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Mongolia 1939 – Stalin’s Shrewd Opening ActBy Stuart D. Goldman | World War II | 6 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post  Soviet infantry advance behind a BT-7 tank in the disputed inner Asian borderland in 1939. RIA Novosti. Even as the battle at Nomonhan was escalating, Stalin was weaving the diplomatic design that would connect it to a far larger conflict: World War II. The Khalkha River winds from north to south near the tip of a flat, grassy salient of Mongolia that juts about 100 miles eastward into Manchuria. In the 1930s, Manchuria’s Japanese overlords regarded the river as an international boundary line: Manchuria to its east, and Outer Mongolia—then a protectorate of the Soviet Union known as the Mongolian People’s Republic—to the west. Those on the Mongolian side of the border claimed that line ran some 10 miles east of the river, near the tiny hamlet of Nomonhan. While the precise location of the border meant little to the nomadic Mongols who had followed their herds back and forth across the river for centuries, the Kwantung Army, the elite Japanese force that controlled Manchuria, took a different view. Subscribe Today
In April 1939, Maj. Masanobu Tsuji, the notorious and sometimes brilliant senior officer of the army’s operations staff, drafted an inflammatory set of principles for dealing with the border skirmishes that had been troubling the desolate region since Japan seized Manchuria in 1931 and 1932 and renamed it Manchukuo. Worded to provoke rather than settle such disputes, Tsuji’s principles declared that “where boundaries are not clearly defined, area commanders will establish boundaries on their own”; that in the event of an armed clash the army will “fight until victory is won, regardless of…the location of boundaries”; and, finally, that “it is permissible to enter Soviet territory, or to trap or lure Soviet troops into Manchukuoan territory.” The following month, the Kwantung Army general responsible for the disputed territory, Lt. Gen. Michitaro Komat-subara, commander of the 23rd Division, was meeting with his staff to discuss the new border principles when he received word of incursions by Mongolian mounted cavalry across the Khalkha River near Nomonhan. In keeping with the new orders, as a participant in the meeting later recalled, the usually cautious, bookish Komatsubara made a firm plan. Weary of the skirmishes and hoping a tough response would get the Soviets to back off, Komatsubara “decided in a minute to destroy the invading Outer Mongolian forces.” That snap decision would turn out to be one of the most important of World War II. The conflict it ignited was no mere border clash. More than 100,000 men and hundreds of tanks and aircraft fought for four months in the battle known in Japan as the Nomonhan Incident and in the Soviet Union and Mongolia as the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. Two commanders in the conflict, Major Tsuji and Soviet general Georgi Zhukov, would go on to play critical roles in the Second World War, one helping to set Japan on the path to Pearl Harbor, the other fending off the Nazi blitzkrieg against Russia in 1941 and ultimately leading the Soviet Union to victory in that titanic struggle. Even more astonishing, this little-known battle, fought in remote inner Asia, helped pave the way for the Nazi invasion of Poland—and all that followed. Indeed, the height of the battle at Nomonhan coincided precisely with the August 1939 conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which gave Hitler the green light to invade Poland, triggering another world war. That was no coincidence. The pact was part of a simultaneous military and diplomatic offensive by Stalin to neutralize the German threat and stun the Japanese. It assured Hitler he would not have to fight Britain, France, and Russia, so he felt safe in attacking Poland; it kept Stalin out of the intracapitalist war in Europe; and, in isolating Japan from Germany, it gave Stalin a free hand to unleash his fury against the Japanese at Nomonhan. Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
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6 Comments to “Mongolia 1939 – Stalin’s Shrewd Opening Act”
I am some knower over Japanese-Soviet Clashes in 1938 and 93 among the Japanese-Chinese Conflict in 1937-45.
based in own experience in Nomonhan Japanese developed a some type of 47mm AT infantry guns and Self-propelled vehicles, Armored carriers and Tanks with 47mm cannons
I considered why for Japanese having to chosen figthing against Chinese are erroneous and theirs poses some potential triumph charts in your hands for created needed base of war against Soviets in Siberia:
*Japanese a set up some anticomunist puppet states in Northern China:
-Chinese East Hebei Autonomous Council (1935 – 1938)
-Chinese Provisional Government of the Republic of China (1937-1940)
-Mongolian Mengkiang (1936 – 1945)
-Manchurian Empire of Manchoukou (1932 – 1945)
*Among Japanese poses some Siberian and Central asian nationalities disconformed with Soviets living in such territoires:
-White Russians and East Jews
-Exiled Yakutians and Buriats
-Tibetans,Uiguirs,Dungans and Central Asians
*Japanese during your failed campaing in mainlad China accumulated a force between 1 to 3 million of Japanese and Korean soldiers a half of total of Japanese land forces in Pacific war period.
