During World War II, Germany and Japan were allies, but during the four years of bloody war between the Soviet Union and Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union did not clash. However, when the Soviet Union celebrated its victory in the Great Patriotic War in Moscow, Japan was surprised to find that three marshals had mysteriously disappeared.
These three marshals were the men who commanded the Far Eastern Campaign, the last large-scale battle of World War II, and they defeated the Japanese Kwantung Army, known as the "Flower of the Imperial Army", in a few days, leaving Japan without the last resistance ability.
As a result, Japan had to announce its unconditional surrender on August 15.
Every year on May 9, Russia holds a grand victory parade on Moscow's Red Square to commemorate the historic moment of Germany's formal surrender to the Soviet Union in 1945.
In 1941, in the face of the threat of the German army, the Soviet Union held a military parade that was overwhelmingly uncontroversial, which greatly boosted the morale of the Soviet military and civilians. In addition, the military parade on Red Square on June 24, 1945 was also a major event that will go down in history.
It was the day when the Soviet Union concentrated the elite units of the three fronts and launched its final assault on Berlin, the old den of German fascism.
Although the Battle of Berlin ended on 2 May, the German representatives did not go to the Soviet headquarters until 8 May to negotiate surrender, which undoubtedly exacerbated the panic in Japan.
On May 9, 1945, the official signing ceremony of the victory in the European theater of World War II took place in Moscow, but due to the time required for the withdrawal of front-line troops and the consolidation of the German occupation zone, Stalin decided to postpone the victory parade originally planned on Red Square until June 24.
This day was four years and two days after the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, and for the Soviet military and civilians, it marked the end of the war. After the parade began, Marshal Zhukov, the most famous general of the Soviet Union in World War II, rode a white horse from the Kremlin to Red Square as the "deputy supreme commander-in-chief".
The huge infantry platoon, the rumbling platoon of tanks and self-propelled guns, showed the world the unprecedented strength of the Soviet Armed Forces after the completion of the Great Patriotic War.
Finally, 200 Soviet salute soldiers threw captured Nazi flags at Lenin's tomb, proving the historical contribution of the Soviet army in the anti-fascist cause.
This victory parade is not only a celebration of the victory in the European theater of World War II, but also an affirmation of the heroic struggle of the Soviet military and civilians.
Although General Zhukov saw the soldiers at the parade rejoicing at the end of the war, Stalin standing on the viewing platform did not feel relaxed. As early as the Yalta Conference in February, he had already promised to fight against Japan three months after the end of the war against Germany.
But he can't make this information public yet, and only a few people in the Supreme Command know that the war with Japan is already in the next step. Some of these elite Soviet units under review would immediately go to the Far East to continue the fight.
At this time, Japan** and the military department, which were in a difficult situation at home and abroad, were also speculating about what actions the Soviet Union would take after the end of the war against Germany. Japanese intelligence officers soon discovered that after the parade, Marshal Vasilevsky, Marshal Meretskov and Marshal Malinovsky mysteriously disappeared from major Soviet newspapers.
Although the dismissal, imprisonment and even execution of high-ranking generals in Soviet history was nothing new, Japan still felt that it could be the next target, and Tokyo was enveloped in an atmosphere of unease.
However, after research, the Japanese military top brass believed that the Soviet Union could not have declared war in 1945 with huge losses on all fronts, and the Kwantung Army had been preparing for war against the Soviet Union in the northeast for many years.
They also believed that Stalin had all kinds of contradictions with the United States and therefore would not easily tear up the peace agreement with Japan. However, it was these miscalculations that led to the rapid destruction of the Kwantung Army.
Historically, Russia and Japan have long been at odds over interests in the Far East. However, a treaty maintained peace between the two countries for a period of time.
Although in recent history, Japan and Russia have not been friendly neighbors, and to this day, the Japanese are arguing with Russia over the issue of the "four northern islands".
After the 17th century, Tsarist Russia expanded eastward, establishing contacts with other Asian countries. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan made the invasion of Korea and Northeast China a basic national policy, and became an Eastern power in the First Sino-Japanese War.
However, Japan's occupation of China's Liaodong Peninsula angered Tsarist Russia, which wanted to occupy the entire northeast. Tsarist Russia, together with Germany and France, forced Japan to withdraw from Liaodong, which further deteriorated relations between the two countries.
After ten years of hard work, Japan finally defeated Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
After the October Revolution of 1917, Japan and the European and American powers carried out armed intervention against the nascent Soviet Russia, which made the Soviet Union hold a grudge against Japan. However, when Japan launched the 918 Incident and invaded the three eastern provinces of China, the Soviet Union, which lacked strength, chose to forbear.
