Bright Sword: Construction starts from southeastern Shanxi

Afterwards, Zeng Jiwen invited the two to join the Eighth Route Army to guide the manufacturing and construction of weapons and equipment for the military factory that was about to be established in the base. Liu Guifu already agreed with the policies of our party, so he readily agreed. Zhang Kai was also grateful to Zeng Jiwen and others for saving his life, so he immediately agreed.

At the same time, Liu Guifu volunteered to persuade the workers and engineers who had been rescued before to do their part in the war of resistance, which made Zeng Jiwen very grateful.

In the following days, Zeng Jiwen took Liu Guifu and his team to travel around the Taihang Mountains where eastern Shanxi and western Hebei meet, looking for locations suitable for building factories.

After checking for a few days, Zeng Jiwen and his team arrived near Songjiazhuang Town.

Looking at the nearby terrain, I suddenly felt that this was a perfect place to hide a military industrial base.

This area is surrounded by mountains on all sides, with the Taihang Mountains to the east and the Yunmeng Mountains to the west. Several important transportation routes pass through these mountains, making the pass fully capable of withstanding heavy Japanese attacks. Furthermore, due to the surrounding rugged mountains, many natural caves have formed in the mountain streams, providing great space and providing effective shelter from Japanese aircraft reconnaissance and bombing.

At the same time, with the rivers flowing between the mountains on the north and south sides, it is entirely possible to build hydroelectric power stations to provide some electricity for the factories. At the same time, although coal in the southeast is not as easy to mine as elsewhere, there are also a large number of coal mines. At the same time, the entire Taihang Mountain area has a large amount of iron ore, copper, tungsten and other important strategic resources, which can fully meet the current consumption of the Eighth Route Army.

After discussing with Liu Guifu and others, they decided to choose the address in the mountains near Songjiazhuang Town, so they returned and started sending people to carry out the construction work of the military factory.

After returning to the brigade headquarters, Zeng Jiwen considered that once the military factory was built, the demand for raw materials would definitely be extremely huge. Coal, steel, saltpeter, sulfur, etc. could be manufactured by themselves using the vast resources of Taihang Mountains, but fuel would require support from home, and the Japanese army's reserve fuel would be seized. At the same time, a large amount of industrial equipment would be needed to mine raw materials.

So, he sent a secret telegram to his home, starting to awaken Zeng Jiwen's backup plan that he had started preparing in the west and north in the previous years. While the Japanese army had not yet torn its face with the West, various mining, steelmaking and other processing equipment were shipped to the base in batches through shell companies.

At the same time, he began to call back some of the engineers and military trainees who had been sent to the west and north to study to support the base.

Throughout February, the focus of the Chinese battlefield was on Xuzhou. Since the Japanese army occupied Nanjing in December last year, in order to expand the results of the war, the Japanese army in North China and the Japanese army in Central China intended to attack Xuzhou from the north and south lines of the Jinpu Railway in order to defeat the main force of the Chinese army and force the National Government to surrender.

However, there were differences among the Japanese high-level officials on the plan to attack Xuzhou. The non-expansion faction believed that the occupied areas should be consolidated, while the North China Front Army actively advocated attacking Xuzhou. Ultimately, under the active advocacy of the North China Front Army, it was decided to attack Xuzhou.

China and Japan launched the massive Battle of Xuzhou in January, and all eyes were on the Xuzhou battlefield.

In Jin, except for the southeastern part of Jin, the rest of the area was also engulfed in war. In order to cooperate with the Battle of Xuzhou, the Second War Zone followed the order of the Military Commission and formulated a plan to counterattack Taiyuan, but the result was somewhat unsatisfactory.

However, in the battle with the Japanese army, Commander He in the north successfully smashed the Japanese army's first siege of northwestern Shanxi. Compared with the original time and space, the results of this battle were huge. A total of more than 4000 enemies were killed, more than 1500 guns, 43 vehicles, and more than 500 mules and horses were seized, and seven county towns including Ningwu, Shenchi, Wuzhai, Kelan, Baode, Hequ, and Pianguan were recovered, defending and consolidating the anti-Japanese base in northwestern Shanxi.