the world is at stake

July 12, night.

The Chinese ambassador to Tsarist Russia officially submitted a declaration of war to the Russian imperial government, and the two sides officially entered a state of war.

The next day, Zhou Qingfeng, who was staying in the imperial capital as secretary of the Commission for Discipline Inspection, received a telegram from St. Petersburg.Taking advantage of the fact that the communication between the two sides has not been completely interrupted, Pu Dadi sent a telegram angrily...

"Why doesn't 'Holy Light' go south?"

The telegram was sent to Zhou Qingfeng by the Tsarist Russian ambassador before the evacuation.It was also because China took the initiative to start a war that made Emperor Pu call his name "Holy Light" regardless of the risk.

The chosen ones have long been waiting for the outbreak of the world war, and the focus is also on when the civil strife in Tsarist Russia will occur.Everyone realizes that the weakest link among the great powers is not "wasted in vain", it is definitely the first to fall.

But no one thought that it was China that pushed the first domino-the war in the Far East started, and Tsarist Russia could not fail to save it; if it did not save it, the Chinese army would really see the Chinese army stabbing along the railway all the way to Yekaterinaburg.

Even if due to logistical constraints, Yekaterinburg could not be reached, but Irkutsk would be lost, and one-third of Tsarist Russia's territory would be lost, and the Far East estuary would be lost.

If it is rescued, Germany will not let go of this great opportunity; if it is defeated, the Russian Communist Party will definitely take the opportunity to cause chaos.Anyway, Tsarist Russia is doomed no matter what.

All the painstaking efforts of Pu Dadi were in vain, and he couldn't control his emotions under the anger and anger, so he sent a telegram to question Zhou Qingfeng.It means why didn't "Holy Light" go to Southeast Asia as a British and French colony?

Uncle Zhou stayed in the office of the Commission for Discipline Inspection building, glanced at the telegram, and imagined Emperor Pu Dadi's mania and unwillingness.He just curled his lips and didn't reply.

It's just because this Lord has finally become what he hates, a stinky bureaucrat who sits in the office every day and 'points out the country'.As the strength of the country became stronger and stronger, the 'Sacred Light' team would not allow him to run around anymore.

The Monkey King who used to be laughing and cursing, fighting against heaven and earth, and having no taboos, has transformed into a fighting Buddha who sits on a lotus seat, works hard, and has a faint fairy trail!

Forget it, let's read the internal battle report.

Military newspaper reporters acted as battlefield observers and were sent to the front line before the war started, preparing to record this great multilateral battle.The telegram could not send too many words, and all the messages were brought back by regular flights.

The first battle report came from the direction of Khabarovsk, and the reporter described the process of war preparations in a self-reported manner.The first paragraph at the beginning reads, "We set off from Harbin, and took a boat along the Songhua River northeast to Jiamusi City while the river was not yet frozen.

Although it was already snowing heavily, the endless fields along the coast surprised me.I thought that in the drought in the north, only wheat can be grown, but rice can be grown in Jiamusi area.

To the east of this place is Shuangya Mountain, and to the north is Hegang.Ships continue northward to Russia-controlled Khabarovsk, the homeland of China decades ago, now called Khabarovsk.

The guide was a crippled veteran, the head of the Qianjin Farm of the Northern Xinjiang Construction Corps, and a man who had just turned 30 years old.On the boat, he told me about the process of defending the frontier and expanding the territory.

From Jiamusi to Boli belongs to the temperate monsoon climate, the winter is cold and dry, and the lowest temperature can reach minus [-] degrees.But in July in summer, it is hot and rainy here, and some days can be as hot as [-] degrees above zero.

There is a large tract of reclaimable land around Khabarovsk, and the Russians completely ignore it.

Chinese reclamation personnel drove steam tractors to cultivate land on both sides of the Songhua River and Wusuli River.Planting one season every year can turn over 10,000+ tons of grain to the country.

When the ship arrived at the advance farm, I saw the leading regiment of the 63rd Infantry Division of the Army stationed here, and also saw the large grain depot built on the farm.

