraft Carrier, Soryu Aircraft Carrier, Flying Dragon Aircraft Carrier, sixty-eight battleships, one hundred and thirteen troop carriers, all with full flags at the same time.

At 11 o'clock in the morning, the flagship King Kong raised the flag.

"The rise and fall of the imperial kingdom, in one fell swoop!"