The Battle of Khalkhin Gol

The Battle of Khalkhin Gol (May to September 1939) was a decisive conflict between the Soviet Union, led by General Georgy Zhukov, and the Japanese Empire, which occurred near the Khalkhin Gol river along the border of Mongolia and Manchuria. It was a key confrontation in the undeclared Soviet-Japanese border wars and marked the end of Japanese expansion into Mongolia. The Soviet victory halted Japanese territorial ambitions in the region, shifting Japan’s focus towards Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and played a significant role in shaping World War II’s geopolitical landscape.

Khalkhin Gol: Sowing The Seeds of WWII

Introduction

The Battle of Khalkhin Gol, fought between Russia and Japan in 1939, was an odd conflict on nearly every level. It arose out of a border dispute concerning a 10-mile strip of featureless steppe at the point where Mongolia, Manchuria, and China converge. It was an accidental encounter that neither side sought, yet it ultimately involved fighting that lasted for five months and resulted in tens of thousands of casualties—and it wasn’t part of any officially declared war. Khalkhin Gol was an important technological testing ground for new weapons, yet it remains a relatively little-known event. Probably the most surprising aspect of its obscurity is that Khalkhin Gol exerted a number of direct and significant effects on World War II.

Background to Khalkhin Gol

• (1) Since Japan embarked on its rapid industrialization in the late 19th century, its greatest challenge had been obtaining the natural resources required by large-scale mechanization. Thus, Japan’s imperial ambitions focused on conquering regions where these raw materials could be found. Logically enough, Japan first looked to the mainland of Asia.
• (2) The military commanders were the most aggressive advocates for expansionism in Manchuria, Korea, and other mainland regions, and because the military enjoyed the emperor’s favor, this policy prevailed, resulting in Japan’s occupation of Manchuria and China in the 1930s. In these campaigns, the Japanese army experienced a string of successes that had made them overconfident, and they now began to eye Mongolia and Siberia.
• (3) During the 1930s, the portion of the Japanese armed forces that occupied Manchuria, now organized into the puppet state of Manchukuo, had developed an odd structural relationship to the rest of the military. It was known as the Kwantung Army after the province where it originated, and it operated semi-autonomously, although its commanders were expected to follow general Japanese policy.
• (4) The immediate cause of the Battle of Khalkhin Gol was the ambiguous borders between the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and the Russian puppet state of Mongolia. In particular, the Japanese maintained that for a stretch of about 30 miles, the Halha River—called the Khalkhin Gol by the Mongolians— demarcated the boundary. The Russians instead claimed that the border ran about 10 miles to the north.

The Battle

• (1) In March 1939, Major Masanobu Tsuji of the Kwantung army staff drafted a new set of guidelines for how to respond to minor border clashes. Major Tsuji was a fanatical Japanese militarist and nationalist who viewed foreigners as racial inferiors and believed that any sort of brutality was justified in dealing with them. His set of instructions decreed, “If any Soviets cross the frontiers, annihilate them without delay,” and “Where boundary lines are not clearly defined, local commanders will, upon their own initiative, establish boundaries.”
• (2) On May 11, 1939, a 20-man patrol of the People’s Republic of Mongolia was spotted moving through the disputed zone between the Halha River and the village of Nomonhan. A group of 40 Manchukuan cavalrymen drove them away after a brief skirmish. Both sides then reported the incident. The Japanese sent more than 50 aircraft to search for the enemy.
• (3) Meanwhile, the Russians also responded, ordering a battalion of infantry to the scene, accompanied by some light tanks and artillery. When the Japanese detected this force, they decided to implement Tsuji’s directive to annihilate the enemy and dispatched more than 2,000 men, supported by artillery and tankettes, to locate and crush them.
• (4) A pitched battle took place on May 28. The Japanese had badly underestimated both the size and the quality of the Russian opposition. The Russians had equipped even their light tanks and armored cars with relatively heavy cannons, which chewed up the weakly armed and armored Japanese.
• (5) The Japanese high command wanted to avoid this distraction, but Tusji argued passionately that a failure to act firmly would invite invasion. The Kwantung Army staff eventually came around and committed a large force to a renewed attack. This group featured Japan’s only independent tank brigade, which boasted two regiments of medium tanks and one of light tanks. The Japanese estimated that to oppose this powerful army, the Russians could muster only around 1,000 infantry and a dozen tanks.
• (6) However, undetected by the overconfident Japanese, the Russians had reinforced the area with a large army of their own. Most important, against the 70 rather flimsy Japanese tanks, the Russians had deployed 186 tanks and 266 armored cars, almost all of them more heavily armed. In addition, a new commander had been appointed. He was Georgy Zhukov, and he would prove to be one of Russia’s greatest generals.
• (7) After some preliminary aerial warfare, the Japanese launched their offensive, executing a successful night attack in which their tanks charged and scattered an unsuspecting Russian infantry regiment. Zhukov responded with a counterattack by his tanks, but they were unable to coordinate their movements with the supporting infantry, and many of his superior armored vehicles were knocked out by Japanese suicide attacks.
• (8) Zhukov was learning to coordinate his tanks, artillery, and planes, and his counterattacks first stopped the Japanese advance, then began to wipe out the surrounded pockets of Japanese troops and vehicles. The remaining Japanese had no choice but to attempt to retreat across the river under heavy fire. There were further Japanese assaults, but the momentum had decisively shifted in favor of the Russians.
• (9) With the Japanese offensives thwarted, Zhukov set about gathering strength to launch his own major attack. He devised a plan in which his center would hold the Japanese in place while his tank-heavy right and left wings would sweep around and encircle the enemy. On August 20, he launched his attack, and by August 29, the Japanese were trapped in three pockets and largely wiped out.