However, the Japanese Kwantung Army saw the Soviet Union as weak and bullied, and provoked the Zhang Gufeng Incident in 1938 and the Nomenkan conflict in 1939. However, after the Nomenkan conflict, the Japanese Army recognized the gap between itself and the Soviet Red Army and abandoned its attempt to move north.
With the outbreak of war in Europe, the Soviet Union needed to concentrate on the German threat, while Japan, after the war in China was mired, wanted to move south to seize the resources of Southeast Asia.
In this case, both sides want to sign a peace agreement.
On April 13, 1941, Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, signed the Treaty of Neutrality between Japan and the Soviet Union with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoyoshi Matsuoka and Japanese Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Miji Kenkawa.
Although many later criticized the Soviet Union for stopping aid to China because of the treaty, and Japan did not take action against the Soviet Union along with Germany as a result, the Far East was not the core interest of the Soviet Union from the standpoint of both sides at the time, and Japan understood that occupying all of Siberia would not bring any resources.
Thus, the parties reached a consensus on mutual non-aggression in the Far East, so that they could concentrate their efforts on their own primary goals. However, peace requires strength to maintain, especially against the Japanese, who are good at sneak attacks.
Although two months after the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, the two sides had signed a contract, the Japanese still found that the Soviet army maintained more than 500,000 troops in the area north of Heilongjiang. Therefore, in response to the German allies, the Japanese army conducted the "Seki Exercise" in the northeast, but in fact did not really prepare for war against the Soviet Union.
However, the Soviets, through the Sorge Group in Tokyo, confirmed that the Japanese intended to move south, so they mobilized more than 200,000 troops from the Far East with winter combat experience during the Battle of Moscow.
With the outbreak of the Pacific War, Japan was forced to transfer troops from the Kwantung Army many times, and even transferred 7 divisions and nearly 1 3 strategic materials back to Japan in April 1945.
In general, until August 1945, Japan and the Soviet Union achieved a win-win situation through the Japan-Soviet Neutrality Pact.
In the Pacific War, the United States and the Soviet Union divided their forces in Asia through the Yalta Agreement. Stalin was bitter about Japan, which had threatened the security of the Soviet Far East, but because of the brutality of the Soviet-German war, he could not immediately solve the Far Eastern problem.
It was not until the end of 1944, when the Soviet Union regained lost territory and attacked Eastern Europe, and the American army also won consecutive battles in the Pacific theater and approached the Japanese mainland, that Stalin began to plan the next step of the Far East campaign.
At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Germany's defeat was inevitable, and the division of power in Asia became a major issue. Although the United States hoped to dominate Asia on its own after the war, Japan was still resisting stubbornly, and the actual combat application of the atomic bomb was uncertain.
Therefore, Roosevelt offered to sacrifice some of the rights and interests of Northeast China, Outer Mongolia, and Japan in exchange for the Soviet Union's participation in the war against Japan after the end of the war against Germany.
Although Stalin agreed with this seemingly easy action, it was a decision he made after careful consideration. Although the Soviet Union had hundreds of thousands of troops in the Far East, these forces were very scattered, equipped with the Soviet army's elimination in 1941, and had no actual combat experience.
In contrast, the Japanese Kwantung Army was still quite strong, with the 1st and 3rd Front armies and 2 armies under its jurisdiction, with a total of 24 divisions and 11 brigades, and about 700,000 people.
In addition, there were about 200,000 puppet Manchu troops. The 17th Front in Korea and the 5th Front in the south of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were also targets that the Soviet troops had to strike.
The Kwantung Army had built 17 fortified areas along the border with the Soviet Union and Outer Mongolia, with about 8,000 very strong fortifications.
By the time the war lasted until 1945, the Soviet Union's human losses had reached their limit, and every family suffered from the death of a loved one. In this situation, Stalin began to think about how to complete the Far Eastern operation with the least possible cost.
So, Vasilevsky developed a plan aimed at the rapid transfer of the main forces fighting against Germany to the Far East. This plan included the 2nd and 5rd armies of the 53rd Ukrainian Front, the 2nd Army of the 19th Belorussian Front and the 6th Guards Tank Army;As well as the artillery, aviation, signal troops, engineering troops, logistics units under their control, they will quickly complete the mobilization to the Far East.
After four years of silence, the Trans-Siberian Railway is busy again. Since May, 1360,000 wagons loaded with people and supplies went to stations in the Far East.
