In the military and political structure of the Soviet Union, there are three major organs: the presidential office, the cabinet, and the high command, and the presidential office has four major departments: the secretariat, the advisory office, the inspection office, and the military attaché's office. Among them, the secretariat is responsible for assisting Zhao Dongyun in handling military and political affairs; The advisory office can be regarded as a nominal institution, mainly employing prestigious officials and generals as advisers to the presidential office; The Inspection Office is mainly responsible for the supervision of officials, and the Military Attache Office was reorganized from Zhao Dongyun's guard and is mainly responsible for the personal safety of Zhao Dongyun and his family.

Needless to say, the Cabinet is the main component of the government.

The General Headquarters consists of the General Staff Department, the Ordnance Department, the Ministry of Education, the Quartermaster Department, the Quanxu Department, the Navy Department, and the General Affairs Department, while the General Staff Department consists of the Operations Department, the Strategy Department, the Supervision and Training Department, the Establishment Department, the Intelligence Department, and the Communications Section.

As a department directly under the jurisdiction of the General Staff, the daily work of this intelligence department is under the jurisdiction of Fang Biyong, chief of the General Staff Department, and An Yutong, the director of the Intelligence Division, also reports to Fang Biyong on weekdays, and rarely says that he will report directly to Zhao Dongyun.

Zhao Dongyun guessed what was going on while going to the study, based on the scope of the work of the intelligence department, it should be external military affairs, such as Duan Qirui's military movements, the Southern Federation's military movements, etc., and this will not be the Fengjun's own front-line battle report, because the return of the war report is passed down layer by layer, and in the end, it should be reported to him by Fang Biyong, the chief of the General Staff, and it is not the turn of An Yu to come to see him urgently.

Things were similar to Zhao Dongyun's guess, when An Yutong arrived, what he said was not the battle report of the front-line Fengjun, but the military intelligence related to the Southern Federation.

"According to the urgent report of the intelligence officer in Hubei arranged by our intelligence department, yesterday the Southern Federation Duan Qirui Department, that is, the Fourth Army of the Northern Expedition of the puppet Southern Federation Empire, conquered Xiaogan County in Hanyang two days ago, and severely damaged the Eighth Mixed Brigade under Wang Shizhen's command, and then cut off the north-south connection of Wang Shizhen's department!" An Yutong said.

When Zhao Dongyun heard this, he immediately looked puzzled: "The Southern Federation was able to severely damage the Eighth Mixed Brigade?" Just rely on Duan Qirui's Fourth Army of the Northern Expedition? ”

I have to make Zhao Dongyun puzzled, since the war between the north and the south last year, it is basically the situation of the Beiyang troops crushing the Southern Federation, you can see from the war between Duan Qirui and Duanfang and Xiliang, Duan Qirui only relied on 30,000 or 40,000 people to capture the entire Jiangsu and Anhui, and the nearly 200,000 troops under the command of Duanfang and Xiliang were defeated and retreated, just in the first battle of Nanjing, the army of up to more than 100,000 troops of the Southern Federation was defeated in the face of Duan Qirui's attack of tens of thousands of people, and Duan Qirui was weak in capturing prisoners. Otherwise, how do you think Duan Qirui's hundreds of thousands of troops were pulled up, and they didn't rely on those prisoners of war and captured ordnance and weapons.

Although the war between Wang Shizhen and Zhang Zhidong in Hubei did not make so much progress, but the first army of Zhang Zhidong's Northern Expedition was defeated by Wang Shizhen many times in a row from Henan, and was forced to retreat to Wuhan from Henan for thousands of miles, and then Hankou and Hanyang were captured by Wang Shizhen one after another.

An Yutong, as the director of the intelligence department, naturally knew more about the intelligence of the southern troops than Zhao Dongyun, a busy man, and immediately explained: "Wang Shizhen's troops have been greatly weakened on the front line of Hankou in recent months. Then Wang Shizhen was forced to send more than 20,000 people to the north to garrison Wusheng Pass to block the troops of our army from moving south, so that his troops on the Hankou front line became very small, and it is estimated that his troops on the Hanyang front line will not exceed 30,000! ”

"Moreover, Wang Shizhen's troops have been extremely dependent on our arms supply in the past year, and since our army was preparing to enter the customs, it has stopped stopping weapons and ammunition from him, and the Hanyang Arsenal he took has become a ruin, although many months have passed, it still has not been able to organize and resume production, although he can obtain the supply of weapons and ammunition from other sources, but the quantity should be very limited!"

An Yutong continued: "On the other hand, on Zhang Zhidong's side, the number of troops under his command has continued to grow since last year, although he suffered heavy losses in many battles such as Henan and Hanyang, but after Tong Guò transferred the troops and finances of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan and other provinces, he quickly recovered his strength, and according to our speculation, Zhang Zhidong's troops in Hubei will not be less than 150,000. Although most of them have limited combat effectiveness, the total strength should not be underestimated! ”

When Zhao Dongyun heard this, he was also slightly surprised in his heart, but he didn't expect that the Southern Federation was not as vulnerable as he imagined, although Duanfang and Xiliang suffered successive defeats in the direction of Liangjiang, Fujian and Zhejiang, but in the direction of Hubei and Shanxi, there has been no defeat like a mountain.

For example, on the Shanxi side, although Wu Fengling has always suppressed Zhao Erxun and then fought, as long as you look at the current war still taking place in Shanxi, you will find that it is actually difficult for Wu Fengling to sweep Shaanxi and Gansu on his own, and it is even very difficult to completely drive Zhao Erxun out of Shanxi. In the Hubei direction, although the troops of the Southern Federation suffered many heavy defeats in the early stage, it can be seen that they are still holding Wuchang under Wang Shizhen's onslaught, and they are not as vulnerable as they imagined.

