August 15 is worth remembering for hundreds of millions of Chinese people forever. On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its unconditional surrender, and China finally won victory after 14 years of arduous resistance.
Many people regard the surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945 as the end of World War II, but in fact the war lasted until August 30, 1945, when the Dongning Fortress on the Sino-Soviet border was completely dismantled, and the Japanese Kwantung Army laid down its weapons and surrendered, which was the last battle of World War II.
The Japanese soldiers laid down their arms and surrendered to the Soviets
From August 9, 1945, when the Soviet army sent troops to the Northeast War until August 22, large-scale fighting in various parts of the northeast was basically stopped, and more than 95 percent of the Japanese Kwantung Army surrendered. However, until August 27, the battle at Dongning Fortress was still not over. Known as the Maginot Line in the East and the permanent fortress in Asia, this Japanese army was the most confident defensive fortress in Asia, but it took only 21 days to fall under the attack of the Soviet army. During this time, the Soviet army annihilated 2,300 Japanese troops and captured 1,200 people, and World War II finally came to an end in Dongning, which also became the end of the Japanese invaders. In addition to relying on well-equipped Soviet soldiers to fight the enemy bravely, another special task force was also indispensable.
Dongning Fortress
Where did this reconnaissance team come from? What did they do to the War of Resistance?
At the beginning of 1940, the anti-Japanese struggle in the northeast reached the most difficult period, and the Japanese Kou launched a brutal crusade against the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Army, and the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition suffered heavy casualties, from more than 100,000 people in the period of the founding of the army to more than 3,000 people. In order to preserve the anti-Japanese armed forces, the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Army carried out a strategic shift, except for a few troops who insisted on fighting in the northeast, most of the remaining troops gradually retreated to the Soviet Far East and were stationed in Vyatsk, Ussuriysk and other places.
Anti-Coalition fighters
On July 16, 1942, the leaders of the Anti-Japanese Coalition, Zhou Baozhong and Li Zhaolin, reached an agreement with General Abanasink, commander of the Soviet Far Eastern Front, and decided to expand and organize the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition forces remaining in the Far East of the Soviet Union into the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Teaching Brigade, the purpose of which was to enable them to actively and effectively cooperate with friendly forces in the era of the Northeast Liberation War, and also to serve as a chain between the Soviet Far East Red Army and the Chinese Northeast Red Army.
In the Northeast Anti-Japanese League Teaching Brigade, the third from the right in the front row is Brigade Commander Zhou Baozhong, on the left and right are Mrs. Wang Yizhi and Kim Il Sung, the second on the left is Li Zhaolin, and the second on the right in the last row is Tao Yufeng
On August 1, 1942, the anti-coalition fighters changed into Soviet uniforms, and the 88th Independent Infantry Brigade of the Red Banner Army of the Soviet Far East was formally established in Vyatsk, the Far Eastern Frontier Region of the Soviet Union, with Zhou Baozhong as the brigade commander and Soviet Major Shilinsky as the deputy brigade commander. The brigade is divided into 4 infantry battalions, 1 radio battalion, 1 direct mortar company, and 1 direct instruction brigade. Each battalion was divided into two companies, each divided into three platoons, each equipped with six heavy machine guns, each company with nine light machine guns, and each platoon with fifteen submachine guns. Brigade Commander: Lieutenant Colonel Rank; Deputy Brigade Commander, Chief of Staff, And Brigade Headquarters Department Heads are Majors; Battalion Commanders and Deputy Battalion Commanders are Captains; Company Commanders and Instructors are Captains; Platoon Commanders are Lieutenants and Lieutenants; and Soldiers are all awarded ranks.
The Anti-Japanese Coalition Army teaches the rank of brigade
This is a special force, which can be called the crystallization of the joint construction of the Chinese and Soviet armies. From the beginning, it had two designations: the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Teaching Brigade and the 88th Infantry Brigade of the Red Army in the Far East of the Soviet Union. This unit was very different from the average infantry brigade. First, its military facilities are hidden deep in the dense forests of Vyatsk, and even the local villagers cannot get in close proximity. Second, it was extremely well-equipped, even surpassing the average Soviet unit. Most importantly, its training outline also completely exceeds the scope required by the infantry unit, in addition to the conventional queue training, infantry weapon shooting, assassination, bomb dropping, engineer operations, etc., but also includes blasting operations, vehicle driving, terrain mapping, armed crossing, paratroopers, skiing, sniping and a large number of training content similar to the "SEALs" and "Delta Commandos" in the US military today. Obviously, these training and equipment across the ages, coupled with the veterans of the hundred battles left by the Anti-Japanese Alliance, will create a combat effectiveness, especially the combat effectiveness of individual soldiers is far superior to the number of troops of the Japanese Kwantung Army, and its value is not reflected in one-on-one combat.
Far East Contingent
In the spring of 1945, World War II was nearing its end, and Japanese fascism was at the end of its rope. In the European theater, the American and British Allies had captured most of Italy and launched an attack on the Siegfried Line on the western border of Germany. The Soviets had ended the Battle of the Visład River on the Eastern Front and approached the German capital Berlin. In the Asia-Pacific theater, the Allies had captured the Mariana Islands and the Philippine archipelago of Leyte, and the war had spread to the Japanese mainland. From February 4 to 11, 1945, the heads of government of the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Kingdom met in Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula of the Soviet Union and signed the Yalta Agreement, which determined that after the end of the European war, the Soviet Allies would jointly fight against Japan.
