Chapter 150 Chapter 17 The Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region’s 1945 Spring and Summer Offensive: The First Battle of “Northward Development”

From February 4th to 11th, 1945, in view of the reality that German fascism was about to perish and Japanese fascism continued to resist, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, gathered in Yalta on the Crimea Peninsula of the Soviet Union for a meeting. , reached an agreement that "the Soviet Union will participate in the war against Japan on the side of the Allies within two or three months after the surrender of Germany and the end of the European War". On May 2, the Soviet army captured Berlin; on the 8th, the German army announced its unconditional surrender.In this way, only one of the Axis countries of Germany, Italy, and Japan is left, Japan, which is still dying in Asia.

During this period, the U.S. military successively captured the Philippines, captured Iwo Jima, and recovered Burma together with the Chinese and British troops.Japan's "Southern Defense Circle" has collapsed across the board, and the flames of war are coming to the Japanese mainland. The mainland of Japan has become a mess, and the chief officers of the Japanese army who invaded and occupied mainland China have also changed frequently.Junliu, the commander-in-chief of the Chinese dispatched army, was transferred back to China as the director of education, and Neiji Okamura became Junliu's replacement in a bleak environment.In the pain of seeing no future and no way out, the Japanese army base camp frantically introduced various emergency measures.

In the "Imperial Army and Navy Combat Plan Outline" issued in January 1945, the Japanese army had decided that "the south of the Thousand Islands, the Ogasawara Islands, the islands south of Okinawa Main Island, Taiwan, and the vicinity of Shanghai are the frontiers for deep combat." The main target of the battle, "transform the battle in mainland China into a battle with the US military as the main enemy. Focus on Shanghai and South China." (Japanese History Compilation Group, Department of History, Fudan University: Selected Historical Materials of Japanese Imperialist Foreign Aggression ")

According to the judgment of the Japanese base camp, the US military will land in Japan's Kyushu and Shikoku after June, and in the Kanto area of ​​Honshu after early autumn.Therefore, Japan must focus on the Kanto and Kyushu regions before this, and complete the preparations for local operations: expand local troops (it is clearly stipulated that all men aged 15 to 60 and women aged 17 to 40 are national volunteers. Team members), repair fortifications in key areas, and strive to increase the production of military supplies; strive to increase the total local army to 2.5 million and 7,000 aircraft by July.

However, due to the sharp shrinkage of the Japanese occupied area in China, the severe damage to resource development, and the bombing and naval blockade by the British and American allies, Japan's domestic resources were exhausted, reserves were exhausted, and food imports were cut off.By March 1945, Japan's oil reserves were only more than 400,000 tons, steel reserves were only 260,000 tons, domestically produced rice was only 3 million tons, and the people were starving.Workers went on strike, farmers protested against paying grain taxes, soldiers fled, suicides and other incidents continued to occur.The Japanese ruling group lamented: "Although the defeat is regrettable, it is inevitable."

But even at this point, the Japanese base camp is still desperate, preparing for the final decisive battle in its homeland and in the Chinese-occupied areas. On April 18, the Japanese army headquarters ordered the Chinese Expeditionary Force to shrink its troops in South China to strengthen important areas in North China and Central China. In June, the Chinese Expeditionary Force determined a new combat plan, deciding to use the main force to control central and northern China, and at the same time defeat the US military invading important coastal areas to support local operations.According to this plan, the 6th Front Army and the 23rd Army of the Japanese invaders retreated from Guangxi, Hunan, and Jiangxi to central and northern China successively, in order to strengthen the defense of important areas in central and northern China, especially coastal areas where the US military might land.