PS: Thank you for the evaluation vote cast by the book friend "xiaomingdesh" and the monthly vote voted by the book friend "I came from the river", and by the way, I asked for a recommendation vote ^_^

As a result, Hideki Tojo tried every means to get Ishihara Wanji, who was known for his strategy, to enter the field army as a military commander. But after thinking about it, he was still a little uneasy, after all, Ishihara Waner had not worked in the front-line army, he even worked as an instructor in a military academy, and even if his tactical literacy was not as good as his strategic vision, he might not be much worse.

At this time, the Battle of the Central Plains had already begun, and Ishihara was very dissatisfied with the strategic decision of the Central China Dispatch Army, believing that judging from the situation at that time, the Japanese army was no longer able to advance into the Central Plains, and even if it was continuously expanded, it would not be of much help, because the Japanese Army's long-standing thinking of building the army was to be small but precise, and rashly piling up too many troops would only greatly reduce the combat effectiveness of the troops and further overdraw Japan's war and economic potential.

In Ishihara's view, instead of letting the Japanese army's now depleted military resources be uselessly lost, it is better to retreat to the Yangtze River Delta to preserve life, and at the same time take advantage of the contradictions between the two parties in China to unite vertically and horizontally, and he even came up with an extremely damaging poisonous plan, that is, to take the initiative to give up all the territory that the Japanese army is currently unable to hold and hand it over to the Kuomintang, so that the red party will have no room for development, and there will be no way to launch an attack on the Japanese-occupied areas separated by the Kuomintang area. On the contrary, the Japanese army could attack the border areas through the Kuomintang through a secret agreement with the Chongqing government, and the Kuomintang army only had to deliberately feint defeat and make way for the opening of the road, anyway, with their low combat effectiveness, the Japanese army did not have to worry about them violating the agreement and copying their own back road. Under these circumstances, if the Red Party's troops could not help but take action against the Kuomintang, they would become sinners in sabotaging the anti-Japanese national united front and would fall into an extremely politically disadvantageous situation, judging by the Red Party's purpose. The consequences of losses in this regard are even more serious than military defeats

However, Hideki Tojo grasped this point, and it happened that the original commander of the 2nd Army of the Central China Dispatch Army, who was born in the imperial family, refused to take office because he was afraid of the 15th Army, so Hideki Tojo took the opportunity to recommend Ishihara Waner to be promoted to the new commander of the 2nd Army. In addition, his "virtuous people do not avoid hatred" has also won praise in Japan, which has greatly improved his popularity, and it is obvious that Tojo Hideki's ability to calculate people's hearts is far above his military ability

But few people in Japan saw Hideki Tojo's calculations, and the reason why he did it. In fact, it was because he knew that Ishihara Waner had never taken the orders of his superiors seriously, and now he must be more domineering after holding the power, so even if Ishihara Waner won in Huaibei. It will also lead to the withdrawal of the main force of the Central China Army, and the Japanese tradition is that there will be no big problem if the army fails to advance, but retreating, especially in a favorable situation on the battlefield, will definitely be criticized by words, even with Ishihara's popularity in the Japanese army, it will be difficult to change this tradition, and when the time comes, Tojo Hideki will just use this to punish him, and even if he does not die, he will never be able to turn over.

What's more, in Tojo's view, the 15th Group Army and the Eighth Route Army, the two main forces of the Red Party, add up to no less than one million troops. Where is it so easy to deal with? As long as Ishihara was unfavorable in battle, he would take the opportunity to take it, and if the Chinese army could give him the opportunity to kill with a sword, Hideki Tojo would be even happier. Hideki Tojo naturally knew that this was not good for Japan, but he was a politician. How many politicians on Shijie are truly patriotic?

And Hu Weidong naturally does not want to miss this opportunity, although he has never paid much attention to how many senior Japanese generals have been killed or captured, but Ishihara Waner is different from others, in Hu Weidong's opinion, if he can kill this guy, the value is not inferior to the total annihilation of 100,000 Japanese troops, and if possible, he also wants to capture alive this Japan since the Meiji Restoration, and may even be the most powerful strategist (Japan) since ancient times, Ishihara Waner is worthy of him!

Since the nearest railway station to Bengbu in Huaibei was under the threat of the 15th Army, Ishihara chose to let the troops drive directly over the bridge instead of taking the train after the railway stopped. However, Hu Weidong wanted to ensure that Ishihara Waner had no way to escape, and it was still necessary to cut off the Jinpu Line Huaihe Railway Bridge in the north of Bengbu, especially since Ishihara Guaner actually did not prepare a ferry on the Huai River, which meant that once the bridge was completely cut off, the 200,000 officers and soldiers of the Japanese Second Army would be blocked on the north bank of the Huai River and had no way to escape

However, if you stand from Ishihara's point of view, this cannot be said to be a big mistake, after all, the fighter plane is fleeting, and the Japanese 2nd Army must cross the Huai River north as soon as possible before it has time to complete the north-south flank attack and annihilate China's number one ace 15th Army on the Huaibei Plain, there is really no extra time to collect a large number of ferries, in addition, Ishihara Waner is also worried that preparing the back road before the battle starts will shake the morale of the army. Besides, in Ishihara's view, 20,000 Japanese troops stationed in Bengbu were more than enough, and the strength of the Red Party guerrillas in Huainan was still very limited, and it was impossible to pose a threat to them, and if the 15 th Group Army sent troops to cross the Huai River to the south, it would not be helpful if there were fewer troops, and if there were many troops, it would certainly be discovered.

Ishihara even thought of the legendary "rebel army" of the Japanese column, but because intelligence showed that this force was only more than 10,000 people, and Ishihara Guaner did not believe that the Chinese would dare to expand this Japanese force to too large a scale, as long as the Bengbu defenders were on strict alert, there was no need to worry about it at all. However, Ishihara still missed two points, one is that the strong ability of the red thought to transform Japanese prisoners of war made Hu Weidong dare to rearm many more Japanese prisoners of war than he expected; The second is that the proportion of veterans among these original Japanese prisoners of war is much higher than that of the Japanese 2nd Army, which has been seriously flooded in the past few months (no matter how fast the ideological transformation is, it will take several months, plus the training, that is to say, even if it is a recruit from the Japanese column, it was captured at least half a year ago, and the quality of the devil's soldiers at that time was far from being seriously diluted as it is now. ), and therefore much more combat; Third, I did not expect that there were also problems within the Japanese army

Although due to the increasing vigilance of the Japanese invaders, the Japanese column was indeed unable to completely deceive the devils as Shiraishi Tomohisa expected, but the first-mover advantage of firing the first shot still could not run, and there was a surprise that surprised the officers and soldiers of the Japanese column in the battle, which also caused the Japanese army in Bengbu, which might have been able to hold out for a while, to quickly rout (to be continued). )