Chapter 286 The Cause of the War: The Eighth Route Army
(It briefly talks about why the Eighth Route Army took the initiative to launch a war. It's a bit watery...if you want to see the details, you can order it)
Although Brigade Commander Chen’s first combat plan was quite standard, who could predict the situation on the battlefield?
The Japanese are now mobilizing troops and transporting supplies, planning to engage in a large-scale battle with the Eighth Route Army.
Before the transfer of troops and supplies is completed, it is impossible for the Japanese to mobilize troops on a large scale to start the battle.
The Eighth Route Army was also mobilizing troops and transporting supplies, intending to give the Japanese a severe blow and completely break the Japanese blockade of the Eighth Route Army.
Now both sides can be said to understand each other's thoughts. Both sides also tacitly stopped fighting, and each accumulated strength to prepare for a decisive battle to determine the winner.
At the same time, the Eighth Route Army and the Japanese troops also switched to a defensive posture to prevent the other side from launching sneak attacks before the war.
At this time, the 386th Brigade divided its troops into four regiments, especially the New 1st Regiment, Independent Regiment, and Vanguard Regiment, which were ranked in the top ten in combat effectiveness among the Eighth Route Army, and launched an attack on Ping'an County.
In a way, it's quite risky.
It can also be said that the brigade commander wanted to stab the Japanese in the back and make them bleed before the war began.
Taking Ping'an County is very important for the Eighth Route Army.
However, if four regiments were accidentally lost, even if Ping'an County was captured, Brigade Commander Chen would not be able to mobilize enough troops to enter Ping'an County for defense in a short period of time.
Especially for well-equipped troops such as the New 1st Regiment, the Independent Regiment, and the Vanguard Regiment, when they attack the city they will inevitably use a large number of artillery to destroy the various fortifications in the county.
After taking over Ping'an County in this way, what would be left for the Eighth Route Army would be a county town with basically no defensive fortifications.
If the Vanguard Regiment, the Independent Regiment and the New 1st Regiment still retain a lot of strength, then the fortifications are just a little bit worse.
After all, these three regiments are more suitable for field battles than for siege battles.
If these three regiments suffered heavy losses, then Brigade Commander Chen would have no choice but to arrange for other troops to fight the Japanese to the death in Ping'an County.
However, the other troops do not have as luxurious weapons and equipment as the Vanguard Regiment, the Independent Regiment, and the New 1st Regiment, and do not have sufficient fortifications to assist in city defense.
At that time, the county seat of Ping'an might become a tense battlefield between the Eighth Route Army and the Japanese invaders, and both sides would have to send in a large number of troops to fight around Ping'an County.
The boss's plan was to mobilize all the Eighth Route Army troops and abandon the previous combat mode of relying on terrain, relying on the mass base and fighting guerrilla warfare against the Japanese.
Planning to launch a large-scale, large-scale battle in the true sense.
We plan to launch a frontal offensive battle with the Japanese with real guns and real swords, and fight them head-on!
The Japanese troops of the North China Front Army were completely destroyed, making it impossible for the Japanese to gather large forces in North China to launch a mopping-up operation against the Eighth Route Army.
At the same time, the Eighth Route Army troops in various regions no longer had to hide their strength, and they were forced to seize all important transportation routes from the Japanese devils. Then they connected the scattered Eighth Route Army bases to form large bases.
Just like the three places of Taiyue, Shangdang and Taihang, they directly formed a large area that was actually controlled by the Eighth Route Army.
To put it simply, the Eighth Route Army’s territory today can no longer meet its needs.
Therefore, the Eighth Route Army urgently needed to expand its territory.
The benefits of expanding territory come from a combat perspective.
A larger territory means a wider space for activities and a wider depth. When a battle breaks out later, even the slightly weaker Eighth Route Army troops will be able to rely on the wider territory to deal with the Japanese and hold out until the arrival of the larger troops.
Instead of retreating to the mountains and being chased around by the Japanese when a powerful and irresistible enemy appears.
From the perspective of the army, more territory means more civilians. With more civilians, the Eighth Route Army can recruit more soldiers.
