Political assessment of the events of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1939) in the writings of German official military representatives.

Ermakov Dmitrii Nikolaevich ORCID: 0000-0002-0811-0058 Chief Researcher Center for World Politics and Strategic Analysis Institute of China and Contemporary Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences 32 Nakhimovsky Ave., Moscow, 117997, Russia, of. Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences dermakow@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

 Introduction

This article is based on German captured documents from the Fund No. 500 of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, these documents have not yet been sufficiently studied.

In particular, the complex of documents of military attaches, including those who worked in Japan, has not been studied in detail. These materials are of particular value today in the perspective of analyzing the positions of China and Japan in World War II and in the process of the emergence of this global conflict, moreover, taking into account that many Japanese documents of the war and pre-war periods were destroyed before the surrender of the Japanese Empire.

Since a significant part of the documents on the German military mission in China turned out to be in the West, we attract for our research the dissertation work of R. L. Rodriguez, which contains fragments of relevant documentary materials and links to them ^[1]

During the Cold War and shortly after it, the image of the Second Sino-Japanese War had a simplified look — China, a victim of the aggression of the Japanese Empire, did not fight the Japanese militarists so successfully from July 1937 (the incident on the Marco Polo Bridge) and until September 1945, respectively, the Chinese theater of operations was auxiliary (about the Chinese army it was customary to mention mainly in connection with the front in Burma).

In Soviet and modern Russian historiography, the above-mentioned accents in the analysis of the Second Sino-Japanese War are basically the same as in the West, and have practically not changed, especially with regard to the motivation of the parties. Only relatively recently, Russian historiography began to study the third side of the conflict — the protectorates of Japan on the territory of modern China. But other collaborators in East Asia are still of little interest to Russian researchers, except for the issue of cooperation of white immigrant circles with the Japanese authorities. It should be noted that the interest in the Second Sino-Japanese War in Russian historiography has recently been largely due to the resumption of a detailed analysis of the conflict on Khalkhin Gol, Soviet-Japanese relations during the Second World War and several years preceding it ^[2].

In modern Chinese media, historiography and mass consciousness, the war with Japan is a struggle against a brutal aggressor who sought to destroy China and its people. The war with Japan is presented by the Chinese official historiography as a war to destroy the Chinese people, or at least most of them. At the same time, Chinese and Western historiographies focus on the war crimes of Japanese militarists against Chinese civilians and prisoners of war. But in China, another trend has also developed in the circles of historians — the development of the image of the Sino-Japanese war as the main theater of military operations of the Second World War, or at least equivalent or slightly inferior in importance to the Soviet-German Front ^[3]. Often the same statements can be heard from Russian historians ^[4]. The Far Eastern — Japanese-Chinese — theater of the Second World War, which for many years was in the shadow of the Eurocentric approach of Russian historians, is really important. But how does it relate to the fighting of the Great Patriotic War, what impact did it have on the world's descent into World War II, whether it is worth reviewing the chronology of this global conflict in this regard — these are just some of the questions that domestic military historians are trying to answer today, ^[5] taking into account the described trends in the development of Chinese historiography ^[6] about the Second World War.

If we consider the resolutions of the EU and the European Parliament dedicated to the anniversaries of 1939 and 1945, it is obvious that the degree of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian criticism is growing in them. At the same time, it is generally recognized that for a long time only the USSR provided assistance to China in the latter's struggle with Japan. The second aspect is Japan's attack on the United States as a factor that prevented the opening of an anti—Soviet front in the Far East, when by June 1941 Japan firmly and openly associated itself with the Anti-Comintern Pact. In this regard, the Second Sino-Japanese War, in which the United States actually intervened, first through the introduction of anti-Japanese economic sanctions, and then as a fighting party, became the factor that turned the military expansion of militaristic Japan south from the Soviet borders. Therefore, American historiography continues to insist that in the second half of 1941, official Washington created conditions to prevent Japan from attacking the USSR (American authors do not always say so directly, but it is obvious from their work on this issue), and after December 7, 1941, fought with Japan ^[7] (this position of the mainstream American historical science has remained unchanged since the first years of the Cold War, the discussion is sufficiently fully reflected in V. P. Safronov's monograph on the war in the Pacific ^[8]. In this connection, even the concept of "The War in the Pacific as a Second Front", which is, however, still on the periphery of American historical science, has arisen. Against the background of all this, the role of the USSR in World War II is becoming more modest.