The Big Three of Yalta
On the eve of the soviet liberation of northeast China, the Eighty-eighth Brigade, in accordance with the instructions of Stalin, the headquarters of the Soviet Far East Army and the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Red Army, dispatched 280 commanders and fighters to form more than 20 special detachments to parachute behind the enemy in the northeast to undertake pre-war reconnaissance tasks. The task force went deep behind enemy lines to conduct a series of reconnaissance, espionage and sabotage activities against the Japanese Kwantung Army. They provided reliable information for the Soviet High Command to grasp in a timely manner the deployment facilities of the Japanese Kwantung Army in the northeast of 17 fortified areas and three lines of defense. From late July 1945 onwards, the Eighty-Eighth Brigade sent hundreds of people to form parachute detachments and parachute into mudanjiang, Hegang, Hailar, Chifeng and other cities and counties in the northeast to harass the Japanese and puppet forces. There were more than twenty special detachments, including 55 in the Middle East, 65 in the Songhuajiang and Mudanjiang areas, 90 in the Northern Manchuria region, and 80 in the Southern Manchuria region, but most of these contingent members died heroically in the process of reconnaissance.
Soldiers of the Anti-Allied Teaching Brigade armed with Bobosha submachine guns
In July and August 1945, the scouts finally figured out the full deployment of the Japanese Kwantung Army and blew up the first Asian artillery at Hutou Fortress. This gun is more than 20 meters long, the diameter of the gun body is 1 meter, the diameter of the muzzle is 41 centimeters, the charge is one ton, a shell is 4 meters long, the maximum range is 20 kilometers, and the lethality is very strong. Located in the hills of the Guandashan Mountains in Heilongjiang, Hutou Fortress was a border military fortress secretly built by the Japanese army to attack the Soviet Union. The most proud of the Japanese army was the first Asian cannon on the top of the fortress. The cannon's muzzles were directed at the Iman Iron Bridge and the Lazuo Water Tower in the Soviet Union, and it is conceivable that the presence of this cannon was a great threat to the Soviet Red Army. The task force of the Eighty-eighth Brigade directly supported the Soviet offensive and cleared the way for a full-scale Soviet offensive.
The first shot of Tiger Head Fortress
At 00:10 on August 9, 1945, 1.5 million Soviet troops launched a lightning attack on the Japanese Kwantung Army in three ways, and at least 280 anti-coalition commanders and fighters directly joined the advance team. They fully cooperated with the Soviet frontal attack, so that the Kwantung Army's airfields, railways, bridges, fortresses and other targets were quickly destroyed. On 29 August, the Infantry Division of the Soviet 384th Division, the 106th Garrison, the Independent Artillery Battalion of the 39th Army, and a unit of the Anti-Allied InstructionAl brigade launched a fierce attack on Dongning Fortress. On August 30, General Onitani Wuyi, commander of the First Border Garrison of the Kwantung Army, led 901 Japanese troops to surrender to the Soviet Army, and the Soviet Red Army was in a state of disarray, and Marshal Vasilevsky, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Far East Army, sent a warm congratulatory message to the Anti-Japanese League Teaching Brigade after the war. He said: The heroic Chinese soldiers of the 88th Brigade, thank you for the information you exchanged with your lives and blood for playing a major role in the Far East Army's attack on northeast China, especially the reconnaissance and rescue activities against the heavily guarded fortresses and fortresses of the Japanese Kwantung Army, which highly embody the excellent character and tenacious fighting spirit of the Chinese soldiers. On behalf of the people of the USSR, I thank you and pay you the highest tribute.
The Soviets accepted the surrender of the Japanese
After all the Soviet troops withdrew from the northeast, the officers and men of the Anti-Japanese Alliance Teaching Brigade were distributed throughout the northeast to establish a democratic regime, on the one hand, to eliminate the remnants of the Japanese puppets, to maintain social order, and on the other hand to vigorously expand the people's armed forces, in view of the rapid development of the anti-coalition teaching brigade, the soldiers have far exceeded the brigade's establishment, on September 8, the Anti-Japanese League Teaching Brigade was renamed the Northeast People's Self-Defense Army, and Zhou Baozhong was appointed as the commander-in-chief of the Self-Defense Army. At this point, this legendary unit: the Anti-League Teaching Brigade "88th Independent Infantry Brigade of the Red Banner Army of the Soviet Far East" completed its mission.
After learning about the deeds of Zhou Baozhong's heroes of the Anti-Japanese League, Peng Zhen, acting secretary of the Northeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, said with great emotion: "In the revolutionary struggle of our Chinese Communists over the past 20 -odd years, there have been three of the most arduous things: the first is the 25,000-mile long march of the Red Army; the second is the 3-year guerrilla war of the Red Army in the south after the Red Army went out on the expedition; and the third is the 14-year bitter struggle of the Northeast Anti-Japanese League. "