In 1942, less than half a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese army quickly occupied New Guinea and the Solomon Islands south of the equator to the south; entered the Indian Ocean to the west, not only landed in Southeast Asia to attack India and Ceylon, but also caused the British fleet deployed in East Asia to withdraw to the east coast of Africa; the Japanese Navy and Army went directly north to occupy the Aleutian Islands of the United States, Atul and Skika Islands.
This series of victories was the most glorious moment of foreign expansion in history for Japan, when the Japanese government was in a state of extreme fanaticism, the entire military believed that the Japanese army was enough to flatten the entire Pacific Theater, they hoped that they could directly crush the Chinese National Government through a head-on confrontation, and wanted to end the Sino-Japanese war in the shortest possible time.
And this extremely ambitious plan was the "Fifth Battle Plan", but it was finally stopped by the emperor before it was implemented, so why is this? This video will take you to understand it together.
One of the most important reasons why Japan wanted to launch the Pacific War was to eliminate the opportunity for the Chinese government to seek foreign aid through the declaration of war on Britain and the United States, and then to leave China in a state of isolation and helplessness, after all, the Japanese base camp at that time gave instructions to the Invading Japanese Army: While capturing important cities in the south, it was also necessary to quickly solve the problem of occupation.
Moreover, in the first 3 months of the Pacific War, the Japanese base camp focused all its energy on Britain and the United States, and the requirements for the Japanese army invading China were to maintain the existing posture, destroy the resistance of the Chinese military and people as much as possible through blockade operations and other means, and do their best to achieve self-sufficiency and obtain sufficient resources in the occupied areas.
There is also a need to occupy Burma to cut off the only route for Chinese and international aid. From all this, it can be seen that the Main Japanese Army at that time was to ensure the stability of the occupied areas while helping the Pacific War as much as possible.
On February 20, 1942, the Japanese base camp successively received applications from the troops stationed in China, including the intention of launching an offensive against Changsha and Changde in the summer and autumn and advancing west into Xi'an, in order to eliminate the main Kuomintang forces as much as possible and to exert pressure on Chiang Kai-shek by forming a wrapped bag on Chongqing.
On this basis, the Japanese General Staff Headquarters began to formulate the second phase of military deployment, and Chief of Staff Sugiyama Moto believed that the Japanese Army should now take the opening up of India, West Asia and Germany as the main purpose, occupy Burma at the end of May, and after June coordinate with the navy to directly intervene in Fiji to fight, and the troops stationed in China should complete the rapid settlement of the Chinese problem alone after the autumn.
In addition, Sugiyama further pointed out that it is necessary to draw troops from other battlefields and the troops stationed in China to complete a large-scale battle together, and to directly solve the Kuomintang Central Army in one battle, or to occupy favorable terrain, so as to force the Chongqing regime to accept negotiations, and then weaken its combat troops through splitting and disintegrating, so as to achieve the ultimate operational goal of the Chongqing regime losing its leadership position.
This idea was called "Sichuan Operation" and was adopted by the War Department of the Japanese base camp on May 16 of that year, and then the deputy chief of staff, Tanabe Moritake, went to Nanjing and consulted with the commander of the Chinese dispatch army, Tian Junroku, pointing out that Japan currently wants to reap the results of the "southern operation" after the Pacific War, concentrate the main army to attack north China and central China as a breakthrough point in the direction of Sichuan, and then fight back against Chongqing, so as to solve the strategic plan of the Sino-Japanese war in one fell swoop, no matter how the form changes in the future. The Japanese will do everything in their power to speed up the resolution of the Chinese problem.
Tanabe also told Guantian Shunroku that the Japanese base camp had now decided to launch an offensive against Xi'an after September 1942, using nearly five divisions to break through the yellow river, annihilate the main force of the Chinese army that had been guarding the Guanzhong area, and then occupy Xi'an and Baoji in order to obtain an attack point from the north into the hinterland of Sichuan.
