Not all high-ranking officers of the Japanese army were indifferent to the frequent transfer of various units in the Eighth Theater, and at least Lieutenant General Naosaburo Okabe, who was transferred to the post of chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, was very concerned.

As an old opponent in the Eighth War Zone, she knows Chen Feng and the army under Chen Feng very well, and he knows very well that Chen Feng is not the kind of person who has nothing to do, just like the person who plays chess, and every move has its purpose. Chen Feng's actions are the same, the seemingly normal change of guard is not necessarily as simple as a change of guard.

After careful analysis and rigorous argumentation, Okabe Naosaburo came to a conclusion that Chen Feng's troops were likely to attack the Kwantung Army, and the primary target was the Hulunbuir grassland.

Okabe Naosaburo presented his analysis to the commander of the Kwantung Army, General Yamada Otozo, requesting that the defensive strength stationed in Hulunbuir be immediately strengthened, and that the 9th Division stationed in Qiqihar should also be transferred to Hailar to defend Chen Feng's headquarters with the 23rd Division.

Yamada Otozo is a very interesting person, although this person has not fought with Chen Feng's department, but he used to be the education director of the Japanese army, and he has long heard of Chen Feng's department, and he is also quite afraid of this army.

After taking over from Umezu Mijiro as commander of the Kwantung Army, Yamada Otozo first had to face two problems. The first problem was to rebuild and strengthen the Kwantung Army, since the Nomenkan Incident and the First Suidong War, the Kwantung Army suffered great losses, not only was a 23rd Division disabled, but also a 12th Division was completely annihilated, and the 2nd Division and the 8th Division under its command were also heavily damaged, and the losses were great.

Facing the increasingly powerful Chen Feng's department. Especially the 4 infantry divisions stationed in the eastern part of the former Outer Mongolia. The Kwantung Army had to be supplemented with manpower and material resources in case of a sudden attack by Chen Feng's troops, of course, Japan has not relaxed its vigilance against the Soviet Union, which is the same as the Soviet Union has not relaxed its vigilance against the Japanese army.

The second problem is to face the increasingly chaotic public order problem in the northeastern region, and I don't know what has happened in recent times, and the public order in Manchuria has deteriorated in a very short period of time to the point that the Kwantung Army Command cannot tolerate it. In addition to the anti-Japanese coalition army in China that has been fighting against the imperial army, there is now a leopard king inexplicably.

In addition, there was an elusive army near Qiqihar, and although the small army was small in number and did not have any banner, it caused great trouble to the local garrison. The Imperial Army Regiment sent troops to encircle and suppress it many times, but it was unsuccessful. On the contrary, many troops were lost.

In addition, the bandits in Manchuria have also been active a lot during this time, and although these guys can't do anything earth-shattering, it's okay to occasionally rob a road, pick up a train, or even blow up a bridge. Of course. Robbing a relative and killing someone is also their old business. All in all, the security in the Tohoku region was very bad during this time, and the matter had been stabbed to the base camp by the merchants of those companies, and His Excellency Umezu ordered Yamada Otozo to settle the matter as soon as possible.

After taking office, Yamada Otozo began to rapidly strengthen the strength of the Kwantung Army. In addition to continuously mobilizing soldiers from Korea and Japan to replenish the Kwantung Army, he also ordered the construction of many forts, strengthened fortifications in various places, stockpiled ammunition, and prepared for a major war.

At the same time, Yamada Otozo cooperated with the Manchuria Railway Company to build a strategic railway between the puppet Manchurian Shinkyo and Pyongyang, so that the Japanese puppet army in Korea could be quickly reinforced to the northeast. In addition, Yamada Otozo went all out to intensify his efforts to supervise the training of the troops. He frequently visited the front-line troops to inspect them, consoled the front-line soldiers, and encouraged them.

In addition to 22 infantry divisions, the Kwantung Army also has 8 artillery brigades, and is also organized into a mecha corps that is unique in Japan, with 1,300 tanks. There was also a Second Air Army, which had the highest level of mechanization and modernization in Japan.

At present, there are 380,000 Japanese soldiers in the Kwantung Army, more than 90,000 Korean soldiers, and about 300,000 puppet Manchurian soldiers, with a total strength of 770,000, and the total strength of the police force in various places has exceeded 800,000.

Yamada Otozo was very complacent about his achievements, and also believed that with the strength of the Kwantung Army, he could compete with Chen Feng's troops, and there was no need to sit back and wait for Chen Feng's troops to attack. So after Lieutenant General Naosaburo Okabe reported his analysis to the Kwantung Army Headquarters, General Otozo Yamada agreed after a little consideration.

Yamada Otozo not only agreed to transfer the 9th Division to strengthen the defense of the line from Hulunbuir to Manchuria, but also transferred the 6th Field Heavy Artillery Brigade and the 1st Tank Brigade to Hailar.

