The next volume of the War of Resistance

The devil is coming

The weather in Lushun has not been very good lately, and the heavy rains in early summer are often accompanied by bursts of thunder, making the coastal city more humid and uneasy.

"This weather really makes people miss the sake of Shinasakamachi Street!" Looking at the rain line outside, the new commander of the Kwantung Army, Okamura Ninji, sighed with emotion, he raised his hand and looked at his watch, the hour hand pointed to eight o'clock, he and several colleagues behind him glanced at each other, and then walked forward with strong steps.

He was wearing a crisp 38-style military uniform, a pair of long riding boots on his feet, and an ancestral * in his hand, with a solemn expression.

There is no doubt that his attire today is somewhat grand, and the group of high-ranking officers of the Kwantung Army behind him are also dressed with ceremoniousness, and the honor guard with them is even more than that.

After the Sino-Japanese Northeast Campaign, the Japanese officers and soldiers stationed at the Port of Arthur were rarely so ceremonious.

It's been six years! In the past six years, tens of thousands of tiger and wolf divisions of the Kwantung Army have swallowed their anger like a sheep.

They will not forget that in the sixth year of the Showa era, the command of the Kwantung Army ordered an attack on Shenyang, and this turned out to be the origin of all shame. The Kwantung Army achieved good results in defeating a strong enemy, and thought that it could easily take Manchuria, but it was defeated a few months later.

Eventually, an agreement was signed between China and Japan, in which the Japanese army retreated to the Port of Arthur and garrisons elsewhere in Manchuria were either wiped out or withdrawn.

This is a great shame for the Japanese soldiers stationed in Northeast China, and even for all Japanese soldiers. The Japanese did not believe that their defeat was due to a lack of strength, but to a miscommand and strategy.

The majority of the people in the military department believe that we should fight an all-out war with China, and if we fight a local war with them, China will gather China's strength to fight against them, so that Japan's superiority will not be manifested, and if a full-scale war breaks out between China and Japan, China's national strength will be weakened, and China's national strength will be dragged down by Japan and thus defeated.

So, after the 226 Mutiny, the militant military department came to power, and they proposed to the emperor to restart the war against China, fight a full-scale war, and drag down China.

Emperor Hirohito was a very ambitious man, and although he was not very tall, he wanted to reign over the world, and he also wanted to emulate his ancestors to conquer the world/establish great achievements. So without much thought, he agreed to the plan.

"I want to invigorate the Quartet, seek the well-being of the subjects of the empire, and enjoy the joy of common prosperity of all nations, so I send troops to the Quartet, and I hope that the soldiers will be brave and loyal to the country......

A ceremonial officer read aloud the letter of conquest issued by His Majesty the Emperor, and the officers present listened attentively as if they were pilgrimages, and their hearts were surging to complete this sacrificial task.

A group of officers and men of the army dressed in 38-style dresses marched in orderly steps, holding aloft the army flag, which symbolizes the glory of the Japanese army, and marched forward amid the cheers of military music.

The rain was pouring down, but the officers and men of this group still walked as before, marching forward to the beat of the military band and drums. Their target was a pier outside the Port of Arthur, and what they escorted was a stone monument.

After arriving at the destination, the captain of the honor guard shouted the command with a hoarse roar, and the team members began to line up with their rifles, and the stone monument that escorted them was carried over by several soldiers. At this time, the heavy rain began to weaken and gradually stopped.

When the red cloth on the stele was revealed, the stele revealed its original appearance, and a poem was engraved on it.

"The mountains and rivers have turned desolate, and the new battlefield has been ten miles away; The expedition is silent, and the sun is set outside the city of Jinzhou", and the payment is called the "Nogi Noshinori" known as the Japanese god of war.

There is no doubt that this poem was written by Nogi Noshinori.

The monument-erection ceremony begins. A tall captain of the guard of honor shouted the order, and the laborers in charge of burying the soil began to fill in the soil with their shovels, and the rain-soaked soil stuck together, and the shovels of the Japanese officers waved, but they could not lift the soil particles.

This stele was buried at the Port of Lushun, facing the direction of Lushun.

Looking at the stone monument where the soil was buried, Okamura Ninji's heart surged. He fought in the Russo-Japanese War, and at that time he was just a squad leader who was not worth mentioning. He will not forget that it was the god of war, Nogi Noshinori, who led the Japanese army to capture Lushun, thus opening the door to attack China and winning that war.

Outside the gates of Lushun, Nogi wrote this poem, which is a testament to his personal talent and a symbol of the glory of the Imperial Army. Today, the Kwantung Army Command of the Japanese Army has decided to erect a monument here to forever commemorate Nogi Noshinori and those emperors and soldiers who were glorified in the Russo-Japanese War!

The burial was completed and the sky began to clear. Okamura Ninji flicked the rain on his military cap and excitedly said to the generals behind him: "It seems that His Majesty the Emperor is protecting us, long live!" ”

"Hooray!" Everyone raised their hands and cheered. The senior generals present knew that they were not only cheering for the erection of the monument, but also for an important military operation - a full-scale invasion of China!

At the time of this monument buying ceremony, the Japanese Navy and Army had already begun a military operation codenamed "Climbing the High Mountain"!

