The Short Victorious War

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

The

Short Victorious War

The Russians win the Russo-Japanese war

Christopher G. Nuttall

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The Background

The Russo-Japanese war was the first war in which an Asian power defeated a western one. It was marked by extraordinary skill on the part of the Japanese and great incompetence on the part of the Russian government. It provided some of the impetus for the Russian Revolution and provided a glimpse, to eyes that sadly were closed, of the horrors of the First World War. The Russo-Japanese War developed out of the rivalry between Russia and Japan for dominance in Korea and Manchuria. Russia had forced Japan to relinquish the right to claim her victory spoils right after the her decisive victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95.In 1898 Russia had pressured China into granting it a lease for the strategically important port of Port Arthur (now Lü-shun), , at the tip of the Liaotung Peninsula, in southern Manchuria, therefore claiming such rights for herself. Japan went mad with rage, a situation which was made worse by the Russians forging an alliance with China against Japan and gaining the rights to extend the trans-Siberian railway to her new possessions. Japan made an alliance with Britain in 1902 (?, detailed below) and started to prepare for revenge.

Interesting Points

1. The Japanese and British have a treaty stating that if there is a conflict between one of the parties and another, the other will use all their power to prevent the conflict from spreading. If it does, the non-involved party will join in.

2. The British have been playing the Great Game, effectively competing with the Russians for territory and influence in Asia; therefore they are very suspicious of Russia.

3. The French and the Russians have been growing together to face the growing threat of Germany.

4. The British and French have been growing together as well, but this, the beginnings of the triple entente, are fraught with suspicion.

5. The Kaiser of Germany, Wilhelm II, has been sowing discord with his cousin the Tsar.

6. The Japanese fell that they have something to prove

7. The Japanese manpower is stretched to the limit, perhaps to the breaking point.

8. Despite being Japan’s allies, the British have a vested interest in Japan’s defeat. If Japan wins, therefore proving that Asians can beat whites, the British domains in India might be threatened.

How will all these interact? Read on…

Possible Points of Divergence (POD)

1. The Russians could have won the early battles. This might well have encouraged the Russians to win and push the Japanese completely out of Korea. However, this is unlikely, as, man for man, the Japanese were better soldiers and had the advantages of surprise and the imitative.

2. The Russians’ counter-attack at Saimachi succeeds. However, this is unlikely again, as any success enjoyed by the Russians is likely to be only temporary. Confusion in the Russian command led to a badly supported attack and consequently a failure.

3. The Russians win the naval Battle of Tsushima. Unlikely. The Russians had a rag-tag fleet, which was slow, old and mutinous, and therefore not in its best fighting trim. Russian success here would perhaps win them the war, but it would still be crippling.

4. No Tsushima. Probably the best POD, as the defeat was supposed to be decisive. A cold consideration of the situation would have revealed that while Russia was hurting, she had not lost yet, and the Japanese were running out of men and supplies. This is the POD we will go with.

The story

After the early navel defeats, Russia planned to send her Baltic fleet on a voyage round the world to defeat the Japanese navy, and therefore cut the Japanese supply lines. However, the planned voyage was fraught from the start and it had one huge weakness: coal. The ships required coal and Russia, out of all the European powers, was the least able to mount such an expedition, having no colonies to supply the fleet. The Germans saw opportunity and, where France hesitated, they offered to use their coilers to supply the fleet. However, after departing, the Russians made a fatal mistake. The Russian Baltic Fleet, having spent the whole summer fitting out, sailed from the Baltic on Oct. 15, 1904. Off the Dogger Bank (in the North Sea) on October 21, several Russian ships opened fire on British trawlers in the mistaken belief that they were Japanese torpedo boats, and this incident aroused such anger in England that war appeared to be imminent. Admiral Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky, blissfully unaware of the trouble his fleet had caused, sailed on, coaling under Dover, much to the fury of English spectators, until they reached Vigo Bay, Spain. The British fleet took up station outside the harbour and Spain was leant on to prevent further coaling. As London and St. Petersburg started shouting at each other, the Kaiser lost his nerve. Panicking, fearing having to fight a war on two fronts when Bismarck had always warned against that danger, he ordered the coilers withdrawn. The Russian fleet was stuck in Spain!

