World War II did not end in May 1945 in Berlin. It ended in September in the Far East after the rout of militaristic Japan, in which both American and Soviet forces fought.

The Manchurian operation, which was conducted on land by the Zabaikalsky Front, the 1st and 2nd Far Eastern fronts and the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Army, and at sea by the Pacific Fleet and the Soviet Amur Flotilla, has gone down in history as an example of great military planning and skill.

President of the Russian Academy of Military Science, Army General Makhmut GAREYEV took part in this offensive. In an interview with RIA Novosti military analyst Viktor LITOVKIN he shares some little known facts about the operation.

LITOVKIN: I'd like to start with a question that a lot of people are asking today. Did the Soviet Union, which was already exhausted by the war against Nazi Germany, really have to go to war against Japan? Japan did not pose a big threat to us. It was reasonably neutral throughout the war, whereas the Americans, whom we had promised to help, did all they could to delay the opening of the second front. They cynically waited to see whether it was Germany or the USSR that came out on top. Why did we have to help them in the war against Japan? Couldn't they have managed without us?

GAREYEV: I think that saying the Americans could have managed without us in the Far East is like saying we could have managed without them in the West. You must remember, it was a world war. On the one side there were the aggressors, the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis, and on the other side there was the Allied coalition led by the USSR, the US and Britain. Neither we, nor the Americans, could have ended the war without having eliminated the threat from both the West and the East.

I'd like to point out that despite the conduct of our allies, Britain and the US, and despite there being many flaws in Stalin's policies, especially in his domestic policies, our leader was very consistent in his international relations and he observed the Allied agreements. Even his critics abroad cannot find fault with him in this respect.

But of course it was not just about the will or lack of will of certain leaders. From the very start of the war we were exposed to threats from both the West and the East. From the mid 1930s all of the USSR's strategic plans were dominated by the need to be ready to fight on two fronts: against Germany in the West and against Japan in the Far East. Soviet policy, diplomacy and military operations were all aimed at avoiding a simultaneous war on two fronts. We wanted to be able to fight the two wars one after the other.

In this respect the rout of militaristic Japan was never removed from the Soviet agenda. Why not? You will remember Russia's shameful defeat by Japan in 1905. This had left the peoples of the Soviet Union deeply embittered and the older generation had waited for decades for the chance to erase humiliating memory. When Russians feel their desire for revenge is just, they cannot let it go. It is also important to remember that Russia lost a lot of land to Japan during that war. Japan took Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and other territories away from us, with little regard for international law. During the Civil War the Japanese seized a large area of the Far East and wreaked havoc there. They shot thousands of people, and in effect, were openly aggressive toward us. The Soviet Union had to respond.

But maybe what mattered most here is that Stalin believed in keeping his word. During all our negotiations with our allies, they called on the USSR to enter the war against Japan. Stalin refused to give a definite answer right up until the Tehran Conference when he finally promised that the Soviet Union would join the war in the East. Then at the Yalta Conference Stalin gave a firm commitment that the Soviet Union would go to war against Japan two to three months after the defeat of Germany. And he kept his word: the war in Europe ended on May 9, 1945, and exactly three months later, on August 9, 1945, we attacked Japan.

L: Were you a young Captain then?

G: No, by that time I was a Major.

L: But in any case, you fought in the West and then you went to fight in the Far East. What about the other men who did this? Weren't they tired of fighting? They had been lucky to survive one war. How did they react to the news that they had to fight another war, that they had to put their lives at risk again?

G: I'll answer your question but first I'd like to finish what I was saying.

So, exactly three months after the victory over Nazi Germany, Stalin declared war on Japan. Much of what happened then is misinterpreted today, distorted even. Many people claim that the Soviet Union should not have entered that war. They say that we violated the Non-Aggression Pact. But the USSR had announced its withdrawal from this treaty back in April 1945, and so there was nothing to violate. We abided by the standards of international law.

Furthermore, it was known (from American studies and assessments carried out at US Army headquarters) that the Japanese would not stop fighting even if the Americans seized their islands. The Japanese said they would continue fighting for decades under the patronage of the Kwantung Army. Tokyo planned to keep Manchuria as a bridgehead for a lengthy campaign. The Japanese were determined not to be beaten.

