Soviet generals' assessment of the Japanese Army

DOI:10.13740/j.cnki.jiiohr.2023.04.009

How to evaluate the Japanese Army during World War II from the point of view of pure military science is an interesting question. Judging from the Sino-Japanese War (1931-1945), it rarely lost in dozens of battles against the Chinese Kuomintang army, and occupied a large part of China's territory. However, if we look at the world and change to a larger frame of reference, the Japanese Army is undoubtedly far behind the trend of the times in many areas of military scholarship, otherwise it is difficult to explain the great rout it suffered in the Pacific theater and the Northeast China theater in the face of the surprise attacks of the American and Soviet forces. The memoirs of a high-ranking Soviet general who personally commanded the war against Japan, specifically the battle to annihilate the Kwantung Army, may give a glimpse of this. Due to the differences in their foothold and their own military level, their views are indeed quite different from the previous works on war history in Chinese academic circles.

1. Zhukov: "Our troops as a whole are much stronger than the Japanese army"

Marshal of the Soviet Union and four-time Hero of the Soviet Union G. Kon Zhukov (1896-1974) was the second military commander in the Great Patriotic War after Stalin, and his name is associated with almost all major battles such as the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk, the Battle of Belarus, and the Battle of Berlin. He is good at commanding large corps operations, especially the coordinated actions of tank mobile units, artillery and aviation units, and encircling and annihilating the enemy's heavy army groups in the form of two-flank assaults. In fact, his first real practice was the Battle of the Khalkhin River (or Battle of the Khalkhain River, or the Battle of the Khalekan River between the Chinese and Japanese sides, or the Battle of Nomenkan or the Battle of Nomenhan) between May and August 1939 between May and August 1939. In this battle, the 57th Special Army (later expanded into the 1st Army) under Zhukov's command encircled, divided, and annihilated the 6th Army of the Japanese Kwantung Army (the main force was the 23rd Division), and achieved a major victory. This battle is also regarded by Japanese military historians as "the greatest defeat in the history of the Japanese Army". Looking back at the Russo-Japanese War more than 30 years ago, the Japanese Army defeated the Russian army many times in the battles of Mukden, Liaoyang, and Lushun.

Marshal Zhukov devoted a special chapter to the battle of the Kharkhin River in his book "Memories and Reflections", written in the 60s of the 20th century. He pointed out that the trump card on which the Soviet army relied for its victory in the entire campaign was that "a tank and motorized mechanized unit that is good at fighting in conjunction with the air force and mobile artillery is the decisive weapon for carrying out rapid combat operations with resolute objectives." In the face of the cluster assault of dozens or hundreds of tanks of the Soviet army, the Japanese army was weak and panicked in defense. Zhukov cites the diaries of many Japanese officers and soldiers captured in battle, which are full of words such as "terrible", "pathetic", "terrifying", "thrilling", "terrible", and "like hell". This was so because "at that time the Japanese army vigorously instilled among the soldiers the idea of opposing the Soviet Red Army." Our army is described as technologically backward, at the level of the old tsarist army of the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Therefore, the Japanese soldiers were completely surprised when they saw the surprise attack of our tanks, aircraft, artillery and well-organized infantry units in the battle for the Khalkha River. ”

Although the Kwantung Army also established tank units at this time and used them in real combat, Zhukov did not rate their technical performance, coordinated actions, mobility and counter-assault capabilities very highly, he wrote: "At that time we paid special attention to the fact that the Japanese army did not have good tank corps and motorized mechanized units and could not quickly transfer troops from secondary areas and from depth to counter our assault groups. "We believe that the weakest point of the Japanese deployment is on their defensive flanks, and at the same time they lack rapid reserves. ”

In fact, on July 4, 1939, there was a tank battle between the Soviet and Japanese armies, and both sides invested about 100 tanks and armored vehicles, but there was a significant "generation gap". The T28 and T130 tanks of the Soviet army had large tonnage, thick armor, a large radius of action, a long range of artillery and a fast rate of fire. In contrast, the Japanese tanks had small tonnage, thin armor, a small radius of action, and very backward artillery. The two armies faced each other, like a huge herd of cattle and a herd of lambs fighting, the Japanese army was not an opponent at all, and 34 Type 89 medium tanks, 4 Type 97 medium tanks, and 35 Type 95 light tanks were destroyed 17, 1, and 11 respectively, and ended in a crushing defeat.

