A four-wheel-drive off-road vehicle crawls the mountain road, the slopes are covered in lush ancient trees, and although it is already summer, the mountain breeze still blows on the face.

Mao ZD wrapped in a thin military coat, tired face leaning on Li Yunhe, he walked four counties in a row in the Hunan and Jiangxi border areas, the situation is not very optimistic, close to the Pingxiang coal mine Liling County is in a slightly better situation, many local peasant children work in the coal mines, the income is quite good, and there is a railway to transport coal from Liling, which has led to the development of the local economy, Liling's fireworks and ceramics are still famous in the Hunan and Jiangxi regions. However, he clearly felt that there was a huge gap between the rich and the poor in the local area, and that the richest were the industrial and commercial capitalists of the Flower Cannon Factory and the Ceramics Factory, and that the houses built around the county town were occupied by these people, many of whom had even bought cars, and that half of the financial industry in Liling County was controlled by the money banks they operated.

In addition, these industrial and commercial capitalists are also engaged in agriculture, and most of the fertile land on both sides of the Chengtan River belongs to these capitalists, some of which are land that can be freely traded with full property rights, and some of which are "perpetual tenant land" that is prohibited by law, and they have also bought the "perpetual tenant right". However, the "tenant" method of exploitation did not reappear, but a large number of farms that hired peasants to cultivate the land. What was once a tenant farmer is now a hired farmer!

However, not all of the landless peasants became hired peasants, and most of them were absorbed by the relatively developed industrial and commercial and coal mining industries in Liling and the neighboring Pingxiang County of Jiangxi Province. By the way, Mao Zd also investigated the living conditions and income of the workers and shop assistants in Liling County, and he found that the income and living standards of this part of the proletariat were very good. If you work in the Pingxiang coal mine, you can earn hundreds of yuan every month - this salary is definitely a huge amount compared to the price level in Liling County! Even in Nanjing, it is not considered a middle and low income, you must know the salary that our President Mao Da gave to Secretary Li Yunhe. It's only 50 yuan a month. But it's not easy to find a job in the coal mine, otherwise there would probably be no one to farm. The easier job to find in Liling is to work as a worker in a ceramic factory or a firecracker factory, and there is a salary of forty or fifty Chinese dollars a month, which is enough to support a family of five or six people.

Therefore, few of the educated young people in Liling County farm at home, and most of them work in factories, coal mines or shops in the county seat. Of course, some people went to Changsha, the provincial capital, or joined the national defense army. Those who still stay at home to work in agriculture are some middle-aged or elderly people who have passed the best age for study. It is inevitable that they are a little clumsy in doing things that they are not familiar with, and most of them do not know words, so the industrial and mining companies and businesses refuse to hire them, so they can only live a hard life by guarding a few acres of thin fields. The poorest people in Liling County are these peasant families with no young people.

Mao ZD also found that the price of land in Liling County was very cheap. An acre of good watered land can't be sold for 80 yuan, and if it is a terraced field on the hillside, no one even buys 2 or 30 yuan, and a large amount of abandoned land is uncultivated there! The reason for this situation is said to be that the income from farming is too low, it is too hard, and there are risks, and if you are not careful, you will farm at a loss. Therefore many families have jobs inside the artificial mining firms. They often choose to sell their land and then move their families to the county seat or move to Pingxiang to live. So the price of land is depressed. In addition, the collection of permanent interest and land endowments is also a reason, and if these two burdens can be relieved, the enthusiasm of farmers to farm will probably be higher.

However, this is only the situation of Liling County, and what Mao Zd saw in Pingjiang, Tongcheng, Chongyang, and other small mountainous counties on the border of Hunan and Jiangxi with inconvenient transportation and no mineral resources to develop can only be described as withering. The land has been abandoned in large areas, the young population has been lost in large numbers, and even the county town does not have much vitality, all of them are old men and old women.

"Are you still going to Xiangtan?" Li Yunhe asked softly.

Xiangtan County is Mao Zd's hometown, Mao Zd has many relatives there, and his younger brother Mao Zemin's constituency is also in Xiangtan County, so he knows the situation in Xiangtan very well.

"I'm not going." Mao ZD waved his hand lightly: "Xiangtan is next to the Xiangjiang River, and has the convenience of the Pinghan Railway and the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway. In the shaking of the off-road vehicle, Mao ZD seemed to say to himself: "This rural ...... Alas, I really don't know what to say, on the one hand, the land is concentrated, on the other hand, farming is unprofitable, and the young people in the countryside are not willing to work in agriculture anymore...... There are still middle-aged and elderly people who are going to farm, but what will happen in the future? In a few decades, will there still be farmers who will farm the land? It seems that I really have to go to the United States to see it! ”

……

Just when Mao Zd had finished his short investigation of the Hunan countryside and was about to go to the United States to have a look, Chang Ruiqing had temporarily put aside all the rural problems, urbanization problems, and agricultural industrialization problems, because as soon as he returned to Nanjing, he received a telegram from the Chinese military delegation in Berlin, saying that Hitler hoped that the Chinese Wehrmacht would send troops to attack Moscow!

