raharris1973
Well-known member
Sino-Soviet conflict (1929) - Wikipedia
What if the Japanese had intervened in this conflict, on either the Chinese side, the Soviet side, or neither side, just sort of its own side?
The conflict in OTL ran from July-December 1929, and it was over an (ultimately failed) attempt by the Chinese to take control over the Chinese Eastern Railway from Soviet majority administrative and security control. The Soviets were strong enough they didn't have to put up with it and threw Chinese forces back and out of the zone and reasserted control. This is in contrast to the way they did *not* feel strong enough to contest Japan's takeover of security control of this rail-line in 1932, ultimately selling it to the Japanese in 1935.
In OTL, despite Japanese intrigues in Manchuria in years and months prior to this border war (including the Kwangtung Army assassination of warlord General Zhang Zuolin in 1928), and Japan's later bold takeover of Manchuria after September 1931, Japan under PM Hamaguchi Osachi was rather inert and quiescent as a bystander to this 1929 conflict.
This conflict was the biggest international conflict news of 1929, because of the size of the countries involved and the fact that it was the first new conflict to break and be noticed since the August 1928 signature (including by China & the USSR) of the Kellogg-Briand Pact "outlawing war".
1. Japanese intervention on China's side. If Japan chose to intervene, it certainly had the tools to do so in the form of its Kwangtung Army forces and their supporting air forces which could have moved in from the Kwangtung peninsula leasehold with additional elements already on patrol in the South Manchuria Railway zone. These could have arrived on scene to contend with Soviet forces relatively quickly. The next set of Japanese forces available to augment the Kwangtung Army and the local Chinese forces under the command of Zhang Xueliang, could have come from Japan's Korean Army. Additional Army and air units could have joined not long afte3r from Japan's home islands and Taiwan.
The IJN I would expect to have no problem maintaining naval supremacy over any Soviet flotillas in the Sea of Japan and Sea of Okhotsk and far northwest Pacific in general.
As a member of the League of Nations Council, and a democracy, Japan would have been decently placed to call for League action, including sanctions, against the USSR, which was not a League member and not a popular country, and League endorsement of Japanese actions on behalf of China, also a League member.
However, the Japanese military and government would have to overcome several awkward factors: 1) Lack of a Chinese request for Japanese help, and probable lack of a Chinese desire for Japanese presence in the northeastern presence, certainly not for any moment longer than required for the expulsion of Soviet forces, 2) The expense of military operations at a time when the Japanese government is attempting an austerity program to get over the effects of the Taisho Financial Crisis, 3) Overcoming uncertainty in Japan about rewarding the Chinese precedent of expropriating foreign property, the CER, even if it is Soviet Communist foreign property.
Nevertheless, the idea of at least a temporary Sino-Japanese anti-Soviet alliance of convenience, ironically some some fig leaves of League of Nations Collective Security endorsement, and looked upon favorably by then anti-communist League Council members like Britain, Italy and France, is interesting. Such Japanese action, and League endorsement, would likely be applauded by Polish, Finnish, and Romanian diplomats in the League as well, with their own concerns about Soviet intervention.
Also, if Japan is doing substantial reinforcement to Zhang and that's creating the real opportunity to throw the Soviets out of northern Manchuria, 'peer pressure' from that alone will force Chiang Kaishek to engage many central government Chinese Nationalist units in the Manchuria fight and show up around the front personally, lest he begin to appear irrelevant politically.
2. Japanese intervene on the Soviet side (de facto, if not openly): The Japanese follow the Soviet precedent set in the summer months of 1929 of occupying the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone, by undertaking a robust occupation of the South Manchuria Railway zone and surrounding locations, crushing and sweeping aside all Chinese resistance. The Japanese halt upon nearing Soviet forces, Soviet lines and Soviet property, but establish a de facto protectorate of their half of Manchuria, while not interfering with Soviet crushing of Chinese resistance within and north of the CER railway zone, with the Soviets forming their own de facto protectorate.
Both powers could extend their protectorates further into parts of inner Mongolia and northern China, with Japan gathering coastal regions and the Soviets gathering inland regions that buffer Mongolia. The Soviets can use the CCP as a cooperative proxy force, and direct CCP forces to largely relocate to Soviet occupied areas outside Japanese lines of march in more eastern and southern China. The Japanese can portray their zones as a refuge from Communist governance.
The Japanese first echelons, like in the other scenario, would be the Kwangtung and Korea armies, with reinforcements from Japan to follow. Unlike the decent amount of international applause the first version of Japanese intervention could receive, the Soviet-Japanese double-intervention would be roundly condemned around the world by major and minor powers alike. However, some 'revisionist' powers. or former losers of WWI, like the WWI, like the Weimar Republic, Hungary, and Bulgaria would be applauding, quietly or not, over the major damage to the integrity of the Versailles-Washington world order and the audacity of the Soviet Japanese challenge to it, and see in Soviet and Japanese reordering of northeast Asia, hope that they could someday reorder their own borders. Turkey, although a 'loser' of WWI, would have more mixed feelings. While it desires some territories, it probably sees more downside than upside from a bold Soviet policy. Italy, while not a loser, probably professes outrage with the duo out 'respectability', anticommunism, and attention to who Italy's best trade partners are, but as a revisionist and action junkie, one the inside, part of Benito Mussolini is really loving this.
Colonial independence activists probably sympathize more with the Soviet and Japanese causes, since they are each in their own way 'sticking it to the man', the preferred order and sensibilities of the white-ruled west, even though it is Chinese actually being immediately victimized.
Of course with financial panic spreading in the US and now to Europe, leverage for meaningful economic sanctions, and for meaningful focus on the Far East, is rapidly being lost.
The Soviets and Japanese can remain openly cordial, and have public trade talks with each other, to try to help blunt western threats of sanctions against each individually, and to depress Chinese morale and resistance. They can both seek under the table trade with Weimar Germany as well.
Alternatively, the two can act outwardly unfriendly toward each other, each justifying their own actions as a possibly regrettable but nevertheless necessary step required in reaction to the what the other one has done, is doing, or could do. And they just happen to not come to blows.
To pursue this approach, the Japanese would have to overcome some awkward factors: It would have to rationalize cooperation with the Communist menace as gynastically as the Nazis had to during the days of the M-R pact, to would have to bear the expense of the military campaigns, going against the austerity plans, it would have to be ready for worsened relations with the west. The Soviets would have to give up near-term hopes for successful Chinese or Japanese revolutions - but their hopes for both had probably been dashed anway by anticommunist massacres and Japan's peace preservation laws and enforcements. Who knows, the Soviets might see aggravating Japanese-western splits over Chinese affairs as worsening the crisis of capitalism for western, Japanese, and Chinese capitalists alike.