Page 328 - The Chief Culprit

A Model War y 273

and telegraph lines were not working. Even in normal circumstances, radio connection with
Japan, which was almost halfway around the world, was difficult. But here the circumstances
were not normal: someone had tampered with the radio stations. In other words, the Japanese
government found out that war was declared after a huge delay and through entirely different
channels. In military language, this could be called “preparation and carrying out of a sudden
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initial attack with the opening of a new strategic front.” In the language of politics, this was
called a “just and humane action by the USSR.” 44
After the first crushing attack, Marshal R. Y. Malinovsky told his troops on August
10, 1945: “ e Soviet people cannot live and work in peace while the Japanese imperial-
ists brandish arms at our far-eastern borders and await a convenient moment to attack our
motherland.” Malinovsky spoke four days after an atomic bomb had been dropped on
45
Hiroshima and one day after an atomic bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki. ose two
Japanese cities lay in ruins unseen in human history, and Malinovsky was fully aware of the
fact. Did the “Japanese imperialists,” after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, really have nothing else
to do but “await a convenient moment”?
In March 1939, Stalin had accused Great Britain and France of wanting to draw Europe
into war while they remained on the sidelines: “In the politics of non-intervention, there is a
desire not to hinder the aggressors while they do their dirty deeds, not to interfere, for exam-
ple, with Japan involving itself in a war against China . . . the goal is to let all the participants
of the conflict become engulfed by the quicksand of war, and let them weaken and exhaust
each other. en, when they are sufficiently weakened, one can enter the scene with fresh
forces, act, of course, ‘in the interests of peace,’ and dictate to the weakened war participants
all the terms of peace.” Stalin always ascribed his own intentions to his enemies. Stalin did
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everything that he accused Great Britain and France of doing. Now, Japan was exhausted by
the war, and it was time to intervene “in the interests of peace”: “ e Soviet government,
striving for the quickest possible restoration of peace, issued a declaration of war.” 47
e offensive operation by Soviet armies in August 1945 was truly a lightning war.
“ e forward battalions, accompanied by border guards, silently crossed the border without
opening fire, and before the Japanese defenders had time to occupy them, took control of
long-term enemy defense structures in a series of locations.” In just the first day, the 6th
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Tank Guards Army completed a thrust of 150 kilometers. e advance took place in ex-
tremely difficult conditions. Manchurian summers were extremely rainy, especially in August.
Rivers overflowed, and fields and roads turned into impassable swamps. e troops of the
1st and 2nd Far Eastern Fronts had to cross the Amur River, one of the largest rivers on the
planet. It stretched 2,850 kilometers in length. In August 1945, the Amur’s water levels were
four meters higher than usual and flooded thousands of square kilometers. e rivers that
flowed into the Amur, among them the Ussuri and the Sungari, also overflowed.
e Trans-Baikal Front faced an entirely different situation—the tank columns ad-
vanced through waterless steppes in thick clouds of dust. e temperature was 30 degrees
Celsius, sometimes even higher. Ahead, the troops had to overcome the Great Khingan
Range, behind which unfolded a territory of rice fields completely unfamiliar to the Soviet
soldiers.
It is claimed that the Japanese troops put up weak or no resistance. at is not true.
e Japanese soldiers were the most tenacious in the world. ey did not yet know about the
destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Japanese government was in no hurry to tell the