Soviet invasion of Manchuria

Soviet invasion of Manchuria (1945)
Part of World War II and Soviet-Japanese War (1945)
File:Soviet invasion of Manchuria (1945).gif Soviet gains in North East Asia, August 1945.
Date August 9 – 20, 1945 Location Manchuria/Manchukuo, Inner Mongolia/Mengjiang, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and Korea Result Decisive Soviet victory. Contributed to Japanese surrender. Liberation of Manchuria and Defeat of Manchukuo. Territorial changes Soviets regain territory lost by Imperial Russia after the Russo-Japanese war in 1904.
Belligerents
Allies: Soviet Union Mongolia (Outer Mongolia) Republic of China	Axis: Japan Manchukuo Mengjiang (Inner Mongolia)
Commanders and leaders
Aleksandr Vasilevsky	Otozo Yamada (POW)
Strength
Soviet Union: 1,685,500 men, 26,137 artillery, 1,852 sup. artillery, 5,556 tanks and self-propelled artillery 5,368 aircraft Mongolia: 16,000 men	Japan: 1,217,000 men, 5,360 artillery, 1,155 tanks, 1,800 aircraft, 1,215 vehicles Manchukuo: 200,000 men Mengjiang: 10,000 men
Casualties and losses
12,031 KIA/MIA, 24,425 WIA	(Soviet estimate) 83,737 KIA, 640,276 POWs; (Japanese estimate) 21,000 KIA

The Soviet invasion of Manchuria or, as the Soviets named it, the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation (Russian: Манчжурская стратегическая наступательная операция, lit. Manchzhurskaya Strategicheskaya Nastupatelnaya Operaciya), began on August 9, 1945, with the Soviet invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and was the largest campaign of the 1945 Soviet-Japanese War. The Soviets conquered Manchukuo, Mengjiang (inner Mongolia), northern Korea, southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. The rapid defeat of Japan's Kwantung Army was a significant factor in the Japanese surrender and the termination of World War II.

Since 1983, the operation has sometimes been called Operation August Storm, after American Army historian LTC David Glantz used this title for a paper on the subject.

Summary

See Soviet–Japanese War (1945)#Summary for a more detailed summary.

As agreed with the Allies at the Tehran Conference (November 1943) and the Yalta Conference (February 1945), the Soviet Union entered World War II's Pacific Theater within three months of the end of the war in Europe. The invasion began on August 9, 1945, precisely three months after the German surrender on May 8 (May 9, 0:43 Moscow time).

Although the commencement of the invasion fell between the atomic bombings of Hiroshima, on August 6, and Nagasaki, on August 9, the timing of the invasion had been planned well in advance and was determined by the timing of the agreements at Tehran and Yalta, the long term buildup of Soviet forces in the Far East since Tehran, and the date of the German surrender; on August 3, Marshal Vasilevsky reported to Stalin that, if necessary, he could attack on the morning of August 5.

At 11pm Trans-Baikal time on 8 August 1945, Soviet foreign minister Molotov informed Japanese ambassador Sato that the Soviet Union had declared war on the Empire of Japan, and that from August 9 the Soviet Government would consider itself to be at war with Japan. At one minute past midnight Trans-Baikal time on 9 August 1945, the Soviets commenced their invasion simultaneously on three fronts to the east, west and north of Manchuria:

• the Khingan-Mukden Offensive Operation (August 9, 1945 – September 2, 1945);
• the Harbin-Kirin Offensive Operation (August 9, 1945 – September 2, 1945); and
• the Sungari Offensive Operation (August 9, 1945 – September 2, 1945).

Though the battle extended beyond the borders traditionally known as Manchuria—that is, the traditional lands of the Manchus—the coordinated and integrated invasions of Japan's northern territories has also been called the Battle of Manchuria. Since 1983, the operation has sometimes been called Operation August Storm, after American Army historian LTC David Glantz used this title for a paper on the subject. It has also been referred to as the battle of Manchukuo, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria., and by its Soviet name, the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation.

This offensive should not be confused with the Soviet-Japanese Border Wars, (particularly the Battle of Khalkhin Gol/Nomonhan Incident of May–September 1939), that ended in Japan's defeat in 1939, and led to the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact.

