After nearly five years of war, China has become very powerful.

With the technical and material support of Germany and Austria, the Beiyang government gradually established a perfect military industrial system during the war, and began to renovate the army, reorganizing, training, and equipping about 350 so-called "Austrian armoury divisions" and 12 armored divisions in imitation of the establishment of Germany and Austria.

The armored division of the Chinese National Defense Forces belongs to the German-Austrian light armored division, under the jurisdiction of one tank regiment and two mechanized infantry regiments, equipped with a total of 76 PT39 medium tanks and 118 PT35 medium tanks copied using Austro-Hungarian technology. On the domestic battlefield of resistance against Japan, the Wehrmacht has deeply experienced the impact of tanks and armored forces on modern warfare, but due to the limitations of domestic industrial capacity, the domestic production of tanks and armored vehicles is far from meeting the needs of war.

Compared to Germany and Austria, China has a significant shortage of steel, and in order to defeat Japan, there is still a part of steel production that needs to be allocated to the navy, so the formation of armored forces is extremely slow. After the Burma campaign, China opened up the sea connection channel with the Axis powers, with a large number of domestic urgently needed German and Austrian machine tools and engines and other key components imported, the domestic production of tanks and armored vehicles has gradually increased, has been able to reach the level of 150 PT39K medium tanks and 320 PT35G medium tanks per month, although there is still a big gap between the output of more than 1,500 tanks per month in Bide and Soviet Russia, But it has far surpassed second-rate industrial countries such as Italy and Japan.

In order to prepare for the battle against the Soviet army, Xu Shuzheng and Jiang Zuobin transferred 8 of the 12 armored divisions currently in China to the northwest and northern theaters, and at the same time stepped up the reorganization of 4 armored divisions and 3 independent tank brigades this winter. Relatively speaking, China has a population of more than 500 million, and the number and source of troops far exceed that of Germany and Austria and even Soviet Russia, with the material and technical assistance of Germany and Austria. With the rapid growth of industrial capacity, it is now gradually becoming a huge and feared warplane.

Due to its huge resources and manpower advantages, China's heavy industry is developing rapidly at an astonishing rate of 2 to 30 percent every year, showing great potential for development. In 1942 or 1943, steel production was expected to reach the same annual output of 16 million tons as Austria-Hungary, making it the world's fourth-largest industrial power. With the improvement of industrial capacity and the level of equipment of the army, the Chinese side is confident enough to defeat Japan on its own. This is also the main reason why Xu Shuzheng was able to persuade some dissenting generals to temporarily abandon the war plan against Japan and go all out to attack Soviet Russia.

From the speeches of Schüschnikg's visit to China, it was already clear that the Austro-Hungarian Emperor wanted to force Russia out of the war in 1942 or 1943 and conclude a peace agreement with it, at which point China would lose an excellent opportunity to regain lost territory. Unless China has the ability to wage a full-scale war with Soviet Russia and then crush its opponents.

Judging by the current situation, at least within the next ten years. China has not been able to do that yet.

If Soviet Russia reached a peace treaty with Germany and Austria, then China would completely lose this opportunity.

At present, the total strength of Soviet Russia in the Far East is about 1.1 million, mainly distributed in Siberia and Mongolia, and about 200,000 in Central Asia, which are equipped with about 1,200 tanks, 3,000 artillery pieces and 1,000 combat aircraft.

In comparison, in order to prepare for the war against the Soviet Union, the Chinese side mobilized a total of 12 armored divisions and 4 independent tank brigades. Nearly 3,000 tanks and 6,000 artillery pieces, with a total army strength of 2.6 million men. Among them, about 450,000 people in Xinjiang Province and 750,000 people in Khovdo Province, and more than 1.3 million troops will march from Mongolia and the northeast along the Siberian Railway, including nine army aviation divisions with a total of more than 2,600 combat aircraft.

In terms of the strength of the two sides, the Wehrmacht has an absolute advantage. However, the possibility of the Soviet army being transferred to the European theater to reinforce the East cannot be ruled out. For this reason, when drawing up the operational plan, Jiang Fangzhen, deputy chief of the general staff, put forward the request that a total of 450,000 troops from the three group armies of the Southwest Theater be transferred to serve as strategic reserves.

However, this request made Xu Shuzheng feel very difficult, because the southwest theater sent an expeditionary force into Southeast Asia to fight jointly with the Axis powers, the number of troops was already insufficient. If troops are transferred again, the entire theater of operations will be emptied.

In the end, according to coordination, the War Department and the base camp decided to transfer one group army from North China, Central China, and Southwest China, one into Xinjiang, one into Kobdo, and one into Kulen, as a strategic reserve for the entire campaign, so that the total number of troops used by the Chinese side in the war against the Soviet Union exceeded 3 million.

The newly formed 277th Division took a train from the garrisoned Zahaqin Banner to the ancient city of Xinjiang, then crossed the Dzungar Gobi and marched along the Ulungu River on the border between Xinjiang and Kobdo Province to the Brento Sea. The new 277th Division belongs to the infantry establishment of the Wehrmacht, and there are only more than 200 transport vehicles and more than 200 horse-drawn carts in the whole division, and there are cannons towed behind the cars.

On the third day of leaving the ancient city, the new 277th Division had just arrived at the Chaertu military station on the banks of the Ulungu River, when the Wehrmacht's elite 7th Panzer Division and 110th Mechanized Infantry Division rushed up from behind. Army General Xu Shuzheng saw that he had made great determination to fight this battle, and took out the 7th Group Army and the 34th Group Army, which were the most elite in the Anhui lineage.

The 7th Armored Division is worthy of being the elite of the Wehrmacht, with more than 300 tanks and armored vehicles, plus more than 1,000 vehicles and nearly 100 artillery pieces of various types, setting up a long snake formation on the Gobi Highway, stretching for more than 30 kilometers, which looks majestic enough.

"What a fucking magnanimity!" Fan Hui said enviously.

Ling Yuan carefully looked at the vehicles that were shining with metallic luster, and said with emotion: "If the Wehrmacht can be equipped with such 50 divisions, it can scare little Japan to death." But it's difficult, it takes almost a month to equip such an armored division in China, and if you want to come out with such an armored division, how can it take ten or eight years. ”

"But you have to give us enough cars, it's too unfair." Fan Hui said with some indignation.

"Well, we are only a second-line unit that has just been formed, and this time we are mainly responsible for maintaining the security of the logistics supply line to prevent the sabotage of the Soviet and Russian guerrillas." Ling Yuan said, "If you can seize the opportunity and fight a good battle, you can immediately upgrade to a mechanized infantry division, which will at least be equipped with some tanks and armored vehicles, and the number of transport vehicles in the division will reach 800." ”

By April 9, the battle had first begun on the line of the Selenga River.

In the early morning of 9 April, on a long front of thousands of kilometers from Verkhnito Udinsk in the east to the Ili River in the west, more than one million Chinese border guards, supported by more than 2,600 combat planes and more than 2,000 tanks, launched a counteroffensive on the entire front of the Soviet and Russian Far East troops. Due to the defeat in the battles of Kiev and the Kuban campaign, the Soviet army lost millions of troops, and urgently needed troops to fill the vacancies in the front, and the Far Eastern troops, which had not been in a major war, naturally became the focus of the transfer.

Since mid-November last year, the number of troops in the Far East has dropped sharply from 1.1 million to 500,000, instead of the 900,000 estimated by the Chinese side.

But no one would have thought that the Chinese would ignore the invading Japanese army, but launched a counteroffensive against Soviet Russia first.

The defense line of the Soviet Russian Far Eastern Army, which was weak, quickly collapsed. (To be continued......)