On 12 September, the Beijing State News Service announced the results of the naval battle on Guam, and as soon as the news came out, it set off quite a naval craze in China, and many young people even regarded wearing naval badges as a fashion. On the afternoon of the same day, in order to ease the tense atmosphere of Pyongyang's loss of the DPRK situation, the Ministry of Defense officially announced the victory in the Battle of Petropavlovsk, which had been suppressed for several days.

Compared to the Navy's tough Ha XVIII, the Army seems to have gone crazy in the Northwest! Only a week after the siege of Petropavlovsk in early August, the 16th and 33rd armies of the South Kazakh Army, led by the Polish 2nd Panzer Division and the 103rd Central Guards Division, forcibly broke through the defenses of five Soviet divisions and occupied Barabinsk. It not only encircled Omsk into the Petropavlovsk encirclement, but also officially cut off the Trans-Siberian Railway, leaving behind a string of Soviet Eastern fortresses such as Barnaul, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, and Krasnoyarsk, and completed the encirclement strategy of Central Siberia.

On the third day after the encirclement, the air force officially launched an all-out bombardment of Petropavlovsk and all the fortress cities to the east, and during the 20 days of bombardment, a total of more than 60,000 tons of bombs of various types were dropped, hundreds of fortified fortresses and bunkers of various types were destroyed, more than 40 bridges were blown up, roads, power generation, drinking water, and other basic living facilities in these places were completely destroyed and paralyzed. Due to the imminent harsh winter, without which the Central Siberian wilderness could not be inhabited, a total of 1.1 million Slavic migrants and other ethnic groups living in these places were forced to retreat to the Ural region of Western Siberia. At the same time, Long Yun and Liu Mingzhao also seized the chaotic opportunity of the retreat of the refugees and launched a general offensive on Petropavlovsk and Omsk.

After three weeks of bloody fighting and more than 70,000 casualties, Timoshenko's troops finally ran out of ammunition and food. The entire 200,000 Soviet defenders in both places were completely annihilated, and more than 110,000 were killed alone. With the defense of Central Siberia and the two fortress cities in northwestern Kazakhstan, they completely fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht. After a year of fighting, the Republic of China finally liberated all Central Asia east of the Aral Sea, imposed a semi-encirclement of Central Siberia, and pushed the defensive line to less than 800 kilometers away from the Ural industrial zone in Western Siberia.

At this point, the tone objectives of the spring-summer offensive of 1940 were completed, and a line of defense from the Aral Sea to Petropavlovsk and north to the town of Tevriz, north of Omsk, was fully formed. Upon learning of the breach, the 9th, 22nd, 33rd and 47th armies of the Siberian Army Group stationed on the east bank of Krasnoyarsk also launched a fierce attack on the west bank and fully occupied it five days later. But just when Moscow feared the complete loss of Central Siberia. The Wehrmacht, however, stopped and, having formed a three-sided encirclement of Barnaul, Novosibirsk and Tomsk, began to build railways, airfields, bunkers and fortifications, and began stockpiling supplies for wintering.

Upon hearing the news, Zhukov hurriedly went to see Stalin. He was asked to give an order as soon as possible for the 200,000 Siberian sergeants in the three places to break through to Surgut in the north along the Ob River, the only gap, and from there to strengthen the defenses by making a detour south to Tyumen and Kurgan. However, Stalin turned a blind eye and ignored the fact that the local people's livelihood and wintering supplies were basically destroyed by air raids, and reprimanded Zhukov. The local military and civilians were forced to continue to hold on. Zhukov was very angry, and he could not disobey the order, and finally went to Rokossovsky, the chief of staff of the Ural Front, under the cover of "fleeing refugees". Secretly drew up a retreat plan and withdrew seven divisions with a total of 120,000 soldiers from three places.

Timoshenko did not know what the two men were doing, and when he learned the news at the end of November, he immediately reported it to Stalin. And the arrest of two people was sent to Moscow. Stalin was also angry for a while, until December when he learned of the tragic situation in Central Siberia. Only then did he re-examine his orders and release the two. Because of this, Zhukov also returned to the front-line command post.

That's all for later.

After the completion of the spring and summer offensive, the northwest, which had been fighting fiercely for five months, finally entered a period of interlude in the war. In the total of five months of fighting, the Wehrmacht paid the price of 550,000 casualties (including wounded), a total of 1,100 aircraft and more than 4,000 tanks and armored vehicles, and a total of 13 million tons of various materials (including everything transported to the front in terms of transportation volume). It is said that the war is about logistics, and this figure can also explain why the Wehrmacht was able to win successive battles, on the contrary, even if the Soviet army, which had suffered successive defeats, fought in the territory, from the beginning to the end of the Battle of Peter Pavlovs, it only transported 5 million tons of supplies to the front line, which was less than half of the Wehrmacht.

