How the USSR prevented "Armageddon" in the war with Japan in August 1945

On each regular anniversary of the defeat of Imperial Japan, which marked the end of World War II, from various foreign sources (and sometimes, alas - from some domestic), there are arguments that the USSR, entering the war with "did not touch it" before time, the country of the Rising Sun, acted "dishonestly", "wrong", or even completely "mean". It is understandable when such fabrications are voiced by the Japanese, trying to prove that the Soviet troops did not seem to play any role in their defeat, and Stalin "attacked" the innocent poor people in order to "chop off the Kuril Islands" and other "primordially Japanese territories."

Here everything is natural - "whoever hurts what, he talks about it." But when our "liberals" repeat something similar, it becomes simply a shame. How much is it necessary not only not to love your own Motherland, but also not to know its history in order to assent to the most perfect nonsense. Well, perhaps it is worth remembering once again how "harmless" were for our country, and for the rest of the world, the samurai from Tokyo, raving about world domination. And also to figure out why the Red Army actually inflicted a crushing blow on them in 1945, putting an end to the crazy and deadly plans of the Japanese military.

Plague and pestilence for "Russian gaijins"

A significant contribution to the exposure of attempts to present the events of August 1945 in a completely distorted light was made, in particular, by the recent publication by the FSB of Russia within the framework of the project "Without a statute of limitations" of unique archival materials shedding additional light on many aspects of those distant days that were under the veil for a long time. the strictest secrecy. No, nothing fundamentally new seems to have sounded - the guilt of the military and political leadership of militaristic Japan in preparing for biological warfare and the production of appropriate weapons was proved absolutely irrefutably even during the famous Khabarovsk trial of 1949, in which war criminals from Kwantung Army. The world has long learned not just terrifying, but literally chilling details of the sinister activities of its special units "Detachment 731" and "Detachment 100", whose crimes, at least, are not inferior to the atrocities of the Nazi executioners, if not surpass them. However, new documents released to the public - such as the original interrogation protocols of the Japanese "biological front fighters", their diaries and similar evidence, bring considerable clarity to the question of who exactly in Tokyo were intended to turn the strictest 1925 Geneva Conventions against. means of mass destruction. Yes, the main enemy for the Land of the Rising Sun was undoubtedly the Americans. However, this in no way means that the samurai had any kind of friendly and good neighborly feelings towards the Soviet Union. In fact, everything was completely different.

Yes, Japan, despite all the urges, demands and promises of the Third Reich, did not dare to open a "second front" against the Red Army in the Far East. But the point here was not at all in the Soviet-Japanese Pact of Neutrality, signed in the Kremlin on April 19, 1941. The samurai wanted to spit on this pact and were quite seriously preparing for an attack on the USSR both before and after its conclusion. The strategic plan of the offensive, which was supposed to begin in August-September 1941 and end about six months later, with the Japanese troops reaching Baikal, which was called "Kantogun tokushu enshu" (Special maneuvers of the Kwantung Army), was not only developed by the General Staff, but was also fully embodied in life. A secret mobilization was launched in the country, the Japanese transferred dozens of divisions to our borders, creating a military grouping of 850 thousand people aimed at the USSR in Manchuria and Korea. Moreover, Tokyo has already mapped out plans for managing our Far Eastern and Siberian lands, which, after their seizure, were to become territories of the "sphere of prosperity of the Great East Asia", the center of which, as you might guess, would be in Tokyo. Proud samurai behaved like jackals or vultures - they waited for the Wehrmacht to finally inflict a final defeat on the Red Army in order to pounce on an extremely weakened country. At the same time, they were deterred from an immediate attack in those days when the Nazi military machine seemed to have flown freely to the East, only a clear realization of the fact that their army was not at all like the Red Army. The sides hurt, very sensitively crushed during the conflicts on Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin-Gol River, and did not leave the feeling that the situation of 1905 with the Soviet Union would not repeat itself. It was these considerations that pushed Tokyo to truly diabolical decisions.

Armageddon hastily

The main military problem of the Japanese, who since ancient times considered themselves, like their German allies, the "superior race", has always been that there were few of them. Not that very little, but in comparison with the main potential opponents - the Chinese, Russians, Americans, the population of the Land of the Rising Sun looked somehow undignified. The same was true for the ratio of all other resources. One "samurai spirit", especially in the age of tanks and combat aircraft, will not win a war. Especially if it is being conducted against almost half of the world. Okay, semi-feudal backward China, but the USA, USSR, Great Britain immeasurably surpassed Japan in terms of military-technical development. It is not surprising that, again, like their demoniac like-minded "Aryans", the samurai desperately dreamed of some kind of "wunderwaffe", a miracle weapon that could not only equalize the chances in an initially hopeless struggle, but bring victory in it. However, what could it be? Nuclear bombs, the ghost of which was about to materialize? Well, no - dug ... sorry, the level of scientific and technological development did not come out. Chemical warfare agents? The First World War too clearly showed their dubious effectiveness and a lot of shortcomings. In addition, in all the countries participating in it, in the 20s and 30s, preparations for chemical warfare were conducted not only at the level of the armies, but also, so to speak, "among the broad popular masses." One Soviet Osoaviakhim was worth something. Again, not that. Now it is unlikely that it will be possible to establish for certain whether the idea of ​​conducting biological warfare was submitted to the imperial elite of Japan, who were preparing to take over the world, by the humble doctor Shiro Ishii, or whether he was simply chosen to implement it. One way or another, this name is worth remembering.

