Chapter 55: The Great Ye Iron Mine

  In addition, the 15th Red Army also gained a lot of talent in Nanchang. Although they were in a hurry, Hu Weidong rarely did not force people to join, but several hundred young intellectuals who voluntarily joined made him very happy. He specially asked the Party Central Committee for credit for the underground party members to further boost their work enthusiasm. The underground party organization soon became another important source of intelligence for the 15th Red Army, in addition to deciphering enemy military codes. Of course, this was also largely due to Hu Weidong and the 15th Red Army's increased status in the eyes of the central leaders. With Vice Chairman Zhou's personal attention, how could the underground party members not work hard for the 15th Red Army?

  The 15th Red Army captured Nanchang, not only gaining substantial benefits but also having extremely important strategic significance. By recapturing a major city, they proved that their previous capture of Hangzhou was not accidental, forcing Old Chiang to deploy more troops to defend the cities within the 15th Red Army's attack range. How many mobile forces could he continue to use to pursue and suppress the 15th Red Army? At this time, Chen Cheng and Sun Lianzhong's troops were also suspicious of each other due to factional contradictions and did not dare to take the lead in attacking the 15th Red Army. The 15th Red Army crossed the Gan River with ease and entered Hubei almost unimpeded. Before leaving Jiangxi, Hu Weidong also massively requisitioned tin from local areas, as this rare metal is an essential component of N-type alloy steel, which has extremely limited reserves north of the Yangtze River.

  Hu Weidong's first target after entering Hubei was the famous Daye Iron Mine, which was currently China's largest iron mine. However, it had already been controlled by the Japanese, and all the iron ore produced was sold to Japan and eventually turned into guns, cannons, and ammunition that killed Chinese people.

  Due to the great reputation of the Red 15th Army, the hundreds of Nationalist soldiers stationed in Daye thought they were outnumbered and had no chance of winning, so they fled without firing a shot. However, the 600 Japanese marines sent to "protect" the Daye Iron Mine put up fierce resistance.

  When they found it difficult to resist the Red 15th Army, they detonated the ammunition depot and destroyed as many of their weapons as possible, resulting in the Red 15th Army capturing very few weapons and ammunition (also because the Nationalist army never destroyed its weapons and ammunition, making for a stark contrast).

  Fortunately, the Japanese were too arrogant and seriously underestimated the combat effectiveness of the Red 15th Army at first. They thought that their 600 men could stop Hu Weidong's army of 100,000, and did not prepare to blow up the mine in advance. This allowed the Red 15th Army to capture most of the mechanical equipment on the mine, with less than a third being too heavy to carry or destroyed by some Japanese supervisors and technicians who were deeply poisoned by militarism.

  But this battle also gave Hu Weidong and the Red Fifteenth Army a wake-up call. Perhaps the Japanese army's combat effectiveness was not necessarily stronger than that of several elite Nationalist troops, but if the Red Army were to engage in battle with the Japanese, even if they emerged victorious, it would be difficult to capture many weapons and ammunition, and it would be impossible to replenish personnel through the conversion of prisoners. This undoubtedly meant that battles between the Red Army and the Japanese were essentially losing propositions, with captured ammunition unable to keep up with their own consumption, and fallen veterans being replaced by inexperienced new recruits from the rear, thereby weakening the Red Army with each battle.

  Now Hu Weidong finally understood why the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army had always avoided engaging in large-scale battles throughout history. Because large-scale battles would definitely not end in a short period of time, the enemy would naturally have enough time to destroy their weapons and ammunition. Moreover, the larger the scale of the battle, the more ammunition they would consume, which would increase exponentially (killing one enemy soldier usually only requires a few bullets, but killing a thousand enemy soldiers would require dozens or even hundreds of bullets, not to mention hand grenades and artillery shells). As a result, the probability of losing money would also increase rapidly. For the people's army, which mainly relied on capturing ammunition, once the captured ammunition was less than what was consumed, they would easily fall into the vicious cycle of "reduced ammunition - decreased combat effectiveness - even harder to capture ammunition". In severe cases, an entire army could become trapped in a desperate situation due to lack of ammunition. Small-scale battles were different, however. Take the extreme example of dealing with a single enemy soldier: a surprise attack would result in the enemy being killed instantly, without any chance to destroy their weapons. Even if a small group of enemy soldiers managed to destroy their guns, it would be difficult for them to quickly destroy the ammunition they carried. This meant that the people's army had the possibility of entering a virtuous cycle and rapidly developing and growing stronger. In comparison, the Red Fifteenth Army had mobile armories following the army, so their situation was slightly better. However, even if they found a new base, the production capacity of their ammunition would not be enough to support the Red Fifteenth Army in frequently engaging in large-scale battles, especially consumption-intensive positional warfare. Even if Hu Weidong later led his troops to occupy the final destination, it would still be the same. Therefore, in essence, they were no different from other Red Armies...

  Unlike Hu Weidong's expectations, the 600 Japanese marines resisted fiercely, but not to the point of complete annihilation or surrender. After the battle, the Red Fifteenth Army captured over a hundred Japanese prisoners (note 1), which was still much lower than the "normal" ratio, but compared to the recorded stubbornness of the Japanese army, it was already considered many. At this time, the full-scale war had not yet broken out, and these Japanese soldiers were temporarily under naval command, with no major blood debts on their bodies. Hu Weidong was no longer a young radical, but he still wanted to take all these prisoners out and execute them because they had destroyed their weapons before surrendering...

  But in the end, Hu Weidong suppressed his anger, after all, this was the first batch of Japanese military officers and soldiers captured by the Red Fifteenth Army, which had great political significance. If they could reform their thinking, these Japanese people would become seeds that would play an unexpected role. Moreover, most of the Japanese prisoners of war were fluent in Chinese and could serve as teachers, greatly accelerating the speed at which the Red Fifteenth Army learned Japanese.

  Due to his experience studying in Japan, Hu Weidong did not completely follow the traditional policy towards prisoners of war used by the Red Army, but instead made bold innovations on its basis, greatly improving the efficiency of reforming Japanese prisoners. Later, his experiences were studied by many brother units, making a significant contribution to the victory of the War of Resistance.

  Even Taizu began to pay attention to the impact of cultural differences between countries and did not hesitate to ask Hu Weidong and other returned overseas students about the situation (note 2). As a result, China's foreign policy, especially its foreign aid policy, differed significantly from that in history...

  Note 1: From the "January 28 Incident" in Shanghai in '32, it can be seen that the combat will of the Japanese Navy's Marine Corps was far inferior to that of the regular army divisions. This may be because the cultural level of naval officers and soldiers was higher, and they were less poisoned by militaristic ideology. As a result, this mining protection unit would not have been an elite force, but rather even worse.

  Note 2: Historically, Taizu's understanding of foreign countries was basically derived from written materials such as books and newspapers, lacking a direct understanding. Although he relied on his judgment to make accurate assessments in many areas, misjudgments were not uncommon. Moreover, his significant errors in domestic issues were also largely due to his lack of understanding of foreign countries, which led to a lack of accurate recognition of modern society.