Xingtai is the northern gateway of Handan, an important town in southern Hebei, and it is also the most important material reserve base in southern Hebei, so it has always been an important city heavily guarded by the Japanese army, and the division of the 32nd Division of the Japanese Army is located in Xingtai at this time.

After the end of the Gaoyi offensive and defensive battle, Kimura Hyotaro easily gathered thousands of remnants, plus some puppet troops in southern Hebei, the defenders in the Xingtai area reached more than 13,000 people. However, both Kimura Hyotaro and the chief of staff of the 32nd Division, Nagata Daisa, knew that this point of strength would not last long.

On the evening of November 15, an infantry regiment and an armored battalion of the advance force of the Eighth Theater arrived in Xingtai, and also carried out a tentative attack on Xingtai, but unfortunately, it was repelled by the defenders.

Despite this, Xu Fufu's department still put great pressure on Kimura Hyotaro, and a mere infantry regiment almost broke through the fortifications of Xingtai, if the main force of the branch arrived, how long could the defenders of Xingtai hold out.

However, the commander of the 32nd Division of the Japanese Army, Kimura Hyotaro, was a ruthless man, who was appointed commander of the 32nd Division in 1939 and promoted to lieutenant general. He was then sent to Shandong, China, to conduct a "sweep" of anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines, ordering soldiers to massacre unarmed civilians. On April 14, 1939, Kimura led more than 8,000 Japanese troops to sweep the anti-Japanese base areas in southern Lunan, China, and issued an order to the troops to annihilate the Eighth Route Army and the base areas at all costs before he led the troops to "go out", and implemented the "three-light policy".

When Kimura entered the base area, he was heavily damaged by the guerrilla warfare of the 115th Division of the Chinese Eighth Route Army. Kimura Hyotaro ordered Japanese soldiers to carry out a bloody massacre of unarmed Chinese civilians, and imprisoned more than 2,000 civilians in concentration camps to do hard labor, establishing the "Xinhuain Concentration Camp".

Every laborer who was sent here would have 200cc of blood drawn every day, and the Japanese army deceived the laborers into saying that it was for laboratory testing, but in fact it was for blood transfusions for the wounded of the Japanese army, and many people died due to excessive blood drawing. Some of those who resisted were severely tortured and even bitten by the wolfdogs that were released. The camp walls were surrounded by a high-voltage power grid, and many of the escaped laborers were electrocuted to death and captured. They will also be killed by the Japanese army using extremely cruel means. Since then, more than 100,000 Chinese laborers have been taken captive to the mining areas of Northeast China and Japan to do hard labor. Since then, there have been criminal "mass graves" in Shandong, Jilin, Liaoning, Shanxi and other places.

Judging from all the high-ranking officers of the Japanese invasion of China, there are many butcher-like figures, such as Tani Toshio, but there are really few people as cruel as Kimura Hyotaro. Now the battle situation in southern Hebei is very unfavorable for the Japanese army. So Kimura came up with the idea of replacing the soldiers with people. It is to use Chinese civilians as a shield to block Chen Feng's department. To put it bluntly, it is to drive the unarmed Chinese civilians to the city, and if Chen Feng's troops insist on attacking the city, it will be these Chinese civilians who will suffer first.

Hyotaro Kimura moves quickly. Before the main force of Xu Fufu's department arrived in Xingtai, the Japanese army had captured more than 3,000 people from the vicinity of Xingtai, and there were more than 10,000 Chinese civilians in Xingtai City, when Xu Fufu's main force arrived in Xingtai, they immediately prepared to attack Xingtai, they just received information from the intelligence officers lurking in the puppet army that the Japanese defenders in Xingtai City were not very many, and the real Japanese soldiers were only five or six thousand people, and the rest were puppet troops.

Xu Fufu, who received the news, was overjoyed and immediately formulated a detailed battle plan, and expected that the Japanese army would hold out for two days at most, and the Japanese army would be completely defeated or even completely annihilated after two days.

Sure enough, as Xu Fufu expected, the first day of the attack was very smooth, although the Japanese puppet army resisted very fiercely, but due to the huge gap in strength, the Japanese army lost all the positions outside Xingtai on the first day of the attack. As of five o'clock in the afternoon of November 16, all the Japanese positions on the periphery of Xingtai were captured by Xu Fufu's department, and Xingtai became an isolated city.

But just when Xu Fufu and others were ecstatic and ready to take Xingtai in one go, news came from the front that the Japanese army had played hooligans, and today the city wall of Xingtai was full of Chinese civilians, and it seemed that there were at least a few thousand people.

Xu Fortune hurried to the forefront of the battlefield, through the telescope, Xu Fortune saw that the low city wall of Xingtai City was full of ragged Chinese, it can be seen that these people are nearby farmers, some even hold babies, although there are mainly young adults, but there are also children and gray-haired old people.

