Khalkhin-Gol: The forgotten battle that shaped WW2

Thanks for the history *and* the analysis!

Wow, didn’t know that, always wondered why the axis-powers didn’t start a war on two fronts against Russia, so they actually did and failed. Thanks for the info.

Very interesting. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor forced the U.S. to enter the war. If the US had not entered the war, world history might have changed dramatically. Had japan instead waited two years until the USSR was fighting the Nazi forces, they could have re-attacked, and fought a weakened enemy.

My grandfather fought @ Khalhin Gol being 20 y.o. artillery captain in soviet army.

However this battle was tiny compares to Stalingrad battle there losses were like 1.2-1.7 millions soldiers for each side and average “life expectancy” was 17 minutes for soldiers in Soviet army.

What would Michael Jackson have done?

Only reason I knew about this prior to reading this post was from Haruki Murakami’s “Wind-up Bird Chronicles”

Thanks for the tale. I think you over-exaggerate the importance, and ramifications quite a bit.
But, Hey, it’s your place do what you like.

Great reading. I had never heard about this battle either. The article is well written too. Keep posting.

Nice article. Now, one thing that might be of interest, that I saw on a PBS (http://www.pbs.org) documentary I believe, was that, based on newly released documents, from Japan and Russia, was that the Japanese surrendered to the Americans, not as is widely believed, because of the nuclear bombs being dropped on their cities, but because the emperor feared the return of the Russian bear, poised, now that the West had settled down, to invade Hokkaido, for starters.

Now if the English did not surrender from the bombing of London (granted, nothing compared to the pummeling the Germans were to receive), and nor did the Germans did surrender, after the bombing of Dresden, which, using incendiary bombs, killed more than Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. And the bombing continued, both RAF and US – Kiel, Dortmund, Essen, but the Germans fought on, a recent book “On To Berlin” describes the Russians fighting street by street in Berlin.

Anyway, to this day Russia and Japan tussle over disputed territory: Sakhalin and the Kurils.

I’ll end with a quote from Losyukov:
“Japan finds itself very much like before World War II. It needs resources and markets, and those two things can combine to lead to a very dangerous situation. ”
Alexander Losyukov, Russia’s ambassador to Japan, expressing displeasure at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s sea visit to view the northern isles last week. (New York Times)

The circle is complete! I had a neighbor in Okinawa who told me he fought the Soviets in Mongolia in 1939. He was in a two-man tank and was shot thru & thru the butt. He, being Okinawan, was a conscript and hated the Japs but *really* hated Russians. Now I know the whole story.

Wow, how could I have never heard of that! Thanks for the history lesson. Fascinating!

Well, I have heard of this battle and agree its significance is rarely acknowledged, but I’m not sure this analysis is entirely accurate. The first 6 months of Operation Barbarossa (e.g. the German invasion of Russia in June 1941) were vastly successful for the Nazis. If ever there were a time for the Japanese to join forces w the Nazis and fight the Russians, this was it. But Japan had changed their priorities, focusing on Pacific expansion. They still joined forces with the Nazis, but attacked the Americans instead (Dec 1941).

Hey, I am a Mongolian from Mongolia. This is very well known story (well, the fact!) in Mongolia since it had happened in Mongolia. I’d been in New Zealand for years, I found it very surprising that westerners taught all others only their own perspective on history. Thanks God that we, post-communists have not been blinded by them, at least.

A note about the Bomb. Germany and Japan had investigated the possibility of an atomic explosive device. Hilter had hoped to get just one so he could drop it on London (via V-2 rocket?) and effectively end Britain’s involvement. Japan found that refining enough ore for one bomb would take years and years. They did not know the magnitude of the Manhattan Project. Still, the Trinity test plus the Hiroshima uranium and Nagasaki plutonium bombs emptied the cupboard. We threatened more. But they were empty threats. Still, they were amazed we did not bomb Tokyo. They decided being vaporized by bomb was less glorious than dieing in human wave attacks on invading armies…

