Soviet Japan war of 1938-39 the first battles of WWII

The Soviet-Japanese War
(July 1938 - December 1939)







Over the north country whose seas are frozen

Spring wind blows across

It is time to beat Russia

Rampant for three hundred years.



Mora Ogai, Uta Nikki (Verse Diary)1904



Antecedents

The Soviet-Japanese relations, officially established in 1925, were characterized by a tense rivalry and deep suspicion almost throughout the entire 1930s. The occupation of Northern Manchuria in 1932, which was traditionally regarded as a territory within the Russian -afterwards Soviet- sphere of influence, brought the USSR and Japan into direct neighborhood. The Japanese inspired Manchukuo Empire had about 4,000 km long border with Soviet Union in the east and north, and about 740 km long border with the Mongolian People's Republic (MPR) in the west.



The Soviet Union's position of "strict neutrality" taken during the 18-months while the Kwantung army's influence was extended to northern, western Manchuria and the Jehol province (March 1933) was dictated not by any Soviet agreement with Japanese actions, but rather by the Soviet Union's external isolation and internal situation, manifested in its relative military weakness in the Far East. While strengthening the economic and military build-up in the Far East under the second five-year plan started in 1932, the Soviet Union thought to appease Japan by offering a non-aggression pact (December 1931). When this proposal met with rejection from the Japanese side, the Soviet side embarked upon the course of selling their last asset in Manchuria, the Chinese Eastern Railway. The negotiations between the Soviet and Manchukuo representatives were frequently interrupted and not until March 1935 was the purchase agreement signed.



Just before the signature of this agreement, the focal point of Soviet-Japanese tension had moved to the Manchukuo-MPR and Manchukuo-Soviet border. Beginning from the Khalkhin-sume (January 1935) incident border clashes became frequent along the Manchukuo-MPR frontier. The three rounds of Manchouli conferences, called to examine Manchukuo-Mongolia border issues including the Khalkhin-sume, were confronted by the completion of the Soviet-Mongolian mutual assistance protocol as well as by the Anti-Comintern Pact between Japan and Germany, and the Manchouli talks were broken off.



The Kwantung Army’s determination to defend the outer frontier of Manchukuo in 1938 was a continuation of two decades of Soviet probing and provocations; and this was one of Japan's reasons to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany in 1936. Reinforcements were sent to face the far eastern borders of the USSR, and the Mongolian Peoples' Republic, since 1936 a client state of the USSR. The Japanese Kwantung Army drew wrong conclusions from the easy successes of its first border clashes of 1937. Communist troops were easily swept from two small islands on the Amur River, on the border of Manchukuo. Assessment of this easy victory concluded that the Red Army must have serious logistical problems, related to the long distance between its eastern and western blocs, despite the USSR's efforts to expand both its rail and road links in the region, as a Kempeitai intelligence report to the Imperial General Headquarters report indicates:



Despite the great efforts made to remedy the situation and the marked progress that was achieved, the Soviet Far East still depended on European Russia for such stable commodities as grain, oil, iron ore and steel. Operations vary according to the state of locomotives, the degree of skill of the railway engineers, the availability, in these vast expanses, of coal and water, and other factors.




Imperial headquarters’ mistake, and the Kwantung Army command's mistake, was demonstrated in July 1938, in a hilly area on the eastern border of Manchukuo, close to Korea, known as Changkuofeng.







The Cassus Belli: The Changkuofeng Incident, or The Battle of Lake Khasan



The Khunchun Treaty of 1886 defined the border between China and Russia in eastern Manchuria, as the ridge tops of a series of mountains and hills near the Pacific Ocean. Territory on the eastern slopes was Russian and the Chinese possessed the western. The independence which Manchukuo gained in 1932 brought about drastic changes in existing administrative boundaries, thus giving rise to the issue of the border between Manchukuo and its neighbors. Although talks for demarcation were begun at the time of the Khalka-Miao Incident in 1935, the talks were fruitless and the actual demarcation line was left unsettled. Manchukuo`s long undefined borders became a source of friction between the Japanese Empire and the Soviet Union, and after the defection of NKVD’s officer Genrikh Lyushkov, one of these clashes, the Changkuofeng Incident, degenerated into the Soviet-Japanese War.



