Chapter 402: The Resurgence of the Great War (Ask for a subscription, ask for a monthly pass, ask for everything!) ）

As the main force of Ma Zheng's division gradually returned to the Suicha area, both the Japanese puppet army and the Nationalist government and other military and political institutions believed that the fighting in the north was over. Next, the two sides will reach the stage of licking their wounds and accumulating strength, and then the next round of confrontation will be carried out when the two sides have recovered their strength.

However, starting from mid-March, the Fourth Column of the Eighth Route Army, which was active on the front line in eastern Hebei, took advantage of the favorable opportunity when the Japanese Second Division and the Fourth Division were heavily damaged or completely annihilated, and took the initiative to attack many times in succession, successively capturing more than a dozen county towns in eastern Hebei, and only a limited number of areas such as Tangshan and Qinhuangdao remained in the 22 counties in eastern Hebei that were still under the control of the Japanese army.

More importantly, after capturing these county towns in eastern Hebei, the Fourth Column immediately disbanded the puppet regime on the spot and organized local political power subordinate to the Eighth Route Army.

On March 15, the 13th Regiment of the Fourth Column raided Tangshan, although it failed to take Tangshan, but it cleaned up the large and small coal kilns and porcelain-burning kilns outside Tangshan, which greatly deterred the North China Front.

After learning that the Eighth Route Army was still stirring up trouble in eastern Hebei, General Sugiyama was extremely angry. In addition, in the past few days, remnants of the army have fled back to the defense area of the North China Front, so the details of the Battle of Huangqizhen, the Battle of Longhua, and the battles of Wuzhishan and Chengde have also been reported to the headquarters of the North China Front Army one after another, and Sugiyama Yuan also has a clear understanding of this defeat.

Subsequently, General Sugiyama did not dare to slack off, and immediately sent a telegram to General Ueda Kenkichi to discuss the aftermath.

The reason why I had to discuss it with General Kenkichi Ueda was mainly because the 2nd and 4th Divisions at this time were both subordinate to the Kwantung Army. Now that the 2nd Division has been completely annihilated and the main force of the 4th Division has been captured, such a big responsibility is not something that Sugiyama Gen alone can afford.

In the strict system of the Japanese Army, the relationship between the outcome of the battle and the commander in chief is like this. The battle was fought and the official was promoted, but if the battle was lost. The chief officer will definitely be unlucky. And there is almost no chance to turn over, for example, General Terauchi Shouichi, who was transferred back to China half a year ago, is still sitting on a cold bench in the base camp, if nothing else, he will sit until the base camp forgets him.

Now that the two first-class field divisions are dead and one is disabled, and the entire southern part of Rehe has also been lost, such a responsibility is extremely heavy. Senior General Sugiyama knew that if this incident was not handled well, not only would not only Kenkichi Ueda and Ueda Kenkichi be unlucky, but the entire leadership of the North China Front Army and the Kwantung Army would probably not be able to save it. Senior General Ueda Kenkichi said that even if he didn't have anything at all, he wouldn't be able to do it for a few years, after all, Senior General Ueda Kenkichi is now 64 and a half years old.

What's more, the retirement age of Japanese generals is set at 65 years old, and unless they receive the title of marshal before the age of 65, they can only serve on active duty for life. And General Sugiyama is 59 this year, and Ueda Kenkichi is already 65, once there is any accident in office, there will never be a day to turn over.

In fact, both Ueda Kenkichi and Sugiyama Moto's performance in office was very bad, which was criticized by the Japanese army base camp. Needless to say, Sugiyama Yuan lost Datong as soon as he took office, tens of thousands of miners and a large number of heavy industrial equipment were robbed by Ma Zheng's department, and a large number of soldiers were killed and wounded, even including two squadrons of military police.

Subsequently, the entire Suixi was captured by Ma Zheng's subordinates, and more than 4,000 people, including Lieutenant General Kojima, were captured. If it weren't for Sugiyama's deep ties in the base camp, it would have been possible to lose his political future in this battle.

In less than a month, the Japanese army not only lost more than 80,000 soldiers, but also lost more than a dozen banner counties, including Duolun, Xilinhot and Chengde.