But at the same time, Zhukov also noticed that although the opponent's technology and weapons were backward, "the Japanese army was extremely stubborn and fought to the last man." This tenacity goes hand in hand with unconditional obedience to his superiors, as he cites as an example: "I remember one day in August, just after dawn, I brought with me a Japanese prisoner who had been bitten by mosquitoes and had been indecently bitten by mosquitoes. "This Japanese soldier was caught in the reeds by Soviet scouts. "I asked him who and where he was made to be like this. He replied that he and another soldier had been ordered to hide in the reeds yesterday evening and secretly monitor the movements of the Russian troops, but did not give them mosquito protection equipment. The company commander ordered them not to move in the reeds so as not to be discovered. When mosquitoes hit at night, they gritted their teeth and endured the mosquito bites, and stayed motionless until the next morning, for fear of being discovered......"

In early May 1940, Zhukov, who had returned victoriously and had received the new rank of general, was received by Stalin for the first time in Moscow, who asked him: "What do you think of the Japanese army?" Zhukov made the following replies:

The Japanese soldiers who fought with us on the Haleha River were well trained, especially in close combat. They were disciplined, resolute in the execution of orders, and fought tenaciously, especially in defensive battles. The command staff below was well trained and fought extremely tenacious. Lower-level commanders generally do not surrender and do not hesitate to commit suicide by "disembowelment". Officers, especially middle and senior officers, are poorly trained, have poor initiative, and are accustomed to conformism. As for the technical equipment of the Japanese army, I think it is backward. The Japanese tanks were equivalent to our MC-1 tanks, very backward, with poor weapons and a small maximum stroke. Our artillery was superior to the Japanese in all respects, especially in firing.

In the end, Zhukov concluded that "our troops as a whole are much stronger than the Japanese army." And the MC-1 tank he said was in service with the Soviet army mainly at the end of the 20s, in other words, there was a 10-year generation difference between the tanks of the Soviet and Japanese armies.

In fact, in July and August 1938, before the Battle of the Halkhin River, there was also a clash between the Soviet Union and Japan in the area of Lake Hassan (known as the Zhangfeng area in Chinese), which also ended in the defeat of the Japanese army. Unfortunately, the Soviet Marshal Blyukhel (1889-1938), who commanded the battle, died in the Great Purge and did not leave a commentary on the Japanese army.

After the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, Japan's life and death national fortunes were mainly maintained in the Pacific theater with the US aircraft carrier and naval and air battles. The basic state of the Japanese Army, regardless of the theater, the Kwantung Army, the Chinese Dispatch Army, or the Southern Army, did not actually change much substantially until the eve of the defeat in August 1945.

2. Beloborodov: "(The Japanese Army) Lags Behind the Demands of the Times"

On August 9, 1945, the Soviet Red Army's three fronts (the Later Baikal Front, the 2nd Far Eastern Front, and the 1st Far Eastern Front) of 1.74 million people launched a centripetal assault on the Japanese Kwantung Army entrenched in northeast China from the west, north, and east at the same time, and the latter was completely wiped out after only about 10 days of fighting, with more than 80,000 killed and more than 594,000 captured. The 1st Red Banner Army, commanded by General Beloborodov (1903-1990), fought in the direction of the Suifen River on the Sino-Soviet border to Harbin within the formation of the 1st Far Eastern Front. "Sudden to Harbin" is his memoir of commanding this war.

