Chapter 896: Heading in the Opposite Direction

“Then, go and do it!” Stalin said, looking at Zhukov. He lit the pipe in his hand, then put it to his lips and said with a smile, “I support you! I support you in the name of the leader of the Soviet Union. Go and drive back the invaders! Comrade Zhukov!”

“Buzz!” The vast conference room instantly erupted in a clamor. Everyone was talking at once, not knowing why Stalin would give such a firm order to advance south. What was the reason that, in just a dozen days, had made the supreme leader of the Soviet Union come up with the idea of a decisive battle to the south?

It was actually very simple: because of a piece of military intelligence from the Far East. This intelligence was still a top secret, because if this secret were to be made public, then many of the fence-sitters within the Soviet Union would begin to waver. Because this intelligence was very simple: the Japanese army had transferred 100,000 elite troops from North China, Shandong, and other regions and had begun to secretly advance north along the railway and highway lines.

To say it was a secret northern advance was an understatement. The Japanese army’s actions had inevitably been discovered by some observant people. After all, to transfer a full 100,000 troops and to move them into a special environmental area, the commotion could be said to be as big as it gets. China at that time did not have many railways and roads, and there were no conditions for concealment at all.

In order to maintain local security, the Japanese army had also forcibly expanded a portion of the puppet army in the occupied areas of China, conscripting a good number of underage youths and middle-aged men from the home islands to serve in these areas from which troops had been withdrawn, in order to ensure the absolute security of the occupied territories. These troops were far inferior to the troops that had been transferred away, which at once gave the Japanese immigrants in these areas a feeling of decline.

Before the start of World War II, Germany, including the Germanic remnants in the surrounding areas and some of the forces in the pro-German regions, had barely managed to scrape together a population of 100 million. It had integrated the industrial resources of the occupied territories, and in the end, the number of troops it could arm was still stretched thin.

Japan’s industrial base was even weaker than Germany’s, and its population was not as large. But because Japan’s strategy was so poorly played, its front was even longer than Germany’s. This made Japan’s problem of insufficient manpower even more prominent, and even more fatal.

Still comparing to Germany, although Germany’s military strength was not large compared to the vastness of its occupied territories, most of the German troops had a high level of military quality. The proportion of armored and mechanized forces was the highest in the world, which allowed the German army to at least make up for some of its numerical inferiority with quality.

But looking at Japan, its approach to military expansion was exactly the same as that of Hitler’s Nazi Germany in another timeline, when it was at the end of its rope. To give new recruits a few days of training, then to issue them a rifle and use them as infantry, was a bit too much of a child’s game.

An infantry division was not a combat unit composed purely of infantry. In order to have the ability to counter most of the enemy’s units, an infantry division often needed to be assigned artillery units to provide fire support, and anti-tank gun units to provide anti-armor capability. Therefore, an infantry division was in fact not a “pure” infantry division.

And now Japan, in order to support the production of the navy, had compressed almost all the production capacity it could. Luxuries like cannons were few and far between and were basically all supplied to the A-class and B-class divisions. The later-formed divisions basically had no decent artillery.

If they didn’t have 105mm heavy guns (referring to the Japanese definition of a heavy tank, don’t be surprised), they had to make do with 75mm field guns. If the production of 75mm field guns was insufficient, they would make do with 60mm mortars… In the end, the substitute became the grenade launcher, and hand grenades.

An A-class division was originally supposed to have a strength of over 28,000 men, several times that of a Chinese division. The result was that the B-class divisions that were formed during the military expansion were a bit pathetic. Their numbers had dwindled to 24,000, but at least the framework was still there. And now, the C-class and D-class divisions of Japan would have a strength of 13,000 or even 11,000 men. In April of 1939, a monster had finally been born in Japan’s divisions, with the same number of men as a Chinese division.

Some of the units that the Japanese army had formed later were, to put it bluntly, at best just infantry regiments with an oversized number of men by the standards of the German Wehrmacht. To call them a division was a bit of a stretch. Of course, if one were to consider the so-called armored units of the Japanese army, the specifications of the Japanese army’s units would make an insider even more desperate.

Taking Japan’s armored forces into account, those so-called armored brigades, and even the battalions and regiments, probably had a combat effectiveness about the same as a single German panzer battalion. And that was just a simple conversion of combat strength. If they were to actually fight, it was estimated that the Japanese tanks would be completely wiped out by the German armored forces, and they wouldn’t even be able to damage a single German tank.