Obviously, the Soviet Union wanted this bridgehead to be destroyed, as it posed a threat not only to the US but also to Soviet territory in the Far East. This bridgehead had to be destroyed at all costs and the Japanese Army had to be defeated.

American specialists informed President Roosevelt that if the USSR did not enter the war the campaign could drag on for 12-18 months and would cost the lives of a million U.S. soldiers. This is what the situation was. Japan did not surrender even after the US dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945. The Japanese wanted to continue fighting.

When we look at all these facts it is clear that the Soviet Union had to join the war. It was in the interests of the USSR and in the interests of the whole of mankind that World War II be brought to an end. The quick defeat of the Kwantung Army eliminated the causes for concern I mentioned earlier. In effect, we saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American and British soldiers who were going to fight there till the end. Regrettably, people often forget this, especially in America.

Now I'll go back to your question about how the front line troops felt. After the capture of Konigsberg, on April 11, 1945, which I was involved in...

L: Sixty years ago...

G: Yes. At that time I was in the operations department of the 5th Army Headquarters. We were redeploying our troops from East Prussia to other places. The 28th Army, which had assaulted Konigsberg, was sent to Berlin. Others were sent to the south...

L: To Czechoslovakia?

G: Not quite. Now this is a very interesting point. We actually started moving the troops eastward in the fall of 1944, straight after Finland left the war. What lay at the heart of the Manchurian operation? The only way we could bring about the end of the war in the Far East and destroy the Kwantung Army without incurring heavy losses was to use the element of surprise. This was a difficult task for the Red Army given that the Soviet Union had withdrawn from the Non-Aggression Pact, giving Japan reason to believe that we were going to attack. It was virtually impossible to transfer such large numbers of troops from the West to the East without the Japanese noticing. So they were waiting for us to attack, but what they didn't know was when we would attack.

There are some "analysts" who claim that we fought without skill. This is a lie. Our military leaders had a lot of very inspired ideas. Chief of the General Staff, Army General Alexei Antonov, together with Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky, planned the Manchurian operation so skillfully that the Japanese were barely aware of what was happening. (When Chernyakhovsky was killed in action, Marshal Vasilevsky was appointed Commander of the 3rd Belarussian Front, firstly, so he could help speed up the defeat of the Nazis in East Prussia and free up troops for the East, and secondly, so he could gain experience of front command.)

They started sending divisions from the West to the East in 1944. They sent divisions from the Karelian Front and Hungary, as these were divisions which had been previously based in the East. This was a ploy. Both the Japanese and our civilians saw this as the triumphant return of our troops to their permanent bases. They were greeted at the railway stations with flowers and music. This homecoming was used to cover up the large-scale redeployment of other units, in particular, tank and air force units. No one spotted them anywhere. They were kept in railroad sidings.

Sometimes people ask, "How was it possible to mount a surprise attack when such long distances and such large numbers of troops were involved?" But it was a surprise attack. You can do a lot with misinformation and military ingenuity.

What else is it important to know? About a month before August 9, the Japanese Government asked us to act as a mediator at peace talks between Toyko and Washington. In exchange, Japan promised to return South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. This would have provided us with a political solution to our territorial problems, and the only lives lost would have been American ones. But Stalin was so consistent in his international relations that he chose to act honorably and keep his promise to the Allies. He rejected Japan's attractive proposal and the Soviet Union went to war.

L: You have not answered my question about how the soldiers felt.

G: Yes, let's go back to Konigsberg. Some of our units were ordered to board a train. Nobody knew where we were going, and we were exhausted after heavy fighting. We were told to stick up maps showing the routes to Berlin and Prague, and so everyone thought that was where we were going. But it turned out that we were bound for Moscow. The 5th Army Staff arrived in the capital on May 2. We waited in sidings. But that night, for the first time ever, I saw a salute given in honor of the capture of Berlin. It was rumored that we were going to fight Turkey. It was only after we had crossed the Volga that it dawned on us where we were going. Our journey was shrouded in secrecy.

L: Did you move only at night?

