An Attempt on Stalin’s Life? Ë 173
to have been in touch with Carpatho-Ruthenian activists and to have encouraged Bam-
mat and his group to cooperate with Ukrainian nationalists.¹⁷But it is unclear whether
Japan and the Caucasus group played any substantive role in the rise of Carpatho-
Ukraine, which raised hopes for a new world order among those striving to achieve
the independence of their homelands from the Soviet Union. Of course, the future of
Carpatho-Ukraine was to prove disappointing to many: forced to give up part of its
territory to Hungary (the First Vienna Award), and in March 1939, when it declared its
independence from Czechoslovakia, it was immediately occupied by Hungary.
7.2 An Attempt on Stalin’s Life?
In turning down Japan’s oer of nancial aid to the Promethean movement, the Poles
were not mistaken that in Europe Japan was given more to subversion and espionage
than constructive political activity. Japan’s apparent attempt on Stalin’s life is sym-
bolic of its true interests.
Japan’s goal in assassinating Stalin is not at all clear. Possibly it hoped to plunge
the country into chaos and crisis. In 1938–39, Japan’s special subversion organ in
Berlin appears to have hatched the scheme to dispatch an armed squad to the Soviet
Union to assassinate its leader. Exactly when the squad crossed the Soviet border
from Turkey, if it did at all, is unknown, but it is likely to have been in late 1938 or
early 1939. On 31 January 1939 Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi Schutzstael (SS),
visitedOshima in his Berlin o ce. According to Himmler: ̄
We discussed conclusion of a treaty to consolidate the triangle Germany/Italy/Japan into an even
rmer mold. He also told me that, together with German counter-espionage [the Abwehr], he was
undertaking long-range projects aimed at the disintegration of Russia and emanating from the
Caucasus and the Ukraine. However, this organization was to become eective only in case of
war.
Furthermore he had succeeded up to now to send 10 Russians with bombs across the Caucasian
frontier. These Russians had the mission to kill Stalin. A number of additional Russians, whom
he had also sent across, had been shot at the frontier.¹⁸If the squad had indeed crossed the Caucasian border into the Soviet Union, these
“Russians” (or at least some of them) were almost certainly people from the Cauca-
sus. Interrogated after World War II,Oshima did not recall meeting with Himmler on ̄
17 Japan’s role in Bammat’s courting of the Ukrainian nationalists, see NARA RG263, 2002/A/10/3
(Makoto Onodera), v. 1, 3; Kenji Suzuki,Ch ̄udoku taishiOshima Hiroshi ̄ (Tokyo, Fu ̄o shob ̄o, 1979),
93, discusses the work of Japan’s special intelligence/subversion organ in Berlin with Carpatho-
Ukrainians as directed by Takanobu Manaki (see p. 146).
18 Here we have relied on the English translation at the Yale Avalon Project: http://www.yale.edu/
lawweb/avalon/imt/document/nca_vol4/2195-ps.htm, accessed October 2008.