Tensions escalated along the Soviet-Manchukuo border when Soviet General G. S. Lyushkov, a senior officer of the NKVD and the Soviet Frontier Forces, suddenly defected to the Japanese in June 1938. Genrikh Samoelovich Lyushkov soared into the Soviet firmament in 1937–38. A ruthless, loyal, experienced Chekist hatchet man serving Stalin, Yagoda, and Yezhov, he became NKVD Commissar for Siberia. His fortunes floundered thereafter, provoking recall. Though he knowingly endangered family, friends, and colleagues, Lyushkov dared to disobey, fleeing to Japan in June 1938. The reason for Lyushkov's defection was clear to the Japanese government. He was on Stalin's purge list and he had fled to the arms of the Japanese to escape the dictator's wrath. Lyushkov brought with him detailed maps and data that identified all of the Soviet military dispositions in Siberia. The defecting Russian, in a show of great cooperation with the Japanese, pinpointed all defense positions maintained by Russian troops along the Manchurian border, and discussed with the Japanese at length the internal disorders of the Soviet Union and the ongoing Stalinist purge.



The incident in question began on 11 July 1938, when units of the well equipped OKDVA (Special Red Banner Eastern Army) under the instructions of the local commander, Colonel Grebennik, began fortifying the eastern slopes of the Changkufeng (Zaozernaya) and Shachaofeng (Bezymyannaya) hills. The Japanese soon found that barbed wire had been placed by the Soviets on the western slopes of the hills. They issued protest leaflets to the troops on the hills and diplomatic protests to Moscow — all of which were ignored. On July 29 a skirmish between reconnaissance units led to Lt Gen. Suetaka Kamezo’s 19th Division seizing the two hills. Marshal Blyukher, commander of the OKDVA began assembling forces for a counter-strike. A hasty divisional strength attack on August 2 was repulsed by the Japanese. An attack by the 32nd Rifle Division north-east of Lake Khasan and the 40th Rifle Division from the south-east, was ordered for August 6. Russian forces heavily outnumbered Japanese forces in tanks and aircraft: Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo immediately ordered to push the Russians back across the Tumen river. For the mission the Kwangtung Army selected forces extracted from the 10th, 28th and 29th Infantry Divisions, the 23rd Tank Regiment, the Botanko Artillery Regiment and the Kwangtung Air Brigade. In addition to engagements by ground forces, there were several encounters between units of the Red Air Force and air units of the Japanese Army up to 1 August, when the Japanese forces returned to their original station. The battle of Changkuofeng (sometimes called the Battle of Lake Khasan) appeared to have come to a close.



Although it is not clear with what intention the Soviets fought the Changkuofeng conflict, it is judged that, as in the case of previous incidents, the Soviet action was a demonstration of force, in line with the policy of using force to frustrate the least development of Japanese confidence in its strength. It is clear that Japan had no reason to start the incident, being deeply involved in the China Incident. Until today, is no clear why after the incident, Stalin ordered the hastily attack against Manchukuo. Some evidence points to the failure of Richard Sorge (German spy in Tokyo working for the Soviets) to convince Stalin the unlikely of a Japanese attack against Siberia. Other scholars had showed some evidence that points to the Soviet total lack of confidence in the Mongolian capacity of defend itself in case of war against Japan: its border with Manchukuo was obscure and there existed the possibility of a border war. If Mongolia had fought against Japan alone and lost- it would have left the Soviet Union with the awesome military might of Japan as it’s threatening neighbor- something that Stalin wanted to avoid.



When in June 1938 Stalin decided that war with Japan was inevitable, the Soviet War Ministry dispatched to the sector its ablest commander, Lieutenant-General Georgi K. Zhukov, later a Marshal of the USSR and Stalin's most renowned commander in the German war. Zhukov arrived that same month to find that the Kwantung Army had secured some vital high ground and quickly concluded his need for reinforcements. The Soviets commenced a massive deployment effort which doubled the Soviet forces in the Far East. More than 40 infantry, tank and mechanized divisions plus artillery and combat support units were transferred from the West to the Far East. This monumental effort required maximum utilization of the Trans-Siberian railroad and 136,000 railroad car loads to move these assault units to the Far Eastern border areas. During the peak troop deployments in July, an average of 22-30 trains per day moved Soviet units under strict secrecy. Surprise was the essential element in the Soviet offensive plan.