The British demanded that the Russians paid composition for the damages and returned the fleet to the Baltic. The British press wanted the Russian fleet sunk and the Spanish just wanted rid of them. The Russian government was in a mess. They had to support Rozhestvensky, as they had ordered him to treat unidentified contacts as hostile and some of them would have welcomed a war with Britain anyway.

Meanwhile, events in the east had not been idle. The next battle of the land war was fought at Mukden in late February and early March 1905, between Russian forces totalling 330,000 men and Japanese totalling 270,000. After long and stubborn fighting and heavy casualties on both sides, the Russian commander, General A.N. Kuropatkin, broke off the fighting and withdrew his forces northward from Mukden, which fell into the hands of the Japanese. Losses in this battle were exceptionally heavy, with approximately 89,000 Russian and 71,000 Japanese casualties. Worse, Port Arthur, the Russian navy base in the Far East, had fallen. Kuropatkin, a stubborn and determined general, had held out for extra reinforcements before launching any counter-attack. After the loss of most of one fleet, and the immobilisation of another, the Tsar agreed to let him build up his strength before attacking.

The Japanese, meanwhile, were stuck. The war had absorbed almost all of their reserves and Kuropatkin could keep withdrawing almost indefinitely. The lengthening supply lines and growing losses were weakening them steadily. President Theodore Roosevelt of the United States had been attempting to convince both sides to come and sit down at the negosthing table. He is less successful than in OTL as both sides have ‘good’ reasons not to talk. The Russians are growing stronger and they have not suffered a catastrophic defeat. The Japanese know that they have never been defeated, and the public would object if they gave up the war now.

On the 17 June 1905, Kuropatkin mounted his long awaited counter-attack at Mukden. After a fierce fight, the Russians were beaten off. However, both sides might well have employed the term pyhic victory, the Russians saw much of their forces pushed back after the morale boosting that the extra reinforcements had given them, and the Japanese had been stretched to the limits. If the Russians had kept up the attack, the Japanese line would have broken.

The Japanese commander, Oyama, realising the precariousness of their position, asked Tokyo permission to withdraw in great secrecy to the Yalu River, where he could set up a proper defensive position. However, Tokyo refused, it still had faith in the army, a force that was now in a worse position than any other army had endured since the Spanish-American war. (Or the German Army Group Centre in OTL WW2.) Worried, Oyama disobeyed orders and ordered much of his force to fall back some miles so that they could pincer the next Russian attack. On the First of July, the Russians attacked again, Oyama’s plan worked… up to a point: The Russian numerical superiority allowed them to break out of the trap and destroy the only Japanese army between Mukden and the Yala River. Oyama himself committed hara-kiri, and the Japanese army, those few survivors collapsed.

The Japanese did not surrender, they tried to fight on, but they were overwhelmed. Some combat troops started to act as partisan bands behind Russian lines, but, as the Chinese switched sides to the new winners, they were betrayed and hunted down. The Japanese government, stunned, ordered the sheer magnitude of the disaster to be kept from the public and the international scène. However, they were unsuccessful in the latter, as the Russians trumpeted their victory to the world. In Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm sent the Tsar a note of congratulations and an offer of Russian-German alliances. The French, learning of this, tried to offer the Tsar more to get him to stick with his agreement with France.

Unaware of the scale of the disaster, Togo, commander of the Japanese navy, attacked and occupied Sakhalin. The Russian garrison put up a stout resistance, but eventually capulated. Togo was very surprised to be fêted like a hero on one side, and cursed for a villain on the other for wasting more of Japan’s men. The truth was: after the disaster, Japan could not afford to waste anything. She attempted to get Britain directly involved in the fighting, but the best the British were willing to do was to supply Japan with weapons and increase the British forces in India.

