The Soviet-German War and the Far East

Abstract

EVERY SO often-nowadays perhaps more frequently than ever-history takes a sharp turn. Such a turn to the entire world situation was given on June 22, I94I, by the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. It denoted not merely a quantitative extension of existing conflict to new areas, but a major change in the relation of forces, a re-direction of the conflict itself. One of the striking features of the Second World War and its diplomatic preparation has been the incidence of sudden change in political and military orientation. The entire decade since Japan announced the coming armed clash by seizing Manchuria was torn by a fierce struggle for alignment.' It was not always clear which action represented temporary maneuver and which fundamental policy. For long it was uncertain which of many contradictory trends in international relations would finally dominate, or in what way the unevenly developed fronts would be connected. By I940, the form in which the war emerged was that of armed conflict in two widely separate theaters, China and Europe. But while these two battle zones were linked by a dozen diplomatic and economic strands, while the contemporary chronicler glibly spoke of the Second World War, in fact it had not yet become that; neither in geographical extent nor historical stature. So long as two of the greatest Powers, the bi-continental vastness of the U.S.S.R. and the American colossus of the western hemisphere, remained outside, the war was still a limited one. In the Far East, though Japan had in the course of years of fighting gained important successes in China and in Southeast Asia, though the foundations of the Washington settlement which had emerged from the last World War were shaken they had not been superseded. In the West, though the