In the last century, our planet suffered two world wars, the First World War had the Battle of Verdun, known as the "meat grinder", and the wider and larger World War II had more brutal battles, such as the Defense of Stalingrad, the Normandy Landings, and the Battle of Songhu in China.
The fierce Battle of Songhu
The Battle of Songhu began on August 13, 1937, and a battle was fought from a hot summer to an early winter. In the more than three months, China and Japan have invested a million troops, and the number of casualties has exceeded 300,000, which can be described as extremely tragic.
This campaign was the first large-scale battle between China and Japan after the Lugou Bridge Incident, and it was also the largest battle in the history of China's War of Resistance. At that time, the Japanese were arrogant and aggressive, and in the face of the numerical superiority of the nationalist army, they recklessly increased their troops, intending to use the victory of the first battle to seriously frustrate the confidence of their opponents.
However, things did not develop exactly as planned by the Japanese invaders. Although they eventually took the fortress of Shanghai, as a small country, they also paid the price of 40,000 troops, and the march-long battle also provoked the resistance of people across China against the Japanese invaders. If the Lugou Bridge Incident was a sign of all-round resistance against Japan, then the Battle of Songhu was the real beginning of the all-round anti-Japanese resistance.
Therefore, from this point of view, the Battle of Songhu, whether for the Chinese side or the Japanese side, is a significant battle, the Japanese army would rather lose tens of thousands of troops than pull down the Shanghai fortress that occupies the airport, railway and national economy, especially the Chinese side. However, in this tug-of-war, there was a Japanese general who opposed the increase in troops, and seemed to want to hand over the victory to others, but in fact, his intentions were even more vicious.
Radical or conservative?
This Japanese general was Ishihara Guan'er, and in the early days of the Battle of Songhu, he proposed not to increase troops to the Shanghai battlefield. The reason for this is neither because he is a good officer with a humanistic spirit, nor because he is ashamed of the fact that his country's army will suffer defeat. His ambitions were even greater than those advocating an increase.
At that time, Japan was mainly divided into two factions in its China policy, one was radical and the other was conservative. The radicals, as the name suggests, are attempts to use violence to force the Chinese government to surrender in a short period of time. On the other hand, the conservatives, on the premise of invading China, control the war in the localization of the region and do not expand the overall war.
One of these two ideas is that we can understand that since the Meiji Restoration, Japan has been completely Westernized, and even its title has been changed to "Oriental", with the intention of breaking away from Asia and entering Europe. The strength of the country brought about by the study of advanced culture has also inflated the ambitions of the island country of Japan, which is located in a remote corner, and after invading and occupying Korea, it has begun to covet us, which are rich in vast resources.
Moreover, at the imperial council before the launch of the war of aggression against China, the radical faction that was the main fighter also boasted to the emperor that Japan could invade and occupy the land of Shenzhou within a month, and even the prince of the imperial family did not believe it, so he changed it to three months.
From this point of view, the main war faction is really full of confidence in itself, so it recklessly increased its troops in the face of the stalemate that the Japanese army could not win in the Battle of Songhu. In response, several quarrels broke out between the conservative Ishihara Wan'er and the radical Japanese general Hideki Tojo, and Ishihara Wan'er even reprimanded him for having only one superior soldier's strategic consciousness.
However, Ishihara's conservatives eventually lost their voice. The Japanese army had been overwhelmed by the previous victories in East Asia, killed red eyes on the battlefield, and the bloodthirsty nature prompted them to throw themselves into the battlefield one after another, creating the fierce Battle of Songhu.
Smiling tiger, the most terrible
So, what is is Ishihara Guan'er doing not advocate the expansion of the war in China? And why it is rated as more ambitious than the "radicals", it has to be said slowly.
First of all, the world situation at that time was that China's three northeastern provinces had fallen, and the bordering Korea had become a Japanese colony. Throughout the East, the enemies that Japan had to face were the Red Army and we, China. Compared with our country, which has just broken away from feudal society, the Soviet Union is obviously a more powerful enemy.
Moreover, although China at that time nominally had a national government in charge, in fact, the northeast fell, warlords were divided, and the whole country was actually quite loose. Moreover, because the development of modern science and technology is relatively slow, some areas can only rely on foot to increase troops, and their combat capabilities are limited.
Therefore, a plan emerged in the minds of conservatives such as Ishihara Guan'er. Previously, they had already tasted the sweetness of the vast resources of the three northeastern provinces, and then they wanted to take advantage of China's rich resources and use China as their base and warehouse. While holding the existing three eastern provinces, they encroached on the remaining areas of China.
In this way, the consequences are terrible. The warlords who divide the various places must give priority to protecting their own acres and three-quarters of land, and will not rush to send troops to areas where local wars have emerged. And this move is to put a long line to catch big fish, through a series of small actions to avoid the eyes of the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States and other major powers, and let China fall step by step, until China becomes a japanese bag, Japan then swings its sword north and fights the Soviet Union.
However, the fierce struggle at the Battle of Songhu completely destroyed the Japanese plan. The warlords who divided the territory put aside their former enmity and began to cooperate, China from the government down to the civilian population also began to actively resist Japan, the beginning of guerrilla warfare and war of attrition, so that the small country of Japan was unable to do so, and the arrogant promise of "occupying China in three months" was also in vain.
End
As the saying goes, "arrogant soldiers must lose", and Japan has gone far beyond pride and become crazy. After the Pearl Harbor incident, the Pacific War began, and the slaps from the world's top two powers crackled like raindrops on their faces, not knowing whether they had a clear understanding of their world status.
Finally, on August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered. Later, the verdict of justice also fell on this group of crazy invaders, and Hideki Tojo, who had argued with Ishihara Guan'er several times, walked to the gallows in fear.
As for Ishihara, although he was exonerated from death because of his later expulsion from japanese military power, he also died of illness exactly four years after Japan's surrender, and wrote to MacArthur before his death, claiming that he loved peace. What a great irony.