Japanese attack Russia in 1941,What if?

Great Debates
21

Wargaming is not inherently flawed and can be quite useful. When they allow for outcomes that fly in the face of facts and reality they reveal their limitations when their rules allow for outcomes that are entirely unrealistic, but conform to the rules of the simulation.

Advancing through Siberia wouldn’t be a very tough logistical problem for Japan, it was flat out impossible outside of divine intervention. Japanese soldiers died to starvation over and over again in the Pacific due to their inability to keep them supplied. Advancing through the endless hundreds upon hundreds of miles of wastelands in Siberia before reaching anything of strategic value simply was not going to happen. The forces that crushed Japan in the border fighting of 1938/39 did not have tanks much better than what Japan had. At best they were T-26 and BT-5/7s and hardly so much superior to the Type 95 Ha-Gos the Japanese were using to qualify them as heavy tanks. There were no KVs in the border clashes or T-34s for that matter. The Soviets used plenty of Tankettes themselves both against Japan and Germany. Google T-27, T-37/38/40/60.

This occurred when the non-aggression treaty was signed long before Germany went to war with the USSR. The transfer of forces from the east to the west started from the beginning of the war.

This simply isn’t close to what would have happened, even in the best case for Japan. Japan would have forces facing them in hundreds upon hundreds of miles of tundra in a fight that vastly favored the defender. A minimal force would be all that was required to slow any Japanese advance to scarcely a crawl.

WW2 wasn’t a brushfire war like Vietnam was for the US. The USSR maintained the will to fight after losing millions of soldiers in 1941, and kept it up until the end of the war. Being a totalitarian dictatorship had its own advantages when it came to public opinion as well - although even the US or the UK never came even remotely close to losing the will to fight even in their darkest hours.

OK, I give. Minimal or even no resistance to an advance through Siberia would be so harsh that there would be no reason to even bother scorching the earth. There was simply nothing to burn in the first place. I’d advise taking a look at how badly Japan’s logistics actually were during the war. Relying upon ‘Churchill Rations’ (captured supplies) worked for a while in the 100 days after Japan went to war, but the folly of it became apparent pretty quickly. Take a look at Guadalcanal, Imphal/Kohema or any battle between the two. Japanese soldiers died to starvation by the thousands and resorted to cannibalism. Try to find a case where US or UK forces ate other human beings because their logistics were so wonderful that they lived off the land or captured supplies. Japan didn’t do this because they had superior logistics; they did it because their logistics were that horribly bad. Their soldiers dying to starvation was the outcome of it.

Utter tripe. Where to begin? 1) The forces from east of the Urals began moving West from June 22. They amounted to 400,000 transferred from all military districts west of the Urals, not just those in Manchuria facing Japan. 2) They were no better trained or ‘winter experts’ than the rest of the Red Army. 3) The transfer of all of 400,000 troops from East of the Urals from Jun 22 '41 to Dec 31 '41 amounted to 4% of what the USSR threw against Germany. 4) I hate to ask, but cite? Cite being for those magical Soviet soldiers from Siberia that turned the tide of the war by popping up in the Moscow area. Its not much more than a myth that passed into pop culture from World at War and such repeating it.

22

Erm - no. It’s nothing at all like asking if Mrs. Lincoln liked the play in the slightest. Germany was not going to succeed if Japan attacked the USSR. They bit off far more than they could chew simply by invading the USSR, much less going to war against the UK, USSR and the USA all at the same time. The transfer of 400,000 men wasn’t going to decide the war. Hell, the Soviets lost more than that number several times over during the encirclements in 1941. Japan had nothing to gain by going to war with the USSR and everything to lose. Japan went to war because it had no source of oil after the US embargo. The only realistic options they had was to either take a source of oil by force or give in to US demands and leaving China. Going to war with the USSR would massively aggravate Japan’s problems while doing nothing at all to alleviate them.

23

Wargames are extremely useful. However, not the wargames ‘we’ play. The wargames we play are designed to be as even as possible or why bother playing?

However, balanced wargames are unrealistic and can’t be relied on for what-ifs.

24

Had a quick look at Wiki and noticed that there was a warning about not amending the items on this subject yet again so it looks as though someones been attempting to revise history.
As Wiki is always suspect I have had a quick look around my local reference library.

From The Oxford companion to the Second World War…

Zhukov arrived in early June and began gathering a powerful forceof 35 infantry battallions,20 cavalry squadrons,500 aircraft and 500 OF THE NEW T34 TANKS(My caps) which outnumbered anything the Kwantung Army could put in the field…On 20th August he launched a massive surprise offensive known to the U.S.S.R. as the Kalkhin-golor River Halha battle.

