Liu Lang talked about the Gui army's counterattack from August 13th to today's daytime defeat, which lasted for more than half an hour.
General Zhang, who had been staring at the map of Songhu with his hands behind his back, looked extremely ugly, but did not refute Liu Lang. Obviously, as an army general, he already knew that the leader made a mistake in intervening in frontline military affairs.
However, not to mention that he was helpless, even the generals who were still above him, such as the then deputy staff officer of the Japanese Military Commission Staff Headquarters, were still watching the corpses of his elite troops spread across the battlefield in the command post this evening.
Xiao Zhuge, the commander-in-chief and director of the Military Training Department who presided over the formulation of the anti-war plan, even though he shed tears quietly on his clothes, wasn't he just crying out for help?
"In your opinion, how should the Battle of Songhu end?" General Zhang did not even ask Liu Lang how the Battle of Songhu should be fought next, but directly asked how it should end.
Obviously, in the cognition of this national army general, he has long had the idea that he should not continue to consume China's most elite forces in the large meat grinder of Songhu. He has been fighting the Japanese army in Shanghai for more than two months.
, the casualties exceeded hundreds of thousands. The determination of the military and civilians across the country to resist the war has been condensed, including the warlords from all over the country who have mobilized their elite troops and no longer hesitate in the past. The most important strategic goal has been achieved. Now, it is necessary to preserve the effective force for other more important tasks in China.
It's time to continue to consume the Japanese on the big battlefield.
"From now on, we should retreat in an orderly manner under the planning of the headquarters." Liu Lang said decisively. "However, retreat does not mean giving up resistance and handing over Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
All ministries should withdraw to the four defense lines set up between Songhu and Nanjing, and fortify layers of defenses to resist. While relying on defense fortifications, we can also make use of the characteristics of the dense rice fields and water networks in the Jiangnan area to allow the Japanese aggressors to far surpass our armored vehicles.
The tanks and heavy artillery move slowly, holding them back, waiting for the cold winter to come."
Liu Lang sneered and said: "I remember that the winter in Nanjing last year was at least minus ten degrees. Fighting in such weather, I don't believe that the Japanese are made of iron. They will freeze to death."
"As for Nanjing, we cannot sit still and wait for death. Sir, I suggest that the people in the city be organized by the government to evacuate across the river from Wuhu to Jiujiang, Wuhan and other places. This matter should be done sooner rather than later, so as to avoid that after the defense line is lost, our army will have to take care of Nanjing.
The whole city had no choice but to fight to the death against the Japanese invaders in Nanjing."
Liu Lang finally took this opportunity to reveal the biggest purpose of his trip.
Yes, Songhu is already in a doomed situation. No matter how much he advises, or even if the bald man accepts his advice, the battle will still be lost. It’s not that the 700,000-strong army is too timid, on the contrary, the battle to the death has been known in the Battle of Songhu
That is to say, the 700,000-strong army of the subjugated country had already spared their lives. Even more than a dozen lieutenant generals and major generals were killed in the battle, which shows the determination of the Songhu army. It is not even a matter of remote control by the bald man. No matter how he intervenes, the frontline command
Officials are not all fools. They will make decisions based on their own ideas.
Instead, the Japanese also tried their best and mobilized almost the maximum strength they could mobilize at this time. They arrived at the Songhu battlefield before October 20, including three aircraft carriers, a seaplane carrier, and several ships.
There are more than 30 ships, including giant battleships, not counting the fighter planes that took off from Taiwan. There are more than 500 fighter planes that can only support nearby. The combined strength of the Marine Corps and Army is as high as 280,000, and they also have more than 300 tanks.
As for the Chinese side, in mid-to-late October, the army, in addition to investing more than 700,000 troops, also had few heavy artillery regiments left in the battle, and only 16 tanks were left. The even weaker air force, after more than a month of fighting,
There was a bloody battle in the air, with hundreds versus thousands, and there were almost no fighter planes that could still fly in the air.
As for the navy, in the future everyone will know that they were ordered to scuttle almost all the navy's main ships in Jiangyin in anger to block the Yangtze River waterway to prevent the inland river from being invaded by Japanese warships and to protect the army's flanks. However, few people know that always
The Chinese navy, which has a tonnage of no more than 100,000 tons, has actually fought hard. If the traitors had not betrayed them, they might even have sunk the Japanese master ship "Izumo" that left its name in the history of the Anti-Japanese War. However,
As we all know, it was not naval guns and torpedoes that dominated the naval battle in World War II, but aircraft.
The weak but heroic Chinese navy could fight the Japanese warships with bayonets and brave the terrifying naval guns and torpedoes, but without air cover, they were sunk without even seeing the Japanese warships.
Starting from September 22, the Japanese army, which had gained air supremacy, attacked the Chinese fleet with large fleets of aircraft for several consecutive days. After continuous fierce battles, the Chinese navy's capital ships were sunk or lost their combat effectiveness one after another, "losing their functions as a naval force." The Chinese navy
, before it could hold out until October, it had already lost all its combat effectiveness that could still threaten the Japanese army on the water.
At this time, in Songhu, except for the Chinese army's advantage in terms of army strength, the rest were dominated by the Japanese army. So how could they fight?
Even if Liu Lang had the power to reach heaven and earth, he would not be able to reverse the situation of the war. What's more, as General Zhang said before, if he said that Songhu would be defeated in front of the bald man, even if he was Liu Lang, there would still be someone
The uncle of a second-level army general was working as a backstage person, and the best outcome was probably to be thrown into prison. The crime of shaking the morale of the army could be punished with immediate death.