At night, the Prime Minister's Office was brightly lit, an emergency meeting was being held in the conference room, and a 1:200,000 topographical map of the western part of the Soviet Union was spread on the table, and Chang Ruiqing, Zhao Zhen, Wu Shi, Yang Yixian, and others were lying at the table to study countermeasures. At present, the shape of the Soviet battlefield is changing extremely rapidly, the Soviet Red Army has collapsed on all fronts, and the Chinese and German armies are advancing rapidly on the battlefields on the eastern and western fronts.

In the days since Chang Ruiqing's visit to Japan and South Korea, China's Siberian Front has advanced to Yekaterinburg, east of the Urals, and Chelyabinsk, which has been bombarded once by a nuclear fission bomb. According to the agreement reached at the Berlin Conference, both plots of land were to be allocated to Germany.

The same German Wehrmacht also launched a devastating offensive on the Western Front, after the surrender of more than a million Red Army troops in Trotskysk (Kiev), the Soviet Western Front and the Southwestern Front were no longer able to organize a decent blocking battle, millions of troops retreated in panic, Kharkov, Donetsk, Sevastopol and other important Ukrainian cities fell one after another, and the vanguard of German Army Group C also rushed all the way to capture Volgograd, an important industrial city located in the lower reaches of the Volga River, Moscow was cut off from the oil-producing regions of the Caucasus. On June 24, 1936, the vanguard of the German Army Group B was directed towards Moscow, and on June 24, 1936, it advanced to Krasna, which was just over 30 kilometers from Moscow. The town of Polyana. It is said that there were also German commanders who climbed the bell tower and looked at the spire of the Kremlin with a telescope. Still, the Soviet Red Army in Moscow seemed to be very strong, and only a day later they launched a counterattack to repel the German forces that had broken through to the outskirts of Moscow. According to Luftwaffe reconnaissance, the Soviets were desperately building fortifications outside the city of Moscow, and it seemed that they were really ready to defend their great capital to the death.

"Chancellor, the Germans hope that we can control the Ural Mountains as much as possible, and at the same time divide our forces to the west, press Moscow from the east, and cooperate with the German Army Group B to annihilate the main force of the Soviet Red Army in Moscow."

After Zhao Zhen informed Chang Ruiqing of the Germans' request, the commander of the air force on the side, Yang Xianyi, who had just been promoted to marshal, sneered a few times and said, "Chancellor, the Germans want us to bear the losses for them, right?" I think it's okay to deal with it. ”

"It's not just a matter of sharing losses," Wu Shi interrupted Yang Xianyi: "On the surface, the Soviet Red Army has now been defeated on all fronts, but the total number of this army is still more than 10 million, and it has rich combat experience and is not badly equipped. Although we and Germany could not be defeated in regular warfare, it would still be very troublesome to start a guerrilla war! So the Germans wanted us to block the retreat of the Soviet troops in Moscow to the east, preventing them from escaping into the Ural Mountains and Western Siberia. ”

Chang Ruiqing touched his beard, and Wu Shi's words reminded him that the Second World War was not over yet! Trotsky still had at least 10 million Red Army troops in his hands, and if he could not destroy them all, even if only 1 million men slipped into the Ural Mountains and Western Siberia, it would be enough for himself to drink a pot. He thought for a while and said: "Brother Yu Xun is still thoughtful, this time we really can't sit on the mountain and watch the tiger fight, without us forcing over from the east, the Germans will have no problem taking Moscow, but it will be difficult to annihilate the defenders of Moscow, in case they run to Western Siberia, we will be in big trouble!" ”

"If this is the case, we will have to send at least one armored army and two infantry armies to cross the Ural Mountains and march west." Zhao Zhen gestured on the map.

"How much did you use?" Chang Ruiqing asked rhetorically.

"I'm afraid that Trotsky will abandon Moscow and go east and run into our troops head-on, so it is better to send more troops."

"Okay, that's it," Chang Ruiqing nodded his head and said in a deep voice: "Brother Lin, give an order to Bai Jiansheng and Guo Maochen, let them transfer an armored army and two infantry armies to form a Western Army Group, cross the Ural Mountains and march to Moscow, in addition, quickly occupy the Ural industrial area of the Soviet Union, and dismantle all the equipment there and transport it back to me!" ”

Chang Ruiqing said in his heart: "Since Hitler proposed to let the squadron go west to help in the war, he must not care about this Russian machine, right?" ”

He glanced at Wu Shi again: "Yu Xun, you will be the commander of the Western Army Group!" This is the first time in the history of our squadron to set foot on the European battlefield to fight (Chang Ruiqing does not recognize the Mongol Empire as representing China), and we must let the Europeans see how powerful we are! You know? (To be continued......)