Glantz David M. August Storm: The Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria

Fort Leavenworth: US Army Command and General Staff College, 1983. — 237 p.Shortly after midnight on 9 August 1945, assault parties of Soviet troops crossed the Soviet-Manchurian border and attacked Japanese positions in Manchuria. This was the vanguard of a force of more than 1.5 million men that was to advance along multiple axes on a frontage of more than 4,400 kilometers, traversing in its course virtually every type of terrain from the deserts of Inner Mongolia to the shores of the Sea of Japan. Thus began one of the most significant campaigns of World War II. For the Soviets, the Manchurian offensive marked the culmination of four years of bitter conflict with Germany in the west and a similar period of worried attentiveness to Japanese intentions in the east. The Soviets had absorbed the potent attacks of the Germans in 1941, 1942, and 1943 and had rebounded with their own 1944 and 1945 offensives, which finally crushed the military machine of Germany. While the Soviets waged a war of survival with the Germans, precious Soviet units remained in the Far East to forestall a possible Japanese attack in support of its Axis partner. Because of the combination of Soviet victories in the west and Japanese defeats in the Pacific, the potential for Japanese attack on the Soviet Far East diminished. Conversely, as Allied victory over Germany approached in 1945, Allied leaders continued to press Stalin to commit his forces against Japan in order to complete the destruction of the Axis combination.