The grain depot is full of unhusked rice. The farm also raises more than 1000 pigs, tens of thousands of chickens, and nearly 2 tons of marinated fish, enough to feed [-] people for three months.

The grain in stock is arranged according to the requirements of military supply, which can greatly save the transportation capacity in the rear.The railway can transport a lot of ammunition and fuel that are in short supply at the front.

The establishment of the Northern Xinjiang Construction Corps is really a great thing for the country and the people.Not only resettled the population, but also provided food and logistics for the army. "

Today's military newspaper reporters have changed jobs from company-level officers, and they are more professional than later generations who can only write stereotypes in the office and go to the dock to take pictures of the waste of "fishing boats".They don't know that the war is about to start, but they are keenly aware of the breath of war.

"Most of the residents on the forward farm are veterans, a small number of locals, in addition to Koreans and Japanese. I even saw Russians working on the farm.

According to the locals, the Sino-Russian border was not clearly demarcated in the past, and the Russian military and police on the opposite side of Heilongjiang often crossed the border to rob and even kill people.

The lame field chief said that in the first two years since Qianjin Farm was established, it had exchanged fire with the Russians hundreds of times.There were regular military personnel on both sides, and they took the opportunity to attack ruthlessly, resulting in many casualties.

In addition, there are more men than women in the area, and marriage problems are extremely difficult.

It is not uncommon for Chinese men to marry Russian women.Just because the Russians are also poor and not good at business.Most of its officials have no concept of management, only looting.

I interviewed several Russian daughter-in-laws.They hated the Russian officials, and when they cursed, it was like we scolded the landlord and the rich, wishing that the other party's whole family would be cremated.

Russian officials are also relentless in oppressing their own people.Such serious internal conflicts may facilitate the governance of northern Xinjiang in the future. "

This report was sent a week ago. Zhou Qingfeng was a little interested, but he was a little disappointed to find the latest one after searching.At this moment, the military reporter who wrote the report has been at the forefront of the battlefield where the bullets are raining.

On the east bank of the Songhua River, less than [-] kilometers away from the Sino-Russian border.When the Chinese army's troops swept north, it was inevitably the first target to be attacked.

Compared with soldiers holding rifles or driving chariots, the weapons of military newspaper reporters are German-made 'Leica' cameras hung around their necks.The person who wrote the report stopped at the side of the road outside the city of Khabarovsk, taking pictures of a super-large 'mobile fortress' that was destroyed.

"The Russians are sick!"

The code name for 'Moving Fortress' is 'Mendeleev'.

It is a heavy machine nearly 11 meters high, 120 meters wide, [-] meters long, with four crawlers, and a weight of nearly [-] tons.It is like moving a cruiser onto land, with a [-]mm cannon on the front of the hull.

The front and side armor of this thing is 150mm and 100mm respectively, and the 50mm tank gun of the 'Grey Wolf' can't be pierced at all.In addition, it can move slowly and cover a large camouflage net. It is not easy for the Air Force to bomb it.

The designer of this thing is Vasily Mendeleev, the son of Mendeleev who created the 'Periodic Table of Elements'.He is a naval engineer, dreaming of building a "mobile fortress that has both offensive and defensive capabilities that no one has ever seen".

Iron Goblin-like things shouldn't be there at all.But after Emperor Pu greatly improved Russia's industrial and economic strength, his military ordered this thing to be built.

This thing was transported by sea from the direction of Temple Street to Khabarovsk the day before the start of the war. It probably wanted to play the role of "one against a hundred".

The National Defense Forces were startled by it when they attacked, especially when they found that their tanks could not penetrate the opponent's front armor, they were a little panicked.The army called the air force to bomb, but the bombers couldn't see the ground camouflage net clearly, so they bombed several times without success.

In the end, it was very simple to solve this thing. It moved and reloaded too slowly, and the artillery was fixed in front of it.The Wehrmacht infantry outflanked on both wings fired hundreds of rounds with '82 Wu'.