I’m not even going to bother looking for a quote about the Russians using tankettes of any variety as a major component of their war against the Germans,in my extensive reading of war on the Eastern front I have read about the KVs,the SU.s,T34s etc but don’t believe that I have even heard tankettes mentioned …ever.
I’m not saying that they didn’t have and use them but to suggest as you undoubtedly do that they were a major component of the fighting is arrant nonsense.

From Russias War by R.Overy…

When Zhukov took charge (of the defence of Moscow) only 90,000 men were between the Germans and Moscow. End of Quote.

Using your own figures of approaching half a million men,they don’t seem so negligble in number now do they?

From The Russian Front by Carruthers and Erickson…

The two armies were desperately stretched,but in terms of responsiveness the Red Army just had the vital and important edge which came from the arrival of the fresh Siberian divisions.
With that the last offensive powers of the two Panzer Groups ground to a final halt.
End of Quote

Also from The Russian Front by Carruthers and Erickson…

As the German armies closed in on Moscow December 1941,the Red Army won the "Battle of the last Battallion"using the narrowest marginof superiorityto check the German advance and launch a winter counter offensive.

End of Quote.

From the Oxford Companion to the Second World War…(With reference to Russian reinforcements for the defence of Moscow)

The armies about 100,000 men each had to be filled with RAW troops,many OVERAGE,UNDERAGE,or UNFIT (my caps) but seasoned Siberian divisions were also coming to act as stiffeners.

End of Quote

25

But why would the Japanese feel their success depended on Germany beating the Russians? They weren’t fighting the Russians! They were fighting the Chinese and the British and the Americans. Look at it another way. Suppose Germany was successful against the Russians. Moscow falls, Leningrad falls, Stalingrad falls. Russia probably doesn’t surrender if that happens, because who is going to give order to surrender? But organized resistance to the Germans collapses, and the various surviving Russian units are little more than glorified partisans since they can’t get ammo, weapons, food, fuel, or reinforcements.

Now what? Well, Japan is in exactly the same situation they were in Real Life. Except if the Germans have won in Europe, well, there ain’t gonna be no Normandy invasion. There probably won’t be an Italian invasion, and if there is German reinforcements would stop the invasion cold. The war in Europe would be essentially over, it would be a stalemate because even with complete victory in the East it would still be rather difficult to pull off Sealion in the teeth of the British and American navies.

So what would all the American troops that would have gone to Europe be doing? Pounding the hell out of the Japanese. And the Germans sure as hell wouldn’t be helping the Japanese, even with victory over the Russians they’d be bogged down trying to occupy Russia. Sure, they’d be happy to give the Japanese the Soviet Far East–because it was nearly worthless. Remember that the Soviet Far East is not the same thing as “Siberia”. All those Siberian reinforcements and resources didn’t come from the Soviet Far East, but from classic Siberia, which was thousands of miles west.

And so the result of German victory over Russia is that Japan is in a WORSE position than before, because in Real Life we had a “Germany First” policy. If the European theater is hopeless, then we have a de facto “Japan First” policy, whether Roosevelt likes it or not. Germany might, just might, have the power to pull off an amphibious invasion of Britain, but they can’t touch America. And so Japan faces America alone. And gets crushed.

And for what? To not have to fight the Russians. But they didn’t have to fight the Russians in Real Life. So they get nothing, even if the Germans win.

26

But not that many years earlier the Russians lost the will to fight and had a revolution so they wouldn’t have to carry on the war.
And I don’t think that the Czar had had even a tenth of the people executed or enslaved as did Stalin with his purges.
I would think that a Soviet collapse was indeed very possible.
And another quote which I’ll put in this post as I was running out of space in the previous.

From The World in Arms-Readers Digest history ofWW2…
(Ref Moscow)

HE (Zhukov) had the men for the attack.
Reinforcements had come from eastern Siberia,where Stalin had been nervously expecting a further Japanese attack from its puppet state of Manchkuo.
But the Soviet agent in Tokyo,Richard Sorge,had sent news that the Japanese etc.etc.etc.had sent news that they had no intention of taking action against the S.U.
So well equiped WINTER TRAINED(my caps)troops, more then 30 divisions in all were transported west along the Trans Siberian railway…

I think that you’re under the impression that all Russian troops were experts at winter warfare,they weren’t , a janitor in a Moscow school knew about as much about winter warfare as the average Brit.