Kuropatkin, after mopping up most of the Japanese survivors, advanced carefully against the Yala. Picking a weak spot, he launched a river crossing attack. The Japanese defenders fought hard, achieving a rate of five Russians for every Japanese dead, but at the end, the Russians held the field. This time, the Japanese commander was allowed to retreat. With almost no Japanese forces left on the mainland, aside from Port Author (taken by Japan Jan. 2, 1905), Seoul and Fusan, both in Korea, the Koreans revolted against their Japanese masters. Kuropatkin wanted to supply the rebels with weapons, but was overruled by the Tsar, who had visions of a Russian Korea. Re-concentrating his forces, Kuropatkin struck at Port Author, and it fell, after a stout resistance and the usual lopsided casualty ratings.

The Russians gained a propaganda windfall when an American correspondent reported on the Japanese suppression of the revolts. They were more brutal than anything that Europe or America had every seen before. World opinion was disgusted and pressure was put on the Japanese to withdraw completely from the mainland. After the fall of Port Author, and Kuropatkin’s advance though Korea, cheered as a hero, the Russians tried to use their windfall to get their ships released from Spain. The Japanese, while confident of their capability to defeat Rozhestvensky’s fleet, knew that the war was lost. They asked the British government to act as a broker in the peace talks. The terms Russia demanded were harsh:

1. Japan to cede all claims on the Asian mainland. All processions there to be surrendered to Russia,

2. Japan to cede all of Sakhalin to Russia,

3. Japan to surrender all of her fleet to Russia

4. Japan to pay Ten million pounds war indemnity to Russia (quite a sum in those days)

5. Japan to disengage from any foreign alliance

6. Japan to admit full responsibility for the war

After much argument, the terms agreed upon were a little bit lighter; Japan was to cede the entire mainland to Russia (Russia was to later claim that this entitled her to all of China), Sakhalin would be demilitarised and returned to Russia, the Japanese fleet would remain with Japan, though she would be forbidden from building or purchasing new ships for ten years, Japan would pay no indemnity, admit no responsibility and disentangle from no alliances. The one advantage that Japan gained would be that the Russians would not base a fleet of their own in the Far East.

Short Term effects:

Japan has been weakened, but she’s still in the game. An invasion of Japan is impossible, except perhaps for Britain, who is Japan’s ally. The Russian’s can’t base a new fleet in the Far East, but that may be a blessing as they need the ships closer home.

The Russian Empire is still unstable, and is trying to digest its new possessions.

Middle Term effects:

Will Japan still enter the First World War? I don’t know. The Russians might object to them taking German territory and obtaining a new foothold upon the Asian Mainland.

Would the course of the First World War be altered? Not by much, the British had superiority in the Pacific anyway. The Germans might have lasted a bit longer there but events would not have changed much. We might see Japan regaining a place on the Asian mainland

Will the Russian Revolution still happen? Probably. The rot had set into the Russian structure too deep for a ‘short victorious war’ to change things. We might expect Japan to use the confusion to regain Korea, but the Koreans might be better equipped to push the Japanese back into the sea.

Will the Second World War happen? Probably, but will Japan be involved? If not, might Germany be defeated earlier, because the British don’t need to send forces to the Far East? Or would Japan concentrate on developing new weapons, such as Aircraft Carriers and Submarines, and do better than in OTL? Would the Americans still enter the war?

Long Term effects:

Just a thought. At the end of the Second World War, Stalin insisted on getting all of Tsarist Russia’s old possessions back. If they included a large part of China and all of Korea, what would happen then? Would the west intervene to prevent it? Would Japan fall under soviet rule? What would Mao and Ching Kai-Shirk do to react?

Well, what do YOU think? I’ve got a few ideas as to how history develops after this, so do you want more? Comments, advice and fan fiction are welcome.