"105, 106, 107...Jesus, this thing took 108 HEAT rounds. The lads probably hate this thing."

The reporter from the military newspaper circled around the 'Mendeleev' to count the craters, and then looked in the direction of its gun muzzle - about 400 meters away, a 'Grey Wolf' was hit by its main gun, with a weight of more than ten tons The car body was blown into scattered scrap iron.

This critical attack was too shocking. One can imagine how frightened the defense forces with high morale were when they were advancing furiously at that time.But this is the only result of 'Mendeleev'.

Open the rear door of the 'Moving Fortress'...

There were eight occupants in this troll, all dead.Jets of metal from armor-piercing rounds sliced ​​the corpse into blackened chunks of flesh, which have yet to be cleaned up.

Tsk tsk tsk... The reporter from the military newspaper took a few photos and shook his head with a sigh.

"The funds and materials for building such a crude benzene thing are enough to build more than a dozen conventional tanks, and the combat effectiveness will be several times greater. The Russians' thinking is really incomprehensible."

Next to 'Mendeleev', formations of Russian troops came out of the city, disarmed and surrendered.This is a dissatisfied Russian infantry division, with poor equipment and morale.

The captives wrapped their military coats tightly and walked through the 'Mobile Fortress' dejectedly, with chaotic footsteps.Occasionally someone looked up in the cold wind and sighed again and again when they saw the 'Mendeleev' who had been given high hopes being trampled in a bad way.

Winter is bad for offense, but worse for defense with poor infrastructure.Khabarovsk was too small to sustain a prolonged battle and was taken in less than twelve hours.

Russia in the Far East is similar to a small city without support, and the scale of the city is not as good as Harbin, and it is impossible to become a consumptive 'Stalingrad'.

On December 12, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Chita, Ulan-Ude and other cities were all captured.The more than a dozen divisions of the scattered Russian army caused more trouble to the Chinese army than the wind and snow.

The news collected and edited by frontline military reporters was screened and released by the Ministry of National Defense on the 4th.The European powers were greatly surprised by this. Napoleon also attacked Tsarist Russia, but suffered a disastrous defeat during the long journey.

The blizzard and severe cold were important reasons for the failure of the French army.

But why is it also fighting in winter, but the Chinese are invincible?European people don't understand military affairs, but they read the news in the newspapers, and they all have a high regard for China.

European military strategists have tried their best to study this new topic and find the secret of the Chinese army's victory.They attribute this one-sided advantage to the use of railroads, the concentrated use of forces, efficient logistics, and mobilization.

Military journalists in Khabarovsk see the other side.

When the Russian military quartermaster in charge of the warehouse opened the warehouse, pointed to the wooden boxes brought by sea and shouted: "Look, look, look at what the idiots in St. Petersburg have done?

We are now in winter, but the bureaucrats have shipped in summer clothes.Half of the soldiers are freezing, how can anyone fight?

The troops are equipped with fifty water-cooled heavy machine guns produced by the Tula Arsenal, which are excellent rapid-fire firepower.But the ammunition delivered was Nagant's revolver ammunition.

Both guns are 7.62mm, but the bullets are completely different.

I bet the same problem doesn't happen only in Khabarovsk.As long as the army has better logistics management, you Chinese don't want to break through our defense line so easily.

The quartermasters of the St. Petersburg General Staff are responsible for the failure, and they should all be shot! "

Chapter 44 World War

December 12, Irkutsk, night.

The train marshalling yard on the outskirts of the city was on fire, and the flames ignited by napalm and white phosphorus illuminated the sky, and the heat could be felt hundreds of meters away.

The special train of Zalitz, commander of the Russian Fourth Army, stopped more than ten kilometers outside the city.He got out of the car and stared at the fire in the distance with the staff officers of the group army, both shocked and angry.

Since the start of the war on the 1st, the Russian army in the Far East has melted away like snow grains by the stove.The progress of modern warfare is so fast and the situation is so corrupted that the main force of the Russian army far away in Europe cannot be saved even if they want to.

