Born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili in eastern Georgia a week before Christmas 1878 and later adopting the name Joseph Stalin, the man who transformed Lenin’s ideology into the modern Soviet Union was nothing like his predecessor. Whereas Lenin had been a true revolutionary, motivated and inspired by his perceived ability to change his world, Stalin was an opportunistic thug who utilized communism as a tool to bend millions of human beings to his will. According to his daughter Svetlana, he was “a very simple man. Very rude. Very cruel.” Asked later in life if she thought of her father she replied, “He broke my life. I want to explain to you. He broke my life twice.” “Wherever I go,” Svetlana said, “here, or Switzerland, or India, or wherever. Australia. Some island. I always will be a political prisoner of my father’s name.” Both Lenin and Stalin were butchers; just as shortsighted, obtuse, and cruel as those controlling the systems they claimed to replace in the name of the common man. Both men displayed the traits of autocrats everywhere—a disdain for the common man they claimed to protect and utter contempt for the lives of their fellow countrymen.
Son of an alcoholic cobbler, young Jughashvili entered a seminary to prepare for the priesthood but soon declared himself an atheist and dropped out. Later, as a meteorologist for the Tbilisi Observatory, he vacillated between revolutionary causes, spending years in various prisons and Siberian exile. Having met Lenin at the 1905 Bolshevik Congress, he attached himself to the man and was elected to the Central Committee in 1912. During this time, he began using Stalin as a surname, seeing himself as a “Man of Steel.”* Due to a crippled arm, he was unable to fight in the Great War but was a constant advocate for using terror and violence to achieve political ends while staying safely away from danger himself.
Despite no military experience whatsoever, Stalin tried his hand at field command during the Russian Civil War and failed miserably. Though constantly at Lenin’s elbow, the two men had many disagreements, most notable was Stalin’s desire to force autonomous soviet republics like Georgia into the Russian Soviet Federation. To Lenin, this was tsarist imperialism, while to Stalin this was a means to broaden his scope of control. Stalin was spared the complications of eliminating his competition when Lenin died in 1924. Nevertheless, the father of Russian communism spoke from the grave and very nearly derailed Stalin permanently.
Lenin wrote in his testament that Stalin, “having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.”
Recognizing the danger, Lenin believed the man had too much power and would be dangerous, so he recommended Stalin’s removal from the position of party general secretary, arguing that “Stalin is too coarse and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin.”
Despite his character flaws, Stalin possessed animalistic survival instincts and managed to retain his position as the undisputed General Secretary of the Communist Party by 1928. From then on, there was no stopping him, and Russia would be locked into the stifling oppression of Stalinist communism for nearly seven decades. All land was collectivized and controlled by the state; foreign businesses and property were nationalized, as were all indigenous industrial capabilities. Everything passed to the “state” that now unequivocally meant Stalin and his inner circle, who ruthlessly exploited the populace just as viciously as the tsars. Merciless to opposition, real or perceived, Stalin greatly expanded the existing secret police apparatus and the network of forced-labor camps. Over fourteen million would eventually pass through the gulags and labor colonies, of which nearly two million would perish.
Stalin’s first ill-conceived “Five Year Plan” for the forced industrialization of Russia had mixed results. State seizure of all farmlands was intended to make production more efficient, yet it had the opposite effect since the incompetent Soviet bureaucracy was unable to realize its goals, and the resulting famine cost another three to seven million dead by 1933. Industrialization faced similar challenges since limited mechanical and educational expertise remained in the country, so the Soviet Union had to rely on foreign, mainly German, assistance. The Treaty of Rapallo had normalized relations between the two countries, which was reaffirmed by the Treaty of Berlin that stated, in part: “The German Government and the Government of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics will maintain friendly contact in order to promote an understanding with regard to all political and economic questions jointly affecting their two countries.”
Germany was offered bases inside the Soviet Union in order to rebuild and rearm its military, far from the prying eyes of international inspectors. Krupp, the great armaments manufacturer, built a facility near the Black Sea, and a school for fighter pilots was established at Lipetsk. Junkers was building aircraft while passing along techniques and designs to the Soviets. German engineers increased Soviet tank production and constructed a naval base at Polyarny. In return for this, the USSR supplied resource-poor Germany with 1.5 billion reichsmarks’ worth of raw materials, used to resurrect Germany’s armed forces, while Russian scientists and military officers had full access to everything the Germans built or modernized within the USSR.
