Fragile peace in the east
The Japanese Empire fought alongside Germany and Italy on the Axis side in World War II. This bloc is often called fascist, but the Japanese had their own unique, traditional ideology, which could simply be called chauvinist nationalism. Despite the ideological differences, the same practical conclusion was pursued for foreign policy: to conquer as many countries as possible for their resources and prestige.
During this great campaign, the Japanese managed to meet the Red Army, which was attacking Mongolia, an ally of the USSR, from occupied Northern China (Manchuria) even before the outbreak of World War II. Then the imperial army suffered a heavy defeat at Khalkhin Gol and realized that it would be impossible to defeat the USSR in a hurry, and that it was better to start a major war with its allies. Such a chance presented itself in 1941, when the Germans began to invade Russia, but it was too late: the Emperor planned a war with the United States at the end of the year. It was impossible to cancel this war, since the United States imposed sanctions on Japan’s oil supplies and oil could only be produced in Southeast Asia, which belonged to the American allies.
Artillerymen of the 1st Far Eastern Front of the Red Army during the Soviet-Japanese War, Manchuria, 1945
Alexander Stanov/TASS
The war in Europe ended in May 1945, but the huge Red Army did not remain idle for long. Immediately after the German surrender, the transfer of divisions to the east began – according to an agreement with the Western allies, the USSR was to start a war against Japan six months after the victory over Germany. Landing on the main Japanese islands was clearly impossible – it would require forces and means similar to those involved in the Normandy landings of 1944, which the USSR did not have. Therefore, the command decided to liberate occupied Manchuria, which would require the defeat of the Japanese Kwantung Army.
A thousand kilometers of kilometers
The Manchurian operation surpassed even the German Barbarossa plan in terms of scope and objectives. The problem was not with the enemy: everyone understood that the Japanese army was no match for the Wehrmacht, moreover, throughout the war the Kwantung Army served as a donor of equipment and personnel for other fronts and was therefore supplied as surplus. The main difficulty was in terms of scale: Manchuria stretches from eastern Mongolia to Vladivostok and from the Amur to the city of Harbin, covering an area of more than 1000×1000 kilometers. The Soviet command planned to occupy this area in a few weeks.
Manchurian Offensive Operation
Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
To accomplish this task, the Red Army planned to use about one and a half million soldiers, 27 thousand guns, 5 thousand tanks and 3.5 thousand aircraft. The Kwantung Army, which included forces in occupied Korea, nominally numbered about 900 thousand people, and they were assisted by about 200 thousand Chinese collaborators. Due to the need to repel the American offensive in the Pacific and hold the front in China, their best soldiers left there, leaving behind mostly new recruits. They were terribly armed: on the 2,000-kilometer front (it went in an arc) there were only 400-500 tanks – infinitely outdated (Type 95 and Type 89), which at best can be called analogues of the pre-war Soviet BT -5. To fight tanks, the Japanese had nothing but a 37-mm cannon (ineffective against the T-34), and the infantry suffered a serious shortage of machine guns and anti-tank rifles.
On August 9, the Red Army launched an offensive on the Manchurian salient from two strategic directions at once – from Mongolia and from Vladivostok – taking the Japanese into giant “pincers”, which converged in the area of the cities of Changchun and Mukden (now Shenyang). In addition, small “pincers” stretched from Blagoveshchensk and Chita to Qiqihar. At the same time, Soviet aircraft began to bomb all enemy territories, almost without interference, destroying headquarters, warehouses, communications centers, and troop concentration areas.
Khingan-Mukden offensive operation, 9 August 1945
Semyon Raskin/RIA Novosti
The Japanese army did not have enough weapons to repel the attack of the tank units at the forefront of the breakthrough – their shells ricocheted off the armor. Theoretically, if the defenders’ skills were significantly superior to the attackers’, they could destroy armored vehicles by firing anti-tank rifles at vulnerable areas and using explosives and grenades at close range. But the ratio of skill was the same as that of technology – young, healthy veterans of the war with Germany were sent east. Periodic attacks on tanks by kamikaze infantry played no role in these battles.