Was China one of the main actors of the Second World War, or is it still a victim of large-scale aggression, which was defended by the countries of the Anti-Hitler coalition? This is one of the main questions in the study of the Sino-Japanese War. Below will be an attempt to understand this issue using the estimates reflected in the German documents.

The objectives of the article are to identify the following: a) how the attitude of the Japanese high command to the war with China and the vision of the first goals of this war are reflected in the corpus of the studied documents; b) how the political relations of the Japanese military authorities with Chinese politicians and the population are reflected in the studied German documents; c) how the actions of the Japanese military against the peaceful the Chinese population, including the bombing of residential buildings in Chinese cities by Japanese aircraft; d) what socio-economic aspects of the occupation of Chinese territories by Japanese troops were reflected in the studied documents; e) to trace the significance of Soviet policy and the conflict on Khalkhin Gol in the Second Sino-Japanese War according to the above German documents.

The German military attache in Japan and other military representatives of the Third Reich in East Asia analyzed the Sino-Japanese War in order to give Berlin an answer to the question: how much Japan was able to continue the war against China and attack the USSR. For a long time, the Japanese political elite doubted the need for Japan to enter into conflict with Britain, as well as with the United States, so relations between Germany and Japan before July 1940 could be described as cool cooperation.

One of the important factors of this cooling was the signing (on the initiative of Berlin) of the Soviet-German non—aggression pact and other documents on August 23, 1939 - at a time when the fighting between the Soviet-Mongolian forces, the troops of Japan and its allies reached their apogee. It is obvious that Tokyo saw in this behavior of its European ally a stab in the back. And the answer was the signing of the Soviet-Japanese non—aggression treaty on May 14, 1941 - at a time when the Wehrmacht was finishing preparations for an attack on the USSR, which the leadership of the Japanese Empire was well aware of. However, despite the contradictions, official Tokyo still had to go to the development of cooperation with Germany, which was due to the economy, but after the beginning of active US pressure on Japan in connection with the Chinese issue - already international politics. Therefore, based on the principle of analyzing archival materials, we have divided the main part of the article in chronological order: a) from the incident on the Marco Polo Bridge and related events to the conflict on Khalkhin Gol and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (for Japanese foreign policy, these were two closely related events; b) the development of the domestic economic situation in Japan, shortly after the end of the fighting on Khalkhin-Gol.

The selection of documents from the above-mentioned corpus of materials of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of Russia is due to both the high informative value for the study of Japan's participation in the war with China, and the high relevance of the events on Khalkhin Gol (Nomongan incident) for Russian historians and readers. The documents we have identified allow us to look at the conflict at Khalkhin Gol in the context of the development of the general military situation in East Asia, primarily in the Chinese Theater of Operations. We consider the events that took place in East Asia after December 1939 to be a somewhat qualitatively different process, since the Japanese military machine definitely began to turn South when, back in the autumn of 1939, the military circles in Tokyo still had intentions to increase pressure on the USSR after a relatively short respite. However, the defeat of the Western Allies in France in May-June 1940 provided additional major prospects for Tokyo in Southeast Asia.

Japan and the armed clash with China before the outbreak of World War II and the Nomong incidentThe head of the German military mission in China, Alexander von Falkenhausen, noted a sharp drop in discipline in the Japanese army as a result of its politicization and the spread of amok among the Japanese — a phenomenon that can be understood as inadequately overaggressive behavior.

At the same time, the Japanese did not have enough resources to completely occupy territories in the western provinces of China (near Shanghai and Nanjing), which allowed the Chinese to conduct maneuver operations on the ground [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 197, op. 12451, l. 4-5].