G: No, we traveled round the clock, stopping only briefly at night. We stopped in railroad sidings, some distance from the stations. Not even all of the commanders knew where we were going. This massive transfer of military forces was very well planned and executed. By that time Stalin had full trust in his generals and he allowed them to use their initiative. This is why the operation was so well prepared.

The Japanese had built very strong defenses on the Manchurian-Soviet border. The Front Staff had planned a three-day preliminary bombardment to destroy them. It would take a day or two just to get rid of the thickets that concealed their fortifications. But the 5th Army Commander, Colonel General Nikolai Krylov, approached Vasilevsky with an alternative strategy. He proposed an immediate, surprise offensive, using advance battalions. The strategy was approved.

At 1 a.m. local time on August 9, under the cover of heavy rain, we crossed the border together with our frontier guards and seized the Japanese pillboxes (during training sessions all the advance units had repeatedly practised border crossings with the frontier guards). The Japanese soldiers were resting in wooden huts some 500 to 600 meters away: soldiers don't stay in pillboxes unless they are expecting an attack. By the time they rushed outside we had already occupied their pillboxes. We didn't have to fire a single shot.

Our fortified base was in Gradekovo, to the north of Mount Verblyud and Mount Garnizonnaya. It was under the command of General Shurshin. The general decided to allow a ten-minute artillery strike to cheer up his troops. As soon as the attack was over, the Japanese rushed out and occupied their pillboxes. After the war had ended, I was crossing the border to deliver a report to the Front Staff, and I saw that the Japanese were still sitting in their pillboxes, firing. What does that tell you? If General Krylov's strategy had been rejected we would have had to attack like we did in the Finnish war. Just breaking down the enemy defenses would have taken six or seven months. Our commander's smart decision saved us from that.

The Kwantung Army had one million men. 690,000 of them were taken prisoner. We, on the other hand, lost just 12,000 soldiers and officers during the Manchurian operation. Some people in the West prefer to overlook this fact, because it gives the lie to their claims that we fought without skill and used our men as cannon fodder.

L: There's another side to this issue and I'll ask you about it later. But I'd still like you to tell me: How did the soldiers who had captured Berlin and Konigsberg feel about being sent to fight in the Far East?

G: A lot depended on how old they were. To digress slightly. When the war broke out on June 22, I was studying at the Tashkent Military College. We stood on the parade ground and listened to Molotov's speech. Cadet Garkavtsev, who was standing next to me, said, "By the time we graduate the war will be over. It'll be just like it was with Khasan and Khalkin-Gol. We won't get the chance to fight."

Garkavtsev was killed near Stalingrad in late 1942. The reason I mention him is that he voiced what many of us young officers were thinking. I was 22 years old in 1945, and I was already a Major. I actually felt excited when I heard the news about the war against Japan. There were some older people among us, middle-aged people, and they agreed that we ought to take revenge on the Japanese. But there were some men who had been at war for four years, and there were lots of men who should have been transferred to the reserves before the war because they had served their terms, but who had to stay on. Some of them had been in the army for seven or eight years. They had families and had been hoping that with the end of the war in Europe they would soon go home... But I was single. So we reacted differently.

I remember that when we arrived at our destination, Battalion Commander Georgy Gubkin, who was later awarded the Hero Star, started showing us how to throw grenades. He said, "You shouldn't throw them the way you did in Konigsberg. The land's flat there, but in Manchuria it's hilly. If you throw it upward, it will roll back under your feet before it's exploded. After you pull out the safety pin, you should count to two before throwing it." Front line soldiers had to be trained as well.

Now, after Gubkin had told us how to throw grenades he asked us whether we had any questions. One soldier, who was about 45 years old, asked, "When will we be demobilized?" Some of the men were very concerned about this.

L: Let's go back to the figures you gave: almost 700,000 Japanese were taken prisoner while the Soviet Union sustained relatively low losses - 12,000 men. This is not surprising. The Red Army commanders had acquired the necessary experience, they wanted to save lives, and they were skilled in the art of war. But people in the West do not give the Red Army due credit. They claim that the Kwantung Army was demoralized by Hiroshima and Nagasaki and did not pose such a serious threat after August 6. They say that whole regiments and divisions surrendered, and that the Russians did nothing to distinguish themselves. What do you think about this?

