Original subtitles

April 1945. As the war in Europe draws to a close,

Stalin agrees to join the war against Japan.

Soviet troops prepare to move to the Far East.

Originally produced for Russian television in 2011,

this is the story of Russia s Great Patriotic War

and the Red Army s long road from defeat to victory.

The Soviet assault team advanced through the ruins of Koenigsberg

with the confidence of veterans.

They used the cover of the smoke and buildings,

and cleared the way with short bursts of submachine gun fire.

It was April 1945, and the Red Army was clearing

the last German stronghold in East Prussia.

At the headquarters of the 3rd Byelorussian Front,

Marshal Vasilevsky followed events with satisfaction.

He was generous with his praise.

But many of his commanders knew he was mentally selecting the men

to take with him on his next assignment.

He had already been told what to expect.

In the summer of 1944 I learnt that after the Byelorussian Operation,

I would have to go to the Far East.

Stalin told me that I would be given command of the army there

for the war against Japan.

Stalin had promised the Allies that he would join the war against Japan

within 90 days of Germany s surrender.

In turn, he had been assured that certain Soviet territorial demands

in the Far East would be met.

As the fighting continued in the East Prussian capital of Koenigsberg,

the Soviet Union denounced its 1941 Neutrality Pact with Japan.

It had done little to ease tension between the two powers.

Stalin had kept almost 40 divisions stationed

in the Far East throughout the war.

The Soviet denunciation of the Neutrality Pact

was a clear warning of Stalin s intentions.

Now the Red Army began to build up its forces in the Far East.

The new arrivals included the 53rd Army and 6th Guards Tank Army

redeployed from Czechoslovakia.

Their experience of fighting in the mountains of Romania and Austria

would prove extremely valuable in the Far East.

Some of the soldiers thought they were going home after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

But their war wasn t over yet.

Japan had attacked Manchuria in northeast China in 1931,

before Hitler even came to power.

It led to border clashes with the Soviets at Lake Khasan in 1938,

and at Khalkhin-Gol in 1939.

Japan had embarked on a policy of ruthless imperial expansion,

which brought war with China, America and the British Empire.

After Germany s defeat, the Allies met for a conference at Potsdam, near Berlin.

There, the US, the UK and China issued a stark threat to Japan

surrender, or face "prompt and utter destruction".

The Japanese response was predictable.

Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki stated that the Japanese government

would ignore the declaration, and "move forward to successfully conclude the war".

The response condemned the country to a terrible, unprecedented fate.

In the New Mexico desert, the Americans had just tested the first atomic bomb.

On 26th July 1945, the USS Indianapolis delivered the "Little Boy" bomb

to the US base on Tinian island.

Two days later General Marshall, the US Chief of Staff,

confirmed the order authorising its use against Japan.

The primary target was the city of Hiroshima.

Alternative targets were Kokura and Nagasaki.

Many civilians had been evacuated from Hiroshima

because of the threat of air raids.

But at the time of the attack, there were still 350,000 people living in the city.

On 6th August, at 8.15 AM, the bomb was dropped from a height of 9 kilometres.

43 seconds later, 600 metres above the city,

the bomb exploded with the force of 13,000 tons of TNT.

70,000 people were killed almost instantly.

It s estimated that the effects of radiation

killed the same number again within 6 months.

Within 5 years, total fatalities had reached 200,000.

Three days later, the Americans dropped a plutonium bomb,

with an explosive force equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, on Nagasaki.

According to a report of the Nagasaki Prefecture,

everyone within a 1 kilometre radius was killed instantly.

Within 2 kilometres almost all houses were destroyed,

and within 3 kilometres all flammable material was set on fire.

By the end of 1945, total deaths in Nagasaki had reached 80,000.

In the years that followed, thousands more died from leukaemia and cancers,

caused by the effects of radiation.

The two nuclear blows against Japan did not immediately break

the country s will to fight on.

Few outside the affected areas knew anything about the bombings.

Members of Japan s Supreme Council

still believed they could negotiate an end to the war.

But a third catastrophic blow was materialising.

