Soviet invasion of Manchuria
At 5 p.m. Moscow time on the 8th of August 1945, Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov informed Japanese ambassador Naotake Satō that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan. This declaration took effect from the 9th of August, marking the end of almost six years of peace between the two nations. The timing was not accidental but the result of agreements made at the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt had agreed that the Soviet Union would enter the Pacific Theatre within three months of Germany's defeat. Germany surrendered just after midnight Moscow time on the 9th of May 1945, setting a deadline for Soviet entry into the war with Japan by the 9th of August. Stalin faced a dilemma: he wanted to avoid a war on two fronts yet also saw an opportunity to secure gains in the Far East. The only way to ensure these gains without a two-front war was for Germany to capitulate before Japan. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin secured Roosevelt's acceptance of Soviet expansion in the Far East in return for agreeing to enter the Pacific war within two or three months after Germany's defeat. By the middle of March 1945, things were not going well in the Pacific for the Japanese, who had withdrawn their elite troops from Manchuria to support actions elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Soviets continued their Far Eastern buildup, having decided they did not wish to renew the Neutrality Pact. The terms of the Pact required a notification of expiry 12 months ahead of time, so on the 5th of April 1945 the Soviets informed the Japanese that they did not wish to renew the treaty. This caused considerable concern among the Japanese, but the Soviets went to great efforts to assure them that the treaty would still be in force for another twelve months. In late June, the Japanese approached the Soviets again, inviting them to mediate with the Western Allies. They offered very attractive territorial concessions in exchange. Stalin ostensibly expressed interest, and the Japanese awaited an official Soviet response even as the Soviets continued to deliberately avoid providing one. The Potsdam Conference ran from the 16th of July to the 2nd of August. On the 24th of July the Soviet Union recalled all its embassy staff and families from Japan. On the 26th of July the conference produced the Potsdam Declaration whereby Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Chiang Kai-shek demanded Japan's unconditional surrender. The Japanese avoided responding to the declaration, instead continuing to wait on a clarifying Soviet reply.
The Stavka had been planning for a mid-August offensive since early 1945, successfully concealing the buildup of a force of 90 divisions. Many Soviet units crossed Siberia in their vehicles to avoid straining the rail link. By early 1945 it had become apparent to the Japanese that the Soviets were preparing to invade Manchuria, though they correctly calculated that they were unlikely to attack prior to Germany's defeat. The Japanese monitored Trans-Siberian Railway traffic and Soviet activity to the east of Manchuria. This monitoring suggested that the Soviets would not be ready to invade east Manchuria before the end of August. They estimated that an attack was not likely before the spring of 1946. The Japanese did not have any concrete evidence as to when or where any invasion would occur. Based upon an initial underestimation of Soviet strength and on the monitoring of Soviet traffic on the Trans-Siberian railway, the Japanese believed that the Soviets would not have sufficient forces in place for an offensive before the end of August 1945. The situation continued to deteriorate for the Japanese, now the only Axis power left in the war. They were keen to stay at peace with the Soviets and ultimately to achieve an end to the war. Since Yalta, they had repeatedly tried to convince the Soviets to extend the Neutrality Pact, as well as attempting to enlist them to mediate peace negotiations with the Western Allies. The Soviets did nothing to discourage these overtures, instead happy to draw out the process for as long as possible whilst continuing to prepare their invasion forces. One of the goals of Admiral Baron Suzuki's cabinet upon taking office in April was to try to secure any peace terms whatsoever short of unconditional surrender. In late June, they once again approached the Soviets, inviting them to mediate with the Western Allies in support of Japan, providing them with specific proposals. Stalin ostensibly expressed interest, and the Japanese now awaited an official Soviet response, even as the Soviets continued to deliberately avoid providing one. The Japanese were caught completely by surprise upon receiving the Soviet declaration of war an hour before midnight on the 8th of August, now facing a simultaneous invasion on three fronts that began just after midnight on the 9th of August.