Outcomes

• (1) This undeclared border war had important and far-reaching effects on both Japan and Russia, as well as on the course and outcome of World War II. For the Japanese, the shocking failure of their army at Khalkhin Gol resulted in a dramatic reorientation of strategic plans.
  (a) Before the battle, the army had been dominant and favored a policy of northern expansion. Now the Japanese navy gained the upper hand. Rather than advocating attacking on the Asian mainland, the navy urged a policy of southern expansion, in which the targets for Japanese imperialism would include the resource-rich regions of the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, and the Philippines.
  (b) The only force that could constitute a threat to this southern-directed imperialism was the U.S. Navy. Therefore, Japanese war planning concentrated on eliminating the U.S. Navy to enable the Japanese to carry out their planned conquests. The solution was an attack on Pearl Harbor.
• (2) On the Russian side, the battle also produced momentous consequences. During the summer of 1939, both Britain and Germany were actively seeking alliances with Russia. On the one hand, the British and the French desired Russian aid in curbing Hitler’s ambitions; on the other, Hitler felt that he could not launch his planned invasion of Western Europe until he had ensured that the Russians would not attack him.
• (3) In the end, Stalin chose to sign a nonaggression treaty with Germany that included secret provisions carving up Poland between them and granting each side “spheres of influence” in the Baltic. One week after the agreement was signed, German tanks rolled into Poland, officially beginning World War II.
• (4) A main reason why Stalin chose to side with Hitler, especially when there were signs that Hitler would eventually turn against Russia, was the Khalkhin Gol conflict, which was being fought while Stalin and Hitler were negotiating. Stalin viewed Japan as a perennial threat on his eastern frontier and feared a two-front war against Japan in the east and Germany in the west. Khalkhin Gol therefore played a key role in initiating World War II in Western Europe.
• (5) Khalkhin Gol also influenced the course of the war. Stalin’s paranoia had caused him to undertake a sweeping purge of army officers that stripped the Russian military of almost all its experienced leaders on the eve of World War II. When Hitler finally broke the nonaggression treaty and invaded Russia in June 1941, these purges had left the Russian army ill-prepared to resist.
• (6) Yet a core of men and officers with battle experience did exist and were dispatched to the western front, where they had a major part in stopping Hitler’s invading armies: the troops who had fought at Khalkhin gol. Foremost was General Zhukov himself. Because of his success at Khalkhin Gol, he was appointed Chief of the General Staff, and in that role, he applied his experience and knowledge of integrated massed infantry, tanks, artillery, and aircraft to rally the Russians and fight the German advance to a standstill.
• (7) The eastern troops and equipment were essential, as well. Khalkhin Gol provided a testing ground for many new weapons, particularly tanks. At Khalkhin Gol, the Russians were able to try out some of their new designs for armored vehicles and to learn to install in their tanks large cannons and hatches that could be locked from the inside. When the Germans invaded, the nastiest surprise was the very high quality of the Russian tanks, which in many cases, were better armed and armored than the German panzers.
• (8) The experience Russia’s troops gained in the east also paid dividends. At the moment when the German invasion posed its greatest threat, the Russians were able to shift 18 army divisions, 1,700 tanks, and 1,500 aircraft from Mongolia to the western front, and the infusion of these experienced soldiers was critical to stopping the German advance.
• (9) Zhukov oversaw the pivotal victory at Stalingrad and directed the Russian counterattacks against the Germans that drove them out of the Soviet Union and back into Germany. In these offensives, Zhukov again made use of encirclement and massed tanks, artillery, and air attacks that he had perfected at Khalkhin Gol. Hitler’s invasion came close to succeeding; if not for Khalkhin Gol, Russia might well have lacked the leadership, the tactics, the technology, and the soldiers that ultimately made the difference.

Conclusion

The Battle of Khalkhin Gol was a pivotal yet often overlooked conflict that had significant implications for the trajectory of World War II. The decisive Soviet victory, under the leadership of General Georgy Zhukov, halted Japanese ambitions in Mongolia and solidified the Soviet Union’s influence in the region. The defeat compelled Japan to shift its focus from the Soviet Union to Southeast Asia and the Pacific, a decision that eventually contributed to its involvement in the broader global conflict. Additionally, the battle showcased the effectiveness of Soviet combined arms tactics, foreshadowing strategies that would be employed in later stages of World War II. Ultimately, Khalkhin Gol shaped the geopolitical landscape of East Asia, preventing a potential two-front war for the Soviets and setting the stage for Japan’s further expansionist moves in the Pacific theater.

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