The A-class divisions of Japan had lost the famous 7th Division (in part) in the Second Battle of Hawaii, and then had lost the newly formed 23rd Division at Wake Island. Subsequently, at the end of the Battle of Imphal, the 15th Division had been almost completely wiped out by the Chinese army.

In this situation, the Japanese army had brazenly transferred the elite 17th Division and two ordinary B-class divisions, plus five C-class divisions, to form a new army, preparing to attack the Soviet Union to the north. In addition to the 1st, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 14th, and 23rd A-class divisions of the Kwantung Army, there were also the 24th, 25th, 28th, 29th, and 57th B-class divisions. They had scraped together a force of nearly 600,000 men for the attack.

To transport such a large force to the front line, as long as the Soviets were not blind, they could have detected some clues. Many of the generals in charge of the Soviet defense in the Far East were capable men with a solid foundation. For example, the general now commanding the only mobile army group of the Soviet army stationed in the Far East was the 39-year-old Chuikov. So these Soviet generals had, in the first instance, passed on the crisis of the Japanese army’s reinforcement of northeastern China back to the Soviet homeland and had urgently mobilized 100,000 new recruits in the Far East region.

In addition, the Soviet army had always maintained a force of over 1 million in the Far East (the combat effectiveness of these troops was not strong). The Soviet Union had, through a cost-is-no-object expansion, increased its forces in the Far East to a level of 1.1 million.

“Baka! A hundred thousand troops, marching on the North China Plain, raising a cloud of dust… If the enemy isn’t blind, they’ll know we’re reinforcing Manchuria,” Tojo Hideki raged in the conference room after hearing that his troops were still using the same old methods of marching from a dozen years ago.

Sugiyama Hajime sat on the sofa, looked at his colleague, and finally, with resignation, explained, “Tojo-kun, our troops lack the capability for rapid mechanized movement. We can only rely on the discontinuous and technologically backward railways in the Chinese theater, as well as the backward roads.”

What he was too embarrassed to say was that while the Germans had already found ways to use railways and roads, to transport troops and supplies by train, truck, and plane, his own troops were still relying on horses and livestock for transport. The 17th Division was a little better off. Those C-class divisions were basically moving by “route 11” (on foot).

“In that case, we will have no chance of a so-called ‘concealed surprise attack’!” Tojo Hideki frowned, then looked at Sugiyama Hajime. “Sugiyama-kun, the intelligence department has already confirmed that the Soviet army is strengthening its forces in the Far East. This shows that our intentions have already been discovered by the Soviets!”

“I have also heard this news, and I feel that the battle in the northeast cannot be commanded by Itagaki Seishirō…” Sugiyama Hajime suddenly changed the subject, which made Tojo a little uncomfortable. But what Sugiyama said next made Tojo feel it was very reasonable. “General Yamashita has already returned to the Pacific theater. General Itagaki must stabilize the situation on the Chinese front. We don’t have many generals we can use for a northern advance strategy.”

To deal with the battle-hardened Soviet Red Army was no easy task. If it were just to kill a few tens of thousands of Chinese troops, it was estimated that an administrative general like Tojo could do it himself. But against the Soviet army, which had added an infinitely large psychological shadow to the Japanese army at Nomonhan, both Tojo and Sugiyama felt they had no certainty of victory.

Everyone would naturally compete for credit, but when faced with such a dangerous matter, most people would still choose to avoid it. At least neither Tojo nor Sugiyama had thought of commanding this matter themselves, but were seriously considering a suitable candidate.

Suddenly, Tojo slapped his thigh and thought of such a person: Ishiwara Kanji! The command skills and strategic vision of this Japanese general were quite good, at least he was one of the best in the Japanese army. He was mentioned in the same breath as Itagaki Seishirō, and had a bit of the meaning of Rommel and Guderian’s “Imperial Twins.” The two of them were known in Japanese military circles as “Ishiwara’s intellect” and “Itagaki’s courage.”

As soon as Sugiyama heard this, he knew that Tojo had come up with a malicious idea this time. Ishiwara Kanji had a conflict with Tojo. To push out his own enemy at a time like this would naturally be a happy outcome for everyone, and if he lost, it would be a case of kicking a man when he’s down.

But to know that Tojo had bad intentions and to stop him from doing so were two completely different things. So Sugiyama wiped his sweat, nodded in agreement with Tojo’s proposal, and found a good reason for him. “Ishiwara-kun has been to Germany and has studied the command of advanced armored forces. It is estimated that he can also understand and predict the Soviet army’s use of troops… In this situation, to have him personally command is the most appropriate.”

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