As for Duanfang and Xiliang in the direction of Liangjiang and Fujian and Zhejiang, this is mainly because they were beaten too badly by Duan Qirui in northern Jiangsu and Nanjing in the early stage, so that it has been difficult to recover their vitality, but even if they are defeated and retreated, they are still fighting.

This Zhang Zhidong can be regarded as having a strategic vision, knowing that Wang Shizhen was not lightly cleaned up by himself before, so he took this opportunity to launch a counteroffensive, relying on the advantage of troops to bypass the Hanyang line, and then attack Xiaogan, so that the situation of Wang Shizhen's department on the Hanyang line is estimated to be not very good.

"What about the Hue army over there in Hanyang? What's going on now? Did the troops of the Southern Federation cross the river on a large scale? Zhao Dongyun continued to ask.

An Yu Tongdao: "According to the information we know now, after Duan Qirui's Northern Expedition Fourth Army conquered Xiaogan, the other main force under Zhang Zhidong's command, the First Army of the Northern Expedition, also moved frequently, we expect that they will carry out a large-scale river crossing in the near future, and then try to attack the front line of Hankou and Hanyang with the Fourth Army of the Northern Expedition, and the strength of the Hubei army on this line is only more than 20,000 people at most, even if the remnants of the Eighth Mixed Brigade are thousands of people, but in the face of the counterattack of more than 100,000 people under Zhang Zhidong, it should be difficult to support!" ”

This last sentence is the point of An Yutong's urgent request to see Zhao Dongyun!

The intelligence officers of the intelligence department were extremely pessimistic about the possibility of Wang Shizhen being able to hold Hankou and Hanyang, believing that Wang Shizhen's troops in the area were very likely to fall into encirclement and be annihilated.

But now it's different!

The war in Hubei is not only related to Wang Shizhen's own survival, but also directly affects the domestic situation, especially the follow-up strategic arrangements of the Feng army.

If Wang Shizhen is defeated in Hubei, then Zhang Zhidong's hundreds of thousands of troops will definitely go north, and then directly confront the Feng army, although Zhao Dongyun has confidence in his own Feng army, but the reality is that the Feng army's deployment in the Henan direction is only a secondary force, there is only one third army and two divisions, and there is only one thirteenth division that can really be used to fight in the Hubei direction. To be honest, without Wang Shizhen in front, it is difficult to stop Zhang Zhidong's more than 100,000 troops from going north by relying on a 13th division.

It is precisely because of the possibility of this change that An Yutong urgently asks to see Zhao Dongyun!

Zhao Dongyun asked about other situations in detail, and then he pondered!

The next day, Zhao Dongyun convened a military meeting on this matter, and the focus of this meeting was not to carry out the battle of Xuzhou in full swing, but how to deal with the sudden change in the direction of Hubei!

"Although the changes in Hubei are a little bigger, but now our recent strategic focus is still on the northern Jiangsu side, according to our current strength, especially the supply of ordnance and ammunition, it is difficult to fight in other directions other than meeting the needs of the war in northern Jiangsu!" As the chief steward of ordnance and weapons, Zhao Dongping expressed his opinion at the first time, that is:

"Now we should try to avoid large-scale battles on the front line of Henan and Hubei, even if we want to move, we must wait until the end of the Northern Jiangsu Campaign!"

Shi Yanglin, who came out of the battle, also said: "I also agree with General Zhao's opinion, now our troops are too tight, and the troops that can be drawn are basically reinforcements to northern Jiangsu, and now it is not easy for Henan to rely on the two divisions of the Third Army to control the situation, and it is not appropriate to provoke a large-scale war!" ”

However, a middle-aged man next to him spoke: "But if we don't move, will the people of the Southern Federation obediently wait for us to end the war in Northern Jiangsu before we move?" Once they conquer Hanyang, the next step must be to continue to go north to Wusheng Pass, and when the time comes, we will have to fight if we don't fight, so I still have to make plans as soon as possible! ”

The young man who spoke was Ren Zhengen, the director of the Strategic Department of the General Staff, who was born in the vanguard of the Wuwei Right Army, the eleventh military preparation student, and was transferred to Zhao Dongyun's command as early as when Zhao Dongyun was preparing to establish the Third Association, and he could be regarded as a Soviet general with old qualifications. Although this person's ability is not very top-notch, his qualifications are old enough, and his ability can be regarded as barely able to enter Zhao Dongyun's eyes, and Gu Lanyu, Meng Enyuan, and Chen Guangyuan are incomparable, but they are actually not bad compared to other ordinary generals. Therefore, after successively serving as the commander of the 3rd Assistant, the 3rd Town Battalion Officer, the 1st Town Standard Commander of the Fengtian Standing Army, and the Colonel of the 9th Division, he was transferred to the Chief of Staff of the Harbin Defense Command, and was promoted to the rank of Major General of the Army in this position.

After Ren Zhengen finished speaking, Shi Yanglin spoke again: "Preparation is naturally needed, but preparation should also be based on defense!" ”

Shi Yanglin's voice fell, and the generals of the other commanders also spoke their own mouths, and for a while there were different opinions and opinions, but most of them still maintained a bottom line, that is, no matter how the situation in Hubei and Henan changed, the Feng army should still focus on the war in northern Jiangsu in the next month or even two months, and Hubei and Henan should be cautious and conservative, but there are different opinions on how to deal with these people.

Some say that they should directly take Wusheng Pass from the hands of the Hubei army, and then rely on Wusheng Pass to hold on and watch the development of the war in Hubei, while others say that they should withdraw their troops from outside Wusheng Pass, return to the front line of Xinyang, rely on the city to build fortifications, and then build a solid defense line.

Zhao Dongyun watched his generals arguing, and he was also thinking about how to deal with the changes in Hubei!