"You mean, you want to restore Aceh?" Liu Bailiang followed up and asked.

"Questions?"

Liu Bailiang hurriedly waved his hand and said: "No, the Aceh guerrillas did receive secret assistance from the Empire, and they also played an active role in the liberation of Sumatra, and the old Sultan who was under house arrest by the Dutch was also successfully rescued...... After all, northern Sumatra is a very important military location at present......"

"There is no contradiction between military management and the preparatory work for the restoration of the country, and the use of military management to promote the preparatory work for the restoration of the country, and the use of the preparatory work for the restoration of the country to facilitate the military management, the two complement each other. As Elder Liu said, the military significance of northern Sumatra is very important, and the new kingdom of Aceh can only rely on the imperial protection for the time being, but it is also very important to gain the support of the local people, at least try to prevent the guerrillas who can continue to fight for a century and a half from treating us as an adversary. As for the timing, based on feedback from the intelligence agencies and the troops stationed in the field, we will reconvene a joint meeting of the Cabinet and the military when the time comes, and then decide on details such as the transfer of powers. ”

"Got it, but what about southern Sumatra? There's no way the oil fields there can be ceded, right? The oil refinery in Palembang took a lot of effort to get the ...... in good condition."

At the beginning of the 21st century, Indonesia was the only OPEC in Asia with a significant role in the global energy market and the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, with its main oil and gas fields concentrated in southern Sumatra.

Before World War II, the Dutch East Indies produced 800 tons of oil a year, most of which came from South Sumatra.

And in this space-time. The Dutch East oil exploitation industry, which was controlled by the Royal Dutch Shell Company founded in 1907, was far from the level of 30 years later, with a peak annual output of 190 tons in 1912, of which 150 tons came from the oil fields around Palembang (next to Pakistan) in South Sumatra, which made Palembang the largest oil storage, transportation and refining center in Southeast Asia, with great economic and strategic value, and naturally became the target of the emperor's key "care".

After the Battle of Lingayen, the 2nd South China Sea Group, which was responsible for attacking the East Indies, first launched a series of amphibious assaults on Borneo (Kalimantan Island) with the coordination of the 2nd detachment, and pacified Sabah and Sarawak in the north in early 20, and prompted Brunei to divide its troops into two ways anyway:

The East Road is based on the 3rd Asia-Pacific Liberation Army (under the jurisdiction of the Nanyang Volunteer 303304 Division and the 306th Division) and the 4th Army Division, and is coordinated by the Sulawesi Task Force of the 2nd Navy. In mid-February, it successively occupied Tarakan, an oil-producing area on the east coast of Borneo, and Balikpapan, an important port, and at the end of February, the 306th Division of the Nanyang Volunteers entered Makassar (Ujung Pandang) on Sulawesi Island, and the main force assembled in Balikpapan, preparing to cross the Java Sea to attack Java and the islands east of Java;

The western route was based on the 73rd Army (with the jurisdiction of the Reserve Infantry Division 145146), covered by the Javanese Task Force of the 2nd Naval Fleet, and moved south along the west coast of Borneo, first occupying Pontianak and liberating the territory of the former Republic of Lan Fang, and then dividing troops to occupy the island of Bangka between Borneo and Sumatra. Prepare for the attack on Sumatra.

At the beginning of the 3rd, the Sumatra strategy of the Western Route Army and the Java strategy of the Eastern Route Army were launched at the same time:

The assault force of the Western Route Army, with Lu 4 as the backbone, set out from Mentok on the island of Bangka. When crossing the Bangka Strait by transport boat and approaching the mouth of the Musi River, the troops changed to special mechanized landing boats and amphibious assault vehicles, and under the cover of land-based aviation units and mobile fleet carrier-based aircraft with Mentok as their temporary base, they traveled up the Musi River and swooped down on the urban area of Palembang, which is 50 or 60 miles upstream of the estuary. On the other hand, in order to prevent the defenders from sabotaging the refinery and other facilities, a special force composed of exiled overseas Chinese in Nanyang who was familiar with the local situation was dispatched in advance to secretly infiltrate the local area, and raided several oil refineries in the suburbs of the city in batches at dawn on the day when the main force launched the attack. As the defenders focused their attention on the river defense, the detachments took control of the refinery without much resistance. However, the Dutch guards who arrived then surrounded the factory and attacked it with artillery, and the special forces, which were only equipped with light weapons, resisted desperately and finally held out until the reinforcements arrived. By this time, most of the detachments had suffered casualties. Some facilities were also hit by artillery fire, and an oil depot burned for two days and two nights before it was extinguished, but the main body of the refinery and most of the oil field facilities were not seriously damaged. By the beginning of June, the output of crude oil and various oil products around Palembang had recovered to 80% of its pre-war level.

