Riding the Red Horse (39 page)

In Asia, the Soviets particularly feared a truce between Chiang and the Japanese, or worse yet, an anti-Soviet alliance. Any truce or accord would have freed Japan to turn against the USSR, and allowed Chiang to focus on eliminating the CCP. Fortunately for the Soviets, the negotiations between Chiang and the Japanese never bore fruit—the Japanese occupation of Chinese territory was a major sticking point. Throughout the 1930s, the Soviets attempted to draw Chiang into a formal alliance—at last succeeding in 1937—and to protract the Sino-Japanese conflict by aiding Chiang. The Soviets also demanded that the CCP cooperate with Chiang against the Japanese (the so-called United Front policy). The main obstacle to this policy in the early 1930s was Chiang’s determination to crush the Communists.

In 1932, the KMT resumed its efforts to destroy the CCP, and liquidated two Communist enclaves (“soviets”) by the end of the year. The KMT prepared for another assault, but then the Japanese attacked in north China. The threat to Peking forced Chiang to redeploy his troops north once again. Nonetheless, the Communists were unable to stop the relentless KMT advance. The CCP decided to abandon its stronghold in Kiangsi province and retreated to Shansi province in the north. The CCP hoped to make contact with the USSR through Sinkiang, where in 1933 the Soviets had established a puppet government backed with Red Army troops. The CCP’s 6,000-mile trek—the famous “Long March”—took place from October 1934 to October 1935. It cost the PLA ninety percent of its initial force.

Meanwhile, in early 1935, Germany announced the introduction of military conscription and the creation of the Luftwaffe, both of which were forbidden under the Treaty of Versailles. The Soviets believed this was directed against them. In the summer of 1935, Moscow ordered the Communist International (the Comintern) to require world Communist parties to unite with non-Communist parties to fight “fascism”. The CCP announced their willingness to cease fighting Chiang and to subordinate their military to the KMT, but this did not come to pass immediately. Chiang continued to attack the decimated Communists until the “Sian Incident” intervened.

In December 1936, Chiang flew to the city of Sian to meet Chang Hsueh-liang, the local KMT commander. Chang had yielded to Communist entreaties not to attack them. Chiang attempted to relieve Chang, but instead Chang took Chiang prisoner. The elated CCP called for Chiang’s execution, which would split the KMT and perhaps give the CCP control of the United Front in China. Stalin was aghast. Chiang’s execution would weaken Chinese resistance to Japan and possibly cause the subsequent KMT leadership to come to terms with Japan. Stalin thus ordered the CCP to settle the dispute peacefully. After Chiang’s release, he relaxed the military pressure on the CCP. He agreed to unite with the Communists in a “nationwide war of resistance” against Japan.

The Sian Incident was Stalin’s master stroke—it ensured that Japan would launch an all-out war against China, as he desired. The KMT not only ceased attacking the CCP, but turned away from negotiations with Japan and aligned with the USSR. Japan could no longer hope to play the Nationalists and Communists against each other, and therefore attacked in force in July 1937. Japanese troops immediately took Peking, and by the end of the year captured Shanghai and Nanking despite a stout Chinese defense.

Stalin wanted to protract the conflict to weaken Japan and prevent her from turning against him. The USSR thus concluded a Non-Aggression Pact with China in August 1937. Even before the ink was dry, the USSR violated its pledge to refrain from aggression against China with an invasion of Sinkiang to support the pro-Soviet warlord there. The treaty also prohibited making agreements with third parties to the disadvantage of either signatory. For Stalin, this provision was designed to prevent China from reaching a settlement with Japan (a settlement he flagrantly violated himself when he signed a non-aggression pact with Japan in April 1941). Stalin also aided the Chinese to ensure they kept Japan bogged down. During the next four years, the USSR supplied China with 900 aircraft, 2,000 “volunteer” pilots, 1,140 artillery pieces, 82 tanks, tens of thousands of rifles and machine guns, ammunition, and a $250 million loan.