Although Beloborodov admitted that the Kwantung Army was a "powerful group" and "could never be called a weak enemy", "it was the largest and most well-equipped corps in the Japanese armed forces; In addition, there were permanent defenses", but in the face of the more powerful Soviet troops, "all this was like a papier-mâché house, which collapsed within ten days of the offensive campaign". He further pointed out that the Kwantung military first constructed 17 fortified areas along the entire border between China and the Soviet Union and China and Mongolia, covering a length of 800 kilometers, with a total of 4,500 permanent firepower points in between. They expected that the Soviet troops would suffer delays and heavy losses in personnel and technical weapons as they passed through the fortified areas and complex terrain, and then the Japanese could carry out a powerful counter-assault in a favorable position and take advantage of the victory to attack the Soviet territory. However, "all the operational concepts to which they had been accustomed in the past, as well as the practical experience that the Japanese had gained over the years in China, Burma, the Pacific and other regions, were completely ineffective in the first battle with the Soviet forces." Because after the baptism of the Soviet-German war in high-speed and large-depth battles, "a large amount of experience accumulated by the Soviet army in offensive campaigns", and this experience is exactly what the Japanese army lacks, specifically, "refers to the large-scale and far-reaching maneuvers of tank corps and artillery, the motorization of infantry, the massive concentration of artillery (breakthrough artillery corps) and the maneuver of artillery (anti-tank artillery brigades), etc." In particular, the Japanese army had not encountered a real opponent, so it was necessary to seriously reconsider the organizational structure and command methods of its own army. Its infantry divisions were still large and inflexible until 1945, with an establishment of 25,000 to 30,000 men (that is, roughly equivalent to my army of three divisions). Artillery lagged behind the requirements of the times, both in terms of technology and in combat training, including anti-tank training. The same is true for tanks. The Japanese generals tried their best to make up for these deficiencies and began to hastily adopt various organizational measures, including "splitting" the division into two, hoping that it would become more flexible and easy to command. The Japanese army's traditional reliance on individual training had practical results, but it had eroded the initiative of the soldiers. Ordinary soldiers were accustomed to revering all those who were higher in rank than themselves, from the emperor to the military commander. They were obedient and extremely diligent in carrying out orders. But in battle, they are not good at and do not want to take responsibility for bold decisions. This is also the case with junior and intermediate commanders."

Although the Japanese Army often showed more than enough and was handy when it encountered low-tech opponents in the past, with the bravery of its soldiers and the skills of stabbing and fighting, it was difficult to adapt to the high-tech Soviet army, especially the Soviet tank units that could advance 80 kilometers quickly every day and night and had powerful firepower, "On the second and third days of the Soviet offensive, the Japanese front and corps-level headquarters lost control of their subordinate units, and by the end of the first week of the campaign, disaster and complete annihilation were a foregone conclusion. The entire Kwantung Army became a rabble divided into groups and scattered over a vast area". After being captured, the commander of the 5th Army of the Kwantung Army, Lieutenant General Shimizu Norri, admitted to General Beloborodov that "we did not expect the Russian army to pass through the primeval forest, nor did we expect such a powerful force to appear in an impassable area." Your advance is lightning fast, and we don't have time to organize our defenses."

In view of this, the Japanese army had to adopt unconventional "kamikaze" special attack tactics on a large scale, with "special attack members crawling to tanks from around like poisonous snakes" in an attempt to prevent the rapid Soviet troops from breaking through to their own hinterland. Beloborodov spent a lot of pen and ink describing this desperate, brutal, helpless, and useless method of warfare.

For example, kamikaze units were formed in divisions, regiments, and wing headquarters, and in every battalion and company. Our tanks became their main targets. Operatives are usually chained along mountain trails, hiding in deep, well-camouflaged foxholes. When the tanks approached, they either dragged old boxes or other inconspicuous objects with mines from across the road with ropes, pushed mines under the tracks with long poles, or strapped explosives around them and pounced on the bottom of the vehicles...... Fortunately, the carrying soldiers were very vigilant and eliminated the Japanese special attackers...... However, it should be noted that the greatest losses of our tanks in the Manchurian campaign were not due to minefields, nor to artillery fire, but precisely due to the actions of these special attack teams. Another example: Japanese soldiers in yellow-green military uniforms swarmed out of the ditches and camouflaged "raccoon dens". Crushed by the mines and medicine packs hanging from their necks, they swooped down and ran diagonally towards the tank. Tanks carry submachine guns to shoot at close range and throw grenades at enemy troops. The strafing of tank and machine gun fire knocked down the rows of Japanese special attackers, and in an instant, hundreds of corpses lay in the valley. However, groups of operatives continued to emerge from caves, crevices in rocks, and behind mounds, heading straight for the bottom of the tank. The Japanese artillery and machine guns roared like crazy, completely ignoring the bullets and shrapnel that killed both sides at the same time, and a fierce white-knuckle battle was already raging around the tank. Also, the enemy special assault team took advantage of the darkness of the night to climb up to the vehicle again and attempted to throw incendiary grenades (shaped like bottles, filled with mixed fuel, with a metal shell). Dense machine-gun fire crushed the Japanese special attackers to the ground, and the special attackers who rushed towards the tanks were eliminated by the tank crews who were providing cover.

