The Last Battle of World War II
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The Last Battle of World War II prof. dr. M. Gareev* Introduction than 50 million human lives. The Red Army helped end the war together his article is devoted to the So- with Allied forces. viet Armed Forces’ role in de- Tfeating the Japanese Kwantung The Red Army defeated the million- Army in August-September 1945. In strong Kwantung Army, the enemy’s my opinion, few people in the West largest Asia-Pacific military forma- know about the Manchurian military tion, which had 1,215 tanks, 6,640 operation that ended World War II. I artillery systems, 1,907 warplanes also took part in that operation; this is and 26 ships (The Japan Times, 15.08. why I will combine historical facts 1984.). The Japanese had set up long- with my own recollections. term and multi-echelon reinforced concrete fortifications along the So- This article analyzes the balance of viet-Chinese border. Those fortifica- forces on the Far Eastern theater of tions were linked by underground the war in August 1945 and the effi- tunnels and had enough food and Soviet Command signing a formal ciency of the Red Army’s Manchurian water for several months of incessant document of Japan’s unconditional operation. The article features a dis- fighting. surrender aboard the battleship cussion with some Western historians USS Missouri on September 2, 1945 with regards to the need to involve the The Kwantung Army, which was (Photo RIA Novosti) U.S.S.R. in the war against Japan. commanded by General Otozo Ya- It also deals with hostilities on Chinese mada, comprised the First Front, the territory and Soviet-Allied coopera- Third Front and the Seventeenth The Manchurian tion. And, finally, the article offers Front, as well as the detached Fourth operation some brief conclusions stemming Field Army. The Kwantung Army had from the results of World War II. 42 regular infantry divisions and Soviet forces conducted the Manchu- seven cavalry divisions, as well as rian strategic offensive operation in On September 2, 1945, Japan signed a another 23 infantry brigades, two ca- the Far East from August 9 to Sep- full and unconditional surrender valry brigades and two tank brigades, tember 2, 1945. It is forever embla- aboard the battleship USS Missouri in one Kamikaze brigade, six detached zoned in the history of World War II as Tokyo Bay. This marked the end of regiments, the Second and Fifth Air a brilliant example of military art and World War II, which had lasted almost Armies and the Sungari naval flotilla. as one of the war’s most outstanding exactly six years and claimed more episodes. That operation took place Moreover, General Yamada comman- ded the 250,000-strong army group of * ‘Army General’ M. Gareev is President of the Manchoukuo puppet state to- USS Missouri on board of which the Russian Academy of Military Sciences in gether with cavalry units of Prince a formal document of Japan’s Moscow. He has written over 200 publi- cations about military history and mililtary Teh Wang (Tonlop), the Japanese- surrender was signed science. appointed ruler of Inner Mongolia. (Photo RIA Novosti) 268 MILITAIRE SPECTATOR JRG 175 6-2006 along a 5,000-km front and to a depth same area as Germany, Italy and Different visions of 200 to 800 km. Hostilities were Japan all together. conducted over rugged terrain that The Red Army killed about 84,000 True, some Western researchers, in- included deserts, plains, mountains, enemy officers and men and took cluding modern U.S. historians E. Ac- forests, marshes and the taiga. nearly 700,000 prisoner. Soviet losses tion, Paul Dull, Ronald Spector and totaled no more than 12,000 officers political commentator of Japan’s Ko- The Red Army had to cross such great and men, or less than 1 per cent of all kubo military magazine O.Toshima, rivers as the Amur, the Argun and the the troops involved. Neither the explained such outstanding successes Sungari. Its units also crossed the Wehrmacht, nor Great Britain and the by the complete demoralization of the Greater Khingan mountain range (al- United States had achieved similar Japanese Imperial Army after the titude, up to 1,500 meters above sea successes in any theater of operation bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki level). That theater of war had the of World War II. and by its end as a formidable milita- JRG 175 6-2006 MILITAIRE SPECTATOR 269 ry force. U.S. President Harry Truman Japanese territory against invading incur the losses incident to such a said the same in 1947 (Bulletin of U.S. forces. war and we shall have to leave the History, 1949. No. 143. p. 30). Japanese islands. In that case, the war would have las- (J. Ehrman, Grand Strategy. Moreover, they claim that the Soviet ted for at least another year or two, October 1944-August 1945. Union’s participation in the final sta- rather than only one month. Conse- Moscow 