You also seem to make no differentiation between cannon fodder who have been given a uniform and basic instructions on firing a rifle and trained professional troops.
Your other points about logistics.

I never at any time said that the Japaneses logistical situation would be easy but your saying it would have been impossible is well wide of the mark.

The examples you gave of J soldiers starving to death on S.Sea islands is a false comparison.
They starved because the allied navys blockaded the islands so that resup. was all but impossible.
Land resup. is a totally different kettle of fish.
As I said before it would have been a very difficult problem but even as likely the Russians managed to destroy some or even a lot of the T.S.Railway they would only probably destroy the track itself which is the easier bit to rebuild,the hard bit is roadbed,cuttings etc.

But even building new railways from scratch using slave labour was easily within the Js capability.

But I’ll finish for now as I’ve got cramp in BOTH the fingers I use to type.

27

Again, the logical response for Stalin in the event of a Japanese attack would be to fall back. Let the Japanese bleed themselves to death. Stalin wouldn’t be obligated to defend the Soviet Far East, he could ignore the Japanese victories and concentrate on Germany. If Russia lost against Germany the Japanese wouldn’t matter anyway, and if Russia won against Germany they’d have their revenge in good time.

28

Nothing to add but that I love threads like this. They inform and intrigue me. I love “What If?” threads.

29

Actually, this sorta happened. Probably a rouge element of the Japanese Kwungtung Army in Manchuria. Anyway, the Japanese got their asses kicked.

From Wikipedia: [The Battle of Khalkhyn Gol](The Battle of Khalkhyn Gol (Mongolian: Халхын голын байлдаан; Russian: бои на реке Халхин-Гол; Japanese: ノモンハン事件 Nomonhan jiken–i.e. Nomonhan Incident) was the decisive engagement of the undeclared Soviet-Japanese Border War, or Japanese-Soviet War, fought between the Soviet Union, Mongolia and the Empire of Japan in 1939. The battle was named after the river Khalkhyn Gol passing through the battlefield. In Japan, the battle was known as the Nomonhan Incident after a nearby village on the border between Mongolia and Manchuria. The battle resulted in total defeat of Japanese 6th army.)(Mongolian: Халхын голын байлдаан; Russian: бои на реке Халхин-Гол; Japanese: ノモンハン事件 Nomonhan jiken–i.e. Nomonhan Incident) was the decisive engagement of the undeclared Soviet-Japanese Border War, or Japanese-Soviet War, fought between the Soviet Union, Mongolia and the Empire of Japan in 1939. The battle was named after the river Khalkhyn Gol passing through the battlefield. In Japan, the battle was known as the Nomonhan Incident after a nearby village on the border between Mongolia and Manchuria. The battle resulted in total defeat of Japanese 6th army.

This was also fictionalized in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. a review here.

30

The Japanese Army was soundly thrashed-I think this cemented the (Japanese ) war plans to strike south. Oddly, the japanese tactic (of suicidal frontal charges) was found useless against the Russian Army-why did they continue to try it? On Guadacanal, the US Marines wiped out thousands of japanese-but they kpt doing it.

31

Suicidal charges weren’t a standard tactic. They were a method of suicide. If your position was hopeless, rather than surrender, Japanese soldiers were trained to scream “10,000 years to the Emperor!” and charge. Sure, you’d be killed, but better to be killed in a last glorious charge that might even take out some of the enemy, than to be captured shamefully.

32

Just what was there in the Soviet Far East or Siberia that would have been of any use to the Japanese? I think they had already won all they wanted on that frontier in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05.

33

I’d ask what Wiki has to do with anything I’ve written since I never cited it, but:

does actually say this. All I can say is its simply wrong. The T-34 hadn’t even entered production in 1938; the prototypes weren’t even completed until 1939 and series production until late 1940.From here:

See also

http://www.battlefield.ru/en/armors/27-medium-tanks/79-t34.html

http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/T-34_-_Production_history/id/5501888 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34

You might want to look a bit deeper before declaring it arrant nonsense. Oxford Companion, p. 1232 “It [the USSR] had more than 20,000 tanks [at the start of Barbarossa], albeit mostly outdated models, but at least 1,861 (according to Volkogonov, op. cit. p. 375, about 2,000) of the newest make that were superior to anything the Wermacht could muster.[meaning T-34s and KVs]” The other 18,000 were these tankettes and light tanks that you don’t believe were major components of the Soviet tank force. Probably pointless to cite for you if you won’t even look at it, but for example the T-26 light tank which formed the backbone of the Red Army at the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-26