The Soviets successfully deployed 30 divisions to western Manchuria without Japanese awareness. Deception and surprise was achieved by heavy reliance upon night movement, utilization of assembly areas far removed from the border and simple but strict measures such as instructing senior Soviet officers to not wear rank insignia and to use assumed names. This extraordinary effort resulted in the Soviet Union's ability to field a very strong force that gave them a 2.2:1 ratio advantage in men, 4.8:1 in artillery and tanks, and a 2:1 advantage in aircraft, without discovery by the Japanese at the start of the war. But above all, his army was to show a marked superiority in intelligence analysis, command, control and communication; and in the end those abilities was the decisive factor in the war, allowing Zhukov¢s Manchurian Front forces to wipe the Japanese out of Manchukuo in less than six months.



The Red Army's surprise assault began on 7 August 1938, with a thrust across the border into western Manchukuo. Zhukov's blitzkrieg combination of armour, artillery, air support, and infantry, along the Kwangtung Amy's whole front with the main armored thrust going to the flank. As a result, Zhukov's force was able to encircle the IJA 28th and 29th Infantry Divisions, and settle down to a battle of annihilation, grinding both divisions by continuous assault, while Soviet air fleet was equally successful due to their superior aerial tactics. General Tojo Hideki, Kwantung Army commander, was now more than ready for a cease-fire, and in Tokyo political leaders hoped that the Soviet government would be content with a re-drawing of the disputed borders. But Stalin had other plans.







The Campaign of Manchukuo



Without so much as a declaration of war, the Soviet Union launched a large offensive against the Japanese Empire's forces in Manchuria: Red Army elements from the Russian Far East Army Groups attacked in two large columns with more than 14 divisions, including several armored division armed with the T-26S and early models of the T-34. On 8 August, supported by the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Red Army divided itself in two invading forces: the Mongolian Force crossed the Mongolia-Manchukuo border and emerged to threaten Harbin, while the Manchurian Force attacked across the marshy valleys between the Wanda Mountains and the Amur river. General Tojo immediately send a message to Tokyo requesting reinforcements and rallied his forces (the 9th, 12th and 57th Infantry Divisions, the 1st Tank Brigade and the 7th Artillery Command of the Kwangtung Army; and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th Mix Brigades, 1st Cavarly Brigade, 2nd Cavarly Brigade, Jilin Guard Army, and the 1st and 2nd Air Units of the Manchukuan Army) to meet the Soviet onslaught. Simultaneously, the Karafuto Guard troops invaded and conquered the northern half of Karafuto (Sakhalin) island.



Manchukuo's best weapon was foul weather. Relentless rain limited Soviet air sorties and turned Manchukuo's few roads to muck. Soviet tanks striking out of Mongolia managed with considerable difficulty to cross rivers swollen by the seasonal downpours-only to run out of fuel when their supply trucks became mired in the Manchurian plain. Whenever the weather cleared, airdrops supplied the fuel the Red Army needed to drive on to the Manchukuan cities.



Soviet troops (6th Tank Brigade, 8th Armored Brigade, 57th Infantry Division, 82nd Infantry Division and 85th Antiaircraft Brigade) first concentrated on securing a bridgehead across the Amur, so that they could continue on unimpeded all the way to Harbin, the main city in central Manchukuo and railroad hub. Several Japanese divisions lied within the marshes, however, and, despite their inadequate equipment, resisted fiercely, delaying the Soviets by several days before fighting became too intense and the Japanese were forced to withdraw across to the opposite bank. The Da Hingang Mountains and Nuomin river would prove the most inhospitable obstacle to the Soviet advance, which shielded the city of Qiqihar along the banks of the Nen. Here the Kwantung Army had deployed their elite divisions as well as the bulk of their armor; ambushing Soviet infantry in the mountains and cutting them off from their supplies. As the Soviets advanced on northern Manchukuo, General Tojo concentrated on creating a series of anti-tank positions to guard the access to Harbin.



By 30 August, the Russians deployed their artillery regiments along the West bank of the Nen river and opened fire against the Kwangtung Army. Soviet engineers continually tried to set up barges and bridges to make it across the river, but these were consistently destroyed by Japanese artillery shooting. On 14 September, the Imperial Japanese Army 27th , 35th and 110th Infantry Divisions and the 15th Tank Regiment abandoned the city of Qiqihar and their excellent positions in western Manchukuo and began retreating. After waiting two days to amass fuel and to ensure that the Japanese were not setting up a trap, General Budenny, commander of the Mongolian Force, finally ordered his men to pursue. He didn’t know that the progress of the Manchurian Force had obligated the Japanese to withdraw to the city of Harbin to avoid being trapped between the two Soviet Forces, superior in every aspect to the Kwangtung Army. By 7 October, the two Soviet armies joined to form the Soviet Combined Force of Manchuria and had pinned General Yamashita Tomoyuki's army in Harbin, surrounding the city excepting a narrow way to the south. Stalin ordered to bludgeon the city for further use of its railroad facilities: days became weeks, and tens of thousands of refugees fled southward. But Yamashita held the city against all odds, provoking the ire of his political rival General Tojo: Yamashita was relieved of his command and sent to train colonial troops in Taiwan. In 12 November, Field Marshal Terauchi Hisaichi took charge of the IJA 25th Army and of the defense of Harbin.



