Chapter 890: Consensus

War had every decision-maker at their wits’ end. You never knew when your opponent would be as brilliant as Zhuge Liang, nor when they would be so foolish as to defy all reason. And so, while Akado was cleaning up his subordinates’ messes, Stalin was sleeping restlessly, and in the Japanese High Command, Tojo Hideki and the others were also on the verge of collapse from overwork.

“Do the Americans really have so many supplies, and are they giving them to the Soviets for free?” a Japanese general asked, tapping the document in front of him with disdain, vehemently attacking Tojo Hideki’s proposed second northern operational policy. “I find the source of this intelligence in your hands to be highly unreliable. It’s something you’ve completely fabricated yourself!”

On the other side, other generals were whispering to each other. For a country that was already on a path to ruin, to once again adjust its strategic offensive direction was no different from suicide. It wasn’t that they felt the Soviet army was unbeatable, but that the time required to prepare for a change in strategic offensive direction was too long, and the variables were simply too great.

Ever since the “Nomonhan Incident” had ended, the Japanese side—especially the Army—had long since given up any thoughts of going north. That was why they had gathered their forces and had achieved a series of brilliant victories in their southern advance. This was hailed by many army generals as an “unprecedentedly great stratagem.” Now, to abandon the southern strategy and continue to go north made many of them feel a burning slap across the face.

It wasn’t just a matter of face. In fact, many of the “technocrat” bureaucrats within the Japanese military felt that going north to provoke the Soviet Union was not a very wise matter. The outcome of the Nomonhan Incident had proven that there was a clear gap between the Japanese Army’s armored forces and those of the Soviet army. If a conflict were to break out again between the two sides, the Japanese army was very likely to be defeated once more.

“The main force of the Soviet armored units, that is, the T-26 tank, its advanced nature is beyond doubt, gentlemen,” an official in charge of the Great Japanese Empire’s armored weapons said with resignation. “To challenge an opponent of this level requires great caution.”

But on this matter, the Japanese Army Air Arm was clearly much more optimistic. Because they had not suffered much of a loss last time, their mentality was much better than that of the ground forces. “To defeat the Soviet air force in the Far East should be no problem, but the key is how to achieve the occupation.”

Putting these surface issues aside, the number of things that needed to be adjusted in secret was already as numerous as the hairs on an ox, enough to make one’s hair stand on end. Because of the southern strategy, Japan’s overall material reserves deployment was biased towards the south. If a war were to break out in the north, then most of these materials would need to be transferred to the northeastern region of China. For Japan, this was simply a fantasy.

It should be known that even in Europe, with its developed railways and roads, for the German army to transfer supplies from south to north or from west to east was a very massive project. Train scheduling, transport security, plus the secrecy of the work and the purpose of doing so all had to be carefully studied.

On the land of China, which was so backward it basically had no railways, and whose road system was even worse than the Soviet Union’s, to complete the transfer of supplies needed for the deployment of a massive, strategic-level force was not something that could be accomplished with just a flick of the tongue.

The mobility of the Japanese army mostly relied on their own two legs, plus bicycles and mules and horses, in coordination with cars and railways. It was an indisputable fact that their degree of mechanization was low, and their dependence on supplies was also relatively small. But to assault an opponent of the Soviet Union’s level was not something that could be solved with just bayonets and bicycles.

Because of the strength of the opponent, the Japanese army also had to prepare corresponding countermeasures, such as the more advanced Type 97 medium tank, large-caliber support artillery, and the trains and cars necessary for a rapid assault. These things were all major consumers of supplies, and for the Japanese army, they were all high-end equipment that devoured gold coins.

The Type 97 tank was a new tank that the Japanese army had only developed in 1936. Its performance at the time was indeed not weak (the Panzer III and IV that Akado had brought out ahead of time were not in the comparison range). Compared to the Soviet T-26 tank, it was also full of highlights. In those years, small tanks were in vogue, and it was certainly not just a Japanese thing.

The key was the positioning of the tanks of various countries, which directly affected the combat record and the perceived performance of the Japanese tanks. What was speechless here was the definition of this medium tank by the Japanese army, which completely made the user feel that they had spent a lot of money but had not bought a good thing. This was like buying a Japanese Toyota Camry and, gritting your teeth, insisting that your C-class car could be compared to a BMW 750. It wasn’t that the Camry was bad; the key was that it really wasn’t in the same class.

Every army in the world had equipment of the Japanese Type 97’s level, such as the German Panzer III assault gun, the Soviet T-26, and the American M3 Lee, and so on. Unfortunately, there was no longer a single country in the world that called a tank of this level a “medium tank.”

