Yan Junliu obviously underestimated the strength of the Eighth Route Army, he didn't expect that the mouse-like Zhinatu Eighth Route in his consciousness would dare to besiege Liaocheng, which was heavily garrisoned by the imperial army, and more importantly, it was also broken by them, which was simply a slap in the face, a naked slap in the face.

As the former supreme commander of the Central China Dispatch Army, Yan Junliu has always felt that he knows China's national defense strength very well, but this time he was slapped in the face by the groundwhine-like Eighth Route Army, which made Yan Junliu extremely angry.

Feeling that his authority was being challenged, General Yan Jun ordered the Japanese troops around Liaocheng to immediately move closer to the periphery of Liaocheng, and at the same time ordered the Japanese 109th Division near Jining and the mixed 10th Brigade stationed in Heze to immediately reinforce Liaocheng, while he himself moved to Jining with fifty or sixty middle and senior officers of the observation group to direct the battle.

The sudden fall of Liaocheng made the Japanese army on the front line very worried, and the situation of the front-line troops was very clear, if the supplies could not be delivered in time, let alone annihilate the Zhina army in the encirclement, whether they could protect themselves was a problem. Originally, according to the Japanese army's consistent marching principle, any unit that went out to fight had to carry a week's worth of supplies and ammunition.

However, in order to achieve a surprise effect this time, Nemoto ordered the troops to carry only three days of supplies for the battle, and now the supply stock has reached below the warning line, and according to the current consumption rate, the little supply in the stock can only last for 20 hours at most.

The food is okay, after all, there are so many Shina villages nearby, and the Imperial Japanese Army can easily raise a large amount of food. But ammunition was a big problem, and the farmers didn't have it in their hands. If only there was no ammunition. Fighting a war is just a joke. In desperation, Nemoto had no choice but to ask for help from the six generals of Yanjun.

The six generals of Yanjun also realized this problem, and the loss of the logistics base in Liaocheng really made the Genbo Department of the lone army extremely passive, and there was a danger of being surrounded and annihilated by the Zhina people. Now there are two roads in front of the Japanese army, one is to immediately break away from the entanglement with the 1st Column and 1st Brigade of Shandong through all the Japanese puppet army, and then retreat north to Dezhou. The other way is to bombard the Japanese puppet army while attacking the 1st column and 1st brigade around Shandong.

Forget about ground transportation, although Dezhou and Linqing are very close to the battlefield, these two cities are not military towns in the first place, and there is not much ammunition in them at all, and the ground transportation time is too long. There was no other way but to airdrop the Japanese army.

On April 8, the Japanese army gathered more than 30 transport planes and airdropped supplies to the headquarters of the Honto Shosho on the battlefield. At the same time, the Japanese army that arrived on the outskirts of Liaocheng engaged in a fierce battle with the Liaocheng defenders of the Eighth Route Army.

After the Eighth Route Army captured Liaocheng, it obtained a large number of weapons and equipment, and Xu Xiangqian gathered more than 30,000 people at once this time, so the battle was extremely tragic from the beginning. One side fights for honor, the other side fights for survival. As soon as the battle began, each side showed off their strongest means of attack.

April 9. Under the response of the 2nd and 3rd Brigades of the 1st Column and the 3rd Brigade of Shandong. The remnants of the 1st Brigade and more than 20,000 civilians finally broke through the encirclement of the Japanese army. However, the department did not retreat. Fifteen or six thousand people under the command of Genbo came towards Liaocheng, and at this point, the Japanese army formed a huge encirclement around Liaocheng.

Realize that this is an opportunity to eliminate the best of the main forces of the Eighth Route Army. General Yan Jun hurriedly mobilized a mixed brigade and an artillery brigade from other parts of Shandong to join the battle. As the two sides fought more and more bravely, the troops around Liaocheng also gathered more and more.

As of April 12, at least 80,000 people had gathered on the battlefield of Liaocheng, of which more than 50,000 troops of the Eighth Route Army were defending the city, and more than 30,000 Japanese troops launched attacks again and again under the cover of aircraft and artillery.

This time, General Yan Jun was completely blinded, he thought that only one mixed brigade would be enough to wipe out the Luxi base area of the Eighth Route Army, but now the troops used have reached one division, 3 mixed brigades and one artillery brigade, and still have not been able to take the Eighth Route Army, not to mention that there are 2 puppet infantry divisions on the side to assist.

The Japanese army had a hard time, and the Eighth Route Army was also not easy. Although they had the advantage in numbers, they were far behind the Japanese in terms of firepower, especially in terms of artillery, when the Japanese army's field heavy artillery brigade joined the battlefield, the pressure on the Eighth Route Army on the front line increased sharply.

Holding out until April 16, after transferring most of the common people, Xu Xiangqian ordered his troops to break through to the west. After a hard battle, Shandong No. 1 Column finally jumped out of the encirclement of the Japanese army and smoothly transferred to the Luxi Mountains. The Japanese army did not pursue, and the encirclement and anti-encirclement and suppression campaigns ended.

In this battle, the Japanese army and the Eighth Route Army were very unhappy, especially the Japanese army, they originally planned to eliminate Luxi's Eighth Route Army Shandong First Column in one fell swoop, but the most difficult result was the loss of troops and the defeat of the army, and the Eighth Route Army broke through, and in the middle process, they also lost the logistics base of Liaocheng and lost a large number of weapons and equipment.

