Yan Junliu's inspection of the North China Front Army this time had profound intentions, and it was far from being as simple as Gangbe Naosaburo and others had guessed. Half a month ago, the German army completed a devastating assault on the Belgian and French armies in the north, which directly led to the annihilation of the Belgian army, and the 30 divisions of the French army and the 9 divisions of the British army ceased to exist. The new commander of the French army, Maxim? Weygand hastily cobbled together 49 divisions plus 2 British divisions to form the 6th, 7th, and 10th Army Corps, which formed the Weygand Line, about 300 miles east and west, along the Somme and Aisne rivers, and held the Maginot Line with 17 divisions. The two lines of defense joined together in an attempt to prevent the Germans from moving south.

However, the great victory some time ago made the Germans see that France at this time was just an old-fashioned paper tiger, and it was not at all the great power of Western Europe that they imagined, so the high command formulated the second phase of the French campaign operation plan codenamed the Red Plan. This plan called for the Germans to move south and defeat the French completely.

On 15 March, the Luftwaffe carried out heavy bombardment of French airfields and rear. Bock's Army Group B was the first to launch a full-front attack on the right flank, and on the same day, Rommel's 7th Panzer Division crossed the Somme first. Immediately, Rommel's division cut off the French 10th Army defending the Abwey-Amiens line, and the rest of the German divisions were able to advance through this gap. Four days later, Rommel turned north and rushed 50 miles in one go, aiming for the coastline. Arriving at their destination that night, cutting off the retreat of the French 9th Army and the British 51st Division, which were retreating towards the coast, the British and French forces, which were soon encircled, were forced to surrender to Rommel on 23 March.

Meanwhile. On March 18, Guderian's corps defeated the French armored forces and broke through the right flank of the French 6th Army. Hordes of French prisoners threw their guns at the Germans and crushed them under the tanks.

On 20 March, the Gudeli Armoured Corps arrived in the Swiss border town of Pantaril. Cut off the retreat of the French troops within the Maginot Line to Switzerland. Since the forcible crossing of the Aisne. In 10 days, Gudri installed the armor corps to drive more than 400 kilometers and capture as many as 250,000 French troops, creating a miracle in the history of warfare.

On March 22, the French government withdrew from Paris. Moved to Tours. Same. Italy took advantage of the fire to loot. Declare war on France. On the 24th, Paris was declared an undefended city. On the same day, the French government moved to Bordeaux again. The Germans occupied Paris without firing a single shot. On the 25th, the French government announced the cessation of resistance and France surrendered.

When the German army entered Paris on 25 March, the French government collapsed and was divided, mainly remaining in mainland France by Philippe ? Marshal Pétain's pacifist government, and the Shire in England? De Gaulle formed a government in exile.

The allied forces composed of Britain, France, Belgium, Rwanda, the Netherlands, and Portugal suffered a total of 350,000 casualties and 1,900,000 prisoners. The German-Italian army suffered 155,000 casualties, of which only 45,000 were killed and 110,000 were wounded.

Originally, Japan no longer had any hope for the strategy of forcing China to surrender by military strikes, and in order to resolve the China incident as soon as possible, the Japanese Government had already planned to hold very sincere peace talks with the Chinese Government. At the same time, the Japanese army base camp also decided that if there was no further progress on the army side, the Japanese troops stationed in China would be reduced from the current 850,000 to 400,000 and withdrawn from the Wuhan area.

However, the major victories of the German government and Hitler in Europe quickly caused a huge stir in Japan and the whole world, and the whole country was shaken. With the surrender of France, the Netherlands, Portugal and other countries, many colonies in Southeast Asia have become ownerless wastelands in the blink of an eye, and "don't miss the bus" has become a slogan among the Japanese people.

Seeing the glorious victory of the German government, the Japanese Army could not sit still, and soon the Japanese Army demanded that the government immediately form an alliance with Germany and Italy to compete with Britain and the United States for the Pacific Ocean, and Yan Junliu was one of them.

There are many others who share the same sentiment as Yan Junroku, including Emperor Hirohito of Japan. Although the war of aggression against China did not bring much wealth and benefits to the Japanese government, it led to a considerable decline in Japan's national strength. But for the Japanese imperial family, it was a feast.

In just a few years, the Japanese government plundered a large amount of gold, silver, and cultural relics, calligraphy and paintings from China, the total value of which far exceeded the Japanese government's war consumption, but all the money flowed into the Japanese imperial family, and ordinary people did not know what to do, so all the Japanese imperial family, including Emperor Hirohito, was supportive of this war. It's just that Emperor Hirohito's castle is relatively deep, and he is worried that the Japanese imperial family will be sick by the world in the future, so it has been hidden behind the scenes, and all matters are handled by the prime minister and the minister of war.

Despite this, after two years of confrontation, Hirohito had a lot of doubts about the combat effectiveness of the Japanese army on the Chinese battlefield, especially the Battle of Nomenkan and the Battle of North China a few months earlier, which had the deepest impact on Emperor Hirohito, so he instructed the General Staff Headquarters to propose the formation of this inspection team, and at the same time appointed his chief of guard as the head of the inspection team.

