To achieve high-speed industrialization, a lot of money is needed first. For Russia, which had almost nothing, only grain and raw materials from the fields could be exchanged for money. But the peasants of small producers did not hand over grain easily, and they once laughed at Stalin, who went to the countryside to collect grain himself: "You want to dance for us, and we may give you some grain."

Stalin, of course, did not go to the dance, but built collective farms with an iron fist. After paying a huge and brutal humanitarian price, food was finally kept in the hands of the political axe and exported in exchange for the funds needed for industrialization. Russian art and Tsarist treasures were also exchanged for money from the Western rich. By 1936, in order to obtain masterpieces by Rembrandt, Rubens and other masters, the bigwigs, including the famous American millionaires Goulburn and Kane, and the former US Treasury Secretary Menon paid the Bolsheviks more than $100 million. Most of the money obtained from various sources was used to import a large number of machines and technologies. In 1932, half of the machinery and equipment exported by Britain and the United States were bought by the Soviets, and a large number of unemployed foreign technicians were recruited to the Soviet Union. In the same year, already 1810 foreign specialists and 10655 technicians worked there, and the economic crisis in the West created a lot of opportunities for the USSR.

In order to build a strong national defense as soon as possible, industrial construction was focused on heavy industry that directly served the military. In the 13 years before the war, the Soviet Union's defense appropriations amounted to 170.1 billion rubles, while the total industrial investment in the same period was only 185 billion rubles. The Soviet people paid a huge price for this. While industry was advancing by leaps and bounds, chimneys were increasing, supplies and food were still desperately scarce, and jokes were circulating: "We have no pork, no milk, no butter, no bread, no vegetable soup, but we have Mikoyan" (in Russian, all of the above words start with m, and Mikoyan was in charge of domestic supplies at the time). In shared houses, people have to queue up to go to the toilet. The standard of living of the Soviets was much lower than that of Germany and China. Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of millions of people, the high speed demanded by Stalin was achieved. However, this kind of industry built up in the "high speed" is extremely imperfect, although the total amount is huge.

Compared to China, there was an extreme shortage of well-trained officers and non-commissioned officers in the Soviet army. Even in the era when there were only 100,000 troops, China still maintained an army of high-quality officers and non-commissioned officers. In 1929, there were 100 officers, 30 sergeants, and at least 400 corporals for every 1,000 [***] people. In addition to the establishment of the army, there were a large number of retired officers with high pensions, and various civilian military organizations had 7 million reserve personnel before 1935, which provided a guarantee for the establishment of a large and sophisticated army.

In the Soviet Union, the revolutionary storm had long since wiped out the old Russian officer corps, and the few officers who remained were not trusted by the new regime, and the red commanders trained under the new system lacked quality and experience. Financial constraints and a shortage of labor meant that 90 per cent of the local units of the Red Army could not be separated from production and received only short training every year, at best as a militia.

The expansion of the Soviet army was also influenced by pre-war foreign policy. In the Soviet Union, which was hated by the entire West, any military measures were taken with extreme caution and in strict secrecy in order to prevent a "crusade" and complete isolation. At the cost of this obscurity, by the eve of World War II, the total strength of the Soviet army, although 2 million men, was only half the number of their German allies, and the ineffective local divisions had just been abolished.

The impact of the Great Purge that began in 1936 on the combat effectiveness of the Soviet army greatly exceeded the above-mentioned factors. More than 40,000 Red Army officers, who were the backbone and elite of the army, were persecuted. Stalin may have thought that he could consolidate his regime and army and make them stronger and more stable through the rebellion, but the price paid was greater than he estimated.

For Stalin, the capitalist countries were all enemies, only in different ways. The German conquest of Europe went so smoothly that Stalin and his generals were incredulous. The German victory stimulated the ambitions of the Soviet Union, and after the full-scale war between China and Japan, Stalin seized the opportunity and began to plan to implement his own plan of shame. His plan was not only to recover the eastern territories occupied by China that year, but to destroy China and create a "Yellow Russian Soviet Republic".

Stalin's eagerness to destroy China was by no means a whim, but a deliberate one. He himself explained this: "Today we are more armed than ever, but we will not be able to maintain this level of armament for long...... One day the Chinese will break in, maybe in ** years, maybe a year later"; "Time is in the enemy's favor, and the current balance of forces will only go in our favor"; "The Chinese don't sleep a lot." Apparently, Stalin was aware of the inferiority and essential flaws of the potential power of the USSR, as well as the enormous potential of China. If it waited until these shortcomings had been overcome before attacking China, the Soviet Union would lose its temporary advantage and the opportunity to dominate the world. Based on this judgment, Stalin thought that he could not wait; For the same reason, he could not wait for Germany to destroy Britain before attacking China. After all, in 1941, the British island nations were not strong enough to threaten German domination in Europe, and there was no need for the Soviet Union to lose a rare opportunity to destroy China for her sake. Moreover, Stalin believed that "if victory [against China] is possible, a situation which would force Britain to make peace" and that "the destruction of China would greatly increase the power of the Far East"; Not only that, but the whole world will "hold its breath" because of the collapse of China, which will pave the way for the USSR to seize world hegemony.

