The Co-Prosperity Sphere
- Thread starter CountofDooku
- Start date
Archduke Wilhelm was the youngest son of Archduke Karl Stephan (fourth child and third son of Archduke Karl Ferdinand of Austria) and Archduchess Maria Theresia, Princess of Tuscany. So if I didn't mess it up:
Ok, so Archduke William is the Third Cousin of Francis Ferdinand and the Third Cousin, twice removed of the current Emperor Otto. Wow, royal bloodlines are complicated, lol
That would suck for the people living in the Soviet Union, though.
That may not necessarily be the case though. Germany isn't out to commit genocide ITTL, and is more set to restore (as much as possible) the old order of conservative monarchies. I'm personally of the opinion that once things settle down a bit, Russian subjects to a Tsar in St. Petersburg would find their new lives much preferable to life as Soviet citizens led by Stalin in Moscow.
Not that Stalin would still be around by then. He's likely either sulking or raving at Novosibirsk, or shot by Tsarist troops or even by his own men.
Chapter 151: The Crusade – The Kingdom of Greater Finland and the Liberation of Karelia
Chapter 151: The Crusade – The Kingdom of Greater Finland and the Liberation of Karelia
In central Finland the German-Finnish advance on the Murmansk railway had been resumed at Kayraly. A large encirclement from the north and the south trapped the defending Soviet corps and allowed XXXVI Corps to advance further to the east. In early-September it reached the old 1939 Soviet border fortifications. On 6 September the first defense line at the Voyta River was breached, but further attacks against the main line at the Verman River failed. With Northern German Army in Finland pushed a second time with greater numbers and captured beachheads across the river. Further south, the Finnish III Corps launched a new offensive towards the Murmansk railway on 30 October, bolstered by fresh reinforcements from the German Army in Finland. Against Soviet resistance, it was able to come within 30 km (19 mi) of the railway, when the Finnish High Command ordered a stop to all offensive operations in the sector on 17 November. The United States of America applied diplomatic pressure on Finland to not disrupt Allied aid shipments to the Soviet Union, but the Finnish government ignored to halt the advance on the Murmansk railway and managed to take it together with German forces. The German-Finnish effort in central and northern Finland continued mostly because of the German forces at first, but the Finnish continued their assault when the Germans told them their new Axis Central Powers state of the reborn Russian Empire would stay in control of eastern Karelia if the Finnish Army stayed in a purely defensive position across their old border before the Winter War.
Germany had pressured Finland to enlarge its offensive activities in Karelia to aid the Germans in their Leningrad operation. Finnish attacks on Leningrad itself remained limited. Finland stopped its advance just short of Leningrad and had no intentions to attack the city. The situation was different in eastern Karelia. The Finnish government under Mannerheim quickly agreed to restart its offensive into Soviet Karelia to reach Lake Onega and the Svir River. On 4 September this new drive was launched on a broad front. Albeit reinforced by fresh reserve troops, heavy losses elsewhere on the front meant that the Soviet defenders of the 7th Army were not able to resist the Finnish advance. Olonets was taken on 5 September. On 7 September, Finnish forward units reached the Svir River. Petrozavodsk, the capital city of the region fell on 1 October. From there the Army of Karelia moved north along the shores of Lake Onega to secure the remaining area west of Lake Onega, while simultaneously establishing a defensive position along the Svir River. Slowed by winter's onset they nevertheless continued to advance slowly during the following weeks. Medvezhyegorsk was captured on 5 December and Poventsa fell the next day. On 7 December Finland called a stop to all offensive operations, going onto the defensive. With Pojanole an Murmansk falling and nearly all of the rest of the Kola Peninsula being cut off, the German/Finnish forces captured the important Murmansk naval yard and the Iron resources east of the Murmans railroad an forces the Red Army to evacuate it's remaining forces on the now cut off Kola Peninsula across the White Sea, leaving man heavy equipment behind.
With the northern an southern lank now secured, the central Finnish and German forces pushed east towards the White Sea and captured Soroka on 19 December, reaching the Stalin Canal and the Oneg See in the south on 21 December and effectively forcing the Soviet Red Army out of all of Finish claimed Karelia before the new year. Because this provided the Axis Central Power member, the Kingdom of Finland with all the land they claimed from the Soviet Union in the east, Mannerheim proudly declared the Kingdom of Greater Finland to be reunited once again. Across Lake Ladoga, the Swir River, Lake Onega and the Stalin Canal (now renamed the Mannerheim Canal) the Finish Army started to build fortifications, bunkers and artillery positions to from now on hold onto the land they had captured, while the German forces in Greater Finland would continue to support the offensive against the Soviet Union to reestablish the Russian Empire. This conquest also meant that Leningrad (St. Petersburg) was now surrounded by Finnish, German and Baltic forces, unable to receive any Soviet supplies and reinforcements to help them during their siege and battle.
In central Finland the German-Finnish advance on the Murmansk railway had been resumed at Kayraly. A large encirclement from the north and the south trapped the defending Soviet corps and allowed XXXVI Corps to advance further to the east. In early-September it reached the old 1939 Soviet border fortifications. On 6 September the first defense line at the Voyta River was breached, but further attacks against the main line at the Verman River failed. With Northern German Army in Finland pushed a second time with greater numbers and captured beachheads across the river. Further south, the Finnish III Corps launched a new offensive towards the Murmansk railway on 30 October, bolstered by fresh reinforcements from the German Army in Finland. Against Soviet resistance, it was able to come within 30 km (19 mi) of the railway, when the Finnish High Command ordered a stop to all offensive operations in the sector on 17 November. The United States of America applied diplomatic pressure on Finland to not disrupt Allied aid shipments to the Soviet Union, but the Finnish government ignored to halt the advance on the Murmansk railway and managed to take it together with German forces. The German-Finnish effort in central and northern Finland continued mostly because of the German forces at first, but the Finnish continued their assault when the Germans told them their new Axis Central Powers state of the reborn Russian Empire would stay in control of eastern Karelia if the Finnish Army stayed in a purely defensive position across their old border before the Winter War.
Germany had pressured Finland to enlarge its offensive activities in Karelia to aid the Germans in their Leningrad operation. Finnish attacks on Leningrad itself remained limited. Finland stopped its advance just short of Leningrad and had no intentions to attack the city. The situation was different in eastern Karelia. The Finnish government under Mannerheim quickly agreed to restart its offensive into Soviet Karelia to reach Lake Onega and the Svir River. On 4 September this new drive was launched on a broad front. Albeit reinforced by fresh reserve troops, heavy losses elsewhere on the front meant that the Soviet defenders of the 7th Army were not able to resist the Finnish advance. Olonets was taken on 5 September. On 7 September, Finnish forward units reached the Svir River. Petrozavodsk, the capital city of the region fell on 1 October. From there the Army of Karelia moved north along the shores of Lake Onega to secure the remaining area west of Lake Onega, while simultaneously establishing a defensive position along the Svir River. Slowed by winter's onset they nevertheless continued to advance slowly during the following weeks. Medvezhyegorsk was captured on 5 December and Poventsa fell the next day. On 7 December Finland called a stop to all offensive operations, going onto the defensive. With Pojanole an Murmansk falling and nearly all of the rest of the Kola Peninsula being cut off, the German/Finnish forces captured the important Murmansk naval yard and the Iron resources east of the Murmans railroad an forces the Red Army to evacuate it's remaining forces on the now cut off Kola Peninsula across the White Sea, leaving man heavy equipment behind.
With the northern an southern lank now secured, the central Finnish and German forces pushed east towards the White Sea and captured Soroka on 19 December, reaching the Stalin Canal and the Oneg See in the south on 21 December and effectively forcing the Soviet Red Army out of all of Finish claimed Karelia before the new year. Because this provided the Axis Central Power member, the Kingdom of Finland with all the land they claimed from the Soviet Union in the east, Mannerheim proudly declared the Kingdom of Greater Finland to be reunited once again. Across Lake Ladoga, the Swir River, Lake Onega and the Stalin Canal (now renamed the Mannerheim Canal) the Finish Army started to build fortifications, bunkers and artillery positions to from now on hold onto the land they had captured, while the German forces in Greater Finland would continue to support the offensive against the Soviet Union to reestablish the Russian Empire. This conquest also meant that Leningrad (St. Petersburg) was now surrounded by Finnish, German and Baltic forces, unable to receive any Soviet supplies and reinforcements to help them during their siege and battle.
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Chapter 152: The Crusade – Proclamation of the Russian Empire in the liberated St. Petersburg
Chapter 152: The Crusade – Proclamation of the Russian Empire in the liberated St. Petersburg
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Battle and Libration of St. Petersburg, was a destructive batle undertaken from the south by the German Amy Group North, the Finnish Army, the United Baltic Duchy Landswehr Army, the Fascist French Legion and the Spanish Blue Divison in the north, against Leningrad, in the Eastern Front theater of the Second Great War. The siege started on 8 September 1941, when the last road to the city was severed. Although the Soviets tried to open a narrow land corridor to the city, they failed and the siege was not lifted until the Axis Central Powers managed to take Leningrad and rename it St. Petersburg one again. Leningrad's capture was one of three strategic goals in the German Crusade in the East and the main target of Army Group North. The strategy was motivated by Leningrad's political status as the former capital of Russia and the symbolic capital of the Russian Revolution, its military importance as a main base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, and its industrial strength, housing numerous arms factories. By 1939, the city was responsible for 11% of all Soviet industrial output. The German plans for Leningrad, including renaming the city St. Petersburg once again and making it the capital of the new reborn Russian Empire that would fight alongside the Axis Cental Powers, making troops free for the Middle East of support a attack on British India.
Army Group North under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad, its primary objective. Von Leeb's plan called for capturing the city on the move, supported by the 4th Panzer Group, but before doing so, von Leeb had to lay the city under siege at first, after reaching the shores of Lake Ladoga, manaig to complete the encirclement and reaching the Finnish Army under Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim waiting at the Svir River, east of Leningrad. Finnish and German military forces were north and east of Leningrad, while Baltic and German forces occupied territories to the south. Both Axis Central Power forces had the goal of encircling Leningrad and maintaining the blockade perimeter, thus cutting off all communication with the city and preventing the defenders from receiving any supplies. The Germans then planned to attack the city after a few weeks that were supposed to starve out and weaken the defenders. On Thursday, 27 June 1941, the Council of Deputies of the Leningrad administration organized "First response groups" of civilians. In the next days, Leningrad's civilian population was informed of the danger and over a million citizens were mobilized for the construction of fortifications. Several lines of defences were built along the city's perimeter to repulse hostile forces approaching from north and south by means of civilian resistance. In the south, the fortified line was planned ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudovo, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo and then through the Neva River. Another line of defense passed through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushy. In the north the defensive line against the Finns, the Karelian Fortified Region, had been maintained in Leningrad's northern suburbs since the 1930s, and was now returned to service. A total of 306 km (190 mi) of timber barricades, 635 km (395 mi) of wire entanglements, 700 km (430 mi) of anti-tank ditches, 5,000 earth-and-timber emplacements and reinforced concrete weapon emplacements and 25,000 km (16,000 mi) of open trenches were constructed or excavated by civilians. Even the guns from the cruiser Aurora were moved inland to the Pulkovo Heights to the south of Leningrad.
The 4th Panzer Group from the United Baltic Duchy took Pskov following a swift advance and managed to reach Novgorod. The Soviet defenders fought to the death, despite the German discovery of the Soviet defense plans on an officer's corpse. After the capture of Novgorod, General Hoepner's 4th Panzer Group continued its progress towards Leningrad, becoming a main part of the siege and later battle. At the same time, the 18th Army, despite some 350,000 men lagging behind, forced its way to Ostrov and Pskov after the Soviet troops of the Northwestern Front retreated towards Leningrad. After both Ostrov and Pskov were captured and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where advance toward Leningrad continued from the Luga River line. This had the effect of creating siege positions from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, with the result of isolating Leningrad from all directions. The Finnish Army then advanced along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga.
On 23 August, the Northern Front was divided into the Leningrad Front and the Karelian Front, as it became impossible for front headquarters to control everything between Murmansk and Leningrad. Ten volunteer opolcheniye divisions were formed in Leningrad in the first three months of the war, as well as 16 separate artillery and machine-gun opolcheniye battalions.
On 6 August, the German Emperor ordered: "Leningrad first, Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third." From August 1941 onward, anything that happened between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen concerned the Imperial German Army's Leningrad siege operations. Arctic convoys using the Northern Sea Route delivered American Land-Lease and British food and war materiel supplies to the Murmansk railhead (although the rail link to Leningrad was cut off by Finnish armies just north of the city), as well as several other locations in Lapland until the Finish and German forces captured the city and the pennsula.
Finnish intelligence had broken some of the Soviet military codes and read their low-level communications. This was particularly helpful for the Axis Central Powers, who requested intelligence information about Leningrad before the main attack. Finland's role in the Eastern Crusade was laid out in the attack orders, "The mass of the Finnish army will have the task, in accordance with the advance made by the northern wing of the German armies, of tying up maximum Soviet strength by attacking to the west, or on both sides, of Lake Ladoga". The last rail connection to Leningrad was severed on 30 August, when the Germans reached the Neva River. On 8 September, the road to the besieged city was severed when the Germans reached Lake Ladoga at Shlisselburg, completely surrounding the besieged city. Bombing on 8 September caused 178 fires.
