Page 155 - The Chief Culprit

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saw the menacing footage on their screens: dive-bombers roaring wildly as they flew toward
the ground, dropping their deadly loads, and soaring back into the clouds, tanks breaking
Polish barricades, letting through hordes of cheerful motorcyclists.
e Red Army’s operation in Mongolia, on the other hand, was carried out on hot
desert steppes, where there were no international observers and journalists. Few people knew
about the operation at the time. For obvious reasons, the Japanese government did not rush
to tell the world about the defeat of the Sixth Army in Mongolia. Surprisingly, the Soviet
propaganda also did not rush to announce its victory.
During World War II, Major General D. Ortenberg was the editor-in-chief of the
central military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star). He was directly subordinate to Stalin
and had many meetings with him. Before the war, he was the editor-in-chief of the 1st Army
Group newspaper at Khalkhin-Gol. Major General D. Ortenberg testifies that Stalin per-
sonally forbade publishing materials concerning the defeat of the Japanese Sixth Army. “In
central newspapers all materials about Khalkhin-Gol effectively went to the trash bin: there
was a strict order from Stalin to not print anything about the Khalkhin-Gol events.” We
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can check Ortenberg’s statement ourselves. It suffices to leaf through Pravda, Izvestia, and
Krasnaya Zvezda from those days—there is not a word about the brilliant lightning-speed
defeat of an entire Japanese army!
All Soviet propaganda was extremely and severely centralized. Stalin’s empire ran the
most powerful and perfected system of censorship. In Stalin’s empire, any printed product
could be published only after a censor gave permission. Without the permission, even bus
tickets could not be printed. e principle of selection of information was extremely simple:
hide any defects, catastrophes, and mistakes and praise any accomplishments. e farms pro-
duced slightly more milk, dug slightly more potatoes, a new factory was built—those were
the reported news. But here we have a true accomplishment: the defeat of an entire Japanese
army. is was an unprecedented historical event. Nobody had ever beaten the Japanese.
During the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–5 Russians had especially suffered from the hands of
the Japanese. Here came a remarkable revenge, huge trophies! e Red Army opened a new
chapter in the art of war. e defeat was achieved by a new, previously unseen method.
Yet, Stalin ordered silence. Why? Because he was preparing the same sort of defeat,
only on a much grander scale, for all of Europe. Stalin’s interest lay in concealing the might
of the Red Army, keeping silent its capability for delivering crushing surprise attacks. Stalin’s
interest lay in letting the whole world believe in the backwardness of the Red Army and its
inability to conduct modern warfare. Stalin’s interest lay in catching Hitler off-guard, in not
scaring him.
At first glance, the Red Army’s lightning operation in Mongolia and the German blitz-
krieg in Poland are not comparable in scale. e German troops participating in the invasion
of Poland numbered 1.6 million soldiers and officers. e Soviet group in Mongolia num-
bered only 57,000 men. In numbers of people, the German operation surpassed the Soviet
one twenty-eight times. However, if one looks at the number of tanks and airplanes, the
numbers are comparable. e German operation against Poland had the participation of four
times more airplanes, and six times more tanks, than the Soviet operation in Mongolia. e
numbers are quite on the same scale.
An analysis of the quality of weapons is even more interesting. e Red Army used
long-range bombers in Mongolia; Germany had no such planes. If one examines the quality
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