Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

Chapter 217 New Pattern
When Okamoto Yasuyuki appeared in Qinyang with less than half a regiment's worth of defeated troops, the North China Front Army and the First Army Headquarters in Shanxi breathed a sigh of relief at the same time after receiving the telegram.

The devastation of an entire division and the annihilation of the entire army are two completely different things. At least for Tian Huang and the headquarters, it is a matter of face. Devastation only means the disappearance of cannon fodder, but the annihilation of the entire army means that the locust army's face is swollen and cannot be reduced immediately. For the cannon fodder in the country, it is an absolutely unacceptable result.

If the 36th Division, including the cannon fodder and the division commander, were to die in Zezhou, the Japanese would have no choice but to fight hard to get back their territory.

Therefore, when Okamoto Yasuyuki escaped, he was about to write to the headquarters to force the Kwantung Army to mobilize its elite troops to fight south to the North China Front. The Japanese devil Okamura personally drafted a telegram to the headquarters, "Our 36th Division fought bloody battles all day and finally broke through the encirclement of tens of thousands of Eighth Route Army troops. Today, we arrived safely in Qinyang, creating a new miracle of breaking through! The grand strategy of fighting southward does not need to be disturbed by the 36th Division. We should deploy calmly to ensure everything is safe."

At the Eighth Route Army Headquarters, facing the battle report of Okamoto Yasuyuki's lucky escape while being pursued by Chen's Brigade, the head of the headquarters sighed but said nothing more. The border area had its own considerations for the cross-level command. The head of the front-line headquarters was stubborn, and the reasons on the border area side were vague due to confidentiality. The head of the headquarters actually did not agree to let go of such a good opportunity, which was a great opportunity to annihilate an entire division.

The Chen Brigade on the front line finally followed the instructions of the border region and let the tiger go back to the mountains, leaving behind future troubles. It is unknown what the border region’s intentions were.

After receiving the news, the entire border region staff was immediately in an uproar.

Brigade Chen not only drove the 36th Division out of Zezhou, but also pursued it all the way, cutting meat with a knife on dozens of rugged roads in Zhongtiao Mountain. The Independent Regiment and the New Second Regiment took turns to fight, almost burying the two infantry regiments and the engineering regiment of the 36th Regiment in Zhongtiao Mountain. It is said that in the end, Okamoto brought only more than a thousand Japanese soldiers out of the mountain, and the 36th Division was really reduced to an empty shell! This almost perfectly realized the intention of the General Staff.

Staff Officer Ye looked at the telegram reporting victory from Chen's Brigade with joy, and rushed to report the good news to the commander. The commander of the border region was extremely happy that Chen's Brigade had completed the command's tasks to a high standard, and he issued a commendation, commending Chen's Brigade for achieving the greatest strategic goal at the lowest cost.

The brigade commander was a little confused when he received the commendation order, but when he thought about a construction task he had received before, he had some vague guesses in his mind that it was related to this. However, at this moment, he did not think about it too much. After throwing the commendation order to the chief of staff, he began to devote all his efforts to the subsequent reconstruction work of the entire base. After all, that stubborn Li Yunlong did not cause trouble for me this time, and this time he completed the task assigned by the brigade without any compromise.

Next, in terms of governance and construction, the independent regiment has many talented people, and Zhao Gang is particularly capable, so he will definitely take on the main responsibility. Next, Ding Wei has learned very quickly from the independent regiment in terms of building a base area, and has done well in the three major projects of steel, chemical industry, and weapons processing. Next, the production capacity will be greatly expanded. According to the planning and construction of the border area, it seems that these two will be the main ones.
Since then, after a brief battle of about ten days, the Eighth Route Army's three active counterattacks in order to obtain resources all achieved their campaign objectives as scheduled, and completely occupied the three major Jin resource areas designated by Ren Zhong.

This time, not only a large amount of mineral resources were obtained, but also the main key resource areas in Shanxi were concentrated in the hands of the Eighth Route Army.

There are also many other hidden but very important potential benefits. First of all, the northwest Shanxi-Luliang base, the southeast Shanxi-Taiyue Taihang base, and the northeast Shanxi-Wutai base have been expanded and connected, forming a greater strategic depth, so that more than half of Shanxi has now become stable contiguous bases.

Next is the aspect of transportation. After a new round of violent expansion of the base areas, the three major base areas are now only separated by the fragile Tongpu Line and Zhengtai Line strongholds that the Japanese army is barely holding on to. Considering the current strength of the major military regions, it is not too difficult to pass through these transportation lines. Many times the Japanese army could only watch the Eighth Route Army pass by, and were completely unable to prevent the important military equipment and mechanical equipment in the border areas from being transported to the three major base areas.

The most important thing is that the base’s stable population has doubled in an instant.

It now covers a population of over 500 million, accounting for less than half of the 1200 million population of Shanxi. The human resources for large-scale construction are now much more sufficient, unlike the border areas where the human resources have almost been exhausted and further development depends on the large-scale absorption of external population. It has begun to be seriously constrained by the shortage of human resources.

With such huge benefits, Ren Zhong certainly hopes that this operation will be a complete success.