G: These are absurd allegations and they bear no relation to the historical facts, some of which I've already mentioned. If we had used a standard military strategy in Manchuria, the campaign would have dragged on for a very long time, regardless of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We arrived in the Far East with all the experience that we had gained in the previous four years of war. Our military skills were second to none. Even today when you undergo three or four days of training at a military college you leave feeling that you've learnt something. And we had had four years of command post exercises, during which we simulated real life situations, and of course you learn a great deal from them. There was a world of difference between our capabilities in 1941/1942 and our capabilities in 1945.

If it hadn't been for our military skill, we would have been faced with "a second Gradekovo." The Japanese went on firing from their pillboxes on Mount Verblyud for another six months. They had enough food, water and ammunition. They had everything they needed. The war was over but they were still firing.

All this goes to show that it was purely thanks to our military skill that we did not sustain heavy losses. The Japanese were determined to resist, and they did put up a good fight. I had to rescue the 84th Cavalry Division commanded by General Dedeugly.

L: Was it a Mongolian division? The commander's name sounds Mongolian.

G: No, the commander was an Armenian. I read a book recently called "Armenians in the Great Patriotic War", and there was a picture of him and his short biography in it. His division was encircled from August 15-18 to the northeast of the Chinese town of Nenang. The Japanese fought fiercely, as they did in other places. But once again the military skill of our troops won out. Large numbers of airborne troops landed in the enemy territory and took the Japanese by surprise.

There was a stone fortress, called Rehe, on the TransBaikal Front, in a city with a population of half a million. If we had had to assault it, it would have taken us a long time and both sides would have suffered heavy losses. And of course there would have been civilian losses as well. So what did the Corps Commander, General Issa Pliyev, decide to do? He came up with a plan that no one would have thought of in 1941.

He took seven or eight guards and one Dodge and two Willises. They drove at high speed right through the fortress gates and went straight to the headquarters. Pliyev said, "I've sent for the planes to bomb you. Surrender if you don't want to die!" After bargaining for an hour and a half, the whole garrison of 25,000 officers and men surrendered to one general and several guards. He was the perfect example of a bold and daring commander.

L: But the Japanese Emperor had ordered his Army to stop fighting on August 14.

G. Yes, he did, but not all of the garrisons and units of the Kwantung Army had received his order. Moreover, not everyone was going to obey it, and there was a tacit order to surrender to the Americans and the Chinese but to continue fighting the Russians. This was to prevent us from seizing more land in Korea, Manchuria and other Chinese regions. But we still managed to achieve our objectives.

I will repeat that if it hadn't been for the military skill of our commanders, we would have sustained much heavier losses. There was every indication that we would be met by fierce Japanese resistance. There is absolutely no evidence that the Japanese panicked and marched to surrender.

L: There were two armies fighting Japan: the Red Army and the American Army. Obviously they coordinated their strategic plans in some way. But what about the tactical and operational plans at the level of regiments and divisions?

G: I was not privy to such information. But of course when I was working in the 5th Army headquarters I did see and hear things. We were told, for instance, that the Americans were not supposed to go to Port Arthur or Port Dairen because it had been agreed that these were our deployment areas. The Americans were to stay south of the 38th Parallel in Korea. Battalions of our 25th Army, under the command of Colonel-General Ivan Chistyakov, approached the northern outskirts of Seoul and waited for two days for the Americans to arrive. When they did, we withdrew to the 38th Parallel. So we did know a bit about the military agreements. But when our 39th Army approached Port Arthur, two American units tried to disembark from high-speed landing craft. Our troops had to open fire in order to prevent their landing. They didn't fire at them though; they fired upward.

The Americans had thought they could seize and occupy Port Arthur. But generally the agreements were observed. Well, actually, there were a lot of agreements that Washington did not honor. For example, it had been agreed that we would take part in the occupation of Japan, and that we would send one or two Soviet brigades to Tokyo.

Our 35th Army, commanded by Colonel-General Nikolai Zakhvatayev, was being trained for service in Japan and was planning to land on Hokkaido. But General Douglas MacArthur, who was a very strong character and had a lot of influence in the White House, went back on the agreement. Apparently, President Harry Truman was not very confident and so allowed MacArthur to make a lot of the decisions relating to the Far East. MacArthur did everything he could to prevent the Red Army from landing in Japan.