During the Japanese offensive on Nanjing, the Germans limited assistance to the Chinese, Reinehau did not give a replacement for the retired specialists of the German military mission. Unlike other countries, Germany did not send modern aircraft to China. But the blame for the difficulties regarding the conclusion of new contracts for the supply of weapons also lay on the Chinese side, according to General A. von Falkenhausen [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 197, op. 12451, l. 6-7].

According to A. von Falkenhausen, the capture of Shanghai by the Japanese in September 1937 was a heavy blow for China, next to this city the Chinese restrained the Japanese for three months, which violated all previously developed plans for war with Japan, in which the northern provinces of the country were identified as the main theater of military operations. And here it is worth paying attention to an important aspect — in 1943-1935, A. von Falkenhausen himself developed a plan for the defense of Shanghai, repeating the provisions of his forecast of possible offensive actions by Japan in 1936. ^[9] ]Accordingly, the Chinese command did not sufficiently take into account the considerations of A. von Falkenhausen, who himself admitted that in 1935 there were tensions between him and Chiang Kai-shek on a number of operational issues ^[10]. However, at the beginning of 1935, A. von Falkenhausen considered a direct Japanese attack on Nanjing as unlikely, since Japanese waxes would then have to rely on supplies from the sea ^[11], in this regard, A. von Falkenhausen paid primary attention to strengthening the defense of the northern provinces ^[12]. In addition, he exaggerated the defensive potential of the Chinese army and the willingness of the Japanese side to negotiate in the event of the first major setbacks ^[13], and this had fatal consequences for China, since A. von Falkenhausen convinced Chiang Kai-shek to go to a full-scale conflict with Japan, not limited to local clashes in the Beijing area, it became an alternative to settle the conflict at the local level through regular peace negotiations ^[14]. However, we would not exaggerate the role of A. von Falkenhausen in the genesis of the Second Sino-Japanese War, since since the end of 1936, Chiang Kai-shek has been under strong pressure from both the left and the right regarding the organization of resistance to Japanese expansion [[15]]. One of the main arguments Chiang Kai—shek considered two divisions trained by German specialists - No. 87 and 88 [[16]].

Despite the fact that the Japanese army, as A. von Falkenhausen wrote, did not correspond to the European level, the Japanese still managed to create a critical situation for China near Nanjing, which Chiang Kai-shek planned to defend only partially (separate quarters). The territorial troops of China, as A. von Falkenhausen wrote, were defeated, but the Japanese also suffered heavy losses. In addition, the superiority of the Japanese in the air was clearly indicated (it was written on November 30, 1937).

The very defense of Nanjing was an act aimed at maintaining the prestige of China [[17]]. German specialists participated in the leadership of the defense of the capital [[18]]. An employee of Siemens, John Rabe, who was then in Nanjing, witnessed a massacre organized by the Japanese military in the city. In the spring of 1938, he tried to publish his notes on this topic, but was arrested by the Gestapo, however, then released [[19]].

Evacuated to Wuhan, A. von Falkenhausen, based on reports by other German military specialists, came to the conclusion in December 1937 that the Chinese and Japanese troops were exhausted and drained of blood by the battles for Shanghai and Nanjing [[20]]. However, A. von Falkenhausen and other German advisers supported the idea of the transition of the Chinese army to a guerrilla war, for which in the spring of 1938 there was an active regrouping of Chinese forces [[21]]. However, A. von Falkenhausen believed that communists were more suitable for guerrilla warfare, when nationalist units had to continue fighting using classical methods [[22]]. Despite the loss of Shanghai and Nanjing, A. von Falkenhausen believed that the war by China had not yet been lost [[23]].

A. von Falkenhausen's predictions that the war would be protracted and difficult for Japan were soon justified. In March-April 1938, the Chinese military managed to win a major victory, which entered Chinese historiography as the Battle of Taierjuan. In the area of this city, the Chinese managed to encircle and almost completely destroy the 10th Japanese Infantry Division, a significant contribution to this operation was made by German advisers [[24]], according to whose report the Chinese won the first major victory over a technically superior enemy [[25]]. In Taierjuan itself, the Japanese irretrievably lost about 16 thousand soldiers and officers [[26]]. But it was this battle that forced Nazi Germany to withdraw its advisers, which Japanese diplomacy actively insisted on, considering the failure of Japanese troops in this area a direct consequence of the work of German officers [[27]].