Although Ren Zhong was nervous for a while because of the incident with the 36th Division, he finally breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the battle report that Okamoto Yasuyuki had escaped, leaving the Japanese with no reason to go berserk.

But Ren Zhong is still very nervous, and recently Ren Zhong has to keep an eye on news from all sides.

He asked Staff Officer Ye to send him a summary of the intelligence from the border area. Although Staff Officer Ye was a little surprised that Ren Zhong did not rely on his own organization to obtain intelligence this time, he did not compromise on Ren Zhong's request and continued to transmit relevant information on this matter.

First, the reactions of local newspapers and periodicals were collected by insiders in Peking. Ren Zhong needed to use this to judge the attitudes of the Japanese towards these three major battles, especially the views of the senior Japanese in the North China Front Army.

As a result, Ren Zhong read the headlines of newspapers in Peking for three consecutive days, which showed that the Japanese in northern China downplayed the defeat in Shanxi. Faced with the disastrous defeat with losses of up to two brigades and one division, the newspapers only mentioned that the locust army in Shanxi had suffered a minor setback and that the locust army was about to gather troops to sweep the security areas where the Eighth Route Army was active.

Then, there were endless articles about good news and new victories in Southeast Asia, as if there had been no major changes in Jin.

Ren Zhong felt relieved all of a sudden. This showed that at least the top leaders of the North China Front Army were trying to cover up the losses in Shanxi and there would be no large-scale military deployment plans in the short term. Judging from the dynamic intelligence of the major garrisons of the North China Front Army, there was currently no intelligence showing that they were carrying out large-scale troop movements.

As for the intelligence on the movements of the Kwantung Army, which Ren Zhong was particularly concerned about, there was no news at all.

The border region issued a task to the Anti-Japanese United Army and the underground workers of the Northeastern Manchukuo Railway to obtain intelligence on railway transportation, and the news received so far is that there are no abnormalities in the stations along the line or the operation of trains on the monitored railway lines, and there is no sign of the Kwantung Army moving south in a large scale.

You have to know that the mobilization of a division-level main force requires a lot of transportation and logistical resources. Even a special train would require dozens of them. If there is a large-scale operation, it is impossible that these intelligence points that are observing in secret would not get any news.

These news about the Japanese's movements made Ren Zhong realize that the Japanese were downplaying the issue.

Therefore, considering the needs of the subsequent construction, Ren Zhong discussed with Staff Officer Ye and decided to temporarily downplay the results of the three major battles launched by the border area and the Eighth Route Army Headquarters. No telegrams were sent or publicized, but the results were reported to the theater command and the rear, and then informed to the Allied forces.

After all, the goal of this campaign is mainly to gain real results, not just empty fame.

Compared with the Eighth Route Army in history, they have now embarked on a path of self-reliance and are no longer so urgent to obtain external support. They have a steady stream of new technologies, new processes, and a large amount of information on mineral resources provided by Ren Zhong, the father of military industry.

Even based on limited land and human resources, the current explosive production capacity in the border areas has already surpassed that of preserved fruits in the rear bases.

According to Ren Zhong's suggestion, the Eighth Route Army's battle report was simply reported to the rear area, which only mentioned the news that our army had successfully recovered Wutai, Luliang and other places, and registered them, thus occupying these places with justification.

In the battle report provided to General Shi, a relatively detailed account of the Japanese losses was given, including the battle records of two brigades and one division. This made General Shi feel that his five sorties of ammunition were not wasted.

After this loss, the Japanese North China Front Army suffered heavy losses and will be even more short of manpower in the future. The pressure from the Eighth Route Army has caused their entire dominant position in North China to begin to crumble, and it is completely impossible for them to withdraw troops to the south.

As for the changes in the war situation in the north, the Eighth Route Army's renewed expansion of strength is a great thing for General Shi. It is even qualified to be compared with the main battlefield on the Guosu side.

Although there are still dozens of troops in the First and Second War Zones in Shanxi and northern and central Henan, their outstanding combat records are almost zero, which further highlights the strategic importance of the Eighth Route Army.

As the leader of the war in Asia, General Shi was considering the overall war situation. After seeing this changing trend, General Shi began to promote deep ties between the Asia-Pacific Theater Command and the Eighth Route Army.

The first step was to push the headquarters to establish a stable information communication channel with the Eighth Office of the Capital, gradually replacing the Guofu with the Eighth Route Army as the dominant force in the North China battlefield, greatly enhancing the importance of the Eighth Route Army in the entire war situation, and shifting from simply cooperating with the Guofu to cooperating with the Eighth Route Army at the same time.

For the Rogue Eagles, their goal is to strike and weaken the strength of the Japs on the mainland as much as possible and reduce their bloodshed on the islands of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Therefore, whoever can fight as many Japs as possible and eliminate them anywhere in North China or Northeast China, at this stage, whoever can do this is his friend.

Not only the Eighth Route Army can cooperate, but the Big Bear in the North and the Rogue Eagle are also supporting them in their fight against Germany and Germany in Europe.

First update!
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(End of this chapter)