During World War II, Japan had planned to occupy the territories of the USSR in Siberia and the Far East as per the documents declassified on August 25 by the FSB of Russia within the framework of the No Statute of Limitations project. The Federal Security Service (FSB) is the successor to the Soviet Union’s Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB).
The verdict documents acquired from the Tokyo International Military Tribunal, which are also declassified and accessed by RIA Novosti, provide evidence that one of the most important parts of Japanese policy was the desire to wage war with the USSR and occupy significant Soviet territories.
“The Japanese leaders considered the seizure of Soviet territories to be so workable that the General Staff and the headquarters of the Kwantung Army worked out concrete plans for the management of these territories,” the verdict says.
The Kwantung Army or the Guandong Army Group was an army group of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1919 to 1945, which protected Japan’s leasehold in the Liaodong Peninsula and the South Manchurian Railway.
It also states that in the period from July to September 1941, a special group of officers of the Japanese General Staff studied the issue of the occupation regime for Soviet territories that were to be captured by the Japanese army.
“When the idea of a ‘sphere of co-prosperity of Great East Asia’ was formed as a euphemism for Japanese hegemony in East Asia, the creation of this sphere inevitably provided for the capture of Siberia and the Soviet Far East,” the document says.
Thus, the Soviet territory actually had to be divided between the Axis countries, viz. the military and economic union of Germany, Italy, Japan, and other states during the war.
In September 1940, a Triple Pact was signed in Berlin, which secured the formation of the nucleus of aggressive states – Germany, Italy, and Japan. During World War II, Japan continued to be an ally of Nazi Germany, nurturing plans for a war with the USSR, violating the agreements on neutrality reached with Moscow, developing a plan of military actions, and committing regular sabotage against the Soviet Union.