Judging from the world map, the division of power between Soviet Russia and Japan in Northeast Asia is like the concave and convex of Chinese characters, the "concave" of Soviet Russia is upside down from north to south, and the two wings stretched out are Outer Mongolia attached to Soviet Russia and the Far East under the direct occupation of Soviet Russia, Japan's "convexity" corresponds to the "concave" of Soviet Russia, and the only protruding part is the puppet Manchukuo and the northern part of Inner Mongolia. www.biquge.info When the Soviet Russian army set off a shocking offensive frenzy in the east bank of the Haraha River bordering Outer Mongolia and the puppet Manchurians, the Japanese base camp first dispatched the main force of the 1st Front Army of the Kwantung Army to respond to the battle, but the armored iron cavalry of the Soviet Russian army ran rampant in the wasteland, and the Japanese-Manchurian coalition army was defeated and retreated, and soon lost Hulun (Bell).

Under these circumstances, on March 30, the Japanese base camp ordered the implementation of a combat operation codenamed "Conquest of the East", in which the Japanese Kwantung Army and the Korean Army both attacked, with the former advancing from Dongning to attack Shuangchengzi, a strategic hub of Soviet Russia in the Far East, with the 8th, 12th, 14th, 23rd Divisions, 28th Divisions and the 5th Independent Tank Brigade under the jurisdiction of the 2nd Front Army, in an attempt to cut off the connection between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. The DPRK Army, with the 20th "Yongsan" Division, the 19th "Ronan" Division, the 29th Division, and the 2nd Mechanized Armored Division, marched northward under the cover of the army and navy units, and it took only half a day for the Kwantung Army troops to fully occupy the heights of Shacaofeng, Zhanggufeng, and other heights where military friction had occurred between Japan and the Soviet Union, and then forcefully entered the Hassan Lake area, and forcibly crossed the opposite bank from the downstream of the Tumen River, quickly occupying a large area on the north bank of the river. The Soviet and Russian ships anchored achieved certain results.

The high-ranking staff in the Japanese base camp thought that coercing Vladivostok was a clever move to encircle Wei and save Zhao, and could force the Russians to shrink their forces from the front of the Haraha River, but they did not know that they were in the hands of the other side - the area on the east bank of the Haraha River was after all the territory of the puppet Manchukuo, and the military operations that took place there could be attributed to the border dispute between Manchu and Mongolia, and Japan and Soviet Russia were involved in the conflict as military allies of the puppet Manchukuo and Outer Mongolia, and most of the land on the north bank of the Tumen River, including Vladivostok, was involved in the 1860 Treaty of Beijing After the signing of the agreement, it became a direct jurisdiction of the Russian government, and Japan sent troops from Manchukuo and Korea to attack the territory of Soviet Russia, and the vast majority of those sent to the war were Japanese soldiers, and the Russian government finally seized the excellent reason for declaring belli.

On April 3, in defiance of the ultimatum by the Japanese side, the Russian government issued a declaration of war against Japan and Manchuria.

Do you need a reason to declare war?

If it is a war of strength and weakness, it does not matter whether the reason for declaring war is high-sounding or unbelievable, but if it is a clash between two heavyweight opponents, given the attitude of many neutral countries, the declaration of war requires not only a reason, but also the more tenable it is and the more sympathetic it can win from the outside world.

At the beginning of 1942, Japan's territory and occupation area was close to 20 million square kilometers, with a native population of more than 70 million and a colonial population of nearly 300 million. At the same time, Soviet Russia had a territory of more than 16 million square kilometers and a population of 120 million, and these two basic figures seemed much inferior to Japan at first glance, but after secret mobilization at the end of 1941 and early 1942, the combat strength of the Soviet Russian Army had reached 1.4 million, and more than 3 million reserve soldiers could be put into the battlefield in a short period of time, and the combat aircraft of the Soviet Russian Air Force reached more than 27,000, of which 30 percent of the high-performance fighters were installed in the past three years, that is, 8,100. With the secret support of the Western Allies and the United States, the Russians were able to throw their main forces into the Northeast Asian theater, while the Japanese army's huge navy, army, and air force had to be dispersed and deployed in the vast Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, and nearly 200,000 Japanese troops and about 700 combat aircraft were stationed in India in recent days. Based on the influence of these factors, in addition to maintaining the superiority of the navy, the Japanese army was completely at a disadvantage in a head-on confrontation with Soviet Russia.

On 5 April, the Japanese Kwantung Army's scout cavalry reached as close as 50 kilometers west of Vladivostok, the farthest they could have traveled overland into Soviet Russia during the war. At the headquarters of the Russian Far Eastern Military District in Vladivostok, the 49-year-old "Red Napoleon" Marshal Tukhachevsky calmly strategized, and the genius general who died tragically in the Great Purge in the old time and space calmly concentrated three mechanized corps, seven and a half infantry corps, and four heavy artillery divisions to launch a large-scale counterattack on the Dongning line through Shuangchengzi. With the strong support of more than 1,000 combat aircraft, the Soviet counterattack force repelled the Japanese troops encircling Shuangchengzi the next day. The 20th and 19th divisions of the North Korean Army attempted to contain the Soviet offensive north of the Tumen River, but suffered heavy losses under the fierce attack of the Soviet and Russian troops, and finally had to withdraw to the south bank under the cover of naval artillery fire......