The T-34 itself was derived from the BT series; the other staple of Soviet tank forces in 1941. For flat out tankettes, look up the T-27/37/38/40 should you deign to do so. For example

Patently absurd, and shame on Overy if he wrote such stupidity. I’d assume he was referring to the forces committed at Elnya, the first counter-offensive/spoiling action of value, but hardly the entirety of the forces facing Army Group Center or even more than a fraction. See for example Elnya

I’ll point out your flaw with bolding rather than caps: “The armies about 100,000 men each” Yes, having a stiffening of pre-war soldiers was handy for raw and recently mobilized troops, but you’ll notice it’s talking about plural armies of 100,000 men each, with Siberian divisions only providing a stiffening, not the bulk. Again, out of over 6,000,000 reinforcements to a pre-war force of 3,300,000 the Siberian (or well, anything east of the Urals really) troops amounted to 400,000. Operation Typhoon, the attempt to reach Moscow before winter set in was hardly more than a desperate gambit based on the very unlikely assumption that taking Moscow would win the war. Taking Moscow didn’t help Napoleon, and I doubt it would do much better for Hitler if it had actually succeeded. In the end Typhoon just left the Germans even further stretched on what was an already horridly overstretched supply line. Digging in for the winter would have been a better option - or planning for a multi-year war to begin with.

34

Rome ruled most of the known world. Italy should have beaten the crap out of everyone and emerged from WW2 as the rulers of everything with all roads leading to Rome, right? The factors that made Czarist Russia rotten to the core and ready to fall in 1917 had nothing at all to do with the situation in 1941. In point of fact, Czarist Russia fell to the Communists. As monstrous and repulsive of regimes as they were Nazi Germany under Hitler and Communist USSR under Stalin were able to sustain and motivate morale far, far beyond what Czarist Russia was.

All I’ll say is Readers Digest.

I have idea where you get these ideas about what I think. Calling the standing Red Army trained professional troops is absurd. Conscription was mandatory; those called back up had already served in a uniform and had basic training in the use of a rifle. Those on active service were the latest conscripts serving their term. Being born to the East of the Urals doesn’t actually confer one with special knowledge about winter warfare.

Actually you did by saying “the Js were famous for their ability to live off of and even fight with resources captured along the way,which would have eased their logistical problem.” Sorry, but the Japanese [Js] aren’t born with a special ability to live off the land. That they died to starvation when left to live off of the land is the end result.

Imphal/Kohema isn’t exactly close to the South Seas being that they’re in India- and resupplied overland. While part of Japan’s logistical problems can be laid at interdiction it hardly applies at Guadalcanal as being ‘blockaded.’ The US Navy abandoned the night to Japan from the get-go after the disaster of Savo Island. Henderson Field was shelled by Japanese battleships. The attacks at Imphal/Kohema and both major assaults to retake Guadalcanal relied on the hopes that supplies would come from the enemy. To put it in a short sentence, Japanese logistics in WW2 were complete shit.

Being willing to murder slave laborers and being able to resupply thier troops are two entirety different things. The Japanese soldiers who died from starvation by the thousands in Burma and India were ‘supplied’ such as it was via the slave labor build rail line through Thailand and Burma. You are seriously overestimating the logistical prowess of Japan (which was in fact very, very shitty) and underestimating the logistical problems presented by Siberia. Trying to move an army from Manchuria to Moscow in the face of even minimal opposition would be a serious logistical problem even today. Sorry, but even if Japan wasn’t going to implode from no oil to feed its economy in short order, an attempt to cross Siberia with any kind of meaningful force in any kind of meaningful amount of time was flat out impossible.

35

I have to agree with some views already expressed here and disagree with others.

First, I disagree that Japan and Germany didn’t act as real allies in WW2. Let’s not forget that Hitler declared war on the US immediately after Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. If that was not a coordinated allied action, what would be?

It might be useful to go few days prior to Pearl Harbor attack and trace the sequence of events. German army offensive toward Moscow stopped in early days of December 1941. On December 5 Hitler issued command to assume defensive positions on the Eastern front. December 7 Japan attacks the US Pacific fleet, drawing the US into WW2. December 8 Germany declares war on the US. I don’t think we can dismiss that sequence as a mere coincidence of the events.