In June and July, the busiest months, 26 military vehicles were sent out every night. For the sake of secrecy, all troops were moved at night, avoiding towns and villages, and all radio stations were not transmitted.
Marshal Vasilevsky and others secretly came to Khabarovsk to set up the General Headquarters of the Soviet Army in the Far East and to work with the local Soviet generals and party and government leaders to improve the battle plan.
In order to avoid being detected by the Japanese, Marshal Vasilevsky assumed the name "Admiral Vasilyev", Marshal Meretskov assumed the name "Admiral Maksimov", and Marshal Malinovsky was even "demoted" to lieutenant general.
Three months later, the Soviets managed to mobilize 26,137 artillery pieces, 5,556 tanks and 3,446 aircraft to the Far Eastern front.157The 770,000 Soviet troops were reorganized into the Front Army.
In August, a sudden storm swept across the battlefield, catching the Kwantung Army off guard, eventually leading to the surrender of Japan. In order to quickly liberate the motherland, the Northeast Anti-Japanese Alliance, which had withdrawn to the territory of the Soviet Union in the early years, played a crucial role during this period.
They secretly infiltrated the Japanese strongholds on the border, found out the details of the Japanese troops by parachuting or swimming, and reported this information to the Soviet command. Based on this intelligence, Vasilevsky and others developed a plan for the Far Eastern campaign, which later became known as the "August Storm".
Since the main garrison of the Japanese army was located along the border along the Heilongjiang and Ussuri rivers, the Transbaikal Front, with its 650,000 troops, was to carry out a major penetration operation after the start of the battle.
They will climb over the desert Gobi and the Great Khingan Mountains in Mongolia, and suddenly appear in the Northeast Plain to carry out lightning attacks on Harbin and other large cities. The 580,000-strong 1st Far Eastern Front was to wipe out the Japanese garrisons along the Ussuri River from east to west, with the support of the Soviet Pacific Fleet.
The Japanese army joined forces with the Transbaikal Front between Changchun and Jilin and successfully surrounded and annihilated the main forces of the Kwantung Army. Although the Second Far Eastern Front had only 340,000 men, their strategy of feint attack to the south played an important role in preventing the Kwantung Army from retreating south.
In the face of the military threat from the USSR, the Japanese ** and the army showed incredible numbness. Even after Okinawa had been occupied by U.S. forces and the Pozdam Proclamation was jointly issued by China, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki was still determined to continue the Greater East Asia War.
However, the Soviet Union, pretending to act as a mediator between the United States and Japan, became the last hope for many Japanese military and political leaders to find an end to the war. Even the top brass of the Japanese army held talks with the Soviet ambassador to Japan on many occasions, trying to exchange large warships that could not go to sea for Soviet tanks and new fighters.
On 8 August, Soviet Foreign Commissar Molotov suddenly summoned the Japanese ambassador to the Soviet Union, Naotake Sato, who heard that the Soviets would declare war on Japan in the early morning of 9 August. He tried to contact the country, but the ** line has been cut.
In the early morning of 9 August, more than 1,000 Soviet planes suddenly launched air strikes on Japan's main military targets in northeast China, followed by a volley of 10,000 artillery pieces on the border line. The unprepared Japanese army was suddenly thrown into disarray, and the front-line troops rushed to the battle, but it was difficult to get in touch with the Kwantung Army headquarters in Changchun.
After daybreak, a million Soviet troops, guided by tanks, quickly broke through the national border and exchanged fierce fire with the recalcitrant Japanese troops.
After the Japanese army learned of the Soviet attack, the top brass still believed that the Kwantung Army would be able to resist for a while, and the Soviet Union would take the initiative to stop the war after inflicting a lot of losses. Therefore, they ordered the Kwantung Army to move its headquarters from Changchun to Tonghua in order to calmly direct the Japanese army to assemble on the Korean Peninsula.
However, the rapid advance of the Transbaikal Front cut off the rear of the main Japanese forces, and at the same time a large number of Soviet airborne troops were airborne behind the Shenyang and other fronts. By August 14, having learned that the organized resistance of the Kwantung Army had been crushed, the Japanese cabinet, in desperation, agreed to surrender unconditionally to the Allies.
The Soviets won a decisive victory in the Far Eastern campaign, successfully annihilating all Japanese troops, capturing a large number of enemy troops, and occupying the Kuril Islands, completely controlling access to the Pacific Ocean.
The resistance of the commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army, General Otozo Yamada, could not stop the strong strength of the Soviet army, which also heralded the final victory of World War II. This battle was a manifestation of the strength of the Soviet army, and at the same time an important turning point in World War II.