Japanese policy of subjugation of ChinaThe Japanese, according to German military representatives, relied on anti-communist propaganda, claiming that they had come to China to save it from communism.

However, as the Japanese advanced, the popularity of communist ideas began to grow in Chinese society, whereas before the war they were spread mainly in the army [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 197, op. 12451, l. 9-10].

According to the reports of the German military attache in Japan (data obtained by the Germans in the first half of the summer of 1938), in Shanghai and other occupied zones, the Japanese established a mixed administration with the local population at industrial enterprises. However, Chinese managers adhered to the tactics of passive resistance, fearing revenge then from the regime of Chiang Kai-shek. Judging by this information, the Chinese intelligentsia for the most part did not believe in the victory of Japan over China. Despite this, the Japanese allowed Chinese capital to participate in enterprises located in the occupied territories. But, as the practice of restoring silk-spinning factories has shown, the Japanese authorities sought to eliminate competition in this industry for their national enterprises on Chinese territory. By October 1939, the Japanese authorities managed to build 8 new textile factories with a capacity of 80 thousand spindles in the occupied Chinese territories. To restore the economy in the occupied territories, the Ministry of Finance of Japan organized a loan for China, which fell into the occupied territories at the disposal of the representative office of the Bank of Japan and the Japanese Ministry itself, the loan amount was 300 million yen [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 232, op. 12451, l. 23; CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 258, op. 12451, l. 16].

In early August 1938, the German military attache in Japan reported to Berlin that, despite the development of the armed conflict with China, the Japanese did not withdraw their units from Manchuria and continued to build fortifications on the Soviet border. Since the end of 1937, the Japanese have been rapidly creating defensive lines in Manchuria, whose access to the areas bordering the USSR was restricted for citizens of European states [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 232, op. 12451, l. 38]. German representatives observed obvious military preparations in Harbin: troops were being pulled together, receiving information about the situation in areas bordering the USSR for diplomatic missions of other states was limited, tens of thousands of Chinese were being rounded up for the construction of barracks in Manchuria, the Japanese also carried out forced resettlement of Chinese and representatives of other nationalities from border zones. But at the same time, the Japanese were driving Chinese from Harbin to the border so that the latter would work on the construction of military facilities. To do this, the Japanese paramilitary police raided the Chinese in Harbin, thousands of Chinese were captured and sent to the border, whom the Japanese authorities openly declared people of inferior culture. The Japanese government did not hide that it was preparing for war with the Soviet Union, but, of course, a defensive war, as was officially stated [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 232, op. 12451, l. 38? 40-41].

In the first half of 1938, German observers noted the growth of the partisan movement in Manchuria. The Japanese responded to the increased shelling of the Chinese with repressive measures of a special nature: the Chinese, who did not have special passports and armbands with them, were shot on the spot, persons carrying anything from the forest, for example, even mushrooms, were also shot, access to the forest was thus closed to the Chinese. The Germans, relying on the data of their agents, assumed that Japan was preparing an offensive war against the USSR, planning first of all to cut the BAM somewhere near Blagoveshchensk, for which, according to the German side, the Japanese had quite enough forces in the summer of 1938 [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 232, op. 12451, L. 42-43]