Background and buildup

See Soviet–Japanese War (1945)#Background and buildup.

Combatant forces

Soviets

The Far East Command, under Marshal of the Soviet Union Aleksandr Vasilevsky, had a plan for the conquest of Manchuria that was simple but huge in scale, calling for a massive pincer movement over all of Manchuria. This pincer movement was to be performed by the Transbaikal Front from the west and by the 1st Far East Front from the east; the 2nd Far East Front was to attack the center of the pocket from the north. The only Soviet equivalent of a theater command that operated during the war (apart from the short-lived 1941 "Directions" in the west), Far East Command, consisted of three Red Army fronts.

Western Front of Manchuria

The Transbaikal Front, under Marshal R. Y. Malinovsky, included:

• 17th Army
• 36th Army
• 39th Army
• 53rd Army
• 6th Guards Tank Army
• Soviet Mongolian Cavalry Mechanized Group under I.A.Pliyev
• 12th Air Army.

The Trans-Baikal Front was to form the western half of the Soviet pincer movement, attacking across the Inner Mongolian desert and over the Greater Khingan mountains. These forces had as objective to secure Mukden (present day Shenyang), then meet troops of the 1st Far East Front at the Changchun area in south central Manchuria, and in doing so finish the double envelopment.

Basic map showing Soviet invasion plan for Manchuria

Amassing over one thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, the 6th Guards Tank Army had to serve as an armored spearhead, leading the Front's advance and capturing objectives 350 km (217 miles) inside Manchuria by the fifth day of the invasion.

The 36th Army was also attacking from the west, but with the objective to meet forces of the 2nd Far East Front at Harbin and Tsitsihar.

Eastern Front of Manchuria

The 1st Far East Front, under Marshal K. A. Meretskov, included:

• 1st Red Banner Army
• 5th Army
• 25th Army
• 35th Army
• 10th Mechanized Corps
• 9th Air Army.

The 1st Far East Front was to form the eastern half of the pincer movement. This attack involved the 1st Red Banner Army, the 5th Army and the 10th Mechanized Corps striking towards Mudanjiang (or Mutanchiang). Once that city was captured, this force was to advance towards the cities of Jilin (or Kirin), Changchun and Harbin. Its final objective was to link up with forces of the Trans-Baikal Front at Changchun and Jilin (or Kirin) thus closing the double envelopment movement.

As a secondary objective, the 1st Far East Front was to prevent Japanese forces from escaping to Korea, and then invade the Korean peninsula up to the 38th parallel, establishing in the process what later became North Korea. The secondary objective was to be carried out by the 25th Army. Meanwhile, the 35th Army was tasked with capturing the cities of Boli (or Poli), Linkou and Mishan.

Northern Front of Manchuria

The 2nd Far East Front, under General M. A. Purkayev, included:

• 2nd Red Banner Army
• 15th Army
• 16th Army (whose 56th Rifle Corps was the only formation to see combat, on Sakhalin)
• 5th Separate Rifle Corps
• Chuguevsk Operational Group
• Amur Military Flotilla
• 10th Air Army.

The 2nd Far East Front was in a supporting attack role. Its objectives were the cities of Harbin and Tsitsihar, and to prevent an orderly withdrawal to the south by the Japanese forces.

Once troops from the 1st Far East Front and Trans-Baikal Front captured the city of Changchun, the 2nd Far East Front were to attack the Liaotung Peninsula and seize Port Arthur (present day Lüshun).

Soviet Forces under the Far East Command

	Total	Trans-Baikal Front	1st Far East Front	2nd Far East Front
Men	1,577,725	654,040	586,589	337,096
Artillery pieces	27,086	9,668	11,430	5,988
Multiple rocket launchers	1,171	583	516	72
Tanks and self propelled guns	5,556	2,416	1,860	1,280
Aircraft	3,721	1,324	1,137	1,260

Each Front had "front units" attached directly to the Front instead of an army. The forces totaled 89 divisions with 1.5 million men, 3,704 tanks, 1,852 self propelled guns, 85,819 vehicles and 3,721 aircraft. Approximately one-third of its strength was in combat support and services. Its naval forces contained 12 major surface combatants, 78 submarines, numerous amphibious craft, and the Amur river flotilla, consisting of gunboats and numerous small craft. The Soviet plan incorporated all the experience in maneuver warfare that the Soviets had acquired fighting the Germans.