The Americans wanted to build bases on Soviet territory for the war against Japan, on the Kuril Islands for example. But it was obvious that if they did that, it would be very hard to get them to leave after the war. So these proposals were rejected.

I have to admit that our postwar diplomatic efforts left much to be desired. We were wrong to leave the San Francisco Conference. We should either have signed the treaty or postponed signing it together with other nations. But we left and so it was signed without us. That decision still troubles us.

L: And now here is my last question. How did the Chinese people react to the Red Army? And what did you think of the Chinese communists? Whether it was intentional or not, you helped them defeat the Kuomintang and carry out a socialist revolution.

G: This is a whole different subject. Basically, it has never been studied. There are a lot of issues that journalists and historians are yet to investigate. But what I myself can tell you is that we were never so well received as we were in Korea and China, except perhaps in Belarus.

I could give you countless examples of how well planned the Manchurian operation was. But here is a particularly interesting historical fact.. The Head of Reconnaissance of the 5th Kwantung Army (they had a 5th army as well) gave Commander Yamada a report on Soviet troop concentrations. They had agents gathering this information. The Commander wrote on the report, "Only mad men would attack during the rainy season." The rains began in August. But we decided to start the offensive at precisely that time when it would least be expected. This created enormous difficulties for the troops. Their supplies were interrupted at once.

L: Artillery gets stuck, tanks...

G: Everything got stuck in the mud. I saw it myself in North Korea, mainly in Nenang, Girin and Donghua. All of the villagers came to our rescue. They helped us pull out our guns, tanks and other vehicles that had sunk in the mud. They even carried tanks from one village to another. Nobody forced them to help us, but they hated the Japanese so much that they were willing to do anything to get them to leave their country. The Japanese were notoriously cruel to the Chinese. Both the Chinese and the Koreans were only allowed to eat rice once a month. Meat products were rationed. The Japanese harassed the local population in many other ways as well. Their occupational regime was extremely harsh.

But this is a separate subject. We are often criticized for not having released the Japanese prisoners of war straightaway. We are asked why we took them to the USSR. I was in charge of an operations group in northern Manchuria that was tasked with controlling the POW camps. Our troops were about to leave in 1945, but then we had to stay on for another few months. In anticipation of our withdrawal, we had handed a number of camps over to the Chinese. And what did the Chinese do? They took all the food away from the POWs. When a Chinese soldier walked past a camp, he considered it his duty to shoot at it.

L: At the Japanese?

G: Yes. The Japanese went down on their knees and begged us not to leave them. Regrettably, even some journalists resort to demagoguery and say that we violated international law. But what could we do with 650,000 people? We didn't have the transportation to take them back to Japan. Besides, there were mines everywhere. And we could not have left them in China because the Chinese would have slaughtered them. They themselves asked us to take them with us. People who are not in full possession of the facts should not be so quick to pass judgement. Life is far more complicated than they make out.

Many complex issues arose. Before the start of the war against Japan the Soviet Union had signed an agreement with Chiang Kai-shek on Port Arthur and the Chinese Military Railway, among others things. The Communists reacted very badly to this. I used to meet Gao Gang, Chairman of the Military Council of North East China, a revolutionary and very clever man. He was absolutely furious about the agreement.

L: If this was the case why did we help Mao Zedong rather than Chiang Kai-shek?

G: All of the initial pre-war agreements were signed with Chiang Kai-shek. One of the conditions we set was that neither the Communists, nor the Kuomintang were allowed to enter territory occupied by Soviet troops. Under the agreement with Chiang we were meant to withdraw from Manchuria in October-November 1945. But Chiang suddenly realized that as soon as we left, the Communists would seize all the towns. He didn't want this to happen but he didn't have the troops to replace us. He became embroiled in the Special District and in other places. Besides, his troops were allowing Japanese soldiers to surrender. Anyway, he asked Stalin not to withdraw the Red Army, and this immediately caused Mao to take issue with the Soviet policy.

But our relations with the Chinese leaders are a different matter. Let's talk about them on another occasion.