The Japanese had detected heavy troop movements along the trans-Siberian railway.

It could mean only one thing...

US forces had just completed a brutal struggle for the island of Okinawa,

300 miles south of the Japanese mainland.

The experience taught them that an invasion of the Japanese homeland

would be a long and bloody affair.

The war might drag on for at least another year.

But a blow from the seasoned Red Army could prove decisive.

Particularly if it was struck against a strategically vital part

of the Japanese empire.

Manchuria, in northeast China, was such a place.

With Korea to the south, it was indispensable to Japan s economy.

Its industries produced coal, iron, steel, electricity,

and more than half of Japan s synthetic fuel.

Factories had been moved here from Japan to be out of range of US bombers.

The loss of Manchuria would make it impossible for Japan to fight on.

The sheer size of the theatre of operations was daunting enough.

Manchuria is as big as Germany and Italy combined.

Its central plain is like a fortress, surrounded by a ring of mountains.

And the remoteness of its frontiers was another important factor.

Between the Far East and the Russian interior,

the roads and railways simply did not exist to move or supply a big army.

Japanese forces in Manchuria, centred on the "Kwantung Army",

had been greatly weakened to reinforce the Pacific,

but still contained 700,000 men.

The commander of the Kwantung Army, General Yamada,

knew it was impossible to defend the whole length of the frontier.

So he placed only light screening forces along the border.

His reserves were located in the interior. They were stationed close to railway hubs,

ready for rapid deployment when the enemy s intentions became clear.

The Soviet High Command planned nothing less

than a double envelopment of the whole of Manchuria.

One pincer would attack from Mongolia, the other from Vladivostok.

The attack from the West would be made by Marshal Malinovsky s Trans-Baikal Front;

from the East by Marshal Meretskov s 1st Far Eastern Front.

The distance between the two forces was 3,000 kilometres.

In the path of General Kravchenko s 6th Guards Tank Army...

lay the Greater Khingan Range.

Kravchenko s orders stipulated that he was to cross the mountains

in no more than 5 days.

Any hold up and the Japanese could send troops to fortify the passes...

and then, the entire Soviet offensive could grind to a halt.

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945,

Stalin had promised that the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan

no more than 90 days after German s surrender.

He would keep his word... just.

Exactly 90 days after Germany s surrender,

troops of the Soviet 1st Far Eastern Front prepared to go into action.

August in Manchuria is the rainy season.

The downpour began on 8th August, the eve of the offensive.

Some river-levels rose by 2 or 3 metres. The ground was soon sodden.

The "Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation" would begin in the dark,

in the pouring rain.

There was to be no artillery preparation: the Japanese were to have no warning.

The attack would be led by assault teams

supported by ISU-152 self-propelled guns.

But their main weapon would be surprise.

The assault teams were built around hardened veterans of the fighting in Europe.

For identification, they sewed patches of white cloth to their caps and tunics.

The password... was Petrov .

At 1 a.m. on 9th August,

assault troops of the 1st Far Eastern Front began their advance.

Scouts led the way, laying telephone wire for the infantry to follow.

At the command posts, officers waited anxiously for news.

If the attack failed, it would be plan B a 4 hour artillery barrage.

The Red Army s sudden onslaught against Manchuria took the Japanese by surprise.

Some soldiers were caught still in their barracks.

Those that manned their defensive positions in time were soon encircled...

and taken out with explosives... or flamethrowers.

The assault teams used infiltration tactics to bypass enemy strongpoints,

and advance up to 20 kilometres in the first few hours of the operation.

The city of Moudanjiang was next in their sights.

The Soviet advance was so fast and unexpected,

that it took several hours for news of the attack to filter back

to Kwantung Army headquarters... and from there, to Tokyo.

The Japanese command had believed that the Soviets

would not be ready to attack for several more weeks.

General Yamada was so sure of this, that on the 9th August

he was at a conference, hundreds of miles from his headquarters.

The Trans-Baikal Front offensive began at dawn, and met little resistance.

