1905: Beer Hall Speaker

Page 72

"Do I have to teach you how to make this 'three-in-one soil'? Do you think I can't tell that it's just ordinary loess that's been tamped down once? You should at least sift it once and scorch it, otherwise the insects and grass seeds inside will all be buried in, and next year this place will be a grassland!"

"Go back to work! Go back to work on everything!"

Dai Mingde was intolerant of any flaws. What seemed like a cursory glance was actually a keen observation, and he could spot every problem.

The officer in charge of supervising this section of the route said with a troubled look, "Sir, it's not that we don't follow the standards, it's just that we don't have enough manpower. If we really followed the standards, we would have to take people out of the mountains to dig up stones!"

Dai Mingde said, "Not enough manpower? Then continue to conscript laborers until we have enough. If you need anything else, just ask the Koreans!"

The officer stammered, "Sir, spring planting is about to begin. If we keep conscripting people like this, won't Korea face a famine?"

Dai Mingde laughed and said, "I didn't expect you to have such a kind heart. What benefits did the North Koreans give you?"

The officer explained, "No, absolutely not! We still have to collect grain during the summer harvest. The Koreans are suffering from famine, so we can't collect any grain either."

Dai Mingde still refused: "No, there's no room for discussion about road construction; it must be done according to the standards."

“Tell the North Koreans that this road belongs to all the North Korean people, and we only have the right to use it 24 hours a day.”

"They built this road themselves; no matter how hard or tiring it was, they had to do it!"

The officer had no choice but to write down the order and turn to carry it out.

To be honest, the current population of the Korean Peninsula is only over 12 million. In order to maintain the war effort, the National Defense Army has conscripted more than 500,000 laborers, all of whom are young and strong.

The local population couldn't hold on any longer, and the capital had stopped conscripting laborers from the north. After all, spring plowing was just around the corner, and if the capital dared to conscript a large number of laborers, famine would break out all over northern China in the first half of the year.

The mainland continues to reduce labor and material support to the front lines, but the fighting will continue. The shortfall will only make things harder for the North Koreans. The leader said he would take the blame.

But North Korea's manpower is almost exhausted. Don't be fooled by its total population of over 12 million; all those conscripted are able-bodied young men. More than 500,000 of them have gone to build roads and support the front lines. These people are essentially demobilized, and the North Korean government still has to support them. The labor shortage has to be filled by desperately recruiting from other places.

Every month, at least several thousand North Koreans are on the front lines of the war. The North Korean laborers supporting the front lines are responsible for various fortification digging and other dangerous work. Sometimes they have to dig trenches under artillery fire to transport ammunition for the National Defense Army to cross the fire line.

The North Koreans who were building the road also lacked food and clothing, and it was common for laborers to starve or die from exhaustion on the construction site.

But North Koreans have only one advantage: if you are strong enough, they will be docile and obedient enough, making them the world's top lackeys, eating nothing but grass and producing nothing but milk!

Even the central government in the capital was extremely surprised. The local government had significantly reduced its support to restore the people's strength and appease their hearts. They had originally thought that the front line would be very difficult and might even encounter chaos.

But Dai Mingde, this genius, shifted the pressure of the shortage onto the North Koreans, constantly squeezing them, and managed to maintain the logistical standards without any decline; all the work that needed to be done continued.

The Ministry of National Defense is already preparing an order to promote Dai Mingde to the rank of Major General in the Army. This man has never fought a battle, never fired a shot, and never killed a single enemy, yet he has been promoted like a rocket.

Even now, many of the main division commanders on the front lines still hold the rank of colonel, and some division commanders of Class B and Class C units even hold the rank of lieutenant colonel, but Dai Mingde is about to be promoted to major general.

In fact, if Dai Mingde could ensure that the logistics were in order after the war was over, he could easily be promoted to lieutenant general after three to five years of service, based on this achievement.

But the Koreans suffered the most, as a large part of Dai Mingde's achievements were built upon the countless bones of Koreans.

