The Germans were fighting hard in Stalingrad, the Soviet stronghold, and thousands of kilometers away, the Japanese were fighting an existential battle against their rivals, the Soviets. Although Ishihara was selected by Hideki Tojo to be the supreme commander of the front line, this guy was really worthy of his name of "Ishihara no Chi", and commanded the Japanese army to achieve a series of great victories on the border line.

The 17th Division, which came from afar, was used by Ishihara as an auxiliary offensive force on the flank, with the so-called main force of Japanese armored forces, to cover the flank of the Japanese offensive group. This arrangement had a certain effect, at least when the Soviet Red Army was busy eating these Japanese units, and forgot its ultimate goal of intercepting the Japanese army.

General Chuikov still paid the price for his youth, although he commanded the troops in a very orderly manner, but neglected to restrain and interrogate the details of the army, which led his troops to sing triumphant songs along the way, but only wasted time on the "abandoned sons" on Ishihara's flank.

On the front of the battlefield, Ishihara wittily invested the two elite main forces of the 1st Division and the 8th Division in the first batch of attacks. These two units were indeed the elite of the Kwantung Army, and they achieved an astonishing record of capturing four cities in the Soviet Far East in a row.

Although it is said that in many cases, the Japanese top leadership has been in a state of brain failure for a long time in formulating strategies, but it has to be said that no matter how weak the Japanese Army is, it still has the title of "the strongest infantry in World War I during World War II". In terms of combat effectiveness, this army that believes in the spirit of bushido still has a certain combat effectiveness, so after breaking through several Soviet defense lines one after another, the shadow of the Japanese army being beaten at Nomenkan was gradually diluted.

The fighters of the Japanese Army also took off frequently from field airfields on the front, using their numerical superiority to suppress the inferior air force of the USSR. In order to cover this huge attack, the Japanese army used a full 400 planes of various types, although it was much more humble compared to the scale of the thousands of planes in Germany, but it was definitely a big deal in a place like the Far East.

However, Ishihara found a problem that made him desperate, that is, after the relevant experience of being abused by the German superior air force, the Soviet army had ******** the loss of air supremacy, so even if the Japanese army aviation used its strength, it had little impact on the ground forces of the Soviet Red Army.

In fact, the pressure on Ishihara was still very huge, in order to entangle the Soviet armored forces, the armored troops in his hands and the 17th Division sent several telegrams to him a day, these troops have been ravaged by the superior Soviet armored forces and have lost their temper, like a suffering little daughter-in-law, crying and shouting to go back to their parents' house to avoid the limelight.

In the end, the supreme commander of the Japanese army, Ishihara Waner, finally pushed the second echelon reserve in his hand onto the battlefield when he was close to the goal. He replaced the 1st and 8th divisions, which had been fighting hard for a long time, with the 9th and 10th divisions. The 11th and 12th Divisions were then replaced with the 17th Division, which was on the verge of collapse, as well as the Japanese armored divisions.

Who would have thought that the Japanese army's proud armored strength would still be vulnerable in the face of the rags eliminated by the Soviet Union? Looking at those small tanks with rivets that escaped from the world, Ishihara finally realized the gap between Japan and the world's mainstream military powers.

Obviously, there is a good side to the matter, and what country in the world can still fight to the death on the front line after losing two-thirds of its troops? I think that there is only the Imperial Army of the Great Japanese Empire, right? At least in terms of spirit, Ishihara felt that the Japanese Army was still invincible in the world.

"Your Excellency Commander!" Lieutenant General Takamasa Iseki, commander of the 14th Division of the General Reserve, stood behind Ishihara Wan'er, holding his command knife and bowing his head and saluting: "Since the beginning of the war, our army has been like a bamboo, and the subordinate officers greatly admire His Excellency the Commander's methods of using troops like gods. When will we be able to go into battle to kill the enemy and fight for His Majesty the Emperor?"

"Ah, Iseki-kun...... Don't worry, you and your division will naturally have a place to use in the future. Ishihara replied with a smile as he stood in the makeshift command booth and looked at the black smoke rising from the battlefield.

There is no reason not to laugh, because under his command, although the Japanese army was in a bitter battle, it also played a rare speed of advance. The entire northbound cluster advanced to the hinterland of the Soviet Far East at a high speed of several tens of kilometers a day, and even Hideki Tojo, who was preparing to find fault, kept his mouth shut. At present, most of the few high-level parties in the base camp who know the market already feel that only this "Ishihara no Chi" can save the army of the Great Japanese Empire and take the entire Great Japanese Empire seriously.

