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Author : E. Titorenko
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Member of the Central Council of the Russia-China
Friendship Association, veteran of the Great Patriotic War
ON MAY 9, 2015, Russia celebrated the 70th anniversary of Soviet Vic-
tory in the Great Patriotic War against fascist Germany; September 2,
2015 will mark the end of World War II.
So far, there have been two versions about the beginning of World War
II; today, their number is increasing.
A sober assessment of the military-strategic situation indicated that the
victory would claim more efforts, more time and, most importantly, more
lives. This meant that World War II could not be completed any time
soon without the Soviet Union; London and Washington, in the first
place, wanted the Soviet Union on their side in the war with Japan. On
the eve of the Yalta Conference, a memorandum from the Joint Chiefs
of Staff to the President of the United States and American delegation
said that the U.S. needed Soviet assistance to rout Germany and that
America badly needed the Soviet Union on its side in the war against Japan as soon as the war in Europe
had been completed.
Absolutely sure of his speedy victory over the Red Army, Hitler did not insist on Japan's immediate
entry into the war against the Soviet Union: he tried to incite it at the U.S. and Britain. Pushed aside
and unwilling to act on German orders the ruling circles of Japan were playing their own game.
The United States and its strongest military-economic potential was thus drawn into World War II in
the Pacific.
The battle for Manchuria was entrusted to the troops of the Trans-Baikal Front under Marshal Rodi-
onMalinovsky, the 1st Far Eastern Front under Marshal Kirill Meretskov, and the 2nd Far Eastern Front
under Army General Maksim Purkaev.
In this war, Japanese losses reached a huge figure of 2, 600,000, the worst defeat of Japan in the last
century, not counting the losses inflicted by the American air raids at Tokyo and other industrial cen-
ters.
World War II was the last world war: Nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction have made
the war as the continuation of politics (at least between the nuclear powers) impossible; it will leave no
chances either for the victors or the defeated and will make international military tribunals unneces-
sary.
We, the veterans of war, have experienced the cruelty and hardships of war and the never healing
wounds.
Let us hope that nobody has been forgotten and nothing should be forgotten. We should never forget
these words.
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World War II in the West and the East