The Moscow Option

by David Downing

  Whatever the motives for this dubious promise, it was hoped in Whitehall that the new degree of British-Jewish military co-operation would slow the German advance to an appreciable degree. In London it was estimated that Rommel might take anything from three weeks to four months to reach the Iraqi border. If it could be the latter then there was a good chance he would arrive too late. American and RAF reinforcements would by then have arrived in strength.

  In the north General Wilson’s force was still considerably smaller than that at Montgomery’s disposal. But the enemy was many more miles away. At the worst he might cross the Soviet-Iranian border in late August, which would leave two months before winter set in and put a stop to mobile operations in the mountains of northern Iran. Even during those two months the panzers would find it hard to move swiftly or far. Roads were few and bad, winding interminably through mountain passes which offered great possibilities for successful defence. Consequently Wilson was putting his faith in infantry and air power. By late August he hoped to have received the 2nd and 5th Divisions from India, the 51st and 56th Divisions from England, the 1st American Armoured Division from across the Atlantic, and heavy RAF reinforcements from a variety of sources. New airfields were under construction at Zahedan, Mirjaveh and Kerman in south-eastern Iran; here the bomber squadrons so begrudged by Bomber Command would be based.

  Through July and August Wilson could do little but wait. He knew that two panzer armies and two infantry armies had entered the Caucasus from the north. It all depended upon how much of them emerged at the other end. And on how soon. And on the attitude of Turkey.

  Ankara

  Shortly before his death in November 1938 Mustafa Kemal, the founding-father of modern Turkey, had looked ahead to the war he was sure would soon engulf the world he was leaving behind. ‘Stay on England’s side,’ he had advised his successors, ‘because that side is bound to win in the long run.’

  The new leaders of Ataturk’s state had done their best to follow his advice, and in 1939 Turkey signed a treaty of alliance with England and France which committed her to joining the forthcoming war should it spread to the Mediterranean. And although the speed of France’s fall gave the Turks second thoughts about actually fulfilling these obligations, their policy of neutrality retained a strong pro-Allied bias.

  The German invasion of Russia changed all this. Now the minority pro-Axis lobby, which included Army Chief of Staff Fevzi Cakmak, found itself allied to the nation-wide anti-Russian lobby. As far as most Turks were concerned the Germans had picked a good enemy. When a leading Turkish general visited the Eastern Front and reported back that all that remained of Russia was its snow, the nation as a whole breathed a grateful pro-Axis sigh of relief. During 1942, as the war drew closer to the Turkish frontiers, it became apparent to both the Turks and the world that Hitler might soon find himself a new ally in Ankara.

  The Allies redoubled their efforts to buy the Turks off. The British offered fighter squadrons they did not have, the Americans lend-lease they could not ship. The Germans too made promises - definite ones of arms deliveries, vague ones of territorial rewards - which were equally spurious. The difference was that the German promises were riskier to refuse. If their armies in Egypt and the Caucasus joined hands in Iraq then Turkey would be encircled, and forced to dance to Hitler’s tune. It would surely be better, argued newspapers like the pro-Axis Cumhuriyet, for Turkey to dance willingly and receive her just reward.

  The Turkish President, Ismet Inönü, was still determined, if possible, to remain faithful to the testament of his old friend Ataturk. He suspected that Turkey was doomed to enter the war that was lapping around her shores, and that sooner or later sides would have to be chosen. But better later than sooner. Inönü believed, despite appearances to the contrary, that the Axis powers would lose the war. But he needed an Allied victory to convince his people. In the meantime he had to compromise. He informed the British that they were no longer free to use the vital Aleppo-Mosul railway for transporting war materials, adding in private that he had no choice if he wished to stay in power. If the Caucasus could be held, he told the British Ambassador, if Rommel could soon be defeated, then Turkey could stay out of the war. If not, then at the very least he would be forced to allow the Germans transit rights across Turkish territory. When all was said and done, if the British could not beat the Germans then Turkey would have to join them.

  Chapter 10: High Noon off Panama

  There is less in this than meets the eye.

  Tallulah Bankhead

  I

  The Japanese Fleet returned in triumph to Hiroshima Bay on 13 June. The American carriers had been destroyed, Midway Island occupied after a bitter four-day struggle. It was a modern-day Tsushima, celebrated throughout Japan as a victory for the virtues of the Japanese way and as a defeat for the godless materialists on the other side of their ocean.

  But the cost to the Japanese carrier force had been high. Kaga was at the bottom of the Pacific; Hiryu, torpedoed by a US submarine during the voyage back to Japan, would take six months to repair. Akagi and Soryu, though hardly damaged, needed extensive replacements of aircraft and pilots. The other carriers would not return for some weeks. Shokaku and Zuikaku had sailed for the south immediately after the naval engagement to take part in the previously postponed Coral Sea operation. Junyo and Ryujo were still at Midway, waiting while the island’s airstrips were made ready to receive their planes. So all in all it would be at least six weeks before Kido Butai could again operate as a coherent striking force.

  For Yamamoto, once more relaxing aboard Yamato in Hiroshima Bay, it was an opportunity for taking stock. The crushing victory he had just secured had not brought the Americans cap-in-hand to the negotiating table. He had never really believed that it would. Midway was only one of a series of hammer-blows designed to weaken American resolve. Each of these blows paved the way for another. Where should the next one be struck?

  Before the Battle of Midway Yamamoto had been reasonably sure of his answer to this question. Despite his airy promises to Kuroshima in early May the Japanese Commander-in-Chief had never seriously considered an all- out assault on the British position in the Indian Ocean. Japan’s primary enemy, the only one which could stand between the nation and its destiny on the Asian mainland, remained the United States. Even after Midway this could never be forgotten. The next blow, and the one after that, must be aimed at American power, at American resolve, until the Americans themselves were forced to call a halt to this war.

  Yamamoto’s next priority was Oahu, the most important of the Hawaiian Islands. It stood at the centre of the Pacific chess-board. Pearl Harbor was the central Pacific naval base, the funnel through which American military potential would be poured into the Pacific bottle. Without Oahu, without Pearl, the Americans would have to mount their Pacific operations from the distant coast of the American continent, a formidable if not impossible task.

  The Japanese capture of Oahu would also be a psychological blow of enormous proportions. Midway had been too far from the United States. It had been a naval tragedy and another island occupied. But there were many islands, and navies could always be built again. Midway had brought bad news, traumatic news, of the war home to America, but it had not brought the war itself. That was what was needed. The occupation of American soil, of American bases, of American civilians. Oahu.

  Even before Midway, Ugaki and Yamamoto had canvassed support for such an operation, but the Army had refused to supply the necessary troops and the Naval General Staff had denounced the plan as being too hazardous. Now, with such a victory behind him, Yamamoto hoped that he could obtain the troops and the go-ahead from his naval superiors. He was soon to be disillusioned.

  The Army saw matters in a different light. It always had. Japan, an island power with continental aspirations, had produced two services of equal status and power which looked in opposite directions. While the Navy directed its energies eastward towards the Pacific and its American enem
y, the Army looked west towards China, its ever-reluctant bride. Soliciting the co-operation of this bride was the Army’s eternal task; that, and fighting off the other noted rapists of the underdeveloped world, the great powers of continental Europe and Anglo-America.

  The Navy’s role, according to the Army, was basically secondary. It consisted of securing the Army’s lines of communication between the home islands and the conquered territories, and of fending off naval interference from the other great powers. In 1905 this had meant little more than controlling the Straits of Japan, and though by 1942 the role had expanded geographically - south towards the protection of the vital oil, east against the air-sea threat posed by the United States - in essence it remained the same. Japan’s destiny lay on the Asian mainland, not amongst the myriad coral atolls of the Pacific. Action in the latter zone served action in the former, not vice versa.

  The glorious victory at Midway was interpreted in this light by the Army leaders. The Navy was doing its job, holding off American interference in the vital Chinese war-zone. It would have to continue to do this job, until such time as the Army had made China a fit place for Japanese to live in. For this latter task the Army needed all the divisions it had. Or nearly all of them. It was recognised that certain army units would have to be deployed alongside the Navy - the Pacific was an amphibious, not a purely oceanic setting - but their number would have to be small. The Japanese Army was not an infinitely expendable resource.

  The struggle in China continued. Little progress had been made in the seven months since Pearl Harbor. In Chungking Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek still defied the Japanese, despite the loss of the Burmese end of his road to the outside world. In the north-central provinces of Shensi and Shansi the activities of the communist partisans under Mao Tse-tung were becoming more rather than less troublesome. The Japanese invaders were still wading in thick treacle.

  What could be done to solve this painful problem? Blind to the realities of the situation the Japanese, in true Western style, sought to solve an internal problem by juggling with the periphery. They convinced themselves, despite evidence to the contrary, that the Chinese would give up their struggle if completely cut off from external aid.

  One source of this aid was India. An air-lift was now supplying Chiang Kai-shek from bases in Assam. Throttling this route at its source would involve the invasion of India, an operation which would involve the participation of the Navy and perhaps also Japan’s Axis partners.

  There were many in the Japanese Army leadership who welcomed the idea of co-operation with Germany in the Middle East/India area. Unfortunately their enthusiasm was not shared by either the Navy or, more important, the German Führer. German policy was becoming increasingly anti-Japanese in the summer of 1942. Even before Midway it had been an ambivalent mixture of reluctant admiration and vague distaste. Ciano noted in his diary that the latter was gaining the upper hand in the months that followed Yamamoto’s great victory:

  “It is all very well for the Japanese to win because they are our allies, but after all they belong to the yellow race and their successes are gained at the expense of the white race. It is a lietmotiv which frequently appears in the conversations of the Germans.”

  The Germans were slightly more tactful in the presence of their ‘yellow’ ally, but the Japanese were not fooled. If Ribbentrop’s charm was not transparent enough for them, then the steadfast German refusal either to offer or receive practical suggestions for joint activity was an obvious enough indication of Japan’s status in German eyes. When the Japanese proposed a jointly sponsored declaration of independence for India and the Arabs the Germans simply ignored them. All offers of military co-operation in the Indian Ocean were spurned. The heirs of the Rising Sun got the distinct impression that they were being brushed off.

  So, with neither Navy or Axis support forthcoming, the Army was forced to abandon its cherished Indian offensive. Its leaders were forced to turn their attention to the other imaginary source of Chinese resolution - Soviet support of the Chinese partisans. Joining the war against Russia had been a possibility since Barbarossa began, and now, in the summer of 1942, it seemed both practical and necessary. The new wave of German victories in May and June had worn down Soviet strength still further; the new wave of German hostility towards Japan made it imperative that the latter secured its natural rights in eastern Siberia while it was still possible. The Kwangtung Army was ordered to update its invasion plans.

  At an Imperial War Cabinet meeting on 5 July the Army announced and defended its decision. The conquest of eastern Siberia would both facilitate the conquest of China and provide much-needed lebensraum for Japan’s crowded Empire. It would finally eliminate the Soviet Union from the war. Simultaneously the Germans would be pushing the British out of the struggle. And the United States would not be able to fight on alone against both Germany and Japan.

  Yamamoto, who was not present at the meeting, strongly disagreed with the Army’s chosen course of action. He believed that the divisions earmarked for Siberia could be used to better strategic effect against Oahu. But he received no support from the Naval General Staff, who still considered that the Oahu operation was far too hazardous. Nor was this the worst of it. On 16 July Yamamoto was informed that the three smaller carriers - Ryujo, Junyo and the new Hiyo - would be needed in the Sea of Japan to support the Army’s operation against Vladivostok. Which left him with only Kido Butai’s four large carriers for the continuation of the war against the United States. He had to do something with them, or the momentum gathered at Midway would be lost. Denied the chance to attack Oahu, Yamamoto began to consider more daring possibilities.

  II

  Shortly before 06.00 on 7 August the green lights glowed on the decks of Hiyo, Ryujo and Junyo, and the Kates and Vals sped past them and into the air. Once in formation they flew off to the north. Forty miles ahead of them the Russian city of Vladivostok was welcoming the first rays of the morning sun. To the Japanese pilots the huge red orb in the east seemed like a vast replica of their flag strung across the horizon.

  At 06.45 the first bombs rained down on Vladivostok harbour, sinking two Soviet cruisers of the moribund Pacific Fleet and three American merchantmen flying the Soviet flag.

  At almost the same moment six divisions of the Kwangtung Army moved into the attack at two places on the Manchurian border, near Hunchun, scene of border fighting in 1938, and at the point 120 miles further north where the Harbin-Vladivostok railway crossed, the frontier. Three hours later a further seven divisions of the Kwangtung Army, also in two groups, moved forward in western Manchuria, into the semi-desert region around Buir Nor where the Soviet, Mongolian and Manchurian borders join. The objective of these divisions was the large Siberian town of Chita, two hundred miles to the north-west, at the junction of the Trans-Siberian and Chinese Eastern Railways.

  The Japanese declaration of war, following at the usual discreet distance behind the commencement of hostilities, was delivered to the Soviet ambassador in Tokyo at midday. Imperial Japan had taken the final reckless plunge.

  In the Harbin HQ of the Kwangtung Army its commander, General Umezu, radiated confidence. His crack army, shunted into the wings of the war since 1937, would at last have the chance to prove its devotion and virility to the Sun God reigning in Tokyo. The defeats suffered in the border ‘skirmishes’ of 1938-9 had been forgotten.

  They would soon be remembered. Considering the smallness of the force at his disposal - a mere seventeen divisions - Umezu’s confidence was astonishing, and only explicable in terms of the ‘victory disease’ prevalent at all levels of the Japanese Armed Forces in early August 1942. The Kwangtung Army’s intelligence work was wholly incompetent; it was reckoned that there were eight Red Army divisions east of Chita, but in fact there were fifteen, and they were commanded by one of the war’s greatest generals - Konstantin Rokossovsky, the future victor of Mutankiang, Vladimir and Smolensk. Stavka had sent him east to take command of the remnants of the Fa
r Eastern Army in mid-July, and he had talked with Zhukov on the eve of his departure from Kuybyshev. The two generals had agreed that Vladivostok would be impossible to hold, but that any further loss of territory should and could be avoided.

  If General Umezu had been privy to this conversation he might have been better prepared for what was to follow in August. But instead he interpreted the rapid progress of the armies converging on Vladivostok as further confirmation of Soviet weakness. The three divisions following the railway, spearheaded by the famous ‘Gem’ Division, fought their way into Voroshilov on the Trans-Siberian only four days after crossing the border. Vladivostok was effectively cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union, and on 13 August the battle for the city began, the Japanese ground forces receiving ample air support from the aircraft based in Manchuria and the carriers still lying forty miles offshore. There was little doubt that the city would fall within a week.