Roger Evans; A Descent into Hell - A History of The World War: Penguin Publishing
Thunder in the East
Following her great victory over the Chinese in 1896, Japan had soon come to identify Russia as her primary adversary. Both powers had been expanding their spheres of spheres advanced steadily toward each other, until a point where it seemed that confrontation seemed inevitable. However, when this point seemed to have been reached in the 1900s, this confrontation did not occur. While the Japanese were concerned about the swift growth of Russian power within Manchuria, they had also judged that the Russians would be too powerful to confront alone, even considering the vast distances between Russia’s core territories and her possessions in the Far East. If Japan were to make war against Russia alone, she reasoned, it was a gamble. If the Russians decided to draw out the war, their military superiority would virtually guarantee her victory. A gamble that the Russians would fight the kind of short war that was most unfavourable to her was judged by the Japanese high command to be a poor gamble, and as a result, the Japanese held their fire.
Despite the policy of “peace for the present”, tensions between the two powers continued to grow. Just as Russia attempted to build its informal empire in Manchuria, Japan attempted to do the same in Korea. Korea had been officially declared an independent country in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, but in practice, Korea had moved from the Chinese sphere of influence to that of Japan. Many Koreans had different ideas about the destiny of their country than the Japanese had, and this contributed to increasing hostility between the Koreans and Japanese diplomats and soldiers within the country, who the locals often perceived as supremely arrogant and overbearing. While organised armed resistance was rare, attacks against individual Japanese were not unheard of. Low-ranking Japanese diplomats, or more often individual Japanese soldiers, would find themselves the victim of Koreans who may have acted more like bandits than like nationalist freedom fighters. Although Japan had won the “right” to rule Korea as far as the European great powers were concerned, the Koreans themselves largely took exception to being subsumed within the Japanese Empire.
As in other European-dominated Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong and Guangzhouwan, Harbin resembled its colonial master more than its Chinese hinterland
Russia seemingly had an easier time establishing its informal empire in Manchuria. The Chinese government which was the nominal sovereign in the region had been crippled following its disastrous war with Japan and seemed to be more focused on internal power struggles than on preserving its peripheral regions. [1] The Russians had, through a poorly disguised private company, established a chain of informal colonies along the Trans-Siberian railroad which connected Vladivostok with the rest of the Russian Empire. These colonies served as conduits for Russian commercial and cultural influence in Manchuria, which some ambitious Russian politicians hoped could be turned into a kind of settler colony, a more fertile and liveable extension of Siberia. Cities such as Harbin, which had previously been a small Chinese village, became cities built in the Russian style, with a large Russian population. In the years prior to 1912, it appeared that the great Russian ambition to turn Manchuria into an extension of Russia itself was steadily transforming into reality. Sergei Witte, who promoted Russian expansion into East Asia, not only made himself personally wealthy in these ventures but won himself influence within the Tsar’s court, eventually becoming the head of the committee of ministers in 1907, making him the head of Russia’s government.
Japan looked enviously at these developments in Manchuria. Japan’s population was growing almost as swiftly as Russia’s was, but in contrast to Russia, Japan was a crowded country which had already become full in the last years of the 19th century. Expansionist voices within Japan now began to speculate whether or not Japan would need to win living space on the Asian Mainland for her quickly growing population. The idea of turning Manchuria into a “New Japan” by conquering the territory from China and settling it with Japanese colonists from the crowded home islands won the interest of industrialists, the army and farmers who found themselves being squeezed into ever-shrinking plots of land. That the land was already being unofficially colonized by Russia was of course a great concern to these sections of Japanese society, and pressure upon the government to act grew. Most Japanese statesmen understood their country was too weak to challenge Russia, even on the far end of their empire.
In 1911 when the British, concerned about the strength of the Three Emperor’s Alliance as a whole and about Russia’s expansionist potential across Asia in particular, came to the Japanese with an offer of a formal alliance, it was difficult to refuse. The main restriction on Japan’s ability to make war against Russia in East Asia was gone, namely that Japan would no longer have to fight Russia alone. It was unknown at this point exactly how many Russians would be dispatched east to fight the Japanese in Manchuria, and how many would march south toward British India, but the very fact that the Tsar’s armies would be distracted was encouragement enough for Japan’s leaders. This, along with what was sure to be a lengthy period of deployment, allowed the Japanese to embark on a bold strategy to win Manchuria and dig in near the critical railway lines before the Russians would have time to send enough men to the east to challenge the Japanese properly.
For their part, the Russians were positively contemptuous at the news that the Japanese would be joining their British allies in the war. The Tsar, who had visited Japan, nevertheless dismissed the Japanese as “a race of little yellow monkeys”, and the Russian military establishment was equally disdainful of the combat abilities of the Japanese army.[2] While the Japanese had demonstrated dash and ability while fighting the Chinese in 1895-96, this had led more to a lessening of perceptions of the Chinese army’s fighting ability rather than a reassessment of Japan’s fighting strength. Only a few keen observers noted that Japan’s victory in that war also owed much to Japan’s strength as well as China’s weakness. Crucially this underestimation of the Japanese was shared by the Russian commander in East Asia, Aleksey Kuropatkin.[3] Contrary to his post-war claims, he believed that victory over the Japanese would be quick in coming and that he would be hampered more by the logistical challenges of fighting thousands of kilometres away from Russia’s heartland than by the Japanese army. He had boasted to the Tsar that even with a numerical disadvantage, he would be able to “scatter those yellow men with great ease”.