Whether it was logistical pressure or the extension of the transportation line, after months of continuous fighting, the soldiers reached the point where they needed a large-scale rest. Therefore, Yue Peng decisively ordered to stop large-scale fighting, seize the time to restore troops, reserve wintering supplies, and dredge roads, and build more railways and airports as well. Of course, this also gave Moscow a chance to breathe, the integrity of Soviet Europe and the Caucasus, so that Stalin still had the capital to continue fighting, so more and more people began to put on military uniforms, and a large number of tanks and planes were constantly manufactured, which also indicated that the fighting in the coming year will be more fierce and cruel. However, with the repair of the Petropavlovks railway and airfield at an accelerated pace, the Ural industrial zone has become enveloped within the radius of Chinese bombers. What's worse is that after losing the resources of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, such as large granaries, meat, cotton, nickel ore, and copper mines in Omsk, Moscow's materials have also begun to be strained, especially the grain pressure has become more and more serious, and it has to adopt the method of restricting purchases and reducing the grain of ordinary people to maintain its huge military needs.

The strict purchase limit and the sight of only three black loaves of bread a day have made some elderly people feel as if they have returned to the most difficult years of the European war. On the contrary, the rearmament and expansion of the forces are like gold-swallowing behemoths, constantly chewing and devouring the flesh and blood of decades of Soviet development. Coupled with the declaration of war by China and Britain, the Soviet Union was completely unable to receive external food support, and even if a large granary like India had fallen to the Soviet Union, it would not be able to get a moment of food. Under such pressure, Moscow also wanted to change, and many Soviet generals proposed that it should cooperate with Germany and Italy to capture the Balkan Peninsula and the Suez Canal in the Middle East, so as to open up maritime ties with India. Get advice on food replenishment here.

On the contrary, due to the complete liberation of the Central Asian region east of the Aral Sea, livestock seedlings supported by the Republic of China from Mongolia and other places have also arrived one after another, and the grain production of the five Central Asian countries has basically recovered in the second half of the year. At the same time, in order to fulfill the agreement, Emperor Annam Bao and Ho Chi Minh also collected the first batch of 500,000 tons of military rations and delivered them to China, which greatly eased the pressure on military rations in the northwest. In order to speed up the establishment of the state of Annam, the Beijing Congress has also passed the border demarcation agreement with Annam as quickly as possible, including the north of the Red River and merging it with Guangxi Province. The merger sparked a grumble between Britain and the United States. Both countries expressed dissatisfaction with Beijing's expansion by taking the opportunity, but they could not come up with information and specific documents on who the area north of the Red River belonged to, coupled with the lack of cooperation of the Provisional Government of Annam, and finally after Peking University united hundreds of universities and hundreds of historians across the country to present "historical documents from ancient times". In the end, this matter had to be settled.

On the morning of 13 September, Emperor Bao Dai announced the establishment of an independent state of Vietnam in Hue, adopting a constitutional monarchy, with Ho Chi Minh as prime minister, Hu Xuelan as minister of defense and chief of general staff, and Ngo Dinh Diem as foreign minister. Subsequently, it also announced its membership in the Central Powers and declared war on Japan, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Germany. He also promised to form an army of 500,000 and hand it over to the joint command of the Alliance's Southwest Pacific Theater Command. Finally, according to the agreement, Cam Ranh Bay, Kunlun Island, and the former French military base in Ba Tia and Vung Tau, east of Saigon, were leased to the Chinese government for a period of 99 years. To celebrate the founding of Vietnam. Not only did the new Prime Minister of the Republic of China Gu Weijun and Finance Minister Pei Zuyi personally arrive in Hue, but Britain, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other countries also sent special envoys to congratulate them. At the subsequent founding ceremony, Pei Zuyi, on behalf of the Beijing government, provided a loan of 300 million yuan to Vietnam. For nation-building and military defense needs. Surprisingly, the U.S. government also provided $50 million in loans at the same time. As a symbol of friendship between the United States and Vietnam.

Although Vietnam was jubilant at this time, the people sang and danced to celebrate the restoration of independence from colonial rule. However, this time, the temporary compromise of the cabinet and the U.S. loan became the trigger for the postwar U.S. defeat in the Southwest Pacific and a complete withdrawal from South Asia.

In fact, the race to the southwest has only just begun.

The simultaneous stabilization of the barrier between the northwest and Vietnam allowed Yang Qiu, who was fighting on both sides, to finally relax a little, and his attention began to turn to North Korea and India.