After the Chinese army took Ulan-Ude and approached Lake Baikal, the Russian army in Irkutsk was forced to blow up the railway around the lake that had only been opened to traffic two years before.Dozens of tunnels and bridges along the way were all destroyed in order to prevent the opponent's rapid westward advance.

But that couldn't stop the Chinese from attacking.

The Russian Fourth Army came to aid from [-] kilometers away, and it took a week just to assemble and set off.But there were only two infantry divisions without heavy equipment that arrived in Irkutsk in this way.

Lieutenant General Zalitz, the commander, couldn't wait any longer. He asked in the telegram that the situation on the front line was stable, so he followed the vanguard.As a result, a fire broke out in the direction of Irkutsk before entering the city.

Could it be that the Chinese came here from the frozen ice of Lake Baikal?

The scouts drove the truck to find out the situation. About three or four hours later, the news on the radio was that the railway marshalling station in Irkutsk was attacked by Chinese bombers during the day, and the oil depot near the station was set on fire.

"Is the city still in our hands?"

"Still, the three garrison infantry divisions are basically complete, but the two Cossack cavalry divisions are not in good condition."

By the next morning, Lieutenant General Zalitz finally arrived at the front line and saw the burned ruins of the railway marshalling yard.

The rails melted under the thermite bomb, many large pits appeared in the roadbed, the platform building was completely collapsed, and more than half of the station personnel were killed or injured.

Without this important railway organization, it will be difficult for trains to turn around and reorganize, and the railway capacity will inevitably drop significantly.

But that's not the worst.

The lieutenant general drove to the direction of Lake Baikal, and saw two Cossack cavalry divisions in 'bad condition' on the shore of the lake-about 1 cavalrymen and their horses fell on the lake, their bodies turned black and frozen into piles ice sculpture.

"The two cavalry divisions were wiped out? Who commanded them? This is a massacre, and it is irresponsible for the lives of soldiers." Lieutenant General Zalitz was furious, and ordered the division commanders who commanded the two cavalry divisions to come to see him immediately.

Major General Ivanov, who was guarding Irkutsk, pointed to the direction of the ice, and whispered expressionlessly: "Major General Uman, who commands the Kuban Cossack Army, is inside, along with six cavalry regiments on the ice. "

"Why did you suffer such a heavy loss?" Lieutenant General Zalitz is a veteran who fought in the Russo-Japanese War, calm and down-to-earth.The Russian General Staff asked him to command the war in the Far East, indicating that he intended to take a defensive position.

But no matter how you defend, you need enough soldiers, and you can only defend if you can attack.Cossack cavalry who are good at field assaults will be sharp daggers, looking for opportunities to bleed their opponents during defense.

Although the Cossacks are rebellious and ruthless, they have no sympathy for the people at the bottom.But the Tsarist Russian military's love for the Cossack cavalry is from the heart.

When fighting, the Cossack cavalry often marched in eight men and eight riders, wearing a tall hat with curly hair on their heads, a black cloak, a rifle slung across their shoulders, and a saber hanging from their waists, marching forward in dust and gunpowder smoke.

Whenever they launched an attack on the battlefield, tens of thousands of horses galloped freely, and tens of thousands of sabers waved staggeredly.The sound of hooves is like thunder, the voice is like drums, and the scene is extremely shocking. It is the most heroic scene in the history of cavalry warfare.

Now two elite cavalry divisions, tens of thousands of brave Cossacks fell meaninglessly on the ice of Lake Baikal.Lieutenant General Zalits was so angry that it was tantamount to breaking his arm.

Major General Ivanov sighed: "After we blew up the railway around the lake, the Chinese tried to lay tracks from the lake to kill them. After the Cossack scouts found out, Major General Uman decided to take advantage of the bad weather and the opponent's air force could not take off. Launch an assault .

