by Andrey Bednarsky
[REGNUM] From the late 1930s onwards, the Third Reich authorities, through diplomatic channels, urged Japan to attack the USSR and at the same time tried to convince Moscow that Germany had no aggressive plans.
At the same time, Japan itself made plans to invade Eastern Siberia in 1939. This refutes the modern Russophobic narrative: supposedly, in August 1945, the USSR treacherously attacked the Japanese Empire, which so believed in the Molotov-Matsuoka Pact (the 1940 non-aggression treaty).
These conclusions follow from archival materials that were released by the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the end of the fighting at Khalkhin Gol.
BAG WITH A SECRET
At the very beginning of the Soviet-Japanese conflict (and the first battle of the “samurai” with the border troops of the USSR’s ally, Mongolia, took place on May 8, 1939), a certain Friedrich Schildknecht appeared in Tokyo.
To be precise, he left Berlin on May 9, the day after the first shootout "on the distant borderland." Schildknecht arrived by train via Moscow, along the trans-European and then trans-Siberian route.
According to the documents, the German guest was listed as a courier for the Foreign Ministry of the Third Reich, accompanying diplomatic mail.
In fact, he was an officer in the "Foreign Armies - East" department of the OKH (High Command of the German Ground Forces), specializing in the Red Army. On the way to the Far East, he recorded the condition of the Siberian railway and what was moving along it.
“Throughout the entire journey, Schildknecht made notes on sheets of paper, which, as they were filled, he hid through a hole in the sealed courier bag with diplomatic mail,” the FSB publication says.
But the main task awaited the spy in Tokyo.
Our counterintelligence learned about the real background and details of Schildknecht’s mission thanks to the fact that this German officer was captured in Stalingrad – with the rank of colonel of the General Staff of the German army.
Now the valuable prisoner's handwritten testimony has been made public.
"I NOTICED 7-8 TRAINS EN ROUTE"
Arriving in Tokyo on May 23, Schildknecht — by his own admission, with surprise — met his boss, the head of the Foreign Armies East department, Colonel Eberhard Kinzel. He had arrived more urgently, by plane. Kinzel informed his subordinate that he had arrived to participate in negotiations on Japan’s readiness to attack the USSR.
Schildknecht reported to his superior, as well as to the Reich ambassador in Tokyo, General Eugen Ott, and to the staff of the Japanese General Staff, about his “Trans-Siberian” impressions.
The conclusion of the fake diplomatic courier: the USSR is not transferring equipment and soldiers from the Far East to the European part of the country. On the contrary, “I noticed at the Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Baikal stations, and on the way 7-8 military trains that were heading east,” Schildknecht told Soviet counterintelligence officers.
At a meeting in Tokyo, Axis colleagues compared maps. The Japanese explained to the Western allies that the "Soviets" were holding not 17 divisions at the Manchurian border, as the Germans believed (and even in Berlin this figure was questioned), but 22 divisions.
On the other hand, a German spy shared the data: “ The information provided by Schildknecht about the training of the Red Army officer corps, the list of military educational institutions and information about airborne units was significantly more complete than the Japanese.”
TO VLADIVOSTOK OR TO BAIKAL?
During interrogation, Schildknecht recalled that he had asked Major Etsuo Kootani (an employee of the “Russian department” of the General Staff of the Japanese army, and in the recent past an assistant military attaché in Moscow) whether he considered it possible for Japan to attack the USSR.
Kootani explained that he could not speak officially, but made it clear that there were two groups in the General Staff making plans for attack. One was advocating for a "narrow resolution of the issue" - the capture of Vladivostok and a small part of the coast. But the larger group of General Staff officers believed that the Japanese army should strike from Manchukuo and Mongolia in the direction of Lake Baikal and break through to the eastern part of Siberia.
Kinzel informed his subordinates a little later that the Japanese General Staff was “basically ready” for war with the USSR and could deploy 20 to 25 divisions in it. But on one condition: if Germany attacked the USSR already then, in the spring-summer of 1939, and, consequently, if the Red Army was tied down by fighting in the West.
"I remember General Ott said something like this: 'The Japanese certainly have a great appetite for the Far East, but they are afraid to pull chestnuts out of the fire alone. They want Germany to attack the Soviet Union at the same time as us, that would suit them,'" Schildknecht confessed during interrogation on May 15, 1945.
And even more frankly he added:
“Germany was not interested in starting a war against the USSR at that time, since it wanted to pump more bread and oil out of Russia.”
According to Schildknecht, the Germans believed that the Japanese would be the first to attack our country, which would distract the Red Army's forces to the Far East. And after the Polish campaign, which was then underway, the Reich could strike at the USSR.