I agree that Japan was facing a simple choice of picking its fights. It couldn’t attack Allies in Southeast Asia and invade USSR at the same time. I also agree that taking over Southeast Asia was clearly much preferable than attacking USSR as the way to enter the WW2 for Japan. However, invading USSR was always a real possibility. As late as winter of 1942 Hitler was hoping that Japan would open the ‘second front’ against USSR. Perhaps one of the reasons it never did was that the US put serious pressure on Japan much sooner than they expected after Pearl Harbor, so the Japanese didn’t get the time to consolidate on their initial conquests and build up the material base they needed to invade USSR.

How does Pearl Harbor fits into all this? The only way I can explain is that Japanese were determined to enter into WW2, they were determined to strike at Allies’ possessions at Southeast Asia and they didn’t expect the US to stay out of the war much longer after that. That was quite a realistic assumption on their part, considering that the US was extremely antagonistic to any prospect of Japanese power expansion in the Pacific basin for many years before the WW2 (in fact, some British diplomats were blaming US constant opposition to any Japanese demands for pushing Japan to ally with Nazi Germany). So the Japanese conducted a pre-emptive strike at the US Pacific fleet to enter the WW2. It may still sound crazy, but we have to keep in mind that Japan (and Germany) weren’t run by entirely sane people back then.

Neither was the USSR run by entirely sane people, which adds to the complexity of the “equation”. In retrospect, the USSR conduct during the WW2 looks like a “constant”, but back in the 1941 it was definitely a “unknown variable”. If Soviet Communists had any known doctrine prior to 1941, it was to let Capitalist countries bleed themselves to death in their Imperialistic wars so the Soviets could take over the World after that. That was exactly the premise Lenin used when taking Russia out of WW1.

Considering that Russian Army performance in WW1 was extremely poor, culminating in abject capitulation, and also considering that USSR was ultimately holding itself as an enemy of any Capitalist regime, it was reasonable for Germans to count on isolating it and breaking it up. Hard to tell how close Germans came to achieving that goal. May be if Japanese were given a chance to invade from the East, Stalin might have lost his nerve and folded. By all accounts that already happened at the start of the war and again in October 1941.

P.S. I also agree that Japanese Army never accounted to much. Japanese Navy had victories against Russian fleet in Tsusima and Port Arthur in 1905 and initial victories against the US in WW2. But Japanese Army never won any battles of note and is mostly known as marauding horde.

36

Your reading this backwards, IMO.

Hitler, who was not informed of the impending Japanese attack, declared war on the U.S. for two reasons:

  1. The US Navy was already engaged in a “shoot on sight” war with the Uboats. The USN was escorting the convoys heading to England as far east as Iceland. Lend Lease was already providing war supplies gratis to the UK and other allies. In effect, Hitler may have felt we were already in a quasi-War.

  2. Hitler declared war on the U.S. in the hope that Japan would reciprocate with a DOW on the USSR. That didn’t happen.

I must strongly disagree with this characterisation. The Japanese Armies that conquered both the Phillippines and Malaya/Singapore were outnumbered by the defending Allied forces. (Air forces started at near parity, number wise. Quality wise, the Japanese formations were of slightly better.)

The reasons the Japanese were able to conquer Malaya in two months was that the Japanese had a plan, and stuck to it (as well as manuevering their forces in the field better), as well as holding them in a higher state of 'elan.

The U.S. Army in the P.I. got slapped around just as badly. The IJA made the mistake of allowing the U.S./Fillipino forces the chance to withdraw to Bataan, where the narrow front and rugged terrain negated the ability to outmanuever the enemy.

37

The problem with the OP what if is there is no benefit to Japan attacking Siberia.

Japan had and still has a severe shortage of material resources. They import and manufacture then export.

The Japanese had to have oil. This was the Dutch East Indies, (now Indonesia). Without this source Japan was sunk.

This was the key reason for the Japanese to occupy the Philippines. A quick glance at the map shows that the route from Japan to the DEI is cut by the Philippines.

Look what Japan occupied. They occupied islands, territories of Vichy France and the Netherlands. They had a bit of trouble fighting the British but still overcame them. Primarily 'cause Britian was busy.

Even in China only the costal areas and a hundred miles inland were in firm Japanese control. The rural areas were tough for Japan to hold against the Chinese.

If Japan invades Siberia then what? Not much. There’s no benefit as the transportation and climate would make it very difficult to extract any resources. The Russians would’ve retreated east, the same way the fell back on the German front.

Any attempt made at holding Siberia would come at a cost of losing the DEI (and oil) or the urban Chinese parts they controlled.

As fun as what ifs are there is no way with Japan’s limited resources they could have won that wart. Japan hoped to grab as much as they could and negotiate a peace that would leave them honor and a lot of what they grabbed.