In August 1938, the military attache in Tokyo noted the growth of the guerrilla movement around Beijing, where Chinese troops received active support from the local population. Chinese regular troops began to push the Japanese southeast of Nanjing. The guerrilla war in Northeast China began to distract large forces of the Japanese army from the front in the summer of 1938. Just at the end of the summer of 1938, the Japanese launched an offensive on Hankou, with the successful completion of which they linked the end of the war in connection with the softening of England's position on the Chinese issue [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 232, op. 12451, l. 179]. Thus, Japanese politicians did not consider Chiang Kai-shek's regime as an independent force by that time, they saw the center of decisions on China in London, and not in Chongqing (the temporary capital of China). The attempts of the Japanese military to establish normal relations with Chinese peasants in the occupied territories were noted, which was most likely due to the expectations of the Japanese military about the conclusion of peace in the foreseeable future. In connection with the attack on Hankou, there was a sharp increase in assistance to China from the Soviet Union in the form of supplies of military aircraft. True, Japanese intelligence assessed Soviet efforts to restore the Chinese Air Force as unpromising, since the Chinese simply did not have a social base for the formation of flight personnel. For example, attempts to form combat aircraft crews from former truck drivers have been largely unsuccessful. In this regard, Moscow was forced to start sending pilots and mechanics to China. The fighting qualities of Soviet pilots were underestimated by the Japanese [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 232, op. 12451, l. 175, 177, 185, 220, 221], what followed from the general attitude of the Japanese military to the Red Army at that time.

Closer to December 1938, the Japanese began to actively restore the economy of the occupied provinces, the Chinese began to return to Nanjing, Shanghai and other cities that had been destroyed during the fighting. German observers noted the indifference of the Chinese peasantry to the fate of Chiang Kai-shek's regime, which was supported primarily by bourgeois circles who had gone to the west of the country during the Japanese offensive. To facilitate the management of the occupied territories of China, the Japanese government, under the pressure of the Minister of Finance, created by the end of 1938 a Chinese committee, which was to take away from the military part of the functions of managing the occupied Chinese lands [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 232, op. 12451, l. 788].

One document shows one of the reasons for the outflow of the masses of the Chinese population from cities — bombing. German observers recognized, despite their obvious sympathy for the Japanese after July 1937, the barbaric actions of Japanese aviation, which attacked columns of unarmed refugees and residential areas that had no military significance. The raids inflicted such heavy losses on the peaceful Chinese population that the Chiang Kai-shek regime was forced to evacuate Nanjing, where 150-200 thousand residents remained as a result of this event, while the pre-war population of the Chinese capital was about 1 million people. The flows of Chinese refugees are defined by the German military as multimillion [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 231, op. 12451, l. 123]. And this is no coincidence: in one of the Japanese military reports transmitted to Japanese journalists, it is shown that the Chinese civilian population suffered greatly from Japanese air strikes. This document is a report on the bombing of cities in Hubei Province in the period 08/21/1937–03/27/1938. The main target of the attacks in this province was the city of Hankou, or Hankou, now a suburb of Wuhan. 7 cities of the province were hit, a total of 22 bombing raids were carried out, in which 340 Japanese aircraft took part. During the specified period, 1,290 bombs were dropped on the cities of Hubei province, as a result, 639 buildings (most private) were destroyed, 693 people (90% civilians) were killed, 443 people were seriously injured, 512 people were lightly wounded, 92% of all civilians were wounded [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 215, op. 12451, L. 531].

Other information about the true face of the war in China was also leaked to the German embassy in Tokyo. For example, the German military attache received information that General Matsui, who commanded the assault on Shanghai and Nanjing, voluntarily resigned, deciding at the same time to devote the rest of his life to serving in a Buddhist temple as a watchman [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 240, op. 12451, l. 511]. Obviously, this decision was made by Matsui in connection with the horrors that the troops under his command were doing in these Chinese cities.

After the Battle of Hankou, when the superiority of the Japanese ground forces finally became clear, the Japanese authorities began to settle the occupied territories. In particular, a corps of 1,500 Chinese policemen was formed in Beijing to fight communists and partisans. The Japanese authorities formed similar contingents of Chinese in other cities of the country. At the same time, the Japanese authorities launched a propaganda campaign, distributing leaflets among the Chinese, saying that the war was being waged not with the Chinese people, who were not to blame for the outbreak of war, but with the regime of Chiang Kai-shek. In the key of this policy, the Japanese authorities have attracted their Buddhists to cooperate. The Union of Japanese Buddhists in the late 1930s specially trained 1,000 priests for China in order to persuade the Chinese population to cooperate with the occupation authorities and create a Sino-Japanese spiritual and cultural unity [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 232, op. 12451, ll. 484-485].

