STALIN'S WAR ON JAPAN: The Red Army's 'Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation', 1945

1-227470

Describes the political, diplomatic, and military build-up to the Soviet offensive and its decisive outcome. The military side of the story is explored in the invasion of Manchukuo where the Soviet 'Deep Battle' concept was employed with shattering results, plus secondary actions in Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. But equally absorbing is the account of the decision-making that gave rise to the offensive and the political and diplomatic background to it, and in particular the Yalta conference. There, Stalin allowed the Americans to persuade him to join the war in the east; a conflict he was determined on entering anyway. He also considers to what extent Japan's capitulation is attributable to the atomic bomb or the stunningly successful entry of the Soviet Union into the conflict.