For the first time, the Russian Federal Security Service declassified evidence of the preparation of the Japanese military for a war with the USSR. For military operations, as follows from the published documents, they were preparing back in 1938.
Among the declassified archival materials, including captured ones: Order No. 70 to units of the 3rd Army dated August 9, 1938, which was issued during the Soviet-Japanese military conflict near Lake Khasan. Information about the training of the Japanese is also confirmed by the interrogation of the last commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army, Otozo Yamada, in 1949. The military man admitted that back in January 1938, he gave an order to units of the 3rd Army to bring them to combat readiness in the event of hostilities with the USSR.
– The troops of the Kwantung Army to strengthen their readiness for war against the USSR are moving forward for concentration in the area of the eastern border, – says the text of the order, which is quoted by RIA Novosti.
In 1940, the Triple Pact was signed in Berlin, which consolidated the formation of the nucleus of aggressive states. Japan acted as an ally of Germany. The conclusion on April 13, 1941 in Moscow of a treaty on the mutual neutrality of the Soviet Union and Japan made it possible to temporarily secure the eastern borders of the USSR, but did not change the general alignment of forces.
During the war, Tokyo remained an ally of Berlin and did not abandon the plan for a war against the USSR. Preparing for war, the ruling circles and the national special services of Japan pinned great hopes on the use of bacteriological weapons, actively developing and testing them in those years.
In 1945, the USSR, having indisputable evidence of the preparation of bacteriological weapons by the Japanese side and taking into account the allied tandem of Berlin and Tokyo, declared the last war. Later, the entry of the USSR into the war and the defeat of the Kwantung Army determined the unconditional surrender of the Japanese troops. On September 2, 1945, the Japanese government signed the Act of Surrender, which marked the end of World War II. The last point at the end of the war was the Khabarovsk trial: in December 1949, the military tribunal of the Primorsky military district considered the case on charges of the Japanese military personnel in the preparation and use of bacteriological weapons.
