18 kilometers southeast of Heihe
May 16, 1937
Zhukov’s stomach grumbled loudly, proclaiming to the best of its ability its dissatisfaction with Zhukov’s present policies, namely those concerning the timings of meals. Pain wrangled its way through his innards, attempting to divert Zhukov’s attention to more immediate, if likely not more important, matters. Zhukov frowned, partially at his stomach’s intrusion into the world of strategy and partially at the same world of strategy. Specifically, Zhukov was attempting to fathom Japan’s strategy; they had finally made their opening moves vis-à-vis land warfare. First, they had conquered the northern half of Sakhalin Island and then they landed on the southern half of the Kamchatka peninsula. It puzzled Zhukov, he could understand the seizure of the rest of Sakhalin; it was adjacent to their own territory and had a bit of oil besides.
He, however, could not figure out why the Japanese were wasting their strength attacking where the Soviets were not. He understood the concept of indirect approach and knew it could be useful at times, but he did not see how occupying the southern half of a barren peninsula far away from anything that even vaguely resembled civilized life could possibly be helpful to their war effort, unless they thought that sheer territorial losses would case the Soviet Union to buckle. After all, the land they seized on the peninsula was nearly as large as the entire expanse of land of their home islands. Zhukov shook his head at the thought; the Japanese had little real understanding of strategy. Not that he blamed them, of course, or at least, not only them. The Japanese were an opportunistic people, their navy they had based on Britain’s Royal Navy. Their army they based on the German Wehrmacht, leading to a similar focus on battlefield and operational tactics at the expense of understanding strategy.
Now, if they reformed their army on the Soviet model, he knew that they would be fairly efficient at strategy even if, though Zhukov was loathe to admit it, they lost some efficacy on the battlefield and operational levels of warfare as the elongated campaigns of Turkey and Persia proved. And Manchuria too, while under Voroshilov’s inept stewardship. As his wandering mind, still fleeing his stomach, snapped back to the subject of Manchuria, Zhukov automatically picked up a piece of paper. It was a missive from the Manchurian government, which had finally seen the writing on the wall and wished to arrange a white peace.
Manchuria begging for a white peace.
At the time the note was sent, something approaching a sixth of Manchuria’s sovereign territory, in terms of sheer land expanse, had been taken already by Vasilevskij and events pointed to another half of Manchuria falling within a week or ten days. Granted, Manchuria still possessed, in principle, large tracts of territory they had nefariously stolen from the Soviet Union during the previous months. The strategic balance was swinging firmly against them, however; their best opportunity for attempting to negotiate a peace would have been when they had destroyed the majority of Voroshilov’s Manchurian Front, before Zhukov and Vasilevskij had arrived with reinforcements. Zhukov smiled thinly, Stalin would never have accepted, of course, and would probably have sent Voroshilov straight to the firing line to be executed for failing so miserably. The Manchurians, however, opted not to do the Soviet army such a service as they fell under the insidious influence of victory disease, and somehow thought they could get away with taking even more.
In the thirteen days since that note, Qiquhar and Heihe had fallen to Vasilevskij’s and Zhukov’s advancing forces, linking them up. It was none to soon, as well, as at some indeterminate date, due to a lack of intelligence, the Japanese had landed at Chumikan as well, finally placing their units somewhere remotely near the relevant theater of operations. In the process, they also happened to close one of Zhukov’s lines of communication and supply, though given that he had the sense to ensure several of them, it posed no difficulty for him.
Meanwhile, he had sent Lukin on a mission to clean up northern Manchuria, primarily by attacking the Manchurian cavalry division at Mohe. Despite the fact that the Manchurians were out of supply, under strength and somewhat disorganized, it seemed to Zhukov that Lukin could not capitalize on the situation and that his attack was running out of steam. He assumed that it was partially due to the Manchurian commander, who was skilled at defense and that some blame went to Lukin’s disorganized division. Nevertheless, Zhukov simply thought that Lukin was an incompetent commander and the only reason Zhukov did not relieve him was that Stalin would take it badly, as in Moscow the government received news only of victory after victory since Zhukov’s arrival.
Lukin’s attack toward Mohe, the Qiquhar-Heihe line held by Vasilevskij and Zhukov and the Japanese forces, four divisions strong, beginning to expand outward from Chumikan.
Zhukov’s stomach broke out into a riot, grumbling so ferociously that it made Zhukov’s mind pause in its strategic machinations for a moment and cower in fear. With a sigh, Zhukov admitted defeat and stood up, eager to find some food to fuel his strategy.