"Recently, a preferred counterfactual among historians has been to wonder what would have happened had China not pressed for Mongolia or if Stalin had bought peace on his Eastern border by acceding to Chinese territorial demands. Would the Soviets have been able to crush the Wehrmacht that first winter if they had been able to deploy more troops to the west? In such a situation, what country would have risen to challenge a victorious Russia? This is all idle speculation as China, by the early 40's had become the world's leading anti Bolshevik democracy.
The CCP within China, though much diminished, had never forgiven Stalin or the Comintern. Defeat had soured the remaining Chinese communists about the notion of the global, Moscow - led revolution, and the party had cast out the Russian influences in an effort both to redefine itself and keep from being dissolved entirely. The moderates had taken over within the party and the Communist Party of China, led officially by one of its original founders Chen Duxiu, had rebranded themselves as the Chinese party that stood for land reform and anti corruption. When the decision to press claims on Mongolia passed through the PPC, almost one half of the communist delegation was in favor with the rest abstaining, as the only way to maintain their seats during the high anti Soviet feeling during the first year of the war was to convince the Chinese people that while the CCP was still pro communist; they were firmly anti Bolshevik.
Lyman P. Van Slyke, "The Dragon, the Bear and the Eagle: The Asian Phase of the Second World War." Cambridge University Press
30年 9月 26日
The Soviets had actually tried to break out to the west into Manchuria, to link up with the Soviet front some 300 miles further west. For the moment the Chinese army was content to let them rot there as the front was moving west faster than the trapped Soviet troops were and that Chinese troops were well on their way to cutting off the coast. If the Soviets were unable to hold the coast, the tens of thousand of Soviet troops still in Manchuria were doomed to become POW's.
In the west, the Tuvans would come under attack from twice their number of Chinese troops who were much better trained and armed. Even so the Chinese supply lines were starting to show strain and the front hadn't moved even a fifth as far as it was going to.
Both attacks would be successful.
The Mongolian campaign was all but over, with the main bulk of the enemy troops on the run or soon to be captured. The remaining task of pacifying the country would fall to the Dai Li's intelligence operatives. Taking a cue from Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland, China had been broadcasting propaganda and sending agents from Inner Mongolia to forment unrest in the North.
In the face of the Mongolian Military collapse, the bulk of Chinese forces would turn North to invade directly into the former Chinese territory held by the Soviet Union itself.
30年 9月 29日
Long Yun's Bingtuan was carving a path through the sparse defenses of Siberia, but many on the Chinese side were worried that China might have overcommited troops to winning a quick victory in the East and would have to perform a massive transfer of almost a million personnel as Operation Tranquility made contact with the bulk of the enemy in the West.
30年 10月 7日
The west seemed to be under control. Resistance had thus far been sporadic and Chinese troops had been more than capable of flinging back the few scattered troops guarding the rail routes.
That was until soldiers and reconnaissance planes started reporting a massive Soviet tank buildup. Stalin had already committed his infantry against the Germans, but his tanks were another story. Thousands of Soviet tanks were now bearing down on the vulnerable supply routes that fuelled the all important northern thrust of Operation Tranquility. If they succeeded China's plan of bisecting the Soviet Union was doomed.
Chinese agents in Mongolia had been looking for something very specific. When the Red Army invaded in 1924 and set up the Mongolian People's Republic, both Communist ideology and the long standing Russian belief that the Mongol invasion had retarded Russian potential, had caused the Bolsheviks to remove as many traces of Mongolia's traditional culture as they could. As China was having it's own troubles in the 30's, Stalin's henchmen had executed some 30,000 mongols in their campaign to eliminate the native culture and religion. They ravaged one monastery after another, shot the monks, assaulted the nuns, broke the religious objects, looted the libraries, burned the scriptures and demolished the temples. And, in 1937, the Soviet Union stole the soul of Genghis Khan.
In traditional Mongol culture, every warrior herder carried with them a Spirit Banner called a sulde， constructed by tying the hairs of his best stallions to the shaft of a spear, just below the head. The spirit banner would remain in the open air below the eternal blue sky that the Mongols worshiped and channeled the power of the sun, moon, wind, and sky to the warrior. The union between the man and the spirit banner grew so intertwined that when he died, the warrior's spirit was said to reside forever in those tufts of horsehair. The physical body was quickly abandoned but the soul lived on in the Spirit Banner to inspire future generations.
Genghis Khan had two banners; a white one for times of peace and a black one for times of war. The white disappeared soon after his death but the black one survived as the repository of his soul. Despite their eventual conversion to Buddhism, the Mongol people continued to honor the banner where his soul resided. In the sixteenth century, a monastery was constructed to house it, but the Soviets destroyed the monastery and killed the 1000 Yellow Hat monks that lived there. Reportedly, someone secretly rescued the embodiment of Genghis Khan's soul from the Shankh Monastery and whisked it away for safekeeping to the capital in Ulan batar, where it ultimately disappeared.