After Hitler rose to power in January 1933, relations cooled somewhat, with Germany’s new chancellor declaring, “We cannot in any way evade the final battle between German race ideals and pan-Slav mass ideals. Here yawns the eternal abyss which no political interests can bridge.” Both supplied opposing sides during the Spanish Civil War, and Japan diplomatically recognized the Soviet Union in 1925. Yet tensions over borders, fishing rights in the Sea of Japan, and Sakhalin Island remained fairly constant, so when the Empire invaded Manchuria and created the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932, Stalin’s greatest external fear became a two-front war, with Russia caught between Germany and Japan. Both nations had signed the Anti-Communist International (Comintern) Pact in 1936, and were very public opponents of all that Stalin and his Soviet Union stood for. Italy joined the pact a year later, declaring that the “Communist International continues constantly to endanger the civilized world in the West and the East, disturbing and destroying peace and order,” and the foundations of the Axis alliance were hardened with anticommunism at its base.
Stalin, therefore, was in a difficult place. He controlled the largest nation on Earth, but it still lagged badly behind the East and West in terms of technology and military capability. True, the Red Army could field three hundred divisions—on paper—but it was largely unmechanized, and twenty-four of its twenty-nine marshals, army commanders, and admirals were victims of the Great Purge. Stalin’s vulnerability no doubt factored into his thinking when Hitler proposed the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact so essential for Germany’s invasion of Poland. Stalin gained half of Poland without firing a shot and, in his mind, had a peace guarantee for ten years, which would permit him to rebuild his military and concentrate on the Far East.
Tsarist Russia, and later the Soviet Union, had a complex history with Japan. Following Russia’s defeat in 1905, Imperial Japan sided with the White Russians against the Bolsheviks, and along with the Americans, Canadians, and British they occupied Vladivostok in 1918. Between 1935 and 1939, 108 combat incidents occurred between the Soviets in Mongolia and the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Following Japan’s 1937 invasion of China, Moscow sent artillery, tanks, machine guns, and vast amounts of ammunition to the Chinese, along with the Soviet Volunteer Group. During 1938, Japan invaded Soviet territory on the Korean border near Lake Khasan, but were ultimately forced to withdraw even after inflicting heavy casualties on the Russians.
Of greater significance were the little-known battles around the Nomonhan area in Mongolia from May to September 1939. The Japanese claimed the Khalkha River was the demarcation between both territories, while the Soviets insisted the border lay ten miles east of the river in Mongolia. After skirmishing back and forth, the Kwantung Army attacked in force and managed to cross the Khalkha, but were forced back again by a Soviet counterattack. Aware that Germany was going to attack Poland and knowing Stalin wished to end the fighting in the Far East, General Georgy Zhukov mounted a counterattack in August 1939, which annihilated the Japanese 6th Army the day before Hitler invaded Poland.
Japan, shocked by the defeat at Khalkhin Gol and Lake Khasan, signed the Japanese-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in April 1941. In fact, Stalin stated that all mutual “problems can be solved in a natural way if the Soviets and the Japanese cooperate.” Both sides agreed to respect each other’s borders, yet Tokyo and Moscow both knew the treaty merely delayed the final reckoning. Japan, after evaluating its performance against an enemy even more careless with soldiers’ lives than itself, decided the northern expansion into Mongolia could wait. After Washington’s oil embargo, and with the Soviet Union temporarily mollified, the Japanese could now thrust south toward Indochina and the Pacific—and the American navy.
While Plane 8 crossed Honshu, Singapore had fallen and the Japanese were raiding deep inside the Indian Ocean, sinking HMS Hermes, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier. The USS Langley, America’s first carrier now serving as a seaplane tender, sortied from Fremantle, Australia, on February 22, 1942, with thirty-two P-40 fighters of the 13th Pursuit Squadron. She was bound for India by way of Ceylon when Vice Admiral Helfrich, the Dutch officer commanding Allied naval units in Java, ordered her to Tjilatjap on the Java coast. Desperate for air support against the Japanese, Helfrich wanted Langley’s planes and pilots. Unfortunately, a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft spotted her south of Java in the Indian Ocean, and on February 27, thirty-one 11th Air Fleet aircraft flew from Bali’s Denpasar Airfield and put five bombs into the old flattop. Dead in the water, Langley was abandoned and later scuttled. Java surrendered in March, and the Imperial Army now occupied the Dutch East Indies, providing Tokyo with all the rubber and oil resources needed to fight the war. Bataan fell on April 9, with the remaining American and Filipino defenders retreating to the island fortress of Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay.