In order to relieve the pressure from India, he asked Qiu Wenbin to put on an active offensive posture in the southwest, constantly crossing the Mekong River to maintain pressure on the Japanese army and Siam, and also bombing the Japanese army in Burma. It also once again deployed five infantry divisions and more than 1,000 heavy artillery pieces to Borneo and Sumatra oil fields to confront the Japanese army in Singapore across Malacca. It also deployed 300 H-5 and other bombers to Natuna and the newly acquired Kunlun Island and Saigon-Vung Tau bases to carry out harassing bombing against Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaya. In this unremarkable Nanyang battlefield, the war had actually been burning for a full ten days, but because both China and Japan were focusing their attention on the Ryukyus and the Marianas, and their respective fleets had suffered heavy losses, they both adopted a posture of supplementing attack and harassment and focusing on defense. However, with the conquest of Pyongyang, the Japanese army, which was unwilling to be defeated, seemed to be unable to sit still, and continued to increase troops to Rabaul and other places, and also increased troops to the Philippines and the South Seas through the long-distance route of Rabaul, which was thousands of miles long, in an attempt to act as Japan's optimus prime and reverse the defeat.

The Chinese Navy, which had just won the Battle of the Marianas, also needed time to recuperate, and it also needed to control the nearby islands and Japanese bases as soon as possible, so as not to be fished in troubled waters by others, so it could not attack the long-range route for the time being. However, even with a long route, the consequences of the loss of Guam still painful to Japan. The Chinese Navy's submarine and bomber forces from Guam became a nightmare for Japan, losing a total of 780,000 tons of merchant ships in the three months from September to the end of November, accounting for one-seventh of all total maritime tonnage (4.5 million tons before the war, about 500,000 tons after the war, and 500,000 tons from client states such as Siam).

Faced with the danger of losing the interruption of the import of supplies from the South Seas, the Japanese Army became more and more frenzied, desperate to completely occupy Korea, and bagged the largest iron ore mines in Asia, the Huishan copper mine, to relieve the pressure on domestic resources. At the same time, it coveted the huge industry in the northeast, trying to emulate the German occupation of the Czech Republic and control one of the largest industrial regions in Asia in one fell swoop. Even in the face of an unfavorable start, in order to achieve the goal of quickly crossing the Yalu River, Itagaki Seishiro immediately sent his troops across the Ahufiling Mountains to carry out a central breakthrough after capturing Kaesong. Taking advantage of the mountain cover, a total of seven divisions advanced rapidly, while encircling Wonsan and Pyongyang. The Japanese Army, which had been holding back for 20 years, really improved, broke through the outflanking easily, and the soldiers were also very good at fighting, so it soon broke through several lines of defense of the North Korean Defense Force in succession.

By August 30. The Japanese army had already occupied Yeonsan and Sinpyeong, less than forty kilometers from Pyongyang. On 3 September, the Battle of Pyongyang began, and in order to seize Pyongyang and destroy North Korea's will to resist in one fell swoop, Seishiro Itagaki threw six divisions into the attack in turn. Although the North Korean Defense Forces and three Chinese Defense Force infantry divisions resisted stubbornly, and two North Korean armored divisions were dispatched, and the air force continued to attack, the Japanese army paid the price of 50,000 casualties. After holding out for seven days to gain valuable time for the evacuation of the city, the troops had to withdraw from the battle and retreat to Suncheon. When the news of the capture of Pyongyang reached Tokyo, there was thunderous cheers in Hibiya Park, and the sound of gratitude for the emperor's long live resounded throughout the Japanese archipelago. The Japanese Army even boasted of the battle as "annihilating 300,000 Chinese National Defense Forces and avenging the victims of the bombing of Kyushu." Punish the despicable sneak attackers, and the capture of Manchurian is just around the corner" Originally, the navy scoffed at this, but who would have thought that two days later the news of the disastrous defeat in the Battle of the Mariana Sea came. Hirohito shakes! Tojo shakes! Japan's top brass shakes! In the face of another crushing defeat of the navy, the Japanese government did not even dare to disclose the truth, and had to pretend to have won a major victory in Guam, sinking ten capital ships of the Republic of China, and destroying the Nanyang Fleet in one fell swoop.