1985. pp. 271-272) ges of World War II was not necessary quently, U.S. casualties would have ex- because the U.S. Armed Forces and ceeded one million. (For more details, It is a fact of history that President those of their Allies could have coped see Ronald Spector’s book Eagle Truman first did not think that it with imperialist Japan on their own. Against the Sun pp. 552-553; W. would be expedient to involve the So, how can one reply to these state- Churchill The Second World War U.S.S.R. in the war. Nevertheless, U.S. ments? Vol. 6. p. 333) generals convinced him to change his mind. General Douglas MacArthur, One could portray those statements as Pentagon leaders believed that the Ja- who commanded Allied forces in the relics of the bipolar Cold War con- panese Emperor and the General Staff south-west Pacific, wrote to the Presi- frontation between the capitalist sys- could leave for Manchuria and resist dent that U.S. forces should not land in tem and the socialist system. At that U.S. forces there with the help of Japan, until the Russian Army laun- time, each side did its best to distort bacteriological weapons. This, too, ched combat operations in Man- any achievements and to portray them would have inflicted tremendous los- churia. (Vyacheslav Zimonin. Final in the worst manner in historical ses on the U.S. Truman’s generals told Victory of World War Two. Moscow science and the mass media. We must him bluntly about this possibility. In 2005. p. 24) now discard old-time ideological his memorandum to President Tru- stereotypes and rely on authentic his- man, U.S. Secretary of War Henry torical facts instead. This is the only Stimson wrote: The Russian view possible method. Once started in an actual invasion, It should also be mentioned here that As is known, U.S. President Franklin we shall, in my opinion, have to go the Kremlin was also interested in de- Delano Roosevelt and British Prime through with an even more bitter feating the Kwantung Army, libera- Minister Sir Winston Spencer Chur- finish than in Germany. We shall ting China’s northeastern regions chill repeatedly asked Supreme Com- mander-in-Chief Joseph Stalin (during the 1943 Tehran conference and at the Yalta conference in 1945) to provide military help against Japan. The new U.S. President Harry Truman also asked Stalin about this at the 1945 Potsdam conference. The Soviet leader confirmed that the Red Army would attack the Kwantung Army exactly three months after the surren- der of Nazi Germany. Indeed, Soviet forces crossed the line of contact with the Japanese Army in the early hours of August 9. Military historians know why Washing- ton insisted that the U.S.S.R. had to enter the war against Japan. In August 1945, the Japanese Armed Forces had almost 7,000,000 troops, 10,000 planes and 500 warships in Asia and the Pacific. The Allies had only 1,800,000 officers and men and 5,000 planes. If the Soviet Union had not joined the war, then the most combat- ready Kwantung Army would have concentrated its main elements on 270 MILITAIRE SPECTATOR JRG 175 6-2006 (Manchuria) and North Korea. It also Obviously, the Russian defeat was At that time, I was a major and senior wanted to deprive Tokyo of its milita- ‘helped’ a good deal by the revolu- assistant to the Fifth Army’s intelli- ry and economic bases in Asia – a tion of 1905, which undermined the gence officer. The Fifth Army, which bridgehead for attacking the U.S.S.R. country’s relatively small economic helped seize Konigsberg in April and Mongolia – and to help Chinese potential and prevented it from con- 1945, was subsequently transferred to patriots eliminate the Japanese inva- tinuing to defend its national interests the First Far Eastern Front. I also took ders from their homeland. in the Far East. Still we must face the part in preparing the Manchurian ope- These goals were fueled by the Krem- facts: Soviet leaders had every reason ration and trained advanced rifle bat- lin’s desire to take revenge for Rus- to declare war on imperial Japan. The talions that were ordered to seize sia’s ignominious defeat in the 1904- people always remembered the heroic long-term Japanese fortifications in 1905 war against Japan and to retrieve feat of the Varyag cruiser, which went August 1945. the lost South Sakhalin and the Kurile to the bottom in Chemulpo Bay rather archipelago. than surrender to the Japanese, and the Seventeen powerful fortified districts wonderful waltzes ‘The Hills of Man- had been built near Soviet and Mong- At the turn of the 20th century, Japan churia’ and ‘The Amur Waves’, which olian borders by that time, including received all-out U.S., British and French were composed during that time and eight fortified districts on the Soviet support and attacked Russian forces served as reminders of the event, and Primorye (Maritime) Territory’s bor- in Manchuria, on China’s Kwantung many other emotion-filled develop- der.