Japanese

The Kwantung Army of the Imperial Japanese Army, under General Otsuzo Yamada, was the major part of the Japanese occupation forces in Manchuria and Korea, and consisted of two Area Armies and three independent armies:

First Area Army (northeastern Manchukuo), including

• 3rd Army
• 5th Army

Third Area Army (southwestern Manchukuo), including

• 30th Army
• 44th Army

Independent units

• 4th Army (an independent field army responsible for northern Manchuria)
• 34th Army (an independent field army responsible for the areas between the Third and Seventeenth Area Armies in North Korea)
• Kwangtung Defence Army (responsible for Mengjiang)
• Seventeenth Area Army (responsible for Korea; assigned to the Kwantung Army in the eleventh hour, to no avail)

Other forces

• Fifth Area Army - responsible for South Sakhalin and the Kurils

Each Area Army (Homen Gun, the equivalent of a Western "army") had headquarters units and units attached directly to the Area Army, in addition to the field armies (the equivalent of a Western corps). In addition to the Japanese, there was the forty thousand strong Manchukuo Defense Force, composed of eight under-strength, poorly-equipped, poorly-trained Manchukuoan divisions. Korea, the next target for the Soviet Far East Command, was garrisoned by the Japanese Seventeenth Area Army.

The Kwantung Army had over six hundred thousand men in twenty-five divisions (including two tank divisions) and six Independent Mixed Brigades. These contained over 1,215 armored vehicles (mostly armored cars and light tanks), 6,700 artillery pieces (mostly light), and 1,800 aircraft (mostly trainers and obsolete types; they only had 50 first line aircraft). However, Kwantung Army was far below authorized strength; most of its heavy military equipment and all of its best military units had been transferred to the Pacific front over the previous three years. By 1945, the Kwantung Army contained a large number of raw recruits; as a result, it had essentially been reduced to a light infantry counter-insurgency force with limited mobility and experience. On paper, the Japanese forces were no match for the highly mobile mechanized Red Army, with its vastly superior tanks, artillery, experience and tactics.

The Imperial Japanese Navy contributed nothing to the defense of Manchuria, the occupation of which it had always opposed on strategic grounds.

Compounding the problem, the Japanese military made many wrong assumptions and major mistakes, the two most significant being:

• They wrongly assumed that any attack coming from the west would follow either the old railroad line to Hailar, or head in to Solun from the eastern tip of Mongolia. The Soviets did attack along those routes, but their main attack from the west went through the supposedly impassable Greater Khingan range south of Solun and into the center of Manchuria.
• Japanese military intelligence failed to determine the nature, location and scale of the Soviet buildup in the Far East. Based on initial underestimates of Soviet strength, and the monitoring of Soviet traffic on the Trans-Siberian railway, they believed the Soviets would not have sufficient forces in place before the end of August, and that an attack was most likely in Autumn 1945 or in the Spring of 1946.

Due to the withdrawal of the Kwantung Army's elite forces for redeployment into the Pacific Theatre, new operational plans for the defence of Manchuria against a seemingly inevitable Soviet attack were made by the Japanese in the Summer of 1945. These called for the redeployment of the majority of forces from the border areas; the borders were to be held lightly and delaying actions fought while the main force was to hold the southeastern corner in strength (so defending Korea from attack).

Further, they had only observed Soviet activity on the Trans-Siberian railway and along the east Manchurian front, and so were preparing for an invasion from the east. They believed that when an attack occurred from the west, the redeployed forces would be able to deal with it.

However, although this redeployment had been initiated, it was not due to be completed until September, and hence the Kwantung Army were in the middle of redeployment when the Soviets launched their attack simultaneously on all three fronts.

Campaign

File:Soviet invasion of Manchuria (1945).gif

Soviet attacks, 1945.

Japanese soldier surrendering to Soviet soldiers.

The operation was carried out as a classic double pincer movement over an area the size of Western Europe. In the western pincer, the Red Army advanced over the deserts and mountains from Mongolia, far from their resupply railways. This confounded the Japanese military analysis of Soviet logistics, and the defenders were caught by surprise in unfortified positions. The Kwantung Army commanders were involved in a planning exercise in (where) at the time of the invasion, and were away from their forces for the first eighteen hours of conflict.