Soviet troops finally launched a major offensive against the city on 18 November, with tens of thousands of infantry leading the way under artillery cover. After several hours of house-to-house combat the Soviets managed to use their superior numbers and equipment to gain the advantage, clearing out most of the outskirts after heavy casualties. The Kwangtung Army retreated to the center of the city, but by 24 November, the Soviets hoisted the red flag over the City Palace, after the suicide of Field Marshal Hisaichi.



Fearing that the Red Army would continue its offensive, a column of reinforcements out of south central Manchukuo moved to intercept the Soviets near Changchung, a major communication hub necessary for the continued operation of the Soviet Army. By reinforcing this city with the survivors of the disaster at Harbin the Imperial HQ had hoped to put a stop to the Soviet advance: it was the turn of the respective air forces to act. The greatest air battles yet seen were taking place, with formations of 150-200 war planes deployed. Soviet anti-aircraft fire was highly effective and the Japanese airforce barely held its own. Soviet supply lines, however, had been strained to the breaking point, being that Irkutsk –their main railroad connection- was over two thousand miles away; the Soviets were forced by necessity to scale down the scope of their operations and instead limit themselves to holding down the countryside near Harbin.



Massive Korean resistance that began on October and continued throughout the country until the end of the war, however, forced the Kwangtung to send precious units to quell rioters and fight nationalist and communist partisans; this was other of the reasons that damaged the Japanese war effort. The Kwantung Army and the Korea colonial administration organized punitive actions against Korean and Chinese irregulars, funded and armed by the Soviet Union. Those guerrillas found in the Soviet Far East and Soviet occupied zones a haven where they could train and escape after their skirmishes with Japanese and Manchurian troops. They avoided fighting large battles, instead they channeled great efforts into Communist indoctrination with the Korean peasantry and reconnoitering. They also sent a great number of small units, groups and agitator to Korea and Manchukuo to make preparations for a peasant uprising. The situation in Korea in those days was threatening: the communist guerrillas of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army performed some combat operations in northern Korea, and in their most successful operation, they managed to destroy 22 Japanese planes and two hangars, and sinking two oil-tankers and fishing boats.



Now in the middle of the horrendous Manchurian winter, the Japanese IHQ launched a hopefully decisive counter attack against its foes: several Imperial Japanese Army divisions advanced from central-eastern China to southern Manchukuo. But unfortunately, general Zhukov didn’t wait and launched a daring offensive against Changchung: Soviet forces advanced without delay and, working with Communist Chinese partisans, the Soviet armies launched an assault across the Japanese lines. While Tojo's repeated counterattacks yielded several successes and a favorable casualty rate, the Soviet were in fact gaining ground; they were moving in a good “tank country”, and any Japanese attempt to stop them encountered stiff resistance. However, Tojo was not so easily deterred. After careful strategic consultations, Tojo decided that defending at any cost the city of Changchung would be the next logical step in keeping the Soviets away from their endangered Korean colony and the strategically invaluable Liaodong peninsula. If major points of supply in central Manchuria could not be seized then the Soviet would be logistically incapable of threatening southern Manchukuo except by another massive offensive action, made impossible by the weather.



However, by early December, in spite of staggering Soviet losses, the city of Changchung was in sight. The ensuing battle was much more brutal than the Battle of Harbin, since the Japanese no longer had strategically irrelevant land to trade for time. Tojo was forced to rely on his infantry, and send several divisions into a frontal assault, which was met by the Soviet troops with their deadly armor. In the ensuing fight, the Kwangtung Army were revealed to be totally outmatched in both firepower and quality of armor, and the Soviets inflicted devastating casualties, slicing the IJA to pieces; and forcing Tojo to call a retreat to the south.



