If Japan turned its eyes towards conquest in Southeast Asia — including the U.S.-controlled Philippine Islands — and became embroiled in a war with America, then Moscow could feel secure that the Japanese would not invade Soviet Siberia, as well. And in the chaos that a general war in Asia would create, the breeding ground for communist revolutions would be expanded. To help seal this likelihood, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Japan in April 1941.
In July 1941, a month after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, FDR's confidant, Harry Hopkins, was in Moscow meeting with Stalin, assuring the Soviet dictator of Roosevelt's intention of supplying the Red Army with as much war materiel as it was possible to provide, with no strings attached. On August 1, FDR told his cabinet that he wanted the aid flowing to Stalin immediately. "The only answer I want to hear is that it is under way," Roosevelt said to them. "Get the planes off with a bang next week."
At that very moment, Stalin's greatest and most successful spy in the Far East, Richard Sorge — who had warned Moscow in early June 1941 that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union during the third week of June, predicting the invasion almost to the day (even though at the time Stalin refused to believe it) — was using his agents to find out if Japan was planning to attack north at Soviet Siberia or south into a collision course with the United States. On October 4, 1941, Sorge, in his last message to Moscow before his arrest by the Japanese police, informed Stalin:
The American issue and the question of the advance to the south are far more important [to the Japanese] than the Northern problem [the Soviet Union]. . . . There will be war with the U.S. this month or next. . . . Japan will attack the United States, then Malaya, Singapore and Sumatra.Stalin had this information corroborated when Soviet intelligence intercepted a November 27 message from Tokyo to the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, saying that he was to "explain to Hitler that the main Japanese efforts will be concentrated in the south and that we propose to refrain from deliberate operations in the north (i.e., Siberia)."
But even as the American aid was beginning to flow into the Soviet Union to bolster the Red Army in the face of the German attack, Stalin kept this information from his most reliable spy to himself. Better not to warn Roosevelt about Japan's war intentions and better simply to watch the unfolding of the Japanese-American war that he wanted. - LINK
Thanks, very interesting. :)
Also, Hopkins was the Lend-Lease director in the Spring of 1943 ... when tens of tons of nuclear materials (includinf enriched uranium) ... was shipped to the USSR ...
RE: And in the chaos that a general war in Asia would create, the breeding ground for communist revolutions would be expanded. To help seal this likelihood, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Japan in April 1941.
This is key. The Vietnam War, really was one of Stalin's ugly babies! That we CHOSE not to win it, demonstrates just how strategically stupid the political mainstream was in this country throughout most of the 20th century.