STALIN'S BLITZKRIEG

In the final month of WWII, the Red Army launched a devastating strike into Manchuria, opening a new front with Japan and threatening invasion of the Home Islands

- WORDS ANTHONY TUCKER-JONES

By the summer of 1944 the triumphant Red Army was deep inside eastern Europe. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was well on the way to creating a massive European security buffer with the creation of Communist satellite states. Never again would Germany launch a surprise attack on Mother Russia. In the Soviet Far East, Stalin planned to create a similar buffer to permanently keep the Japanese away from the Soviet border.

Stalin, although not at war with Japan, had little reason to trust the Japanese. They had attacked the Imperial Russian fleet at Port Arthur in 1904, seizing the latter and gaining Russia's concessions in the southern part of Chinese Manchuria. Six years later Japan annexed Korea and the Japanese proceeded to colonise the country, suppressing Korean culture and language. It recruited Koreans into the Japanese armed forces and used them as slave labour throughout the Empire of Japan.

All this led to the rise of the Korean independence movement. The Japanese crushed opposition in Korea and thousands of people fled to China. From neighbouring Manchuria, numerous groups waged guerrilla warfare against the occupation, until the Japanese then invaded Manchuria, forcing them back deeper into China and the Soviet Union.

Japan’s puppet state