As for the Soviet Union, Stalin’s towering miscalculation of Hitler’s intentions and the success of Germany’s invasion forced him to temporarily reevaluate his alliances. With no other choice, Stalin sided with the West to stave off the enemy on his doorstep, but this in no way diminished his ambition to create a communist Europe with himself at the center. In the dark days of 1942, this hinged on throwing endless Russian bodies at the Germans and on Lend-Lease materiel supplied by the United States. Despite having stopped the Wehrmacht short of Moscow, the Red Army’s January 1942 counteroffensive was a disaster. In attempting to destroy a salient formed by the German Fourth and Ninth Armies, the Russians lost several million soldiers dead, wounded, and missing. This was roughly four times the casualties incurred by the Germans, who remained in place, and news of this military failure reached Moscow about the same time as Plane 8 touched down in Russia.
Stalin’s primary concern, as always, was self-preservation, and in 1942 this meant avoiding a two-front war at all costs. The Soviet Union might have withstood the German onslaught unaided given German logistical shortcomings and the sheer size of Russia—it was possible, but at great cost, certainly. However, if the Japanese renewed their cherished territorial ambitions in Mongolia and attacked from the east while their nominal Nazi allies assaulted from the west, then the Soviet Union, and Stalin, would certainly have fallen. As Major General A. K. Kazakovtsev, the Soviet Far Eastern Army’s chief of operations, stated bluntly, “If the Japanese enter the war on Hitler’s side … our cause is hopeless.”
So when the Americans, who wanted something in return for their Lend-Lease billions, suggested bases east of Lake Baikal, Red Army authorities were “shocked by the idea and literally turned white.” Stalin would now openly accept any aid that assisted him in killing Germans, but would also assiduously avoid any action giving the Japanese a pretext to annul the nonaggression pact and again invade in the east. This included a declaration of war against Japan, which Washington and Britain greatly desired, and the basing of Allied troops or aircraft in the Soviet Maritime Territory.
This, then, was the situation within the Soviet Union when Plane 8 landed at Unashi airfield some sixty miles east of Vladivostok on the early evening of April 18, 1942. The consternation caused by a lone American bomber suddenly landing in the Soviet Union after attacking mainland Japan was a policy shock that went straight to the Kremlin: it became a tense diplomatic and military juggling act, with a lonely American crew caught squarely in the middle.
7 CONSEQUENCES
“You guys stay in the ship,” Ed York unclasped the lap belt and tossed the ends off his seat, “and keep me covered.” Leaning forward, he also unhooked the khaki M1936 pistol belt, pulled it off his hips, and handed it to Bob Emmens. The crowd of dark-coated men hadn’t moved and were simply standing off the right wing staring up at the cockpit.
Tugging open his side window, Emmens felt a wave of cold, fresh air slide past his cheeks and he breathed in deeply. It smelled wonderful after nine hours in the cockpit. York crouched against the yoke and then carefully put his right leg down between the seats, balancing a moment as the blood flowed into his cramped muscles. Nine hours and ten minutes of sitting hurt, and the pilot winced as he clambered past Nolan Herndon, who had appeared once they shut down the engines.
“By the way,” Bob called as York squeezed behind the seats toward the forward hatch. “Do you know any Russian?”
“Hell, no.”
Unlocking the hatch, York sat and slowly dropped through it feetfirst, holding on to the opening as he did so. It wouldn’t do to fall on his face in front of the Russians—if, in fact, that’s who they were. Navigation was tough without good maps, but they’d planned to fly over the first bay inland from Cape Povorotnyy, and assuming that finger-like spit of land was the cape, then he had turned in over American Bay.* The airfield they needed to know about was ten miles up a river north of the bay, and this place matched the location. If they’d spotted the correct cape … and if that was the right bay and river.
If.
Lots of ifs.
