Operation August Storm

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Operation August Storm
Soviet map of troop movements
Soviet map of troop movements
date August 8 to September 2, 1945
place Manchukuo
output Soviet victory
Parties to the conflict

Soviet Union 1923Soviet Union Soviet Union Mongolia
Mongolia People's Republic 1940Mongolian People's Republic 

Japanese EmpireJapanese Empire Japan Manchukuo Mengjiang
ManchukuoManchukuo 
Flag of Mongol United Autonomous Government (1937-1939) .svg

Commander

Soviet Union 1923Soviet Union Alexander Wassilewski

Japanese EmpireJapanese Empire Yamada Otozo

Troop strength
1,577,225 men,
26,137 guns,
1,852 guns as support,
3,704 tanks,
5,368 aircraft 		1,040,000 men,
6,700 guns,
1,000 tanks,
1,800 planes,
1,215 vehicles
losses
according to the Soviet Union:
12,031 killed,
24,425 wounded
according to Japan:
20,000+ killed,
50,000+ wounded 		according to the Soviet Union:
83,737 killed,
594,000 prisoners of war
according to Japan:
21,000 fallen
,? Prisoners of war

Operation Auguststurm is the name of the Manchurian Strategic Operation of the Soviet Union against the Japanese Empire at the end of the Second World War , which goes back to the American military historian David Glantz . In its course, Soviet troops conquered and occupied the Japanese vassal states of Manchukuo ( Manchuria ) and Mengjiang , Korea , the prefecture of Karafuto (southern Sakhalin ) and the Kuril Islands in August and September 1945 .

It was the first military action by the Soviet Union against the Japanese Empire during World War II. At the Yalta Conference , Stalin had given in to pressure from the Western Allies to break the neutrality agreement with Japan and the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific War . However, this was only to happen three months after the end of the war in Europe .

troops

Soviet Union

Marshal Alexander M. Wassilewski was in charge of the operation . For the offensive three were fronts of the Red Army provided:

The forces comprised at least 80 divisions with 1.5 million soldiers, over 5000 tanks (including 3700 T-34s ), over 28,000 artillery pieces and 4,300 aircraft . About a third of the Soviet forces made up support and supply units. The naval forces consisted of 12 larger ships, 78 submarines , numerous amphibious vehicles and the Amur flotilla , which consisted of gunboats and numerous smaller ships.

Japan

The Japanese Kwantung Army under General Yamada Otozō was the strategic and operational unit that was supposed to stop the advance of the Red Army. As one of the main armies of the Japanese Empire, it was the most important part of the Japanese army of occupation in Manchuria and Korea and essentially consisted of three regional armies , two independent armies , two railway regiments and two air fleets :

Each regional army of the Kwantung Army consisted of one or two armies and several divisions directly subordinate to the regional army command and independent mixed brigades . In addition, the Japanese were supported by the 40,000-strong Manchukuo Defense Forces , which were made up of eight poorly equipped and inadequately trained Chinese divisions. Korea , the next target of the Soviet Far Eastern Command , was defended by the 17th Regional Army.

The Kwantung Army comprised more than 600,000 men, who had 1,215 armored vehicles (mostly armored vehicles and light tanks), 6,700 (light) guns and 1,800 mostly obsolete aircraft used for training .

The Japanese Navy did nothing to defend Manchuria, which it had always advised against for strategic reasons. The majority of the Japanese forces consisted of significantly fewer soldiers than intended and the majority of their heavy equipment had been diverted for the Pacific War .

Most of China's available industry and raw materials were in Manchuria. The Japanese units , however, could not take on the Red Army , which was significantly better equipped, trained and tactically superior. This also consisted in no small part of fresh workers, mostly recruits. The army headquarters gave priority to Korea and the Japanese army had to position itself on the northern and eastern borders of Manchuria, while the western border was sparsely defended.

The campaign

Pacific Fleet soldiers in Port Arthur , October 1, 1945

The campaign was carried out using the classic pincer method , encircling an area the size of Western Europe . In the west, the Red Army fought its way along with the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Army across the mountains and deserts of Mongolia , far from their supply lines. This confused the Japanese and they were caught off guard. The Japanese commander was absent for the first 18 hours of the fight and contact with other units was broken off a short time later; the Japanese army suspected the invasion would begin in October and was therefore not prepared for the Soviet attack. At the same time, Soviet air supply forces secured airfields and city centers as the ground troops marched; they were also used to deliver fuel to units that were no longer in contact with the ground.

The fighting lasted only about a week, until Emperor Hirohitos Gyokuon-hōsō (= the radio address for the unconditional surrender of Japan ) on August 15, who ordered the armistice in the region for the next day. By this time the Soviet troops had already advanced far into Manchukuo, but continued to fight and now, almost without resistance, advanced into the core area of ​​Manchukuo, where they took Mukden , Xinjing and Qiqihar on August 20 . At the same time, the Mengjiang area was conquered by the Red Army and their Mongol allies, and Hohhot was quickly captured.

On August 18, before the advance of the ground forces, a number of amphibious landings were carried out: three in northern Korea, one in Sakhalin and one on the Kuril Islands . As a result - at least in Korea - the Soviet ground troops were already awaiting the attack on this area by other Soviet units. In Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, this led to the immediate establishment of Soviet sovereignty.