The winter forced a ceasefire the rest of December, time that was harnessed by the Japanese government to try to reach an accord with the Soviet Union. They offered an immediate armistice, and ceding to the Soviet all the territory they claimed in Manchukuo. However, the Soviet Union Foreign Affairs Commissioner V. Molotov, informed the Japanese Ambassador Togo that theirs was not an aggressive war, instead it was a “liberation war” in behalf of the “workers and peasants” of Manchuria. The reason for the decision: Hitler was now increasingly threatening to engage France, not Poland, from the European side. So the Soviet Union decided not lose the opportunity to battle in the Far East, and expel definitely Japan from the continent.



An special envoy sent to Moscow by the Emperor himself, offered to grant the Soviet with the entirety of the Manchukuan territory they captured as the price to stop the current war with Japan. Nonetheless, some documents point to the increasing independence of the Kwangtung Army command, which had a disastrous and profound influence on the events leading to the continuation of the war, deciding which orders to obey despite the Emperor's wish not to continue the war with the Soviets. It appears that they couldn’t affront the combination of: the failure of the archaic Japanese tactical and operational doctrine; their incapacity to learn the more fundamental tactical and operational lessons of modern war in the climactic disaster in Manchukuo; and their complete dependence upon "spirit" or courage as a counterweight to modern firepower. Given such chaos and such a determined and well-organized foe as Stalin's army, the "blind gallantry" of the ordinary Japanese soldier could not prevail. Having been swept back almost to Korea with heavy casualties, the Imperial Japanese Army forced the continuation of the war, interfering with the negotiations in Tokyo.



From the Soviet side, Stalin was kept in touch with Japanese deliberations by his masterspy Richard Sorge, and thus the Soviet Army, better prepared for a winter war, continued their advance. Zhukov, under Stalin’s orders, didn’t directed his forces to the South, to Mukden and Dalian; instead, they advanced to Korea, in order to “liberate” this country too, and dispel any Japanese possibility to menace the Soviet supremacy over Manchuria in the future. Their armored forces routed the Kwangtung Army, that was forced to retreat to the mountainous Korean border with Manchukuo. This terrain wasn’t the appropriate for tank maneuvering, and the Soviet were forced to relay in their heavy artillery. But no amount of artillery could dislodge the Japanese from their ferociously defended entrenchments, and when January came, the Soviets were forced to abandon plans for a hasty entry into Korea, and content themselves with having conquered Korea's border highlands.



Meanwhile in Manchuria, the Soviets installed a puppet regimen under the Chinese communist Wang Man, and they took home everything they could move. They dismantled steel mills and other industrial plants and used the 16,000 cars and 2,000 locomotives of the confiscated Manchurian railroad to ship their booty to the Soviet Union. They also captured more than 600,000 military and civilian Japanese prisoners-most of whom disappeared behind the Soviet border, never to return home again.







The campaign of Korea


After the negotiations with Moscow failed, due to the interference of the Kwangtung Army’s staff, the Red Army launched a bold attack across the Yalu river against the IJA positions in Korea. Red Army forces numbered in excess of 37 divisions of infantry (including 5 armored divisions). The IJA, which had been bolstered in late months by the IHQ, was well prepared for the engagement, and consisted of 20 divisions of infantry, several modern tanks and the well-defended strategic crossing of Dandong. Also, more Japanese troops were extracted from the Chinese interior, then transported across the Yellow Sea from Tsingtao on the Shantung Peninsula to Dalian on the Liaodong Peninsula, where they were mustered to combat the Soviet forces in the Manchurian-Korean border (these forces were transported to Korea later in the year). In the early days of February, the Soviets launched an attack across the Yalu, seeking to take the Dandong pass. Artillery and bombs rained down upon the Kwantung Army defenders for weeks, and the the Soviets finally launched an assault against the fortress, putting up pontoon bridges across the thawing snow-laden Yalu and surging across with its armored forces.



Although the tenacious Kwantung Army resistance was cut down in the face of the Soviet lead armored forces, soon more experienced battalions joined the fray, veterans of campaigns in China. Heavy casualties in both sides ensued as the Soviets succeeded in seizing the beaches on the East bank of the Yalu towards the north of Dandong, just beyond the range of the Kwantung Army’s heavy artillery. On February 14, the Soviets attacked along the whole line, stretching over several dozen miles: they attempted to exploit their breach to the north, pin-wheeling around the Japanese and cutting them off from behind, thus obligating them to either concede the pass or accept being surrounded. At Dandong, resistance against the Soviets continued, although the IHQ ordered a withdrawal of the northern divisions to secondary defensive lines along the Taedong river, just outside Pyongyang; the retreat had started.



