Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry

#213 - Conspiracy

As the industrial scale of the border region continued to expand, the production capacity of automobiles, guns, and factory equipment all achieved multiple increases, and the previously adequate resources of the border region began to feel strained.

If Ren Zhong hadn't started the mining of mineral resources in the Ik Zhao League in advance, the supply of raw materials would have been somewhat unable to keep up with this wave of large-scale industrial expansion.

Even so, Ren Zhong felt that the current resource structure was quite unhealthy. Although Sai Bei Jiu Yuan had been opened up and a huge resource reserve had been found in Baiyun Ebo, building a large-scale mining base there could not be completed in the short term.

Moreover, Sai Bei is bitterly cold and sparsely populated, mostly nomadic people. Now, transferring people from the border area to the north for construction, due to the war, mobilizing hundreds or even thousands of people is not a problem, but realizing a large industrial base with tens of thousands of people is simply unrealistic at present.

This means that most of the labor force still relies on the Sui Meng Autonomous Army and the Sai Bei Military Region to work hard to build mines and factories outside the Great Wall.

However, agricultural production and food supply in Jiu Yuan itself still have serious problems. Now, during the spring plowing season, the border region has to send two lightly armed Type B regiments to farm!

After all, Sai Bei is remote, and the military strength is already very tight for the border region. Sooner or later, farmers and workers will have to be sent to take over.

When Ren Zhong discussed this matter with Staff Officer Ye, they both felt very棘手 (棘手 - jí shǒu - thorny; troublesome).

"Staff Officer Ye, I think the development of Sai Bei will be difficult to form a scale that supports our border region's industry in the short term." Ren Zhong said to Staff Officer Ye after examining the map for a long time and marking several places on it.

"What is the strength of the troops in these places now? If not, let's completely take down the Lvliang Mountains, Wutai Mountains, and Zhongtiao Mountains!"

"Old Brother Ren, this step is a bit big." Staff Officer Ye gasped when he saw that Ren Zhong had marked nearly half of Jin Province.

"There's no way, our resources can only rely on ourselves. According to our organization's investigation, 90% of the iron ore reserves in Jin Province are distributed in the Wutai Mountain area and Lvliang Mountain area, 95% of the copper ore is concentrated in the Zhongtiao Mountain area, and 75% of the bauxite is distributed in Lvliang and Xinzhou." Ren Zhong said to Staff Officer Ye, "In the past, we had no way to completely control these areas. Now, after reorganization, the strength of the troops has increased rapidly. For these mountainous areas that are temporarily of little value to the little devils, we should have the opportunity to take them all down. After all, after we took Luzhou, the little devils didn't have much reaction."

Ren Zhong knew more about the overall dynamics of the little devils than Staff Officer Ye, and knew that due to the naval losses, the little devils in the South Pacific had to invest more army allied forces to seize the islands.

Although this world has undergone some changes compared to the original historical time and space, the overall strategic thinking of the enemy and us has not changed.

The huge historical inertia made the little devils' eyes and resources desperately invest in the South Pacific.

After their combined fleet suffered heavy losses, the costly shipbuilding operations never stopped, and the limited resources were put on the combined fleet as a bet.

Because the little devils' headquarters knew that if the South Pacific was lost, they could only wait to die!

A small oil field with an annual output of only more than 10,000 tons (output before General Shi's assistance with 10 sets of oil extraction equipment), although somewhat valuable, considering that to take the border region, at least five or six field divisions and more than half of the North China Air Force would have to be dispatched based on the current strength of both sides. For the current North China little devils, it is completely impossible to deploy this force.

It is only possible to transfer troops from the Kwantung Army, but the mobilization of a huge force of nearly 100,000 people just for an oil field of more than 10,000 tons would be too disrespectful to the consumption of the troops.

Now that they have taken the British territory of Burma and oil fields such as Sumatra, the little devils can obtain 9 million tons of crude oil in the South Pacific every year. In contrast, the oil field in the border region is almost negligible. The same five divisions can achieve much better results in the South Pacific than in this poor mountainous area of the border region.

This is also the purpose of Ren Zhong controlling the oil extraction rhythm in the border region. More than 10,000 tons is enough for the border region, which only had more than 1,000 vehicles at the time. According to the current level of refining technology, these 15,000 tons can extract more than 2,500 tons of gasoline and more than 6,000 tons of diesel.

A car runs around the clock, and at most runs 100,000 kilometers a year. Taking the old-fashioned border region mainstays, the Red Star Dali Wang and the Victory I, one is a 1.1-liter diesel engine and the other is a 1.8-liter diesel engine. The comprehensive fuel consumption per 100 kilometers is about 20 liters. 100,000 kilometers is basically a little over 1.6 tons and less than 1.7 tons of diesel consumption. The vehicle part is enough.

The excess oil is also used in a large number of diesel rotary tillers, which brought the agricultural mechanization process of the border region forward. Otherwise, the 2 million mu of intensive and high-yield fields would consume a lot of labor. According to the border region's population of more than 1.4 million, most of the labor force would have to be invested in it.

"Old Brother Ren, has your organization ever analyzed whether our large-scale attack on the little devils in Jin Province at this time will cause changes in the entire North China region, leading to a full-scale attack on our Eighth Route Army by the North China Front Army or even the Kwantung Army?" Staff Officer Ye asked Ren Zhong with a solemn expression.

This was no laughing matter.

