When Barbarossa began in June of 1941, the Germans had every reason to think they would triumph in short order. The Soviet army had performed poorly against Japan, only overcoming the Japanese through sheer weight of numbers. They had moved cautiously in Europe, only annexing their share of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldavia. Caught in disarray, the Soviet Union’s forces fell back in the first days of combat, and even Churchill thought Germany would win quickly. Reality, however, was rather different.
Perhaps the most important consequence of the Sino-Japanese War was that Stalin immediately called a halt to the purges. Officers under suspicion were dispatched to Siberia, where some, notably Marshal Tukhachevsky, served with distinction.
The war with Japan also revealed glaring deficiencies in Soviet equipment. While the USSR’s artillery, small arms, and armor were superior to Japan’s, there were significant command and control problems. More seriously, the Red Air Force’s planes were antiquated and inferior to Japan’s fighters, particularly the Japanese Zero. These changes were first addressed during the war, and served the Soviet Union well in its war against Germany.
Deep Operations
Perhaps the greatest hero of the war was Marshal Tukhachevsky. Tukhachevsky had been an early proponent of the Soviet “Deep Operations Doctrine”, which entailed using armored divisions to pierce enemy defenses and annihilate them from the rear. Tukhachevsky used it to great effect; but equally important for the future were Japanese efforts to defeat it. While Tukhachevsky was able to isolate several Japanese divisions in Manchuria, he also recognized the difficulty in seizing fortified, urban positions from the Japanese; and was an early advocate of the adoption of the recoilless rifles the Japanese produced in the last stages of the war…
Perhaps one of the most important lessons of the Sino-Japanese war was the emphasis on defense in depth. Previously, the USSR had focused on employing large forces near the border; but after the Sino-Japanese War, they were instead deployed in concentrations along the front line. Moreover, although the USSR placed troops in its new Polish territories, it was believed to be premature to dismantle the Stalin line that guarded the prewar Polish border.
The USSR suffered heavily in the opening stages of Barbarossa; vast swathes of the nation were overrun, with the new Baltic Republics falling under the Nazi heel. In the South, the Red Army fought a bloody battle throughout the fall in Kiev, ultimately being pushed back to the Dnieper. The USSR lost almost two million men, and the Wermacht was firmly ensconced in the soil of the rodina.
Yet as Manstein wrote, “another victory like this and we shall be ruined”. Barbarossa had failed to reach any of its objectives; Moscow and St. Petersburg remained safe behind Soviet lines, while the Finnish were unswayed by German promises of territory. Moreover, the Germans and their allies had approximately a million men in the invasion, more than their casualties in the war to date. While Goebbels trumpeted the fall of Riga, the Germans on the front line knew it would be a long, cold winter.
To the Defense of Revolutionaries: the Anti-Fascist Volunteers
The assault on the USSR divided the feelings of many in China. On the one hand, many in the Guomindang’s leadership was horrified by the images from Sakhalin of Soviet gulags. On the other hand, the USSR was still viewed as a progressive force in the world, for better or worse, and it had aided China in its struggle against Japan.
And really, nobody liked Germany anymore.
“You Germans boast of their progress and pride as a civilization, but they fail to understand that our civilization is two thousand years ahead of yours. While we are only too happy to help you to advance yours to our stage, we cannot be pulled backward by you. Two thousand years ago we abandoned imperialism and militarism. We have been peace-lovers ever since. We consider the brutalities of your might as nothing short of barbarism. So we will fight you until you are tired of war. Perhaps then day of real peace will come.”-Madame President Sun, July of 1941
It should come as no surprise that by August of 1941, twenty thousand men had volunteered to form the “Legion of Chinese Volunteers against Fascism”. More colloquially, as Chiang put it,
“Make China remembered in Germany for a thousand years so that no German will ever again dare to even squint at a Han” –Chiang Kai Shek [1]
It should also come as no surprise that the Republic of China took advantage of the oppurtunity to remove the Soviet-backed warlord who ruled Xinjiang, and that the Republic of Korea used the oppurtunity to crack down on Communists within the country.
[1] This is a play on what Wilhelm I told the German force sent to subdue the Boxers. Alas, Chiang isn’t aware of it.