Since Xie Tian had a plan to fight Pingjin, of course Chief He had to ask Xie Tian how much his total strength was now.

However, Chief He didn't think that Xie Tian would have too many troops, after all, the time for Xie Tian to come out was too short.

The vast majority of the remaining nine theaters are the strength of the two group armies, and with the addition of independent divisions and regiments, it will be between 40,000 and 50,000 troops, and some theaters even have only more than 20,000 troops.

For example, Yan Xishan's Second Theater had two group armies, with a total strength of 55,000 troops, which was the most powerful of the ten theaters.

However, there was only one 41st Army in the 10th Theater of Thanks, and the Military Commission only symbolically allocated two brigades to the 41st Group Army, one was the 26th Mixed Brigade of Yan Xishan's Jinsui Army, which had not yet been established, and the other was the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division of the 18th Group Army.

The chairman of the committee has long been familiar with the technique of weighing, and his two brigades were assigned to the 10th Theater, not so much to help Xie Tian form the 41st Group Army of the 10th Theater, but to plant thorns for Xie Tian between Yan Xishan and Yan'an.

Even if Xie Tian (Xie Baoqing) of these two brigades has already taken all the orders, plus his original so-called People's Liberation Army, Chongqing estimates that the total strength of the 10th Theater should be about 20,000, which is still an optimistic figure estimated under the condition of amplifying the strength of the 386th Brigade.

More than 20,000 troops have already begun to worry about Pingjin, and Chief He only thinks Xie Tian's idea is funny.

I won a few battles, but I don't know how thick the sky is.

Xie Tian looked at Chief He and said with a smile: "There are not many soldiers, and those who make good use of them win." The instrument is not profitable, and the good dancer wins. Of course, if there are more soldiers and generals are well equipped, the battle will be easier. ”

Pang Yuan nodded sympathetically, since the founding of the People's Liberation Army, that battle was not a battle of defeating the strong with the weak, and achieved an impressive record that others thought was impossible to win.

Xie Tian is the one who is good at using soldiers and dancing swords.

Chief He didn't think so, thinking that Xie Tian was avoiding the important and trivial, he nodded perfunctorily and asked, "How many soldiers and horses do you have now?" ”

Xie Tian smiled and said: "If you don't count the reserves, the 41st Group Army, including the divisions directly under it, has a total of more than 66,700 soldiers. ”

"That's not bad", Chief He said casually, and suddenly looked at Xie Tian in surprise and asked, "How much?" ”

Xie Tian smiled: "As of last night, to be exact, there were 66,775 soldiers, and the Battle of Yangquan has not ended yet, and the specific number of people should fluctuate to a certain extent." ”

Chief He looked at Xie Tian dumbfounded, 66,775 soldiers, more than Yan Xishan's troops, is it really fake?

The fluctuation in the number of people that Chief He understood was that Xie Tian's troops would be attrition to a certain extent after the Battle of Yangquan, but he didn't know that the fluctuation Xie Tian said was that after the People's Liberation Army recovered Yangquan, it should recruit a group of soldiers in Yangquan, and it would also set up a local security force stationed in Yangquan, which could be regarded as a second-class force.

The first type of troops naturally refers to the field troops, and the second type of troops includes local security forces, engineering troops, logistics support units, and so on.

The most terrifying thing is that Xie Tian also has a large number of reserve forces, and at least half of the soldiers can be converted into a first- or second-class army in a short period of time.

Chief He and Xie Tian looked at each other for a long time, and finally believed that Xie Tian did have so many troops in his hands.

With so many troops, it is true that it can pose a great threat to the Japanese army in North China, but it is still impossible to recover Pingjin.

It is not easy to recover Pingjin, first of all, it is necessary to occupy a large area of land in the northern Hebei region as a base area in order to ensure that there is sufficient strategic depth, and even if it is lucky enough to take Pingjin, the Japanese army will never be willing to lose Pingjin, the choke point in and out of the Central Plains, and will definitely organize a frantic counterattack.

At that time, the army occupying Pingjin would face a two-sided encirclement of the Japanese Kwantung Army and the North China Army.

Without hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of miles of strategic depth, it is simply a fool's dream to hold Pingjin.

Of course, if you think about the good side, if Xie Baoqing's troops can really recover Pingjin, then the situation of the anti-Japanese war in the whole country will all change.

Strategically, the division of the Japanese Kwantung Army and the North China Front Army has been realized, and the remaining nine theaters of the Nationalist Army can concentrate firepower to destroy the Japanese troops that have invaded and occupied North and South China, and relying on the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, it may be possible to divide the Japanese army twice and three times, so that the large forces of the Japanese army will be cut into small pieces one by one, which is extremely conducive to our gathering of troops to gather and annihilate them, even if it is to engage in another battle of Xuzhou.

If this strategic goal can really be achieved, that is, our army has achieved a strategic counteroffensive in the true sense, then the war situation will look much better.

Chief He couldn't help but stand up and smoke the cigarette and walked to the window, staring at the spring swallows pecking at the mud under the edge of the room, but what came to mind was the whole strategic map of the Republic of China, and he fell into deep thought.

Thank God not in a hurry, I also picked up a cigarette and lit it.

Pang Yuan looked at Xie Tian and asked in a low voice, "Are you really going to fight Pingjin?" ”

Xie Tian nodded with a sigh: "Sooner or later, we have to fight, but our current strength is still lacking, and it would be better if we could have more planes and tanks." ”

It's definitely going to be hit, but it's impossible to say when it's going to be hit.

There has to be a step-by-step process.

Sending troops from Shanxi to attack Pingjin is nothing more than taking two routes, one route is to send troops from Pingxingguan, Baoding to take Langfang, and divide Pingjin from the middle road, taking one of the two, relatively speaking, it is easier to attack Beiping first than to attack Tianjin first.

Tianjin is the headquarters of the Japanese army in North China, guarding two important passages by sea and land, and the Japanese army has heavy troops in Tianjin.

Beiping, on the other hand, is relatively isolated.

However, attacking Beiping would have to withstand reinforcements from the Japanese army in Tianjin, Zhangjiakou, and Chengde, and the Japanese army was several times larger than ours, and it was difficult to successfully recover Beiping.

Pingxingguan is now under Xie Tian's control, and this seems to be the only path he can choose to send troops to Pingjin.

The other route was to take the lead in recovering Datong, marching into Zhangjiakou, pushing from Zhangjiakou from north to east, taking Beiping first and then Tianjin, cutting off the land communication between the Kwantung Army and the North China Army in one fell swoop.

At the same time, the other army could go out of Pingxingguan to attack Baoding and Cangzhou to cooperate, and form a joint encirclement of the Japanese army in Pingjin.

Perfect.

It's a pity that this strategic idea is enough to think about in the head, and really wanting to implement it is tantamount to a fool's dream.

First of all, there is still a second theater Fu Zuoyi's troops between Datong and the People's Liberation Army of the Tenth Theater, and if you want Yan Xishan to cooperate with Xie Tian to act together, is that possible?

Yan Xishan didn't even invite Pang Yuan to come to Taiyuan to greet Chief He and the allied delegation, and would he cooperate with Xie Tian to fight devils together?

It is estimated that Yan Xishan was eager to eat Xie Tian alive, and if he didn't shoot Xie Tian behind his back, he would already take the overall situation into account.