POLITICS : Why didn't Japan invade the Soviet Union during WW2?

Sohail Khurianwala

works at Verscom Technologies & Services

23w ago

Many people who study about World War II are not aware of this:

I would like to quote from the above article.

From May to September 1939, the USSR and Japan fought an undeclared war involving over 100,000 troops.

This war played its part in altering world history.

In the summer of 1939, Soviet and Japanese armies clashed on the Manchurian-Mongolian frontier in a little-known conflict with far-reaching consequences.

This was no mere border clash, this undeclared war raged from May to September 1939 embroiling over 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks and aircraft.

Some 30,000-50,000 men were killed and wounded. In the climactic battle, which lasted from August 20-31, 1939, the Japanese armies were encircled and crushed by Soviet Armor in the Far East.

This coincided precisely with the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (August 23, 1939) – Which gave Hitler the green light he wanted to invade Poland and the outbreak of World War II one week later when only Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany.

These events are all connected.

This not so famous conflict also influenced key decisions in Tokyo and Moscow in 1941 that shaped the conduct and ultimately the outcome of World War II.

This conflict (called the Nomonhan Incident by Japanese, the Battle of Khalkhin Gol by Russians) was provoked by a notorious Japanese officer named Tsuji Masanobu, ring-leader of a clique in Japan’s Kwantung Army, which occupied Manchuria in the 1930s.

On the other side, Georgy Zhukov, who would later lead the Red Army to victory over Nazi Germany, commanded the Soviet forces.

In the first large clash in May 1939, a Japanese punitive attack failed and Soviet/Mongolian forces wiped out a 200-man Japanese unit. Infuriated, Kwantung Army escalated the fighting through June and July, launching a large bombing attack deep inside Mongolian territory and attacking across the border in division strength.

As successive Japanese assaults were repulsed by the Red Army, the Japanese continually upped the ante, believing they could force Moscow to back down. Stalin, however, outmaneuvered the Japanese and stunned them with a simultaneous military and diplomatic counter strike.

In August, as Stalin secretly angled for an alliance with Hitler, Zhukov amassed powerful forces near the front. When German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop flew to Moscow to sign the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Stalin unleashed Zhukov’s forces on the Japanese.

The future Red Army Marshal unveiled the tactics he would later employ with such devastating effect at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and elsewhere: a combined arms assault with massed infantry and artillery that fixed the enemy on the central front while powerful armored formations enveloped the enemy’s flanks, encircled, and ultimately crushed him in a battle of annihilation.

Over 75 percent of Japan’s ground forces at the front were killed in combat. At the same time, Stalin concluded the pact with Hitler, Japan’s nominal ally, leaving Tokyo diplomatically isolated and militarily humiliated.

The fact that the fighting at Nomonhan coincided with the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was no coincidence.

While Stalin was openly negotiating with Britain and France for a purported anti-fascist alliance, and secretly negotiating with Hitler for their eventual alliance, which divided territory in Eastern Europe between the USSR and Nazi Germany, he was being attacked by German’s ally and anti-Comintern partner, Japan.

By the summer of 1939, it was clear that Europe was sliding toward war. Hitler was determined to move east, against Poland. Stalin’s nightmare, to be avoided at all costs, was a two-front war against Germany and Japan. His ideal outcome would be for the fascist/militarist capitalists (Germany, Italy, and Japan) to fight the bourgeois/democratic capitalists (Britain, France, and perhaps the United States), leaving the Soviet Union on the sidelines, the arbiter of Europe after the capitalists had exhausted themselves.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact was Stalin’s attempt to achieve his optimal outcome. Not only did it pit Germany against Britain and France and leave the Soviet Union out of the fight – it gave Stalin the freedom to deal decisively with an isolated Japan, which he did at Nomonhan. This is not merely a hypothesis. The linkage between Nomonhan and the Nazi-Soviet Pact is clear even in the German diplomatic documents published in Washington and London in 1948.

Recently revealed Soviet-era documents add confirming details.

Soviet General Zhukov won his golden spurs at Nomonhan/Khalkhin Gol – and thereby won Stalin’s confidence to entrust him with the high command, just in time to avert disaster in December 1941 when the spearheads of the Wehrmacht were just 20 miles from the spires of the Kremlin.

