032 Red Sun Rising

The History of the Twentieth Century

Mark Painter

History

4.8 • 719 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2016

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Japanese First Army defeats the Russians at the Battle of the Yalu River and advances from Korea into Russian-occupied Manchuria. The Japanese Second Army lands on the Liaodong Peninsula and advances north, while the Japanese Third Army moves south to begin the Siege of Port Arthur. Russian commanders quarrel among themselves. The small Russian Vladivostok Squadron proves surprisingly troublesome.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Three months after the surprise Japanese attack on Port Arthur, the Russian Pacific Squadron remains
0:24.3	bottled up in the harbor under blockade from the Japanese combined fleet.
0:30.4	Russia's great strength is supposed to be its army, the largest in the world.
0:36.0	But with sea supremacy, the Japanese are now deploying soldiers into
0:39.3	Manchuria faster than the Russians can.
0:43.3	The Russians need a win.
0:45.3	At sea or on land, but somewhere, and soon.
0:50.3	Welcome to the history of the 20th century.
0:55.0	The 20th century. Episode 32, Red Sun Rising
1:22.6	Last week, we discussed the opening weeks of the Russo-Japanese War in early 1904,
1:31.1	mostly focused on the naval fighting between Japan and Russia at Port Arthur.
1:36.2	We'll continue that story today, but I want to circle around a bit and get caught up in what's going on in the land war.
1:44.6	As I emphasized last week, since Japan is an archipelago, its ability to place troops and fight
1:51.6	on the Asian mainland is dependent on maintaining sea superiority in the waters between the
1:57.5	home islands and continental Asia. Hence the emphasis in the naval war on either destroying the Russian fleet at Port Arthur,
2:05.9	or at least in confining it to the port.
2:10.1	The Russians don't need sea superiority to conduct the war.
2:15.1	They already have 100,000 soldiers in Manchuria and are shipping more
2:19.9	soldiers in supplies eastward every day on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The highest-ranking
2:27.9	officer in the theater is Yevgeny Ivanovich Alexaev. Alexaev was the illegitimate son of the Emperor Alexander II, the current emperor's grandfather.
2:39.8	That makes him Nikolai's uncle.
2:43.5	Alexeiov had a long military career and held the rank of Admiral in the Navy.
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