Shadow Spy

Chapter 339 Analysis of Battle Strategy

In terms of time, this return trip, coupled with the rest and time difference, took four days. It was on Monday, November 11, that Li Junhao and his party returned to Shanghai.

He first went directly to the headquarters to inquire about the situation over the past few days, and confirmed that everything was normal and there were no unexpected incidents, and then he went home to rest peacefully.

After returning to Shanghai, he immediately adjusted his mentality and no longer thought about Washington. After all, it was too far away from him. At the moment, his focus was still on the concession in Shanghai.
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On December 12, the Consulate General in Shanghai received a telegram from Washington: Ognyan Lee Panson was promoted to Navy Colonel and took up the post of Chief Assistant to the National Security Advisor, Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S. Far East Force Headquarters, and concurrently serving as Consulate General in Shanghai. The deputy consul general of the consulate and commander of the Navy-U.S. Joint Command will no longer serve as the commander of the 1th Marine Regiment. The commander will be replaced by Colonel Xie Jinyuan.

This appointment aroused unanimous surprise from everyone in the Consulate General. However, while others were surprised by the position of Deputy Chief of Staff of the Far East Force, only Acting Consul General Sheehan knew the meaning of this chief assistant. This surprised him extremely. In his subsequent work He just lowered his attitude and regarded himself as a subordinate.

Xie Jinyuan was surprised that a Chinese soldier himself was officially appointed as the leader of the 327th Regiment!He could only attribute this situation to the fact that Commander Panson returned to China and did his work.This situation made him and other Chinese officers and soldiers very excited.

In Manila, Philippines, at the U.S. Far East Headquarters, Lieutenant General MacArthur was very upset. You must know that in the Far East Command, the chief of staff is still concurrently served by the commander of the Philippine Division, Major General Jonathan Wainwright. In fact, there is no When he actually takes office, the director of the headquarters staff office is actually responsible to him; now that the Ministry of War suddenly appoints a deputy chief of staff, the command authority will be partially dispersed, which he doesn't like very much!
In fact, Li Junhao now doesn't want to care about the affairs in the Philippines at all. The appointment of deputy chief of staff of the Far East Army is also useless to him, but he knows the reason in his heart: because of his previous distrustful remarks towards MacArthur, the Army Secretary Stimson made a certain compromise and gave him this appointment despite external pressure.

Li Junhao could imagine that if he took office as deputy chief of staff, he would be able to observe MacArthur's inappropriate behavior at a close distance. On the other hand, he would have to bear certain joint and several liability when problems arise in the Far East Command!From this point of view, Minister Stimson is still very thoughtful.

However, Minister Stimson did not think of one thing. Since it was a part-time appointment, what if Li Junhao did not take up the post because he was busy with his job?If you go to take office, what if you directly seize the command of the troops?

Li Junhao himself is also considering this issue. Should he take office?If you take office, when will you go?What measures should be taken?How far should things go? ...He will not go to the Philippines until he has figured this out.
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On Monday, December 12, Li Junhao, who has officially assumed the position of Chief Assistant to the National Security Advisor, accepted his first task: to write a report on the current situation of the Sino-Japanese War and analyze the future strategic direction of the Japanese army.

In order to write the report, he spent several days checking the Chinese battlefield intelligence from the previous period. In addition to the movements of the Japanese troops, the focus was on the Eighth Route Army's counterattack that was currently fiercely contested on the battlefield in North China (the so-called Hundred Regiments War in later generations). The current battle situation It's in its final stages.

Li Junhao made a clear judgment: The situation of the North China War has gradually become clearer. The Eighth Route Army commanded by the underground party has the support of a large number of local armed forces and civilians. Compared with the Japanese army that left the occupied cities to fight, it has the advantage of flexible combat. At present, has gained a clear upper hand.

According to various intelligence reports, in the three and a half months from August 8 to early November alone, the two sides engaged in more than 20 large and small battles. The Eighth Route Army killed and injured more than 11 Japanese soldiers and puppet troops at the cost of more than 3 casualties. It had more than 1800 troops, captured more than 1.7 Japanese troops and more than 2 puppet troops, uprooted more than 5000 enemy strongholds, destroyed more than 280 kilometers of railways and more than 1.8 kilometers of roads, and achieved remarkable results.After suffering a blow, the Japanese army had to deploy two divisions from the frontal battlefield in Central China to strengthen the North China Front Army in order to carry out larger-scale retaliatory operations against the anti-Japanese base areas in North China.

The current fighting direction is mainly concentrated in the Eighth Route Army's Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei base area and northwest Shanxi. It is expected that there will be more than two months of fighting.

At present, the morale of the Chinese military and civilians is strong, and the possibility of the Japanese army winning this battle is extremely low.

In the process of compiling intelligence, some clues caught his attention. Coupled with the awakening of past life memories, he discovered some bad signs, which he mentioned in the report:
On October 10, He Yingqin, Chief of General Staff of the Military Commission of the National Government, and Bai Chongxi, Deputy Chief of General Staff, sent a message to the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, attributing the causes of frictions in North and Central China since the Anti-Japanese War to the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, and ordered the Anti-Japanese War to persist in the north and south of the Yangtze River. The Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army all withdrew to the north of the Yellow River within a month.

Although the underground party has ordered the New Fourth Army troops stationed in southern Anhui to move north of the Yangtze River on November 11, the troops in the Kuomintang's third theater (combat areas are southern Jiangsu, southern Anhui, Zhejiang, and Fujian) are still undergoing large-scale mobilization...

He believed this was an extremely dangerous signal, indicating that the Kuomintang government was about to attack the New Fourth Army in Jiangnan!
He seriously pointed out in the report that the Kuomintang government's move was obviously cooperating with the Japanese army to strangle the anti-Japanese forces, indicating that the government had a fascist tendency; Chairman Chiang in Chongqing was going further and further down the road of dictatorship, and the U.S. government must Be alert to it.

In his report to Ayers, he put forward this point of view, but in fact he had realized that this was the prelude to the "Southern Anhui Incident"!So that night, he reorganized the excerpted report into language and sent it to Yan'an, hoping to play a positive role in saving the fate of the New Fourth Army's headquarters.

Regarding the analysis of the strategic direction of the Japanese army, Li Junhao asserted: After the disastrous defeat in the Battle of Nomenkan last year, the Japanese army has lost the courage to advance north, and its next step can only be to go south!

The relevant battles currently being conducted by the Japanese army in North China and other places are all aimed at consolidating the "rear area" so that they can take advantage of the fact that the United States' war preparations have not yet been completed and the United Kingdom is unable to look eastward, so as to "advance south" and seize the territories of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, the Netherlands and other countries in Southeast Asia and the Southwest. Colonies in the Pacific...

Previously, on September 9, the Japanese army entered French Indochina, which was the first step of testing.

(End of this chapter)