Originally connecting his medical career with the military service, Ishii was a man undoubtedly talented. True, his abilities were of the kind about which it is customary to speak of "evil genius". Having a real "fad" on all kinds of bacteria and microbes, the doctor in uniform very quickly realized how destructive the consequences of the massive use of this "trifle" against the enemy - both his army and, above all, the rear - could be. Disciplined, the thoughts reported to the higher authorities were received not only favorably, but with genuine delight - Ishii was immediately sent on a long trip abroad to get acquainted with all the possible amount of "advanced experience" in the development, creation and use of biological weapons. Upon his return, he headed a special research institute, naturally deeply classified, and then, in 1932, the infamous "detachment 731", which he commanded from the moment of its creation until 1942, later going up the same line.

From all this, an absolutely unambiguous conclusion can be made - the Japanese high command made a bet on biological weapons in the late 20s and early 30s (by the way, even before the Nazis came to power in Germany). And since then, with true Japanese perseverance and determination, they followed a terrifying plan, which, if fully implemented, would have claimed the lives of tens, if not hundreds of millions of people. However, a considerable number of them were destroyed by the samurai with the help of biological weapons. And it’s not only about the victims of the ominous special forces, estimated, according to various sources, in the figure from 3-4 to 10-odd thousand. Against the USSR, the Japanese tried to use it back in 1939, pouring biological poison into the Khalkhin-Gol River, from the banks of which they were kicked out with a bang by the Red Army.

Enough for all mankind!

This is exactly what one of the members of "Detachment 731" once said, speaking of the combat potential of the "superweapon" created and already prepared for use by his colleagues. Bragging? Exaggerated? Alas, in no way. After many years of research and experiments, which were carried out on living people, invariably ending in their painful death, the same Shiro Ishii settled on infections of typhus, anthrax, cholera, and plague as the most effective and promising for military use. Moreover, the last infection from the mentioned ones was put at the forefront. They planned to deliver strikes in three main ways - by carrying out sabotage directly on enemy territory, spraying biomaterials from aircraft and delivering massive strikes with bombs with special biological "stuffing". Again, the third method was the most "advanced". A saboteur can be caught or neutralized before the mission is completed, a deadly "cloud" can be dispersed by the wind, but bombs are a completely different matter. Special ceramic ammunition "loaded" with fleas, ticks or plague-carrying rats was also the development of Dr. Ishii. Bursting fifty to a hundred meters above the ground, they practically guaranteed to disperse the carriers of the deadly disease, which was especially effective when attacking large populated areas. Such "plague bombs" the Japanese have repeatedly used in China, and over the course of several years. The number of victims of biological warfare among the local residents could not be counted either during the war years or afterwards. According to Chinese experts, they are "very large" and amount to at least hundreds of thousands of people.

Were the samurai going to use this weapon against the USSR? Absolutely yes. There are several irrefutable proofs of this. First, these are the words of Kato Tsunenori, a former member of the 731 unit, who in 1948 told stern investigators from the NKVD that “it was planned to use the same biological materials against the Soviet Union as against the United States and China - plague and anthrax "And not" any other ". The second (and most terrible) proof is that at least 30% of the "experimental" brutally tortured in the torture "laboratories" of the "detachment 731" were Russian. Our compatriot emigrants were caught in China and even secretly kidnapped on the territory of the USSR. What for? The goal was to find out the effect of deadly bacteria on their organisms. What else is there to prove ?! The order of a sharp increase in the amount of biological rubbish produced was given by the command of the Kwantung Army to the heads of the corresponding special forces back in 1944, and at the same time, active reconnaissance of our territory was launched, the purpose of which was to select targets for large-scale sabotage and air strikes with the help of biological weapons. Tokyo simply left Moscow no choice. I am sure that his fate was finally decided at the moment when the first reports of all these preparations lay on Stalin's table. All the conversations that are being conducted today in the United States (and in Japan, which is also typical) regarding the fact that the country's resistance "was broken by the horrific fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" are pure lies. No one in there even thought to surrender - even after the atomic bombings! If the Americans landed directly on the Japanese Islands, the emperor, the government and the military command would have evacuated to Manchuria and continued the war there with renewed vigor.

But the stars and stripes "winners" would have expected a very unpleasant surprise. We are talking about a detachment of monstrous submarines of the I-400 series, each of which, in fact, was a submarine aircraft carrier. It was already being prepared for a throw in the direction of the US coast, which was going to be bombed just by "products" of Dr. Ishii with "fillers" from carriers of plague and anthrax. What kind of a global pandemic could cause these, and others, similar actions of agonizing samurai, do not even want to think. It is quite possible that a natural end of the world threatened humanity. All these horrific plans were ruined by the swift advance of the Red Army. "Detachment 731" ceased its activities and existence just because of him. Its members hastily burned documents, their own "laboratories" and "production workshops" for the manufacture of bioweapons, tried to destroy evidence and fled wherever already under the roar of our "thirty-fours" passing through the "inaccessible" Gobi and Khingan. The plans of Shiro Ishii and his patrons were thwarted. They simply did not have time ... So the Soviet Union saved humanity from another catastrophe.