Were Stalin, Mao and Kim Il-sung plotting to invade Japan during the Korean War? I doubt it, but it’s still interesting to contemplate. If the intel was misinformation, one wonders if Kim Philby had a hand in it.
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Sounds more like a case of Uncle Joe blowing smoke up Mao and Kim’s asses (pre-emptive strike, that, wot?) to keep them motivated to do their jobs in Korea as part of the bigger Cold War game in the hope of getting Soviet help with their respective hobby horses later down the line.
There’s no way invasion forces would’ve gotten past the 7th Fleet. Completely bogus.
Could have been a single, unsubstantiated report that the allies received, disinformation or not. Or could even have been something like a rudimentary “concept plan” devised by the commies that would have been an outline of a future action to consider if conditions allowed, but it is highly unlikely that such plan was ever approved for implementation. They did not have the ability to project force like that.
Shucks, Divine Wind II would have been so much better than the original. Raijin sad.
the most prominent contribution from the Russians for all time was Communism.
This caused death, misery, and poverty all over the world.
How could they possibly do it? There was no Russian navy to speak of in 1950… At least, no match to the US Navy. And another reason: all documents clearly indicate that Stalin was deadly afraid of escalation. In early October he nearly wrote North Korea off, and was willing to accept US as “our new neighbour on the Far East” (his own words). The Soviet pilots were strictly forbidden to start dogfights with the USAF planes anywhere close to the frontline - only in deep North Koreran rear. Nobody wanted the WW3, and Kim Il Sung had to lobby hard to get permision even for a small-scale blitzkreig (well, it turned out abit bigger…)
Actually, Communism was more or less a German invention (or the invention of a German, anyhow). Russians were relative late-comers who added in their own ‘refinements’.
As for the ‘plan’ to invade Japan, I wonder if this wasn’t more like the ‘plans’ that get leaked from time to time here in the US - operations plans that study (sometimes rather unlikely) military contingencies that when leaked, certain reactionary elements tend to understand as some conspiracy to invade England or whatever. Maybe Russia and China were simply studying a possible (though unlikely) course of action - a contingency plan.
Actually, Communism was more or less a German invention (or the invention of a German, anyhow). Russians were relative late-comers who added in their own ‘refinements’.
Actually, Communism is a Jewish invention. The idea of class struggle fit nicely with the Jewish persecution complex. Communism was brought to Russia by revolutionaries like that guy Perchik in “Fiddler on the Roof”.
If this was an intelligence product of the G2 section of US Far East Command (as the article seems to state), I think that means it was intelligence produced under the supervision of Major General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur’s G2 of long tenure (Willoughby was one of the “Bataan gang”, staff officers who had been with MacArthur since the siege of Bataan and Corregidor Dec 41-Mar 1942, and who had evacuated with him in the famous escape by PT boat to Mindanao and then Australia).
Willoughby was quite a character (to put it mildly) and this intelligence estimate may represent an effort on his part to provide his boss (MacArthur) with “ammunition”, for MacArthur’s ongoing effort to convince the JCS and Truman that the war needed to be expanded; and in particular that the Nationalist Chinese needed to be supported and brought into the war effort in a major way.
It’s interesting that this was found in British archives. I think it’s there because the Crown’s representative to the Allied Occupation authority in Japan must have been well aware of his home government’s concern over what would happen in the event of any serious expansion of the war in Korea, particularly at this time (early December 1950, when the major Chinese counteroffensive in North Korea was well underway, one that would force the UN forces all the way back from near the Yalu to well south of Seoul, once again (as mentioned in the linked article, the Communist forces would recapture Seoul in January 1951)).
Nevertheless, it’s most unlikely that this report was ever taken at all seriously by the JCS in the Pentagon and consequently by Truman. Willoughby would have been a well-known quantity to them, and the JCS and especially the Secretary of Defense were all experienced WWII senior officers, ones who were well aware just how logistically difficult it was to mount a major amphibious operation of this scale.
(In fact, without looking it up, I’m 99% sure the SecDef at this time was Marshall, who had come out of retirement for exactly one year to be SecDef at this time of crisis, at the personal request of Truman). Marshall and the senior naval officers of the JCS staff underneath him would have known (from their own WWII experience) that without mass quantities of specialized landing craft, an invasion of this scale was impossible, unless somehow the Communists could have gained access to a major (and undamaged) port facility in Japan (perhaps by some sort of mass domestic insurrection on the part of Japan’s Communist party; at that time I gather Japan’s domestic Communist party did represent a serious concern for the Occupation authority).
But the Americans had not allowed the Soviets their own occupation zone in the Japanese Home Islands (I think the Soviets had requested the island of Hokkaido).
“Actually, Communism is a Jewish invention. The idea of class struggle fit nicely with the Jewish persecution complex. Communism was brought to Russia by revolutionaries like that guy Perchik in “Fiddler on the Roof”.”
You could do some ghostwriting for Lee Won-bok.