(06-19-2014 01:01 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(06-19-2014 12:22 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 04:42 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(06-18-2014 08:33 AM)GoApps70 Wrote:  

(06-14-2014 04:05 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  I have read elsewhere that one of Stalin's greatest fears was that Hitler and the Nazis would hold out longer than the Japanese, thus shutting the Soviets out of the partition of Asia.

For his many faults one of the smartest things Douglas MacArthur ever did was keeping the Soviets out of Japan post-war. Stalin wanted Japan to be divided much like Germany, and Truman was considering allowing it. MacArthur fought against that happening and succeeded.

The Russians had beat back the Japanese twice really bad. This was probably one reason the Japanese never attempted taking them on again during WWII. It also allowed Stalin to transport troops to help save Moscow from the Germans.

After the war the US took possession of Japanese submarines designed to launch aircraft. The Russians requested one of
them for study. We sank them instead. Things like this may have helped convince the Russians to back North Korea's invasion of South Korea so much, and to send pilots and Migs to them.

I wonder if they might have tried to do something against the Russians even so, if they weren't already bogged down in China.

The Russians handled the Japanese at the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 and the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 because the Japanese were stuck with World War I tank tactics and tanks designed for that war. Specifically, tanks to support infantry against other infantry, otherwise known as "light tanks". They also didn't have the same number of tanks as their Soviet opponent. Soviet medium tanks (what we'd call a main battle tank today) and tank specific tactics took the Japanese by surprise.

Their reaction to this lesson; considering the Chinese had no real tanks to oppose them, and anywhere else they wanted to invade was likely to also contain none to few pieces of mobile armor; was to leave the Soviets alone and concentrate on other weapon systems that would work well against the Chinese and navy/island based war with the United States.

Yea that's true, their tanks weren't up to it. There still seemed to be a fair amount of discussion about fighting the Russians even then. Which is surprising to me. Though they did beat the Russian navy in 1905. To some extent I think they were still revelling in that victory, even though that was navy and not army.

In the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese dominated on sea and land for the entire war. This was mostly due to the fact that the Trans-Siberian Railway was at best an intermittent means of travel/communications in those days. Plus the Tsar's forces in the Amur region were woefully unprepared for war (mostly because the Eurocentric Russians couldn't fathom the Japanese being a real threat). Except for the Russian Pacific Fleet, which was crippled and contained in the opening day of the war, and the garrisons at Port Arthur and Vladisvostok; there were no significant land forces already in place in the Amur to oppose the Japanese Army. They had to ship their land forces across that fragile railway over 3000 miles and only a fraction of their forces thanks to the fact that they had potential aggressors on their European borders to worry about as well.

Add in the Tsarist bureaucracy's notorious mismanagement style and the results seem predictable.

Stalin didn't make that same mistake. He park a significant force in the Amur "just-in-case" and all he had to ship down a significantly improved Trans-Siberian Railway were supplies and replacements.