Manchurian campaign (1945), final campaign of WW II, in which the Soviet Far Eastern Command destroyed the million-strong Japanese ‘Kwantung Army’ in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo between 9 August and 2 September. The campaign began the night before the dropping of the second atomic bomb on Japan on 9 August, which has led some historians to question its importance. However, on 9 August a Japanese theatre command with 3 army groups (‘area armies’), 1 million men, 5, 000 guns, 1, 100 tanks, and 1, 800 aircraft was still intact, and it fought on until the end of the month. Although many of the troops were trainees and included non-Japanese units, they fought fanatically. Furthermore, the Soviet operation was considered by Cold War military analysts to be the prototype for a future Soviet theatre strategic operation in, for example, western Europe. The theatre was the size of Europe and the terrain very varied, including the Gobi desert, the Greater and Lesser Khingan mountain ranges, melted permafrost, and swamp.
The Manchurian campaign, August 1945.
(Click to enlarge)
In April 1945 the USSR indicated it would not renew the non-aggression treaty signed with Japan in April 1941 when it expired in April 1946. The Japanese concluded, correctly, that the USSR would attack as soon as it had finished with Germany. At Yalta, Stalin promised he would attack three months after victory in Europe. That came for the USSR on 9 May 1945 and Stalin was true to his word.
Three months after defeating the Germans in Europe, the Red Army was at its most powerful. In firepower, mobility, communications, support, and even battle experience (their veteran troops mostly having died in the Pacific campaign) the Japanese were no match for the three Soviet Fronts (army groups) gathered round Manchuria: First and Second Far Eastern on the Pacific and the Transbaikal Front in Mongolia. Units which had experience against German defences in East Prussia were drafted in to deal with similar defences near Vladivostok. The Second Far Eastern Front, with most of the lower quality formations, stood mainly on the defensive north of the Amur river. An independent force, equating to an army, in the Gobi Desert was Issa Pliev's Soviet-Mongolian cavalry mechanized group. This secured the right (south-western) flank and moved to threaten Peking (Beijing).
The Japanese had seriously misjudged how far the Soviet army had come in conducting ‘deep operations’ (see operational concepts). They believed any Soviet offensive would have to halt for resupply after 250 miles (402 km) and planned to use this breathing space to marshal their forces for a defensive battle on the central Manchurian plain. In fact, the Soviets and Mongolians penetrated much deeper without halting. They made extensive use of airborne forces to seize airfields and communications centres ahead of the main advancing columns. They also captured the puppet emperor of Manchukuo—the last emperor of China.
The Transbaikal Front advanced through the mountains to the central plain covering an astonishing 560 miles (901 km) in eleven days—virtually unopposed because the Japanese had not thought the Soviet-Mongolian forces would be able to advance through the mountains because of resupply problems. As the Soviet columns bit deeply into Manchuria the Kwantung army, following an order from Tokyo, surrendered at Khabarovsk. Soviet forces also advanced south from Kamchatka and northern Sakhalin to occcupy southern Sakhalin and the Kurile islands. Soviet and Japanese troops continued to fight until the day before Japan's formal capitulation on 2 September.
Bibliography
- Glantz, David, August Storm: The Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria (Fort Leavenworth, 1983)
— Christopher Bellamy
