The Japanese did not yet know or suspect that the Russians had already pledged to join the war against Japan. At Yalta, Stalin had fixed the date of the Soviet attack for three months after the fall of Germany. The Soviet dictator led the Japanese along with inconclusive diplomatic exchanges, intending only to buy time for his forces to redeploy from Europe. Throughout June and July, Russian troops, tanks, and artillery were traveling east by rail and massing on the Manchurian border. The point of Stalin’s characteristically devious game was to get his country into the last phase of the war
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