Although the Japanese did not say anything, as an experienced commander, Xu Fufu knew that the purpose of the Japanese was that they hoped that the troops besieging the city would have scruples, so they did not dare to do their best.

The stakes are very high, Xu Fucai doesn't dare to make his own decisions, this problem is very serious, but it is not something he can decide privately. Xu Fufu immediately ordered the troops to be stationed in place, and at the same time reported to the Theater Commander's Department, asking Commander Chen to give an explicit explanation.

After receiving Xu Fufu's report, Chen Feng was also extremely angry, these little devils are too embarrassed to be soldiers, they can't beat them, a group of elite troops with weapons and equipment in their hands, they still need thousands of unarmed people as meat shields, these bastards deserve to die. At the same time, Chen Feng also knew that the old devil of Kimura Hyotaro must have been bullied by Xu Fufu's department, and there was no way for the dog to jump off the wall in a hurry.

After thinking about it, Chen Feng still couldn't give the order to forcibly attack, and while he ordered Xu Fufu's subordinates to continue to besiege Xingtai, he sent a part of the war correspondents to the front line, and he wanted to publicize the shameless face recognized by Japan. Afterwards, Chen Feng convened reporters from all over the world and held a press conference.

At the meeting, Chen Feng complained about the shameless behavior of the Japanese army in southern Hebei, and at the same time warned the Japanese North China Front and Japanese Army Lieutenant General Kimura Hyotaro, demanding that they be released immediately, otherwise the Eighth Theater would retaliate by retaliating with a tooth for a tooth.

As soon as this incident was revealed, the Japanese Army's North China Front immediately became the object of condemnation by public opinion in various countries in the world, and the Japanese army was condemned by Western countries because of this incident, and even Germany, Japan's ally, was very dissatisfied with this incident, believing that the Japanese army's behavior was an insult to the honor of the soldiers. Perhaps the only thing that praised the Japanese army's actions was Japan's own media, which had become heavily fascist.

The Japanese news media described the 32nd Division's actions as a last resort, and some media even openly praised Kimura Hyotaro's decisiveness and resourcefulness, which could have come up with such an effective method at such a critical juncture to preserve the Imperial Japanese Army.

In the eyes of Western countries, war is only a matter between soldiers, and it has nothing to do with civilians, and some unpleasant things may happen in the course of the war, but on the whole, the army still rarely takes action against civilians, let alone brazenly coerce civilians to blackmail opponents like Japan.

What is even more inconceivable to the countries of the world is that the Japanese news media seem to have abandoned the social mission of the news media and have become a tool of public opinion for the government. This shameless behavior of Kimura Hyotaro is contrary to the mission and honor of a soldier, no matter in that country or in the world.

If it happens in other countries, whether it is China or the United States, the government will cover it up as soon as possible, so as not to be criticized by the Chinese people and other countries in the world, and the country still wants to save face. Only in Japan can such a strange thing happen, and the news media even boasted that Kimura Hyotaro was a national hero of the Yamato nation, which was a big joke in the world.

In fact, there has never been a truly democratic free press in Japan, and modern journalism in Japan was born before and after the Meiji Restoration, which was plagued by internal and external troubles and wars, and has been closely linked to partisan struggles since its birth. As the struggle between the parties intensified, the Japanese government did not ignore the powerful propaganda and agitation power of the media, but used it as a "gatekeeper" to manipulate the situation.

In the 70s and 80s of the 19th century, the differences between the Japanese government and the opposition on the issue of "conquest of Korea" gradually affected the newspapers and periodicals, and as a result, three major newspaper camps emerged, namely, the so-called "bureaucratic faction," the "civil rights faction," and the "imperial political faction." All kinds of newspapers and periodicals were more or less involved in the partisan struggle and became the organs or vassals of various political parties. The efforts of the "civil rights" newspapers also contributed to the development of the liberal civil rights movement to a certain extent, and a large number of people joined the political life of the country.

In 1875, the Meiji government enacted the "Newsprint Ordinance," followed by the "Defamation Law," and enacted a criminal law against journalists. In the five years that followed, more than 300 journalists and newspaper writers across the country were fined or arrested, marking an unprecedented period of speech terror in the history of Japanese journalism. In 1883, in order to restrict the free competition of legitimate newspapers and periodicals, the Meiji government amended the "Newspaper Ordinance" and forced dozens of newspapers to cease publication by imposing high security deposits.

In the early 20 th century, in order to prevent the breeding and development of the socialist movement in China, the Japanese Government heightened its vigilance and strengthened its control over public opinion. So far, after several strong "corrections" by the government, the desire for press freedom in modern Japanese journalism has been distorted and wiped out little by little. After the 20s, the Japanese newspaper industry was increasingly strictly controlled, gradually swayed by the forces of militarism, and lost its due "independence." (To be continued......)