Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry

#276 - The restless devils and the servile 8th Division

Ren Zhong wasn't afraid of the Japanese not making a move. If the Japanese didn't act, he'd first clear the Jin-Ji-Lu-Yu passage, completely opening the road to Qi-Lu. Then, he'd periodically bombard the Japanese with rockets.

He didn't believe the Japanese could endure it.

Although the new generation of 1200-kilometer rockets wasn't ready yet, increasing the payload and sacrificing some accuracy to get a 1000-kilometer range wasn't a big deal for a weapon like a fuel-air explosive that caused area damage.

However, before Ren Zhong could use his rocket barrage, the Japanese military, under Tian Huang's strict orders, planned the new Operation Zero!

According to this new plan, the Kwantung Army began a general mobilization in the Northeast. The Japanese troops stationed in Korea were also placed under the command of the Kwantung Army's commander-in-chief, ready to move north to assist in defense should the Great Bear make any unusual movements. In this way, 250,000 retired Japanese soldiers in the Northeast were re-enlisted, forming 8 divisions, 7 mixed brigades, 1 tank regiment, and 5 artillery regiments as a supplement to the temporary deployment forces. After this rapid recovery, the Kwantung Army's total strength reached 31 divisions and 13 independent mixed brigades, bringing the total number of the Kwantung Army to an unprecedented nearly one million!

This directly reached the peak of Ren Zhong's home world historical timeline.

Such a large-scale mobilization was second only to the mobilization in the Japanese mainland, essentially squeezing out all the potential of the Japanese in Northeast Asia in one go!

To win the decisive battle in North China, the Japanese truly gambled on the main force of the entire Kwantung Army, transferring the 1st, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 28th, 29th, 57th, and 71st Divisions into China proper, joining the Ninth Area Army.

At the same time, to defend against possible attacks by the Great Bear, the expanded Kwantung Army left behind about 700,000 troops, distributed in the Northeast and Korea.

To counter the Eighth Route Army's powerful firepower, they also reinforced the Kwantung Army's 1st Independent Tank Brigade, the 3rd Field Heavy Artillery Brigade, and the 5th Air Army, among other special firepower units. Such formidable strength represented the elite of the Kwantung Army's power.

The 1st Independent Tank Brigade, to counter the Eighth Route Army's tank forces, specially transferred the most elite new-type tanks from Kyushu. Sixty Type 3 Chi-Nu medium tanks were assigned to its 34th and 35th Tank Regiments. The front turret armor of the Type 3 Chi-Nu medium tank was thickened to 50 mm, theoretically capable of defending against the 76 mm ordinary armor-piercing rounds of the M4A2. Its main gun was also upgraded to a large-caliber Type 3 Model 2 38-caliber 75 mm tank gun, with 70 rounds of ammunition.

The Type 3 Chi-Nu medium tank began development in 1943 and was successfully developed in early 1944. About 150 vehicles were produced, which was the Japanese's last "trump card."

In the original historical timeline of the main world, these Type 3 Chi-Nu medium tanks were gathering dust in Kyushu, never put to use.

Adding the 48 Type 4 150 mm howitzers and 36 Type 38 modified 75 mm field guns of the 3rd Field Heavy Artillery Brigade...

Whether on the ground or in the air, the Japanese headquarters had truly invested heavily to gamble on fate!

Through computer decryption of telegrams, the border region's communications decryption team partially reconstructed the Japanese's general actions. Coupled with the efforts of underground organizations, the border region and the Eighth Route Army headquarters learned in advance the serial numbers of the Japanese troops moving south.

Almost everyone in the staff headquarters and the Eighth Route Army headquarters was stunned by this move by the Japanese.

The Japanese were now deploying their true field main forces!

Among the first twenty divisions, the Japanese 1st Division was a mainstay and an oddity, pushing the Japanese tradition of insubordination to the extreme, nearly overturning the Japanese military headquarters!

They were the most fanatical warmongers among the Japanese, with countless blood debts!

However, that wasn't their limit. The Japanese 8th Division was even more notorious. The division's establishment dated back to after the Sino-Japanese War and was one of the six mixed divisions added during the Japanese military expansion. Because it was established in Hirosaki, it was also called the Hirosaki Division. From its establishment to the present, all of the division commanders were lieutenant generals, and the soldiers mostly came from the poor and remote prefectures of the Japanese Northeast, such as Aomori, Iwate, Akita, and Yamagata. Therefore, these soldiers were known for their toughness and extreme obedience to orders.

Because of their viciousness, the Japanese soldiers of this division were a truly beastly force, participating in almost all the heinous crimes committed by the Japanese in China. They were involved in the September 18th Incident, the July 7th Incident, the Rehe Operation, the burning, killing, and looting in the Northeast, the clearing operations, the suppression of the Volunteer Army, the implementation of the Three Alls Policy, the Nanjing Massacre, and the burning, killing, and looting in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, and Hebei.