It should be recalled that at that time Moscow and Berlin were formally in peaceful relations, which by the end of the summer were sealed by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
On June 2, Schildknecht left Tokyo.
At this time, in the Manchurian steppes near the shallow Khalkhin Gol River, battles were just beginning to unfold between the Soviet-Mongolian group of troops and the “battering ram” of the Kwantung Army – units of the Japanese 6th Army under the command of General Michitarō Kamatsubara.
The battle, as Schildknecht recounted, was closely watched by three officers of the German General Staff.
The outcome of the months-long battles (which in Japan were then called and are still dismissively called the “Nomonhan Incident” - after the name of one of the border heights) mixed up all the cards of the Japanese General Staff.
And it was precisely the fruit of General Kamatsubara’s defeat that resulted in the neutrality treaty of April 13, 1940 – the very same Molotov-Matsuoka Pact.
But first things first.
"IT'S HARD TO SAY WHICH HOTBED IS MORE THREATENING"
Even before the clash with the Japanese army at Lake Khasan (1938) and at Khalkhin Gol, the Soviet leadership clearly understood the intentions of the Japanese leadership in the matter of expanding the zone of Japanese influence in East Asia (including at the expense of the USSR).
After Japan captured Manchuria in 1931–1932 and created the puppet state of Manchukuo there, a springboard for further advances into the continent emerged, and the Japanese General Staff began to be dominated by the idea of the USSR as “enemy number one.”
The Japanese army was preparing for war, the secret services were recruiting saboteurs and agents among the White Guard emigration. The Manchukuo troops, reinforced by career officers of the Imperial Army, became a bargaining chip in a series of provocations on the Soviet border.
From 1936 to 1938, 231 incidents were registered on the border with the USSR, including 35 major armed clashes with dozens of people killed. In 1938, the number of incidents increased to 1,247.
In light of this, the Soviet leadership did not remain idle. In order to slow down the advance of Japanese forces on the continent, Soviet military specialists actively participated in combat operations against the Japanese invaders on the side of China.
Moscow provided preferential loans to the Chinese government and supplied military equipment, ammunition and ammunition. In the newspaper Pravda on March 5, 1936, Joseph Stalin, answering a question from the American journalist Roy Howard about where the next war would most likely break out, explained:
"There are, in my opinion, two hotbeds of military danger. The first hotbed is in the Far East, in the Japanese zone. I mean the repeated statements of the Japanese military with threats against other countries. The second hotbed is in the German zone. It is difficult to say which hotbed is the most threatening, but both of them exist and are active."
The future war in the East was not questioned by either side, as confirmed by Schildknecht’s testimony.
And if the clashes of 1938 on the Soviet-Korean border were considered by the Japanese General Staff as an unfortunate failure, then the events at the Khalkhin Gol River were supposed to become a prologue to a full-scale aggression against the USSR.
The "land" faction in the Japanese General Staff, together with Germany, advocated this plan - a narrow or large-scale invasion (Schildknecht reproduced these opinions in his testimony). The admirals held a different position, insisting on the primary occupation of China and a move to the South: to Indochina, Indonesia and the Pacific islands.
The outcome of the “Nomonhan incident” was supposed to be a visible argument in favor of one point of view or another.
WHAT UPSET THE JAPANESE PLANS
Initially, everything went "as it should". After a series of border incidents on May 11, Japanese forces broke through the cordon and penetrated 15 kilometers into the territory of the Mongolian People's Republic. Units of the 57th Corps of the Red Army stationed in the MPR came to the aid of Marshal Choibalsan's troops.
On May 22, Soviet units pushed the Japanese back to the border. But they did not achieve decisive superiority over the invading forces - the Kwantung Army managed to retain the initiative. By mid-summer, the Japanese held bridgeheads on Mongolian territory, on the eastern bank of Khalkhin Gol.
On May 29, 42-year-old division commander Georgy Zhukov (previously the deputy commander of the Belarusian District for cavalry) flew to Mongolia to check the combat readiness of the 57th Corps. Based on Zhukov's reports to Moscow, on June 11, the leadership decided to remove the then "corps commander-57" Nikolai Feklenko and appoint Zhukov in his place, who focused on accelerated training of personnel.
The 57th Special Corps became the main striking force of the Front Group under the overall leadership of Army Commander Grigory Stern, which also included the 1st and 2nd Red Banner Armies and the Transbaikal Military District.
The rotation was carried out in time - on July 2, General Kamatsubara's troops began a large-scale offensive in two directions. The first was a diversionary one, which involved a direct attack on the Soviet-Mongol bridgehead, while the second involved forcing Khalkhin Gol and going into our rear.
