MOSCOW, September 13. /TASS/. On the occasion of the 85th anniversary of the end of the hostilities on the Khalkhin-Gol River (on September 15, 1939 an agreement on the cessation of hostilities was signed between joint Soviet-Mongolian forces and Japan) the FSB has released an archive document testifying that Japan and Germany attempted to push each other into launching a war against the Soviet Union.
The factsheet presents testimonies by an officer of the Foreign Armies of the East section of the Supreme Command of Nazi Germany’s ground forces, Friedrich Schildknecht. The officer, taken prisoner in Stalingrad, recalled the details of a trip by a group of Wehrmacht officers to Tokyo in May 1939 with the aim of gauging Japan's readiness for war with the Soviet Union. The German officers were dispatched to Tokyo twenty-four hours after the first battle between the Japanese and Mongolian border guards.
Schildknecht testified he had been supplied with a huge array of intelligence about the Red Army - a map showing the locations of troops and military districts, the German General Staff’s review of the Red Army’s divisions and brigades, a memorandum on the structure of headquarters in wartime, military hardware, uniforms and other equipment of the Soviet military, a reference material on the military training of the Red Army with a description of all known military schools, academies and officer training courses and the latest 1938 combat regulations of the Red Army. In addition, he was carrying a digest concerning Soviet airborne troops, a report on maneuvers and exercises by the Red Army that took place in 1938 and a map of the Soviet Union’s railroads, drawn by the German General Staff. At a meeting at the Japanese General Staff the intelligence available was verified, with negotiations conducted in Russian.
Difference of positions
According to Schildknecht's testimony, upon his return from the trip, when he was already in Berlin, he learned from his superior, a Colonel Kinzel, that the Japanese General Staff had agreed to engage in armed conflict with the Soviet Union. Schildknecht also cited Germany’s ambassador to Japan, General Ott as saying: "The Japanese appetite for the Soviet Far East is certainly great, but they are afraid of pulling chestnuts out of the fire alone."
Major Kotani, of the Russian section of the Japanese General Staff, stated in a conversation with the Germans that there were two groups in the Japanese General Staff. One faction favored a limited operation. These officers argued it would be enough to occupy Vladivostok and a small part of the coastal strip in order to eliminate threats to Japan from that city and Russian influence on the Pacific coast. But the majority of officers at the Japanese general staff wished to seize the entire eastern part of Siberia, with the main strike targeting Lake Baikal. Japan was prepared to field 20-22 divisions against the Soviet Union. But the Japanese General Staff stipulated that the attack must be a coordinated effort, with the Japanese striking from the east and the Germans from the west. The German staff, on the contrary, preferred that the Japanese start the war in the Far East, while Germany would join in later, after "finishing off Poland and resolving matters in Europe."
Also, according to Schildknecht's testimony, Germany was not interested in starting a war against Moscow at that moment, because it wanted to siphon more grain and oil out of the Soviet Union first.
"Perhaps, the Germans deliberately understated the number of Soviet divisions in the Far East (the difference between German and Japanese estimates was 5-6 divisions) in order to cause the situation develop in the direction they needed and draw Japan into a full-scale war with the Soviet Union in 1939," the FSB’s commentary says. "However, Japan’s political leadership after the defeat in the armed conflict on the Khalkhin-Gol River was very cautious about the idea of going to war with the Soviet Union and managed to resist the external influence of Hitler's Germany and the internal pressure of the militarist lobby both in 1939 and in 1942".