Kravchenko s 6th Guards Tank Army led the way, with 75,000 soldiers,

6,000 vehicles, almost 800 tanks,

and 200 self-propelled guns.

The T-34s and Lendlease Shermans advanced alongside old BT-5s and T-26s,

which had been stationed in the Far East throughout the war.

They overran the weak Japanese units in their path

and advanced 120 kilometres on the first day.

A simultaneous supporting attack was made along the rail-line.

As the first reports of the Soviet attack reached the Japanese High Command,

the senior staff did not initially comprehend its scale.

Yamada received instructions to maintain

"a staunch defence of areas occupied by Japanese troops,

and prepare for large-scale military operations."

But there was more news that day.

From Hiroshima came a detailed report on the scale of the devastation.

Then, a few hours after the Soviet attack,

news arrived that a second bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki.

These blows, coming one after another,

were a profound shock to the Japanese leadership.

Prime Minister Suzuki told a meeting of the Supreme Council

that the Soviet Union s entry into the war made the situation hopeless.

It was impossible to continue.

The Allied terms offered at Potsdam must be accepted.

That night, the meeting was resumed in the presence of Emperor Hirohito.

It continued into the small hours of the morning.

Following the Emperor s lead, the Council finally agreed to the Allied terms.

But they demanded an assurance that the Emperor would retain his position.

This was rejected.

Only unconditional surrender was acceptable. The war continued...

In eastern Manchuria, the infantry advanced with well-practiced assault drills.

The men blasted their way in through the armoured door.

It became routine to completely demolish these bunkers.

Otherwise Japanese survivors would hide and wait for the first wave to pass,

then rush back to their positions and resume firing.

Mine clearance experts who had served in Germany

were struck by the simplicity of Japanese minefields.

They caused little hold up for the Soviet tanks and infantry.

The Red Army met more serious opposition to the north,

around the Hailar fortified zone. After several days of heavy fighting,

the Japanese defenders were encircled. Then the air force went in...

More than 80 Soviet bombers dropped 120 tons of bombs on the Japanese.

Two hours later they surrendered.

Kravchenko s tank army, meanwhile, struggled

through the passes of the Greater Khingan Mountains.

The 26-ton tanks crawled along the old caravan routes.

Where the track was too narrow, they widened it with explosives,

or improvised other solutions.

Captain Dmitry Loza led a tank battalion through the mountains.

Two tank recovery vehicles were chained together at the top of the mountain.

One had a winch, the other acted as the anchor.

A tank was attached to the winch cable and put into first gear.

Then it was slowly lowered down the slope. This is how we got them down safely.

By the 12th August, the mountains were behind them.

They were through with one day to spare.

They left an old BT tank at a crossing and inscribed on its turret:

Soviet tanks passed here 1945.

But as the tanks began to cross the plain, dark specks appeared on the horizon.

Japanese aircraft arrived to strafe the Soviet columns with cannon and bombs.

Some even made suicidal ramming attacks.

9 kamikaze attacks were recorded by the tank crews.

But not a single tank was lost.

Tank tracks quickly chewed the wet, dirt roads into bogs.

So resupply became a major problem.

Two transport divisions of the 12th Air Army

were given the job of flying fuel to the front.

But despite making 160 deliveries per day, it wasn t enough.

As the Soviet advance struggled on,

on 14th August news came that the Japanese government had agreed to surrender.

A message had been sent to the governments of Great Britain, America,

the Soviet Union and China, that it was Emperor Hirohito s will

that Japan accept all the Allies conditions set out at Potsdam.

The war should have been over.

But the order to surrender was slow to reach the Kwantung Army.

General Yamada s orders only instructed him to immediately burn all banners,

imperial portraits and edicts, and all secret documents.

In western Manchuria, the increasingly one-sided fight

caused many Japanese troops to surrender regardless.

In Eastern Manchuria, the Soviet 1st Far Eastern Front

faced a different situation suicide attacks by Japanese infantry.

A special unit of 1,700 soldiers, under an officer named Kobayashi,

was sent into battle near Mudanjiang.