Less than a month after taking office, Ueda Kenkichi personally met with Pu Yi and informed him that the Kwantung Army had arrested Ling Sheng, the governor of North Hung Yen Province, on charges of "anti-Manchu and anti-Japanese" and "Tongsu", and sentenced him to death. What's more, Ueda Kenkichi bluntly emphasized that the purpose of this move was to make an example of a hundred people.

The Ling Sheng incident shook Pu Yi very much, and the Japanese colonial rulers wanted to make an example by killing one and asking the puppet officials to be lackeys honestly, otherwise they would be met with Ling Sheng. This private action of Senior General Ueda Kenkichi made Major General Sasaki Toichi, the top adviser of the puppet Manchukuo Army, very dissatisfied with Ueda about this matter, believing that he had destroyed the harmonious relations between Japan and Manchuria, which had been established with great difficulty.

The vast majority of high-ranking officials in Japan also have very strong opinions on this, and this action by Ueda Kenkichi has caused the high-ranking officials of the puppet Manchukuo to be extremely shocked, and even the high-ranking officials at the level of provincial governors can be killed by the Japanese army if they want to, and there is nothing to remember if this official is not appropriate. There were not a few puppet Manchukuo officials who resigned for a time or even simply abandoned their posts and fled, and the puppet Manchukuo was on the verge of collapse.

In addition, Ueda Kenkichi established an interest group in the northeast with the Kwantung Army as the core, and this interest group is very grouped, and many times it also disobeys some orders in Japan, and its loyalty is very questionable. Therefore, the Japanese base camp has always wanted to split the Kwantung Army, and the Mongolian army is a step forward for the base camp, showing that the Mongolian army is directly under the command of the emperor, and then it is subsumed into the North China Front, which directly breaks the interest group of Ueda Kenkichi, but this is far from enough.

This time, the main force of the 2nd Division was annihilated, the 4th Division suffered heavy losses, and even the commander of the division, Lieutenant General Sawada Shigeru, was also urgently attacked, and the losses were extremely heavy. Although it is said that the main responsibility this time is the North China Front, it is said that the responsibility should also be borne by Sugiyama Gendai in the future. However, you must know that General Sugiyama Moto, the former deputy chief of staff of the Ministry of War, also served as the land minister, and has a very good relationship with the current chief of staff of the base camp, Prince Kanin Miyazaihito, so the responsibility for this defeat cannot be borne by Sugiyama Moto.

Therefore, General Ueda Kenkichi already knew his fate when he saw the good news sent by Ma Zheng's department, although the responsibility was not on his own, but he was likely to bear the responsibility for the defeat because of the favoritism of the base camp.

For being dismissed or transferred to the reserves, Senior General Ueda Kenkichi had been prepared for a long time, after all, he knew his own situation. He could have become a field marshal of the Imperial Japanese Army, but in 1932 he took the Kanazawa 9th Division to Shanghai, and at the post-war celebration party, Ueda Kenkichi was bombed by Yoon Bong-gil, a righteous soldier sent by Wang Yaqiao, and his left calf was amputated due to his injuries after being sent to the hospital, and his superior, General Shirakawa Yoshinori, was seriously injured and died, and because of this, he lost hope of being promoted to field marshal.

The Empire of Japan could tolerate a lame man serving as a general, but would never allow a man to be a marshal. That is to say, he will only be in the army for more than half a year at most, and after half a year, no matter what name he is, he will be transferred to the reserve.

However, what Ueda could not bear was that he would be dismissed from his post due to the defeat of the 2nd and 4th Divisions, which was an insult to his decades-long military career. Therefore, after receiving a telegram from General Sugiyama Moto, a battle plan for Yujidong was quickly formed within the headquarters of the North China Front and the Kwantung Army.

Two days later, the 10th Division and the 110th Division of the Japanese mobile unit suddenly completed their assembly in Baoding and Tianjin, and then the 10th Division took advantage of the darkness to board the train at Beiping Station and rushed to Tangshan by military train, while the 110th Division boarded the ship from the port of Tianjin and went to Qinhuangdao by boat.

At the same time, about 20,000 people of the Kwantung Army were assembled from outside the Guan, and suddenly appeared in Lingyuan, posing a great threat to the Eighth Route Army in eastern Hebei and Renan, and a major war was about to break out. (To be continued.) )