After receiving the new conscription order, the North Korean government in Pyongyang was practically ready to explode, but faced with heavily armed soldiers of the National Defense Army, it didn't dare to explode and could only continue to exploit the people to help the National Defense Army maintain the war.

The hidden households and servants of the upper-class nobles in Korea were all exploited by the National Defense Army, and their stored grain and money were forcibly converted into war bonds. If the Japanese or the Korean government had done this, the Koreans would have risen up in rebellion long ago.

But faced with the Celestial Empire, which had exerted its dominance for thousands of years, and the infamous reputation of its leader Zhao Yan, the Koreans could only swallow their tears in humiliation.

Zhao Yan said he would take the blame, and he was adept at exploiting his subordinates, always invoking the head of state's name! Who would dare to stand up for him?

Zhao Yan had previously led his troops south, slaughtering the Japanese until rivers of blood flowed. Even now, there are still many corpses piled up on the battlefield, forming mounds of corpses. One mound for each division, making the Koreans weak in the knees.

Previously, the Japanese were reluctant to plunder North Korea in this way. They even planned to develop North Korea and considered incorporating it into their own territory. However, the Republic has been ruthlessly plundering and exploiting North Korea.

From the poorest of the poor to the most powerful nobles, no one was spared. What a joke! They've bleed themselves dry internally, how could they possibly be polite to you North Koreans?

Those with money can contribute money, and those without money can contribute manpower. Even a piece of toilet paper or a pair of underwear has its use.

Dai Mingde pinned all the blame for Zhao Yan's wrongdoings on him, but he also took all the credit without hesitation. After inspecting Pyongyang, he happily wrote a report and submitted it to the capital.

The report details various data from North Korea and how it exploits and uses this data. It also optimistically estimates that North Korea's human and material resources are more than enough to sustain it until the end of spring planting on its own soil.

At this critical juncture, the Koreans will become the last bargaining chip for the National Defense Army to wear down the Japanese on the battlefield.

In Northeast China, the hard and tiring jobs were done by the Manchus, while in the Korean Peninsula, they were done by the Koreans. Dai Mingde, like a shrewd Jew, indiscriminately exploited both insiders and outsiders.

Then all that squeezed flesh and blood will become a shining golden star, inlaid on his rank, reminding him not to forget his original aspiration and to continue to forge ahead!

Chapter 128 The Front Lines Decide the Negotiation Table

"The highest directive from the central leadership orders us to achieve results and demonstrate our strength during the negotiations!"

"I know the front line is tough, and we lack everything, but that is no excuse or reason. We are having a hard time, but the enemy is having an even harder time. The closer we get to the end, the more we must muster our last bit of strength."

"The Führer has made it clear that no matter what happens in the Shanghai negotiations, the front lines must act as if there were never any negotiations, and continue fighting as before."

Everyone present was on edge, hoping nothing would go wrong, otherwise even the King of Heaven couldn't protect them!

In Cheongju, North Korea, at the headquarters of the Korean War Zone Command of the National Defense Army, Lieutenant General Wang Chongshan was convening a meeting with a group of generals. The main purpose of the meeting was to keep everyone on high alert.

Although Zhao Yan was no longer on the front lines, he understood very well what the front lines needed to pay the most attention to at the moment. At this critical juncture, the most important thing for the front lines to do was to prevent any unexpected problems from arising.

What Zhao Yan feared most was that once the news of the ceasefire negotiations reached the front lines, these generals would relax their efforts.

The more negotiations for a ceasefire take place, the more intense the fighting must be on the front lines; the success or failure at the negotiating table is entirely determined by the outcome on the battlefield.

The negotiations in Shanghai are currently at a stalemate, especially as the differences between China and Japan are extremely serious, with both sides taking a very hard line and neither willing to back down.

At the negotiating table, Gao Dewu used all sorts of tricks and tactics, but progress was slow. He could negotiate the minor details of the interests smoothly, but when it came to the core issues of the Korean War, he was at his wits' end.