In early 1938, the Japanese established a Chinese client government in Nanking. Japanese forces pursued KMT troops up the Yangtze towards the industrial city of Wuhan, and captured it in October. However, Japan’s advance was briefly restrained by a border clash with the USSR at Lake Khasan, near Vladivostok, in July. The Soviets interpreted this as a test of their border defenses. When Germany dismantled Czechoslovakia with Anglo-French complicity a mere two months later, the dreaded two-front war against the USSR seemed closer than ever. The Soviets accordingly pressured the KMT and CCP to fight Japan more aggressively. Above all, Stalin wished them to resist Japanese demands to capitulate.

With the capture of Canton, Japan controlled Manchuria, northern China and the coastal ports. Thereafter, China could only receive external assistance overland through Sinkiang, Burma, and Indochina. Britain controlled Burma and France controlled Indochina. Japan pressured the British to close the Burma route for three months in late 1940, occupied Indochina in 1940, and conquered Burma in 1942. In late 1938, the KMT government retreated to Chungking, but refused to surrender. Japan believed that the growth of German power would render outside powers unable to assist China effectively. Thus, Japan settled down to await developments. Apart from the 1944 operation that eliminated American bomber bases in southern China, Japan conducted no further major offensives in China.

Despite the stalemate, over half the Japanese Army was tied down in China. This represented success from Stalin’s perspective. Moreover, the Soviets later dealt Japan a crushing blow when it attempted to encroach on the territory of the USSR’s client state, Mongolia. At the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in August 1939, the Soviets surrounded and destroyed a Japanese division, inflicting some 17,000 casualties. The power and effectiveness of the Soviet tanks and aircraft shocked the Japanese, who thereafter treated the prospect of war with the USSR with great caution.

The Japanese were further dismayed in August 1939 when the Nazis and Soviets signed a Non-Aggression Pact. Stalin intended the pact to encourage the Germans to attack Britain and France. He expected a prolonged war in the West, after which he would attack the exhausted belligerents. But this was not to be, as France rapidly collapsed. The Pact also served to split Germany and Japan, and reduce the possibility of a two-front attack on the USSR. The Japanese noted bitterly that their only ally, Germany, had betrayed them and left them at the mercy of their most hated enemy, the USSR. Nazi perfidy caused many Japanese to question Germany’s value as an alliance partner. In the end, however, partnership with Germany seemed better than abject submission to America.

In China, the Nazi-Soviet Pact put the United Front on hold for nine months, during which the CCP attempted to expand at KMT expense. After the stunning surrender of France in June 1940, the renewed threat of a two-front war once again made prevention of Sino-Japanese reconciliation a top Soviet priority. Consequently, under pressure from Stalin, the CCP announced a reversal of their expansion policy and a return to the United Front in July 1940.

That same month, Hitler decided to attack the USSR in the summer of 1941. He concluded the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy in September 1940. The pact stated that Germany, Italy, and Japan would “assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict.”
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This could refer to the United States or the USSR, although the pact also stated that it “affects in no way the political status existing at present between each of the three Contracting Powers and Soviet Russia.” Principally, Hitler hoped the pact would intimidate the United States during the German assault on the USSR, but this failed. Instead, America made greater efforts to support the beleaguered British.

The Soviets naturally suspected the Tripartite Pact was directed against them despite Axis assurances to the contrary. In late 1940, the Germans tried to broker a settlement between the KMT and Japan in order to free Japanese forces for action elsewhere. The Soviets, on the other hand, wished to keep Japan occupied to prevent them from attacking the USSR, and thus offered additional trade credits to the KMT. They also directed the CCP to attack the Japanese in order to derail the KMT-Japanese negotiations. The PLA’s guerrilla attacks in late 1940 harassed the Japanese, and provoked a ferocious Japanese response known as the “Three Alls” campaign (“Kill All, Burn All, Destroy All”). Ultimately, Chiang rejected Japan’s peace terms, and the Japanese Army remained trapped in China.

After Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and attacked the USSR in June 1941, she urged Japan to strike the Soviets in the Far East. The Japanese were unprepared for war with Russia, but sent large-scale reinforcements to Manchuria. Japan decided to attack the Soviets if the Germans took Moscow, or if Japanese forces in Manchuria had 3-to-1 numerical superiority over local Soviet forces. The Soviets, desperate to pin down Japan, again called on the CCP to attack Japanese forces in China. This time the CCP refused to sacrifice their weakened troops.