After the spring of 1943, the Japanese army would launch a comprehensive Sichuan offensive, preparing to use eight divisions and regiments to take the Sichuan hinterland from the direction of Xi'an, and then attack Chongqing with three divisions from the direction of Yichang, so that it could completely destroy the Nationalist government, end the war early, and order the Japanese troops stationed in China to begin to prepare for related matters.
This plan was later called "Plan Five" by the Japanese General Staff Headquarters, and the entire operation would be divided into two parts, and the Japanese troops would be divided into three routes, from Weishui, Han River and Yangtze River to the yangtze River, and finally capture Chongqing.
The first phase of the operation began in the spring of 1943, when the Fifth Front forcibly broke through the blockade in Shanxi and crossed the Yellow River. The First And Seventh Fronts moved north along the Wei River to launch an attack on Xi'an, and after the two armies met to capture Xi'an, they marched together into Baoji. One crossed the Yellow River from the northeast and east of Yan'an, and took Yan'an in coordination with the Japanese Seventh Front North of the Wei River. Then the main force of the First Front marched from Baoji to Fengxian and Hanzhong to cut off the transportation hubs leading to lanzhou and Xinjiang in the northwest through Huixian and Wenxian; the other from Lantian, Xi'an, and Guoxian, marched south across the Qinling Mountains to the upper reaches of the Han River, and after meeting with the main forces of Hanzhong, directly took Guangyuan, the gateway to northern Sichuan, in order to open up the passage for the Japanese army to enter the hinterland of Sichuan.
The Twenty-eighth Army attacked the area around the Laohekou from Kaifeng, Henan, and then marched west along the Han River to the Ankang area. After crossing the Daba Mountain, it reaches Daxian county in northern Sichuan and other places. The Eleventh Army set out from Yichang, Hubei Province, and began to advance west along the banks of the Yangtze River until it occupied Wanxian and other places in eastern Sichuan. In this way, the Japanese army was deployed in Guangyuan, Daxian and Wanxian, forming a posture of enveloping Chengdu and Chongqing from the three aspects of northern Sichuan, northeastern Sichuan and eastern Sichuan, and after a month of repair in the above areas, the final offensive was launched. The second stage of the operation was to directly capture Chengdu and Chongqing.
The Japanese troops entering Sichuan were under the full command of the Fifth Front. The First Front Marched south from Guangyuan and entered Chengdu through Mianyang, the Twenty-eighth Army advanced southwest from the direction of Daxian to prepare for the First Front's capture of Chengdu, the main force of the Eleventh Army advanced from Enshi, Qianjiang, Pengshui, Wulong, Nanchuan and other places south of the Yangtze River, and the rest of the troops advanced from Wanxian County north of the Yangtze River to Xi'an, and the two-compartment combined attack directly took Chongqing.
However, according to the final calculation of the Japanese base camp, in order to fully realize this combat task, it will be necessary to have at least 16 divisions and 2 mixed brigades of army units plus 2 flying divisions as a huge force for air support, and such a large-scale battle will exceed any previous war launched by the Japanese army. It was for this reason that the Japanese War Department had to increase its troops from the Japanese mainland, Southeast Asia, and northeast China and Korea to the Hinterland of China by as much as 360,000 troops.
In addition to sending additional troops to the hinterland of China, the Japanese army also needed a steady stream of logistical material support, including 100,000 tons of ships, 50,000 tons of steel, and 50,000 tons of gasoline, but according to japan's national strength at that time, it was simply unrealistic to support such a war. Therefore, after this plan came out, including the Japanese Navy, the Kwantung Army, and other aspects of the resolute opposition, and the Japanese General Staff Headquarters also doubted it after receiving negative feedback, after all, such a big showdown is almost a gamble on the full ability of the Japanese army to fight, and once it fails, it will lead to the overthrow of all japan's early advantages.
However, the belligerent Hideki Tojo had an almost crazy obsession with the "Fifth Plan", and in his view, if he wanted to obtain the final victory of the Great East Asian War, then solving the Chinese problem was a top priority, otherwise there was no way to withdraw from East Asia, and the initial victory in the Pacific Theater would be in vain.