Zhao Yan had no patience for the agonizing wait in Shanghai. He was determined to stir things up on the Korean Peninsula and make the Japanese understand that they had no choice but to compromise and back down.

"This time I am determined to launch a localized offensive operation in the Wochuan area to break through the Japanese army's defenses in the region and turn a section of the Japanese salient into a depression in their defenses!"

"We can only cook as much rice as the pot can hold. Our resources are very tight, so we can only pursue high returns with low costs. In this operation, we'll squeeze out logistical constraints and strive to deploy an army group-sized force to wipe out the damned Japanese 7th and 36th Divisions in the Wochuan salient."

The salient that Wang Chongshan had his eye on was the southern part of Wochuan County, which was occupied by the Japanese army. This salient was about 20 kilometers deep into the National Defense Army's front line.

Currently, the National Defense Forces occupy the line from Daejeon to North Gyeongsang Province, and the entire line has been heavily fortified, forming an impenetrable fortress. A total of 670,000 National Defense Forces have been deployed on this line.

The Japanese army's overall offensive was simply ineffective. Of course, they also lacked the resources to launch a large-scale, all-out offensive; they could only gain some advantages in certain local areas.

The Japanese army also deployed more than 500,000 troops in response, putting them at a disadvantage in terms of manpower. The reason why the Japanese army was still able to launch an offensive was because their supply lines were very short. Supplies from the mainland could be transported directly to Busan Port by sea, and then transported to the front line over a distance of more than 100 kilometers.

The supplies for the National Defense Forces had to be transported to the front lines over long distances, while North Korea could requisition food and fodder locally, but it could not requisition military equipment and ammunition.

If they had sufficient logistical support, the generals of the National Defense Forces would have been unwilling to stay in their shells and would have been eager to launch an attack long ago.

Zhao Yan had already demonstrated to them how to thoroughly defeat the Japanese. The Chinese army now showed no fear of the enemy whatsoever; in their eyes, the so-called armies of the great powers were nothing more than their own military achievements.

The only problem was that logistics couldn't keep up, making large-scale offensives impossible.

The Chinese and Japanese sides are like two exhausted boxers. After several rounds of fierce fighting, it's already a miracle that they can stand in the ring now. Both of them have exhausted their strength.

No one can unleash the same powerful swings as at the start anymore; they can only throw small punches, or even none at all, to see who can't take it and falls down first.

The newly formed republic can only provide the strength to keep the front lines standing, while the strength to deliver the punches must be squeezed out by the front lines themselves.

The rear is in the spring plowing season, and the most important and core task is to ensure the completion of spring plowing. Compared with war, spring plowing is the most important thing. A large amount of manpower and material resources have been transferred to the agricultural field. It concerns the food supply of 400 million people, and the central government dares not have any wishful thinking.

Even if the front lines suffer a major defeat, it's not a big deal. But if there are problems with spring planting, famine will immediately follow.

Fortunately, the brilliant Dai Mingde emerged on the front lines, shifting the heavy burden originally borne by the Republic onto the heads of the North Koreans, freeing up a large number of domestic laborers and ensuring the smooth progress of spring plowing in Northeast China.

On the other hand, the Japanese had a much harder time. In Lushun and Korea, more than 800,000 of their troops were tied up, and in order to ensure logistics, more than 2 million people had to put down their hoes and carry ammunition boxes.

Nearly three million Japanese were forced to leave their jobs to maintain the war effort during the critical spring planting season. Leaving aside the daily consumption of one million front-line combat personnel and two million second-line logistics personnel, the loss of output value after their departure was unbearable for Japan.

China has a population of 400 million, while Japan at that time had a population of about 50 million. The difference is that China is an agricultural country, while Japan is a nascent industrial country.

However, Japan's technological development path is very skewed. Their military and heavy industries, as well as their foreign exchange-earning light industries, are quite good, but their other consumer sectors are very weak.

Agriculture, in particular, is fragile and simply cannot withstand the devastation of war. During the spring planting season, so many valuable young and able-bodied workers are tied up in the war effort, making it impossible for agriculture to remain unaffected.