However, the advance by land was stopped shortly before the Yalu River , the geographic beginning of the Korean peninsula, as the air supply ended here. The troops already in Korea were able to exercise some control in the north of the peninsula. However, the goal of conquering the entire peninsula became unattainable when American troops landed at Incheon on September 8th .

The island of Hokkaidō was not conquered either, although Soviet plans had provided for it.

War crimes

Many Japanese settlers took their own lives before the Soviets conquered their territories. Mothers were forced by the Japanese army to murder their children before killing themselves. Occasionally the Japanese army itself participated in the murder of the children. Wounded soldiers were left behind.

British and US reports indicated that the Soviet forces that captured Manchuria terrorized the people of Mukden and burned their homes. The Soviet government would have allowed three days of rape and looting. The Chinese Communist Party allegedly complained to the Soviets about the rape and looting.

Konstantin Asmolow from the Center for Korean Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences rejects these allegations. In contrast to Germany, there would have been no looting and mass rape permitted by the leadership.

Results

The successful Soviet operation in Manchuria, together with the American atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9, 1945) made it clear to the Japanese that they had no way of averting their defeat in World War II. Some historians, especially from China and the former Soviet Union, see the loss of Manchuria and the associated total loss of power in China as a decisive factor in the surrender of Japan, sometimes even as the main reason. They believe that the Japanese were ready to surrender to the Allies only after the defeat of their army in Manchuria.

The Soviet-occupied Manchuria was later the headquarters of Mao Zedong's units, which would eventually emerge victorious from the Chinese Civil War in 1949 . The military success of the Soviet Union in Manchuria also prevented Stalin's troops from receiving bases there that the western allies had promised them, since the entire area now became the property of the People's Republic of China . However, before leaving the area, the Soviet occupiers dismantled the industrial facilities in Manchuria, which were regarded as valuable, after such goods were urgently needed in the Soviet Union, which had been badly affected by the war since 1941.

As agreed at the Yalta Conference, the Soviets had entered the war within three months of the German surrender, which is why Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, Port Arthur and Dalian were left to them. The territories on the Asian mainland were given to the People's Republic of China in 1955, the other possessions are still part of the legal successor of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation .

Naming and military historical processing

The military-historical term "Operation Auguststurm" (in the original: Operation August Storm ) was first created in 1983 by the US Army historian LTC David Glantz, who introduced the term in the title of a publication on the conflict.

The military operation itself was carried out under the official Soviet name of Манчжурская стратегическая наступательная операция ( Manchurskaya Strategicheskaya Nastupatelnaya Operacija , Manchurian strategic offensive operation).

Military historical publications under the occasionally used American designation thus prove to be published in 1983 at the earliest.

See also

literature

  • David M. Glantz: August Storm. The Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria (= Leavenworth Papers. No. 7). Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 1983, ( PDF; 8.8 MB ).
  • David M. Glantz: August Storm. Soviet Tactical and Operational Combat in Manchuria, 1945 (= Leavenworth Papers. No. 8). Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 1983, ( PDF, 9.0 MB ).
  • Афанасий Павлантьевич Белобородов: Прорыв на Харбин. Wojennisdat, Moscow 1982. Online (Russian; Afanassi Pawlantjewitsch Beloborodow: Breakthrough to Harbin. )

Web links

Commons : Operation Auguststurm  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David M. Glantz & Jonathan House (1995): When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler , Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, ISBN 0-7006-0899-0 , p. 300.
  2. ↑ Vyacheslav Zimonin: The Truth and Lies About Japanese Orphans . In: Far Eastern Affairs , Academy of Sciences of the USSR, p. 121. 
  3. ↑ FC Jones: XII. Events in Manchuria, 1945-47 . In: Manchuria since 1931 . Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, Oxford University Press 1949, pp. 224-5 and pp. 227-9. Archived from the original on December 19, 2013 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Retrieved May 17, 2012). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / oudl.osmania.ac.in
  4. ↑ Hannah Pakula: The last empress: Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and the birth of modern China . Simon & Schuster, 2009, ISBN 1-4391-4893-7 , p. 530 (accessed June 28, 2010).
  5. ↑ Dieter Heinzig: The Soviet Union and communist China, 1945-1950: the arduous road to the alliance . ME Sharpe, 2004, ISBN 0-7656-0785-9 , p. 82 (accessed November 28, 2010).
  6. ^ Robyn Lim: The geopolitics of East Asia: the search for equilibrium . Psychology Press, 2003, ISBN 0-415-29717-6 , p. 86 (Retrieved November 28, 2010).
  7. ↑ Ronald H Spector: In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia . Random House, 2008, ISBN 0-8129-6732-1 , p. 33 (Retrieved November 28, 2010).
  8. ↑ Konstantin Valerijanowitsch Asmolow (Константин Валерианович Асмолов): Victory in the Far East (Pobeda na dal'nem Vostokje) . In: Alexander Djukow, Igor Pychalow (ed.): The great patriotic war (Velikaja obolgannaja Wojna) . tape 2 . Jausa, Moscow 2008 ( lib.ru [accessed December 13, 2017] Russian: Победа на дальнем востоке .).