They were involved in burning, killing, and looting in Xiangjiang, using poison gas in Zhejiang Province, and plundering Chinese cultural relics in Shanxi. They also captured women in China to force them into becoming comfort women. In the historical timeline of the main world, the 8th Division was transferred to the Luzon battlefield to confront the rogue Eagles, eventually defeated and collectively committed suicide! This group of beasts was cruel to others and even crueler to their own people.

Multiple division commanders were listed as Class A war criminals and tried!

Their crimes were too numerous to count, so much so that after Ren Zhong saw the serial number of this division, he said to Staff Officer Ye, "This 8th Division has committed heinous crimes. From the division commander to the stableman, not one of them is worthy of forgiveness. I suggest using our fuel-air explosives as much as possible on the 8th Division, making sure that nothing is left!"

Staff Officer Ye rarely saw Ren Zhong with such a solemn expression.

Although he didn't know exactly what the 8th Division had done, he knew that Ren Zhong had his own sources of information and naturally knew a lot about the Japanese's actions. Although Ren Zhong had always been very ruthless towards the Japanese and had even hinted to Li Yunlong's unit not to take prisoners.

But he rarely hated a Japanese unit with a serial number so much, so this Japanese division must deserve to die!

"Don't worry, Old Brother Ren. Since you said so, we will definitely not let the 8th Division go. Once we confirm the specific location of this group of Japanese soldiers, we will find a way to eliminate them first," Staff Officer Ye stated.

"No, Staff Officer Ye, you don't understand what I mean," Ren Zhong shook his head. "I don't mean to eliminate them first, but that when dealing with this group of Japanese soldiers, there's no need to consider taking prisoners, because they are ruthless to our people and ruthless to themselves. They fight desperately. Our soldiers' lives are very precious, and we don't need to fight these beasts to the death."

"Now that we have fuel-air explosives, when facing this 8th Division, we should directly attack them with fuel-air explosives from the start, leaving no future trouble, instead of deliberately taking risks to fight them!"

Although Ren Zhong extremely hated the 8th Division, he would never let the Eighth Route Army's soldiers take risks specifically for this group of beasts.

There was no need. After encountering them, use the strongest means directly, and cremating them alive is the best reward for the 8th Division!

The Japanese army gathered.

The old base area in central Hebei Province was evacuated and cleared in advance. This battle was no ordinary one. According to the staff headquarters' deduction, it would last for at least several months.

These elite Japanese soldiers from the Kwantung Army had always been known for their inhumanity, so at Ren Zhong's suggestion, the Eighth Route Army's base area carried out a super-large-scale policy of strengthening the walls and clearing the fields.

The core base areas of central and southern Hebei Province were relocated, with millions of people evacuated into the base areas of Shanxi and Shandong. Food and valuables that could not be taken temporarily were hidden.

They tried not to leave anything useful for the Japanese.

Now, outside the cities in central and southern Hebei, it was already the world of guerrillas. The Japanese were holed up in the cities and didn't dare to come out at all. The strongholds outside the cities had basically been completely destroyed.

With such a foundation, at the sound of an order, millions of people responded, sacrificing their small families for the greater good!

In this way, not only were central and southern Hebei emptied, but the people within hundreds of kilometers near Shijiazhuang and Jizhou, where the Japanese were about to arrive, also ran away.

They were powerless to do anything about the large-scale migration of the people in central and southern Hebei.

They watched helplessly as the people moved away, and even the people in the cities, seeing the relocation of the people in the suburbs, also packed their bags and ran away!

The population of most cities in Hebei Province quietly moved away, making it almost impossible for the Japanese to maintain basic livelihoods in the cities, which led them to choose to close the city gates and no longer allow anyone to leave the city.

However, it was too late at this point. A large number of people poured into Shanxi and the newly built Shandong base area, injecting a large amount of human resources into the local area. According to Ren Zhong's industrial plan, some of them were selected to enter factories to work temporarily, while others were put into the vigorous farmland water conservancy construction. Even the elderly, weak, women, and children chose to weave cloth, make clothes, herd sheep, and do short-distance transportation and other things within their capabilities.

Although it would consume a lot of food, the amount of food that the people took away was, after all, not too much. A wheelbarrow could generally carry a hundred catties of grain, which was already good.

Now it was not clear when the war would end, so the food problem for these millions of people naturally had to be considered.

Thanks to the large-scale promotion and application of hybrid varieties and the role of water conservancy projects, Shanxi Province had a great harvest in the summer.

There was no problem with supplying these millions of people for two or three months.

Now that there was a mature work-for-food method, everything did not require much arrangement from above. The county and township levels in the places that accepted the relocated people took care of these things themselves.

They even built temporary housing facilities with thick walls for the temporarily relocated people, to prevent the people from relying on individual physical exercise to generate heat and keep warm when the heavy snow came.

That would be too tragic. The climate in Shanxi was not kind either, and the winter was just as cold as a knife cutting the face!

First update, asking for monthly tickets! Starting to massively defeat the Japanese!