38. Ibid., 223–7.
39. Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel, I Joined the Russians: A Captured German Flier’s Diary of the Communist Temptation (New Haven (CT): Yale University Press, 1953), 225–7.
40. Details in Peter J. Lapp, General bei Hitler und Ulbricht. Vincenz Müller—Eine deutsche Karrier (Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2003).
41. Alaric Searle, ‘“Vopo”-General Vincenz Müller and Western Intelligence, 1948–54: CIC, the Gehlen Organization and Two Cold War Covert Operations,’ Intelligence and National Security 17 (2002), no. 2, 27–50.
42. Document Nos. 7.23 and 7.25 in Voennoplennye v SSSR, 768–9, 772–3.
43. Document No. 54 in Vsevolodov, Srok khraneniya, 246–8.
44. Data from Hille’s personal file, Military Archive, Moscow; Hille’s prisoner card in Vladimir Prison; and Hille’s interview given on September 1, 1954 to the Swedish journalist, Rudolph Phillipp.
45. From February till August 1946, N. V. Liutyi-Shestakovskii (1899–?) was deputy head, and from August 1946 till February 1948, head of the 2nd Department (supervision of secret agents) of the GUPVI Operational Directorate. Voennoplennye v SSSR, 1077.
46. Joachimsthaler, The Last Days of Hitler, 254.
47. V. A. Kozlov, ‘Gde Gitler?’ Povtornoe rassledovanie NKVD–MVD SSSR obstoyatel’stva ischeznoveiya Adolfa Gitlera (1945–1949) (Moscow: Modest Kolyarov, 2003), 123 (in Russian).
48. GARF, Fond R-940, Opis’ 2 (Stalin’s Special NKVD/MVD Folder), Delo 66, L. 293–323.
49. For all these people see, for instance, von Klemperer, German Resistance Against Hitler.
50. John H. Waller, ‘The Double Life of Admiral Canaris,’ The International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 9, no. 3 (Fall 1996), 271–89.
51. Peter Carstens, ‘Eime “zweite Entnazifizierung,”’ FAZ.net, March 18, 2010, http://www.faz.net/s/Rub594835B672714A1DB1A121534F010EE1/Doc~EA65AAB2D1C2048249EAD3E3BC2FA6BAA~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.
CHAPTER 26
War with Japan
On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union began a war with Japan. Japan had maintained neutrality toward the Soviet Union since April 13, 1941, when Yosuke Matsuoka, the Japanese foreign minister, signed an agreement to that effect in Moscow.1 To stress the importance of the just signed Neutrality Pact, Stalin and Molotov personally went to Moscow’s Yaroslavskii Station to see off Matsuoka. Signing this pact allowed Stalin to order a month later a secret transfer of two armies from the Transbaikal and Siberian military districts to the regions near the western border for preparations for the war with Germany.2 However, the possibility of a Japanese attack against the Soviet Union existed until the first months of 1942, and by December 1941, as a result of a new draft in Siberia, thirty-nine Soviet divisions were deployed in the Transbaikal region and the Soviet Far East. But the war with Japan was inevitable, while for the Western Allies it had started on December 8, 1941.
Preparations
On May 21, 1943, the GKO ordered the secret construction of a railroad from Komsomolsk on the Amur River to the Soviet Harbor in the Far Eastern Pacific.3 This railroad was crucial for the future movement of troops and military hardware to the Sea of Japan. With labor camp prisoners doing the construction work, completion was planned for August 1, 1945.
On November 1, 1943, after a dinner in the Kremlin, Stalin confidentially informed U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull that he planned to enter the war with Japan after the German defeat. Hull immediately cabled the news to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.4
In July 1944, after the Western Allies opened the Second Front in Europe, Stalin informed Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, head of the General Staff, that he would be commander in chief of the war with Japan.5 The GUKR SMERSH started preparing an operational list containing the names of Japanese intelligence members and leaders of the Russian émigré community in Manchuria, which it completed on September 15, 1944.6 On February 11, 1945, the last day of the Yalta Conference, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill signed a secret protocol, stating that after the war with Japan, the Soviet Union would acquire all of Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, and a zone in Korea.7
On April 5, 1945, Molotov denounced the 1941 agreement in a diplomatic note to the Japanese ambassador to Moscow, Naotake Sato. The Soviet troops were already on the move to the Russian Far East. On June 28, 1945, Stalin issued an order: ‘All preparations are to be carried out in the greatest secrecy. Army commanders are to be given their orders in person, orally and without any written directives.’8 Marshal Vasilevsky was appointed commander in chief in the Far East under the alias ‘Vasiliev’ (previously he was ‘Vladimirov,’ Table 21-1), and other commanders were also given aliases.9 All preparations were to be completed by August 1, 1945.
On May 15, 1945, Abakumov appointed his deputy, Isai Babich, and Aleksandr Misyurev, an assistant, as coordinators of SMERSH units of the Far Eastern Group of Soviet Troops.10 They were transferred there with a staff of 150 experienced SMERSH officers. Experienced UKR SMERSH heads were put in charge of the Far Eastern fronts:
| Front | SMERSH Head |
|---|---|
| Far Eastern Group of Troops | I. Ya. Babich, Deputy Head, GUKR SMERSH |
| Primorsk Group of Troops | D. I. Mel’nikov, Head, Karelian Front UKR SMERSH |
| Transbaikal Front | A. A. Vadis, Head, 1st Belorussian Front UKR SMERSH |
| Far Eastern Front | I. T. Saloimsky, Transbaikal Front UKR SMERSH |
Later, in August 1945 the Primorsk (or Maritime) Group of Troops and Far Eastern Front became the 1st Far Eastern Front and 2nd Far Eastern Front respectively when Stalin launched his war against Japan. At the same time, GUKR SMERSH in Moscow was not idle. On June 9, 1945, it updated its operational list of Japanese intelligence members and Russian émigrés in Manchuria targeted for arrest.11
On July 11, 1945, Ambassador Naotake Sato tried to persuade Molotov to establish long-term friendly relations with Japan. At the time, three groups of Soviet troops totaling about 1.5 million men had already been deployed at the Manchurian border. The Japanese Kwantung Army, stationed in Manchuria since 1931, was the first to meet the Soviet offensive. In 1945, this army consisted of 713,000 men, of whom, according to the Japanese sources, about half were poorly trained teenaged recruits and old men, since the elite troops had long ago been sent to fight the Americans and British.12 The Japanese troops had almost no fuel and as a result, during the ensuing battle with the Soviets not a single plane out of a fleet of 900 was able to take off, and all 600 Japanese tanks were seized by the Soviets before they were even used.