On 21 September, German High Command considered how to completely conquer Leningrad. Taking it also meant that from there on the Axis Central Powers would become responsible for food supply of the huge population. The resolution was to lay the city under siege and bombardment, starving part of its population and the enemy army to break their will to fight. The original plan was to: "Early next year , we enter the city and use it as the new capital of the Russian Empire." On 7 October, the German Emperor ordered Army Group North to directly assault and capture the city, because the German advance was so fast and beyond the planned schedule. By August 1941, the Finnish and Germans advanced to within 20 km of the northern suburbs of Leningrad at the 1939 Finnish-Soviet border, threatening the city from the north; they were also advancing through East Karelia, east of Lake Ladoga, and threatening the city from the east. The Finnish and German forces crossed the pre-Winter War border on the Karelian Istmus by eliminating Soviet forces at Beloostrov and Kirjasalo, thus straightening the frontline so that it ran along the old border near the shores of Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and those positions closest to Leningrad still lying on the pre-Winter War border. The Finnish and German advance was stopped in September through resistance by the Karelian Fortified Region however, German and Finnish troops continued to advance until all of Karelia was occupied by the Axis Central Power forces.
The Finns themselves at first did little to contribute to the later direct Battle for Leningrad, but focussed mostly to maintaining their own defense lines. Their headquarters and that of the Pro-Axis Central Powers Russian Empire in Exile rejected German pleas for aerial attacks against Leningrad and the Finnish Army did not advance farther south from the Svir River in occupied East Karelia (160 kilometres northeast of Leningrad), which they had reached on 7 September. In the southeast, the Germans and United Baltic forces captured Tikhvin on 8 November and complete their encirclement of Leningrad by advancing further north to join with the Germans and Finns at the Svir River. On 9 December, a counter-attack of the Volkhov Front forced the Imperial German Army to retreat from their Tikhvin positions in the River Volkhov line for a few weeks, before their own counter-attack recaptured the position.
On 6 September 1941, Germany's Supreme Kommander, the German Emperor himself visited Helsinki. His main goal was to persuade Mannerheim to continue the offensive alongside the German Army. In 1941 Mannerheim declared to the Finnish Parliament and Public that the aim of the war was to restore the territories lost during the Winter War and gain more territories in the east in Karelia to create a "Greater Finland". The Germans aimed the Finnish soldiers at crossing the old border and continuing the offensive to Leningrad. Mannerheim and Minister of Defense Walden agreed to continue the offensive and participate in the Battle of Leningrad, otherwise Karelia would remain a part of the soon to be re-established Russian Empire. The main problem was that there was no systematic shelling or bombing from the Finnish positions and the German shelling from the north was uncoordinated with the later Finnish Army assault. Mannerheim himself had spent most of his career in the Imperial Russian Army stationed at old St. Petersburg and was eager to take the city alongside it's Axis Central Power allies if it promised to get Karelia for Greater Finland. The proximity of the Finnish border, 33–35 km (21–22 mi) from downtown Leningrad and the threat of a Finnish attack complicated the defense of the city. At one point, the defending Front Commander, Popov, could not release reserves opposing the Finnish forces to be deployed against the Imperial German Army because they were needed to bolster the 23rd Army's defences on the Karelian Isthmus. Mannerheim stopped the offensive on 31 August 1941, when the army had reached the 1939 border to reorganize and resupply the Finnish forces. Popov felt relieved, and redeployed two divisions to the German sector of his front on 5 September. Subsequently, the Finnish forces reduced the Soviet pockets of Beloostov and Kirjasalo, which had threatened their positions at the sea coast and south of the River Vuoksi. The Germans, Finnish and Baltic forces now completely surrounded and starved the defenders of Leningrad in preparations of their final attack on the former Russian capital city.
The Leningrad Front (initially the Leningrad Military District) was commanded by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. It included the 23rd Army in the northern sector between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and the 48th Army in the western sector between the Gulf of Finland and the Slutsk- Maloschuika position. The Leningrad Fortified Region, the Leningrad garrison, the Baltic Fleet forces, and Slutsk–Maloschuikaoperational groups (including the former Karelia Army) were also present.
Before the war Leningrad had a population of 3,103,000 and 3,385,000 counting the suburbs. As many as 643,129, including 314,148 children were evacuated since 29 June 1941 and the start of the battle. They were moved to the Volga area, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan to stay far away from the main front as the Soviets believed to stop the Axis Central Power advance. By September 1941, the link with the Volkhov Front (commanded byKirill Meretskov) was severed and the defensive sectors were held by four armies: 23rd Army in the northern sector, 42nd Army on the western sector, 55th Army on the southern sector, and the 67th Army on the eastern sector. The 8th Army of the Volkhov Front had the responsibility of maintaining the logistic route to the city and attempted a few unsuccessful breakthroughs to relieve the besieged defenders . Air cover for the city was provided by the Leningrad military district PVO Corps and Baltic Fleet naval aviation units. The defensive operation to protect the many civilian evacuees was part of the Leningrad counter-siege operations under the command of Andrei Zhdanov, Kliment Voroshilov and Aleksei Kuznetsov. Additional military operations were carried out in coordination with Baltic Fleet naval forces under the general command of Admiral Vladimir Tributs. The Ladoga Flotilla under the command of V. Baranovsky, S.V. Zemlyanichenko, P.A. Traynin, and B.V. Khoroshikhin also played a major military role in helping with evacuation some of the civilians.
By Monday, 8 September, German forces had surrounded the city, cutting off all supply routes to Leningrad and its suburbs. Unable to press home their offensive, and facing defences of the city the Axis Central Powers armies laid siege to the city. The air attack of Friday, 19 September was particularly brutal. It was the heaviest air raid Leningrad would suffer during the war, as 276 German Empire and United Baltic Duchy bombers hit the city killing over 1,000 civilians. Many of those killed were recuperating from battle wounds in hospitals that were hit by German bombs. Six air raids occurred that day. Five hospitals were damaged in the bombing, as well as the city's largest shopping bazaar. Hundreds of people had run from the street into the store to take shelter from the air raid.
The Artillery bombardment of Leningrad began in August 1941, increasing with the arrival of new equipment until the begin of the Battle for Leningrad. Even Torpedoes were used for night bombings by the Imperial German Air Force. Against this, the Soviet Baltic Fleet Navy aviation made over 20,000 air missions to support their military operations during the siege. German shelling and bombing killed 2,723 and wounded 17,507 civilians in Leningrad during the siege and later battle. To sustain the defense of the city, it was vitally important for the Red Army to establish a route for bringing a constant flow of supplies into Leningrad, but they failed to do so. The security of the supply route could not be ensured by the Ladoga Flotilla, the Leningrad PVO Corps, and route security troops when the German and Finish troops advanced and cut of the vital food, ammunition and equipment supply line into Leningrad. The route was additionally also used to evacuate civilians from the besieged city, whenever the supply trains, ships and trucks returned until the Germans cut of the route. This was because no evacuation plan had been made available in the chaos of the first winter of the war, and the city was nearly completely isolated until the main German assault.
The siege after the surrounding of Leningrad and the actual Battle of Leningrad/ St. Petersburg took three full months until the Axis Central Powers had defended the remaining Soviet and Red Army defenders, or Bolshevik Partisans. Because of the incoming Winter and the destruction of most buildings and shelters many more died additionally to the cold then to starvation and fighting alone. The German Tanks proved to be at a disadvantage during the battle and many houses had to be captured by infantry and were used by the Soviet Red Army as little defense positions and fortifications against the invading Axis Central Powers. The Soviet Baltic Fleet tried to evacuate as many soldiers, equipment and civilians from the city as possible during the siege, but their partly successfull breaktrought in the Baltic Sea led to many ships being sunk by the Axis Central Powers ships, mines or coastal artillery, before they were able to escape into the North Sea and the Atlantic.
In the end the Axis Central Powers managed to take Leningrad on 12 December 1941, with the help of the Russian Liberation Army. The Germans then drove the exiled Vladimir to Leningrad in a armored train, on exactly the same road they had used to transport Lenin there over twenty years before. While up to 45,254 Axis Central Powers soldiers and up to 1,247,621 Soviet Red Army soldiers/ partisans and 923,143 civilians corpses were still rotting all over the city and it's outsides, the Axis Central Powers held a huge victory parade in celebration of their first established main goal during the Eastern Crusade in the renamed St. Petersburg. The victory parade was led by the Russian Liberation Army, followed by the Imperial German Army and other Axis Central Powers forces. It ended in the most important point of the Eastern Crusade; the proclamation of new Tsar Vladimir that from this day onward the Russian Empire would be recreated and the evil Soviet state and organizations were banned. Soviet and Bolshevik collaborators were imprisoned or shot and the old, hated Soviet and Russian systems and ideas were thrown out of the window. The Soviet planned economy, collective farming (collective kolkhozes and state sovkhozes farms) and centralized administrative planning would be a thing of the past as would the Kulaks and other outdated models and ideas. Tsar Vladimir promised that his new Russian Empire would be lead as a mixture of National Monarchism and Fascist Monarchism, creating a Democratic Fascist Monarchism or Democratic National Royalism state and a Constitutional Monarchic Empire with partly Republic elements. Under him Tsar Vladimir, the State Duma that was dissolved during the Russian Revolution in 1917 would be reestablished as local city and province political bodies, while the State Duma or Imperial Duma would house both, the State Council (elected legislative made up by the city and province council representatives) the Governing Senate (elected judicature council of Ministers and Senators). They together with the Supreme Procurator Council of the Russian Orthodox Church) would together with the new government departments (collegia) for different affairs help the reestablished Tsardom (executive) rule the new Russian Empire for Tsar Vladimir from St. Petersburg from now on. This new regime opposing the Soviets and Stalin created some debate inside the Allies what of the two governments would be more legitimate (they were split over the issue, like in China before) and it was hard to sell the public that this new, partly democratic and republican Tsardom was more evil and less benevolent and progressive then the Soviet Union it fought. The Allied (mostly British Empire and American) support for the Soviets caused massive Anti-Allied, Anti-British and Anti-American anger protests and boycotts inside most of Axis Central Powers Monarchistic Europe and their Economic Union. The anger and hate the Americans and British created with their support was especially great in the Kingdom of Ukrainia, where the Holodomor was still freshly remmbered. In the end Tsar Vladimir was not as totalitarian as the Soviets or the Romanovs before him, but his new Russian Empire was simply no true democratic republic and constitutional monarchy either.
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Battle and Libration of St. Petersburg, was a destructive batle undertaken from the south by the German Amy Group North, the Finnish Army, the United Baltic Duchy Landswehr Army, the Fascist French Legion and the Spanish Blue Divison in the north, against Leningrad, in the Eastern Front theater of the Second Great War. The siege started on 8 September 1941, when the last road to the city was severed. Although the Soviets tried to open a narrow land corridor to the city, they failed and the siege was not lifted until the Axis Central Powers managed to take Leningrad and rename it St. Petersburg one again. Leningrad's capture was one of three strategic goals in the German Crusade in the East and the main target of Army Group North. The strategy was motivated by Leningrad's political status as the former capital of Russia and the symbolic capital of the Russian Revolution, its military importance as a main base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, and its industrial strength, housing numerous arms factories. By 1939, the city was responsible for 11% of all Soviet industrial output. The German plans for Leningrad, including renaming the city St. Petersburg once again and making it the capital of the new reborn Russian Empire that would fight alongside the Axis Cental Powers, making troops free for the Middle East of support a attack on British India.
Army Group North under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad, its primary objective. Von Leeb's plan called for capturing the city on the move, supported by the 4th Panzer Group, but before doing so, von Leeb had to lay the city under siege at first, after reaching the shores of Lake Ladoga, manaig to complete the encirclement and reaching the Finnish Army under Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim waiting at the Svir River, east of Leningrad. Finnish and German military forces were north and east of Leningrad, while Baltic and German forces occupied territories to the south. Both Axis Central Power forces had the goal of encircling Leningrad and maintaining the blockade perimeter, thus cutting off all communication with the city and preventing the defenders from receiving any supplies. The Germans then planned to attack the city after a few weeks that were supposed to starve out and weaken the defenders. On Thursday, 27 June 1941, the Council of Deputies of the Leningrad administration organized "First response groups" of civilians. In the next days, Leningrad's civilian population was informed of the danger and over a million citizens were mobilized for the construction of fortifications. Several lines of defences were built along the city's perimeter to repulse hostile forces approaching from north and south by means of civilian resistance. In the south, the fortified line was planned ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudovo, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo and then through the Neva River. Another line of defense passed through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushy. In the north the defensive line against the Finns, the Karelian Fortified Region, had been maintained in Leningrad's northern suburbs since the 1930s, and was now returned to service. A total of 306 km (190 mi) of timber barricades, 635 km (395 mi) of wire entanglements, 700 km (430 mi) of anti-tank ditches, 5,000 earth-and-timber emplacements and reinforced concrete weapon emplacements and 25,000 km (16,000 mi) of open trenches were constructed or excavated by civilians. Even the guns from the cruiser Aurora were moved inland to the Pulkovo Heights to the south of Leningrad.
