Tanaka Memorandum ( Japanese: 田中 上奏 文 Tanaka Jo: So : Bun ) - Attributed to the 26th Prime Minister of Japan Tanaka Giichi, a Japanese strategic planning document of 1927, in which he allegedly presented to Emperor Hirohito a strategy for conquering the world. Today, this document is generally regarded by scientists as a fake. Recently, Japanese experts on the history of international relations as a source of fakes increasingly point to the environment of the then Manchu dictator of young Marshal Zhang Xueliang .
The Tanaki Memorandum was first published in December 1929 in Nanjing in a Chinese nationalist publication.
Content
- 1 Summary
- 2 Doubts of Authenticity
- 3 notes
- 4 References
Summary
- In order to conquer China, Japan must first conquer Manchuria and Mongolia. “ Manchuria and Mongolia have never been Chinese territory ,” the memorandum proclaimed. [2]
- In order to conquer the world, Japan must first conquer China.
- If Japan manages to conquer China, all other Asia Minor countries, India, as well as the countries of the South Seas will be afraid of Japanese power and surrender to it.
- The world will then understand that East Asia belongs to Japan, and does not dare to challenge its rights.
Although the authenticity of the Tanaka memorandum is denied by modern scholars, in the 1930s and 1940s this document was perceived by the general public as genuine, since the aggressive actions of Japan very precisely corresponded to the expansionist plans described in it: the Mukden incident of 1931, the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the battles at Khalkhin Gol in 1939, the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in 1940, and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor .
Doubts of authenticity
When the allies after the surrender of Japan searched for incriminating evidence of war crimes, including the preparation of an aggressive war, they did not find any projects or copies of what would be consistent with the Tanaki memorandum. Japanese officials have always denied the authenticity of the published memorandum, and historians and researchers, despite the most thorough searches, could not find the original text [3] .
Although the Tanaki memorandum is mentioned in newspapers and school books in China, most Japanese historians claim that the document is fake.
In 1995, Vitaly Pavlov, a retired high-ranking NKVD officer, wrote about the Tanaki memorandum in the Moscow journal "Intelligence and Counterintelligence News". Pavlov noted that the document is a fake made by the USSR in 1931 in order to sow anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States and Europe [4] [5] .
Notes
- ↑ Boog, Horst; Rahn, Werner; Stumpf, Reinhard; et al., eds. (2001). Germany and the Second World War, Volume 6: The Global War. Oxford University Press . Retrieved November 29, 2014.
- ↑ History of diplomacy - Potemkin V.P. - Google Books
- ↑ Tanaka Memorandum. // Japan from A to Z. Encyclopedia. EdwART 2009.
- ↑ Romerstein and Breindel The Venona Secrets, 2001, ISBN 978-1621572954 , pp. 520-521
- ↑ The biography of the Soviet intelligence officer Ivan Chichaev indicates that he was the first who managed to get this document