The Eighth Route Army's situation had just begun to improve slightly. The border region and the Taihang and Saiwai (Great Wall) base areas were not too short on grain, weapons, and ammunition. The Jin-Cha-Ji (Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei) and Ji-Lu-Yu (Hebei-Shandong-Henan), and E-Wan-Su (Hubei-Anhui-Jiangsu) base areas were still struggling, but they were better off than in history, with qualitative changes in the level of self-sufficiency and supply of weapons and ammunition.

However, compared to the strength of the Japanese devils, it was still not enough.

The border region was doing the best, but even with all its resources, it had only managed to organize 8 Class A regiments, 16 Class B regiments, and 24 Class C regiments. Relatively speaking, there were no local guerrilla units in the border region. The troop strength was basically just over 80,000 people. After all, the entire border region only had a population of just over 1.5 million. If it weren't for the rotary tillers taking up the slack, they wouldn't have been able to spare so many people from production.

Moreover, the factories were also absorbing labor very quickly. Now the industrial workers exceeded 100,000, with the base factories near the Dawn Research Institute accounting for almost 20,000!

This was also the reason why Ren Zhong strongly demanded an expansion. In the past, they were poor and lacked grain, and they disliked the large population because they couldn't support it. But now, with 2 million mu of base grain as support, the border region had no worries.

It was just that the population couldn't grow as quickly as crops.

The Taihang region reorganized 2 Class A regiments, 5 Class B regiments, and 15 Class C regiments. The Taiyue Military Region reorganized 5 Class A regiments, of which Li Yunlong's military sub-district accounted for 1 Class A regiment quota (Independent Regiment, New First Regiment, New Second Regiment, 771st Regiment, and 772nd Regiment) and two Class B regiments (New Third Regiment and New Fourth Regiment). The Taiyue Military Region had a total of 9 Class B regiments and 13 Class C regiments.

Due to the occupation of Luzhou, a relatively wealthy area, there were more than 1 million more people. The population of the two military regions connected together reached more than 6 million. In addition, thanks to Ren Zhong's resource reorganization plan, the production capacity of the five major ordnance bases doubled, and the strength of the Taihang and Taiyue Military Regions also expanded rapidly.

Because they bordered more of the Japanese-occupied areas, there were also more than 100,000 independent guerrilla detachments and district squads in the guerrilla areas who were not detached from production. Compared to the border region, the Taihang and Taiyue Military Regions had the best potential.

After the reorganization in northwestern Shanxi, relying on the border region's weapons supply, they reorganized 2 Class A regiments, 7 Class B regiments, and 11 Class C regiments, connecting northwestern Shanxi with the border region, and life was also good.

The Jin-Cha-Ji region was not doing so well. After a major mopping-up operation by the Japanese devils in 1942, the base area shrank a lot. After the reorganization, they pulled out 5 Class B regiments. The remaining troops could basically only be reorganized into Class C regiments according to Ren Zhong's standards. The old Eighth Regiment of the Central Hebei Military Region was eventually reorganized into a Class C regiment. The entire military region reorganized a total of 42 Class C regiments, but the combat effectiveness of the main force after the reorganization had made great progress.

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The original supplementary regiments and backbone regiments, which were second-line main force units with insufficient strength, were directly assigned as local guerrilla detachments this time and were not detached from production for the time being.

In this way, in North China, there were 17 Class A regiments, 42 Class B regiments, and 105 Class C regiments directly under command, truly possessing more than one hundred regiments of troops detached from production. Although the Class A and B main force regiments with heavy weapons were less than 70, the combat effectiveness was at least several times higher than last year!

Of course, compared to the more than 200,000 field main force troops of the North China Front Army, and the Japanese devils who also had almost the same number of puppet troops, this strength was not enough to confront them head-on. It was just that the situation in the original timeline, where the Japanese devils casually dispersed one or two brigades as the main force into regiments, leading thousands of puppet troops to carry out a net-like sweep deep into the base areas, no longer existed.

Even in the Jin-Cha-Ji, the relatively weak base area, with the popularization of mortars, the ability to annihilate Japanese devil battalions or even regiments had increased dramatically. The Japanese devils did not dare to go deep into the base areas without assembling into brigade-level heavy troops.

In this way, the Japanese devils' mopping-up effect became much worse. The sweeping routes were full of loopholes, allowing our main force regiments to move around, with almost no chance of catching our main force.

It was just that the overall property and grain losses brought about by the Japanese devils' mopping-up operations were difficult to avoid.

Therefore, the Japanese devils' mopping-up operations in Jin-Cha-Ji were generally carried out during the winter wheat harvest and autumn wheat harvest, making the base area very nervous about the rush harvest work.

Of course, these were all digressions. What Staff Officer Ye wanted to know was whether the Japanese devils' North China Front Army would launch a full-scale retaliatory attack if the three major mountain areas and nearby cities designated by Ren Zhong were captured.

This was a very crucial question. To attack and take these places, the Eighth Route Army's main force troops would inevitably be exposed. In this way, for the Japanese devils, the Eighth Route Army would no longer be just a potential threat, but would become their real and most powerful opponent.

Although it was impossible for the Japanese devils' North China Front Army to concentrate their main force, it must be known that there were still 700,000 Kwantung Army troops behind them who had not moved. If the Japanese devils really felt that the Eighth Route Army was a serious hidden danger that needed to be eliminated from a strategic height, it would be terrible for the Japanese devils to concentrate their forces.

After all, the current Japanese devils were still at their peak, and their overall strength was simply not comparable to that of the Eighth Route Army.

The so-called 'a single hair can move the whole body' depends on whether it is worth moving.

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