After the Battle of Jiangqiao, under the soft and hard hands of the Japanese army, the "resistance general" Ma Zhanshan was unexpectedly shaken. Now Harbin (Harbin) has become the "last stop" for Japan to reach in Manchuria.
Attacking Qiqihar is, in a sense, a test of the Soviet Union to see if the other side will react. The Soviet Reaction was to reaffirm to Japan its policy of non-intervention, as if to encourage the Japanese: Concentrate on it, and I will never disturb you.
The Kwantung Army was originally a bunch of hob meat, and the situation in front of them made them even more impatient--at home, from the Minister of Land to the Chief of Staff (it should be the Deputy Chief of Staff, because the Prince's Chief of Staff was not very responsible) were supporters of the war, and abroad, the Soviets were knowingly hiding aside, and with Tanaka Takayoshi and Kawashima Yoshiko on fire in Shanghai, international public opinion could no longer pay attention to the northeast.
If you don't do it at this time, when will you stay? However, in terms of specific tactics, the Kwantung Army was divided into two factions, both of which first emphasized the need to give play to the subjective initiative and creativity of the traitors or puppet armies, and took "using China to control China" as their primary strategy. One faction, represented by Baiwu Qingji, the head of the Harbin secret service, advocated using a soft hand to carry out "internal countermeasures" through Zhang Jinghui and others. The other faction, represented by the head of the Jilin secret service, Forced Tongzhen, advocated the direct capture of the city of Harbin with a hard hand through the puppet army controlled by Xi Qia.
Hyakutake Haruyoshi's faction first hit the wall. Although Zhang Jinghui had long secretly hooked up with the Japanese and had declared the independence of Harbin as the chief executive of the Eastern Province Special Region, he was different from Xiqia in Jilin Province, who had some military power, while he was a soft-footed crab, a veritable "prince of tofu", with neither a gun nor a cannon in his hand. Without the barrel of a gun, it would not be hard to speak, and it is no wonder that when Ma Zhanshan narrowed his eyes, he frightened Zhang Jinghui and did not even dare to participate in the inauguration ceremony of the "chairman of Heilongjiang Province."
The actual military power in Harbin was in the hands of Ding Chao, the garrison of Binjiang Town and the commander of the 28th Brigade. Ding Chao belonged to the non-commissioned officer department of the Northeast Army and participated in the Battle of The Tongjiang River between China and the Soviet Union, at least the people in the army had to obey him. At that time, Ding Chao's attitude was actually ambiguous, surrender was not willing, resistance was uncertain, just dangling over there, anyway, not easily expressed.
Ding Chao didn't speak, you just borrowed Zhang Jinghui's two guts, and he didn't dare to sell Ha Shi openly. Zhang Jinghui was not angry, and he was tired of his backstage boss, Baiwu Qingji, who left not long ago, and replaced him was the toihara who had nothing to do.
In the absence of wanting to send the Kwantung Army directly to the battlefield, Toihara naturally only approved of the idea of the Daisuke Tōjō faction. So the two secret service agencies joined forces and forced Xi Qia, a slave, to quickly use a knife on Ha City.
However, at this time, Xi Qia couldn't take care of himself, let alone move the mind of Ha City, and even Jilin was a little uncertain. The person who made him so uneasy was called Feng Zhanhai, the nephew of Zhang Zuoxiang, the former head of the Guard Regiment of the Office of the Deputy Commander of Jilin Province after the "918" incident. The regiment of guards he led was not only well equipped, but also quite well organized, and in addition to having three infantry battalions, it was also decently equipped with cavalry battalions, heavy machine gun companies, communications companies, and other coordinating arms. At that time, this kind of scale was only available in the Japanese army wing, and even Chiang Kai-shek's German mechanic division was not fully possessed.
Northeast Volunteer Army: Harbin at Night (1) Serial, to be continued.......