Now it's a contest of who can hold on until the very last breath and not collapse. China has a strong population base to support it, while Japan is far behind in this respect.

Zhao Yan instructed Wang Chongshan to launch a preemptive strike at the front line, with the aim of wearing down the last bit of the Japanese and making them fully realize the cruel reality.

Wang Chongshan may not have many other skills, but when it comes to obedience, he is unparalleled. He immediately finds a way to carry out Zhao Yan's instructions.

They painstakingly pieced together enough supplies for an army group campaign, preparing to launch their final attack.

Of course, Wang Chongshan didn't have that ability; he was only responsible for execution and coercion. The one who was really in charge of doing the work was Dai Mingde.

Dai Mingde reduced the already meager supplies of other units and used the last batch of reserves that had been put at the bottom of the stockpile, procuring more than 20 million rounds of ammunition of various calibers, 17,000 artillery shells, and more than 2,000 tons of other military supplies, barely enough to meet the needs of the campaign.

Wang Chongshan himself scavenged over 270 artillery pieces and added them in, along with the last of his emergency reserves from the war zone's warehouses.

The generals below were naturally aware of the importance that all levels, from the central command to the theater command, attached to this assault. Whoever could get this mission and complete it brilliantly would be guaranteed a great achievement.

Several army group commanders were all eager to volunteer for the mission, none of them wanting to miss this golden opportunity to make a name for themselves.

The National Defense Forces have now established a corps-level organization, consisting of ten group armies. The 1st to 8th Group Armies, except for the 6th Group Army which is stationed in Myanmar, are stationed in North Korea and Northeast China. The 9th Group Army is stationed along the Beijing-Tianjin line, and the 10th Group Army is stationed in Xinjiang.

Army groups are not currently recognized as permanent organizational units and will most likely be abolished after this war ends. All army group commanders are senior major generals, and usually division commanders also hold the position of army group commander.

The higher-ups' intentions were clear: after the war, they certainly wouldn't be able to maintain a standing army of ten army groups. Canceling some unit designations was inevitable, but retaining some was also certain.

Who stays and who gets laid off depends entirely on solid performance, nothing else matters.

The remaining army group positions would be those of lieutenant generals, powerful and substantive posts! Who could resist such temptation? Keep in mind that Wang Chongshan, the current Minister of National Defense, is only a lieutenant general!

The generals argued fiercely over this achievement, disregarding any personal feelings. When it came to military merit, even their own fathers had to be put aside.

The meeting room was filled with noise. The higher-ups had initially worried that the generals at the front might become complacent due to the ceasefire negotiations, but in reality, these people were not complacent at all; in fact, they were among the most opposed to the ceasefire.

Wang Chongshan was so annoyed by the noise that he slammed his fist on the table and roared, "Shut up, all of you!"

"Zhu Zhilie, your Third Army Group is still guarding the Incheon line on the west coast, what are you doing getting involved?"

"And Liu Zhaocheng, your 7th Army Group has five divisions at full strength! Where am I supposed to gather the supplies for five divisions to launch an attack?"

"We're only dealing with the salient of two Japanese divisions. If we send in five divisions in one go, the enemy won't even collapse before we break our own teeth!"

There is no fixed size for an army group; it depends on the needs of the battlefield and the actual situation. A large army group may have five or six divisions, and the largest may have more than 120,000 troops. However, a small army group may only have two or three divisions, with a force of only 40,000 to 50,000 troops.

If you were to send a large army group to fight this battle, with hundreds of thousands of troops attacking, Wang Chongshan wouldn't be able to afford it even if he sold his blood.

To put it bluntly, if I had the ability, would I need to give the credit to you? Wouldn't I have taken matters into my own hands?

After much deliberation, Wang Chongshan chose the Fourth Army for this task. The Fourth Army had been resting for more than a month and was located in Shangzhou, very close to the objective. Most importantly, the Fourth Army only had three divisions and a total strength of more than 57,000 men, which was neither too many nor too few.

The Fourth Army never expected this task to fall to them, and the army commander was overjoyed.