This kind of gambling and fluke "surprise attack" cannot change the overall situation at all, except for bringing a large number of losses to one's own personnel. For this reason, the Chief of Staff of the 5th Army of the Kwantung Army, Major General Shigesada Kawagoe, was captured and confessed to Colonel-General Beloborodov: "We are behind the requirements of the times. You've seen it all, and you've understood it. However, some people continued to speak out, emphasizing that one Japanese division was equivalent to three German infantry divisions and six American infantry divisions in terms of combat qualities. One of our divisions had twenty-five thousand people, and its artillery ...... Or the level of the thirties. ”

3. Vnotchenko: "The Japanese army actually has no experience in modern warfare"

Soviet Marshals Vasilevsky (1895-1975) and Meretskov (1897-1968), who commanded and participated in the liberation of Northeast China, and Soviet General Shtemenko (1907-1976), also opened a special chapter in their memoirs about the "Battle of Manchuria" in 1945. Comparatively speaking, the Soviet military historian Vnotchenko in his book "Victory in the Far East" has a relatively accurate summary of many characteristics of the Japanese Kwantung Army:

Qualitatively, the Japanese army was far weaker than the Soviet Armed Forces. The Japanese army's technical weapons were incomplete. For example, there were no heavy tanks, medium tanks were old vehicles (armor thickness 20 mm, one 57 mm gun and two machine guns). There were no automatic guns and rocket artillery in the troops, and the planes were all old aircraft of various types. The enemy's attempts to create "impregnable" defensive areas and "special attack teams" in order to compensate for the weakness of technical weapons showed that these did not have the desired effect. The organization of the Japanese army was also imperfect. Infantry divisions were bloated, difficult to command, and did not have enough modern technical weapons and means of transport. The Japanese army practically had no experience in modern warfare. The so-called "war" with the Kuomintang army and the battles in the Pacific overwhelmed the minds of the Japanese devils, who were confident that they had mastered the experience of modern warfare. Later combat operations exposed some other weaknesses of the Japanese army, such as the lack of stability in command, the lack of initiative of the soldiers, the fear of exposing the flanks, and the fear of our army's use of modern combat technology and equipment such as tanks, rocket artillery, and submachine guns.

Why did there be such a clear gap between Japan's army and the Soviet Red Army just over 30 years after its victory in the Russo-Japanese War? Directly speaking, it was because since the Soviet Union completed its two five-year plans (1928-1932 and 1933-1937), its national strength has become the largest in the world, and it has attached great importance to army building, spending billions or even tens of billions of rubles (1 ruble is equivalent to about 0.8 yen) every year. In one year, the Red Army in the Far East alone spent almost as much as the entire Japanese army.

Fundamentally, however, this was due to the fact that the overall construction of the Japanese Army had tended to stagnate since the Russo-Japanese War, and by the 30s it had become outdated. The internal motives can be summarized as follows: First, due to the victorious experience of the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese Army has developed a voluntarist tendency, deliberately expanding the proportion of human physical and mental strength in combat effectiveness, obsessing with white-knuckle combat, and correspondingly devaluing the role and effectiveness of weapons and technology; Second, because the Japanese army lacked actual combat experience in the European theater of World War I, it lacked a sufficient understanding of the changes in the form of warfare caused by the emergence of advanced weapons such as tanks and aircraft, and also ignored the absolute position of logistics after entering the era of total warfare. Third, among the great powers, Japan's national strength is weak, and it is difficult to support the modernization of the army and navy at the same time, and in order to build a navy to compete with the United States, it has to give up the army's military spending for many years, especially in order to build a large number of naval ships, and has always been forced to squeeze out the army's steel by a large margin. Fourth, because they have been engaged in war with a weak enemy for a long time and have been able to easily achieve major results every time, they have thought that they are invincible in the world, so they have psychologically relaxed their sense of urgency to modernize the army. Specifically, as far as the construction of tank arms is concerned, in terms of hardware, it is mainly limited by the weakness of the country's automobile industry and steel industry, so it is absolutely difficult to have a strong tank industry; In terms of software, it was a lukewarm response to the new tactics of using tanks in clusters that emerged from European and American powers at that time.

The military history of the world has proven more than once that the winners and the losers, the leaders and the laggards, are often interchangeable.