General Beloborodov witnessed their attack.

Soldiers in green uniforms emerged from camouflaged foxholes and ran at the tanks.

The paratroopers shot them down. They were decimated by machineguns.

But more of them emerged from foxholes and trenches,

throwing themselves at the tanks.

On 15th August 1945, as Emperor Hirohito made a radio address

to the Japanese people announcing his decision to surrender,

Soviet tanks of the 5th Army rolled on towards Mudanjiang.

The next day the Soviet General Staff issued a bulletin.

The Emperor s statement of 14th August regarding Japan s capitulation

was only a general statement accepting unconditional surrender.

No order was issued to the armed forces to cease fire,

and Japanese forces continue to resist.

Thus, in effect there has been no capitulation.

The Japanese aircraft was acting strangely.

It flew slowly, and waggled its wings as it approached the Soviet lines.

The anti-aircraft gunners took a chance, and held their fire.

It was a message from General Yamada s staff,

informing the Red Army that he had ordered a cease fire.

It was not news to Marshal Vasilevsky.

His headquarters had already received a radio communication from General Yamada,

stating that he had ordered his men to lay down their arms.

Some Japanese troops began to surrender,

including the garrison of the Hailar fortified area, holding the rail-line.

But other units did not receive or chose to ignore the order.

So Vasilevsky sent Yamada an ultimatum.

I propose that at noon on 20th August,

you cease all military operations against Soviet forces,

lay down your arms and surrender.

The waterlogged plain meant that the railway line was the only way

for Kravchenko s tanks to advance.

But a two-day march along the rails was tough on men and vehicles.

Any breakdown brought the whole column to a standstill.

Some tanks were simply shoved off the embankment to make way.

But the long advance was taking its toll.

One corps was down from 200 tanks to just 70.

Marshall Vasilevsky now demanded the immediate capture of Changchun,

Mukden, Jilin, and Harbin, by highly mobile taskforces, supported by airborne landings.

On 19th August, seven Lisunov-2s carrying 175 officers and men, left for Jilin.

They were escorted by 4 fighters and 3 Pe-2 bombers.

The Japanese command had been officially informed of the landing.

As the second aircraft came into land... the Japanese suddenly opened fire.

The unit s commander was Colonel Dmitry Krutskikh.

I was standing by the aircraft s wheel when the Japanese opened fire.

I received a light facial wound. I led my soldiers into the attack,

and we captured 8 Hotchkiss machine guns and took 40 prisoners.

To tell the truth, we tried not to take prisoners. We were too mad.

We d had a deal, and they started shooting at us!

Airborne units, 200-strong, were also sent to seize control

of the Japanese airfields at Harbin, Mukden and Changchun.

As Soviet fighters circled the landing zones, the transport planes made their drop.

Within 24 hours, the paratroopers were relieved by Soviet tanks.

On 19th August, Japanese troops began to surrender en-masse.

Most combat operations came to an end,

but fighting continued on the island of Sakhalin,

where Soviet infantry carried out amphibious landings on 20th August.

Five days later, the Red Army entered the capital Toyohara,

and accepted the surrender of 18,000 Japanese troops.

To prevent the destruction of important industrial and naval facilities,

detachments of the 6th Guards Tank Army boarded trains at Mukden,

and raced south to the large Japanese naval bases at Port Arthur and Dalny.

Paratroopers were sent ahead, to make sure the Americans didn t get there first.

The two powers were already positioning themselves

for the Cold War that was to come.

In one of the most remote outposts of the Soviet empire,

naval gunners were hard at work.

The coastal battery at Cape Lopatka was firing at an island...

barely visible on the horizon.

The target was Shumshu, the northernmost of the Japanese-held Kuril Islands.

It was the prelude to an invasion.

In exchange for joining the war against Japan,

Stalin was promised certain Japanese territories,

including the Kuril Islands and south Sakhalin. He also had his eyes on Hokkaido.

But the new American President, Harry Truman, was alarmed by these concessions.

In his view, too much had been promised to the Soviets.

