Calculating the time, the U.S. military had just finished the Battle of Saipan in the Pacific theater, and the front was once again approaching the Japanese mainland, while in distant Europe, the Allied forces that had just completed the Normandy landings were advancing in depth towards France. The Red Army in the east also began to counterattack the German East Prussia region after entering Poland, and the entire battlefield of World War II seemed to have sounded the horn of a counteroffensive at this moment.

Things on the European side are too far away to be beaten, but the Japanese troops in the Pacific Ocean have made the Americans feel more and more pressure.

Although the success of the island-hopping tactic turned the Japanese army's proud island chain defense into an ornament, the repeated approach of the U.S. military to the mainland also prompted their determination to resist to the end.

The frenzied Japanese are preparing to shrink their forces in the Pacific theater, intending to establish an absolute defense circle and fight the Americans to the end with every last ounce of strength.

One of the small islands, which was originally less strategically located and only 350 kilometers from the mainland, has become a focal point of defense, and the Japanese continue to build up troops on the island, intending to turn the area called Iwo Jima into an attacker's nightmare.

Japan's so-called absolute defense sphere generally refers to the main areas occupied by the Japanese army, including the Kuril Islands in the north, the Japanese archipelago, the Philippine Islands, and the Ogasawara Islands, as well as Malay, Indonesia, and New Guinea in Southeast Asia, as well as Korea in Northeast Asia, Northeast China, and North China.

This range was calculated based on the flight distance of American bombers at that time, and within this range, it was difficult for American long-range bombers to fly intensively to the Japanese mainland, and the Japanese archipelago was relatively safe.

But once the Allies break through this so-called "defensive circle", there will be no peace in the Japanese archipelago, and the B29 bomber can turn Tokyo into a scorched earth, so this is equivalent to the last fig leaf for the Japanese.

So the importance of the absolute defense circle is self-evident. In addition, in order to seek a breakthrough, the Japanese high-level has re-turned their attention to the Chinese mainland... The military's long-planned "Army No. 1 Operational Plan" was officially put into effect.

In order to reverse the unfavorable situation in the Pacific theater, the base camp decided to open up the mainland communication line from northeastern China to Vietnam, and at the same time destroy the airfields in North and Central China in Huaxia to avoid the situation of US troops using Huaxia Airport as a springboard to bomb the mainland. Not long ago, in May, the Japanese invaders mobilized 500,000 troops and coordinated with the land, sea, and air force to implement the "No. 1 Operational Plan."

The Fourth Battle of Changsha kicked off, and the Battle of Henan-Xianggui officially began, which was the largest offensive of the Japanese army on the battlefield in China since the invasion of China.

Since the offensive was mainly concentrated in Henan, Hunan, and Guangxi, the Japanese wanted to unite the occupied territories of "puppet Manchukuo, North China, South China, and Southeast Asia" as a substitute for the sea routes blocked by the American army. As a result, the Kwantung Army, the China Mainland Dispatch Army, and the Southern Army became a whole and relied on each other.

Some time ago, the Battle of Myitkyina had just ended, and Lao Jiang was anxious to transfer the expeditionary force back to China because of this consideration.

Although the 20th Group Army and the 11th Group Army were allowed to return to Korea, the situation of the entire Henan-Xianggui Campaign was still not optimistic, after all, the battlefield covered half of China.

Since the end of 42 years, because the Japanese army has focused on the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia, the encroachment on China has slowed down, and a large number of elites have been transferred to the Pacific and Southeast Asian battlefields.

Soon after the battle, the Japanese army launched an unusually ferocious attack on Changsha, but due to the victory of the first three battles, the Ninth Theater was blindly optimistic and poorly prepared for war from top to bottom, coupled with the high-level infighting The command of the troops was out of balance, so that the Japanese army lightly took Yuelu Mountain and destroyed the heavy artillery position of the Kuomintang Army, making the entire battle irreversible, Xue Yue was forced to retreat to Hengyang, and the fourth Changsha defense battle was declared a failure.

Japan has assembled 500,000 troops, 250 aircraft, built 14 mixed brigades and 8 field supplementary units, equipped with thousands of artillery pieces, 100,000 horses, 15,000 automobiles, and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles.

Although Hunan and Guangxi received reinforcements from the two major armies of the expeditionary force this time, they still could not stop the iron hooves of the Japanese artillery armor, and the battle lines in various places were tightened, and all other places except the Hengyang battlefield were defeated

Although Hengyang was the city that held out the longest, due to the consumption of ammunition and the casualties of soldiers, logistics materials could not be sent to the front line in time, making it difficult for the defenders of Hengyang to maintain the defensive line, and the Japanese army rushed into the city several times to engage in more brutal street battles with the defenders.

