Chapter 22 Chapter 4 Small Town Story

Folk song: In the 32nd year of the Republic of China, there was smoke in Lidong, barnyard grass grew in the rice fields, and there were no fishing boats in the lake. The thirty-second year of the Republic of China is 1943. The annual rings of the Second World War went through the rugged year of 1942. The world peace forces raised their heads from the trenches, farmland and machines, and saw the dawn of victory on the far horizon. At the beginning of 1943, the Battle of Alamein, which lasted more than half a year, ended. The African Army commanded by the German general Rommel, known as the "Desert Fox", suffered a complete defeat, and the British army has since then mastered the initiative on the African battlefield.

In the Caucasus and Kursk regions of the Soviet Union, the Soviet army launched a powerful counterattack against the German army, and the German army was forced to retreat. From January 14th to 24th, Churchill and Roosevelt, the two political giants, met in Casablanca, Morocco. After discussing military strategy issues, they announced a statement that was beyond the expectations of reporters: Britain and the United States demanded that Germany, Italy, and Japan be unconditional. surrender. According to the agreement of the Casablanca Conference, Britain and the United States will jointly conduct a large-scale landing operation in Sicily, Italy in July.General Montgomery of the United Kingdom and General Patton of the United States commanded 3,200 ships and 4,000 combat aircraft, swept the entire island with an absolute advantage of 478,000 troops, and opened up the Mediterranean route.Almost at the same time, a coup took place in Italy. The king, royal family and army generals loyal to the king imprisoned Mussolini, and the new government surrendered to the Anti-Fascist Allies.One of the three legs of the Axis powers was cut off.

In the Pacific battlefield, which is closely related to the situation of China's Anti-Japanese War, the US military counterattacked Japan with its powerful war strength.Following the Great Battle of Midway Island, which severely damaged the Japanese navy and air force, the U.S. and Japanese armies fought fiercely for half a year over the strategically important Guadalcanal Island in the southern Solomon Islands. Until February 1943, this fierce battle ended with The US military completely occupied the island and the Japanese army lost the war initiative in the Southwest Pacific.In order to curb the US offensive, the Japanese base camp carried out the "Yihao" combat operation.Admiral Yamamoto Fifty-Six, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, personally inspected the front line by plane to boost the morale of the front-line troops. Because the code was deciphered by the US military, his plane was attacked by US Air Force fighter jets, and Yamamoto was killed.The Emperor accurately calculated that the impact of this incident on the Japanese people and army was "not less than the loss of three divisions."

In the Chinese battlefield, after the third Changsha battle, the Japanese army launched the Zhejiang-Jiangxi battle from May to August 1942. The troops from the third and ninth theaters of China fought fiercely with more than 140,000 Japanese troops from 8 divisions for three and a half months.The Japanese army destroyed Quzhou, Yushan, and Lishui airports at the cost of more than 30,000 casualties, and had to return to their original places because of insufficient troops.The Chinese army lost more than 40,000 people in this battle, which is also a heavy loss. In the vast anti-Japanese battlefield behind enemy lines under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army and other anti-Japanese people's armed forces fought tenaciously against the Japanese invaders and the Wang puppet regime.In Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan and other provinces, the Eighth Route Army used the strategic principles of people's war and the tactics of guerrilla warfare and mobile warfare to mobilize the masses of the people to counter the crazy "sweeping" of the occupied areas and anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines by the Japanese aggressors, and made great achievements. .

In February 1942, the Chinese government sent elite troops to Burma to fight the Japanese army in order to protect the entry channel of international strategic materials - the Burma Road. The expedition suffered a disastrous failure. At the beginning of 1943, the leaders of China, Britain, and the United States discussed counterattacking Burma. Wei Lihuang and American General Stilwell respectively led a large army to launch an offensive against the Japanese troops in northern Burma. The small city of Changde in 1943 was heading towards war step by step against such an international and domestic background.