Well, he sighed and slowly straightened. Too late now. Walking slowly and deliberately toward the waiting soldiers, or whatever they were, the pilot was careful to keep his hands in plain sight. They didn’t seem to be carrying rifles, but each had a black holster attached to their black belts. No one moved, and as he got closer York saw they were running their eyes over his uniform. They were also smiling, but only with their mouths and not their eyes, like true Slavs. Watching from the cockpit, Emmens gripped his pistol as York stopped and began speaking. His arms were moving, and the men up front smiled broadly. Bob figured the pilot was greeting them in Polish, which he spoke, and maybe it was close enough to be understood.†
“Ski turned around and smiled,” he recalled, “which we took as the ‘all clear’ signal.” Emmens, Herndon, and Sergeant Laban dropped down from the forward hatch, while Pohl came down from the rear hatch and joined them next to the wing. Waving them forward, Ski continued talking as the men clustered closely around him. For a few minutes they gestured, talked, and pointed.
“Witam,” Ski kept repeating. “Jestem przyjacielem.” Hello. I am a friend.
Several nodded and smiled again, understanding the intent if not the meaning.
“Amerykański,” Ski said and pointed to his chest, then at his crew.
More smiles. One of men up front nodded enthusiastically. “Da … Amerikanskiy.” He waved at those around him. “Russkiy. My russkiy!”
Relief seeped through Bob’s muscles at that word. Russian. He hadn’t really doubted it after seeing the strange letters on their hatbands, but it was still good to hear. No matter what else, they were in Russia.
Suddenly the gathered men snapped to attention and stood rigidly, their long ribbons waving in the breeze. Three new Russians had appeared, obviously higher ranking. Dressed in similar long black overcoats, these men had peaked caps and wore officers’ shoulder boards, though Bob didn’t know the insignia. One of them waved his hand, then barked something, and the initial crowd quickly dispersed. Short and stocky, the officers were not unfriendly, but neither were they smiling.
“Amerykański.” Ski tried Polish again, then French, and got steady blank looks in return. Emmens tried German, which probably wasn’t a good idea, and that got a reaction. They looked at each other, then at the bomber and one of them pointed out the American markings. Finally, another nodded slightly and pointed back toward a small building behind the bomber to the left. “Prikhodit’!… poydem s nami.”*
Bob didn’t understand the words, but apparently York did and nodded in return. Anyway, the meaning was clear enough. Though they were stiffly polite, no one drew pistols, so the Russians must have decided their new arrivals were not Germans.
“Prikhodit’ … Prikhodit’!”
The sun was “a ball of red on the horizon now,” just above the mountains to the west. The wide valley was beginning to darken as the steady northern breeze chilled the air. Short grass crunched beneath their boots as they walked, and it was quiet: very unlike an American base. Crossing the flattened landing strip, they walked up to and entered a dirty, white, run-down building. Motioning for them to follow, the senior Russian officer strode into a small, shabby office and pointed at a few chairs. He removed a telephone from its cradle on a surprisingly ornate and well-made wooden desk, then spat out short, terse sentences in rapid-fire Russian. His call completed, the officer slammed the phone down, lit a cigarette, and looked at each American in turn through puffs of smoke.
It was no use trying to communicate, so the pilots discussed their options in low tones. The first priority was hundred-octane fuel for the bomber. Then, no matter what happened, if they could get to the Mitchell, then they could get away. The fighter’s sudden appearance was discussed and, in fact, it answered one of the questions regarding Soviet air defenses. But had they been detected by radar, which was supposedly unknown in Russia, or had the pilot simply seen them visually? In any event, if they could get airborne, York was confident that the B-25 could outrun any fabric-covered biplane, and he hadn’t seen any anti-aircraft guns on the way in.
Unashi, or anything else built near here, would be ideal for bombing Japan. With a proper runway, this field could support heavy bombers, and the nearby port on American Bay was big enough for logistics. York had jotted down all the distances, and from this part of the Soviet Union most of Japan would be directly threatened: certainly Tokyo, Yokohama, and the other centers of industry. Plane 8 had flown painfully slow to conserve fuel, but from here a fully fueled and combat-loaded B-25 could make the Honshu coast in less than two hours. Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe were all around six hundred miles from where he now stood, which was less than two and a half hours at tactical airspeeds.