In a rare display of strategic altruism, America deliberately sought war with Japan in late 1941 in order to prevent Japan from attacking Russia. The United States was aware, through intercepted communications, that Germany wanted Japan to attack the USSR and that Japan was preparing to do so. As the Germans advanced on Moscow, the United States ratcheted up tensions in the Pacific to divert Japanese attention south. Just after Operation Barbarossa began, the United States placed an oil embargo on Japan, and began reinforcing the Philippines in order to create a threat that Japan could not ignore. The pretext for this was Japan’s occupation of southern Indochina, but the actual reason was to prevent an attack on Russia. Washington knew that the embargo, if not lifted, would force Japan to attack the Netherlands East Indies within six months, and in doing so, would probably attack the Philippines as well in order to eliminate American forces and bases there. Japanese planners indeed thought they could not bypass the Philippines – but they also decided to attack Pearl Harbor to prevent the Pacific Fleet from counterattacking while Japan moved south.

In September, the Germans destroyed a vast Soviet force near Kiev, and resumed their drive on Moscow. The Wehrmacht encircled another enormous Soviet force in the Battle of Bryansk-Vyazma, about two hundred miles west of Moscow, at the beginning of October. The road to Moscow was open. A change of government in Tokyo seemed to presage an attack on Siberia. The new Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo, was violently anti-Soviet. In response, the United States sent B-17 bombers to the Philippines. Washington publicly proclaimed the ability of these aircraft to bomb Japan in an effort to draw Japan’s attention to the Philippines and away from Siberia.

The German advance stalled in the mud, but began again after the ground froze. By the end of November, the Germans were less than 50 miles from Moscow. The American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, had been negotiating with the Japanese for a return to the July status quo. In this “modus vivendi” Japan would withdraw from southern Indochina in exchange for lifting the oil embargo. At this critical moment, Hull took this deal off the table and instead presented Japan with an ultimatum. He demanded, among other things, that Japan withdraw from China. The manifestly unacceptable terms of the new proposal ensured that Japan would attack the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands, just as Washington expected. Another six-month delay would have greatly improved American and British defenses in Southeast Asia, but the fall of Moscow seemed imminent. Thus, Washington needed to force Japan to move south immediately. Rather than watching the Russian and Japanese tigers fight, America picked a fight with Japan to keep the Japanese tiger off Russia’s back.

The fear that Japan would attack the USSR resurfaced in 1942. In the spring, Germany once again urged Japan to attack Siberia, and also to move into the Indian Ocean to interdict Allied communications with Egypt and Iran. These moves would assist the German summer offensive into Egypt and through the Caucasus mountains. The Americans brought Tokyo’s attention into the Central Pacific with a series of carrier raids culminating in an attack on Japan itself (the Doolittle Raid). This cemented Japan’s determination to capture Midway Island and destroy the American fleet. Instead, the U.S. Navy sank four Japanese carriers, eliminating the Japanese threat to Siberia and the Indian Ocean.

The Pacific War proceeded ideally from Stalin’s perspective. The Americans crushed Japan, and the USSR entered the war in its final week to grab major territorial prizes at a trivial cost. In contrast, the war in Europe unfolded in a manner exactly contrary to Stalin’s schemes. While the German and Soviet tigers fought to exhaustion. Britain and America largely watched from the sidelines from until the Normandy invasion in mid-1944, engaging only in smaller-scale fighting in North Africa, Italy and the Mediterranean. Eisenhower entered Europe to grab the major prizes (France, the Low Countries, and western Germany) only after the Red Army crippled the Wehrmacht. On the plus side, the defeat and occupation of Germany and Japan eliminated the two-front war threat that obsessed the Soviets from 1931 to 1941.

In September 1945, the Soviets had a very favorable position in Asia. They occupied the formerly Japanese-controlled territories of Manchuria, northern Korea, Sakhalin Island, and the Kurile Islands. And they had a vast territorial buffer zone in Sinkiang, Mongolia, and Manchuria. These gains had been sanctioned at the Yalta Conference and in the Sino-Soviet Treaty of August 1945. However, they did not gain an occupation zone in a divided Japan, as Stalin had desired, because Truman acted decisively in the closing days of the war to prevent them.