USSR and China: United in Victory

Directed by Ekaterina Kitaytseva (2025)

Film Review

https://en.rtdoc.tv/films/2199-ussr-and-china-united-in-victory

For China, World War II began in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. By November 1937 they occupied all of Manchuria. advancing to capture Shanghai in November 1937 and the Chinese capitol Nanjing in December. The communist guerilla forces led by Mao Zedong and the anticommunist Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek joined forces to defend their country. However when both armies withdrew from Nanjing, the Japanese systematically raped, mutilated and slaughtered its civilians.

The combined Chinese forces received major support from the Soviet Union. Between 1937-1941, the USSR supplied China with 900 aircraft, 100 tanks and tens of thousand of artillery and small arms. They also provided instructors, pilot and troops, significantly helping to significantly slowing the Japanese advance. Although the Russians also invited Chinese recruits to train at the Soviet military academy, once the Japanese blockaded the Soviet-Manchuria border, they (including Mao’s son) couldn’t return and fought the German Nazis alongside Soviet troops.

Meanwhile the Japanese established the infamous Unit 731 in Manchuria, carrying out cruel experiments on civilians, infecting them them with typhoid, cholera, plague; exposing them to toxic chemicals and gradually freezing them to death. In total 500 Manchurian villages were destroyed via biological warfare or by poisoning their wells and reservoirs. The Japanese systematically contaminated a 1000 more villages in the rest of China.

The Japanese, who signed an anti-Comintern pact with Nazi Germany in 1936, planned to invade the USSR from the Far East after the anticipated Nazi victory over the Soviets.

The Soviet response, in February 1945, was to join the US and Britain in the Pacific arena under the Yalta agreement. The USSR committed 100 million troops to the Japanese-controlled industrial center of Manchuria. The latter was logistically inaccessible to US and British troops.

During the Japanese war crimes trial of 1946-48, the Soviet Union protested bitterly that the Japanese emperor was never prosecuted. They were also condemned the US destroyed of official archives implicating the emperor and participants in Unit 731.

The Soviets held a second war crimes tribunal in Khabarovsk in 1949 in which they tried 12 war criminals who participated in Unit 731. Only China supported and participated in these proceedings, the first to bring Japanese biological warfare activities to international attention.

Ten out of the twelve defendant pleaded guilty. All were convicted and received custodial sentences.