Due to the fierce counterattacks launched by Germany and Austria in the Don River valley and the Ukrainian front, the front line was tight, and the Soviet army had to draw a large number of troops from the Far East to invest in the European theater, and the forces in the Far East and Central Asia were weak, which gave the Chinese Defense Forces an excellent opportunity to counterattack. ※%top※%point※%small※%say,x.

In the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in early summer, there is endless green everywhere, and some tall trees stand alone on the grassland, like guardians of this wilderness.

In 1937, the Far Eastern Republic was destroyed under the attack of the Soviet and Japanese armies. In order to avoid further invasion by Soviet Russia, the Far Eastern Army, which had withdrawn into China, was disbanded and "naturalized" into the Wehrmacht formation. After the Soviet army invaded and occupied the Tangnu-Ulianghai and the Far East, due to the conflict with the Japanese army over the battle for Nizhny Uginsk and Kulen, the pace of the offensive to the south was stopped, and the Chinese side confronted the first line of the Hangzhou ** Mountain, and no large-scale fighting broke out after that.

In order to defend against the invasion of the Soviet army, the Wehrmacht reorganized the Northwest Theater and established the Northwest Front Army, focusing on Xinjiang and Kobdo provinces, with two group armies and two cavalry corps under its jurisdiction. In addition, the Northern Front Army was newly formed with the armies of Shanxi, Suiyuan, and Shaanxi provinces, under the jurisdiction of five group armies, three cavalry corps, and one armored corps, with a total strength of nearly 700,000 troops, and focused on defending against possible Soviet-Japanese attacks from the Mongol side.

On the front line of Rehe, Chahar and Zhili, the Chinese side set up the Northeast Front Army to resist the invasion of the Japanese army, because the Japanese Kwantung Army and the North China Dispatch Army have 37 divisions and 7 ** mixed brigades, plus the Manchuria Railway ** garrison brigade, etc., the total strength of nearly 1.1 million people, so the Chinese side deployed the strongest troops on this line, with a total of 11 group armies, three cavalry corps and one armored corps, with a total strength of more than 1.3 million people.

Since 1933, the Beiyang government has achieved great results in large-scale heavy industry investment and construction, and has built two major heavy industry bases in China, with Taiyuan and Wuhan as the center.

In the north, a series of large-scale heavy industry bases based on steel, metallurgy, mechanical processing, coal and chemical industry have been formed with the five major iron and steel plants of Taiyuan, Xuanhua, Jingxi, Baotou and Handan as the center. It has also built three large tank factories in Baotou, Zhangjiakou and Taiyuan, four large automobile manufacturing bases in Beijing, Taiyuan, Xi'an and Dexian, four large aircraft factories in Beijing, Taiyuan, Xi'an and Luoyang, and three large arsenals in Linxian, Baotou and Taiyuan.

In the south, several major heavy industry centers centered on seven iron and steel plants in Wuhan, Xinyu, Chongqing, Kunming, Guiyang, Zhuzhou, and Liuzhou have been formed, and four large arsenals in Hanyang, Chengdu, Zhuzhou, and Qinzhou, and five large aircraft factories in Wuhan, Kunming, Chengdu, Nanchang, and Nanning have been built. Three tank factories in Wuhan, Chongqing and Liuzhou, and three large automobile manufacturing bases in Wuhan, Qinzhou and Chongqing.

In terms of shipbuilding industry, it has gradually formed shipbuilding bases in the north such as Tianjin, Yantai, Qinhuangdao, Weihai and Qingdao with Tianjin as the center, and three shipbuilding bases in the south, including Qinzhou, Fangcheng and Beihai, and at the same time four major inland shipbuilding bases have been built in Wuhan, Chongqing, Nanchang and Wuzhou.

With the recovery of Guangzhou, Guangzhou's shipbuilding industry is also rapidly recovering and developing.

After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, more than 100 large-scale factories built with the assistance of Germany and Austria were completed and put into operation one after another, and the Chinese side became stronger and stronger in this war. As more and more new tanks, armored vehicles, aircraft, artillery and other equipment are equipped with the troops, the Chinese army has far surpassed the Japanese army in terms of equipment performance and quantity, but because the training of these technical arms still needs time. That's why a large-scale counteroffensive has not been launched.

Because the Soviet army transferred a large number of the Far East Army to the European theater, the Japanese army now concentrated its main forces in the South Seas and the Pacific theater. In the Chinese theater, the warring parties and the balance of forces have changed significantly, and the Chinese Aerospace Forces have seized the initiative in the sky,

At present, Japan has only three flight groups left in the Chinese battlefield, the second, fourth, and seventh, with a total of more than 3,600 combat aircraft, of which the second and fourth flight groups belong to the Kwantung Army combat series. The 7th Flying Group was under the command of the Japanese East China Dispatch Army.