By March, the main force of the Kwantung Army fortified the Taedong river, setting up fieldworks and emplacing camouflaged artillery, while becoming engaged by numerous Korean partisan units, who sabotaged Japanese logistical lines and laid ambushes. In April, twenty-five Soviet divisions were positioned just to the north of Pyongyang; General Zhukov wasted no time in preparing another attack on the Japanese's main lines, and followed through with another assault preceded by an aerial bombardment. The Kwangtung Army was reinforced by more forces extracted from China, by now numerous enough to barely garrison the coastal Chinese cities.



Six fortified complexes guarded the Taedong river and all approaches to Pyongyang. The Red Army launched a huge attack across the length of the Taedong, mixing their infantry and armored forces with aerial attacks and hoping to turn the tide of the war through their sheer numbers. Japanese artillery blasted huge holes into the Soviet line, slicing through the massed Soviet infantry. The Japanese defenders’ discipline and bravery weren’t easily overwhelmed by Soviet sheer numerical advantage; this moment was chosen by the Imperial Government to offer another deal to Stalin: the surrender of southern Manchukuo to the Soviets in exchange of northern Korea. Unfortunately, while Stalin was still considering the offer, an increasingly desperate and scared General Zukhov threw ten of his 43 division into battle, intending to use them as cannon fodder to run the Japanese out of munitions or at least soften the Japanese defense to the point that Soviet mechanized troops could exploit the momentary weakness: this strategy paid off, and the wary Kwangtung Army found itself at the breaking point. Lieutenant-General Yoshitsugu Saito, humiliated but determined to rescue what he could, orchestrated in 2 June a retreat across the Taedong, fighting his way with immense effort out of the Soviet's grip.



The Soviet wasted no time, and when the railroad between Changchung and Pyongyang was repaired, in the last days of July they launched a renewed offensive across the roiling Keijo river in central Korea, where the IJA had entrenched in depth in and around the Korean capital of Keijo (today Seoul). As in last year, the Soviet commanders opened the campaign with first an aerial bombardment and then a frontal armored assault against the city, but the Kwangtung Army held firm and repulsed the Soviets repeatedly. But when a large force of Soviet tanks led by a division of the new T-34/74A slammed into the Japanese lines, the result was the loss of the Kwangtung Army’s artillery emplacements, and by the end of the month most of the Kwangtung Army divisions had been forced to retreat to southern Korea. The Keijo garrison was left behind, without any hope of relieving, just to slow down the Soviet invasion.



By August 1939, the Red Army continued its inexorable advance across Korea, laying siege to the important industrial city of Taiden (today Taejon), which was surrounded by an important industrial zone. The Soviets were outnumbered as they approached, but they had high morale and were well supplied. Despite being outnumbered, the Soviet determined to attack, approaching the Japanese right flank, cutting off the Kwangtung Army defenders from their supplies. The siege lasted four weeks, during which time the rainy season started, pouring water onto the two armies. Rather than wait under poor conditions in the field, Zhukov ordered an assault against Taiden on September 9, and as the soldiers of the Soviet Army surged over their positions, accompanied by armored brigades, whole divisions of Kwangtung Army troops simply performed suicidal attacks against their enemies.



The fighting became even more bloody as the Red and Imperial Armies soldiers clashed in the inner city: Lieutenant-General Saito Masatoshi desperately tried to hold his crumbling forces intact, but the Soviet commanders soon determined that the Japanese ranks had been devastated by repeated outbreaks of cholera and typhus, brought on by the weather and the unburied dead. After six days of fighting, Lieutenant-General Saito finally surrendered, turning himself in to General Zhukov. The Kwangtung Army, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Army and protector of the imperial possessions in northeast Asia, was destroyed; the standard was burned personally by Zhukov. A week passed as the Japanese prisoners were forced to reconstruct the railroad to Keijo, and when that was finished, General Zhukov struck south, intending on seizing the city of Fusan (today Pusan), the last possible Imperial foothold in Korea.



After the fall of Taiden, the Japanese government ordered the approximately 220,000 Japanese residents of the Liaotung peninsula to evacuate Manchurian territory and embark in Dalian to Shanghai or Kagoshima, while the military personnel, concentrated in the peninsula for a counteroffensive which never materialized, was transferred to southern Korea to help in the defense of Fusan. In this point the Japanese government proposed a new plan to Stalin, this time they proposed to divide Korea all along the 35 parallel, thus keeping a Korean buffer between Japan and the Communist. However, the recent events in Europe, the most important the German invasion of Poland, made Stalin extremely nervous and he wished nothing but end the war against Japan for good.



