Chapter 143 4. Nakayasu Hosokawa panicked

When the generals of the Japanese and puppet troops gathered together to study the battle plan, the leaders of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the generals of the Eighth Route Army were also busy preparing for the final counterattack. On April 12, Mao Zedong pointed out in his report at the Yan'an senior cadre meeting: "The task now is to prepare to take on greater responsibilities than in the past. We must prepare to drive the Japanese invaders out of China under any circumstances. In order for our Party to be able to shoulder this responsibility, it is necessary to further develop and consolidate our Party, our army and our base areas, we must pay attention to the work of large cities and major communication routes, and we must place equal importance on urban work and base area work. status."

On July 1, the "Instructions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Concerning the Training of the Army" was issued, pointing out that the current 470,000 troops in the entire army are enough to maintain and develop the base areas before the counter-offensive, but it is necessary to use this to seize large areas during the counter-offensive. Cities and major transportation routes are not enough to finally expel the Japanese invaders from China and deal with possible domestic accidents from the Kuomintang side.To undertake the final expulsion of the Japanese aggressors from China and to deal with possible sudden incidents, a military force that is one to several times the size of the existing military force is incapable of doing so.

As a result, the Communist Party was not only preparing for the final counteroffensive, but also began to prepare for postwar contingencies. The Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army not only prepared for the counter-offensive in terms of policy guidelines and troop deployment, but also prepared in terms of combat methods. This was the development from "guerrilla warfare" to conditional "mobile warfare." Before receiving instructions from the central government to prepare for a counteroffensive, the Eighth Route Army in Shandong had already begun operations.Under the leadership of Luo Ronghuan, they formulated a general strategic deployment, the content of which was: to completely control the Yilu Mountain area, expand the Zhuri Jushan Mountain base area, seize the isolated Japanese and puppet army strongholds that penetrated into the liberated area, expand the liberated area, and make Jiaoji Road south The three strategic areas of the Jiaoji Road are completely connected into one; develop to the areas on both sides of the eastern section of Jiaoji Road to open up and strengthen the connection between the strategic areas on the Laoshan Front of Jiaoji Road; In the divided situation, change the guerrilla zone into a base area; further eliminate the Japanese and puppet forces in the innermost areas of Jiaodong, and create a more favorable situation.

According to the above principles, the Shandong Military Region has carried out a series of offensive operations since the beginning of 1944.First, on January 21, the traitor Zhu Xinzhai's tribe was wiped out at Shigou Cliff on the Ri (Zhao) Ju (County) Highway.Then, troops from the three military regions of Lunan, Jiaodong, and Bohai successively occupied and forced to withdraw a number of Japanese and puppet army strongholds, and wiped out part of the Japanese and puppet army. At the beginning of 1944, Luo Ronghuan focused on the third crusade against the Ministry of Culture of Wuhua by the Luzhong Military Region.

After the crusade against Wu Huawen, in order to further expand the results of the victory, cooperate with frontal battlefield operations, and defend the summer harvest, Luo Ronghuan commanded various military regions and launched a large-scale summer offensive.By August 1944, the situation on the Shandong battlefield had undergone greater changes, which were more favorable to the Eighth Route Army. However, the Eighth Route Army's spring and summer offensives caused the Japanese commander Lieutenant General Nakayasu Hosokawa, who was stationed in Jinan, to be extremely panicked, and urgent telegrams from all over the country flew in like snowflakes.Hosokawa picked up a magnifying glass and lay down on a 1/15 military map. No place in his jurisdiction was safe, and wars were raging everywhere.He wanted to gather troops to put out these sudden flames of war, but he didn't know where to start.His predecessor had enough troops to carry out a large-scale "drag net" sweep.Today is not what it used to be. Most of the elite Japanese troops have been transferred to Nanyang. The newly formed brigades and regiments are aging and lack training, and have lost the vigor they had at the beginning of the war.On the contrary, the CCP army has been tempered by six or seven years of war. The more they fought, the stronger they became. Without heavy weapons, they were able to capture a well-fortified city like Yishui, and defeated Wu Huawen, who had tens of thousands of troops, at one time.

Hosokawa put down the magnifying glass and paced back and forth like a trapped animal. On the wall hung the saber bestowed by the Emperor himself, and a flag of the sun presented by Neiji Okamura. Four months ago, all the generals and officers of the North China Front Army gathered in Beiping to participate in the "Operation No. 1" war game exercise.Neiji Okamura did not know what motive he gave each general to present a flag and personally wrote the words "Fortune for a long time".Hosokawa looked up and saw that the handwriting on the flag seemed to have faded a lot. He was worried that one day those four characters would suddenly disappear.

Recently, it is true that the military luck is not good. The generals who participated in the "Operation No. 1" achieved brilliant results, and all received medals from the Emperor.His division stayed in Shandong, and was scattered among the star-studded strongholds and fell into the vast ocean of communist guerrilla warfare. However, the communist army took advantage of the emptiness of the imperial army to attack in all directions. Facing the flames of war that spread throughout Shandong, Hosokawa The commander was at a loss.If you want to "sweep" on a large scale, you have more than enough energy; if you gather troops to "sweep" a place, you may lose sight of the other.Hosokawa was extremely anxious about this.