The 4th Panzer Group from the United Baltic Duchy took Pskov following a swift advance and managed to reach Novgorod. The Soviet defenders fought to the death, despite the German discovery of the Soviet defense plans on an officer's corpse. After the capture of Novgorod, General Hoepner's 4th Panzer Group continued its progress towards Leningrad, becoming a main part of the siege and later battle. At the same time, the 18th Army, despite some 350,000 men lagging behind, forced its way to Ostrov and Pskov after the Soviet troops of the Northwestern Front retreated towards Leningrad. After both Ostrov and Pskov were captured and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where advance toward Leningrad continued from the Luga River line. This had the effect of creating siege positions from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, with the result of isolating Leningrad from all directions. The Finnish Army then advanced along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga.
On 23 August, the Northern Front was divided into the Leningrad Front and the Karelian Front, as it became impossible for front headquarters to control everything between Murmansk and Leningrad. Ten volunteer opolcheniye divisions were formed in Leningrad in the first three months of the war, as well as 16 separate artillery and machine-gun opolcheniye battalions.
On 6 August, the German Emperor ordered: "Leningrad first, Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third." From August 1941 onward, anything that happened between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen concerned the Imperial German Army's Leningrad siege operations. Arctic convoys using the Northern Sea Route delivered American Land-Lease and British food and war materiel supplies to the Murmansk railhead (although the rail link to Leningrad was cut off by Finnish armies just north of the city), as well as several other locations in Lapland until the Finish and German forces captured the city and the pennsula.
Finnish intelligence had broken some of the Soviet military codes and read their low-level communications. This was particularly helpful for the Axis Central Powers, who requested intelligence information about Leningrad before the main attack. Finland's role in the Eastern Crusade was laid out in the attack orders, "The mass of the Finnish army will have the task, in accordance with the advance made by the northern wing of the German armies, of tying up maximum Soviet strength by attacking to the west, or on both sides, of Lake Ladoga". The last rail connection to Leningrad was severed on 30 August, when the Germans reached the Neva River. On 8 September, the road to the besieged city was severed when the Germans reached Lake Ladoga at Shlisselburg, completely surrounding the besieged city. Bombing on 8 September caused 178 fires.
On 21 September, German High Command considered how to completely conquer Leningrad. Taking it also meant that from there on the Axis Central Powers would become responsible for food supply of the huge population. The resolution was to lay the city under siege and bombardment, starving part of its population and the enemy army to break their will to fight. The original plan was to: "Early next year , we enter the city and use it as the new capital of the Russian Empire." On 7 October, the German Emperor ordered Army Group North to directly assault and capture the city, because the German advance was so fast and beyond the planned schedule. By August 1941, the Finnish and Germans advanced to within 20 km of the northern suburbs of Leningrad at the 1939 Finnish-Soviet border, threatening the city from the north; they were also advancing through East Karelia, east of Lake Ladoga, and threatening the city from the east. The Finnish and German forces crossed the pre-Winter War border on the Karelian Istmus by eliminating Soviet forces at Beloostrov and Kirjasalo, thus straightening the frontline so that it ran along the old border near the shores of Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and those positions closest to Leningrad still lying on the pre-Winter War border. The Finnish and German advance was stopped in September through resistance by the Karelian Fortified Region however, German and Finnish troops continued to advance until all of Karelia was occupied by the Axis Central Power forces.
The Finns themselves at first did little to contribute to the later direct Battle for Leningrad, but focussed mostly to maintaining their own defense lines. Their headquarters and that of the Pro-Axis Central Powers Russian Empire in Exile rejected German pleas for aerial attacks against Leningrad and the Finnish Army did not advance farther south from the Svir River in occupied East Karelia (160 kilometres northeast of Leningrad), which they had reached on 7 September. In the southeast, the Germans and United Baltic forces captured Tikhvin on 8 November and complete their encirclement of Leningrad by advancing further north to join with the Germans and Finns at the Svir River. On 9 December, a counter-attack of the Volkhov Front forced the Imperial German Army to retreat from their Tikhvin positions in the River Volkhov line for a few weeks, before their own counter-attack recaptured the position.
On 6 September 1941, Germany's Supreme Kommander, the German Emperor himself visited Helsinki. His main goal was to persuade Mannerheim to continue the offensive alongside the German Army. In 1941 Mannerheim declared to the Finnish Parliament and Public that the aim of the war was to restore the territories lost during the Winter War and gain more territories in the east in Karelia to create a "Greater Finland". The Germans aimed the Finnish soldiers at crossing the old border and continuing the offensive to Leningrad. Mannerheim and Minister of Defense Walden agreed to continue the offensive and participate in the Battle of Leningrad, otherwise Karelia would remain a part of the soon to be re-established Russian Empire. The main problem was that there was no systematic shelling or bombing from the Finnish positions and the German shelling from the north was uncoordinated with the later Finnish Army assault. Mannerheim himself had spent most of his career in the Imperial Russian Army stationed at old St. Petersburg and was eager to take the city alongside it's Axis Central Power allies if it promised to get Karelia for Greater Finland. The proximity of the Finnish border, 33–35 km (21–22 mi) from downtown Leningrad and the threat of a Finnish attack complicated the defense of the city. At one point, the defending Front Commander, Popov, could not release reserves opposing the Finnish forces to be deployed against the Imperial German Army because they were needed to bolster the 23rd Army's defences on the Karelian Isthmus. Mannerheim stopped the offensive on 31 August 1941, when the army had reached the 1939 border to reorganize and resupply the Finnish forces. Popov felt relieved, and redeployed two divisions to the German sector of his front on 5 September. Subsequently, the Finnish forces reduced the Soviet pockets of Beloostov and Kirjasalo, which had threatened their positions at the sea coast and south of the River Vuoksi. The Germans, Finnish and Baltic forces now completely surrounded and starved the defenders of Leningrad in preparations of their final attack on the former Russian capital city.
The Leningrad Front (initially the Leningrad Military District) was commanded by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. It included the 23rd Army in the northern sector between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and the 48th Army in the western sector between the Gulf of Finland and the Slutsk- Maloschuika position. The Leningrad Fortified Region, the Leningrad garrison, the Baltic Fleet forces, and Slutsk–Maloschuikaoperational groups (including the former Karelia Army) were also present.
Before the war Leningrad had a population of 3,103,000 and 3,385,000 counting the suburbs. As many as 643,129, including 314,148 children were evacuated since 29 June 1941 and the start of the battle. They were moved to the Volga area, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan to stay far away from the main front as the Soviets believed to stop the Axis Central Power advance. By September 1941, the link with the Volkhov Front (commanded byKirill Meretskov) was severed and the defensive sectors were held by four armies: 23rd Army in the northern sector, 42nd Army on the western sector, 55th Army on the southern sector, and the 67th Army on the eastern sector. The 8th Army of the Volkhov Front had the responsibility of maintaining the logistic route to the city and attempted a few unsuccessful breakthroughs to relieve the besieged defenders . Air cover for the city was provided by the Leningrad military district PVO Corps and Baltic Fleet naval aviation units. The defensive operation to protect the many civilian evacuees was part of the Leningrad counter-siege operations under the command of Andrei Zhdanov, Kliment Voroshilov and Aleksei Kuznetsov. Additional military operations were carried out in coordination with Baltic Fleet naval forces under the general command of Admiral Vladimir Tributs. The Ladoga Flotilla under the command of V. Baranovsky, S.V. Zemlyanichenko, P.A. Traynin, and B.V. Khoroshikhin also played a major military role in helping with evacuation some of the civilians.
By Monday, 8 September, German forces had surrounded the city, cutting off all supply routes to Leningrad and its suburbs. Unable to press home their offensive, and facing defences of the city the Axis Central Powers armies laid siege to the city. The air attack of Friday, 19 September was particularly brutal. It was the heaviest air raid Leningrad would suffer during the war, as 276 German Empire and United Baltic Duchy bombers hit the city killing over 1,000 civilians. Many of those killed were recuperating from battle wounds in hospitals that were hit by German bombs. Six air raids occurred that day. Five hospitals were damaged in the bombing, as well as the city's largest shopping bazaar. Hundreds of people had run from the street into the store to take shelter from the air raid.
The Artillery bombardment of Leningrad began in August 1941, increasing with the arrival of new equipment until the begin of the Battle for Leningrad. Even Torpedoes were used for night bombings by the Imperial German Air Force. Against this, the Soviet Baltic Fleet Navy aviation made over 20,000 air missions to support their military operations during the siege. German shelling and bombing killed 2,723 and wounded 17,507 civilians in Leningrad during the siege and later battle. To sustain the defense of the city, it was vitally important for the Red Army to establish a route for bringing a constant flow of supplies into Leningrad, but they failed to do so. The security of the supply route could not be ensured by the Ladoga Flotilla, the Leningrad PVO Corps, and route security troops when the German and Finish troops advanced and cut of the vital food, ammunition and equipment supply line into Leningrad. The route was additionally also used to evacuate civilians from the besieged city, whenever the supply trains, ships and trucks returned until the Germans cut of the route. This was because no evacuation plan had been made available in the chaos of the first winter of the war, and the city was nearly completely isolated until the main German assault.
The siege after the surrounding of Leningrad and the actual Battle of Leningrad/ St. Petersburg took three full months until the Axis Central Powers had defended the remaining Soviet and Red Army defenders, or Bolshevik Partisans. Because of the incoming Winter and the destruction of most buildings and shelters many more died additionally to the cold then to starvation and fighting alone. The German Tanks proved to be at a disadvantage during the battle and many houses had to be captured by infantry and were used by the Soviet Red Army as little defense positions and fortifications against the invading Axis Central Powers. The Soviet Baltic Fleet tried to evacuate as many soldiers, equipment and civilians from the city as possible during the siege, but their partly successfull breaktrought in the Baltic Sea led to many ships being sunk by the Axis Central Powers ships, mines or coastal artillery, before they were able to escape into the North Sea and the Atlantic.
In the end the Axis Central Powers managed to take Leningrad on 12 December 1941, with the help of the Russian Liberation Army. The Germans then drove the exiled Vladimir to Leningrad in a armored train, on exactly the same road they had used to transport Lenin there over twenty years before. While up to 45,254 Axis Central Powers soldiers and up to 1,247,621 Soviet Red Army soldiers/ partisans and 923,143 civilians corpses were still rotting all over the city and it's outsides, the Axis Central Powers held a huge victory parade in celebration of their first established main goal during the Eastern Crusade in the renamed St. Petersburg. The victory parade was led by the Russian Liberation Army, followed by the Imperial German Army and other Axis Central Powers forces. It ended in the most important point of the Eastern Crusade; the proclamation of new Tsar Vladimir that from this day onward the Russian Empire would be recreated and the evil Soviet state and organizations were banned. Soviet and Bolshevik collaborators were imprisoned or shot and the old, hated Soviet and Russian systems and ideas were thrown out of the window. The Soviet planned economy, collective farming (collective kolkhozes and state sovkhozes farms) and centralized administrative planning would be a thing of the past as would the Kulaks and other outdated models and ideas. Tsar Vladimir promised that his new Russian Empire would be lead as a mixture of National Monarchism and Fascist Monarchism, creating a Democratic Fascist Monarchism or Democratic National Royalism state and a Constitutional Monarchic Empire with partly Republic elements. Under him Tsar Vladimir, the State Duma that was dissolved during the Russian Revolution in 1917 would be reestablished as local city and province political bodies, while the State Duma or Imperial Duma would house both, the State Council (elected legislative made up by the city and province council representatives) the Governing Senate (elected judicature council of Ministers and Senators). They together with the Supreme Procurator Council of the Russian Orthodox Church) would together with the new government departments (collegia) for different affairs help the reestablished Tsardom (executive) rule the new Russian Empire for Tsar Vladimir from St. Petersburg from now on. This new regime opposing the Soviets and Stalin created some debate inside the Allies what of the two governments would be more legitimate (they were split over the issue, like in China before) and it was hard to sell the public that this new, partly democratic and republican Tsardom was more evil and less benevolent and progressive then the Soviet Union it fought. The Allied (mostly British Empire and American) support for the Soviets caused massive Anti-Allied, Anti-British and Anti-American anger protests and boycotts inside most of Axis Central Powers Monarchistic Europe and their Economic Union. The anger and hate the Americans and British created with their support was especially great in the Kingdom of Ukrainia, where the Holodomor was still freshly remmbered. In the end Tsar Vladimir was not as totalitarian as the Soviets or the Romanovs before him, but his new Russian Empire was simply no true democratic republic and constitutional monarchy either.
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Боже, Царя храни!
Translation: God, save the Tsar!
I think the Japanese would also be significantly sympathetic and supportive to the new Tsar. Aside from being allies, and despite Japanese ambitions in the Soviet/Russian Far East, many Japanese leaders both military and otherwise were especially horrified at the regicide of the previous Tsar and his family, and would contribute to Japanese hatred for the Soviet regime.
On another note...depending on how things go, and quite likely in my opinion, the European Axis have won. Unless the Allies can get to Berlin before the Tsarist regime can take control of the Russian heartland i.e. European Russia, then the Axis now have the manpower, resources, and industry to hold out against British and American attack. And with Allied public opinion already split on the war, I doubt measures like strategic bombing much less nuclear attack would be accepted by the general public.
Translation: God, save the Tsar!