The mission of the inspection team was to conduct a thorough survey of all the Japanese troops on the battlefield in China, and at the same time to conduct a thorough investigation of the strength of the Chinese anti-Japanese forces, and also to deal with some confidential matters for Hirohito.

At the age of 17, he entered the Army Central Infant School, graduated from the Army Infant School with the third place, and then entered the First Wing of the Field Artillery Unit. In the same year, he entered the Army Non-commissioned Officer School, and the following year graduated with the second place out of 660 students in the same period. After the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Shunroku Hahata was incorporated into the Third Army led by Nogi Noshinori and went to Lushun to participate in the war against Russia, and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Fifth Degree.

In 1907, Shunroku Hahata entered the Army University, which trained mid- and high-ranking officers in the Japanese Army, and in 1910 he graduated from the Army University with the first honor. Later, he followed the elite line and worked in the staff headquarters, and in 1926, he was promoted to major general and served as the commander of the 4th Brigade of Field Artillery. In 1927, he was appointed director of the Fourth Department of the General Staff Headquarters, and the following year he was transferred to the General Staff Headquarters as the head of the War Department, and participated in the planning of the Manchurian and Mongolian occupation by his brother Eitaro Hata and his staff officers Seishiro Itagaki and Ishihara Waner. In 1931, he was promoted to lieutenant general and served as director of field artillery. Since 1933, he has successively served as the commander of the 14th Division, the head of the Army Aviation Headquarters, and the 2nd Division. After the 26 Incident, he replaced Yanagawa Heisuke of the Imperial Road faction as the commander of the Taiwan Army. In 1937, he was promoted to general and assumed the post of director of education, one of the three commanders of the army, and became one of the heads of the Japanese army.

It can be seen from the resume of Shunroku Hata himself that his life is very smooth, it is precisely because of this success that Shunroku Hata is extremely conceited, he himself is very dissatisfied with the Japanese army on the battlefield in China now, in his understanding, the Chinese army is just a group of farmers with primitive weapons, and their combat effectiveness is as loose as sand, and they are not vulnerable at all. And the Imperial Japanese Army is a strictly trained elite, even compared with the German Army, which is the most rigorous and most combat-ready in the world, the Great Japanese Imperial Army is not inferior at all, how can it be repeatedly defeated by the Chinese people, or even hit hard.

This time he wants to see whether the Chinese are no longer cowardly or the Imperial Japanese Army itself has fallen, and he wants to use his eyes and actions to provide a real data to those bigwigs in the country to see if the Imperial Japanese Army can shoulder more important tasks.

In view of the strength of Chen Feng's department and the fact that it affects the whole body, Hata Junroku decided to organize a small-scale assault battle in a small area now, and the target of the battle is not Chen Feng's department, but the troops of the Eighth Route Army in Shandong.

On 30 March, Toshiroku Hata arrived in Jinan by car, and on the same day he personally transferred an ordinary infantry wing and an artillery brigade from all the units of the 12th Army stationed in Shandong, as well as a cavalry wing and a tank squadron, to form a mixed brigade, with Major General Nemoto Hiroshi as the brigade commander and the commander-in-chief of the operation.

According to Yan Junliu's plan, this time he will use the mixed brigade of Gen Bo as the main force, and then accompany two puppet infantry divisions to launch a large-scale sweep of the Luxi Mountains, striving to eliminate the first column of the Eighth Route Army entrenched in Luxi within two weeks.

The predecessor of this unit was the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army of the Zhina, which created the "Pingxingguan Great Victory", and the current number is the first column of Shandong. Xiang Xiang is the commander and Zhu Rui is the political commissar, and the strength of three regular brigades is under its jurisdiction, and it is the strongest Eighth Route Army in Shandong.

The reason why Yan Junliu wanted to take the first column in Shandong was completely because of the combat effectiveness of the first column, although it was less difficult and more certain to carry out a sweep of the Eighth Route Army in Jiaodong and Yimeng Mountains. However, Yan Junliu believes that this does not reflect the combat effectiveness of the Imperial Japanese Army, and only a duel between regular troops can prove that the Imperial Japanese Army is indeed stronger than the Chinese army, so that his report can be more convincing and golden.

This operation of the Japanese army adopted strict secrecy measures, so it did not attract the attention of Chen Feng, let alone the attention of the Shandong Eighth Route Army.

Of course, even if the Eighth Route Army knew that the Japanese wanted to carry out a large-scale sweep of the Luxi base area, they would not be too surprised, after all, since 38 years, the Japanese army has swept all the base areas in Shandong too frequently, it is simply like a cow's hair, and they have long been used to it.

Moreover, the Eighth Route Army in the past was not high in combat effectiveness due to the lack of weapons and equipment, and even the Japanese army ordered the military and civilians in the base area to be completely transferred due to a sweep at the level of a brigade. However, after the development of the army in the past few years, the Eighth Route Army is still very confident in its own strength, and they do not pay attention to the sweeps of ordinary scale at all, and in the past few years, there have been no less than 20 sweeps at the division and regimental level, and they still have a lot of experience in dealing with the sweeps of the Japanese army. (To be continued......)

PS: PS: There is one more change in the evening!