By 1940, the Japanese government's strategy towards China was changing. Direct occupation is gradually being replaced by the administration of the country through a puppet regime extended to the northern provinces. However, the appearance of restoring Chinese sovereignty was created there. Despite the fact that the Japanese government in the late 1930s strongly doubted the feasibility of creating its own army in Northern China, formed from Chinese citizens, a military school subordinate to the Provisional Chinese Government (Tungchou Military School) was already functioning in Beijing at that time. 330 students were trained at the school, whose training program included a mandatory visit to Japan [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 240, op. 12451, l. 553].

Apparently, the supporters of the creation of a puppet Chinese army were Japanese generals who fought directly in China. In Nanjing, a peacekeeping corps was created, consisting of Chinese and numbering approximately 26 thousand people. This corps was formed mainly of Chinese defectors, that is, traitors. To provide the corps with junior officers, a special school was organized in November 1938 in Nanjing, in which 320 Chinese young people were trained, they had both Japanese and Chinese instructors, but the training was conducted exclusively in Japanese. The building was intended to perform police functions. For the same purpose, in Tianjin, the Japanese created a regiment of Russian White Guard volunteers in the late 1930s, commanded by Japanese officers. At the beginning of 1940, the Peace Corps was subordinated to the Beijing puppet government, at that time it consisted of about 20 thousand former soldiers of the Chinese army, 5,000 gendarmes, 55,000 policemen, 350 military school cadets. The police forces of the corps also included former partisans [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 240, op. 12451, ll. 162, 414, 497, 498].

The details received by the German Embassy about the activities of the Japanese gendarmerie in China reflect, perhaps, the official propaganda of the Japanese authorities. For example, it is reported that on March 15, 1938, in the province of Sankiang, the Japanese army (counterintelligence, it must be understood) and the gendarmerie arrested 337 communists. Of these, 121 people were convicted, 10 were executed, 7 were sentenced to life imprisonment, the rest to short terms of imprisonment. However, according to the Japanese military authorities, British agents also carried out anti-Japanese activities in Northern China. In May 1939, Japanese counterintelligence managed to arrest the English senior lieutenant Spiar [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 240, op. 12451, ll. 495-496].

In practice, the Japanese authorities began to pursue a policy of Japanization of a number of occupied territories, including, first of all, Manchuria. In the report transmitted to the German military attache on the growth of the population of Manchuria in 1938, there is not a word about the Chinese, there are only nations whose representatives inhabited this territory — Manchus, Japanese and Koreans, the rest are called foreigners, who made up 0.7% of the population [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 240, op. 12451, L. 559]. Thus, the Japanese made it clear that the Chinese question in Manchuria does not exist against the background of the fact that China did not officially recognize this state.

The Japanese military authorities clearly sought to divide China. On the island of Hainan, on July 16, 1939, they organized a local Chinese government, not subordinate to the so-called Central Provisional Government headed by Wang Ching Wei. A similar local government was formed in Canton. But at the same time, all the territories occupied by Japan, including Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, were merged into an economic region to facilitate the implementation of a Three-Year development Plan for the Chinese lands occupied by Japanese troops. And this was the official policy of the Japanese occupiers. General Hata, in one of his conversations at the end of March 1938, made it clear that the Japanese military favored the creation of local Chinese governments, but doubted the possibility of forming a general Chinese government, taking into account the tough position of a significant part of the Chinese population in the central provinces of the country, except Shanghai. True, General Hata considered it expedient to create a central Chinese government in the future, but specifically in the first half of 1938, the Japanese faced the unwillingness of most of the Chinese elite to compromise with Tokyo [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 240, op. 12451, ll. 88, 505, 559; CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 215, op. 12451, ll. 20-22].

The Central Provisional Government (the Central Committee, as it was accurately called) was divided into Beijing and Nanjing. But the economy of the occupied Chinese territories was to be managed by a special Chinese committee, subordinate directly to the Japanese government and consisting mainly of Japanese.