I think the Japanese would also be significantly sympathetic and supportive to the new Tsar. Aside from being allies, and despite Japanese ambitions in the Soviet/Russian Far East, many Japanese leaders both military and otherwise were especially horrified at the regicide of the previous Tsar and his family, and would contribute to Japanese hatred for the Soviet regime.
On another note...depending on how things go, and quite likely in my opinion, the European Axis have won. Unless the Allies can get to Berlin before the Tsarist regime can take control of the Russian heartland i.e. European Russia, then the Axis now have the manpower, resources, and industry to hold out against British and American attack. And with Allied public opinion already split on the war, I doubt measures like strategic bombing much less nuclear attack would be accepted by the general public.
The Crusade – Proclamation of the Russian Empire in the liberated St. Petersburg
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Battle and Libration of St. Petersburg, was a destructive batle undertaken from the south by the German Amy Group North, the Finnish Army, the United Baltic Duchy Landswehr Army, the Fascist French Legion and the Spanish Blue Divison in the north, against Leningrad, in the Eastern Front theater of the Second Great War. The siege started on 8 September 1941, when the last road to the city was severed. Although the Soviets tried to open a narrow land corridor to the city, they failed and the siege was not lifted until the Axis Central Powers managed to take Leningrad and rename it St. Petersburg one again. Leningrad's capture was one of three strategic goals in the German Crusade in the East and the main target of Army Group North. The strategy was motivated by Leningrad's political status as the former capital of Russia and the symbolic capital of the Russian Revolution, its military importance as a main base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, and its industrial strength, housing numerous arms factories. By 1939, the city was responsible for 11% of all Soviet industrial output. The German plans for Leningrad, including renaming the city St. Petersburg once again and making it the capital of the new reborn Russian Empire that would fight alongside the Axis Cental Powers, making troops free for the Middle East of support a attack on British India.
Army Group North under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad, its primary objective. Von Leeb's plan called for capturing the city on the move, supported by the 4th Panzer Group, but before doing so, von Leeb had to lay the city under siege at first, after reaching the shores of Lake Ladoga, manaig to complete the encirclement and reaching the Finnish Army under Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim waiting at the Svir River, east of Leningrad. Finnish and German military forces were north and east of Leningrad, while Baltic and German forces occupied territories to the south. Both Axis Central Power forces had the goal of encircling Leningrad and maintaining the blockade perimeter, thus cutting off all communication with the city and preventing the defenders from receiving any supplies. The Germans then planned to attack the city after a few weeks that were supposed to starve out and weaken the defenders. On Thursday, 27 June 1941, the Council of Deputies of the Leningrad administration organized "First response groups" of civilians. In the next days, Leningrad's civilian population was informed of the danger and over a million citizens were mobilized for the construction of fortifications. Several lines of defences were built along the city's perimeter to repulse hostile forces approaching from north and south by means of civilian resistance. In the south, the fortified line was planned ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudovo, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo and then through the Neva River. Another line of defense passed through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushy. In the north the defensive line against the Finns, the Karelian Fortified Region, had been maintained in Leningrad's northern suburbs since the 1930s, and was now returned to service. A total of 306 km (190 mi) of timber barricades, 635 km (395 mi) of wire entanglements, 700 km (430 mi) of anti-tank ditches, 5,000 earth-and-timber emplacements and reinforced concrete weapon emplacements and 25,000 km (16,000 mi) of open trenches were constructed or excavated by civilians. Even the guns from the cruiser Aurora were moved inland to the Pulkovo Heights to the south of Leningrad.
The 4th Panzer Group from the United Baltic Duchy took Pskov following a swift advance and managed to reach Novgorod. The Soviet defenders fought to the death, despite the German discovery of the Soviet defense plans on an officer's corpse. After the capture of Novgorod, General Hoepner's 4th Panzer Group continued its progress towards Leningrad, becoming a main part of the siege and later battle. At the same time, the 18th Army, despite some 350,000 men lagging behind, forced its way to Ostrov and Pskov after the Soviet troops of the Northwestern Front retreated towards Leningrad. After both Ostrov and Pskov were captured and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where advance toward Leningrad continued from the Luga River line. This had the effect of creating siege positions from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, with the result of isolating Leningrad from all directions. The Finnish Army then advanced along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga.
On 23 August, the Northern Front was divided into the Leningrad Front and the Karelian Front, as it became impossible for front headquarters to control everything between Murmansk and Leningrad. Ten volunteer opolcheniye divisions were formed in Leningrad in the first three months of the war, as well as 16 separate artillery and machine-gun opolcheniye battalions.
On 6 August, the German Emperor ordered: "Leningrad first, Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third." From August 1941 onward, anything that happened between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen concerned the Imperial German Army's Leningrad siege operations. Arctic convoys using the Northern Sea Route delivered American Land-Lease and British food and war materiel supplies to the Murmansk railhead (although the rail link to Leningrad was cut off by Finnish armies just north of the city), as well as several other locations in Lapland until the Finish and German forces captured the city and the pennsula.
Finnish intelligence had broken some of the Soviet military codes and read their low-level communications. This was particularly helpful for the Axis Central Powers, who requested intelligence information about Leningrad before the main attack. Finland's role in the Eastern Crusade was laid out in the attack orders, "The mass of the Finnish army will have the task, in accordance with the advance made by the northern wing of the German armies, of tying up maximum Soviet strength by attacking to the west, or on both sides, of Lake Ladoga". The last rail connection to Leningrad was severed on 30 August, when the Germans reached the Neva River. On 8 September, the road to the besieged city was severed when the Germans reached Lake Ladoga at Shlisselburg, completely surrounding the besieged city. Bombing on 8 September caused 178 fires.
On 21 September, German High Command considered how to completely conquer Leningrad. Taking it also meant that from there on the Axis Central Powers would become responsible for food supply of the huge population. The resolution was to lay the city under siege and bombardment, starving part of its population and the enemy army to break their will to fight. The original plan was to: "Early next year , we enter the city and use it as the new capital of the Russian Empire." On 7 October, the German Emperor ordered Army Group North to directly assault and capture the city, because the German advance was so fast and beyond the planned schedule. By August 1941, the Finnish and Germans advanced to within 20 km of the northern suburbs of Leningrad at the 1939 Finnish-Soviet border, threatening the city from the north; they were also advancing through East Karelia, east of Lake Ladoga, and threatening the city from the east. The Finnish and German forces crossed the pre-Winter War border on the Karelian Istmus by eliminating Soviet forces at Beloostrov and Kirjasalo, thus straightening the frontline so that it ran along the old border near the shores of Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and those positions closest to Leningrad still lying on the pre-Winter War border. The Finnish and German advance was stopped in September through resistance by the Karelian Fortified Region however, German and Finnish troops continued to advance until all of Karelia was occupied by the Axis Central Power forces.
The Finns themselves at first did little to contribute to the later direct Battle for Leningrad, but focussed mostly to maintaining their own defense lines. Their headquarters and that of the Pro-Axis Central Powers Russian Empire in Exile rejected German pleas for aerial attacks against Leningrad and the Finnish Army did not advance farther south from the Svir River in occupied East Karelia (160 kilometres northeast of Leningrad), which they had reached on 7 September. In the southeast, the Germans and United Baltic forces captured Tikhvin on 8 November and complete their encirclement of Leningrad by advancing further north to join with the Germans and Finns at the Svir River. On 9 December, a counter-attack of the Volkhov Front forced the Imperial German Army to retreat from their Tikhvin positions in the River Volkhov line for a few weeks, before their own counter-attack recaptured the position.
On 6 September 1941, Germany's Supreme Kommander, the German Emperor himself visited Helsinki. His main goal was to persuade Mannerheim to continue the offensive alongside the German Army. In 1941 Mannerheim declared to the Finnish Parliament and Public that the aim of the war was to restore the territories lost during the Winter War and gain more territories in the east in Karelia to create a "Greater Finland". The Germans aimed the Finnish soldiers at crossing the old border and continuing the offensive to Leningrad. Mannerheim and Minister of Defense Walden agreed to continue the offensive and participate in the Battle of Leningrad, otherwise Karelia would remain a part of the soon to be re-established Russian Empire. The main problem was that there was no systematic shelling or bombing from the Finnish positions and the German shelling from the north was uncoordinated with the later Finnish Army assault. Mannerheim himself had spent most of his career in the Imperial Russian Army stationed at old St. Petersburg and was eager to take the city alongside it's Axis Central Power allies if it promised to get Karelia for Greater Finland. The proximity of the Finnish border, 33–35 km (21–22 mi) from downtown Leningrad and the threat of a Finnish attack complicated the defense of the city. At one point, the defending Front Commander, Popov, could not release reserves opposing the Finnish forces to be deployed against the Imperial German Army because they were needed to bolster the 23rd Army's defences on the Karelian Isthmus. Mannerheim stopped the offensive on 31 August 1941, when the army had reached the 1939 border to reorganize and resupply the Finnish forces. Popov felt relieved, and redeployed two divisions to the German sector of his front on 5 September. Subsequently, the Finnish forces reduced the Soviet pockets of Beloostov and Kirjasalo, which had threatened their positions at the sea coast and south of the River Vuoksi. The Germans, Finnish and Baltic forces now completely surrounded and starved the defenders of Leningrad in preparations of their final attack on the former Russian capital city.
The Leningrad Front (initially the Leningrad Military District) was commanded by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. It included the 23rd Army in the northern sector between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and the 48th Army in the western sector between the Gulf of Finland and the Slutsk- Maloschuika position. The Leningrad Fortified Region, the Leningrad garrison, the Baltic Fleet forces, and Slutsk–Maloschuikaoperational groups (including the former Karelia Army) were also present.
Before the war Leningrad had a population of 3,103,000 and 3,385,000 counting the suburbs. As many as 643,129, including 314,148 children were evacuated since 29 June 1941 and the start of the battle. They were moved to the Volga area, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan to stay far away from the main front as the Soviets believed to stop the Axis Central Power advance. By September 1941, the link with the Volkhov Front (commanded byKirill Meretskov) was severed and the defensive sectors were held by four armies: 23rd Army in the northern sector, 42nd Army on the western sector, 55th Army on the southern sector, and the 67th Army on the eastern sector. The 8th Army of the Volkhov Front had the responsibility of maintaining the logistic route to the city and attempted a few unsuccessful breakthroughs to relieve the besieged defenders . Air cover for the city was provided by the Leningrad military district PVO Corps and Baltic Fleet naval aviation units. The defensive operation to protect the many civilian evacuees was part of the Leningrad counter-siege operations under the command of Andrei Zhdanov, Kliment Voroshilov and Aleksei Kuznetsov. Additional military operations were carried out in coordination with Baltic Fleet naval forces under the general command of Admiral Vladimir Tributs. The Ladoga Flotilla under the command of V. Baranovsky, S.V. Zemlyanichenko, P.A. Traynin, and B.V. Khoroshikhin also played a major military role in helping with evacuation some of the civilians.
By Monday, 8 September, German forces had surrounded the city, cutting off all supply routes to Leningrad and its suburbs. Unable to press home their offensive, and facing defences of the city the Axis Central Powers armies laid siege to the city. The air attack of Friday, 19 September was particularly brutal. It was the heaviest air raid Leningrad would suffer during the war, as 276 German Empire and United Baltic Duchy bombers hit the city killing over 1,000 civilians. Many of those killed were recuperating from battle wounds in hospitals that were hit by German bombs. Six air raids occurred that day. Five hospitals were damaged in the bombing, as well as the city's largest shopping bazaar. Hundreds of people had run from the street into the store to take shelter from the air raid.
The Artillery bombardment of Leningrad began in August 1941, increasing with the arrival of new equipment until the begin of the Battle for Leningrad. Even Torpedoes were used for night bombings by the Imperial German Air Force. Against this, the Soviet Baltic Fleet Navy aviation made over 20,000 air missions to support their military operations during the siege. German shelling and bombing killed 2,723 and wounded 17,507 civilians in Leningrad during the siege and later battle. To sustain the defense of the city, it was vitally important for the Red Army to establish a route for bringing a constant flow of supplies into Leningrad, but they failed to do so. The security of the supply route could not be ensured by the Ladoga Flotilla, the Leningrad PVO Corps, and route security troops when the German and Finish troops advanced and cut of the vital food, ammunition and equipment supply line into Leningrad. The route was additionally also used to evacuate civilians from the besieged city, whenever the supply trains, ships and trucks returned until the Germans cut of the route. This was because no evacuation plan had been made available in the chaos of the first winter of the war, and the city was nearly completely isolated until the main German assault.
The siege after the surrounding of Leningrad and the actual Battle of Leningrad/ St. Petersburg took three full months until the Axis Central Powers had defended the remaining Soviet and Red Army defenders, or Bolshevik Partisans. Because of the incoming Winter and the destruction of most buildings and shelters many more died additionally to the cold then to starvation and fighting alone. The German Tanks proved to be at a disadvantage during the battle and many houses had to be captured by infantry and were used by the Soviet Red Army as little defense positions and fortifications against the invading Axis Central Powers.