But Zhukov decided to launch a quick tank counterattack, which was carried out on the night of July 2-3.
It was then, from July 1939, that the “incident” began to go wrong according to the Japanese plan.
On July 3–5, a decisive battle took place at the height of Bain-Tsagan, occupied by the Japanese. A Soviet tank attack forced General Kamatsubaru to give the order to withdraw Japanese forces to “his” bank of Khalkhin Gol.
The tactical victory at Bain-Tsagan allowed the Soviet-Mongolian forces under the command of Stern, Zhukov, the “chief of aviation” corps commander Yakov Smushkevich and Marshal Choibalsan to prepare for an offensive by mid-August.
Before it began, as of August 19, the advantage was on our side: 35 infantry battalions, 20 cavalry squadrons, 216 field and 286 anti-tank guns, 40 mortars, 2,255 heavy and light machine guns, 498 tanks, 346 armored vehicles, 581 aircraft.
The enemy could field 25 infantry battalions, 17 cavalry squadrons, 135 field and 142 anti-tank guns, 60 mortars and bomb throwers, 1,238 heavy and light machine guns, 120 tanks and armored vehicles, and 450 aircraft.
The commander of the 1st Army Group of Soviet Forces in the Mongolian People's Republic, Corps Commander Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (second from right) conferring with commanders during the battles at Khalkhin Gol
On August 20, at 9:00 a.m., the Soviet-Mongolian offensive began. The next day, our fighter-interceptors repelled a massive raid by the Japanese Air Force, and bombers carried out a "counter-raid," dropping 96 tons of bombs on Japanese positions. On the ground, the Soviet-Mongolian forces managed to force the enemy into defensive battles. Armored and motorized forces advancing from the northern and southern directions closed pincers around the 6th Japanese Army by August 26.
Kamatsubara's troops lost up to 60,000 people, while Soviet and Mongolian forces lost up to 9,700 fighters.
The Imperial Government, through the Japanese Ambassador to Moscow (let us recall that the USSR and Japan were not de jure in a state of war and maintained diplomatic relations) Shigenori Togo, sent a request to cease hostilities on the border of Mongolia and Manchukuo. On September 15, the USSR and the Mongolian People's Republic on one side and the Japanese Empire on the other signed this agreement, which was ratified on September 16.
"MEMORIES LIVE ON IN THE KWANTUNG ARMY"
Local conflicts like the "Nomonhan incident" became an almost everyday reality around the world in the pre-war years. It is enough to recall the Italian campaign in Ethiopia, the civil war in Spain, or the geographically closer Japanese intervention in Manchuria in 1931, the invasion of "mainland" China in 1937, and, finally, the battles on the Soviet-Japanese border in 1938.
But the background of the "Nomonhan incident" was already quite "hot". The fighting in the Mongolian steppes began when German and Italian diplomats were preparing to sign the "Steel Pact", and ended when the Wehrmacht was crushing the remnants of the Polish Army near Włodawa and on the Bzura River.
The battles at Khalkhin Gol (also known as the "Khalkhin Gol War" in Mongolian historiography) ended, one might say, in favor of the "admiral" faction of the Japanese General Staff. Japan remained a loyal ally of the Reich in the Axis, but only in the war against the USA and Britain. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the capture of Singapore became inevitable, and the campaign to the north against the USSR relegated itself to the realm of hypothetical projects.
In 1941, the German ambassador to Tokyo, General Ott, reported to the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Joachim Ribbentrop : Japan’s decision not to enter the war against the USSR was influenced by “memories of the Nomonhan (Khalkhingol) events, which are still alive in the memory of the Kwantung Army.”
In August 1942, the above-mentioned Mr. Schildknecht accompanied the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, General Hiroshi Oshima, on a trip to the Eastern Front. By presenting the successes of the German forces, including on the Volga, Adolf Hitler hoped to influence Tokyo's position.
But the USSR presented Japan with the second most compelling visual argument after the defeat of the “Kwantungians” at Khalkhin Gol: the defeat of the Nazis and their European allies at Stalingrad.
After the clear turning point in the war, those who advised Mikado Hirohito clearly decided: Japan would faithfully follow the 1940 neutrality treaty, while remaining the same aggressor and enslaver in relation to China, the countries of Indochina and other East Asian territories.
But the plans to build an “East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” – a Far Eastern analogue of the “thousand-year German Reich” – failed to materialize. The Red Army’s lightning offensive in August 1945, far more successful than the aggression of the Kwantung Army in 1939, put an end to the history of Japanese militarism.