At the end of World War II, the desperate Japanese army issued a slogan of national jade crushing while frantically expanding its army, in an attempt to start a final battle with the Allies. By 1945, the nationwide mobilized Japanese army had expanded to 7 million, accounting for more than 10% of the total population.
Of the more than 7 million troops, the Army accounted for more than 5.4 million and was divided into six general armies (the highest strategic group of the Japanese army), which were:
The Southern Army in Southeast Asia, the Chinese Dispatch Army in Kannai, the Kwantung Army in the Northeast Region, the First and Second General Armies in Japan, and the Air General Force composed of the Japanese Army and Aviation Units, if the latter is excluded, then the ground forces will be composed of five major general armies
In this issue, let's take a look at the real strength of the six major armies of the Japanese army.
Japanese troops at the end of the war
The Six General Armies in 1945
First of all, I would like to say here that because there is no comparison between the General Air Forces, the comparison is actually between the five major general armies of ground operations before the end of the war in 1945.
Don't talk nonsense, go straight to the dry goods......
The first is the Chinese Dispatch Army, which we are most familiar with and has been fighting with our army and the national army for a long time.
The earliest "China Dispatch Army" was formed on September 12, 1939, that is, after the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression entered the stalemate stage, and was the product of the integration and command of the two systems of the North China and Central China Front Armies in order to facilitate the command of the Japanese army in Guannei.
The general army is also the first general army formed by the Japanese army in order to meet the needs of World War II.
In its heyday, before the surrender of the Japanese army, the Chinese Dispatch Army had a total of 23 divisions and 17 brigades, with a total strength of 1.04 million.
Japanese Army, China Dispatch Army, North China Front
Among them, the North China Front Army is under the jurisdiction of:
58,000 people from the 1st Army (114th Division, 3 independent brigades) stationed in Taiyuan, 70,000 from the 43rd Army (47th Division, 2 independent brigades) stationed in Jinan, 70,000 from the 12th Army (110th and 115th Divisions, 1 cavalry brigade) stationed in Luoyang, and 120,000 from the Front Army Headquarters and the Mongolian Army (3rd Tank Division, 118th Division, 5 Independent Brigades), totaling 320,000 people.
The troops stationed in East China are:
The 6th Army (70th and 133rd Divisions, 3 independent brigades) stationed in Bengbu had 180,000 people, and the 13th Army (60th, 61st, 65th, 69th and 161st Divisions, 2 independent brigades) stationed in Shanghai had 130,000 people, totaling 210,000 people
The 6th Front Army stationed in Central and South China is:
The 20th Army (64th, 68th, and 116th divisions, 4 brigades) stationed in Changsha had 70,000 people, the 11th Army (58th Division, 2 independent brigades) stationed in Nanchang had 60,000 people, and the Front Army troops directly under the Central Army (132 divisions, 8 independent brigades) stationed in Wuhan had 140,000 people, in addition to the 23rd Army (104th, 120th, 129th divisions, 2 independent brigades) stationed in Guangzhou, 80,000
The troops directly under the Contributing Army are: the 3rd, 13th, 27th, 34th, 40th and 131st Divisions.
Dispatch troops are being lined up
If you include the 120,000 men of the Japanese 10th Front (9th, 12th, 50th, 66th, and 71st Divisions) and the 38th Army (21st Division) in Vietnam with 30,000 troops, the strength of the army reaches 1.31 million troops.
The scale of China's dispatch of troops was the largest overseas general army of the Japanese army, which shows that our army and the national army played a strong role in restraining the Japanese army at that time and made a lot of contributions.
The second is the notorious "flower of the locust army" - the Kwantung Army
In the early days, the Kwantung Army was actually very small, but it was only a number of divisions and regiments on rotation of "army" level units, on the eve of the Battle of Nomenhan, in order to increase the pressure on the Soviet army, it was upgraded to the "front army", after the outbreak of World War II, in order to continue to put pressure on the Soviet army, so it was upgraded to a "general army" level unit.
The Kwantung Army peaked in strength and combat effectiveness in early 1942, but has been declining ever since.
The Kwantung Army preparing for the offensive
So what was the size of the Kwantung Army at the end of the war in 1945?
According to the Soviet army's operational statistics, they eliminated a total of 680,000 Japanese troops in the northeast and the peninsula, but these were not all Kwantung Army, and there were also 2nd General Army units in the peninsula, Chiba and Sakhalin areas, after removing these, the Kwantung Army in the northeast only had about 550,000 people (24 divisions and other units).