After a grueling march, in 15 October the Soviet forces finally approached Taikyu (today Taegu), the nominal capital of Korea and also a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants. The Soviet army found itself confronted by a significantly numerically superior Japanese force armed with the new Chi-nu tank: after a brief consultation with his advisors, General Zhukov ordered his army to fortify and wait for reinforcements. The casualty estimates in engaging such a large force in a brutal street battle inside a city were too high for Zhukov's liking. Split between literally obeying his orders and following competent military reason, Zhukov ordered his forces to commence a five kilometer withdrawal to bring them out of the range of Japanese artillery. The Japanese commander, Lieutenant-General Sakai Naoji, considering keeping of their city more important than the most likely suicidal pursuit of the enemy, held back.



But in 20 October Stalin ordered to commence an immediate attack and take in the city. Unbeknownst to the Soviet soldiers, though, the Japanese had reinforced Korea with troops coming from China and southern Manchukuo. On 23 October, General Zhukov ordered a full scale assault. With armor in the lead supported by a heavy aerial and artillery bombardment and even cavalry pulling in the flanks, the Japanese were forced to withdraw into the confines of their city to protect against the vicious firepower of the enemy. The Soviet pursued them and soon were caught up in brutal street fighting., then they managed to break the defenses of the city's periphery, but after that were thrown back in a rout as the Japanese infantry, outnumbering the entire Soviet force by nearly three to one, smashed through their enemy's lines with extreme success, forcing an stalemate. However, when in the first weeks of November, the railroad between Taikyu and Keijo was able to transport enough fresh troops and materiel, and the Soviet armies continued their attacks against the city, renewing their efforts with powerful reinforcements out of Siberia. They continued their attack throughout the entire month, which time the Soviets suffered heavy casualties, but they were able to take the city in 2 December; the Soviet treated the POW as they did in Taiden, and then continued advancing toward Fusan (today Pusan).



By now any coherence in the IJA was lost: without concerted logistical support and replacement units the Japanese resistance had no real hope of success - it was merely meant to inflict a maximum of damage to the enemy, while trying to keep control of the rebellious Korean population and evacuate Japanese civilians to the Imperial homeland. But the situation in Japan was not static: in the last days of August, the IJN orchestrated a coup d¢etat against the Army leaders in Tokyo, negotiated with the Kuomingtang party the withdrawal of Japanese forces in China, and after realizing that Korea was irremediably lost, negotiated, first with Stalin, and after he refused, directly with Zhukov, the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Korea. Zhukov, in spite of personal risk, accepted to ignore the Japanese until 15 December, if not for humanity, at least for his incapacity to bring enough troops to siege Fusan. This time was used by the IJN to transfer most of the military units still deployed in Korea and thousands of Japanese civilians to Japan. By 15 December Zhukov renewed his advance against Fusan, and in 29 December, he took Fusan almost without resistance, thus ending the Soviet-Japanese War.

 

an analysis by the US Army staff college..

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources ... /drea2.asp

Introduction
"A Strange War," observed a 20 July 1939 New York Times editorial about the fighting between the Soviet Red Army and the Imperial Japanese Army on the Mongolian steppes. The Times derided both combatants' claims as exaggerated but inadvertently touched on the distinctive feature of the fighting when it described the battle as "raging in a thoroughly out-of-the-way corner of the world where it cannot attract a great deal of attention."1 Geography, the combatants' compulsive secrecy, and the subsequent outbreak of World War II in September 1939 all combined to overshadow the most massive use of tanks theretofore recorded. The Soviets used over 1,000 tanks during the fighting and, under the command of General Georgi K. Zhukov, evidenced skill and sophistication at mechanized warfare. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), essentially an infantry force, fared poorly, and fell victim to a Soviet double envelopment.

While this "Strange War" may be all but forgotten in the West, the Soviets continue to regard it as a brilliant example of the proper manner in which to fight a limited border war. During the time of border clashes with the Peoples' Republic of China in 1968 and 1969, it was no coincidence that several articles about the 1939 border war appeared in Soviet military journals. At least a dozen such articles have appeared in Soviet military literature in the 1970s. Soviet experience gained in 1939 apparently still carries great weight today.