Communication infrastructure was poor, and communication was lost with forward units very early on. However, the Kwantung Army had a formidable reputation as fierce and relentless fighters, and even though understrength and unprepared, put up strong resistance at the town of Hailar which tied down some of the Soviet forces. At the same time, Soviet airborne units were used to seize airfields and city centers in advance of the land forces, and to ferry fuel to those units that had outrun their supply lines.

The Soviet pincer from the east crossed the Ussuri and advanced around Khanka Lake and attacked towards Suifenhe, and although Japanese defenders fought hard and provided strong resistance, the Soviets proved overwhelming. Perhaps the most glaring fact illustrating the differences in efficacy between the two opponents was that, often, the speed of Soviet advances far outpaced any sort of fighting withdrawal the Japanese could conduct, which formed a crucial element of the entire Japanese strategy for defending the Manchurian heartland.

After a week of fighting, during which Soviet forces had penetrated deep into Manchukuo, Japan's Emperor Hirohito recorded the Gyokuon-hōsō which was broadcast on radio to the Japanese nation on August 15, 1945. The idea of surrender was incomprehensible to the Japanese people, and combined with Hirohito's use of formal and archaic language, the fact that he did not use the actual word "surrender", the poor quality of the broadcast, and poor lines of communication, there was some confusion amongst the Japanese about what the announcement actually meant.

The Imperial Japanese Army Headquarters did not immediately communicate the cease-fire order to the Kwantung Army, and many elements of the army either did not understand it, or ignored it. Hence, pockets of fierce resistance from the Kwantung Army continued, and the Soviets continued their advance, largely avoiding the pockets of resistance, reaching Mukden, Changchun and Qiqihar by August 20.

On the Soviet right flank, the Soviet-Mongolian Cavalry-Mechanized Group had entered Inner Mongolia and quickly took Dolon Nur and Kalgan. The Emperor of Manchukuo (and former Emperor of China), Puyi, was captured by the Soviet Red Army. The cease-fire order was eventually communicated to the Kwantung Army, but not before the Soviets had made most of their territorial gains.

On August 18, several Soviet amphibious landings had been conducted ahead of the land advance: three in northern Korea, one in Sakhalin, and one in the Kuril Islands. This meant that, in Korea at least, there were already Soviet soldiers waiting for the troops coming overland. In Sakhalin and the Kurils, it meant a sudden and undeniable establishment of Soviet sovereignty.

The land advance was stopped a good distance short of the Yalu River, the beginning of the Korean peninsula, when even the aerial supply lines became unavailable. The forces already in Korea were able to establish a bit of control in the peninsula's north, but the ambition to take the entire peninsula was cut short when American forces landed at Incheon on September 8, six days after the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender.

Soviet War Crimes

700,000 Soviet troops occupied Manchuria, in China, and looted the entire region of valuable materials and industrial equipment. Soviet Russian Red Army troops looted and terrorized the people of Mukden in Manchuria, China. A foreigner witnessed Soviet Russian troops, formerly stationed in Berlin, who were allowed by the Soviet military to go at the city "for three days of rape and pillage". Most of Mukden was gone. Then convict soldiers were then used to replace them, it was testified that they "stole everything in sight, broke up bathtubs and toilets with hammers, pulled electric light wiring out of the plaster, built fires on the floor and either burned down the house or at least a big hole in the floor, and in general behaved completely like savages".

The Soviets made it a policy to loot and rape civilians in Manchuria. The same Russian troops from Germany had been sent to Manchuria and looted, killed, raped. In Harbin Chinese posted slogans such as "Down with Red Imperialism!". Soviet forces ignored protests from Chinese communist party leaders on their mass rape and loot policy.

Importance and consequences

See Soviet–Japanese War (1945)#Importance and consequences

See also

• Soviet–Japanese War (1945)
  • References and notes
  • Further reading
  • External links
• Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang

Capabilities

• Amur Military Flotilla (Russian)
• Mongolian People's Army (A secondary army under the Soviet Red Army)
• Kwantung Army (An army group of the Imperial Japanese Army)

General

• Military history of Japan
• Military history of the Soviet Union