In the blink of an eye, it was mid-March, and after more than 20 days of mobilization, the tens of thousands of troops of the Eighth Theater were finally transferred to Suidong and Mengbei, and at the same time, Chen Feng and Shi Jianfei, chief of staff of the theater, also went to Ulaanbaatar.

During this time, the Japanese army in North China also made great achievements, although methods such as digging trenches and blockades began to be implemented when Tada Jun was in office, but at the beginning of Tada Jun's tenure, the North China Front was the most difficult time for the North China Front, which had been repeatedly hit hard by Chen Feng's troops, and the main forces of the North China Front Army were used to monitor and deal with the attacks of Chen Feng's troops, and they could still divide their forces to carry out these things, so although things were going on, the progress was very slow, and the blockade line in the Pingjin area was barely done.

But now the situation is different, because now Shanxi has been taken back by the Chinese, northern Jibei, southern Ji, and most of Jizhong have also been defeated by the Chinese, as for Guisui and Chahar, they have long been controlled by the Chinese, and only the eastern Jidong, the first part of Jizhong, the Pingjin area, and all of Shandong are still in the hands of the Japanese army, and the territory has shrunk by more than half.

In addition, the Japanese army continued to reinforce North China, so the originally scattered forces of the Japanese army in North China are now relatively concentrated, and the number of soldiers per square kilometer has reached more than a dozen, and if you count the puppet army, it has reached dozens of people, so Okamura Ninji has the strength to carry out a sweep in the area under his jurisdiction while carrying out a "blockade" and "cannibalization".

Another point is that Okamura Ninji is very experienced in this kind of thing, because Okamura had earlier implemented this so-called "separation of bandits and people" policy in North Manchuria, so the Japanese army in North China moved quickly. By the beginning of March, the Japanese army had completed a blockade ditch focusing on Chen Feng's headquarters, which started from Zhulu in the west, passed through Xiahuayuan, Yanqing, and Huairou, and protected Beiping to the death.

This blockade should have started in the Tada Jun's time, but it never broke through, and it took Okamura Ninji only a month to connect the blockade. Many guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army were completely annihilated by the Japanese army, and several regular divisions were also beaten by the Japanese army to hide everywhere, and the 115th Division of the Shandong Military Region was simply driven to the defense area of Chen Feng's department.

It is worth mentioning that although Okamura Ninji ostensibly warned the troops to "abstain from killing, burning, and robbing" during military operations, they should pursue the "three precepts policy" during sweeps. However, secretly conniving at the implementation of the three-light policy by the troops, Okamura Ninji adopted a completely different approach to the common people in the city and the Chinese people in the countryside.

In the towns, the Japanese army was very lenient to ordinary people, and as long as they paid their money and food on time, everyone else could be lenient. However, the common people in the guerrilla areas still pursued the three-light policy, and the two sweeps alone caused tens of thousands of houses in eastern Hebei, western Luxi, and southern Lunan to be destroyed by Japanese artillery fire, or directly burned 6 million catties of grain and more than 700 head of livestock to be looted by the Japanese puppet army, and more than 700 people were killed and more than 1,300 people were taken away.

In the early morning of February 28, 1941, the Japanese army that swept Jixian County marched to Zhoujiakou Village, and immediately carried out a comprehensive encirclement of this small village, because of the suddenness of the incident, no one in the village escaped, and the people in the village were driven to 3 courtyards by the Japanese puppet army, and were strafed by machine guns. During the atrocity, 264 people were slaughtered, the youngest of whom was only three months old and the oldest was 78 years old.

On March 3, the Japanese defenders in Yanggu County suddenly made a surprise attack on Dongmian Village, 22 miles south of the city, and captured 9 wounded 8th Route Army wounded and 17 guerrillas who were recuperating in the village.

Half an hour later, the wounded and guerrillas were all executed in front of the villagers of Dongmian Village, some of them disemboweled, some of them stabbed to death. The most terrifying thing is that the skulls of two people were smashed open, the brains were taken out, and they were boiled in white corn porridge, named "brain-opening porridge", and after boiling, the villagers were forced to drink it. After the incident, the people of Dongmian Village did not dare to eat white corn porridge for many years, and some did not even dare to look at it.

At dawn on March 12, a squad of Japanese troops surrounded Dagouli Village, Chengwu County, drove more than 100 people into several houses, set fire to the houses, and the people who rushed out of the siege were captured by them, among whom more than 50 people were thrown into a well, and then threw stones and burning firewood down, and shot and threw grenades into the well, killing all the people.

After these sweeps, the low morale of the North China Front was quickly boosted, and secondly, a large number of anti-Japanese forces were dealt a devastating blow. Because the raid was assisted by the Japanese army's special combat team and intelligence department, neither the small guerrilla units nor the regular units were spared, and the losses were extremely heavy in just over a month. (To be continued......)