Admiral Zhang's previous words were more of a reminder to Liu Lang than a threat.
"Hiss~~~~" General Zhang couldn't help but take a breath after listening to Liu Lang's words. "Why do you attach so much importance to the retreat of ordinary people in Nanjing? Even if the Japanese army occupied Nanjing, they should not do anything to ordinary people.
Right! After all, they are here to seize resources and wealth. Killing the people will not be beneficial to their strategy at all. Not only will it arouse the determination of our military and civilians to resist the war, but it will even attract international condemnation. "
"Sir, you underestimated the brutality of the Japanese invaders. Especially after our troops fought bravely in Songhu and suffered heavy casualties, they will most likely take their revenge on ordinary people like me." Liu Lang shook his head with a solemn expression.
In fact, it was not only the generals who underestimated the brutality of the Japanese invaders, but also the ordinary people in Nanjing who were unwilling to flee their homes. No matter how you analyze it, no one would have thought that the Japanese army would do such a beast.
But, they did just that. For six weeks, Nanjing was almost slaughtered to ashes. The Yangtze River was covered with floating corpses, and the muddy yellow water showed a strange pink color. In that year, people around the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and even
I don't even dare to eat fish because the fish are much fatter than in previous years.
The Battle of Songhu was truly brutal, beyond human imagination. Let alone the Chinese generals who shed tears on their clothes, how could the Japanese fare any better?
American cowboys are best at using movies to promote tough guys. The Normandy landing filmed in the future allowed the world to see the bloody Normandy landing battle. However, a scene even bloodier than that had already appeared in the largest city in eastern Asia.
The Japanese are not flying men with wings. They get off the ships and carry out landing operations; the Chinese are not fools. They will naturally conduct life-and-death snipers at the landing site, even if they are facing an infantry company that can be killed with one shot.
The terrifying naval cannon blasted the position into nothingness.
Hungarian-American war photographer Robert Capa witnessed this scene. Under his lens, a young Chinese soldier, with the help of his companions, was tying 12 grenades to his body. The picture caption: "He wants to use his own
His flesh and blood body got under the Japanese tank and detonated the bomb." That photo, at the war record exhibition in the future, every Chinese who passed by the photo stopped and stared in silence with tears in their eyes.
Because they all know that the protagonist of the photo who appeared decades later and his companions who helped him hang grenades have long since disappeared in that terrible war. They have no chance to grow old. They will always be young.
At Wusongkou, he led 8,000 soldiers to defend, but all the soldiers were sacrificed. General Guo Rugui, determined to live and die with the position, died for his country. He left a famous reply to his superiors in the trench: "The victory of the Japanese War of Resistance will be won in the future."
, as a famous anti-Japanese general, when you pass Wusongkou by ship, if there are waves like mountains, then I am here to see you."
This is the Chinese soldier back then who only turned his life into the rolling waves of the Yangtze River for future generations to gaze upon.
I would rather the long river of life stagnated at that moment.
Faced with such determined Chinese soldiers, the Japanese naturally did not fare well.
Japanese soldier Ogishima Shizuo wrote in his battlefield diary: "We only live in muddy trenches, and the muddy water floods our lower abdomen. We are provided with rice balls once a day, and eat them with hands covered with mud. What we drink is what someone has urinated on."
water."
Faced with the strength of the Chinese army, the voices in the Japanese army erupted: "Our morale has been weakened" and "Our regiment feels like it has been wiped out." The pessimism spread among the Japanese soldiers, so much so that this soldier
The battlefield diary two days later wrote: The soldiers on the front line all wanted to retreat to the rear. Retreating due to minor injuries was "very, very happy", "but the healthy front-line soldiers do not know when they will be sentenced to death."
Even Major Nishimura Toshio of the Japanese Army Staff Headquarters reported after an inspection: "The enemy's resistance is really tenacious. No matter whether it is bombarded or surrounded, it will never retreat... The dispatched troops were unable to provide relief from the rear, and the two divisions were trapped in a serious and bitter battle.
"
In fact, these pains and pessimism are not enough to reflect the misery of the Japanese army.
In this anti-landing battle on the Shanghai River, China deployed more than 15 divisions, most of which were elite divisions, to block the landing enemy for 20 days. On the other hand, the Japanese army only advanced less than 1 kilometer per day on average, and the main force was
This is achieved by bombardment by naval guns, strafing bombing by the air force and impact by tanks.
In his memoirs, a former Japanese captain likened the battle to the Omaha landing, the most brutal battle in the Normandy campaign. He said: "When the reinforcements landed on the shore of Wusong, what they saw was a hell.
What a scene! The corpses of our troops are piled up on top of each other on the shore, and you can’t even see them on the ground. Under a shore wall close to the reinforced concrete fortifications, as far as you can see are piles of corpses, just like the morning market at the port.
Like floating tuna, soldiers who were still alive 10 days ago are now piled up like rotten fish on a foreign river bank."
The Chinese soldiers suffered more than 300,000 casualties in this battle, while the Japanese suffered more than 50,000 casualties. It was also a heart-wrenching battle.
Perhaps, the devil's cage had been completely opened at that moment. Nanjing, the capital of China, had become the place where they most wanted to vent their anger.
If the empty city is not left behind, the destruction of Nanjing will be inevitable.