In the end the Axis Central Powers managed to take Leningrad also with the help of the Russian Liberation Army. The Germans then drove the exiled Vladimir to Leningrad in a armored train, on exactly the same road they had used to transport Lenin there over twenty years before. While up to 45,254 Axis Central Powers soldiers and up to 1,247,621 Soviet Red Army soldiers/ partisans and 923,143 civilians corpses were still rotting all over the city and it's outsides, the Axis Central Powers held a huge victory parade in celebration of their first established main goal during the Eastern Crusade in the renamed St. Petersburg. The victory parade was led by the Russian Liberation Army, followed by the Imperial German Army and other Axis Central Powers forces. It ended in the most important point of the Crusades; the proclamation of new Tsar Vladimir that from this day onward the Russian Empire would be recreated and the evil Soviet state and organizations were banned. Soviet and Bolshevik collaborators were imprisoned or shot and old, hated Soviet and Russian systems and ideas were thrown out of the window. The Soviet planned economy, collective farming (collective kolkhozes and state sovkhozes farms) and centralized administrative planning would be a thing of the past as would the Kulaks and other outdated models and ideas. Tsar Vladimir promised that his new Russian Empire would be lead as a mixture of National Monarchism and Fascist Monarchism, creating a Democratic Fascist Monarchism or Democratic National Royalism state and a Constitutional Monarchic Empire with partly Republic elements. Under him Tsar Vladimir, the State Duma that was dissolved during the Russian Revolution in 1917 would be reestablished as local city and province political bodies, while the State Duma or Imperial Duma would house both, the State Council (elected legislative made up by the city and province council representatives) the Governing Senate (elected judicature council of Ministers and Senators). They together with the Supreme Procurator Council of the Russian Orthodox Church) would together with the new government departments (collegia) for different affairs help the reestablished Tsardom (executive) rule the new Russian Empire for Tsar Vladimir from St. Petersburg from now on. This new regime opposing the Soviets and Stalin created some debate inside the Allies what of the two governments would be more legitimate (just they were split like in China before) and it was hard to sell the public that this new, partly democratic and republican Tsardom was more evil and less benevolent and progressive then the Soviet Union it fought. The Allied (mostly British Empire and American) support for the Soviets caused massive Anti-Allied, Anti-British and Anti-American anger protests and boycotts inside most of Axis Central Powers Monarchistic Europe and their Economic Union. The anger and hate the Americans and British created with their support was especially great in the Kingdom of Ukrainia, where the Holodomor was still freshly reminded. In the end Tsar Vladimir was not as totalitarian as the Soviets or the Romanovs before him, but his Russian Empire was simply no true democratic republic and constitutional monarchy either.
Yo man the Soviet Union will become a thing of the past when the Axis are done man. Poor America and Britain, shouldn't have supported the Communists at all!
The fall of Murmansk really hurts the USSR. From now on any imported materials will have to either go through Archangel (easily intercepted by convoy-killers out of Murmansk) or all across the trans-siberian railway.
With St. Petersburg's factories being used on behalf of the Axis, that should really help their logistical issues. Also they can put supplies in ships and bring them from Rostock/Kiel/Konigsburg and bring them to the St. Petersburg docks
With St. Petersburg's factories being used on behalf of the Axis, that should really help their logistical issues. Also they can put supplies in ships and bring them from Rostock/Kiel/Konigsburg and bring them to the St. Petersburg docks
I expect rebellions in the Caucasus and Central Asian republics (the neo-Ottomans would be idiots not to foment them)
Yes we will see some Mohammedan rebellions and Ottoman calls for a anti-Soviet Jihad later on.
Yes the Axis Central Power support for the Fins in the Winter War and the station of a large ACP army there paid of on the long run.
Chapter 153: The Siam/Thai Malay States
Chapter 153: The Siam/Thai Malay States:
Up until 1909 the Malay states of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu had been Siam/ Thai territory. As part of an agreement in 1909 Siam/ Thailand transferred them to British control. Malaya was gradually occupied by the Siamese/Thai and Japanese between 16 November 1941 1941 and the Allied surrender at Singapore on 16 January 1942. The Siamese/Thai and Japanese remained in occupation and Siam/Thailand quickly annexed Malaya after the capture. Later Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo announced that the lost provinces of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu were to be returned to Thailand together with the rest of Malaya that was allowed to be annexed by Thailand, as part of the military alliance signed between Thailand and Japan. Thailand immediately administered the new states as it's own provinces and continued to station it's own troops as garrisons in Malaya to free Japanese forces. The annexation of Malaya by Thailand was also partly in exchange for the denied annexation of Laos in Indochina and the Thai Empire quickly became very much satisfied with the deal since it became the major member of the Co-Prosperity Sphere that now expanded massive amounts of rubber, tin, petrol and even betel nuts. Later during the war, when allied submarines and torpedo bombers threatened the shipments from Singapore, Thailand shifted it's resource transport over the land route in Indochina, China and Chosen to finally reach Japan.
The ideological concept of a unified Asia took form based on an Imperial Japanese Army concept that originated with General Hachiro Arita, an army ideologist who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1936 to 1940. The Japanese Army and soon the Japanese Government proclaimed the new Japanese Empire of the Co-Prosperity Sphere was an Asian equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, especially with the Roosevelt Corollary. The regions of Asia, it was argued, were as essential to Japan as Latin America was to the U.S. The Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka formally announced the expansion of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, in a press interview after the attack on the Allied Colonial Powers in South East Asia. Leaders in Japan had long had an interest in the idea. The outbreak of the Chinese Civil War and the Second Great War in Europe had given the Japanese an opportunity to demand the withdrawal of support from China and from the American and European Colonies in the name of "Asia for Asiatics", with the European powers unable to effectively retaliate. Many of the other nations within the boundaries of the sphere were under colonial rule and elements of their population were sympathetic to Japan (as in the case of Indonesia), occupied by Japan in the early phases of the war and reformed under puppet governments, or already under Japan's control at the outset (as in the case of Manchukuo). These factors helped make the formation of the sphere, while lacking any real authority or joint power, come together without much difficulty. The sphere would, according to imperial propaganda, establish a new international order seeking "co prosperity" for Asian countries which would share prosperity and peace, free from Western colonialism and domination under the umbrella of a benevolent Japan.
Japanese Military Affairs Bureau Unit 82 was formed in 1939 or 1940 and based in Taiwan to bring this about. In its final planning stages, the unit was under the then-Colonel Yoshihide Hayashi. Intelligence on Malaya was gathered through a network of agents which included Japanese embassy staff; disaffected Malayans (particularly members of the Japanese established Tortoise Society); and Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese business people and tourists. Japanese spies, which included a British intelligence officer, Captain Patrick Stanley Vaughan Heenan and Lord Sempill also provided intelligence and assistance. Heenan's intelligence enabled the Japanese to destroy much of the Allied air forces on the ground. Prior to hostilities Japanese intelligence officers like Iwaichi Fujiwara had established covert intelligence offices (Kikans) that linked up with the Malay and Indian pro-independence organizations such as Kesatuan Melayu Muda in Malaya and the Indian Independence League. The Japanese gave these movements financial support in return for their members providing intelligence and later assistance in determining Allied troop movements, strengths, and dispositions prior to the invasion.
By 1941 the Japanese had been engaged for four years in China trying to bring their subjects and vassal states of the Co-Prosperity Sphere to victory against Chiang's United Front. They were heavily reliant on imported materials for their military forces, particularly oil from the United States. From 1940 to 1941, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands imposed embargoes on supplying oil and war materials to Japan. The object of the embargoes was to assist the Chinese and encourage the Japanese to halt military action in China with the goal to end the hostilities and stop the Chinese Civil War. The Japanese considered that pulling out of China would result in a loss of face as well as their priveous accomplishments and victories, so they decided instead to take military action against US, British and Dutch territories in South East Asia. The Japanese forces for the invasion were assembled in 1941 along Hainan, former Indochina (Cambodia) and across the Siam/Thai border region. The troop build-up in Indochina, Siam and Hainan was noticed by the Allies and, when asked, the Japanese advised that it related to their operations in China.
Japanese policy for the administration of occupied territories was developed in February 1941 by Colonel Obata Nobuyoshi (Section Chief of Intelligence - Southern Army), and Lt Colonels Otoji Nishimura and Seijiro Tofuku of the General Staff. These set out five principles: acquisition of vital materials for national defense, restoration of law and order, self-sufficiency for the troops in the occupied territories, respect for established local organizations and customs, and discussion to bring the future status of sovereignty. For Malaya: the Straits Settlements were under the Siamese/ Thai and Japanese Army, the Federated Malaya States were to eventually revert to Thai rule in exchange for the Siamese/Thai Empire to not annex Laos during the liberation of French Indochina.
Once occupied Malaya was under the Malay Military Administration (Malai Gunsei Kumbu) of the Imperial Siamese/Thai Army and the Imperial Japanese Army until the Thai civil administration took over. The 25th Army's Chief of Staff was the Superintendent and its Chief of General Affairs Department Colonel Watanabe Wataru its executive officer. It was Wataru that implemented the occupation policies. He had a particularly hard line view, treating the Chinese particularly harshly because of their support for Chiang's United Front government in China against the pro-Japanese Wang Jingwei regime. Malays and Indians were dealt with more moderately because of their cooperation under the Japanese, but all natives later faced harsh treatment under the Empire of Thailand when the Civil administration took over and later established Martial Law in Malaysia. Wataru strongly believed British rule had introduced a hedonistic and materialistic way of life to the indigenous people. He considered that they needed to be taught to endure hardship with physical and spiritual training and education. Wataru also believed that they must also be ready to give their lives if necessary to establish Hakko Ichiu (the whole world under one roof) and the Co-Prosperity Sphere. When Wataru was replaced by the Thai government the more repressive policies towards the Chinese were lifted and advisory councils were formed. The Thai even established a public reading room to engage in discussion with the local community leaders and youth in hopes to convince them of cooperation with their government. At the same time the Empire of Thailand sought to change the common language of Malaya to Thai the same way the Japanese tried to change the common language of the Co-Prosperity Sphere to japanese. Its initial moves were to change shop signs and street names. Penang was renamed Koh Maak and Malaya renamed Malai. The time zone was also moved to align with Thailand. Malay was considered a unwanted dialect and the Thai officials wanted it to be removed, just like they planned to remove the Mohammedan Malay population in total. The area was planned to be settled with Buddhist Thai to fully integrate it into the new Thai empire, but the Empire of Yikoku and Huikoku that had both significant Hui (Mohammedan) population protested this plans, together with the Imperial Japanese Army, Navy and Government. Instead they suggested the Malay States population (2,450,000 citizens of the Federated Malay States, 2,320,000 Malayans, 670,000 Chinese, 370,000 Indian and 6,000 Europeans) to be settled to the liberated Kingdom (Sultanate) of Brunei in Borneo (that now included the former British Crown Colony of North Borneo, the British Protectorate of Brunei, the Kingdom of Brunei-with a combined population of 890,000 and Dutch East India Borneo, with a population of 1,760,000). There they were planned to create a new sample state of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, forcing the primitive native Dajak deeper into the inner island jungles of Borneo and modernize their new state thanks to the riches that came from exporting Petroleum (by the Brunei Royal Oil Company), Rubber, Pepper, Tabaco, Copra and Sago.
The invading Siamese/Thai and Japanese forces used slogans such as "Asia untuk orang Asia" (translation: Asia for Asians) to win support from the local Malays. The Co-Prosperity Sphere worked hard to convince the local population that they were the actual saviors of Malaya while Britain was portrayed as an imperialist force that wished to exploit Malaya’s resources. However, the Japanese and Thai Imperial government had already planned not to liberate Malaya, but to let Siam/Thailand annex the area altogether in exchange for Laos not being annexed by them when French Indochina was liberated. The Japanese news agency, Domei Tsushin, was granted a monopoly covering Malaya (together with Thai news agencies), Singapore, and British Borneo. All news publications in this region fell under its control. The Jawi script Warta Malaya, owned by Ibrahim Yaacob and financed by the Japanese, ceased publication prior to the Japanese invasion and was allowed to stay operational for a short period of Malay occupation until 14 August 1942. During that brief period it was managed by the Japanese to promote support for Japan, Thailand and the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The 25th Army Headquartered at Singapore provided garrison duty in Malaya to secure the region against the Allies for the duration of the war even when Thai civil government took over the region. It was later replaced by the 29th Army's, 94th Infantry Division, under Lieutenant General Teizo Ishiguro until the end of the war. The Second (with the 25th Army) and later the Third (with the 29th Army) Field Kempeitai Units of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group (South East Asia Liberation Army Group) provided military police and maintained public order in the same manner as the German Imperial Guards and Military Police in Europe. These units were able, at will, to arrest and interrogate, with torture, both military and civilians. The civilian police force was subservient to them and the Thai Army. The Commander of the 2nd Field Kempeitai unit was Lieutenant Colonel Oishi Masayuki. No 3 Kempeitai was commanded by Major-General Masanori Kojima. In total there were 758 Kempeitai stationed in Thai annexed Malaya until the end of the war.
During the occupation Penang was used as a submarine port by the Japanese, Italian, and German navies. The Imperial Japanese Navy's 6th fleet Submarine Squadron 8 was based at Penang from February 1942 under Rear-Admiral Ishizaki Noboru. The base was used as a refueling depot for submarines bound for German occupied Europe and for operations in the Indian Ocean. Later during the war starting in 1942/43 the first German, Austrian-Hungarian, Italian, French and Spanish submarines began to call at Penang to exchange resources, technologies and war plans to coordinate the Axis Central Powers with the Co-Prosperity Sphere in the common struggle against the Allies and the Soviet Union. In April 1943 U-178 under Kapitanleutnant Wilhelm Dommes was sent to set up and command the German U-boat base at Penang. This base was the only operational base used by all major Axis Central Powers and Co-Prosperity Sphere navies during the Second Great War.