The 24 divisions are:
In 1944, the four second-line corps formed by the Japanese army in the northeast were the 107th, 108th (second formation), 112th (later transferred to the peninsula) and 119th divisions, and the four divisions transferred from the Kannai in 1945 were the 39th, 63rd, 59th ((later transferred to the peninsula) and 117th divisions, and the 79th, 122nd, 123rd, 124th, 125th, 126th, and the newly formed in January composed of the Northeast pioneers and domestic reserve candidates. The 127th and 128th Divisions, in July 1945, when the Great War was approaching, were incorporated into the 134th-139th (missing 137th), 148th and 149th divisions, a total of 8 divisions
If the 96th, 111th, 121st, 137th, 150th, 160th and 320th divisions under the command of the Kwantung Army are newly formed, the Kwantung Army had 31 divisions and nearly 700,000 men before the Soviet offensive.
The Kwantung Army surrendered to the Soviets in 1945
This was followed by the 1st and 2nd General Armies in Japan
In 1945, when the Japanese army was dying overseas, the Japanese army at home was also preparing for a decisive battle on the mainland in response to the Olympic operation, where the U.S. army was about to land a million people.
Specifically:
The First General Army defended Suzuka mainly in the Kanto, Tohoku, and Tokai regions, while the Second General Army defended Nishi-Honshu, Kansai, Kyushu, and Shikoku.
Among them, the First General Army was established in April 1945, and its first commander was General Sugiyama, who was not very smart, and was stationed in Tokyo.
Commander of the First General Army of the Japanese Army, Sugiyama
The First General Army is under the jurisdiction of 3 front armies, 31 divisions, and 2 tank divisions (tank divisions)
These three armies are: the 11th Front Army in the northeast, under the jurisdiction of the 50th Army, a total of 6 divisions and 2 independent brigades, the 12th Front Army in the Tokyo area, under the jurisdiction of the 36th, 51st, 52nd, 53rd and Tokyo Defense Army, a total of 5 armies, 19 divisions, at the same time, the most elite tank divisions of the Japanese army are also deployed in this area, and in the East China Sea area, the 13th Front Army is also under the jurisdiction of 1 army and 6 divisions, mainly as a defense against US troops that may come from the direction of the Sea of Japan.
The headquarters of the Second General Army was also located in the Hiroshima area, as the initial battlefield to resist the landing of American troops, and the commander was the former commander of the Chinese Dispatch Army, the master of Okamura Thief, Toshitoshi Hatata.
Commander of the 2nd General Army, Toshishi Hata, an old thief (left)
The Second General Army has 4 front armies and 37 divisions under its jurisdiction.
Among them, the 15th Front Army was responsible for the defense of Kansai, Shikoku, and China, and had 2 armies and 8 divisions under its jurisdiction for internal defense, and the 16th Front Army was also responsible for the defense of Kyushu, and its commander was the famous Isamu Yokoyama, with 14 divisions under the jurisdiction of the 40th, 56th, and 57th armies; the 5th Front Army had 5 divisions under its jurisdiction, which was responsible for the defense of Hokkaido and the four northern islands; and the 17th Front Army was the Japanese Peninsula Force, which was under the dual command of the Second General Army and the Kwantung Army, and Yuda-kun placed it in the Kwantung Army
The total strength of the two armies is about 2.6 million, and the size of each army is more than one million.
Japanese troops stationed on the island in 1945
Finally, it is the Southern Army, which is full of nuclear attributes.
The army was established in 1941 for the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, at the beginning of the strength of only 400,000 troops, but with the expansion of the war reached 1 million at its peak, before the end of the war, there were only five front armies and 44 divisions, with a total strength of 750,000.
Among them, the Burmese side is the Burmese Front
Under the jurisdiction of the 28th Army, 1 division (18th and 56th divisions), 33rd Army, 3 divisions (18th, 49th and 53rd divisions) and 3 divisions (31st, 33rd and 56th divisions) directly under the jurisdiction of the front army.
The 7th Front in charge of the Malayan and Indonesian directions
It has jurisdiction over the 25th Army and 1 division, the 29th Army and 2 divisions (37th and 94th divisions), the 16th Army, 1 division, the 37th Army and 2 brigades, and the 46th Division directly under the Front Army.
The Southern Army that surrendered its guns with the U.S. military
In charge of operations in the Philippines was the 14th Front Army of Yamashita Fumi.
It is also the strongest of the Southern Army, with 2 armies, namely the 35th Army (1st, 16th, 26th, 30th, 100th, and 102nd Divisions), and the 41st Army (8th Division), and the 10th, 19th, 23rd, 103rd, and 105th Divisions under the direct jurisdiction of the Front Army, as well as a 2nd Chariot Division.
The 18th Front Army was responsible for the operation on the Indochina Peninsula, under the jurisdiction of the 15th Army (4 divisions) and the 15th and 22nd divisions
The Front was under the direct jurisdiction of the 2nd Army (5th, 32nd, 35th and 36th Divisions) and the 18th Army (20th, 41st and 51st Divisions) and a 14th Division in the Palau area.
The remnants of the Confederate Army reading the armistice in the jungles of Southeast Asia
So, who is the strongest of these five general armies?
The Southern Army sang the leading role, and the Kwantung Army was the weakest
Let's talk about the weakest first
There is no doubt that the Kwantung Army, which has the least number of troops and elites, is undoubtedly the existence of the bottom.