Similarly, IJA staff officers subsequently examined the Japanese Army's performance at Nomonhan in minute detail, and even today the battle serves as a case study at the advanced tactical schools of the Japanese Ground Self Defense Forces. The interest of an ally and of a potential adversary suggests that it would be beneficial for the U.S. Army to know what happened at Nomonhan/Khalkhin Gol in the summer of 1939.

Yet little on the subject has appeared in English.2 Furthermore, Japanese studies and the few accurate English language accounts tend to focus on affairs at the division level or above. The purpose of this paper is to examine the battalion and company level tactics that Japanese infantrymen used to fight the Soviets and the degree of success those tactics achieved.

All modern armies have a tactical doctrine, the officially approved method for their various units to fight on the battlefield. The IJA invested much time, talent, and treasure to formulate a tactical doctrine that would be successful against their potential enemy, the Soviets, who were superior to the IJA in manpower and materiel. This essay briefly describes the evolution of that IJA tactical doctrine, and then presents a detailed examination of how a particular Japanese infantry battalion applied that tactical doctrine in combat against the Soviets in 1939.


Excerpt from 2/28th Infantry War Diary.

Looking at a small unit in combat allows the historian the chance to analyze and to scrutinize doctrine in the test of battle. Such an approach, in turn, surfaces questions about the flexibility, applicability, and effectiveness of doctrine which should concern all armies.

The day-by-day account of a single Japanese battalion in battle is not, however, a comprehensive treatment of the entire Nomonhan fighting. Ordinary Japanese combat infantrymen, like those of any army, did not have the time to reflect on whether or not their fighting techniques followed official IJA doctrine. The Japanese private, clinging to a sand dune during an enemy artillery barrage, could not have a clear grasp of the overall battle, the socalled "Big Picture," which retrospect provides. He received orders and carried out those orders based on his previous training. His was a limited but unique view of land warfare. Here an overview of the Nomonhan campaign is provided, but the theme is small unit tactics and the focus is the battalion, the microcosm, not the division or the army.

The IJA's 2d Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division (2/28th Infantry), serves as the vehicle for this study. There are several reasons for the selection of this particular unit. First, the 2/28th Infantry's report of the fighting- (hereafter referred to as War Diary) is available and provides detailed information on its day-to-day operations against the Red Army at Nomonhan. Second, the battalion operated as an independent unit attached to different task force commanders for different missions. Third, it is neither so small that its activities were overshadowed by a parent unit nor too large for the study of small unit tactics. Finally, the battalion participated in both offensive and defensive operations against the Red Army, providing an insight into IJA tactics for each situation.

The primary documents used in this study are in the IJA archives, which are open to the general public. One collection is available on microfilm in the U.S. Library of Congress. The original documents are kept at the National Defense College Archives in Tokyo, Japan. These IJA documents were originally classified materials, and I have included the original military classification when citing the documents to allow the reader to have a sense of the importance that the IJA attached to these papers. Throughout this study all Japanese personal names are given in the Japanese manner, surname preceding given name.



see link for further reading

 

Could you mention the source of your first post please? Or did you write it yourself?

And maybe make a point about it? I don't really know what you're trying to set in motion here.

 

http://www.angelfire.com/gundam/japanes ... ap/sjw.htm



Points, reasons

Zhukovs first command of a theater, first use of the T-34, Soviet designs on Korea

I though it was a good read also.

 

it is also relevant to my Japan Surrnder piece, I was gonna post it in a different forum, but this is the most appropriate, though I could make an argument this was the opening move of WWII..

Feel free to move it as you feel appropriate

 

wow ,fascinating ,i had no idea of the scope and ferocity of this forgotten war.i have many fond memories of korea from my boyhood in the early sixties.battle debris from the early 50s could still be found in the hills and feilds of taegu.i had no notion that a much larger war had been fought on the same ground in the late 30s.red t34s pushed the ija all the way down to pusan in 1939....? too bad the u.s. army wasnt takeing notes,eh stonwall....anyone have any pics of the tanks and aircraft of war..please post them..thks

 

I think it also indicates that Stalin was responsible for the 1950 Korean war. It was part of a his long term plan. The S.U. expanded this border war purposely.

The hostilities only stopped after he died in 1953.

 

The site Stonewall linked clearly mentions that this is an alternative history. These are not the facts of the conflict.

 

The US Army Command & staff college link is more accurate

another link

http://zhukov.mitsi.com/Russo.htm