At one minute past midnight Trans-Baikal time on the 9th of August 1945, or just over an hour after the declaration of war, the Soviets commenced their invasion simultaneously on three fronts to the east, west and north of Manchuria. The Far East Command, under Marshal of the Soviet Union Aleksandr Vasilevsky, had a plan to conquer Manchuria that was simple but huge in scale, calling for a massive pincer movement over all of Manchuria. This was to be performed by the Transbaikal Front from the west and by the 1st Far Eastern Front from the east; the 2nd Far Eastern Front was to attack the center of the pocket from the north. The Transbaikal Front, under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, included 17th Army, 36th Army, 39th Army, 53rd Army, 6th Guards Tank Army, Soviet Mongolian Cavalry Mechanized Group under Issa Pliyev, and 12th Air Army. These forces had as their objectives firstly to secure Mukden, then to meet troops of the 1st Far Eastern Front at the Changchun area in south central Manchuria. Amassing over one thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, the 6th Guards Tank Army was to serve as an armored spearhead, leading the Front's advance and capturing objectives inside Manchuria by the fifth day of the invasion. The 1st Far Eastern Front, under Marshal Kirill Meretskov, included 1st Red Banner Army, 5th Army, 25th Army, 35th Army, 10th Mechanized Corps, and 9th Air Army. The 1st Far Eastern 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. Once that city was captured, this force was to advance towards the cities of Jilin, Changchun and Harbin. Its final objective was to link up with the forces of the Transbaikal Front at Changchun and Jilin thus closing the double envelopment movement. As a secondary objective, the 1st Far Eastern Front was to prevent Japanese forces from escaping to Korea, and then invade the Korean Peninsula up to the 38th parallel. The 2nd Far Eastern Front, under General Maksim Purkayev, included 2nd Red Banner Army, 15th Army, 16th Army, 5th Separate Rifle Corps, Chuguevsk Operational Group, Amur Military Flotilla, and 10th Air Army. The front also included the 88th Separate Rifle Brigade, composed of Chinese and Korean guerrillas of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army who had retreated into the USSR in the beginning of the 1940s.
The Kwantung Army of the Imperial Japanese Army, under General Otozo Yamada, consisted of two Area Armies and three independent armies. Including the Japanese forces in Korea, the Kwantung Army had over 900,000 men in 31 divisions and 13 brigades; there were about 400 obsolescent tanks and 2,000 aircraft. However, the Kwantung Army was far below its authorized strength; most of its heavy equipment and all of its best military units had transferred to the Pacific Theater over the previous three years to contend with the advance of American forces. By 1945 the Kwantung Army contained a large number of raw recruits and conscripts, with generally obsolete, light, or otherwise limited equipment. Almost all of the tanks were early 1930s models such as the Type 95 Ha-Go and Type 89 I-Go, the anti-tank units only possessed Type 1 37 mm anti-tank guns that were ineffective against Soviet armor, and the infantry had very few machine-guns and no anti-materiel rifles or submachine guns. As a result, the Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea had essentially been reduced to a light-infantry counter-insurgency force with limited mobility and limited ability to fight a conventional land war against a coordinated enemy. In fact, only six of the Kwantung Army's divisions existed prior to January 1945. The Japanese military made many wrong assumptions and major mistakes, most significantly: they wrongly assumed that any attack coming from the west would follow either the old railway line to Hailar, or head into 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 Soviet Far East. The Japanese redeployment in Manchukuo had begun, it was not due for completion until September 1945, and hence the Kwantung Army was in the midst of redeploying when the Soviets launched their attack simultaneously on all three fronts. The operation was carried out as a classic double pincer movement over an area the size of the entire Western European theatre of World War II. The Russians treated the Japanese with the utmost cruelty after their deadly attack on Japan's Kwantung Army in Manchuria just days before Japan's surrender. Japanese forces were overwhelmed by Soviet attacks. Soviet paratroopers destroyed the Kwantung Army from behind its own lines, while Japanese anti-tank shells bounced off the sides of Soviet tanks.
During the invasion of Manchuria, Soviet soldiers killed and raped Japanese civilians. The most famous example was the Gegenmiao massacre, where Soviet soldiers from an armored unit massacred over one thousand Japanese women and children. Property of the Japanese were also looted by the Soviet troops. According to Soviet historian Vyacheslav Zimonin, many Japanese settlers committed mass suicide as the Red Army approached. Mothers were forced by the Japanese military to kill their own children before being killed themselves. The Japanese army often took part in the killings of its civilians. Wounded Japanese soldiers who were incapable of moving on their own were often left to die as the army retreated. British and U.S. reports indicate that the Soviet troops that occupied Manchuria (about 700,000) also looted and terrorized the local people of Mukden and were not discouraged by Soviet authorities from three days of rape and pillage. In Harbin, Soviet forces ignored protests from Chinese Communist Party leaders on the mass rape and looting. There were several incidents in which Chinese police forces in Manchuria arrested or even killed Soviet troops for committing various crimes, leading to some conflicts between the Soviet and Chinese authorities in Manchuria. During the Soviet occupation of North Korea, it was reported that Soviet soldiers committed rape against both Japanese and Korean women alike in the northern half of the Korean peninsula. Soviet soldiers also looted the property of both Japanese and Koreans living in northern Korea. The Soviets laid claim to Japanese enterprises in Manchuria and northern Korea and took valuable materials and industrial equipment. Konstantin Asmolov of the Center for Korean Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences dismisses Western accounts of Soviet violence against civilians in the Far East as exaggeration and rumor and contends that accusations of mass crimes by the Red Army inappropriately extrapolate isolated incidents regarding the nearly 2,000,000 Soviet troops in the Far East into mass crimes.
