Stalin, Japan, and the Struggle for Supremacy over China, 18941945

Stalin was a master of deception, disinformation, and camouflage, by means of which he gained supremacy over China and defeated imperialism on Chinese soil. This book examines Stalins covert operations in his hunt for supremacy. By the late 1920s Britain had ceded place to Japan as Stalins main enemy in Asia. By seducing Japan deeply into China, Stalin successfully turned Japans aggression into a weapon of its own destruction. The book examines Stalins covert operations from the murder of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928 and the publication of the forged Tanaka Memorial in 1929, to Stalins hidden role in Japans invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the outbreak of all-out war between China and Japan in 1937, and Japans defeat in 1945. In the shadow of these and other events we find Stalin and his secret operatives, including many Chinese and Japanese collaborators, most notably Zhang Xueliang and Kmoto Daisaku, the self-professed assassin of Zhang Zuolin. The book challenges accounts of the turbulent history of inter-war East Asia that have ignored or minimized Stalins presence and instead exposes and analyzes Stalins secret modus operandi, modernized as hybrid war in todays Russia. The book is essential for students and specialists of Stalin, China, the Soviet Union, Japan, and East Asia.