At present, the Chinese side has 14 aviation divisions and more than 4,000 combat aircraft in the two major theaters of North China and Northeast China. The two theaters of central and eastern China also have eight aviation divisions and more than 2,800 combat aircraft. In the Chinese theater, the monthly loss of fighters on both sides is about 300 aircraft, but since China's aircraft production has now exceeded 600 per month, the strength of China's air force has been increasing. In fact, Japan's monthly aircraft production was comparable to that of the Chinese side, but the Japanese side was greatly consumed in the war against the Axis powers in the South Seas. Domestic aircraft production could no longer make up for the losses on the battlefield, and without the support of the Americans, the Japanese army's combat aircraft would be exhausted within a few months.

In the Chinese battlefield, there is basically no scene of large-scale attacks by Japanese military planes in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War. More often than not, it was the Chinese air force group soaring in the sky, brazenly attacking the Japanese troops defending on the ground.

The shape of the battlefield is getting better and better, and the decision-making level of the army headed by Xu Shuzheng, Jiang Zuobin, and others has drawn up a large-scale counteroffensive operation plan.

According to the establishment of the German Affairs Advisory Group, the Chinese side should take advantage of the weakness of the Soviet army to launch a large-scale counterattack in Central Asia and along the Yenisei and Irtysh rivers, cooperate with the Axis powers to defeat Soviet Russia with all their might, and then make every effort to deal with the Japanese army. However, Xu Shuzheng was not interested in the Germans' strategy of "Europe first and then Asia", and in his view, Japan was China's top priority, and it was imperative to defeat Japan with all its might.

After several debates, Xu Shuzheng finally agreed to the battle plan of the Chinese side to send troops to recover Mongolia and cut off the Soviet-Russian Trans-Siberian railway line. This battle plan was beneficial to China, and it cut off the transportation channel on the Siberian railway line, which was quite important for Soviet Russia, and it could be regarded as a corresponding "contribution" to the European theater.

Unbearable and lonely, "Xiao Xu" decided to personally go out and take command of the first real large-scale counteroffensive operation of the Chinese side since the beginning of the war.

Now Guisui has suddenly become much more lively, and the high-ranking generals belonging to the Northern Theater have gathered at the Guihua Airport to wait for the arrival of this army commander.

Several black dots appeared in the sky, the roar of the engines became louder and louder, and accompanied by more than a dozen escort fighters, two "Y-3" twin-engine military transport planes of the Xi'an Aircraft Factory with the imported drawings and technical imitations of the Austro-Hungarian SM28 passenger aircraft landed on the huge concrete runway of the naturalized airport.

Wei Zonghan, commander-in-chief of the Northern Theater, took a large number of generals and lieutenant generals of the Northern Front Army to the plane in a car. Xu Shuzheng, Jiang Zuobin, chief of the army's general staff, deputy chief of the general staff, and head of the German-Austrian military advisory group, Falkenhausen, and other senior members of the Wehrmacht have already stepped down the ramp of the plane.

"Brother Wei, why are you here, it's too troublesome." Wei Zonghan was a general of the Anhui department, who served as president of the Army University and director of the Department of Military Science of the Army, and was in charge of the mobilization and training of the national reserve force after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, and later succeeded Wu Guangxin as commander of the Northern Theater.

Wei Zonghan had a smile on his face: "If it were someone else, I would basically not come in person, our brothers, there would be no need to be polite." He then shook hands with Jiang Zuobin and others and said hello, it was still a little embarrassing to meet Jiang Fangzhen, when Wei Zonghan was in charge of the Military Science Department, Jiang Fangzhen was forced to stage a "suicide incident", which caused Jiang to almost die, although it has been nearly 30 years, but it is inevitable that everyone is a little unnatural when they meet.

Su Bingwen, Zhang Weicheng, Yang **yuan, Wang Jiajun, Fu Yisheng, and other commanders of the various group armies of the Northern Front also rushed to Guisui to greet the arrival of the Minister of War and the Chief of the General Staff of the National Defense Forces. Since the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a large number of Baoding officer generals who are capable of fighting well have grown up, replaced the position of those veteran generals, and become the military commanders of various group armies, armies, and divisions of the National Defense Army.

Although there are still many factions within the IDF, the factional division and antagonism are no longer as obvious as in the past, and at least in the face of foreign aggression, everyone can still maintain sincere cooperation and support each other. (To be continued......)

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