Before the Soviet army launched its attack on Japan, the base camp expressed concern about the state of the Kwantung Army at that time
"The actual combat effectiveness of the 24 divisions is only one-third of what it used to be, that is, eight and a half divisions, and it has become a vulnerable paper tiger armed with bamboo guns. ”
Once upon a time, the Kwantung Army was the flower of the Japanese Army, and in 1942, it was even more elite, and the Kwantung Special Show gathered 17 elite first-line ace divisions.
The elite Kwantung Army during the Battle of Normenheim
However, by 1945, except for the 39th and 63rd Divisions, which had been supported from Kannai, the other divisions had not fought any battles, and most of the personnel were composed of pioneers who had gone to the northeast.
A typical example is in "Purple Sun", the heroine and her boyfriend are both students, but her boyfriend is conscripted into the army, and the instructor in charge of training is also composed of reservists who are idle at home.
A Japanese pioneer student preparing to join the army in "Purple Sun".
Secondly, there were the 1st and 2nd General Armies of the Japanese Army in the country.
The two total armies together are more than 2 million, and at the same time, they have also added 2 tank divisions, but their combat effectiveness is not much stronger than that of the Kwantung Army, and the Japanese divisions in the country, except for one 7th division, which is the former permanent division, the rest are all divisions with numbers after 100, or even more than 300, most of these divisions are composed of old people and children, and some divisions even have hawkers, disabled people, hairdressers, etc.
For example, in the movie "I Want to Be a Shell", the male protagonist Toyomatsu Shimizu belongs to the Second General Army, he was born as a barber and was forced to enlist in the army, and he couldn't even hold a gun.
So don't look at the number of the total armies, but in fact they are some of the last troops.
Shimizu, the protagonist of "I Want to Be a Shell", is a small citizen with a physical disability
Next, there is the Chinese dispatch army that has been fighting with us for 14 years.
In the sequence of China's dispatch troops, there are units such as the 11th Army, which have been fighting since the beginning of their formation, and there are also divisions and regiments such as the 3rd and 13th Army, which have been fighting all over the field after the July 7 Incident.
The most direct example is that in 1944, the exhausted Chinese dispatch army actually gathered 510,000 troops in Dongping and Xiping, and in the case of starving and poor logistics support, they directly defeated the 1.5 million national troops in the four theaters of Lao Chiang, so that the national army swallowed the humiliating defeat of the Yuxianggui Campaign.
In June 1945, two months before the surrender of the Japanese army, the division was still doing trouble, participating in the Battle of Xuefeng Mountain as an attacker, and its 116th Division (first-class division) escaped from the encirclement in the encirclement of the 4th Front Army of the National Army, which shows its strength.
The crazy dispatch army in the Battle of Yuxianggui
Finally, there is the strongest general army - the Japanese Southern Army.
Many people may be very strange, the strength of the Southern Army is only a little more than that of the Kwantung Army, and the strength of the first and second armies is twice that of him, why do you still say that it is the strongest?
The answer lies in the basic units that make up the General Army, the constituent divisions.
Of the 24 divisions of the Kwantung Army, none of them were born in permanent and ad hoc divisions, even in 1939-41, there were no new divisions to fight against the Soviet Union, and the strongest 63rd Division was born in North China, but I was blocked in the artillery tower by the Eighth Route Army in North China and did not dare to come out. As for the 2 tank divisions in Japan, the 7th Division of Hokkaido is considered an elite unit, and the other numbers are all D divisions and national divisions after 70.
China's dispatch army is strong, but it is also a strong and weak force, and there are divisions and regiments in the rear of East China such as 131 and 161, which are not as effective as those of our army in guerrilla warfare at that time.
The Southern Army, which is carrying out tactical intersperses
But the Southern Army really took out a division and regiment at random, and it was the main force in other theaters.
The symbol of the elite soldiers of the Japanese army is 17 permanent divisions, with one 7th in the country, 2 in Takashima (9th and 12th), 1 in Kannai (3rd), and the remaining 12 are all in the Southern Army sequence.
In addition to these 12 divisions, the second permanent batch of divisions established in 1942, such as the 52nd, 53rd, 54th, 55th and 56th divisions, are also in their sequence, to give an example. The second group of the 56th Division, with more than 1,000 men in half a wing, was in Songshan, causing nearly 8,000 casualties to the attacking Nationalist army. In addition, the 18th, 32nd, 33rd, 36th, and 37th divisions were also garrison and combat divisions against the Soviet Union in those years, and they were not weaker than permanent divisions.
Therefore, if 3 standard divisions of the Kwantung Army = 1 division of the Southern Army are calculated, its converted combat effectiveness can rank first among the five major ground forces.
The Southern Army launched a onboard offensive
From the perspective of pure hard power, the Japanese Southern Army is the first of the major general armies, and the Kwantung Army, which was once the ace, is the bottom......