But this is actually a temptation of the Chinese, and even more of a trap.The track-laying sappers were the bait, and taking advantage of our eagerness to win back a victory, we lured two cavalry divisions out for an ambush.

The track-laying engineers seemed to be far away from the shore and unprepared, but in fact they were ambushing at least [-] heavy machine guns at the construction site on the open ice.The Chinese army on the shore also deployed more than [-] heavy artillery pieces, including large-caliber train guns. "

Hearing this description, Lieutenant General Zalitz's eyes turned black and he almost fainted.He could imagine the scene of tens of thousands of cavalry being harvested by rapid-fire heavy machine guns on the unobstructed ice.

Although the ice is thick enough to carry railroads and trains, it will crack under the blow of heavy artillery.Even if the Cossack cavalry rushed to the death, the faster they rushed, the faster they died, and they couldn't make it through.

With the cold weather and snow and ice at your fingertips, the heavy machine guns of the Chinese army can shoot without limit.Bullets like splashing water poured on the Cossack cavalry ranks, and the steel and iron bones couldn't stop them.

"How can you be so stupid? St. Petersburg has also equipped you with a large number of heavy machine guns and light artillery. Don't you know that cavalry can't forcefully charge the machine gun positions?"

Lieutenant General Zalitz felt that this was a matter of common sense.

"We really didn't expect the Chinese army to have so many machine guns." Major General Ivanov was also very annoyed, "It's just that they are at most similar to us."

In the original history, when World War I started, the number of heavy machine guns in the Russian army was around [-].Now that the time is lagging behind, and with the strengthening of Emperor Pu, the firepower of the Russian army has increased by more than ten times, and it is full of confidence.

But the firepower came up, but the brains of the Russian commander didn't come up.Especially the Cossacks who "ignorance is strength" are the most. These cavalrymen have not been baptized in low-intensity wars, and their understanding of "brave and good at fighting" is still limited to saber strikes.

Fight bullets recklessly with flesh and blood, it's strange if you don't die.

Qi returns to Qi, the line of defense still has to be defended.

After Lieutenant General Zalitz took over the command, he demanded to strictly arrest Chinese spies, deploy anti-aircraft artillery fire, closely investigate opponents, and hoard ammunition and equipment, posing a posture of "building an iron wall and waiting for the enemy to hit the head".

But in late December, in addition to conducting small-scale skirmishes, the Chinese army sent the air force to bomb the Russian railway line.Either take off 'Early Warning-1' to prevent Maozi bombers from bombing their own railway lines.

It is indeed difficult to carry out large-scale field operations in the cold winter, and China and Russia are facing each other across Lake Baikal.

The Chinese side only stormed for a few days after the start of the war, and then seemed to sit firmly on the Diaoyutai, not in a hurry, and slowly stockpiled supplies and started construction.set up

Until January 1918, a Cossack cavalry who fled back from Mongolia brought back definite news-China was building a "wartime railway" from Ulan-Ude to Ulan Bator.

This is bad news for the Russian army!

'Wartime railway' is also called 'urgent railway'. When laying, they don't care much about the construction of the roadbed, and lay the track simply by leveling the ground.The trains passing through it cannot be overloaded, the speed cannot be too high, and they are easy to break. The only advantage is that they can be repaired quickly.

The track distance between the two 'Wu' is more than 500 kilometers, and the route is relatively flat, without the barriers of mountains and rivers.With professional engineers and tens of thousands of Russian captives, the 'wartime railway' can be repaired in half a year.

Although the "wartime railway" is bad in various ways, it is a railway at any rate, and its transport capacity is far stronger than that of animal power or ordinary trucks, and its cost is also lower.If it is really necessary to build the two "Ukraine" railways, China will form a closed-loop transportation line on the front line, and its logistics advantages will greatly increase.

Only with logistics can we supply more troops, exert stronger firepower, and persist in a longer war.

Obviously, China does not intend to end the dispute with Russia within a year or two, and it may drag on for five or six years like the Sino-Japanese War.

Lieutenant General Zalitz became anxious.