*Japanese poses a important defector and expert in Soviets topics
the NKVD officer Genrikh Samoilovich Lyushkov why advised the needed of accumulated a 4,000 tanks for invading siberian lands
If Japanese Army have a decided to use such elements in adequate form for:
- created a combined force conformed by Japanese,white russians,mongol,chinese and Manchu units less between 2 to 3 millions of men
-the use of modified tanks and self-propelled vehicles armed with 75mm cannons
-joining with any type of aerial “Blitz” bombardments
for used an sort distracted strikes to Argun and Amur frontier fortifications and Japan sea fortifications for launched the main stream “lance point” land attack for main Mongolian territoire in route to Irkusts preceded with aerial landings and some undercover strikes for cutting Transiberian line along Irkust also.
such plan as results to “cut the neck” of the Soviet Far East and causing the isolation of such territoire of rest of European Soviet Union,and Japanese easy entering to Blagoveschensk and Khabarovsk without or scarcy resistance
Among this exists some reports from Siberia were one a Communist Serbian why making a interviews with diffrents siberian citizens (students,konsomolsk members,office workers, mining and factory workers,teaches and Communists Party officers,etc) why related stay agreed with seeking the entering of Japanese tanks and soldiers in disacord with Stalininst regimen among some inclusive as disposes to support a Japanese forces if enter in Siberian lands if aiding to a local rebellion against European Stalinists in local government also.
with these points i thinked why Japanese a poses some potential posibilities to defeated soviet forces in Siberia if proposed a making such campaing inclusive with Imperial Navy enter to war with United States in Pearl Harbor.
By Wladimir on Apr 8, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Wow, that’s some history I didn’t know, with gigantic implications.
Of course, Stalin, by buddying up with Hitler, set the Soviet Union up for horrendous casualties–in the range of 20 million-plus deaths. And *he’s* responsible for the eventual death of the marxist ideology(cept in liberal arts department in college), for he purged the party of anybody more charismatic, innovative, intelligent, talented, and inspriing than himself, and this eventually led to stagnation and the fall of the Soviet Union due to a paucity of actual ideas, combined with dizzying cynicism.
By Charles Laster on Apr 14, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Notice the parallel with Guadalcanal-The Japanese committed forces in a very piecemeal and indecisive fashion against an unfamiliar enemy and on both occasions got burned for it.
Excellent research-I enjoyed Zhukov’s ploys to lull the Japanese into not expecting an attack. The Germans pulled the same stunts on the Russians preceding Barbarossa
By paul penrod on May 5, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Paul Penrod’s comment about similar Japanese errors at Khalkhin Gol and Guadalcanal has a surprising basis. TSUJI Masanobu, who bears so much of the responsibility for the disaster at Khalkhin Gol, was in the thick of the ighting on Guadalcanal, where he again caused a military disaster.
By Stuart Goldman on May 9, 2009 at 6:46 am
Where these Soviets units from khalkhin Gol to same units that came to the rescue at Moscow and Stalingrad?
What was the predominant ethnic makeup of the units from Khalkhin Gol?
By Chic Lurch on May 25, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Many of the units that Zhukov commanded at Khalkhin Gol were transfered to the Moscow front in late 1941. But These Khalkhin Gol vetrans were only a fraction of the total forces transfered from the Far East to the Moscow front at that time. I’m not sure what percentage were Russian and slavic. I haven’t followed them after the Battle of Moscow, so I don’t know to what extent these same units were involved in the Stalingrad campaign.
By Stuart Goldman on May 27, 2009 at 1:13 pm