Moreover, the people living in the areas controlled by the Eighth Route Army did not need to worry about being discovered by the Japanese and thus implicating their relatives when they joined the army.
Now the Eighth Route Army units in many places are recruiting soldiers. Many of them are new recruits recruited in the Japanese occupied areas, or they are recruits who escaped from the Japanese occupied areas to join the Eighth Route Army.
There were two problems to be faced when recruiting soldiers in the Japanese-occupied areas, or when the common people in the occupied areas ran out of the occupied areas to join the Eighth Route Army.
One of the most important issues is that young and strong people can join the Eighth Route Army and leave with the troops when the time comes, or they can run away from the Japanese-occupied area alone and join the Eighth Route Army.
But what about the young and strong family members?
Those young and strong family members had to continue living in the Japanese-occupied areas.
You must know that the Japanese wanted to prevent ordinary people from fleeing and joining the Eighth Route Army, or joining the Kuomintang’s troops, especially to prevent the Eighth Route Army from rapidly expanding its forces and restoring its combat effectiveness.
The Japanese adopted a high-pressure policy against the people in the occupied areas.
For those ordinary people whose family members joined the Eighth Route Army or the Kuomintang troops, it would be fine if they were not discovered.
At the beginning, they would hypocritically persuade the common people to write letters to their families and call back their relatives who had joined the army.
And they said that as long as the person could come back, they would never pursue any responsibility.
If ordinary people really wrote letters to call their relatives back home, and if the people who came back carried some intelligence or something and were prepared to become traitors, then the Japanese might really let bygones be bygones.
However, they will not be released directly, but incorporated into the puppet army. As for their treatment, it depends on how important the intelligence they bring back is.
If they didn't bring anything back... the better ones would be directly incorporated into the puppet army and eventually used as cannon fodder.
However, not all those who return will be incorporated into the puppet army by the Japanese or the puppet regimes. After all, the Japanese and the puppet regimes are also worried that there will be problems with those who come back without bringing anything.
They were afraid that those people were fake and their real purpose was to infiltrate the puppet army and provide intelligence to the Eighth Route Army or the Kuomintang army, or even to bring a bunch of puppet soldiers and guns to join the Eighth Route Army. So after the Japanese suffered a few losses, they were not so kind to the civilians who came back.
Most of them were captured together with their relatives. The better-off ones, the men, were forced to work as able-bodied soldiers to mine, build roads and construct artillery towers.
If the local Japanese devils did not need to conscript men and were a bit cruel, they would kill them all directly to warn other civilians that if anyone in their family dared to run out of the occupied area or directly join the Eighth Route Army in the occupied area, they would be dead!
If a case is found, they will be killed, or even the entire village will be massacred!
If persuasion fails to bring people back, the Japanese and traitors will not hesitate to arrest the relatives of the soldiers who joined the Eighth Route Army or the Kuomintang, and use the lives of the relatives as a threat to force those people to come back.
Or they could simply carry out a massacre to intimidate the civilians in other occupied areas so that they would not dare to leave.
Under the Japanese's high-pressure policy, although some people in the occupied areas still dared to take the risk of joining the army, most of them still thought about the lives of their relatives and had various concerns.
Moreover, if there really were many soldiers forced to leave the army by the Japanese due to the above reasons, it would be a big blow to the morale of the army.
The impact was particularly greater for the Eighth Route Army.
The Kuomintang troops can also treat those soldiers who want to leave the army as deserters.
But the Eighth Route Army cannot do this, especially the Eighth Route Army fighting behind enemy lines. If even this little bit of humanity is gone among the troops, then they are no longer the Eighth Route Army.
At the same time, the Eighth Route Army will lose its foundation. Without a foundation and the support of the people, there will be only one way left for the Eighth Route Army.
In addition to the above reasons, it was also difficult for the young and strong who wanted to escape from the occupied areas to join the army to fight the Japanese. In order to prevent the people from running around and running to the territories of the Eighth Route Army or the Kuomintang troops, the Japanese specifically blocked the villages and households.
If one person is missing in the village, the whole village will be affected.