So on September 4, Sugiyama Yuan officially issued all the operational instructions on the "Fifth Plan" to the headquarters of the troops stationed in China, and after receiving the order, the headquarters of the troops stationed in China immediately began to conduct preliminary reconnaissance operations on the upcoming large-scale battle, and they screened Sichuan's intelligence in detail through the secret service agencies, and even sent many agents to Sichuan.
Subsequently, the headquarters in China organized the combat staff to conduct meticulous aerial reconnaissance of the offensive route and the terrain in Sichuan Province by plane, and trained the mountain brigade as quickly as possible to prepare to serve as the vanguard unit when attacking Sichuan, and the Japanese base camp also began to secretly mobilize a large amount of materials to transport to China.
In fact, Chiang Kai-shek also understood that there would be a decisive battle between China and Japan after all, but he did not expect it to come so suddenly, but after he received the information that the Japanese army was preparing to attack Sichuan, he also immediately convened the Military Commission to discuss countermeasures, and then ordered the Eighth Theater where Hu Zongnan of Xi'an was located, to strengthen the defense along the Yellow River and the defense of southern Shaanxi, and ordered the Fifth Theater of Operations, where Li Zongren was located at the mouth of the Old River in Hubei, to strictly guard the area east of the Wudang Mountains. In particular, the main transportation routes into Sichuan and Shaanxi must be held to the death, and the Sixth Theater of Operations, where Chen Cheng of Enshi in Hubei is located, is ordered to make every effort to protect the Yangtze River and the various key points on the north and south banks of the Yangtze River, so as to hold the gateway to the eastern Sichuan region.
However, unexpectedly, the situation in the Pacific Theater took a sharp turn for the worse, in June 1942, the Japanese Navy suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Midway, losing the initiative in the Pacific Theater, the Japanese base camp not only could not draw troops from the Pacific Theater to reinforce the troops stationed in China, but needed to draw a large number of troops from the Chinese Battlefield to the Pacific Theater, and the Japanese troops who opened their bows left and right fell into a dilemma at this time.
Due to the dwarfing of the number of troops, the "Fifth Plan" planned by the Japanese General Staff Headquarters also came to naught, but there are still some people in the Army who are not dead-hearted, they believe that as long as they make every effort to realize the "Fifth Plan", then even the disadvantages in the Pacific Theater can be solved, if this plan is abandoned, it means that Japan will maintain the embarrassing situation of two-front operations, but in the end it was directly stopped by Emperor Hirohito, and ordered that the "Fifth Plan" be sealed and not activated.
In fact, the main reason why the emperor wanted to stop the "Fifth Plan" was that from the perspective of the strategic situation of the Japanese army in China at that time, this plan was undoubtedly an extreme risky action, the first is that a large number of Japanese troops have been firmly contained by the Chinese military and civilians' insistence on resisting the war, and Chiang Kai-shek's Fifth Theater, Sixth Theater and Ninth Theater have a full 100 divisions, even if the Japanese army launches a surprise attack, it can stand firm for a period of time, and this period of time is enough for the US army to continue to expand its achievements in the Pacific Theater.
The second is that the Japanese army was already in a state of multi-front combat at that time, and the "Fifth Plan" needed a very large material supply, which was a huge pressure on the Japanese government at that time, to know that Japan at that time was already short of materials, if such a large-scale battle was launched, it was likely to cause more problems.
The third is that the Strategic Priorities of the Japanese Army and Navy for the next expansion have diverged, the Navy hopes to be able to invest more troops in the Pacific Theater, but the Army insists that it must advance westward with Chongqing as the center, and the mutual restraint between the two sides has intensified the internal contradictions of the Japanese army. It was precisely because of this series of reasons that the "Fifth Plan" was finally aborted, and the desire to attack Chongqing became a dream that the Japanese militarists could not hope to have.