Zhukov was crucially able to halt the German onslaught and turn the tide at the gates of Moscow in early December 1941 (arguably the most decisive week of the Second World War) in part by deploying most of the forces from the Soviet Far East.

Many of these were the battle-tested troops he used to crush the Japanese at Nomonhan. The Soviet Far Eastern reserves – 15 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry divisions, 1,700 tanks, and 1.500 aircraft – were deployed westward in the autumn of 1941 after Stalin learned from his master spy - stationed in Tokyo - Richard Sorge (pronounced - Rishart Zorga) that Japan would not attack the Soviet Far East, because it had made an irrevocable decision for a southward expansion that would lead to war with the United States and Britain.

Stalin in September 1941, did not repeat the grave mistake he made in June 1941 where he angrily dismissed reports by the same spy that the German Armies would definitely invade the USSR on June 22nd with the remark :

“There is this squirt who has set himself up with some little factories and brothels in Japan and even he dares to send me ridiculous reports of an imminent German invasion.”

Japan had decided to gamble on using its powerful Navy to wallop the Americans and British since it did not forget the whacking its Army had received from the Soviets on the Soviet Manchurian border in 1939.

There were other considerations also.

It was the oil embargo imposed by the USA and Britain on the Empire of Japan after it overran French Indo-China, after the fall of France in 1940 to the Wehrmacht, which forced Japan to look desperately for oil and other resources vital for the survival of her empire in the East.

By September 1941, with the oil embargo by the USA and Britain in force, Japanese oil reserves had dropped to 50 million barrels, and their navy alone was burning 2,900 barrels of oil every hour.

The Japanese had reached a breaking point. If they did nothing, they would be out of oil and options in less than 2 years, If they chose war, there was a good chance they could lose a protracted conflict.

Given the possibility of success with the second option, versus none with the first option, the Japanese chose war.

Importantly, Siberian petroleum zones are in the West Siberian petroleum basin, Central Urals and the Sakhalin Island.

Eastern Siberia did not have the extensive oil wells like those which were already established in the Dutch East Indies at that time.

The Japanese leadership thought that securing the oil wells of the Dutch East Indies and invading South East Asia using their Army and powerful Navy was far easier than taking on the Soviet Armies again in Siberia in a winter campaign.

The only hindrances to securing the oil wells of the Dutch East Indies and transporting that oil back to Japan using the ocean route was the United States Pacific fleet and the Royal Navy in the Far East.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th 1941 was a knock out blow meant to disable the US fleet and make Japan the dominant Naval power in the Eastern Pacific so that resources from the Philippines, Dutch East Indies and British Malaya could come under the control of the Empire of Japan after their army had taken over these countries and tin, oil, rubber and other raw materials needed for the Japanese industries could easily be transported to Japan using the sea route.

The Japanese air force immediately struck mortal blows at the Royal Navy also in the Far East by sinking two of Britain’s largest battleships: The Prince of Wales and Repulse off Kuantan in the South China Sea on December 10th 1941, before they embarked on their lightning conquest of British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.

The Prince of Wales and Repulse were the first capital ships to be sunk solely by naval - air power on the open sea.

They also overran the Philippines which was a US colony at that time.

(The US had acquired the Philippines after their victory in the Spanish American war.

References:

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Evgeny Bakhtin

Russian who watches Russia from outside for years.

81w ago

Most of answers are based on assumption that if Japan would attack USSR, it should go until Moscow, or at least take the whole Siberia. Which doesn’t make sense, indeed.

However, these two areas did make sense for Japan:

These two areas make sense for Japan not in terms of resource base, but rather strategic defense of it’s rear and strategic offence towards China.

It makes even more sense, if you consider that USSR was already in proxy war with Japan since 1937 - Soviet Volunteer Group helping China to fight Japan at the air. Also, you have constant small conflicts starting from 1935 - Soviet–Japanese border conflicts.

So, it makes a lot of sense to Japan to attack USSR!

But in contrary, Japan seals Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941. And focuses southward.

However, USSR didn’t trust Japan with this Pact and kept about 1.000.000 soldiers, tanks, aviation, etc. at Far East. Which were damn needed at German front!

So, basically the answer is - Japan had comparatively less need to go North than to go South, and USSR was well armed there.