Japanese submarines ans ships from Penang would participated in the Battle for Ceylong and the Battle of Madagascar in 1942, attacking shipping in the Indian Ocean and Allied harbours. Seven Italian BETASOM submarines were adapted to carry critical material from the Far East (commanded by Bagnolin, Barbargio, Commandante Capellini, Guiseppe Finzi, Reginaldo Guiliandi, Enrico Tazzoli and Luigi Torelli) of which two were sunk by the Allies. Of the first 11 U-boats assigned to the Monsun Gruppe at the base, only U-168, U-183, U-188 and U-532 arrived at first and carried out strikes in the Indian Ocean beginning in 1942. A second group was send in 1943 to tighten the blockade of allied supplies in the Indian Ocean and to support the own advances in Ceylon and Bengal. Later arriving transport submarines focused on transport between Europe and Asia. These cargo missions were to transport important war supplies between Germany and Japan. Air support and reconnaissance from the base also supported the Japanese and Co-Prosperity Sphere operations in South Asia/ India and the Pacific Ocean.
Overall military control and administration of Malay was the responsibility of the 25th Army by the Japanese in the area, while the civil control and administration came from the Empire of Thailand, that also governed the region with it's 1st Thai Army by Martial Law during the Second Great War.. The transfer of the all Malay states to Thailand moved them to Thai control. With the transfer of Malaya from the 25th to the 29th Army, Johore was placed under control of the Japanese Southern Army based at Singapore to provide additional security against Allied raids, sabotage or possible invasions. Thai, Japanese and Taiwanese civilians headed the Malayan civil service and police during the occupation. The structure remained similar to that of Malaya's pre-war civil service with many for Civil Servants being reappointed. Many of the laws and regulations of the British administration continued to stay in use as long as the Thai hadn't relocated the natives and exchanged them with their own Thai population. The Sultan's were initially allowed to continue as nominal rulers, with the intent that they would eventually be completely removed from power, once the population of the area with Thai. The Japanese also undertook recruiting, particularly with the Indian and Malay populations, both prior to and after the occupation to support their liberation fights against the Allies in the region.
Prior to the invasion of Malaya, Japanese intelligence officer Major Iwaichi Fujiwara had formed links with Pritam Singh Dhillon of the Indian Independence League. Fujiwara and Dhillon convinced Major Mohon Singh to form the Indian National Army (INA) with disaffected Indian soldiers captured during the Malayan Campaign. Singh was on officer in 1 Battalion of the 14th Punjab Regiment and had been captured after the Battle of Jitra. As the Japanese campaign progressed more Indian troops were captured with significant numbers being convinced to join the new force under Singh. After the fall of Singapore the army came into being. By the end of 1942 it numbered 80,000 volunteers drawn from both former soldiers and civilians in Malaya, Singapore and Burma. Singh, now designated a general, was to command it. In a conference held at Bangkok, the Indian Independence League under the leadership of Rash Behari Bose, had appointed Singh its commander-in-chief. With the return of Subhas Chandra Bose, from Germany in June 1942 the Indian National Army was revived in the form of Azad Hind Fauj. Bose organized finance and manpower under the cause for Indian independence among the expatriate Indian population. The INA had a separate women's unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (named after Rani Lakshmi Bai) headed by Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan, which was seen as a first of its kind in Asia. Even when faced with great losses in the later stages of the war, Bose was able to maintain support for the Azad Hind movement.
Another link forged by Fujiwara was with Ibrahim Yaacob of Kesatuan Melaya Muda a pro-independence Malay organization. On the eve of the Second Great War, Yaacob and the members of Kesatuan Melayu Muda actively encouraged anti-British sentiment. With Japanese aid the organization purchased the influential Singapore-based Malay publication Warta Malaya. Close to the time of the Japanese invasion Yaacob, Ishak Muhammad and a number of Kesatuan Melayu Muda leaders were arrested and imprisoned by the British. During the Battle of Malaya, Kesatuan Melayu Muda members assisted the Japanese as they believed that the Japanese would give Malaya independence. When the Japanese captured Singapore the arrested members were released by the Japanese. Mustapha Hussain, the organizations Vice-President, and the others requested the Japanese and Thai grant Malaya independence but their request was turned down because of the annexation of the Malay States by the Thai Empire. The Japanese instead disbanded Kesatuan Melayu Musa and established the Pembela Tanah Ayer (also known as the Malai Giyu Gun or by its Malay acronym PETA) militia instead. Yaacob was given the rank of lieutenant colonel in charge of the 2,000 man militia.
Once the Siamese/Thai Japanese had taken Malaya and Singapore from the British their attention turned to consolidating their position. Of primary concern were the ethnic Chinese who were known to financially support both Nationalist and Communist forces in China fighting the pro-Japanese government of Wang Jingwei. In November 1941 a list of key elements to eliminate within the Chinese population had been drawn up. On 17 January 1942 Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of the 25th Army, ordered anti-Japanese elements within the Chinese be eliminated. The method employed had been used by the occupying divisions; the 5th, 18th, and Imperial Guards in earlier actions in China, whereby suspects were executed without trial. That same day 70 surviving soldiers of the Malay Regiment were taken out of the prisoner of war holding area at Farrer Park, Singapore by the Siamese/Thai and Japanese to the battlefield at Pasir Panjang and shot. Some Malay Regiment officers were even beheaded by the Japanese. An explanation given in a proclamation by Yamashita on 23 January 1942 was that they were dealing with rebellious Malay and Chinese. This message was elaborated on in a Syonan Times article of 28 February 1942 titled Sword that kills one and saves many. Commencing in January in Singapore and then throughout Malaya a process of rounding up and executing those Chinese perceived as being pro-Chiang Government threats began. This was the start of the Malay and Chinese in which an estimated 100,000 or more ethnic Malayan and Chinese were killed, predominantly by the Kempeitai. Most were charged with true or face accusations of supporting the Chiang United Front government, pro-Communist and Malay Independence Riots, rebellions and guerrilla fighters and killed for it by the Kempeitai or the Thai Army.
Specific incidents later include Kota Tinggi, Jahore on 28 January 1942 (2,000 killed); Gelang Patah, Johore on 4 March (300 killed); Benut, Johore on 6 March (number unknown); Jahore, Baharu, Senai, Kulao, Sedank, Pulai, Rengam, Kluang, Yong Peng, Batu Pahat, Senggarang, Parit Bakau, andMuar between January and February) (estimated up to 40,000 Chinese and Malay were killed in Johore); Tanjong Kling, Malacca on 16 February (142 killed); Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan on 15 February (76 killed); Parit Tinggi, Negeri Sembilan on 16 March (more than 100 killed, the entire village); Joo Loong Loong on 18 February (990 killed, entire village eliminated by Major Yokokoji Kyomi and his troops); and Penang in March (several thousand killed by Major Higashigawa Yoshinura). With increased guerrilla activity more massacres occurred, including Sungei Lui, a village of 400 in Jempol District, Negeri Sembilan, that was wiped out on 31 July 1942 by troops under a Corporal Hashimoto. News of the Sook Ching massacres reached the west by January 1943, with Chinese and some Malay sources stating that 197,000 suspected anti-Japanese Chinese and Malay had been imprisoned or killed by the Japanese in Singapore and Malaya and many more were forcefully shipped to Borneo. The same article also stated that the Thai and Japanese had set up mutual guarantee units whereby a group of 130 Chinese and Malay families would guarantee that none of their members would oppose the Japanese. If they did then the whole group was executed. As is with the Changi Prison in Singapore, major civilian prisons throughout Malaya (such as the Pudu Prison and Taiping Prison) were reconstituted by the Japanese for use as detention and execution grounds. Various schools, including the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar, were also re-purposed as interrogation facilities for the Thai and Japanese. The Thai and Japanese were also accused of conducting medical experiments on Malayans, and were known to have taken Malay and Chinese girls and women as comfort women for their soldiers in the region.
The Thai and Japanese required the Chinese (and later the Malay) community through the Japanese controlled Overseas Chinese Organization to raise Malay$50 million as atonement for its support of the Chinese war effort. When the organization only raised $28 million, the organization was required to take out a loan for the balance. This money was partly used to finance the Malay relocation to Borneo, the increasing infrastructure in Malay and central Siam that later even linked Saigon, Bangkok and Rangoon to support the Co-Prosperity Sphere forces in Burma by the Thai-Burma Railway.
Initially Malaya's two other major ethnic groups, the Indians and Malays, escaped the worst of Japanese maltreatment, but got the same harsh treatment by the Thai, that the Chinese had gotten from the Japanese before. The Japanese wanted the support of the Indian community to free India from British rule, while they also considered the Malay's not to be threat. All three races were encouraged to assist Japanese war efforts by providing finance and labor. Some 73,000 Malayans were thought to have been coerced into work on the Thai-Burma-Railway, with an estimated 25,000 dying. The Japanese also partly took the railway track from Malacca and other branch lines for construction of the Siam-Burma railway. While most Malay and Chinese were playfully relocated to Borneo, the majority of the Indians was taken to Burma to support the war efforts there and support the Indian Liberation Movement. About 150,000 tons of rubber was taken by the Japanese, but this was considerably less than Malaya exported prior to the occupation. Because Malaya produced more rubber and tin than Japan was able to utilize Malaya lost some its export income and had to trade with other Co-Prosperity Sphere member states in South-East Asia and former China. Real per capita income fell to about two third of its 1941 in 1942. Prior to the war Malaya produced 40% of the world's rubber and a high proportion of the world's tin. It imported more than 50% of its rice requirements, a staple food for its population. The after the annexation starting Allied blockade meant that both imports and the limited exports to Japan and the Co-Prosperity Sphere were dramatically reduced until the trade could be re-managed over the Asian land way.
During the occupation and later Annexation the Japanese and Thai replaced the Malayan dollar with their own new Thai Yen. Prior to occupation, in 1941, there was about Malaya $219 million in circulation. Thai and Japanese currency officials estimated that they would exchange the money inside of Malay within the next years completely by their own visions. Some Thai and Japanese army units had mobile currency printing presses and no record was kept of the quantity or value of notes printed. Up to $500 million of uncirculated currency were additionally held by the Japanese in Kuala Lumpur and used to secretly buy resources and other things from the Allies over third contries. During the war the Allies dropped propaganda leaflets stressing that the Thai and Japanese issued money would be valueless when Co-Prosperity Sphere surrendered. Counterfeiting of the currency was also rife with both the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) printing $10 notes and $1 notes and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) printing $10 notes that were brought into the Malay economy by anti-Co-Prosperity Sphere rebels.
As the war progressed all three ethnic communities began to suffer deprivations from increasingly severe rationing, a lack of resources and the forced relocation. A blockade by Allied forces on the Japanese occupied territories coupled with a submarine campaign reduced the ability of the Japanese to move supplies between its occupied countries partly. Both the Malay and Indian communities gradually came into more conflict with the occupying Thai and Japanese prompting more joining the resistance movement, including Abdul Razak bin Hussein, and Abdul Rahman bin Hajih Tiab. Yeop Mahidin Bin Mohammed Shariff , a former Royal Malay Regiment officer, founded a Malay-based resistance group immediately after the fall of Singapore in January 1942.
Following the Japanese invasion of Malaya on 16 November 1941, the British colonial authorities accepted the Malayan Communist Party's (MCP) standing offer of military co-operation and on 15 November, all left-wing political prisoners were released. From 20 November, the British military began to train party members in guerilla warfare at the hastily established 101st Special Training School (101st STS) in Singapore. About 165 MCP members were trained before the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. These fighters, scantily armed and equipped by the hard-pressed British, hurriedly dispersed and attempted to harass the occupying army.
Just before Singapore fell on 15 November 1942, the party began organize armed resistance in Johor. 4 armed groups, which became known as 'Regiments', were formed, with the 101st Special Training School's (101st STS) trainees serving as nuclei. In February, this force was dubbed the Malayan People's Anti-Thai/Japanese Army (MPATJA) and began sabotage and ambushes against the Thai and Japanese occupation forces. The Japanese responded with reprisals against Chinese and Malay civilians. These reprisals, coupled with increasing economic hardship, caused large numbers of Malayan and Chinese to flee the cities (some to escape from forced deportation to Borneo). They became squatters at the forest margins, where they became the main source of recruits, food, and other assistance for the MPATJA. The MPATJA consolidated this support by providing protection.