If this job is done well, the credit will go straight to the head of state's desk. More importantly, the purpose of this battle is very simple: to put pressure on and wear down the enemy.

As long as nothing goes wrong and there is no major defeat, even a draw would be a merit. If two Japanese divisions could be defeated or even annihilated, the Fourth Army would definitely become a permanent postwar army, and its commander would definitely be a lieutenant general.

Don't underestimate this junior general. Among the million-strong National Defense Army, there are only about twenty major generals and only one lieutenant general, Wang Chongshan.

The rank of general is incredibly prestigious, representing the highest level of military leadership. Of the twenty-seven major generals, at least fifteen are already at their current rank and eligible for promotion to lieutenant general. But can they all be promoted? Certainly not. There are only so many positions available, and they will be reduced after the war.

Zhao Yan was extremely strict about rank, partly to ensure the prestige of the ranks and partly to save money. A general's salary was a hundred times that of a soldier. While an ordinary soldier's monthly salary was two or three taels of silver, a general's salary was two or three hundred taels of silver per month. If other benefits and rewards were included, it would be even higher.

If Zhao Yan were to adopt the Nationalist government's approach of having generals everywhere, it would cost millions of taels of silver a year just to support them. Even if Zhao Yan were out of his mind, he wouldn't do it that way.

The battle plan for the front line has been completed, the participating troops have been identified, and the supplies and weapons have been delivered. The upcoming Battle of Wochuan will begin soon.

In order to force the Japanese to submit, Zhao Yan prepared a three-pronged approach. The first was the upcoming Battle of Wochuan, which would put pressure on the front lines. The second was the propaganda plan. The third was to continue exporting the revolution.

All three approaches were aimed at the weaknesses of the Japanese people, from the front lines to the rear, comprehensively pressuring and depleting Japan's national strength.

To deal with the likes of Japan, who like to gamble with their national destiny, let's gamble with them to the end. If you gamble with your national destiny, I'll gamble with my national strength.

Zhao Yan has instructed Gao Dewu to continue his efforts in Shanghai to quickly persuade the British to leave, and to expedite the departure of the remaining other countries as well, doing everything in his power to isolate Japan.

This method isn't exactly new; it's the "befriend distant states while attacking nearby ones" strategy that our ancestors used to death.

On the other hand, things couldn't stop on the Korean front; they still had to squeeze out every last penny to deal with the Japanese, isolating them while continuing to harass them.

Zhao Yan didn't believe that Japan's national strength could withstand such torment. The Republic was almost drained dry; there was no way Japan could endure it.

If Japan can truly withstand the Korean War despite the significant damage to its national strength in the Russo-Japanese War, Zhao Yan is willing to accept defeat.

On March 21, 1908, the Fourth Army of the Korean War Zone assembled three divisions and launched a high-intensity counterattack in the Okchon area. On the first day of the battle, 3 troops were deployed to besiege two Japanese divisions in the Okchon salient.

After Zhao Yan left the court, the National Defense Army launched another fierce offensive.

The Japanese army, which had become accustomed to Wang Chongshan's turtle-shell strategy, was caught off guard by the sudden counterattack. No one expected that Wang Chongshan, the notorious "coward," "master of filling in the gaps," and "wall of sighs," would actually take the initiative to attack!

The Japanese front was thrown into chaos. The generals of the National Defense Army were not swayed by the Shanghai negotiations, but the generals of the Japanese army were. They waited anxiously for the outcome of the Shanghai negotiations.

Everyone thought the opposing defense forces wouldn't attack, but they just wouldn't play by the rules and insisted on adding another bet at this crucial moment!

Chapter 129 Deception is Strategy

"This is a provocative and premeditated war. Do you even have any sincerity for peace?"

"The Great Japanese Empire will never accept such deception, and your country must immediately cease its war activities on the Korean front!"

"Now that negotiations have begun, you must demonstrate sincerity in the talks, instead of using the guise of negotiations to launch a surprise attack—this despicable and shameless behavior!"