page_title: Kantokuen
section_title: Strengths and weaknesses of the combatants
hierarchical_section_title: Kantokuen / Soviet response / Strengths and weaknesses of the combatants
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Soviet operational plan for the Far East, early 1942
context_page_description: KANTOKUEN was an operational plan created by the General Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army for an invasion and occupation of the far eastern region of the Soviet Union, capitalizing on the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in June 1941. Involving seven Japanese armies as well as a major portion of the empire's naval and air forces, it would have been the largest single combined arms operation in Japanese history, and one of the largest of all time.
  The plan was approved in part by Emperor Hirohito on July 7 and involved a three-step readiness phase followed by a three-phase offensive to isolate and destroy the Soviet defenders in no more than six months. It envisioned heavy use of chemical and biological weapons. After growing conflict with simultaneous preparations for an offensive in Southeast Asia, together with the demands of the Second Sino-Japanese War and dimming prospects for a swift German victory in Europe, Kantokuen began to fall out of favor at Imperial General Headquarters and was eventually abandoned following increased sanctions by the United States and its allies in late July and early August 1941.
context_section_description: Both of the prospective belligerents faced an array of difficulties that might have impeded the attainment of their goals. In the Japanese case, although their then four-year war in China had provided them with a wealth of combat experience, their understanding and application of concepts such as modern military logistics and massed firepower still lagged behind the Red Army. At the time of the Nomonhan Incident the IJA regarded distances of 100 kilometers as "far" and 200 trucks as "many," while Zhukov's corps of over 4,000 vehicles supplied his Army Group on a 1,400 kilometer round trip from the nearest railheads. To make up for their lack of numbers and limited resources, the Japanese relied on intangible factors such as fighting spirit and elan to overcome the foe, but this alone was insufficient. Although the IJA's appreciation of these 20th Century military realities improved in the months and years after the fact and the Kwantung Army's material strength was vastly upgraded during the build up of 1941, their fundamental reliance on spirit to bring victory in battle never changed, sometimes even at the expense of logical thinking and common sense. Often, traditionalism and unwillingness to change actively impeded improvements to both technology and doctrine, to the point where those who spoke up about the matter were accused of "faintheartedness" and "insulting the Imperial Army." Toward the end of the war in the Pacific the pendulum began to swing in the opposite direction, with Japanese leaders grasping at 'wonder weapons' such as jet fighters, and a so-called "death ray" in the hope of reversing their fortunes.
  The Soviets, on the other hand, operated under the shadow of the raging war with Germany. Although the Far Eastern and Trans-Baikal Fronts had access to a formidable array of weaponry, the demands of the fighting in Europe meant that strength was siphoned away by the week. Moreover, the state of those vehicles that remained was often mixed: prior to the beginning of transfers westward in 1941 some 660 tanks and 347 aircraft were inoperable due to repair needs or other causes. Because the Soviets only possessed a limited offensive capability on the Primorye and Trans-Baikal directions, they could never hope to achieve a decisive victory over the Kwantung Army, even if they succeeded in slowing or stopping them. Furthermore, attacking into the teeth of a prepared enemy, especially one with his own fortified regions and heavy concentrations of troops immediately opposite the border, was "the hardest kind of offensive," requiring "overwhelming numbers and massive means of assault" to succeed, neither of which the Soviets possessed.
  Soviet forces in the Far East were dispersed over a vast arc from Mongolia to Vladivostok. Without the ability to capitalize on this deployment by striking deep into Manchuria from multiple axes, their strength would be fatally diluted and prone to piecemeal destruction at the hands of the Japanese, who could maneuver freely on their interior lines, concentrating their power at will while the immobile Red Army was fixed in place. The only saving grace for the Soviets was that the remoteness of the Far East from European Russia meant that Japan alone could never hope to deal a mortal blow to the USSR, for which the former would be reliant on Germany.
  Organizationally, although Soviet forces in the Far East on paper amounted to some 32 division-equivalents by December 1941, they were regarded as only barely sufficient for defensive operations. Compared to a typical Japanese division, pre-war Red Army units possessed slightly less manpower, but had greater access to long-range, higher caliber artillery. After the German invasion, however, the Red Army was reorganized so that each division had scarcely half the manpower and a fraction of the firepower of either its German or Japanese counterpart. Hence, to achieve superiority on the battlefield the Soviets would have to concentrate several divisions to counter each of the opponent's.
  Lastly, the quality of both personnel and equipment 
caption: Outline of the Soviet operational plan in the event of war, early 1942
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