In January 1942, Lai Teck, an alleged British agent who had infiltrated the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) was arrested by the Japanese. He became a double agent providing information to the Thai and Japanese on the MCP and MPATJA. Acting on information he provided the Japanese attacked a secret conference of more than 100 MCP and MPAJA leaders on 1 August 1942 at the Batu Caves, north of Kuala Lumpur, killing most of them. The loss of personnel forced the MPATJA to abandon its political commissar system, and the military commanders became the heads of the regiments. Following this setback and under the leadership of Lai Teck, the MPATJA avoided engagements and concentrated on consolidation, amassing 4,500 soldiers until early 1943. The allies failed to see that Lai Teck was a traitor who wished to liberate the Soviet or Communist Malay States once the Thai and Japanese were beaten instead of returning to former British Colonial Rule. From February 1941 onward, British commandos from Force 136 infiltrated Malaya and made contact with the guerrillas. Later an agreement was reached whereby the MPATJA would accept some direction from the Allied South East Asia Command (SEAC), and the Allies would give the MPATJA weapons and supplies. But significant amounts of material would first began to arrive by air drop in 1944 for the Malay rebels. Also operating at the same time as the MPATJA was the Pahang Wataniah, a resistance group formed by Yeop Mahidin. Mahadin had formed the group with consent of the Sultan of Pahang and set up a training camp at Batu Malim. The unit had an initial strength of 254 men and was assisted by Force 136 which assigned Major Richardson to help train the unit.
The principles of Allied strategic doctrine in the event of Japan entering the war were established at a secret conference between 29 January 1941 and 27 March 1941. The strategy set forth the principle of Europe first, with the Far East being a defensive war. After the Japanese attacked the American and European Colonies, the British prime minister, Winston Churhcill, and the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, met at the First Washington Conference where the United States officially joined the Allies in a combined struggle against the Axis Central Powers in Europe and the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Asia. This conference reaffirmed the doctrine of Europe first, since the Axis Central Powers were seen as the much bigger danger. At the later Third Washington Conference in February 1943 alleviating pressure on the Co-Prosperity Sphere in China and India was discussed, in particular through the Bengal Campaign. The liberation of Malay was a prime target in these discussions as the fall of the Co-Prosperity Sphere there would have endangered their resource supply from the south dramatically, but the later Allied operations all failed in doing so.
Up until 1909 the Malay states of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu had been Siam/ Thai territory. As part of an agreement in 1909 Siam/ Thailand transferred them to British control. Malaya was gradually occupied by the Siamese/Thai and Japanese between 16 November 1941 1941 and the Allied surrender at Singapore on 16 January 1942. The Siamese/Thai and Japanese remained in occupation and Siam/Thailand quickly annexed Malaya after the capture. Later Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo announced that the lost provinces of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu were to be returned to Thailand together with the rest of Malaya that was allowed to be annexed by Thailand, as part of the military alliance signed between Thailand and Japan. Thailand immediately administered the new states as it's own provinces and continued to station it's own troops as garrisons in Malaya to free Japanese forces. The annexation of Malaya by Thailand was also partly in exchange for the denied annexation of Laos in Indochina and the Thai Empire quickly became very much satisfied with the deal since it became the major member of the Co-Prosperity Sphere that now expanded massive amounts of rubber, tin, petrol and even betel nuts. Later during the war, when allied submarines and torpedo bombers threatened the shipments from Singapore, Thailand shifted it's resource transport over the land route in Indochina, China and Chosen to finally reach Japan.
The ideological concept of a unified Asia took form based on an Imperial Japanese Army concept that originated with General Hachiro Arita, an army ideologist who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1936 to 1940. The Japanese Army and soon the Japanese Government proclaimed the new Japanese Empire of the Co-Prosperity Sphere was an Asian equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, especially with the Roosevelt Corollary. The regions of Asia, it was argued, were as essential to Japan as Latin America was to the U.S. The Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka formally announced the expansion of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, in a press interview after the attack on the Allied Colonial Powers in South East Asia. Leaders in Japan had long had an interest in the idea. The outbreak of the Chinese Civil War and the Second Great War in Europe had given the Japanese an opportunity to demand the withdrawal of support from China and from the American and European Colonies in the name of "Asia for Asiatics", with the European powers unable to effectively retaliate. Many of the other nations within the boundaries of the sphere were under colonial rule and elements of their population were sympathetic to Japan (as in the case of Indonesia), occupied by Japan in the early phases of the war and reformed under puppet governments, or already under Japan's control at the outset (as in the case of Manchukuo). These factors helped make the formation of the sphere, while lacking any real authority or joint power, come together without much difficulty. The sphere would, according to imperial propaganda, establish a new international order seeking "co prosperity" for Asian countries which would share prosperity and peace, free from Western colonialism and domination under the umbrella of a benevolent Japan.
Japanese Military Affairs Bureau Unit 82 was formed in 1939 or 1940 and based in Taiwan to bring this about. In its final planning stages, the unit was under the then-Colonel Yoshihide Hayashi. Intelligence on Malaya was gathered through a network of agents which included Japanese embassy staff; disaffected Malayans (particularly members of the Japanese established Tortoise Society); and Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese business people and tourists. Japanese spies, which included a British intelligence officer, Captain Patrick Stanley Vaughan Heenan and Lord Sempill also provided intelligence and assistance. Heenan's intelligence enabled the Japanese to destroy much of the Allied air forces on the ground. Prior to hostilities Japanese intelligence officers like Iwaichi Fujiwara had established covert intelligence offices (Kikans) that linked up with the Malay and Indian pro-independence organizations such as Kesatuan Melayu Muda in Malaya and the Indian Independence League. The Japanese gave these movements financial support in return for their members providing intelligence and later assistance in determining Allied troop movements, strengths, and dispositions prior to the invasion.
By 1941 the Japanese had been engaged for four years in China trying to bring their subjects and vassal states of the Co-Prosperity Sphere to victory against Chiang's United Front. They were heavily reliant on imported materials for their military forces, particularly oil from the United States. From 1940 to 1941, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands imposed embargoes on supplying oil and war materials to Japan. The object of the embargoes was to assist the Chinese and encourage the Japanese to halt military action in China with the goal to end the hostilities and stop the Chinese Civil War. The Japanese considered that pulling out of China would result in a loss of face as well as their priveous accomplishments and victories, so they decided instead to take military action against US, British and Dutch territories in South East Asia. The Japanese forces for the invasion were assembled in 1941 along Hainan, former Indochina (Cambodia) and across the Siam/Thai border region. The troop build-up in Indochina, Siam and Hainan was noticed by the Allies and, when asked, the Japanese advised that it related to their operations in China.
Japanese policy for the administration of occupied territories was developed in February 1941 by Colonel Obata Nobuyoshi (Section Chief of Intelligence - Southern Army), and Lt Colonels Otoji Nishimura and Seijiro Tofuku of the General Staff. These set out five principles: acquisition of vital materials for national defense, restoration of law and order, self-sufficiency for the troops in the occupied territories, respect for established local organizations and customs, and discussion to bring the future status of sovereignty. For Malaya: the Straits Settlements were under the Siamese/ Thai and Japanese Army, the Federated Malaya States were to eventually revert to Thai rule in exchange for the Siamese/Thai Empire to not annex Laos during the liberation of French Indochina.
Once occupied Malaya was under the Malay Military Administration (Malai Gunsei Kumbu) of the Imperial Siamese/Thai Army and the Imperial Japanese Army until the Thai civil administration took over. The 25th Army's Chief of Staff was the Superintendent and its Chief of General Affairs Department Colonel Watanabe Wataru its executive officer. It was Wataru that implemented the occupation policies. He had a particularly hard line view, treating the Chinese particularly harshly because of their support for Chiang's United Front government in China against the pro-Japanese Wang Jingwei regime. Malays and Indians were dealt with more moderately because of their cooperation under the Japanese, but all natives later faced harsh treatment under the Empire of Thailand when the Civil administration took over and later established Martial Law in Malaysia. Wataru strongly believed British rule had introduced a hedonistic and materialistic way of life to the indigenous people. He considered that they needed to be taught to endure hardship with physical and spiritual training and education. Wataru also believed that they must also be ready to give their lives if necessary to establish Hakko Ichiu (the whole world under one roof) and the Co-Prosperity Sphere. When Wataru was replaced by the Thai government the more repressive policies towards the Chinese were lifted and advisory councils were formed. The Thai even established a public reading room to engage in discussion with the local community leaders and youth in hopes to convince them of cooperation with their government. At the same time the Empire of Thailand sought to change the common language of Malaya to Thai the same way the Japanese tried to change the common language of the Co-Prosperity Sphere to japanese. Its initial moves were to change shop signs and street names. Penang was renamed Koh Maak and Malaya renamed Malai. The time zone was also moved to align with Thailand. Malay was considered a unwanted dialect and the Thai officials wanted it to be removed, just like they planned to remove the Mohammedan Malay population in total. The area was planned to be settled with Buddhist Thai to fully integrate it into the new Thai empire, but the Empire of Yikoku and Huikoku that had both significant Hui (Mohammedan) population protested this plans, together with the Imperial Japanese Army, Navy and Government. Instead they suggested the Malay States population (2,450,000 citizens of the Federated Malay States, 2,320,000 Malayans, 670,000 Chinese, 370,000 Indian and 6,000 Europeans) to be settled to the liberated Kingdom (Sultanate) of Brunei in Borneo (that now included the former British Crown Colony of North Borneo, the British Protectorate of Brunei, the Kingdom of Brunei-with a combined population of 890,000 and Dutch East India Borneo, with a population of 1,760,000). There they were planned to create a new sample state of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, forcing the primitive native Dajak deeper into the inner island jungles of Borneo and modernize their new state thanks to the riches that came from exporting Petroleum (by the Brunei Royal Oil Company), Rubber, Pepper, Tabaco, Copra and Sago.
The invading Siamese/Thai and Japanese forces used slogans such as "Asia untuk orang Asia" (translation: Asia for Asians) to win support from the local Malays. The Co-Prosperity Sphere worked hard to convince the local population that they were the actual saviors of Malaya while Britain was portrayed as an imperialist force that wished to exploit Malaya’s resources. However, the Japanese and Thai Imperial government had already planned not to liberate Malaya, but to let Siam/Thailand annex the area altogether in exchange for Laos not being annexed by them when French Indochina was liberated. The Japanese news agency, Domei Tsushin, was granted a monopoly covering Malaya (together with Thai news agencies), Singapore, and British Borneo. All news publications in this region fell under its control. The Jawi script Warta Malaya, owned by Ibrahim Yaacob and financed by the Japanese, ceased publication prior to the Japanese invasion and was allowed to stay operational for a short period of Malay occupation until 14 August 1942. During that brief period it was managed by the Japanese to promote support for Japan, Thailand and the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The 25th Army Headquartered at Singapore provided garrison duty in Malaya to secure the region against the Allies for the duration of the war even when Thai civil government took over the region. It was later replaced by the 29th Army's, 94th Infantry Division, under Lieutenant General Teizo Ishiguro until the end of the war. The Second (with the 25th Army) and later the Third (with the 29th Army) Field Kempeitai Units of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group (South East Asia Liberation Army Group) provided military police and maintained public order in the same manner as the German Imperial Guards and Military Police in Europe. These units were able, at will, to arrest and interrogate, with torture, both military and civilians. The civilian police force was subservient to them and the Thai Army. The Commander of the 2nd Field Kempeitai unit was Lieutenant Colonel Oishi Masayuki. No 3 Kempeitai was commanded by Major-General Masanori Kojima. In total there were 758 Kempeitai stationed in Thai annexed Malaya until the end of the war.
During the occupation Penang was used as a submarine port by the Japanese, Italian, and German navies. The Imperial Japanese Navy's 6th fleet Submarine Squadron 8 was based at Penang from February 1942 under Rear-Admiral Ishizaki Noboru. The base was used as a refueling depot for submarines bound for German occupied Europe and for operations in the Indian Ocean. Later during the war starting in 1942/43 the first German, Austrian-Hungarian, Italian, French and Spanish submarines began to call at Penang to exchange resources, technologies and war plans to coordinate the Axis Central Powers with the Co-Prosperity Sphere in the common struggle against the Allies and the Soviet Union. In April 1943 U-178 under Kapitanleutnant Wilhelm Dommes was sent to set up and command the German U-boat base at Penang. This base was the only operational base used by all major Axis Central Powers and Co-Prosperity Sphere navies during the Second Great War.
Japanese submarines ans ships from Penang would participated in the Battle for Ceylong and the Battle of Madagascar in 1942, attacking shipping in the Indian Ocean and Allied harbours. Seven Italian BETASOM submarines were adapted to carry critical material from the Far East (commanded by Bagnolin, Barbargio, Commandante Capellini, Guiseppe Finzi, Reginaldo Guiliandi, Enrico Tazzoli and Luigi Torelli) of which two were sunk by the Allies. Of the first 11 U-boats assigned to the Monsun Gruppe at the base, only U-168, U-183, U-188 and U-532 arrived at first and carried out strikes in the Indian Ocean beginning in 1942. A second group was send in 1943 to tighten the blockade of allied supplies in the Indian Ocean and to support the own advances in Ceylon and Bengal. Later arriving transport submarines focused on transport between Europe and Asia. These cargo missions were to transport important war supplies between Germany and Japan. Air support and reconnaissance from the base also supported the Japanese and Co-Prosperity Sphere operations in South Asia/ India and the Pacific Ocean.