The Eighth Route Army, on the other hand, felt that this battle was very poor, and the first brigade was almost dumpled by the little devils, and lost nearly 10,000 troops in the First World War, not to mention that one-fifth of the villages in the base area were slaughtered by the Japanese army, and tens of thousands of civilians were killed and wounded, which can be said to be the biggest loss of the Eighth Route Army in the past two years.

After the battle, General Yanjun personally reported the results of the battle to the Japanese base camp and Emperor Hirohito, and he wrote in the battle summary: "After the investigation and verification of the humble field, the combat effectiveness of the Shina army has indeed improved, mainly in the fact that the weapons and equipment of the Shina army have been greatly improved, and even the Shina Tubalu, which has always been poorly equipped, can now reach one rifle per person, and even an artillery team has been formed." The second biggest change is the will to fight of the Chinese people, who often collapsed at the touch of a blow when they clashed with the imperial army three years ago. Now the people of China not only dare to fight with the imperial army face to face with bayonets, but even dare to open up the situation and fight a positional war and a war of attrition with the imperial army."

Regarding the combat effectiveness of the Japanese army, Yan Junliu commented: "Facts have proved that the combat effectiveness of the Imperial Japanese Army has indeed declined, and the decline is relatively large, which is mainly manifested in the composition of the Imperial Army's soldiers and the will to fight. Three years ago, the Imperial Japanese Army was almost entirely composed of veterans who had been in the army for more than three years, and those veterans had undergone strict military training and had extremely high individual quality, so their combat effectiveness far exceeded that of the Chinese army with the same strength. However, after three years of war attrition, the veterans of the imperial army suffered extremely heavy casualties and were almost exhausted. The new recruits who were newly added to the various units were all temporary conscripts of the new soldiers, at most after three months of short military training, they could not be compared with the previous veterans because there were too many pro-soldiers, so the imperial army's will to fight greatly declined, three years ago with the Chinese army, the Imperial Japanese Army almost did not surrender soldiers, but now it is not uncommon for the imperial soldiers to surrender to the Chinese army, there is no such determination to die, which is also another reason for the decline in the combat effectiveness of the Imperial Japanese Army! ”

Therefore, General Yanjun advised the Japanese Empire not to consider going south or north for the time being, because if the people of China were not defeated, going north or south would only lead to self-destruction. At the same time, the Sixth General sent a secret telegram to Emperor Hirohito, suggesting that Emperor Hirohito should continue to maintain contact with the Chinese government and hold peace talks with the Chinese government in the shortest possible time, even if he did not hesitate to give up a little interest.

However, although Yan Junliu's telegram attracted the attention of the Japanese emperor, the Japanese army base camp, which was red-eyed by the German army, was almost unanimously opposed to peace talks with the Chinese government. Fumima Konoe, who came to power with the support of the Ministry of War, also openly supported the continued expansion of the war by the Ministry of War, and even put forward the concept of co-prosperity in Greater East Asia. This time, even Mitsumasa Yonechi and others, who had originally supported the peace talks, did not speak, and although they did not explicitly support the military department, everyone at the time could see that Mitsumasa Yonechi and others acquiesced in continuing to expand the aggression.

In fact, it is no wonder that the attitude of the Japanese top brass has changed so much, and the performance of the Germans is really incredible. In just over half a year from September 1, 39 to now, Germany quickly defeated Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. As of now, Germany occupies all of Western Europe. From then on, the entire Atlantic coast from Norway in the north to Spain in the south was controlled by Germany.

Britain and France, who once controlled the League of Nations, were left with Britain still surviving, and although the British army withdrew part of its troops in the Dunkirk retreat, it lost a large number of weapons and equipment, including 2,450 artillery pieces, 6,400 anti-tank guns, 11,000 machine guns, more than 75,000 vehicles, 500,000 tons of military supplies, 224 ships were sunk, and 106 planes were shot down. The Air Force has also been greatly weakened, with only a little more than 1,300 combat aircraft remaining. As for the navy, due to the blockade of the German navy and air force, it lost the conditions for cooperation with the French fleet.

Whether it is the Soviet Union, Japan or other countries, they all believe that Britain has lost the ability to continue fighting, and the German army will attack the British Isles in the shortest possible time, completely destroy the empire on which the sun never sets, and then sweep it into the garbage heap of history in a very chic manner.

What the Germans can do, the Japanese think they can do. Compared with Germany, which has been beaten by Britain, France, and other countries for 20 consecutive years, the Japanese believe that their national strength is much stronger than that of Germany. The main thing was that the Japanese believed that their opponents were not as strong as their German counterparts, and that the weak China could not be compared with Britain and France at all.

The reason why the Germans were able to successfully defeat Britain and France, while the Empire of Japan remained alive and well in the quagmire of the Sino-Japanese War, attributed this to the fact that Japan had no allies. Germany was able to achieve such a brilliant record in such a short period of time, on the one hand, because the German army was indeed strong, but it was undeniable that Germany had allies such as Italy, Spain, Finland and Romania, and it was precisely because of the help of these allies that Germany was able to concentrate its forces on the war against the British, so the Japanese government was eager to find a reliable ally. (To be continued......)