At a time when Hu Weidong was making great efforts to build the Soviet region in western Henan, the great men of northern Shaanxi were preparing to carry out the eastward expedition to open the channel for resistance against Japan, and even if they failed, they could use this to expand their fund-raising and improve the current extremely embarrassing financial situation of the base areas in northern Shaanxi. Since the western Henan Soviet region is now in the southwest of the mountain, Taizu naturally will not let go of the powerful reinforcements of the Red Eighth Army, and immediately ordered Hu Weidong to send troops to cooperate. After receiving the telegram, Hu Weidong did not dare to slack off, and hurriedly ordered the main force of the Red 15th Army to prepare to cross the Yellow River north and attack Shanxi, the base camp of Yan Xishan.

Hu Weidong learned from the telegram that perhaps due to the tricks of converting prisoners of war and enhancing cohesion, such as "making up for prisoners of war as soon as they are captured" and "complaining about grievances and checking grievances" that appeared in advance, the Red Front Army is now far more powerful than the same period in history, with more than 50,000 troops and much better equipment. It turned out that there were tens of thousands of "liberation fighters" transformed from previous battles during the Long March, and after arriving in northern Shaanxi, they encountered the Northeast Army, which had a mess in combat effectiveness but was quite well equipped, and annihilated tens of thousands of them in succession, thus greatly enhancing their own strength. It must be noted that in history, the Red Army also killed many units of the Northeast Army and the Seventeenth Route Army, but later sent back most of the captured and captured equipment for the purpose of the united front, so the strength of the Red Army did not increase much, but in this time and space, due to the extremely high efficiency of the conversion of prisoners of war, the Red Army was naturally reluctant to put most of them back, and only released some officers, plus the recruits recruited in the base areas, it is not surprising that the Central Red Army soared to more than 50,000 people

It is precisely because the overall strength of the army on the one hand has increased greatly, and the Red Army of the Eastern Expedition, which is only more than 13,000 people in history, has become a powerful force of more than 30,000 people in this time and space. Moreover, now Henan is erosive, and there is a base area in the middle of the Dabie Mountain, which is difficult for the Central Army to pass through, and the hundreds of thousands of large units of the Central Army in southern Shaanxi and northern Sichuan in history are also gone (due to the birth of the Red Eighth Army, these national army units have been transferred to the south to "suppress bandits", and a considerable part of them have been annihilated. Therefore, once the Red Army attacked Shanxi, Yan Xishan did not want to expect Lao Chiang's reinforcements to arrive in a short period of time

Of course, considering Yan Xishan's deep roots in Shanxi, even if the Red Army has 200,000 elites, it is impossible to drive him out of Shanxi in one go, but it is not difficult to get him in Shanxi

In January 36, there was an unexpected surprise, Zhang Fu of Luoyang announced an uprising, adding 30,000 elite soldiers to the already strong Red Eighth Army. When Zhang Fang saw Hu Weidong, he immediately bowed down and said, "The people of the Central Plains are bitter! In the past few decades, there has not been a good day, the old man boasted that he had been a revolution for half his life, but he was helpless about it, but he hurt the people of his hometown again and again in the warlord melee (Zhang Fan was one of the key figures in the Central Plains War), and he felt ashamed! Now that you have only been here for a few months, the originally poorest mountainous area in western Henan has been reborn, and you are the real revolutionaries! ”

"Where is it, Mr. Zhang, you followed the father of the nation to participate in the revolution in your early years, and you have always been a model for our younger generations, how can we afford such a big gift?" , Hu Weidong was happy to die in his heart, but he still looked respectful to his elders when his juniors saw him, and this modest attitude undoubtedly further won Zhang Fian's favor, and the adaptation of his 30,000 subordinates was relatively smooth. Even Hu Weidong considered that Zhang Fang's tactics were seriously outdated and that he was too old, so he persuaded him to leave the military command post and be reappointed as the head of the People's Armed Forces Department of the Western Henan Soviet Region. …,

Most of the more than 30,000 people in Zhang Fang's department came from the grass and green forests, and many of them were good at the rivers and lakes, and the officers and men were generally vigorous and brave in combat, and as long as their discipline improved, they would definitely be a first-class elite division in China. What made Hu Weidong particularly happy was that many of them were good seedlings of special forces and scouts, and the special forces brigade also built three new reserve units, with a total strength of more than 5,000 troops, and the total number of scouts of the Red Eighth Army Corps exceeded the 10,000 mark, but they were all scattered to various regiment-level units, and they were not as conspicuous as the special forces brigade in terms of establishment.

Even after the elimination of the old and weak, Zhang Fang's uprising still caused the strength of the Red Eighth Army to increase by more than 20,000 people, and its political significance is even more incalculable. Zhang Fu is not only a veteran of the League, but also one of the most influential leaders in China, and even he voted for the Red Party, which naturally caused an uproar in domestic public opinion. Lao Jiang was even more angry, and he almost immediately ordered to dispatch a large army to attack western Henan, but this was impossible, and there was Dabie Mountain blocking the road. What's more, in terms of actual threats, the Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Anhui Soviet areas in the south of the Yangtze River and the Dabie Mountain Soviet District, which threatened many important communication lines, posed a greater threat to the Chiang regime based in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, so under the persuasion of Chen Cheng and others, Lao Jiang finally gave up his plan to march into Henan immediately, and decided to solve the threat of Jiangnan and Dabie Mountains first.

Due to the lessons learned from the previous failures of encirclement and suppression, this time the old Jiang learned to be obedient, and he did not make the mistake of dividing the troops into two ways again, but concentrated almost all the troops that could be mobilized to encircle and suppress the Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Anhui Soviet regions in the south of the Yangtze River, and prepared to pull out these nails one by one with the momentum of a lion fighting a rabbit. In the face of the encirclement and suppression of the superior strength of the Nationalist Army, which exceeded 500,000 troops, the Red Army in Jiangnan inevitably suffered huge losses, and at the most critical time of the situation, more than 15 counties in the Soviet area fell and the strength of the regular Red Army was reduced to about 20,000, but it was precisely because of their sacrifices that the revolutionary situation in the rest of the country was able to develop rapidly

Although Yan Xishan's Jin Sui Army also has an air force, it is only the size of a squadron in total, with only a dozen aircraft, and most of them are old goods from the First World War, among which few are guaranteed to be able to fly, not to mention compared with the Central Army and the Guangdong Army, even now the air force of the Red Eighth Army is much stronger than them. Therefore, even though Hu Weidong was a little "afraid of the well rope for ten years", he personally led the main force of the Red 15th Army to cross the Yellow River from Mengjin without worry, and quickly defeated the first part of the Jin Sui Army that heard the wind, and quickly gained a firm foothold on the north bank.