However, due to the Japanese army's imperative victory on Hengyang, in addition to the offensive end, there were also a large number of reinforcements on the periphery, and the 11th Group Army that came to support it was still a step slower, and it was blocked by the Japanese army and could not enter the battlefield at all, and the defense of Hengyang could only rely on the tens of thousands of people of the 10th Army.

Song Xilian's command headquarters phone was about to be blown up, Lao Jiang urged him, Xue Yue urged him, and Fang Xianjue, who was surrounded in Hengyang, was also urging him, but if he couldn't get in, he couldn't get in.

It was thought that the troops would be able to gain an advantage over the Japanese army after being equipped with some American-style weapons, but the actual results were unsatisfactory.

Compared with the army stationed in India, the Western Yunnan Expeditionary Force is much backward in terms of combat effectiveness and the number of equipment, and to put it mildly, the former is only slightly better than the front-line troops in China, and it really does not have much advantage over the Japanese, and it is even more impossible to achieve the same situation as the army stationed in India and the 88th Army with fewer enemies.

During the long Battle of Changheng, the Chinese and US air forces fully supported the ground operations and cut off the Japanese army's logistical supply lines for a time, but it was difficult to make up for the overall disadvantage of the Kuomintang army and the evil consequences caused by the wrong command.

The battle to defend Hengyang lasted more than two months, killing more than 25,000 Japanese soldiers and wounding nearly 60,000, breaking the original plan of the Japanese base camp to open the Hunan and Guizhou lines and reach Yunnan and Burma within seven days. The defenders of Hengyang sacrificed more than 16,000 people, and in the end less than 1,000 remained.

The people of Hengyang alone sacrificed more than 3,000 people to dig fortifications and transport ammunition, and the thousand-year-old city was razed to the ground. The anti-Japanese soldiers and the people of Hengyang paid a heavy price.

In the end, when there were no reinforcements from outside and the ammunition and food were exhausted, a group of senior generals such as Fang Xianjue, the supreme commander of the city and the commander of the Tenth Army, finally surrendered to the Japanese army on the condition of preserving the wounded soldiers.

In the six months since the engagement, the situation on the battlefield in China has taken a sharp turn for the worse, and by October it had lost most of the land in Henan, Hunan, Liangguang, Fujian, and other provinces, with more than 400,000 casualties among the troops, and five air bases and more than 20 airfields were destroyed by the Japanese army one after another.

The defeat at home seemed to be due to the lack of assistance from the allies, and the battlefield on the Western Front dragged on, but in fact the biggest reason was that the Kuomintang army was very short of 1.3 million troops, but in fact it was not more than 1 million at most, and there were many internal factions and intrigues with each other.

When the Japanese army invaded Central China on a large scale, the units of the First Theater stationed in Henan took the lead in the battle, but the Fifth and Ninth Theaters did not launch a large-scale attack on the Japanese army for a long time, preventing the Japanese army from reinforcing the first theater.

Similarly, when the Fourth and Ninth Theaters were attacked, the other theaters were similarly inadequate, let alone heavily reinforced. Let me ask, can they win this kind of cooperative battle?

Hundreds of thousands of refugees were displaced during the war, hundreds of thousands of people died of disease, freezing and starvation, hundreds of people were poisoned, and more than 60 million people were left homeless.

However, the Kuomintang has not fully retreated, and several major theaters are still preparing for a counteroffensive, and local non-governmental organizations are also doing their best to resist the Japanese invaders.

Fortunately, the expeditionary force opened the Yunnan-Burma Highway half a year ahead of schedule, and this lifeline of China began to transport a large number of materials to the country, at least in terms of military losses compared to the original time and space, and still retained more counterattack forces.

At this time, the commander of the 88th Army drove straight in, successively defeated the Japanese defenders such as Mandalay and Mitiera, captured a large amount of land, and destroyed more than 60,000 enemies. finally gave Jiang Guangtou, who was burned, a shot in the arm.

The bald head deserves to be an excellent politician, and immediately began to hype up the proud achievements of the new 88th Army of the expeditionary force, in order to stabilize the people's hearts and boost morale, as if to say: Look, although we failed to withstand the attack of the Japanese army this time, and were pressed to the ground and rubbed hard, but the expeditionary force also hit the Japanese hard in Burma, although we were in pain, we were beaten up like little devils, and they were not comfortable, so as long as we persist in the struggle and then fight back, we will definitely be able to achieve victory...

At the same time, the bald head also gave a series of awards and commendations to all the officers and soldiers of the 88th Army, anyway, Feng Guan made a wish for his old routine, completely forgetting that he was still scolding Liao in Chongqing two months ago for his wolf ambition...

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