Although the Battle of Zaoyi ended with the capture of Yichang by the Japanese army.However, our Chinese army, under the leadership of the anti-Japanese heroes represented by General Zhang Zizhong, dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese army, causing the Japanese army to pay the price of tens of thousands of casualties, and finally failed to realize the strategic intention of defeating the main force of our Fifth Theater.And because of the heroic martyrdom of General Zhang Zizhong, it has further inspired the morale of the military and people across the country to resist the war.At the time of the Battle of Zaoyi, the situation in Europe changed abruptly.After a heated debate in the fascist German High Command, Hitler finally decided to implement the Manstein Plan.After fascist Germany annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia and partitioned Poland, Hitler was convinced that attacking Western Europe was the only way out for Germany.However, for various reasons, the German offensive plan was repeatedly delayed.The previous operational plan for attacking the Western Front was basically based on the plan of the Franco-German war of 1914, and there was nothing particularly new.The plan provided for the main attack by Fredo von Bauk, commander-in-chief of Army Group B in the north, to encircle the main Allied forces from the north after breaking through from central Belgium.Army Group A, commanded by Rensted, to the south, will assist through the wooded terrain of the Ardennes.At that time, both the German High Command and the Allied High Command seemed to believe that there was only one way for the German offensive.The reason is that the Ardennes Mountains are easy to defend and difficult to attack, and the infantry was still difficult to pass through in the First World War, and it is even more impossible for the German mechanized troops to launch a main attack in this dangerous place at present.But Manstein doesn't see it that way.He believed that wars were won by surprise.If your battle plan has already been guessed by the enemy, then your main attack direction must be the enemy's key fortified area, and the result will be a protracted battle that will be indistinguishable from victory.As for the upcoming war, Manstein had already come up with a bold plan, which was to shift the direction of attack to the Ardennes, because this was the most unexpected place.The basic idea was to use a strong tank force through southern Belgium and Luxembourg to reach Sedan and break through the Maginot Extended Line in the region and cut France in two off the Atlantic coast.After consulting with tank expert Guderian, he determined that a large cluster of tanks would be able to pass through the Ardennes Pass without any problems.Manstein persuaded Rensted and delivered a memorandum to Army Headquarters, which had been approved and signed by Admiral Rensted.However, Army Commander-in-Chief Brauchitsch and Army Chief of Staff Halder refused to adopt Manstein's proposal.Over this matter, Manstein had a heated dispute with the army headquarters and was eventually transferred to the rank of commander of an infantry corps.In mid-December 1939, General Valimon, Chief of the Defense Division of the General Staff of the Supreme High Command, spoke with Manstein and found Manstein's proposal to be very desirable.So he mentioned it again to the Chief of Operations of the Supreme Command, General Jodl.Manstein's assertion was only up to Hitler.However, Hitler did not immediately adopt it, but simply put it aside as one of the plans.After full argumentation and several exercises, the "Manstein Plan" was finally confirmed.The two Panzer Corps, Guderian's 19th Panzer Corps and Reinhardt's 41st Panzer Corps, which were finally identified as assault armies, formed an armored group, commanded by General Kleist; Among them, the 19th Panzer Corps will serve as the spearhead of the Andernes assault.Huo Zhi's 15th Panzer Corps was located on the right flank of the army group as an auxiliary attacker.On May 9, 1940, the "Manstein Plan" was put into action.Between April and May 1940, according to this plan, the German army successively completed the occupation of Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and other countries.At the same time, the Germans bypassed the heavily fortified Maginot Line of the French army, passed through the Ardennes Mountains, and invaded French territory.At that time, the British and French allies still held a strategy of blindly sticking to the strategy of deploying most of their forces on the Maginot Line in the south, and if the Germans carried out a frontal attack on the Maginot Line, they relied on strong fortifications to resist; In the middle section, it relied on the natural dangers of the Ardennes Mountains and the Maas River, leaving only the weaker combat units to garrison.In this way, the "Manstein Plan" was a great success, and in the first stage of the campaign, the Germans wiped out nearly thirty divisions of the French army.On May 25, 1940, after the collapse of the Anglo-French lines under the rapid offensive of German mechanized troops, the British army carried out the largest military retreat in the history of Dunkirk, a port town in northeastern France near the Belgian border.Although this large-scale retreat, code-named "Project Dynamo", enabled Britain and France to withdraw a large number of troops and successfully save a large number of manpower using various ships, and rescued 335,000 people in a week or so, which can be described as a miracle that shocked the whole world.But all the heavy equipment of the British expeditionary force in France was abandoned on the European continent, causing serious problems for the ground defense of the British mainland.When the German army entered Paris on June 14, 1940, the French government collapsed and was divided, mainly the pacifist government of Marshal Philippe Petain, which remained on French soil, and the government-in-exile established by Charles de Gaulle in England, when almost no other country in the world supported de Gaulle except Britain.On 21 June 1940, the Vichy French government of Pétain proposed a truce to Germany and announced its surrender.The Allies suffered 350,000 casualties and 1,900,000 were captured.The German-Italian allies suffered 155,000 casualties, of which 45,000 were killed and 110,000 wounded.Within a few weeks of Germany's attack, France, once the largest power on the European continent and known as the world's largest army, was defeated and surrendered.In a series of "blitzkriegs", the Germans quickly occupied most of Europe, and the whole world was shrouded in fascist gloom.The rapid defeat of France also had a great impact on China, which was at war at that time.Many anti-Japanese elements in China's military and political circles began to become active again, openly advocating the so-called Petain line.That is, to follow the example of France and surrender to Japan in exchange for the so-called peace.At the same time, Wang Jingwei, who had already surrendered to Japan and had become a traitor, was also shameless and trumpeted his so-called curve strategy of saving the country, causing many anti-Japanese and undetermined elements to openly defect to the enemy and become lackeys and traitors of the Japanese.There has even been a situation in which troops are surrendered like a tide and generals are like hair, and this so-called curve to save the country, called saving the country, is actually a traitor.All the above reasons made the situation of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, which had just improved at that time, become grim again, and the morale of the military and civilians across the country fell into a trough.aa2705221: