MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/. Japan's military leadership was preparing for an attack on the Soviet Union, which was to begin if the Nazis managed to capture Leningrad. Along with combat operations large-scale terror and bacteriological sabotage against the Red Army were envisaged, according to archive materials presented by the presidential National Center for Historical Memory at a TASS press conference.

"Japan's top brass consider the question of going to war with the USSR to be settled and are merely waiting for a convenient opportunity. The Germans are certain that Japan will go ahead after they occupy Leningrad. If the government [of Japan] backs away away from the Axis (the countries of the military and economic alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan - TASS), the army will start an internal coup and even go as far as the assassination of the Emperor," reads an agent's message from Shanghai, received in Moscow in September 1941.

Postwar testimonies by Japanese generals confirm this message. In particular, according to reports by the military counter-intelligence Smersh (Death to Spies) in 1941, in collusion with the German government Japan intensified preparations for war and for this purpose the Japanese General Staff developed its own plan for an attack on the USSR, codenamed Kantokuen, which translates as Special Maneuvers by the Kwantung Army. This plan envisaged, along with military measures, acts of terror and sabotage on a large scale, including bacteriological sabotage against the Red Army.

The Japanese were also collecting information about the Red Army in the Far East, including naval and military air bases and railroads.

Up to 20 divisions and tank units were massed up in Manchuria for a hypothetical offensive. All infantry troops from Formosa (Taiwan), Hainan and Fujian Province were sent to North China.

TASS and the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of the Russian Federation signed a memorandum of cooperation on June 21. It envisages the launch of an information and educational project on key events crucial to historical memory, one of them being June 22 and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.