A full-fledged central government of China was planned to be created in the future, it must be understood, after the defeat of the Kuomintang. The main obstacle to the creation of a single pro—Japanese Chinese government, according to the Japanese side, was the activity of underground workers, whom the Japanese authorities called terrorists - they eliminated Chinese collaborators in Shanghai. Judging by this fact, Shanghai was the center of Chinese collaboration [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 240, op. 12451, ll. 89, 503].

Already at the end of March 1937, the Japanese government developed a program for the so-called raising of the economic standard of living of the Chinese. This policy was focused mainly on the Chinese peasants, whom the Japanese wanted to attract to their side, opposing the workers and the bourgeoisie. One of its tools was the establishment in the villages of the institute of elders, who united around themselves local groups of peasants loyal to the Japanese. The entire countryside was divided by the Japanese authorities into special districts, where economic tasks and financing were centrally distributed, doctors were also sent there [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 240, op. 12451, l. 503].

The Japanese planned to develop primarily the northern provinces of China, as for Central China in mid-1939, Tokyo did not have a definite position on the economic future. Negotiations with Chinese collaborators on the creation of a central provisional government in the middle of 1939 were also delayed [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 240, op. 12451, l. 463].

Khalkhin-Gol, the Sino-Japanese War and the economic situation of JapanWe do not agree with the opinions of American historians J. McSherry [[28]] and A. Cooks [[29]] that the famous "turn" of Japanese military expansion to the South occurred due to the defeat of the Japanese army at Khalkhin Gol.

Part of the Japanese political elite advocated reconciliation with Moscow, which was due, as follows from the documents of the German military attache in Tokyo, to the economic difficulties caused by both the Second Sino-Japanese War and the British blockade, already connected with the Second World War.

We should especially note that Japan in 1939 had a relatively long (4 months) military conflict on remote borders, which contradicted the Tanaka memorandum, according to which Japan needed to first defeat China and then Russia [[30]]. The confrontation against the USSR and China at the same time was considered by Japanese strategists as very undesirable. The Chinese also understood this, so in the summer of 1938, Chan Kaishi asked the Soviet Union to create a tense situation on the border with Manchuria so that Japan could not transfer parts of the Kwantung army to the fronts in China [[31]].

After the defeat of the Japanese army at Khalkhin Gol, the Japanese parliament began to demand explanations from its government, but the government did not give detailed explanations. Only narrow circles of the Japanese political elite were privy to the reasons for the failure of the offensive on Khalkhin Gol, this information got to the German military attache in Tokyo.

Supplies of goods from the British Empire to Japan were limited due to the outbreak of World War II (London considered Japan as an ally of Germany and the same aggressor as the latter). Australia, under the pretext of the need to supply England with grain, stopped exporting grain to Japan in the second half of 1939. Therefore, the USSR and its Transsib became particularly interested in Tokyo after September 1, 1939 as a bridge between Japan and Europe. This happened against the background of a temporary cooling of relations between Japan and Germany due to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. In Tokyo, it was expected that Soviet-German relations would, on the contrary, worsen, which would allow the creation of a German-Japanese anti-Soviet coalition, which from the mid-1930s was primarily hoped for by circles of the highest Japanese military command.

Thailand could only partially meet Japan's food needs. By the end of 1939, Japan found itself in a difficult financial situation due to the Second Sino-Japanese War, which limited its budgetary capacity to solve acute economic problems.

The budget of the Japanese Empire was planned for 1940 in the amount of 10 billion yen, of which the government intended to spend 5.5 billion yen for military needs. The planned investment budget within the framework of the Three-Year plan3 for the development of Japanese possessions in China required about 1.4 billion yen [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 258, op. 12451, ll. 13, 30], which the Japanese cabinet offered to receive from Chinese financiers.

The new finance minister, Aoki Kazuo, pinned his hopes on domestic resources, but Japanese banks and firms financed a government loan in October 1939 by only 48%. In this regard, the Finance Minister made attempts to persuade Osaka business circles to cooperate, since business Tokyo became skeptical of the government's plans to build an Asian empire of prosperity [CA MO RF, f. 500, d. 258, op. 12451, l. 31].