Overall military control and administration of Malay was the responsibility of the 25th Army by the Japanese in the area, while the civil control and administration came from the Empire of Thailand, that also governed the region with it's 1st Thai Army by Martial Law during the Second Great War.. The transfer of the all Malay states to Thailand moved them to Thai control. With the transfer of Malaya from the 25th to the 29th Army, Johore was placed under control of the Japanese Southern Army based at Singapore to provide additional security against Allied raids, sabotage or possible invasions. Thai, Japanese and Taiwanese civilians headed the Malayan civil service and police during the occupation. The structure remained similar to that of Malaya's pre-war civil service with many for Civil Servants being reappointed. Many of the laws and regulations of the British administration continued to stay in use as long as the Thai hadn't relocated the natives and exchanged them with their own Thai population. The Sultan's were initially allowed to continue as nominal rulers, with the intent that they would eventually be completely removed from power, once the population of the area with Thai. The Japanese also undertook recruiting, particularly with the Indian and Malay populations, both prior to and after the occupation to support their liberation fights against the Allies in the region.
Prior to the invasion of Malaya, Japanese intelligence officer Major Iwaichi Fujiwara had formed links with Pritam Singh Dhillon of the Indian Independence League. Fujiwara and Dhillon convinced Major Mohon Singh to form the Indian National Army (INA) with disaffected Indian soldiers captured during the Malayan Campaign. Singh was on officer in 1 Battalion of the 14th Punjab Regiment and had been captured after the Battle of Jitra. As the Japanese campaign progressed more Indian troops were captured with significant numbers being convinced to join the new force under Singh. After the fall of Singapore the army came into being. By the end of 1942 it numbered 80,000 volunteers drawn from both former soldiers and civilians in Malaya, Singapore and Burma. Singh, now designated a general, was to command it. In a conference held at Bangkok, the Indian Independence League under the leadership of Rash Behari Bose, had appointed Singh its commander-in-chief. With the return of Subhas Chandra Bose, from Germany in June 1942 the Indian National Army was revived in the form of Azad Hind Fauj. Bose organized finance and manpower under the cause for Indian independence among the expatriate Indian population. The INA had a separate women's unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (named after Rani Lakshmi Bai) headed by Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan, which was seen as a first of its kind in Asia. Even when faced with great losses in the later stages of the war, Bose was able to maintain support for the Azad Hind movement.
Another link forged by Fujiwara was with Ibrahim Yaacob of Kesatuan Melaya Muda a pro-independence Malay organization. On the eve of the Second Great War, Yaacob and the members of Kesatuan Melayu Muda actively encouraged anti-British sentiment. With Japanese aid the organization purchased the influential Singapore-based Malay publication Warta Malaya. Close to the time of the Japanese invasion Yaacob, Ishak Muhammad and a number of Kesatuan Melayu Muda leaders were arrested and imprisoned by the British. During the Battle of Malaya, Kesatuan Melayu Muda members assisted the Japanese as they believed that the Japanese would give Malaya independence. When the Japanese captured Singapore the arrested members were released by the Japanese. Mustapha Hussain, the organizations Vice-President, and the others requested the Japanese and Thai grant Malaya independence but their request was turned down because of the annexation of the Malay States by the Thai Empire. The Japanese instead disbanded Kesatuan Melayu Musa and established the Pembela Tanah Ayer (also known as the Malai Giyu Gun or by its Malay acronym PETA) militia instead. Yaacob was given the rank of lieutenant colonel in charge of the 2,000 man militia.
Once the Siamese/Thai Japanese had taken Malaya and Singapore from the British their attention turned to consolidating their position. Of primary concern were the ethnic Chinese who were known to financially support both Nationalist and Communist forces in China fighting the pro-Japanese government of Wang Jingwei. In November 1941 a list of key elements to eliminate within the Chinese population had been drawn up. On 17 January 1942 Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of the 25th Army, ordered anti-Japanese elements within the Chinese be eliminated. The method employed had been used by the occupying divisions; the 5th, 18th, and Imperial Guards in earlier actions in China, whereby suspects were executed without trial. That same day 70 surviving soldiers of the Malay Regiment were taken out of the prisoner of war holding area at Farrer Park, Singapore by the Siamese/Thai and Japanese to the battlefield at Pasir Panjang and shot. Some Malay Regiment officers were even beheaded by the Japanese. An explanation given in a proclamation by Yamashita on 23 January 1942 was that they were dealing with rebellious Malay and Chinese. This message was elaborated on in a Syonan Times article of 28 February 1942 titled Sword that kills one and saves many. Commencing in January in Singapore and then throughout Malaya a process of rounding up and executing those Chinese perceived as being pro-Chiang Government threats began. This was the start of the Malay and Chinese in which an estimated 100,000 or more ethnic Malayan and Chinese were killed, predominantly by the Kempeitai. Most were charged with true or face accusations of supporting the Chiang United Front government, pro-Communist and Malay Independence Riots, rebellions and guerrilla fighters and killed for it by the Kempeitai or the Thai Army.
Specific incidents later include Kota Tinggi, Jahore on 28 January 1942 (2,000 killed); Gelang Patah, Johore on 4 March (300 killed); Benut, Johore on 6 March (number unknown); Jahore, Baharu, Senai, Kulao, Sedank, Pulai, Rengam, Kluang, Yong Peng, Batu Pahat, Senggarang, Parit Bakau, andMuar between January and February) (estimated up to 40,000 Chinese and Malay were killed in Johore); Tanjong Kling, Malacca on 16 February (142 killed); Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan on 15 February (76 killed); Parit Tinggi, Negeri Sembilan on 16 March (more than 100 killed, the entire village); Joo Loong Loong on 18 February (990 killed, entire village eliminated by Major Yokokoji Kyomi and his troops); and Penang in March (several thousand killed by Major Higashigawa Yoshinura). With increased guerrilla activity more massacres occurred, including Sungei Lui, a village of 400 in Jempol District, Negeri Sembilan, that was wiped out on 31 July 1942 by troops under a Corporal Hashimoto. News of the Sook Ching massacres reached the west by January 1943, with Chinese and some Malay sources stating that 197,000 suspected anti-Japanese Chinese and Malay had been imprisoned or killed by the Japanese in Singapore and Malaya and many more were forcefully shipped to Borneo. The same article also stated that the Thai and Japanese had set up mutual guarantee units whereby a group of 130 Chinese and Malay families would guarantee that none of their members would oppose the Japanese. If they did then the whole group was executed. As is with the Changi Prison in Singapore, major civilian prisons throughout Malaya (such as the Pudu Prison and Taiping Prison) were reconstituted by the Japanese for use as detention and execution grounds. Various schools, including the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar, were also re-purposed as interrogation facilities for the Thai and Japanese. The Thai and Japanese were also accused of conducting medical experiments on Malayans, and were known to have taken Malay and Chinese girls and women as comfort women for their soldiers in the region.
The Thai and Japanese required the Chinese (and later the Malay) community through the Japanese controlled Overseas Chinese Organization to raise Malay$50 million as atonement for its support of the Chinese war effort. When the organization only raised $28 million, the organization was required to take out a loan for the balance. This money was partly used to finance the Malay relocation to Borneo, the increasing infrastructure in Malay and central Siam that later even linked Saigon, Bangkok and Rangoon to support the Co-Prosperity Sphere forces in Burma by the Thai-Burma Railway.
Initially Malaya's two other major ethnic groups, the Indians and Malays, escaped the worst of Japanese maltreatment, but got the same harsh treatment by the Thai, that the Chinese had gotten from the Japanese before. The Japanese wanted the support of the Indian community to free India from British rule, while they also considered the Malay's not to be threat. All three races were encouraged to assist Japanese war efforts by providing finance and labor. Some 73,000 Malayans were thought to have been coerced into work on the Thai-Burma-Railway, with an estimated 25,000 dying. The Japanese also partly took the railway track from Malacca and other branch lines for construction of the Siam-Burma railway. While most Malay and Chinese were playfully relocated to Borneo, the majority of the Indians was taken to Burma to support the war efforts there and support the Indian Liberation Movement. About 150,000 tons of rubber was taken by the Japanese, but this was considerably less than Malaya exported prior to the occupation. Because Malaya produced more rubber and tin than Japan was able to utilize Malaya lost some its export income and had to trade with other Co-Prosperity Sphere member states in South-East Asia and former China. Real per capita income fell to about two third of its 1941 in 1942. Prior to the war Malaya produced 40% of the world's rubber and a high proportion of the world's tin. It imported more than 50% of its rice requirements, a staple food for its population. The after the annexation starting Allied blockade meant that both imports and the limited exports to Japan and the Co-Prosperity Sphere were dramatically reduced until the trade could be re-managed over the Asian land way.
During the occupation and later Annexation the Japanese and Thai replaced the Malayan dollar with their own new Thai Yen. Prior to occupation, in 1941, there was about Malaya $219 million in circulation. Thai and Japanese currency officials estimated that they would exchange the money inside of Malay within the next years completely by their own visions. Some Thai and Japanese army units had mobile currency printing presses and no record was kept of the quantity or value of notes printed. Up to $500 million of uncirculated currency were additionally held by the Japanese in Kuala Lumpur and used to secretly buy resources and other things from the Allies over third contries. During the war the Allies dropped propaganda leaflets stressing that the Thai and Japanese issued money would be valueless when Co-Prosperity Sphere surrendered. Counterfeiting of the currency was also rife with both the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) printing $10 notes and $1 notes and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) printing $10 notes that were brought into the Malay economy by anti-Co-Prosperity Sphere rebels.
As the war progressed all three ethnic communities began to suffer deprivations from increasingly severe rationing, a lack of resources and the forced relocation. A blockade by Allied forces on the Japanese occupied territories coupled with a submarine campaign reduced the ability of the Japanese to move supplies between its occupied countries partly. Both the Malay and Indian communities gradually came into more conflict with the occupying Thai and Japanese prompting more joining the resistance movement, including Abdul Razak bin Hussein, and Abdul Rahman bin Hajih Tiab. Yeop Mahidin Bin Mohammed Shariff , a former Royal Malay Regiment officer, founded a Malay-based resistance group immediately after the fall of Singapore in January 1942.
Following the Japanese invasion of Malaya on 16 November 1941, the British colonial authorities accepted the Malayan Communist Party's (MCP) standing offer of military co-operation and on 15 November, all left-wing political prisoners were released. From 20 November, the British military began to train party members in guerilla warfare at the hastily established 101st Special Training School (101st STS) in Singapore. About 165 MCP members were trained before the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. These fighters, scantily armed and equipped by the hard-pressed British, hurriedly dispersed and attempted to harass the occupying army.
Just before Singapore fell on 15 November 1942, the party began organize armed resistance in Johor. 4 armed groups, which became known as 'Regiments', were formed, with the 101st Special Training School's (101st STS) trainees serving as nuclei. In February, this force was dubbed the Malayan People's Anti-Thai/Japanese Army (MPATJA) and began sabotage and ambushes against the Thai and Japanese occupation forces. The Japanese responded with reprisals against Chinese and Malay civilians. These reprisals, coupled with increasing economic hardship, caused large numbers of Malayan and Chinese to flee the cities (some to escape from forced deportation to Borneo). They became squatters at the forest margins, where they became the main source of recruits, food, and other assistance for the MPATJA. The MPATJA consolidated this support by providing protection.
In January 1942, Lai Teck, an alleged British agent who had infiltrated the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) was arrested by the Japanese. He became a double agent providing information to the Thai and Japanese on the MCP and MPATJA. Acting on information he provided the Japanese attacked a secret conference of more than 100 MCP and MPAJA leaders on 1 August 1942 at the Batu Caves, north of Kuala Lumpur, killing most of them. The loss of personnel forced the MPATJA to abandon its political commissar system, and the military commanders became the heads of the regiments. Following this setback and under the leadership of Lai Teck, the MPATJA avoided engagements and concentrated on consolidation, amassing 4,500 soldiers until early 1943. The allies failed to see that Lai Teck was a traitor who wished to liberate the Soviet or Communist Malay States once the Thai and Japanese were beaten instead of returning to former British Colonial Rule. From February 1941 onward, British commandos from Force 136 infiltrated Malaya and made contact with the guerrillas. Later an agreement was reached whereby the MPATJA would accept some direction from the Allied South East Asia Command (SEAC), and the Allies would give the MPATJA weapons and supplies. But significant amounts of material would first began to arrive by air drop in 1944 for the Malay rebels. Also operating at the same time as the MPATJA was the Pahang Wataniah, a resistance group formed by Yeop Mahidin. Mahadin had formed the group with consent of the Sultan of Pahang and set up a training camp at Batu Malim. The unit had an initial strength of 254 men and was assisted by Force 136 which assigned Major Richardson to help train the unit.
The principles of Allied strategic doctrine in the event of Japan entering the war were established at a secret conference between 29 January 1941 and 27 March 1941. The strategy set forth the principle of Europe first, with the Far East being a defensive war. After the Japanese attacked the American and European Colonies, the British prime minister, Winston Churhcill, and the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, met at the First Washington Conference where the United States officially joined the Allies in a combined struggle against the Axis Central Powers in Europe and the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Asia. This conference reaffirmed the doctrine of Europe first, since the Axis Central Powers were seen as the much bigger danger. At the later Third Washington Conference in February 1943 alleviating pressure on the Co-Prosperity Sphere in China and India was discussed, in particular through the Bengal Campaign. The liberation of Malay was a prime target in these discussions as the fall of the Co-Prosperity Sphere there would have endangered their resource supply from the south dramatically, but the later Allied operations all failed in doing so.
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Wait, so the US has joined the war against the Monarchist Axis? Based on how Crusade is going, if the USSR collapses then the Allies are screwed