Soviet forces also captured scientists of the Kwantung Army's Unit 731 biological and chemical warfare division, sentencing them in the 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials while allegedly using their information and experience in the Soviet biological weapons program. In late 1949, numerous members of the former Kwantung Army who had been captured in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria were convicted in connection with the activities of Unit 731, and related units for their connections with crimes against humanity and the use of chemical and biological weapons. Sheldon H. Harris documented these events in Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932, 1945, and the American Cover-up. The capture of these scientists represented a significant intelligence coup for the Soviet Union, providing them with detailed knowledge about Japan's biological warfare capabilities. The trials served both to punish those responsible for atrocities committed during the war and to extract valuable technical information that could be used to develop Soviet biological weapons programs. This process highlighted how the Soviet Union leveraged the expertise gained from Unit 731 researchers to advance its own military scientific endeavors in the post-war period.
In September 1945, the Chinese Communist Party dispatched soldiers to Soviet-occupied Manchuria. The CCP obtained Japanese arms with Soviet help. The Soviet stance regarding the CCP and the Chinese Nationalists oscillated during this period, and in November 1945 the Soviet Union requested that the CCP withdraw from major cities in Manchuria. The Soviet occupation of Manchuria, along with the northern portions of the Korean Peninsula, allowed for parts of those regions to be transferred by the Soviet Union into the control of local communists after the Soviet withdrawal in 1946 despite a 1945 agreement signed between the Soviets and the Kuomintang. The control of these regions by communist governments backed by Soviet authorities would be a factor in the rise of the CCP and shape the political conflict of the Korean War. Several thousand Japanese who were sent as colonizers to Manchukuo and Inner Mongolia were left behind in China. The majority of Japanese left behind in China were women, and these Japanese women mostly married Chinese men and became known as stranded war wives. Because they had children fathered by Chinese men, Japanese women were not allowed to bring their Chinese families back with them to Japan, so most of them stayed. Japanese nationality laws allowed only children fathered by Japanese fathers to become Japanese citizens. In late 1948, the Soviets continued to occupy northern Korea until 1948 and the Port Arthur naval base until 1955. The resumption of full-scale conflict in the Chinese Civil War prompted the Red Army to withdraw by the 3rd of May 1946, handing much of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia to territories controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
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Common questions
When did the Soviet Union declare war on Japan during the 1945 invasion of Manchuria?
Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov informed Japanese ambassador Naotake Satō that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan at 5 p.m. Moscow time on the 8th of August 1945. The declaration took effect from the 9th of August, marking the end of almost six years of peace between the two nations.
Who commanded the Soviet forces during the 1945 invasion of Manchuria and what were their objectives?
The Far East Command under Marshal of the Soviet Union Aleksandr Vasilevsky planned a massive pincer movement to conquer all of Manchuria. The Transbaikal Front under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky aimed to secure Mukden while the 1st Far Eastern Front under Marshal Kirill Meretskov targeted Mudanjiang, Jilin, Changchun, and Harbin to close the double envelopment.
Why was the Kwantung Army unable to resist the Soviet attack in 1945?
Most heavy equipment and best military units transferred to the Pacific Theater over three years left the Kwantung Army with obsolete tanks and limited infantry capabilities. Only six divisions existed prior to January 1945, and the force contained many raw recruits and conscripts when the Soviets launched their simultaneous attack on all three fronts.
What happened to Japanese civilians and soldiers after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria began on the 9th of August 1945?
Soviet soldiers killed and raped Japanese civilians including the Gegenmiao massacre where over one thousand women and children died. Wounded Japanese soldiers often were left to die as the army retreated while looting and terrorizing local people occurred in cities like Mukden and Harbin.
How did the Soviet Union utilize Unit 731 scientists following the capture during the 1945 invasion of Manchuria?
Soviet forces captured scientists from the Kwantung Army's Unit 731 biological and chemical warfare division and sentenced them in the 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials. The Soviet Union leveraged this expertise to advance its own military scientific endeavors while punishing those responsible for atrocities committed during the war.