Kempeitai that the Pact would be a benediction for humanity It was duly agreed by 65 states, including such later aggressors as Italy, Japan, and Germany It had no provision for enforcement It was touted by liberal-internationalists in the interwar period as an advance for moral consciousness among states, while criticized by believers in realpolitik as a prime example of legalistic and moralistic folly in statecraft Neither view seems entirely merited The Pact was actually a low-cost, even clever, security gambit by Briand It failed because he did not foresee that isolationists in the United States would deflect it into an innocuous public relations exercise—that Kellogg would gut it by making it general instead of bilateral Despite this checkered history and its utter inconsequence in real-world affairs, the Pact achieved public acclaim It was cited by the Nuremberg Tribunal and Tokyo Tribunal to support post facto charges of crimes against peace against Axis defendants Its wording was later added to Article of the post–World War II Japanese “Peace Constitution.” KEMPEITAI Or “kempei-tai.” The military police of the Imperial Japanese Army They enforced rough discipline on soldiers in the field and investigated and arrested rebellious officers Their most important role during the war was to investigate and repress dissent of all kinds They were much feared by soldiers and civilians alike, and bore close comparison in their methods and reputation to the Gestapo in Europe or the NKVD in the Soviet Union In Manchuria and Inner Mongolia they ran independent opium and heroin networks that paralleled the larger drug trade by which the Japanese Army financed its mainland operations Kempeitai were brutal torturers of enemy prisoners of war, specializing in water and electric tortures They were formally demobilized on October 30, 1945 See also Tokkoˉ KERCH DEFENSIVE OPERATION (NOVEMBER 1941) One of Joseph Stalin’s favorites, Marshal Grigory I Kulik represented the Stavka in operations in the Crimean and Kerch peninsulas in November 1941 Kerch was a 60-mile long eastward abutment of the larger Crimean peninsula Initial fighting at Kerch was part of the much wider Donbass-Rostov defensive operation (September 29–November 16, 1941) The town of Kerch fell to the Germans on November 15 Three thousand soldiers and civilian refugees who remained alive were then trapped in a nearby quarry at Adzhimuskai, or in labyrinthine tunnels in hills around the city They survived for three months by eating horse flesh, until most were killed by ferocious NKVD guards who would not permit the weakened survivors to surrender The miserable few who lived though massacre by their own side were subsequently killed by poison gas piped into the caverns by the Germans See also Crimea; Kerch-Feodosiia operations; Sebastopol, siege of ·· KERCH-FEODOSI I A OPERATIONS (DECEMBER 1941–MAY, 1942) Soviet amphibious and supporting airborne operations took the Germans by surprise at Kerch and Feodosiia, located on the Kerch peninsula, in the last week of December 1941 and first two days of January 1942 Larger landings were planned 628