He asked his commanders to look at ways to prevent

the Soviet occupation of the islands.

So Stalin decided to present the Allies with a "fait accompli".

A few hours after the Emperor of Japan announced his nation s surrender,

Marshall Vasilevsky ordered the invasion of the Kuril Islands to proceed.

The operation would be launched from Soviet bases in the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Their initial objectives were the islands of Shumshu, Paramushir, and Onekotan.

The invasion would be led by Major General Dyakov s 101st Rifle Division.

It had been in intensive training for an opposed amphibious landing

for more than 6 months.

They would be accompanied by marines and NKVD border troops.

The landing force would be 10,000 strong.

The main objective was Shumshu, the island closest to Kamchatka.

Perpetual cloud prevented any effective Soviet air reconnaissance,

but it was known that the Japanese had constructed a strong defensive line,

including pill boxes and anti-tank traps, to protect the key naval base at Kataoka.

At the island s northern tip there were several bunkers,

and an anti-aircraft battery mounted on the Mariupol,

a Soviet tanker stranded in 1943.

The garrison of 8,500 men was commanded by Major General Fusaki.

General Dyakov opted for a beach-landing in the north.

Dyakov thought that a direct assault on the port of Kataoka was too risky.

But his land campaign carried its own risks.

If the Japanese could bring in reinforcements

from the neighbouring island of Paramushir, General Fusaki would have 23,000 men

including 16 amphibious tanks at his disposal.

At 4 am on 17th August,

the invasion force of 42 ships set sail from Kamchatka in thick fog.

It was a day-long voyage to Shumshu. Radio silence was enforced.

Messages were sent only by signal lamp, or semaphore.

At 2 AM the next morning, the fleet arrived off the landing beach.

The assault troops would have to contend with powerful currents, and freezing water.

The regular bombardment from the Cape Lopatka battery

caused the Japanese to miss the landing of the Soviet advance guard.

It was detected only an hour later, by which time they were more than a mile inland.

The Japanese guns belatedly opened fire.

Soviet naval guns set fire to the lighthouse,

which acted as a beacon for the rest of the landing ships.

The next wave was landed 200 metres from the shore.

Hundreds were carried away by powerful currents,

but enough men reached the beach to begin the assault.

Heavy cloud cover meant there was no air support. They were on their own.

But the light Japanese tanks proved vulnerable even to Soviet antitank rifles.

7 tanks were destroyed with antitank grenades.

First Sergeant Babich distinguished himself by destroying 2 tanks single-handedly.

It was a massacre. Only one Japanese tank escaped.

The infantry moved forward to assault the enemy strongpoints,

supported by artillery, which had now been landed at the beach.

Within 24 hours the Japanese opened negotiations.

General Fusaki announced a ceasefire the following day,

and on the morning of 22nd August, the garrison laid down its arms.

The last battle of the Second World War

had cost the lives of more than a thousand soldiers on both sides.

On 25th August, the garrison of Onekotan surrendered,

followed by Matsuwa, with its naval base and airfield.

The rest of the Kuril Islands soon followed suit.

Soviet forces were planning to occupy Hokkaido,

the northernmost of the Japanese home islands.

But the operation was cancelled by Stalin

in the face of forthright opposition from the United States.

But, in line with the agreement signed at Yalta,

the Soviet Union now took full possession

of the former Japanese territories of south Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands.

On 2nd September 1945, the Japanese Instrument of Surrender

was signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

It was signed on behalf of the Soviet Union by General Derevianko.

The Soviet Union had earned its place at the ceremony

by its decisive action in Manchuria,

which proved a crushing blow to Japanese hopes of continued resistance.

But the first hints of coolness had crept into relations between the wartime allies.

They had already begun to form two distinct camps, and 5 years later,

Soviet and American pilots would meet over Korea as enemies.

But for now, the Allies celebrated their victory.

The largest war in history was at an end.

The fighting had raged across three continents, and four oceans.

It had claimed the lives of an estimated 70 million people.

But now, the soldiers were coming home.

They believed that this war was the last. The very last.

How could it be otherwise?