JiveTurkey, that’s the author’s point. By the time the USSR was potentially vulnerable, and busy with Germany, Japan had already committed to the Pacific war and didn’t want a second front. If Khalkin-Gol had gone differently, and the Japanese had not felt it better to turn their attention to the Pacific islands and the US, they could have backdoored the USSR during Barbarossa and the outcome of WW2 would most likely have been very different. Even if Japan had waited, post-Khalkin-Gol, for the Soviets to be tied up elsewhere, and had not attacked Pearl Harbor, the US might not have entered the war soon enough to do any good. Or, if they’d taken another poke at the USSR, Stalin would not have had the Siberian divisions free to throw into the European theatre at a critical moment. In any version of the scenario other than what actually transpired, either the USSR would have been weaker or the US would not have become involved as soon, and either one could easily have tipped the balance of the war.

Old news! The Russians were their traditional Enemy No.1 since the turn of the century and according to conventional wisdom this battle convinced them it was a bad idea to go after them.

This was an excellent article, nicely done. I myself was well aware of this short-lived “second” Russo-Japanese war, but it was interesting to hear more of the details.

I must take issue with your assertion, however, that Japan’s defeat in this instance spurred the Japanese on to expand southwards and thus eventually attack Pearl Harbor. The Japanese *always* planned on expanding into Southeast Asia; it was part of their very old scheme for the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” which essentially meant Japanese hegemony over the Western Pacific and all island territories and East Asia, as well as Australia. This was the Japanese plan going back perhaps as far as the turn of the century.

The Japanese did not attack the United States, finally, because they perceived the US as “weaker” than the Soviet Union. This is patently ridiculous. Intelligent minds in the Japanese military knew that the US was the most dangerous enemy they would ever face—this is why many of them were opposed to going up against the US, but also, oddly enough, why many of them supported the idea of attacking Pearl Harbor specifically–because it was thought that if they could wipe out the American fleet at the outset, it would force the US to submit or at least delay the US so long that Japan could fully consolidate its hold over Asia and perhaps even invade Australia. As I said–this was always the Japanese plan.

It was not just the atom bombs that forced the Japanese to surrender. It was Russia attacking with land/armored forces to gain land before the US gained a foothold in mainland Asia. Japan thought that they could broker peace with the US’ “ally” Russia. When Russia attacked, the Japanese realized that their “getting out” of the war with brokered peace, they surrendered.

Good find. This was only part of what turned the war against the US and Pearl Harbor invasion. There is also an even more unknown factor that is read almost Nowhere except the Nanjing, China museum and a few books. I have personally been to these places and seen the killing fields and photos and heard stories from actual victims. Japanese armed forces had invaded and raped about every woman and child in Nanjing, China. Also killed most of the men in the city. Hundreds of thousands of people! Still something most Japanese soldiers deny to this day. During all this, Eisenhower went to the Japanese with a plea to stop what they were doing in Nanjing or else… That was the first week of that December.. The days before Pearl Harbor.

Excerpted from JFM:

“There is an overlooked but very important consequence of Khalkhin Gol, it propelled Zhukov to the top.”

****

When compared to the Soviet-Finnish war (which occurred at roughly the same time), the Red Army did much better against a stronger Japanese foe.

Being farther away from Moscow probably spared the Red Army’s far eastern flank the brunt of the Stalin’s purge of the officer corps. There’s also the view that at the time, the USSR’s best ground personnel were located in the far east, as a pre-planned defense against a possible Japanese attack. The 1905 Russo-Japanese War wasn’t that long ago and during the Russian Civil war, the Japanese showed signs of desiring Russian territory. Simple common sense acknowledged a sparsely Soviet populated far east, thereby requiring a strong military presence to counter a hypothetical Japanese attack. Another factor in the performance differential was perhaps Stalin taking the Finns for granted unlike the militarily stronger Japanese.

Good to see this subject covered Andy. On the characerization of Russia being “decisively defeated” in 1905, keep in mind that it was the Japanese who were seeking a settlement. This is because they knew that their war chest was running out. The Japanese complaint of being robbed “the fruits oif victory” overlooks this point. Tokyo benefitted from surprise attack, geography and world symnpathy on their side. At the time of the Japanese attack, the major powers took glee at seeing Russian influence in Asia challenged. At the time of the surprise 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, many Russians remembered the American reply to the surprise 1904 Japanese attack on Port Arthur.

