The activity of Japanese military intelligence against the USSR in 1922-1945

Abstract

Japan's military intelligence has been continuously working around the world since 1871, and Russia has always remained one of its main goals. After the end of the intervention in 1922, the Japanese government took a course to normalize relations with our country, in connection with which the intelligence agencies of the empire monitored the activities of the Soviet leadership to strengthen the defense and economic potential of the state and the implementation of foreign policy objectives in the Far East, without conducting subversive actions. The USSR state security agencies managed to arrange the transfer of inflated data on the state of the Red Army to the Japanese military intelligence, as the central intelligence agency of the empire, therefore, in 1923-1931, Tokyo's military planning against our country was defensive in nature. After the capture of Manchuria in 1932, Japan faced the Soviet Union's buildup of its troops beyond Lake Baikal, regarding this fact as preparation for an invasion of Northeast China. Japanese intelligence intensified its activities to collect information about the intentions of the Soviet leadership and engaged in the organization of a sabotage apparatus in the event of a war with the USSR in 1937-1938, however, counter measures of the Soviet state security bodies hampered the work of the empire's special services in our country. After the defeat on the Khalkhin-Gol river (1939), the military-political leadership of Japan carried out a radical reorganization of the military intelligence agencies, strengthening their personnel and betting on the collection of information by technical means. Thanks to the information received from the foreign intelligence apparatus, the government of the Empire in the summer and autumn of 1941 came to the conclusion that it was inappropriate to attack the Soviet Union. The entry of the USSR into the war against militaristic Japan in 1945 drew a line under the activities of the empire's military intelligence and became a prologue to its transition to US control.