Page 325 - The Chief Culprit

270 y e Chief Culprit

e strategic regrouping of Soviet troops was carried out at a distance of nine thousand
to twelve thousand kilometers. A regrouping of troops on such a scale was being performed
for only the second time in human history. e first time was in May and June 1941, from
the east toward the German borders. In 1945, it was done in the opposite direction. e
commands of two fronts, three field armies and one tank army, fifteen rifle, artillery, mecha-
nized, and tank corps—all those were moved to the Far East. e smaller units moved there
together with their commands: thirty-six rifle, artillery, and air-defense artillery divisions,
fifty-three brigades, and over a hundred separate regiments and battalions were moved there
too. In just three months, over 500,000 soldiers and officers were transported from Central
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Europe to the Far East. To minimize the volume of transports, a large part of the brigades,
divisions, corps, and even an entire tank army were transported without their equipment. But
some formations still had to be moved with their weapons and military equipment, and the
number of arms transported with the troops was enormous: 3,340 tanks and self-propelled
guns, 7,500 cannons and howitzers, 3,600 mortars, 1,100 rocket-launching field installations
(“Katyusha”), and 1,400 warplanes. It took 135,756 railcars to transport this mass of troops
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and weapons.
During a surprise offensive operation, it would be necessary to supply a tremendous
number of troops, which would be continuously moving forward. e troops immediately
would need to receive hundreds of thousands of tons of ammunition, fuel, lubricants, food,
and everything else that was indispensable for advancing. e transport of such quantities
of cargo over distances of hundreds of kilometers could only be done by railroad. However,
the Soviet Union’s railroads had a broad gauge, while Manchuria’s and China’s railroads had
a narrow gauge. It was decided to re-weld the railroad gauge there to the Soviet standard.
Special brigades of railroad troops with the necessary equipment were prepared for this.
e arriving cargo was unloaded directly onto the ground in each border station’s
vicinity. Part of the cargo was not unloaded at all. It remained in the railcars, ready to follow
the advancing troops across the border. “By the beginning of the operation, there were over
1,500 cisterns with fuel on the railroads of the Far East. . . . is imposed a great strain on
the functioning of the railroads.” 23
After the strategic regrouping of the troops was complete, the three Soviet fronts con-
tained eleven field armies, three air defense armies, three air force armies, one tank army, and
four separate air force corps. In addition, the Pacific fleet, the Amur flotilla, NKVD troops,
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and the armed forces of Mongolia were all under the command of the Soviet commander-in-
chief in the Far East. e formation of Soviet troops included 1,747,465 men, 29,835 guns
and mortars, 5,250 tanks, and 5,171 airplanes. e Pacific fleet had 417 warships, including
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78 submarines, and 1,618 airplanes, including 1,312 combat aircraft. e Amur navy flotilla
had 126 warships and 68 combat aircraft. Colonel Generals Vasiliev, Morozov, Maksimov,
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and Zolotov (in reality, Marshals of the Soviet Union A. M. Vasilevsky, R. Y. Malinovsky, K.
A. Meretskov, and General of the Army M. V. Zakharov) arrived at the secret command posts
ahead of the troops. To maintain secrecy, the “colonel generals” wore plain black jumpsuits
over their uniforms, without any insignia, and during their trips to the vicinity of the state
border they wore the uniforms of regular NKVD border troops.
A stream of cargo flowed in from the United States at the same time Soviet forces were
being transferred out of Central and Eastern Europe. Stalin was the most cunning diplomat
of the twentieth century. He demanded that the president of the United States supply food