On the afternoon of April 8, in the field fortifications north of the fortress of Dongning, looking at the rumbling olive-green chariots in the fields, Taichi Arioka, a young soldier from Kumamoto, was close to the cold trench wall, his fingers tapping the ground rhythmically.

"Two hundred and nine!" He said to the soldier beside him, "I counted two hundred and nine chariots in the enemy's front-line troops!" ”

Jun Cao did not say a word. For the Soviet Russian chariots with roughly the same silhouette and large and small size, most of the Japanese infantry who had just withdrawn from the Shuangchengzi front line had unbearable memories. The 8th and 14th veteran divisions joined forces to block the Russian army, and the main force of the 5th Independent Tank Brigade responded from the sidelines, and the front commanded by the fierce general Eitaro Uchiyama did not survive 24 hours when the preparations were relatively sufficient. The 8th Division was the first to lose its position under the repeated onslaught of Soviet and Russian armored forces, two wings lost more than 80%, and two more were disabled, and the situation of the 14th Division was not much better, it is said that the number of dead and missing was nearly 10,000, and the equipment loss rate of the 5th Independent Tank Brigade also reached more than 60%......

After a while, Arioka muttered in a low voice: "There are about four hundred wheeled armored vehicles, and there are countless infantry. ”

"Looks like we're in big trouble this time!" Private Furukawa, who was next to him, couldn't help but sigh, and as a result, he was immediately reprimanded by Jun Cao.

"Furukawa! Watch your tongue! Don't you know that we are stationed in the first line of defense in the Far East? How dare you spread rumors and shake the morale of the military? ”

After being defeated by the Soviet Russian army in the Battle of Shuangchengzi, the 2nd Front of the Kwantung Army, with the 3rd, 8th, 12th, and 14th Divisions as the main force, decisively abandoned its positions along the border and concentrated all its efforts on the Dongning defensive line. This defense system with the Dongning fortress group as the core was built in the early 30s, before and after the requisition of more than 100,000 laborers and a large number of prisoners of war, it lies horizontally on the road from the Russian Far East to the hinterland of the puppet Manchurians, the frontal width of the defense line reaches more than 110 kilometers, the depth is more than 50 kilometers, the north and south are difficult for large troops to pass through the lofty mountains. According to the "special" fortification standards formulated by the Japanese army, the thickness of the roof of the permanent fortifications and the thickness of the main wall in front should exceed 3 meters, and they can resist direct bombardment with a caliber of 300 mm and a weight of 1 ton, and they have underground facilities that can accommodate 1/3 of the garrison force and underground tunnels connecting important facilities, and there are more than 400 permanent firepower points, more than 500 civil and wooden firepower points, more than 100 command and observation posts and shelters, a number of steel fortresses that can be lifted and lowered, nearly 100 artillery firing positions, and 10 field airfields. There are nearly 500 kilometers of anti-tank trenches, 1 arsenal, nearly 100 permanent underground ammunition depots of more than 300 square meters, more than 50 oil depots and material depots, and more than 10 water supply stations......

In all the war games, the General Staff of the Kwantung Army determined that this line of defense was sufficient to withstand the frontal attack of hundreds of thousands of Soviet and Russian troops, so it was praised as the "first line of defense in the Far East". After the outbreak of the Zhanggufeng conflict, the Japanese military high-level believed that the possibility of war between Japan and Russia was increasing, so they deployed a large number of manpower and material resources to further consolidate the Dongning defense line, until the first battle of the Haraha River in the following year, the Kwantung Army and even the base camp believed that the Soviet Russian army had low combat strength and it was difficult to do anything even if it took the initiative to attack, which slowed down the follow-up construction of this defense line. By the beginning of 1942, the Japanese Kwantung Army had 5 divisions and 2 independent brigades stationed in Dongning, with more than 230,000 combat troops, while the population of the entire Dongning County was less than 40,000 at that time.

As soon as the Battle of Shuangchengzi ended, Marshal Tukhachevsky, the "god of the army", rushed to Shuangchengzi with his staff officers, while Lieutenant General Ivan Stepanovich Konev, who served as the commander of the front, led his front headquarters to follow the main forces to the Dongning front. On the evening of April 8, the Soviet and Russian troops, who had launched a large-scale counterattack, launched their first exploratory attack on the Japanese Dongning defensive line. After 30 minutes of artillery preparation, hundreds of armored vehicles of the 7th Mechanized Corps rolled forward like a torrent of steel, and although their first offensive stopped at anti-tank trenches and minefields, and lost nearly 100 tanks and a considerable number of armored vehicles, they successfully forced the Japanese to open most of the frontal fire points. That night, the Soviet and Russian heavy artillery units began to bombard the main positions of the Japanese army, and the sharp knife reconnaissance battalions belonging to the divisions participating in the battle were scattered in all directions, groping their way forward to the forward positions of the Japanese army under the cover of artillery, they planted explosives in the trenches, cleared safe passages from the minefields, and even pulled out some outpost fire points of the Japanese troops, thus reducing the resistance to the follow-up attack of the main forces.

(End of chapter)