The Soviet plan to invade China had a closely related but little-known plan: the "Eastern" master plan. Not many people know the details of the program. But compared to this brutal plan, the Supreme Command of the Soviet Red Army's "Special Jurisdiction in the Occupied Areas and Special Measures for the Army" of the Soviet High Command that the Soviet army's aggression against Chinese citizens was not punished by military law, and the policy of economic plundering of China, which Stalin himself estimated would starve tens of millions of people to death. Based on the available information, it can be confirmed that the plan will evict at least 46 million to 51 million inhabitants of Siberia, Mongolia, the northeast and northwest regions of China, and some other regions. 14 million Russians will move in the areas where these people once lived, and the remaining 14 million local residents will also be Russified. According to some of Stalin's private speeches, those who survive will be treated as pariahs. There could be no intellectuals among them, the culture of the people was only to know the markings on the highway or to be able to count to five hundred, and the Soviet soldiers who fought on the Eastern Front would be the priority developers of the occupation zone in the East, and they would be allowed to keep their weapons to suppress the local resistance at any time. And the content of the "East" master plan should be more than that, and the scope of its implementation is clearly within the control of the Soviet Union. Stalin himself said that as long as the war situation allowed: "the territory of the USSR will be expanded to the Bering Sea and the South China Sea". And if there really is a day, there is every reason to believe that the genocide in the USSR will also expand to these regions!

Stalin never counted on the establishment of a long-term peace in China. But according to his estimates, the war between Germany and the West would last a long time. Unexpectedly, Poland and France, known as Europe's largest army power, were defeated in less than a year. The swastika flag fluttered over half of Europe. Stalin is said to have asked those around him: "Can they not resist at all?" "Stalin's unease was justified: the fighting power of the Red Army was not as strong as he used to think. In the Soviet-Finnish Winter War, the Soviet army, which had absolute superiority over the Finnish army, was dragged for 4 months. It was only after paying several times the cost of the enemy's casualties that the Red Army barely won. The shortcomings of the army were exposed in this winter war, and all this was seen by the Chinese. The documentary of the Soviet-Finnish war became a tool for the amusement of the Chinese generals. Enraged, Stalin rebuked Voroshilov, the People's Commissar of Defense. This civil war hero, who is poorly educated, knows nothing about modern warfare, is said to be only good at handguns, and spends a lot of time smiling at the camera. But his rebuttal when attacked by Stalin is not nonsense: "You (Stalin) are to blame for all this!" You are the one who wiped out the older generation of the Red Army, and our best generals were killed by you. "In the purges launched by Stalin, the Red Army lost all its commanders of military districts, 90 percent of its deputy commanders and chiefs of staff, and 80 percent of its divisional commanders. A third of the regimental commanders were blamed, middle and junior officers suffered heavy losses, technicians were not spared, and 5,616 pilots were purged in the Air Force alone. The foundations of the army were greatly damaged. In order to make up for these losses, which were simply irreparable in the short term, a large number of low-ranking officers were promoted by skipping ranks. Yesterday's platoon commander became a regiment commander, and a battalion commander became a division commander or even a corps commander. A large number of "crash platoon commanders" (with only 6 months of military training) trained by various crash courses also flooded the army. At the beginning of 1941, there were only 7 commanders of the Soviet army. 1% with a higher military education, 55. 9% have a secondary education, 24. 6% graduated from crash course, the remaining 12. 4% have no military education at all. Whether or not Stalin acknowledged his responsibility for this, it was clear that the solution to the army's many problems, as the time for the invasion of China was approaching, could not be solved by removing Voroshilov and replacing him with Timoshenko, who had distinguished himself in the Finnish campaign. The armed forces must be thoroughly reorganized, and the economic and industrial preparations for war must be further strengthened. And it takes a lot of time. To do this, Stalin had to carry out his own plans with the help of the Germans, and he believed that he could do it, and he had no choice.

Under Stalin's orders, trains loaded with Soviet oil and rubber headed west through the vast Russian plain, ending in Germany. According to the agreement reached between the Soviet Union and Germany in August 1939, the trade volume between the two countries was about 250 million marks, while the trade agreement signed in Moscow on February 11, 1940 provided for a minimum exchange of 1.04 billion marks for the next 18 months. In order to win over the Germans, Stalin, who faithfully fulfilled the agreement, provided Germany with 2 million tons of grain, 1.2 million tons of oil, 200,000 tons of cotton, 800,000 tons of phosphate, a large number of other important raw materials, and 1.5 million tons of soybeans transiting from Germany. Stalin himself confessed his friendship to the German ambassador to the Soviet Union: "We should always be friends, and you should make efforts to do so." Ambassador Schulenburg was really doing this, and the words were brought by Schulenburg to Stalin or to Molotov, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union. Of course, Stalin's efforts were not in vain, and the German side paid off handsomely. The stationing of the German affairs advisory group has to a great extent reduced the bad impact of the "Great Purge" on the combat effectiveness of the Soviet army, and Germany's advanced technology has also greatly improved the equipment level of the Soviet army. The Soviet legions, which followed the Germans as they swept across Europe, also gained a lot of valuable experience, which would be very important in future wars.

