Bright Sword: Construction starts from southeastern Shanxi

After the speech, Zeng Jiwen and others began to communicate with everyone.

At this time, a young man below raised his hand excitedly.

After seeing this, Zeng Jiwen asked him to sit down and talk.

The man calmed down and asked expectantly, "Commander, our ability to recapture southeastern Shanxi this time means we can drive the Japanese out soon."

After listening to this, Zeng Jiwen saw that everyone was looking at him expectantly. He thought for a moment before starting to speak to everyone.

"I think the question this comrade just asked is also a question shared by many comrades present here."

"Since the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, we have suffered continuous defeats on the front lines. Only since the first half of this year have we seen some improvement. We have inflicted heavy losses on the Japanese troops in both North and Central China."

"But, comrades, the road to resistance is still long and arduous, and we have made great sacrifices."

Afterwards, Zeng Jiwen began to explain the current situation and background to everyone, and at the same time called on everyone to actively participate in construction and do their part to fight against the invaders.

After Zeng Jiwen and others communicated with everyone present, they began to arrange everyone.

The delegation included approximately 300 political cadres, who would be responsible for the construction of grassroots government units in the border region. Furthermore, over 200 engineers of various types, who came to support the project, would be deployed to various factories to provide guidance on their construction.

Considering the current lack of anti-aircraft weapons, the most urgent task is to produce a batch of anti-aircraft machine guns (does anyone have any recommendations on how to reasonably produce them?).

When selecting a site for the factory, we considered that even if we could manufacture anti-aircraft weapons, the current anti-aircraft machine guns would fail nine out of ten times.

Once the Japanese army recovers its strength after the new year, if Japanese planes conduct reconnaissance above the base every day, the newly built factory will soon be targeted by Japanese bombers.

Zeng Jiwen then thought of the Third Front construction in the past, and immediately came up with an idea. He decided to look for hidden natural caves in the Taihang Mountains and dig deep and expand them.

All kinds of production equipment and processing factories can be placed in these places. It doesn't matter if they are small in scale. The vast area in Taihang Mountains is fully sufficient for the construction of the entire industrial system of the Eighth Route Army.

Some unimportant light industrial factories can be placed in other places.

So Zeng Jiwen immediately told Zhou Shi and others about his idea. After hearing Zeng Jiwen's idea, everyone also felt that this was a way to defend against Japanese aircraft at present.

At the same time, it can also hide the industrial strength of the Eighth Route Army.

They acted immediately, so Zeng Jiwen and others began to issue orders to the local troops in the Taihang Mountains, starting a vigorous construction campaign.

On the morning of the 7th, Zeng Jiwen took He Ping and other engineers to the Taihang Army Factory in Songjiazhuang.

After arriving at the military factory that afternoon, Liu Guifu excitedly greeted everyone. The over one hundred engineers who had come to support the military factory had finally made up for the factory's current shortage of personnel.

Moreover, since a large number of machine gun barrels and 82mm mortar barrels were brought on this trip, it would not take long to make up for the heavy weapons firepower of the regiments below.

At the same time, based on the large number of machine tools previously seized, the production lines of various weapons were transformed.

As more people joined in, the entire military factory soon became lively.

Based on the early exploration in southeastern Shanxi and other places, many resource minerals have been detected. With the arrival and installation of machines, many of them can already provide raw materials for military factories.

Although these machines and equipment for collecting various mineral resources are small in scale and the amount collected is also small, they are sufficient for the current consumption of the Eighth Route Army.