Chinese intelligence agents had scoured the country for the banner. They found it in a converted Russian ammunition depot, that seemed to be repurposed for storing temple loot. In a moving ceremony, Mongolian monks from Chinese Inner Mongolia, many of them refugees from communist oppression, were allowed to to reraise the banner over the ruins of its former home.
The formal instruments of annexation would be signed under the banner. The Chinese officials were the first to leave, followed by Mongolia's former rulers, finally the assembled crowds thinned or went to bed leaving the banner standing alone with a few monks and bored Chinese soldiers standing guard. As the last light faded, a breeze picked up the weathered black horsehairs causing them to waft faintly towards the northwest.
The modern Chinese descendants of the Khan's mobile forces, met their Soviet counterparts in Aktyubinsk when they tried to cross the Ilek River. Had they arrived a little later they might have been able to replicate the Mongol feat of using the frozen rivers as highways, but the rivers remained liquid and the battle became a desperate melee for control of the bridges.
30年 10月 8日
The battle would be won the next day, but the Chinese mobile forces were definitely pushing their own limits with regards to supply and organization. The increasing cold was also starting to wear on the advancing Chinese columns.
30年 10月 11日
The Russians would try to stop the crossing again three days later. They were hoping that they could keep the now stretched Chinese from establishing a foothold north of the Caspian. Whether the single cavalry division that they sent was up to the task was another matter entirely.
In Siberia, Chinese troops were advancing on the last significant Soviet port in the Pacific, Okhotsk. The going was tough but the proponents of China's use of overwhelming force in the Siberian theater felt vindicated. The Russian defense was unusually determined and the terrain was downright hostile.
30年 10月 12日
The crossing in Aktyubinsk would continue despite the harassment. The front was starting to freeze and the approaches to the Volga were fast becoming nothing more than an arctic wasteland.
Although the victory in Okhotsk had been won overland. The actual occupation would come from the sea. The Second Bingtuan would march in from the coast to occupy the city an cut off those few Soviet divisions still fleeing up the coast.
30年 10月 14日
Chinese oil supplies were dangerously low. In a pattern that would continue throughout the war, the government was forced to turn to America to make up the shortfall.
30年 10月 15日
The sole Soviet presence on Chinese soil was eliminated using Korean troops. The initial phases of the war had exceeded the expectations of the Chinese military planners. There was talk in Beijing of meeting the Germans east of Moscow.
That talk was silenced very quickly by a piece of dire news. The Soviets had thrown five tank divisions led by General Konev against 45,000 Chinese troops guarding the vulnerable railroads that supplied the Northern thrust of Operation Tranquility. The Chinese troops had never faced tanks beyond the scattered handfuls that the Japanese had deployed, and had no plan let alone capability to deal with the massive 2,000 tank assault..
30年 10月 16日
The next day Soviet forces would place themselves firmly in control of the railway. The advancing Chinese forces were now trapped in enemy territory. The Chinese army had nothing that could stop those tanks, so freeing the pocket from behind had to be abandoned. The only hope now was was to divert mobile forces from the south to save the trapped divisions inside the pocket. This was do or die time for the Chinese army; three out of the seven Chinese mobile Juntuans were in danger of being wiped out completely.
30年 10月 17日
In a little bit of news that was almost comically late, Chinese planners released their new protocol on how to enact repairs of damaged vehicles stranded deep in enemy territory. The defense department was none too happy with the generals responsible for the situation around northern spearhead, and would appoint Joseph Stillwell to take over army logistics, as a way of putting the Chinese generals on notice.
30年 10月 19日
The Chinese generals had not entirely failed. When it became clear that the Soviets were rushing to cut off the northern spearhead, one of the Juntuans had been diverted south to prevent it. While the move was far too late to stop the tanks, it had opened up a corridor to the north if the troops in the south were able to break through at Orsk.
The Soviet counterattack was brutal. The two divisions would retreat along the railroad and the all eyes would turn to the exhausted mobile divisions in the south.
30年 10月 22日
Tannu Tuva would be formally annexed on the 22nd. The last Soviet puppet state in central Asia had fallen and most of these forces were being sped to the west.
30年 10月 24日
The troops in the South had waited five days to rest and resupply and some feared that it had already been too long. The Soviets had parked the command for the entire eastern front as well as an infantry division at the Orsk rail hub. The troops were well rested and equipped and were more than capable of making Orsk a very unfriendly place.
30年 10月 25日
Chinese mobile forces were able to dislodge the defenders after a day of fierce sub zero fighting. The question remained as to whether they could retake Orsk fast enough to ship supplies north before the soviets closed off Chelyabinsk. Even if this meant the salvation of the northern spearhead, how was the Chinese army going to deal with the thousands of tanks now embedded behind the Chinese lines?
All of these questions and more answered next time on AARight to be Hostile!
Second Quiz item: What made the bronze used by Qin Shi Huang's army special?