A number of warships of the Japanese Navy's 3rd Fleet stationed on the Huangpu River in Shanghai suddenly attacked without warning and shelled the Zhabei area and the Songhu Artillery Headquarters. After the heavy shelling, more than 3,000 officers and men of the Japanese Marine Corps stationed in the Songhu area began to attack Zhabei.

At the same time, the Shanghai Dispatch Army, formed by the 3rd and 11th Divisions of the Japanese Army, also began to cut through the wind and waves and march towards Shanghai.

When the artillery fire in Shanghai was ignited, the Japanese Kwantung Army stationed in Lushun began to attack north with Lushun as a starting point. Tens of thousands of Kwantung Army launched a surprise attack on the garrison of the armored brigade of the First Army of the Chinese National Defense Army, which was stationed near Arthur.

It was also on the same day that the 2nd Division of the Japanese Army landed in Qingdao, Shandong Province, where it was stationed, and used it as a base to start an offensive on the Jinan line.

The Japanese army's sudden attack inflicted considerable losses on the Chinese troops, most of the positions fell into the hands of the enemy overnight, four or five cities in the northeast alone were captured by the Kwantung Army, and even the military airfields in the northeast suffered blows of varying degrees, and the First Group Army of the Wehrmacht, which had strong combat effectiveness, suffered heavy losses.

Shanghai is also not optimistic, because of the previous Songhu agreement, the Chinese army did not nominally have a garrison in Shanghai, and the only combat force was Sun Liren's Songhu armed police force.

This unit was stationed in five areas of Shanghai, and when it was attacked by the Japanese, its forces were not effectively assembled and suffered considerable losses.

After a night of fierce fighting, the Japanese army occupied Zhabei, and a large number of refugees began to pour into the concession, and Shanghai, the largest city in the Far East, fell into chaos.

In addition to this, the Japanese detachment in Taiwan also began to attack Fujian under the cover of the navy. The Fujian Navy is a branch of the East China Sea Navy, and although it is a naval fleet in formation, its tonnage is less than one-third of that of the Japanese offensive force, and its firepower is even less pitiful.

However, in the face of the powerful Japanese navy, they were not afraid of difficulties and faced the enemy face to face, and when the Japanese attacked, the officers and men of the navy shared the same hatred of the enemy, and in the end, except for 11 people who survived, the rest of the hundreds of officers and men all died heroically.

Annihilating the Fujian Sea Navy, the Japanese Navy fleet attacked Xiamen, Fujian, but this time they did not take advantage.

The officers and men of the 15th Artillery Regiment of the Navy stationed in Xiamen immediately entered a state of combat readiness after receiving the battle report, and they had stored enough ammunition in peacetime, so when the Japanese Navy entered the sea, all the artillery was pushed out of combat positions.

The artillery regiment was commanded by an army artilleryman, whose unit had shelled the Soviet Red Army in the northwest and used artillery to great skill, and this time was no exception. After the scheduled test firing, the artillery quickly adjusted its bearing, pouring two bases of ammunition at once.

The Japanese navy launched an artillery counterattack, but neither the firepower nor the bunkers could compare with the shore artillery, and after a morning of shelling, the Japanese navy suspended the attack with the loss of several warships.

The flames of war were ignited almost immediately in the land of China, and larger newspapers added additional issues to report in detail on the war in various places. At the same time, the streets were full of troop vehicles and propaganda flags, and overnight China was enveloped in war.

At this time, the busiest is the Nanjing Ministry of Defense Command.

The Commander of the Ministry of Defense was brightly lit, the tinkling telephone rang incessantly, the ticking of telegrams was constantly heard, and the uniformed officers were busily moving back and forth.

In the first conference room on the ground floor of the Ministry of National Defense, the senior generals of the national government gathered. Defense Minister Huang Ke, Chief of Staff Jiang Baili, Army Minister Jiang Zhongzheng, Navy Minister Chen Shaokuan, Air Force Minister Xu Shaozhou, and dozens of other high-ranking generals gathered together, all of them with serious expressions, and the pressure of war was reflected on their faces.

"The national strength of the Japanese is not yet able to support the two fronts of the Yangtze River and North China, and I judge that Japan's main intention is to attack from North China, destroy our living forces in North China, and then converge to the Yangtze River to implement a strategy of great encirclement of China." Chen Cheng, a staff officer of the Military General Staff, held a large baton and introduced the latest battle situation on a large-scale map and expounded the strategic analysis of the Military General Staff.

Huang Ke miscalculated, he was not unaware of the battle in front of him, but he did not expect that the Japanese would launch an attack on China from the fourth front.

"The suggestion of our general staff is that at present we should mobilize troops to engage in battles with the Japanese army in Shandong, Songhu, and Fujian, and that if the number of troops is insufficient, we can transfer mobile troops from the Northwest Theater, the Central Theater, and the Southwest Theater to support the Songhu, Shandong, and Fujian regions, and mobilize the whole country for war to hold the first line of defense." Jiang Baili said slowly.

Huang Ke looked at the map with his eyes like torches, and he knew it was time for him to make a decision.

(Note: Some readers and friends said that the issue of the power of the Ministry of Defense is that many people are solidified by the thinking of the existing Ministry of Defense.) If you have read the previous chapters, you will know that the Ministry of Defense involved in the article is the highest military authority in the country, commanding the three armed forces)