The expeditionary force began to dominate Southeast Asia by recruiting defeated soldiers

On August 15, inside the Fuso Southern Army Headquarters in Seongju.

The commander of the Southern Army, Terauchi Hisaichi, was sitting in front of a large desk with a heavy cloud on his face.

Several secret reports were scattered on the table of the luxurious desk in front of him, each from a different intelligence department. However, the conclusions of these reports were contradictory, making him unable to make a decision.

Although many people believe that the difficulty of intelligence work lies in the fact that there is too little intelligence that can be collected and it is difficult to obtain information.

But Terauchi Juichi knew that the real difficulty in intelligence work was how to sort out the truth from mountains of false "noise" or outdated information.

History has proven this countless times - whether it was "Operation Barbarossa" or "Pearl Harbor Raid", in fact, the intelligence departments of the Russians and the White Eagles had received a lot of intelligence in advance to remind them that such a raid was about to happen.

So why do these raids still happen so smoothly?

It’s not that these intelligence officials were so dumb that they couldn’t see the intelligence on their faces, but because they also received a large amount of “reassuring” intelligence telling them that “everything is normal and these raids will not happen.”

Now the Southern Army Commander Terauchi Hisaichi is in the same predicament.

He glanced at the four reports in front of him. Each one was convincing, yet contradictory. But in his opinion, each of the four reports made sense.

One of the reports pointed out that the newly modified Type 97 medium tank was invincible and was unbeatable against light tanks such as the T-26 and M3 Stuart on the battlefields of Southeast Asia and Qianguo.

The battle report data attached to the report shows that these Type 97 modified tanks achieved a huge advantage in terms of casualties in armored combat. (Those who know the Japanese battle report data will understand)

The report also strongly recommended that the headquarters speed up the mass production of the Type 97 modified version.

Another report pointed out that the Type 97 modified tank had weak armor and firepower when facing the mysterious "Guerrilla Independence Regiment" in Pegu, and was completely defeated in the armor-piercing and shell-to-shell confrontation. It was an absolute failure of design.

The report stated that this tank was so bad that it even damaged the national prestige, and strongly demanded that the headquarters fire the traitorous designers of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, completely abandon the Type 97 Kai, and immediately start the design work of a new main battle tank.

The report also included a list of technical indicators that the front-line mecha troops believed the "new" tanks should have.

"The frontal armor should be 80mm, preferably welded rather than riveted? The main gun caliber should be no less than 70mm, with an armor-piercing capability of no less than 70mm at a distance of one kilometer? The maximum off-road speed should be no less than 35km/h?"

Terauchi Hisaichi looked at the technical indicators on the paper in his hand, which seemed like a fairy tale, frowned slightly and sneered.

He knew very well that with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' current technological level, even if he threatened to shoot all the people in Mitsubishi, they would not be able to immediately build such a powerful tank.

Terauchi was lost in thought, rubbing his hands lightly on the table.

As a senior military officer, he knew that time and resource constraints were the biggest bottlenecks in war.

Both reports appear to have merit, but overly demanding requirements for new weapons will only make the situation worse.

Faced with this dilemma, he decided to make a compromise on the report: "It is recommended that Mitsubishi replace the Type 97 Kai with a new engine and main gun, thicken the frontal armor to 50mm, and start mass production as soon as possible based on the existing production line." (This data is the design of the Type 1 medium-sized battleship with a new gun)

This seemingly mild decision not only avoided directly denying the existing tanks, but also gave Mitsubishi a certain buffer time to improve the design.

But Terauchi Hisaichi knew very well that this was just a temporary expedient.

Whether in terms of industrial level or resource endowment, Fuso has a huge gap compared with the three Allied powers, which cannot be reversed by one or two reports or technological improvements.

As the son of an earl and one of the main culprits who started the war, Terauchi Hisaichi could already vaguely sense the bleak future.

A series of wars have certainly eased the dissatisfaction of the radical young people of the "Imperial Faction", but facing the huge power of Western countries, can he really win in the end?

Putting his worries aside, Terauchi Juichi turned his attention to the other two reports on the table.

The two documents contain completely different views, but both concern the future strategic direction of the Southern Army.

He picked up the first report first and quickly scanned the paper.

The report believes that after sweeping across Southeast Asia, the Allies have lost the ability to effectively counterattack the Fuso army.

The Fuso Navy has firmly controlled the sea transportation lines in the South Seas, and sporadic resistance activities can be completely dealt with by local puppet troops and newly formed garrison brigades and garrison regiments.

This is a strategy that advocates "holding on", believing that the Southern Army should switch to a defensive position and withdraw its main divisions back to the mainland or the Qian Kingdom mainland battlefield.

The report further recommends that, in conjunction with this, the army should be reorganized, demobilized and other reform measures should be implemented to reduce the size of the army, while giving priority to the development of mobile weapons such as tanks and trucks to improve the army's mobility and modernization.

Terauchi Hisaichi put down the report and pondered silently.

The suggestion to reduce troop strength and concentrate resources on innovating military equipment seems reasonable.

However, due to the devil's innate blind gambler mentality of "I want to win, win, win big", he himself is actually not optimistic about this proposal.

Due to the short-sightedness of the Japanese upper echelons, Fuso did not even have an overall war plan at that time.

It's completely a "fight wherever you can" mentality.

Therefore, as the commander of the Southern Army, Terauchi Hisaichi himself was of course opposed to holding on.

He turned to the second report.

This document takes a completely opposite view, advocating an offensive strategy.

It was suggested that the Southern Army should immediately gather its forces and launch a full-scale attack on Sindhu to seize the gold and food there and completely destroy John's country's war potential.

The report even clearly pointed out that elite divisions, tank units and flying units should be transferred to Pegu to first eliminate the "guerrilla independent group" in the mountainous area that had caused a lot of trouble, and then split the troops into two groups.

One route attacked the rear of the Qian Kingdom from western Yunnan and approached the mountain city; the other route advanced westward to the Sindhu Plain and completely conquered Sindhu.

"Attack and defense, this is truly the eternal proposition of war..."

Terauchi Juichi rubbed his temples.

Although he was more optimistic about the second report, the end of the first report document clearly stated the authors of the report - several lieutenant generals and major generals, all of whom were well-known figures in the military.

"No one wants to offend these people..."

He sighed softly, grabbed a pen and wrote down his suggestion in the blank space - a compromise but offensive plan.

Terauchi Hisaichi came to power entirely because he had resolved some "minor conflicts" between the "Imperial Way Faction" and the "Control Faction", so he proposed to withdraw the Konoe, 2nd, 4th, and 5th Divisions from Southeast Asia back to the mainland to ease domestic tensions.

(Because White Eagle soon launched the Battle of Guadalcanal, this withdrawal was not implemented. Instead, a large number of divisions were strengthened and sent to the Pacific later.)

Avoid the recurrence of "small conflicts", while strengthening the army's strength at home and preventing the navy from overthrowing the government by force.

But at the same time, he also demanded that the 15th Army maintain its presence in Pegu to threaten the rear of the John people and the Qian Kingdom.

"For the upcoming Sindhu campaign, dispatch more tanks and infantry from the tank regiment to Pegu. By the way, the first phase of the campaign should be to completely crush the Zerglings in the Pegu Mountains."

As Terauchi Hisaichi muttered to himself, an attack against Zhang Chi's Independent Regiment was about to begin.