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Ozgur Zeren

Author at ViaPopuli.com

96w ago

They tried - in Khalkin Gol battle, they attacked USSR.

That was very probably a test of Red Army's strength on behalf of the alliance Japanese belonged to - Anti-Comintern. Since there were 2-3 countries on the planet who claimed to be communists, and the only sizable country was USSR, Anti-Comintern alliance was basically an anti USSR alliance.

How do we conclude that this was a test, is rather simple:

A big Japanese army starts with border skirmishes, then escalates into a full blown battle. For ~4 months, it conducts full blown operations with no impediment to its supplies, requisitions or manpower.

Then when it is beaten back, Japanese government says this was done by a 'rogue general' who 'acted on his own'.

So a rogue general acting on his own fought a massive battle for 4 months, Japanese government not only was not able to control him, but magically his supplies, manpower and equipment flow from Japan did not get impeded in any way.

Of course not. No general in Japanese army could even imagine going against orders.

So it was a test to check Red Army's fighting power.

If the test evaluated well, Japan would not hesitate from invading Siberia, which would very easily be accompanied by Nazi Germany invading from the west. Poland would be more than cooperative with that kind of affair. Which was what the West was hoping.

Instead Japanese got steamrolled. Khalkin Gol was a beyond decisive victory for Red Army, in which Zhukov implemented the very tactics which were to be used in the Eastern Front to Germany.

Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in between USSR and Germany was signed just 4 days after Zhukov started his final offensive in Khalkin Gol, and it was evident that Japanese army was being run over. This is a critical point. Practically pact's existence is due to the result of Khalkin Gol.

So now it was seen that Red Army was strong, Japanese had nowhere near the power necessary to even beat the forces Zhukov already had in Eastern USSR, they had no hopes of moving forward, leave aside reaching any Oil fields in USSR, and they had limited oil reserves.

Which meant that trying to invade Siberia would be a craziness which wouldn't even 'start' happening.

Wisely, they turned into the only thing they could do - gamble against US with Pearl Harbor and hope for a quick peace on favorable terms.

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Omanshu Thapliyal

works at Purdue University

125w ago

TL;DR 
It was not merely due to resource scarcity, but resource scarcity combined with a change in state policy from Hokushin-ron to Nanshin-ronJapan had already occupied parts of French Indochina (1940) before signing the neutrality pact (1941) with the Soviet Union (therefore, the neutrality pact was not the only reason)

Many of the answers have tackled the scarcity of resources in the Japanese mainland to be the reason for their southward expansion, but it misses a key point of the change in the Japanese state's policies in the pre war period.
Simply put, Japan didn't invade the Soviet Union because of a stark change in the Imperial state's policies.

In the pre-WW2 period, Japan maintained hostile borders with USSR and the general of the Imperial Japanese army, Kenkichi Ueda, was a staunch supporter of Hokushin-ron 北進論. The Imperial army at that time believed in the Hokushin-ron, or the Strike North doctrine. Under this Northern expansion doctrine, Japan considered it destined for her to conquer the sparsely populated, mineral rich regions of northern Asia. This policy saw steep budget cuts incurred by the Imperial Navy and large scale production of tanks, etc. However, under Ueda's generalship during the Soviet-Japanese conflicts in the 30's, repeated Japanese losses resulted in a Neutrality Pact in 1941. This was followed by a a drastically different policy, Nanshin-ron 南進論. This was the governing doctrine of the Japanese Imperial motives during the immediate pre-WW2 period and it claimed the Southeast Asian region to be Japanese sphere of influence and that the "Pacific was destined to be a Japanese lake".

After this stark change of Imperial policy, Japan carried out huge Naval militarization violating the Washington Naval Treaty and with the promulgation of the Toa shin Shitsujo (New Order in East Asia), Nanshin-ron became the adopted as the national policy in 1936. It should be noted that Japan had already occupied Northern French Indochina by September 1940 and the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact came later in 1941.

The Imperial motive of Japan were affected by the fact that it being an island nation; this meant a limited supply of resources and raw materials. This could be mitigated by the new state policy to occupy the Pacific region and southeast Asia.

This change of policy is prominently reflected in how the Japanese occupations and militaristic tendencies behaved with time: