On August 8th 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan.
Over a million Red Army soldiers advanced out of Siberia into Manchukuo. But why did it take
them so long? Why had the two countries been at peace for nearly the whole war?
Why didn’t Japan invade when the Germans were gaining ground in the west? In this video, we’ll
answer these questions, and uncover the secrets of possibly the greatest spy to ever have lived.
To tell this story, we’ve got to start at the beginning. Not 1939, but way earlier, in 1931.
Japan made up an excuse to invade Manchuria — a large province in China’s north. The Chinese
Nationalist Army fought back, but the region was effectively under Japanese control by February
1932. Not satisfied with their immediate gains, the Japanese force in their newly established
protectorate of “Manchukuo” decided to pick a fight with the Soviets. They were called the
Kwantung Army, and the undeclared war they started became known as the Soviet-Japanese Border War.
The war’s first skirmishes were fought between horsemen of the Soviet-aligned Mongolian People’s
Army and platoons of Japanese-led Manchukuo infantry. Honestly, the last guy I’d ever want
to fight would be a communist Mongolian horseman, let alone an army of well-armed ones. The
Manchukuo infantry found this out quite quickly, losing over half their strength as casualties.
Retaliation begat retaliation, and within a few months, Mongolian horsemen and infantry
were attacking Japanese positions along the disputed border. The Japanese responded with
a few hundreds soldiers and scores of tankettes, taking many Mongolian POWs.
The decisive battle of the war was fought right at its end, between July and August
1939. It raged over the river of Khalkhin Gol on the border of Soviet Mongolia and Manchukuo.
Seven years of skirmishes and small engagements meant that both sides had built up enormous
reserves. The Japanese commander noted that Soviet reserves were building more rapidly than his own,
and he decided to strike the enemy before they became too strong.
Launched in July, the attack consisted of four full infantry regiments backed up by 100 tanks and
tankettes crossing the river in two thrusts. The Soviets took heavy casualties and lost a lot of
equipment, but the Japanese supply lines were too stretched for them to press home their advantage.
In August, the Soviets threw a counterpunch. Led by the greatest commander in Soviet history,
General Zhukov, three tank brigades, two mechanized brigades, two Mongolian cavalry
divisions, and 550 aircraft were sent to annihilate the Japanese — once and for
all. Massive armoured pincers enveloped the Japanese on both sides of the river,
while aircraft flew bombing run after bombing run. The staunch Japanese refused to surrender.
They were virtually obliterated by artillery strikes and air attacks.
The Kwantung Army had been hit hard, but Zhukov couldn’t advance into Manchukuo.
Stalin’s signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had forced a cease-fire between the battered
Japanese and the Soviets in the East. For the time being, there was peace on the border.
Between 1939 and 1941, the defeated Kwantung Army was built back up to 700,000
troops. Its commanders had seen the devastation
wrought on their infantry by Soviet tanks as well as the critical logistical role
played by supply trucks. Tank and truck production in Japan increased and the Kwantung
Army rapidly became one of the best-equipped and best-trained forces the Japanese had. They even
trained their own reserve unit from conscripts in Manchukuo, known as the Manchukuo Imperial Army.
But while they had gained thousands of recruits and vital equipment, the Kwantung
Army lost many of its officers. The Japanese government faced a difficult decision in 1939:
where to secure vital wartime resources now that they faced a US blockade?
The Army and Navy were divided, the Navy coveted the Dutch East Indies, while the Army wanted to
capture resource-rich Siberia. The Soviet show of force during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol had
convinced the government that an invasion of Siberia would require a massive build-up,
whereas kicking out the Dutch would be easier. The Kwantung Army officers who heavily supported
the Siberian option weren’t happy, so the government had them purged from the ranks.
Even with its strongest proponents out of the picture, an invasion of Siberia by the Kwantung
Army was still on the table. The Soviets knew this too, and they kept a massive depot of military
supplies as well as over a million soldiers ready for action on their Eastern border.
Each side waited for the other to make the first move.
But one man managed to tip this precarious balance against Imperial Japan. His name
was Richard Sorge, and he was so instrumental we’ve actually done a video on him before. A
German veteran of the Great War, Sorge had become dissatisfied with Nationalism and became an ardent
socialist. In 1929, he was recruited into GRU, the Soviet intelligence service. GRU found him a job
as a journalist to give him a cover story. After a stint in China, Sorge was sent to Berlin in 1933.
What GRU wanted more than anything was intelligence from Japan,
and what better way to get this than to have an agent in the German embassy?
To prepare for this impossible job, Sorge joined the Nazi party and made friends with many senior
Nazi journalists. It wasn’t long before the most prestigious newspaper in Germany,
*Frankfurter Zeitung*, offered him a position as their Japanese correspondent. Sorge was in, but
before he left he hosted a farewell dinner with his Nazi mates. Even Joseph Goebbels attended.
Sorge had one mission in Tokyo — to "give very careful study to the question of whether or not
Japan was planning to attack the USSR." What’s the best way to do this you ask?
It’s a three-step process. Step 1, set up a spy network. Step 2, become best mates with
the German chief military attache. Step 3, seduce his wife and get her to inform on her husband.
Yep, Sorge literally did this. The German’s name was General Ott, and Sorge would have breakfast
with him every morning. If he didn’t get all the classified intel he needed over breakfast,
he would extract it from Ott’s wife Helma later that evening.
A hard drinker, Sorge got drunk with all the major Nazi players in Tokyo.
They loved him, and so did many of their wives, who Sorge frequently jumped in bed with He was
so well-trusted by the Germans that they made him a courier for top-secret military documents.
He passed absolutely everything on to the Soviets.
Sorge passed so much intelligence to Moscow that Stalin and the other head
honchos were getting suspicious. How could this alcoholic know so much about German war plans?
They thought he was making things up. He wasn’t. In 1941, Sorge had gotten the job
of drafting General Ott’s reports for Berlin. He knew everything the Germans in Japan knew about
the impending attack. In May, he sent one of the most important messages of his life,
Expected start of German-Soviet war around June 15.” Stalin saw the message... and laughed.
Exactly one week after Sorge predicted, Operation Barbarossa began. Stalin was completely shocked
at Hitler’s betrayal, but he learnt the hard way that Sorge’s intel was reliable.
Sorge’s intelligence was never taken for granted again. In September, the master spy advised Moscow
that Japan would not attack the Soviet Union until “Moscow had been captured, the Kwantung Army had
become three times the size of Soviet Far Eastern forces[, and] a civil war had started in Siberia.”
These caveats indicated that Japan was unwilling to commit too much of its strength in the East.
Probably the only thing that would have made Stalin happier than this news was
Zhukov serving him Hitler’s head on a plate. It meant that the vast bulk of Soviet strength
could be committed to fighting the Germans. At a critical point in the war, this information
allowed thousands of men and vital equipment to be moved west from the depot in Siberia, where it
would be desperately needed to repel Operation Typhoon — the German offensive to take Moscow.
Had these men and supplies not been diverted, many have suggested that the Germans would
have broken through Moscow’s defences. This would have dealt Stalin and his leadership
a crippling blow they might never have recovered from. If this was the case,
Sorge’s intelligence work in Japan was likely the most important spying of the entire war.
Spies don’t live long, and Sorge was no exception. A man of duty to the very end,
his penultimate message, sent in October 1941, was The Soviet Far East can be considered safe from
Japanese attack.” He was captured days after. Like an absolute king, he spent his last night as a
free man in bed with Helma, before being captured by the Japanese secret police the next day.
Knowing he was to be executed, Sorge confessed to spying. He declared, That I successfully
approached the German embassy in Japan and won the absolute trust [of] people there was the
foundation of my organisation in Japan... Even in Moscow[, the] fact that I infiltrated into the
centre of the embassy and made use of it for my spying activity is evaluated as extremely amazing,
having no equivalent in history.” That I successfully approached the German embassy in
Japan and won the absolute trust [of] people there was the foundation of my organisation in Japan...
Even in Moscow[, the] fact that I infiltrated into the centre of the embassy and made use of it for
my spying activity is evaluated as extremely amazing, having no equivalent in history.”
THAT was the incredible story of the Kwantung Army, Richard Sorge, and why the Japanese didn’t
invade the Soviet Union along with the Germans. But what do YOU think?
Do YOU think Operation Barbarossa would have been as successful if Stalin had listened to his spies?
What do YOU think would have happened if the Kwantung Army had invaded in 1941?
Was Sorge the most influential spy of the war? Let us know in the comments!