As a result, the main difficulty for the Red Army was to maintain the pace of advance. Tanks needed a lot of fuel and ammunition, while men needed ammunition and food. Therefore, the USSR landed air assault forces on numerous Manchurian airfields to receive transport aircraft with cargo for the advancing columns. Troops also landed in the southern Kuril Islands, on Sakhalin, and in northern Korea.
As a result, the Kwantung Army disappeared in less than two weeks. On August 15, the emperor announced his surrender, but his order did not reach Japanese units in Manchuria immediately, and some did not immediately believe it. The fighting continued until 20 August and cost the Red Army approximately 12,000 killed during the entire period, four times fewer than the comparatively successful and smaller-scale Vistula-Oder operation against Germany.
Soviet troops entered Harbin on August 28, 1945
Israel Ozersky/RIA Novosti
Why should he surrender?
In Soviet history textbooks it is written that it was the stunning success of the Manchurian operation that forced the Japanese Empire to surrender. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the beginning of the attack were supposedly of no importance.
The success of the Red Army in China was undoubtedly unconditional, and the course of this offensive operation is still being studied in military academies around the world. There is no doubt that if Japan had not surrendered, the USSR would have occupied all its mainland territory until it met with American or Chinese troops. Moreover, Japan had long hoped for the USSR as a possible mediator in peace negotiations with the United States, and therefore the entry of the Soviet Union into the war deprived the already hopeless situation of the last rays of hope. But it is not clear how any events in the Japanese colonies could force a country whose national ideology was to fight to the end and commit ritual suicide at the last moment to surrender?
A Japanese representative reports to a Soviet officer on the progress of his unit’s surrender in Manchuria, 1 September 1945.
TASS
In Japan, surrender has always been associated with the destruction of cities with nuclear weapons. And this is not a retrospective justification invented by historians. The Japanese did not plan to surrender in a conventional war, but instead prepared militia units in case the Americans landed. The journey to Tokyo was supposed to be a sustained battle for Okinawa, an island the Japanese had turned into a concrete fortress with a fanatic garrison.
But on August 7, the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, the Imperial Cabinet I’m prepared entered full force and there was discussion about whether to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration demanding surrender. Some generals and admirals did not believe that an atomic bomb had been created at all and demanded that an entire city be destroyed. Others tried to estimate how long it would take to create an analogue for parity. Admiral Soemu Toyoda, Chief of the Naval Staff, said that even if there was a bomb, it was unlikely that the Americans would have a second bomb like it. To summarize the discussion, the Emperor in question: “Personally, I don’t care what happens to me. We must not waste time and stop the war so that such a tragedy does not happen again.”
Residents of Hiroshima amid the devastation caused by the explosion of the first atomic bomb, September 8, 1945
US Air Force/AP
But on August 9, a second bomb exploded over Nagasaki. At the same time, the downed American fighter pilot Marcus McDilda, after hours of torture, confessed that the United States had a hundred atomic bombs in stockpiles and even explained their mechanism (at the beginning of the interrogation, I did not know about their existence at all). In reality, the third product would not be ready until August 19, and the fourth product would not be ready until September, but MacDild’s “assessment” was the only one that could be voiced at the government meeting. Officials feared that the Americans would destroy one Japanese city after another until the entire population was completely destroyed. But this It didn’t bother me General Korechiku Anami: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this entire nation were destroyed like a beautiful flower?”
As a result, Emperor Hirohito made a difficult decision: to accept the enemy’s conditions and stop the war. Interestingly, in his radio message about surrender, he directly referred to nuclear weapons: “The enemy has begun to use a new and very cruel bomb, the destructive power of which cannot be estimated, which has claimed the lives of many innocent people. If we continue to fight, it will not only lead to the final collapse and destruction of the Japanese nation, but also to the complete destruction of human civilization.”
There was no mention of the Soviet offensive in this speech, although it certainly played a role in this decision. Presumably, if not for the defeat in Manchuria, Japan would have tried to use the captured territories to negotiate surrender terms. Bargaining would not have worked, but the delay in time would have cost thousands of Russian, Japanese, American, and Chinese lives.
What are you thinking?
Source: Gazeta
Barbara Dickson is a seasoned writer for “Social Bites”. She keeps readers informed on the latest news and trends, providing in-depth coverage and analysis on a variety of topics.