In March of 1939, the Germans were still using the Panzer III chassis purely for economic considerations. The Panzer III assault gun that was in production was also an armored vehicle for supporting infantry, not an armored combat weapon for decisive battles. The mainstay of the German armored forces was the Panther tank. The American army used the M4 for the same job. The Soviets were already playing with the T-34 and the Stalin.

But the Japanese, at this time, were still clinging to the leg of their own 15-ton Type 97 tank, insisting that it was a medium tank, and even using it as their main tank. This was a typical case of forcing a duck onto a perch. In fact, the Type 97, which the Japanese army intended to use against the T-26, was only a little bit stronger than the senile “grandpa” T-26.

This involved a philosophical question. It wasn’t that everyone was determined to belittle those who rode electric scooters as poor bastards; after all, many people couldn’t even afford an electric scooter. But to ride an electric scooter and insist on comparing who has more face with someone driving a Ferrari, that wasn’t just a case of everyone being jealous of the rich and maliciously slinging mud, was it?

Of course, in fact, the Japanese Type 4 tank, which was on paper comparable to the German main tank, the Panther, was still in the imagination of the tank designers. As for the Type 1 tank, which was on the same level as the Panzer III, it was still just a thing on paper; there wasn’t even a model yet.

Although Japan was the only “great power” in Asia at the time that could, along with the Western powers, independently develop tank technology, its foundation was limited, and the nature of its sudden wealth could not be changed. The things it came up with did indeed have a certain gap with the real armored powers.

In addition, Japan had a “glorious tradition” of “giving half the cake to the navy.” While the army was desperately trying to produce a few more small tanks to play house with, the navy itself was still playing with the more superior “AAV” (now called the EFV) landing craft. So it was not surprising that this tragic situation had occurred.

Since the Japanese Army had a prior conviction of researching aircraft carriers, please don’t be so surprised that the Japanese Navy was now researching and equipping its own amphibious tanks. Marshal Yamamoto Isoroku was now trapped in the Solomon Islands, unable to advance or retreat. Wasn’t it because the army had bizarrely insisted on fighting at Imphal?

While everyone was talking, Tojo Hideki and Sugiyama Hajime exchanged a glance. Sugiyama coughed twice and said, “Silence! This time, in the war against the Soviet Union, we will have the element of surprise. We will naturally have an advantage. I have analyzed the specific advantages with a few generals, and now I will let Tojo-kun explain them to everyone.”

Tojo Hideki picked up the document in front of him and said slowly, “First, our intelligence personnel are confirming the specific strength of the Soviet army in the Far East… and are also analyzing how many supplies the American aid to the Soviet Union really contains.”

“The Soviets’ security work is better than we had imagined. We have investigated a portion of the Soviet supply depots that are stockpiling American supplies. We have found that there are indeed a lot of supplies inside. As for the specific quantity, we are still counting,” a Japanese colonel in charge of intelligence said humbly to all the generals present. “What is certain is that there are a lot of supplies, so many that it is hard to imagine.”

The specific military strength of the Soviet army in the Far East was still impossible to verify. Because before the start of the German-Soviet war, the Soviet forces deployed in the Far East were supposed to be around 1.5 million. This number was something the Japanese army could not afford to provoke, no matter what. So, although the Japanese army had more than 600,000 troops stationed in Manchuria, they were in a state of constant fear.

It was also for this reason that after the Japanese army had tested the Soviet army’s combat effectiveness in the Nomonhan Incident, they had never mentioned the matter of going north again. They had begun a large-scale construction project in the northeastern region of China, building a pile of strong fortifications. In any case, the amount of work was not small. The things that the tyrant Qin Shi Huang had done in the plays (digging pits for people and repairing “defense lines”), they had just repeated in a different way and in a different place.

They had said they would be a turtle for the rest of their lives. Now you want everyone to change from defense to offense? Isn’t this a joke? They had fewer men than the Soviets, their equipment was not as good as the Soviets’, and they had a little bit of courage while squatting in their fortresses. To charge out now, wasn’t that just looking for death? This was the thought of most of the Japanese grassroots officers and soldiers, very simple and directly related to everyone’s life.

So when the intelligence officers began to report on the military strength in the Soviet border regions, many of the generals present felt a sense of relief. Because the intelligence on the Japanese side showed that although the Soviet army had reduced its garrison in the border regions, it still maintained a massive superiority in forces over the Japanese Kwantung Army.

The confirmed number of Soviet troops that had been withdrawn was over 700,000, which was about half of the total Soviet forces in the Far East. Even so, the conservative estimate of the Soviet forces was still around a million, which was still not something that a mere 600,000 Japanese troops could shake.

At the very least, the existing forces and intelligence did not support Japan launching a northern advance war in the Far East. This was the consensus of all the Japanese generals present.

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