But history is cruel, and in a telegram from the General Headquarters of the Soviet Far East Defenders to the Kremlin in Moscow, the Japanese attack was described as follows: "The Japanese advance is twice as slow as the German army, they lack the means to transport baggage and heavy weapons, our army has compressed the speed of their advance within a controllable range, do not worry about the situation in the Far East will deteriorate further." ”

In Chuikov's view, the Japanese army was desperately attacking forward smoothly, and this speed was the basic advance speed of the German army after it was seriously hindered in the original plan. To put it bluntly, in the seriousness of Chuikov, the Japanese marched at full speed barely as fast as the advance of the German offensive army.

Of course, Ishihara didn't know that there was such a huge gap between his troops and the German army, which was the most mechanized in the world. At this moment, he still fantasizes that his troops can rush into Vladivostok, gnaw a piece of meat in the hinterland of the Soviet Far East, and then complete a unilateral peace with the Soviet Union.

Ishihara clearly saw that on the Soviet-German battlefield, the German army had a high probability of winning in the end, and the defeated Soviet Union would lose its richest territory. At this time, it was very much in the interests of the Japanese army to take advantage of the fire to rob, and as long as the Soviet Union compromised with Germany, then the territory obtained by the Japanese side would be the territory of the Japanese themselves. He sketched a clever picture of the situation for the Japanese Army: as soon as Germany invaded Moscow, the Japanese envoy would negotiate with Germany and the Soviet Union at the same time, bringing relations between the three countries back to a state of peace - and then the territories that Japan forcibly occupied would fulfill Japan's dream of dominating East Asia.

It can be said that Ishihara's plan seemed much more "feasible" than the Navy's plan to subdue the US Navy, because he decisively saw that Japan could not drag down the Soviet Union on its own, so he decisively pulled in Germany, the former ally and today's enemy. Relying on the powerful Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, Japan's plan of action to loot while it was burning was much better than the plan of the navy to roll up its sleeves and personally fight the United States into an endless situation, at least Ishihara outsourced the work that the Japanese Army could not do to the German Army in Accardo.

Kimura huddled in a makeshift trench with his rifle in hand, desperately enduring the Soviet defenders' machine guns flying over his steel helmet, and now he realized that his hard-working shooting skills were just a money-saving part of the army's ammunition savings.

Just like Chinese soldiers, China is a poor country, so guns are more expensive than human lives, which has led to the combat habit of Chinese troops "would rather lie down and be slow for two seconds, but also protect their guns". Japan is not much richer than China, so submachine guns are a "luxury" for them to waste ammunition, so that the Japanese army is rarely equipped with submachine guns.

This is why Japan rarely has submachine guns equipped with troops, and this is why Japanese soldiers do not have semi-automatic weapons like the German G43 or the American M1. A small country that has risen by cutting back on food and clothing, speculation and gambling, can have such achievements as today, it can be regarded as glorifying its ancestors, can they be asked to do better?

The Makqin heavy machine gun of the Soviet soldier on the opposite side even had an iron shield on the body, and the Japanese army's Type 92 heavy machine gun with a very high body really could not be compared with the Makqin in terms of rate of fire. Even the Japanese themselves don't bother to complain about the Type 92 heavy machine gun, and there is even a gap between this weapon and the Maxim 20 years ago......

Kimura saw with his own eyes that the shooter of the Type 92 heavy machine gun covering the infantry attack not far from his flank was shot by the Soviets and fell in the trench, and by the time he staggered past to help, the shooter had no more value to salvage.

Secretly thankfully, Kimura had performed well in the last battle, and was assigned to the machine gun team as flank cover, so he didn't have to charge forward with the hapless guys. So he could still breathe happily now, and most of those recruits had died in the way of the charge.

From time to time, the heavy artillery of the Soviets would sweep past Kimura's position and fall on the Japanese artillery position not far behind him, and the Japanese artillerymen, who had only a small number of 70 mm caliber 92 infantry guns, were not at all the opponents of the Soviet artillery with a large number of 122 mm howitzers.

Looking at the battlefield, the Japanese soldiers bravely launched one attack after another, and finally were repelled by the fierce fire of the Soviet soldiers, Ishihara couldn't help but feel distressed, the artillery position in front of him a hundred meters had been smashed by Soviet artillery, and it also made him more intuitively feel the gap between the two sides in terms of firepower.

"Yaga!" Ishihara finally couldn't sit still, and he decided that he should do something to live up to his name and the soldiers who were struggling on the front lines. So he turned around and asked his adjutant angrily, "What about the Ishii troops?"