There’s a pretty good account of USSR-Japanese air combat before and during this period in THE RAGGED, RUGGED WARRIORS by Martin Caidin. IIRC, Caidin was of the opinion that Japanese aerial losses to the USSR accelerated the development of the Zero.

Nice job. My one complaint was about the numbers of the Japanese forces, but “Chris” already covered it.

There is another reason this battle was very important. While exact details of the battle were not known in the west, the general story that the Japanese were defeated by the Soviets was known. And this was probably studied by the military commands in the western countries because the USSR and Germany had a pack and Germany had just embarked upon WW2. The USSR would have been considered a foe at that time. They did study the USSR-Finland war, and a study of that war would have shown the Soviets to be rather deficeint.

Now lets jump ahead 2 years. Germany invades the USSR and causes staggering loses. Well, Germany was already known to be a deadly opponent, but the Soviet failures showed that the USSR was very much inferior militarily to Germany on the field in 1941. Add in the Finland war and the poor Soviet showing there, considering, and then think back to Khalkhin Gol where the Soviets defeated the Japanese.

Which brings me to that other reason this battle had such influence. The western nations would have looked at Japan in 1941 as the country beaten by the Soviets, who themselves were thought to be on the verge of losing to Germany. The west would of not considered the Soviet military as very competent at that point, so a Japanese military that was defeated by the Soviets would have been thought of as a rather impotent threat. In histories about the first 6 months of the Pacific war, much has been made about how completely the west underestimated the ability of the Japanese. It is my belief that the Japanese defeat at Khalkhin Gol convinced the western powers that they did not need to reinforce their eastern colonies to a much greater extent or make this region an urgent matter. They probably thought the Japanese would not be up to conquering their forces. At least not before reinforcements could be deployed. So the Japanese defeat at Khalkhin Gol lulled the west into thinking Japan would not be much of a threat and neglected reinforcing their colonial forces because of this impression of Japanese incompetence.

great post!

an additional aside concerning the sovs and imp. japan:
the military historian, bruce lee, wrote a book titled “marching orders”, dealing with declassified (as of 1995) info about the u.s. codebreaking of japan’s ciphers.
iirc, a major point was that after kholkhin-gol there was a detente until 41. stalin originally was seeking a non-aggression pact with japan, particularly after barbarossa began. the japanese never signed a pact with the sovs, even after barbarossa began.
this mutual detente allowed the sovs to ship their siberian troops to moscow for the 41 winter counterattack, since by then the japanese were wrapped up in the pacific campaign.
sometime after midway and guadalcanal, it was the JAPANESE who were pressing the sovs for a formal non-aggression treaty. the sovs stalled and delayed, never agreeing until they eventually attacked japan.
strongly recommend the book; it’s a fascinating new viewpoint.

A very interesting Article Andy. It is interesting also that a man named George Sorge, a German “Nazi” who was a communist double agent reporting to the Comintern from Tokyo, had set up an extensive spy ring from China to Toko. Almost single handedly, he influenced the Soviet decision to concentrate forces on their western front, with the information he collected and those the collaborating Japanese communists imparted to him. Otherwise Soviet forces would have been unnecessarily concentrated on the eastern front to the benefit of Germany. General Charles Willoughby wrote an informative book on the subject in 1952 after Sorges execution in Tokyo. It was fortunate for the historical record that the role of British secret services and global financial power were not elaborated upon, but how and ever it is a good example of how even the British Military can postulate on the “scourge” of communism. Welcome to wallyworld. I heard rumour that the Russians in fact invaded Poland in 1939, prior to the Nazis. Would there be any truth in this?

Actually, Japan’s Kwantung Army was ready for a full scale war against the USSR as Nomohan Incident got totally out of control. But when Germany betrayed Japan by signing a nonaggression pact with the soviet union, Japan had no choice but to quit the battle.

Excellent article. Only a few minor quibbles, already covered by others. Thanks for bringing this back to the forefront for a while. Important battle for so many reasons, almost completely unknown here in the States (at least as far as my experience goes). Good job.