History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

[Kyriakos]

the famed Siberians . Two front war keeps Russia from concentrating on Nazis , the existantial threat thing , allowing the Japanese to make a little show and get things . Siberia is too large and too tough . But if Japan manages to gain a foothold it can be a really useful addition to Manchuria ... Letting Japan to declare a truce with China . So that China can be invaded and destroyed later , say , by 1950 or 60 . Except the Russians in the Nomonhan Incident totally crushed the Japanese Army , which was a second rate force when you omit the fanaticism of the troops . On the other hand the IJN was indeed a major naval power , perhaps the best in the world , before the US defence industry got into high gear . Adolf wants a distraction , might even give parts of Siberia to America to make a peace in the West .

I ask all that because I have very little knowledge of ww2. I have to assume that since russians already felt safe from Germany in the Urals, they wouldn't bother much with an attack by Japan that had to literally reach the opposite edge of the largest continent.
Though I suppose US wouldn't as easily send them supplies if the Barents sea ports had fallen (after a fall of St. Petersburg).

 

[r16]

100 million or 120 million Japanese are a lot of manpower . Russians had better tanks with much better models on the way and a working theory of armoured warfare in contrast to Japanese who had none of the above . A short sharp clash and the Japanese Army discovered it had no chance of winning . A thing to remember about Japan is the fall of the Shogunate , where the victors parcelled the spoils . One group gets the Navy , other gets the Army . Defence budget is roughly divided in half . Army tends to be traditional , everywhere , studying Napoleon . Navies are always in a tech race where a single shot can decide the fate of nations . IJN prospered , though it was still miniscule when the Allied potential was considered . IJA was backwards but it would have to improve . Exposure to real combat tends to bring about that . So , Russia could really NOT ignore millions of Japanese troops milling around in Soviet territory , extracting mines and stuff .

much the same with the Chinese in the 1960s and 70s . The Chinese nukes might have been delivered by donkey carts but they would have a lot , really a lot of infantry . So , the Russians feeling hopeless in the immensity of the task to deliver conventional weapons to stop all those hordes , tried to design supersonic aircraft to fly low and fast to fight the Chinese with breaking the sound barrier all day long . If you ever see F-16s over your home , they are probably slow to keep the noise down . While with the F-104s and F-4s in the 1980s , you would see the window panes rattling ... Like , gotta be much , much more louder to hurt the Chinese with sound .

 

[Kyriakos]

Japan had 70 million people in ww2 (from a search online). Of those, it appears that around 1/10 were serving in the armed forces by the end.
But I doubt they had enough vehicles to carry a meaningful fraction of that force anywhere near european Russia?

 

[r16]

Demography of the Empire of Japan - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

151 million people in the Empire in 1940 or so . 74 million of them Japanese . Which would mean Japan could field a very large army through using the rest as slaves and whatnot . Even if a substantial part of that Army would have to oversee the slaves . Already countered by the notion that the Japanese would use and exploit them ruthlessly as slaves even in peacetime anyhow .

they do not need to go to European Russia . Falling victim to the Polish Bloc propaganda here , that Russians should divest themselves of territory and it will be allright .