But no matter how much publicity. It is an indisputable fact that the Japanese Navy completely gave way to the Army. Originally, the attackers led by Minoru Genda, Kuroshima Kameto and Yamaguchi Tabun insisted that Mariana should not be abandoned and should continue to attack. Because they believe that the Chinese Navy's XN21 battle group is not intact in this battle either, they should gather the remaining four aircraft carriers and four Kongo-class battleships. Even the two long doors in the face were pulled up and continued to fight. If you lose, you can simply surrender to China, and if you win, you can regain control of Marianas. Although their words make a lot of sense. If the Japanese army continued to invest four aircraft carriers and six capital battleships, Bingwen might really be difficult to deal with. But the old school such as Nagano self-cultivation did not do it. Japan has a narrow territory and scarce resources, and it is not easy to save these funds by frugality, and before the start of the war, it lost nearly half of its main force, and they all believed that they should abandon the offensive and adopt the tactics of defending to the death.

As mentioned earlier, the navy is an offensive branch of the armed forces, and once the offensive is abandoned, then the significance of the navy will no longer exist. The decision of the Japanese top brass made the Japanese Navy completely vassal of the army, and it happened that the great victory in Pyongyang came, so even Yamamoto and others, who hated the army the most, did not dare to say a word. We can only hope that the battleships such as Yamato in the dockyard will be built as soon as possible, and the mission of the fleet will also change from attacking to protecting various seaports and transportation lines, and become the "convoy" of the army. The Japanese Army, eager to recover its losses and continue to expand its gains, became a gambler, and on the third day after the occupation of Pyongyang, it was impatient to divide its troops into three directions. The west road follows the railway line to the north, Suncheon and Anju. In the middle, take the Afeihuling Mountains and Yuanshan Mountain to attack Xingnan and Changjin Lake. The East Road departed from Busan, dispatched the "Army Fleet" and two heavy cruisers, and landed in Zucheon and Jincheong. Hideki Tojo and Hirohito were already disillusioned with the navy, and they put all their bets on North Korea, and even disregarded the emptiness of the country, and transferred five divisions from the mainland that had only been formed for less than a month to support North Korea.

However, when Kiichiro Higuchi led the 9th Division from Pyongyang to attack Suncheon, he was hit in the face.

Under the protection of four lightning planes, the flexible Y-6 tactical transport plane slowly landed at the Shuncheon field airfield. As soon as he got off the plane, Li Zongren heard a familiar scream, followed by an explosion that resounded through the sky. To the south, several huge mushroom clouds were already rolling up on the horizon. "Well, Yizhi, it's still lively here. Listen to the sound, at least three railway heavy guns. "In several major battles in the northwest, Li Zongren and his Seventh Army were not the main force. Watching the old guys kill one by one, he was also itching on the side. But the large-scale battle in the northwest has ended, and there will be no major war until at least April next year, so seeing this kind of scene, he grabbed Zhu Peide, who came to pick him up, and jokingly asked to be transferred to North Korea.

Zhu Peide and Li Zongren are both one of the nine heroes of the army, and the two were friends when they were at the National Defense University. Hearing the joke, he also narrowed his eyes: "It seems that there is no vain in the northwest, and after listening to a few sounds, you will know how many cannons have been used." But today you're out of sight, and I've dispatched four gates on my side. ”

"Oh? Then I want to see and see. You don't know, we have few railways over there, not to mention railway guns, and even 305 mm towed howitzers are laborious to transport. "Since it is a war zone, the people who are responsible for the pick-up and drop-off are all Hound armored vehicles. The two had not spoken for a few words, and Li Zongren saw a large number of soldiers in front of him, and in the woods behind the soldiers, three war hammer 305-mm long-range railway guns lined up had already raised their barrels.

"Let's go. The General Staff, Commander Zhang, and Xue Yue are all here. Oh, by the way, Yan Youbing is here too. ”

"Xue Yue and You Bing are here! Hehe, Seishiro Itagaki has too much face, right? Li Zongren was surprised. Xue Yue and Yan Youbing are not ordinary people. The former is a master of the application and tactics of armored troops, and the nine masters of the army. Although the latter is not included in the so-called nine masters, he is the old artillery king of the Wehrmacht and the father of domestic ballistics. Both of them became famous in the European war and were world-renowned generals, how could they suddenly gather in North Korea?

Zhu Peide doesn't like this kind of false name, Jiujie is just a joke of good deeds. If you really want to rank, Wang Zhuo, the commander of the Central Guard Division and the current president of the National Defense University, Zhang Zizhong of the 11th Army of Borneo, and Ouyang Nan of the 21st Army of Vietnam, are they generals? Not to mention the new generation of Zhuo Fan, Li Jin, Ye Weixun, Du Yuming, Xu Xiangqian and Su Duozhen, which one is the easy one?

So he threw a steel helmet to Li Zongren and said with a smile: "Let's go, the chief of the general staff has been waiting for you for a long time." ”