After the 4th Army Assault Force quickly captured Palembang under the cover of absolute superiority in air and armor, the task of sweeping the rest of Sumatra was transferred to the headquarters of the 73rd Army, which entered Palembang with the 73rd Division, marched by sea to Tanjong Garan at the southern tip of Sumatra and Telok Betong, and the 1st Division of the 146th Division marched up the Hari River to attack Jambi north of Palembang, and then traced the Gamba River to occupy North Gambalou, further north. By the beginning of April~|||The first detachment occupied the Linga and Riau Islands south of Singapore, respectively, and cooperated with the navy and the first South China Sea set

Singapore. After the 1st South China Sea Group captured the Singapore fortress on the 51st, the regiment formed the North Sumatra detachment with the 4th and 73rd Army and the 73rd Army, and with the cooperation of the Aceh guerrillas, successfully captured Medan, Banda Aceh and other important places in North Sumatra and liberated the entire island of Sumatra, while at the same time, the other part of the 4th Army entered the Andaman and Nicobar Islands with the support of the 1st Fleet detachment.

On the other hand, with the support of the main force of the 2nd Army, the 3rd Army of the Archael, 304 (each lacking one regiment), landed near Batavia (Jakarta), West Java, and conquered Batavia, where the Dutch East Indies Governorate was located, in one fell swoop, and then penetrated inland with the support of a small armored force attached to it, and defeated the main Dutch army at the beginning of the 4th, forcing the surrender led by the Dutch East Indies Governor and the commander of the garrison who had escaped from Bandung. At the same time as the main force of the Eastern Route Army attacked Batavia, the 4th Division of the Army landed on Bali east of Java with the support of the 2nd detachment, and then used Bali as a springboard to land near Surabaya, the most important port in East Java, together with the 306th Division of the South Seas (missing a regiment), to conquer Surabaya in one fell swoop, and then used Surabaya as a base to advance the main force to Semarang in central Java, and conquered Semarang at the end of March, and in early April, the vanguard of the 303rd Division, which bypassed Bandung and advanced eastward, and the reconnaissance team of the 306th Division from Semarang to the south met near Yogyakarta. Soon the news of the surrender of the remnants of the enemy in Bandung came, and the whole island of Java was pacified. Subsequently, the Eastern Route Army was successively organized into detachments of Nusa Tenggara, Timor, and Maluku, and by the beginning of the 5th, the main islands east of Java were pacified.

Out of respect for Portugal's neutrality, the Chinese army did not immediately occupy Portuguese East Timor, and was prepared to negotiate and make deals by diplomatic means, as they did when the Macao question was resolved—this is a digression.

In the Dutch East Indies Raiders, the Dutch colonial army, which was mainly composed of natives, inferior weapons, and low morale, collapsed in just two or three months, and the 100,000 regular divisions of Java on paper engaged in a "constructive resistance" that masturbated with self-sufficiency. From the launch of the East Indies to the surrender of the Bandung fortress, the Second South China Sea Group had a net attrition of less than 5,000 men, about half of which were due to epidemic losses, and as for the results of the battle, 43,000 people were captured - the indigenous soldiers who had returned home from the rout.

In addition, in the First Battle of Palembang, the elite special combat team that the Reference Office spent a large amount of budget and more than ten years of training and planting was almost completely wiped out, and perhaps this is the reason why Liu Bailiang seemed to show such sincerity when he said that he had "spent a lot of thought."

—

After listening to Liu Bailiang's exclamation, Zhang Zhigao glanced at Yang Zhengjin again, and suddenly smiled slightly: "The meaning of the cabinet is that the disposal of South Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi and the eastern islands will be mainly under direct military management for the time being, and at the same time, depending on the civilization level of local residents, they will be urged to participate in politics. ”

"Swallow it first?" Liu Bailiang subconsciously rubbed his hands.

Zhang Zhigao did not answer directly, but continued to talk to himself: "Let me explain that the ancient kingdoms existing in the above-mentioned areas have perished one after another 200 years ago, and the morality and reality of the restoration of the country no longer exist, and the remaining princely states and tribes have long declared their allegiance to the Netherlands and become part of the Dutch East Indies colony, which is completely different from the nature of protectorates such as Brunei and Sabah, and is not qualified to be liberated as a country." In addition, under the influence of the colonial strategy of the Dutch to retain various feudal forces and divide and rule, the overall level of civilization has been stagnant for a long time, and it is far from reaching the quality of being able to build an independent state like the Filipinos. ”

"In another history, the national independence movement in the Dutch East Indies developed relatively late, and it was not until 1912 that the first one appeared to establish Indonesian autonomy; The Lan League, formerly known as the 'Islamic Business Union', was formed to boycott Chinese businessmen, and it is clear that the existence and development of such an organization is not in the interests of the empire. ”

"By 1914, elements of the former Dutch Social Democratic Party~ founded the East India Social Democratic Union in Surabaya. This organization, which was the first to explicitly put forward the program of 'Striving for Indonesian Independence', advocating 'uniting the people, workers and peasants, and all nationalities and religions on the basis of class struggle' and 'educating the people with socialist knowledge', evolved and reorganized into Indonesia**, and was > in 1926Of course, this is also not in the interests of the Empire. ”

"Indonesia's national independence movement is really on the right track, and it will not be until the 30s when he is the leader of the Indonesian national independence movement, and his political ideas become the guiding ideology of the independence movement. Even so, a series of national independence activities in Indonesia in the 30s ended in failure, and the Japanese army reached the South Seas and uprooted the Dutch colonial rule, and it is difficult to say how long Indonesia's independence will be delayed. ”

"So," Zhang Zhigao rolled his eyes and stared at Xiao Ruhai who was listening with a smile. "These places are a lot of work for Commander Xiao."