Kuropatkin had at least seen that the weather would be a challenge. Japan declared war on Russia in support of her British ally on the 15th of September, the same day that Germany declared war on Great Britain. Russia was already in the process of mobilizing, and Japan immediately mobilized upon the declaration of war, giving Japan a window of around two months to make serious gains in Manchuria before the weather became too cold to fight in. The Japanese First Army stormed out of Port Arthur and raced towards a small Russian garrison at Kingkou. Kuropatkin had ordered the force to retreat and join the growing Russian army at Mukden however, seeking to minimize any potential losses. As the First Army had been denied the first blood of the conflict, so too would the Second Army, which crossed the Yalu River on the 27th of September, striking toward the Russian army at Mukden. By now it appeared that the main body of the Japanese army would attempt to encircle Kuropatkin’s outnumbered men in Mukden before they could be reinforced, besieging them or if possible, inflicting a Sedan-style defeat upon them. Minister for War Oyama Iwao wanted this, though most Japanese field commanders would settle for starving the Russians out and conserving their own soldiers.
The Russians were largely unable to challenge the Japanese crossing the Yalu River, allowing the latter control of this crucial barrier
It was to be the Japanese Third Army that would draw first blood. This army crossed the Yalu River further east, marching straight for Vladivostok, the home of Russia’s Pacific fleet. An initial Japanese attempt to attack Russia’s Pacific fleet using submarines had failed and the gauntlet of Russian coastal forts along the approaches to Vladivostok made a naval assault impractical, and it was left to Japan’s army to force its way into the city and annihilate Russia’s naval power in the region. At Bezverkhovo, the Russians attempted to defend the approaches against a determined Japanese assault on the 1st of October, and although they fought a brave delaying action, one Russian division proved insufficient to hold back a full Japanese army corps, and after two days of fighting the Russians were overcome, albeit with heavy bloody losses on the Japanese side. The Russians noted the almost fanatical bravery of the Japanese, who often enthusiastically attacked positions that Russian troops would hold back from. If elan was to be the deciding factor in the war, it seemed as if the Japanese army possessed more of this quality than any other.
As it turned out, elan was not as decisive as Japanese officers had hoped. Bravery and recklessness would only let the Japanese get so far. When it came to assaulting the Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, at the southern end of which Vladivostok was located, the Japanese soon found that their offensive tactics which involved massed attacks on the enemy were unable to break entrenched soldiers in strong defensive positions. Thousands of Japanese were slaughtered trying to break into Russian well-constructed Russian trenches held by defenders able to mow down infantry assaults with repeating rifles and machine guns. It took 3 days of these massacres for the Japanese to recognize that a change of tactics was needed, and the Japanese Third Army now settled down for a lengthy siege of Vladivostok. Although Japanese propaganda continued to emphasise the need for sacrifice, telling soldiers that “a man, like a cherry blossom, should fall in his prime”, Japanese commanders swiftly became aware of the need to conserve their limited manpower. However, it would take time for them to figure out offensive tactics that would enable them to do this.
A siege also seemed to be the fate of fighting further west, where Japanese attempts to destroy Kuropatkin’s Far Eastern Army had come to nought. Kuropatkin, ever a bureaucrat more than a soldier, had hoarded provisions in Mukden, hoping to tie down the Japanese in a siege that would allow Russian reinforcements to mass in Harbin, eventually coming to his rescue. The Japanese put this down to a lack of imagination on Kuropatkin’s part, but Kuropatkin was determined to preserve as much of his force as possible. He fortified the city of Mukden as much as he could, building a strong network of trenches and redoubts to rebuff Japanese attempts to storm the city and crush the Russian army there. As November ended and December began, the weather worsened, and temperatures punched below zero degrees Celsius even at the warmest time of the day. In these terrible conditions, it seemed that the Japanese could not break the Russians.
Although the opening moves of the war had seen a string of Japanese successes as they pushed back Russian troops and besieged two of the most important strategic points in the Russian Far East, the situation seemed as though it was swiftly turning against the Japanese. The Trans-Siberian Railway was swiftly allowing the Russians to prepare a new, large army in Harbin, which seemed poised to sweep down to Mukden and relieve the siege when the spring came. Already by the February of 1913, the fully mobilized Japanese army of some 1.5 million men now only had parity with the Russians, and by now 200,000 Russians were arriving in the theatre each month. Kuropatkin’s gamble seemed to be paying off, and now the Russians made plans not only to relieve their besieged brethren in Mukden and Vladivostok but to push into Japanese-owned Port Arthur and Korea as well.
[1] – See post
385
[2] – But of course, in TTL, there was no assassination attempt. He did still get a kick-ass tattoo there if you’re into that kind of thing.
[3] – Kuropatkin in TTL was the man who had pulled the Russian army together after the defeat at Çatalca and has something of a good reputation in TTL.
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Author's notes - Finally back! "Guangzhouwan", or Zhanjiang as it's known today, is actually quite a pleasant little place.
This isn't quite a re-run of OTL's Russo-Japanese War. Firstly the Russians have already completed the Trans-Siberian Railway, allowing them to ferry all the troops and resources needed to the theatre to eventually push the Japanese back. Secondly, the Japanese will only have to face a smaller portion of the Russian Navy, and we will most probably not see an alt-Tsushima. This is going to have its own impact on naval thought as well as Asian political thought overall. If Japan wins in the Far-Eastern Theatre, this will not have the dramatic effect that Japan's victory over Russia had in OTL. Not that TTL's scenario is necessarily worse for Japan. In OTL she was running out of money by the time peace was signed but in TTL, she will be bankrolled by Britain. This gives Japan much more staying power than she had.
In the background of all of this is China. Her sovereign territory has become the battleground, but Guangxu is too weak to assert his authority and keep the war out of his borders. This will likely prove a lightning rod for criticism from both conservatives and Chinese nationalists. We haven't delved much into the war's effect on China yet but like the Ottoman Empire, China is going to be a key neutral country.