At the same time that Sta was desperately trying to win over the Germans, preparations for an attack on China were unfolding on a large scale. The pace of construction of the defense industry is getting faster and faster. In Stalin's view, who firmly believed that "one is lazy and stupid, and everything else is virtue", "designers always leave room for themselves, they have not tapped all their potential, and they should squeeze more from them". Stalin, on the other hand, relied on severe administrative and criminal penalties as well as labor competitions and propaganda to enforce the work of factory workers, sometimes leading to jail time for hours late for work. At the spur of Stalin, the production of the Soviet military industry increased rapidly. From 1939 to June 1941, the output of the Soviet defense industry increased by 39%, while other industries grew by only 13%. The newly built factories began to extend to the Urals, the Volga, Siberia and other deep areas. The growth in the aviation industry has been particularly significant. A Luftwaffe delegation visited several Chinese aerospace spherical bearing, alloy and aero engine factories. Upon their return, they declared in a report to the German political axe that the Soviet aircraft industry was the largest and most advanced in all of Europe. During this period, the Soviet Union, with the exception of new aircraft, had significantly surpassed China in the production of weapons. One of the purposes of the Soviet production of such tanks was that they were convinced that the Chinese had giant tanks like "dreadnoughts", when in reality there were none. The army stepped up its training. From August 1940 to the outbreak of war, the Western Special Military Region held five field exercises at the group army level, one on-the-spot exercise at the headquarters level at the group army level, five combat exercises at the army level, one combat exercise at the front army level, one radio exercise with the participation of two mechanized armies, and two drills at the division and one army level. A large-scale expansion and reorganization of the Soviet army was also underway. The number of troops expanded rapidly from 2 million men in 98 divisions in 1939 to 5 million men in 303 divisions in June 1941. Following the experience of the Spanish Civil War, the abolished Mechanized Corps was reorganized. Once fully equipped, these mechanized corps will have 29,899 tanks, including 15,834 T-34 and KV tanks. The Soviet Aerospace Forces have converted the original aviation brigades into divisions and regiments, new aircraft have begun to equip the troops, and five airborne corps are being formed. The scale of the Soviet Union's preparations for war was truly unprecedented in the history of mankind. But these preparations were far from complete before the offensive began. The old troops have not yet recovered from the severe devastation of the Great Purge, and a large number of newly built units that lack training have further reduced the overall quality of the whole army. The ambitious retooling program has only just begun, and a small amount of new equipment (relative to the staggering amount of old equipment) has not yet become combat-ready. But judging by the enormous size and tendencies of its existence, as soon as these preparations are completed, the Red Army will have an absolute overwhelming superiority over any enemy.

The Soviets on the eve of the offensive were a powerful, but not yet assembled machine. But many believed what Stalin said: the Red Army would have a comprehensive advantage over the Chinese.

After the outbreak of the Sino-Soviet war, Stalin's propaganda department hyped that the USSR had taken preventive action before China launched a "storm of Mongols that destroyed everything" against the Soviet Union. This claim is not entirely groundless. Shortly before the outbreak of the war, Soviet reconnaissance agencies discovered that the Chinese troops were massively massing along the border (this is a fact), and the rear was intensifying mobilization. There were all sorts of speculations about this in the Red Army leadership. In general, the General Staff of the Soviet Army tended to see the build-up of Chinese troops as a show of strength by China to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Stalin informed German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop of the so-called "evidence" of China's preparations to invade the Soviet Union.

In the weeks leading up to the outbreak of the war, some of the advanced equipment of the Chinese army and the elaborate maps of the Soviet Union captured in the border area, as well as other materials with mixed authenticity and falsity, were also used as evidence of the "preventive war". But this evidence did not convince even the Soviet generals themselves, let alone their diligently delicate German allies. What is surprising is that soon, the "persuasive" evidence was actually put forward by the Chinese themselves.

A document sent by Soviet intelligence officer Sorge entitled "To the President of the Chinese Federation: Ideas for the Strategic Deployment Plan of the Chinese Armed Forces" caused a sensation. This was a report personally drawn up by Brigadier General Zhang Xiao, then chief of the General Staff of the Chinese Army: The report believed that the Soviet army was already in a state of general mobilization and had a vast rear, so that "the Soviet Union and its allies, Germany and Italy, were able to send 320 divisions to attack China", "In order to prevent this in time, I believe that under no circumstances should the Soviet high command be allowed to seize the initiative in action, but should we preemptively deploy the army before the enemy, and before the Soviet army is in the stage of deployment, Attack on the Soviet troops before the battle front and the coordination of the various arms of the armed forces", "the purpose of the attack is to cut off the Soviet Union from its allies." Soviet oil was the blood of China's wartime industry. The disclosure of this document greatly increased the likelihood of a "Chinese invasion", although many German generals doubted the document's real surname.

(To be continued)