And like the Japanese, the Eighth Route Army or the Kuomintang troops were also worried that the able-bodied men who escaped from the occupied areas to join the army might be traitors sent by the Japanese, and what if they recruited the traitors into the army.
Especially for those small Eighth Route Army guerrilla units fighting behind enemy lines, if there are traitors in the unit, the traitors do not need to do anything, they just need to expose the location of the unit, which will bring a devastating blow to the unit.
When fighting behind enemy lines, you have to rely on being elusive so that the Japanese cannot find out where your troops are.
If they were unable to hide themselves and the Japanese knew their troops' location, those small Eighth Route Army troops would never be a match for the large Japanese or puppet army forces.
After all, the troops fighting behind enemy lines cannot get enough supplies, and most of the military supplies come from captured items.
Therefore, the Eighth Route Army actually had some headaches about the young and strong people who ran out from the occupied areas to join the army.
They had no way of confirming whether the other party who escaped from the occupied area was a spy sent by the Japanese devils. After all, the Eighth Route Army did not have such great ability, and it was impossible for them to spend manpower and material resources to go deep behind enemy lines to find out the identities of the young and strong people who joined the army.
Besides, the enemy is planning to send traitors to your side, so how could you not deal with the identity issues of the traitors and spies?
But if they are not taken back, it will hit those young and strong people who really came out to fight the Japanese. If they are not taken back, the Eighth Route Army will not be able to expand quickly, nor will it be able to quickly recover its strength after the war.
However, if there were enough civilians in the territory controlled by the Eighth Route Army, then the above problems could be solved.
In the area controlled by the Eighth Route Army, ordinary people did not need to worry about the Japanese's retaliation and could join the army with confidence. They also did not need to find ways to escape the Japanese's blockade.
The Eighth Route Army did not need to worry about whether the soldiers were traitors sent by the Japanese. After all, they were in their own control area, and it was easy to find out the identity information of the soldiers joining the army.
From the perspective of people's livelihood, the larger the land, the more arable land there is, and more arable land means more grain can be harvested.
With more food, more people and troops can be fed.
At the same time, as the territory expanded, in addition to obtaining more arable land, some mineral resources could also be obtained. The Eighth Route Army could mine those resources and use them. They could use what they could and sell what they could not.
There will also be extra land to grow some cash crops to make money.
With enough money, the Eighth Route Army can buy a large amount of urgently needed resources from other forces.
It can be said that the expansion of territory can bring huge benefits to a military unit, especially to the current Eighth Route Army.
Moreover, the Eighth Route Army has already expanded its forces, and its strength has greatly increased. The territory currently controlled by the Eighth Route Army can no longer meet the consumption of the Eighth Route Army. If the territory is not expanded, the Eighth Route Army will either disband, or fight to support the war, or increase the intensity of grain collection.
It is impossible to downsize the army. The burden on the people in the base areas is already heavy enough, and the Eighth Route Army cannot possibly add more burden to the people.
The approach of fighting to support fighting is not feasible for all troops.
So the only thing left to do was to mobilize the troops and launch a large-scale attack to expand their territory.
But there is only so much territory, and it is either occupied by the Kuomintang’s troops or by some puppet regime supported by the Japanese.
If the Eighth Route Army wants to expand its territory, it can only seize it from others.
The only areas that could be robbed were those occupied by the Japanese.
So under such circumstances, the Eighth Route Army must and must launch a large-scale battle against the Japanese devils, seizing enough territory from them while also seizing sufficient resources from them.
And consume as much of the Japanese North China Front's manpower as possible.
As long as we can significantly consume the mobile forces of the Japanese North China Front Army, the Japanese North China Front Army will not have enough suitable troops to launch a new battle.
Then they can only hide in various defensive fortifications such as the county town and strongholds, while the Eighth Route Army can control all township areas except the county town strongholds, take advantage of this opportunity to quickly digest the results of the battle, and then strengthen their own strength.
Finally, we will knock down those strongholds and county towns one by one.
The Japanese had no troops to mobilize for support and could only watch their territory shrinking.
(End of this chapter)
