Nomonhan, 1939: The Red Army's Victory That Shaped World War II

by Stuart D. Goldman

  Other victims included several hundred-thousand rice farmers of Korean origin living in the Ussuri region of the USSR. Immediately after the fighting, Soviet authorities deported these hapless peasants to the Soviet Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan in order to eliminate all Korean hamlets, some of which had been used by Japanese espionage agents.

  The Changkufeng incident also exerted an indirect influence on the Japanese army’s Wuhan operation. The massive flow of men and material needed for this “climactic” campaign in Japan’s futile attempt to force China into submission was interrupted temporarily while fighting flared on the Soviet frontier. Especially missed by the Japanese army advancing on Wuhan was Kwantung Army’s 2nd Air Group, which had been earmarked for the Wuhan operation but was held back because of Changkufeng. Chiang Kai-shek’s decision to blow up the dikes of the Yellow River, flooding the distant approaches to Wuhan through which the Japanese had to pass, also slowed the Japanese offensive. By the time Japanese forces entered Hankow on October 25, 1938, Chiang Kai-shek had transferred his capital far inland to Chungking. Ironically, the fall of Wuhan, which severed the rail lines from Canton to the interior, increased Chiang’s dependence on Soviet aid, which came overland and by air from Soviet Central Asia into western China. The Japanese achieved their immediate goal, but the decisive victory for which they hoped eluded them. Chinese resistance continued, and the one million Japanese troops on the mainland could not be withdrawn from the occupation and “pacification” of China.

  To the question, “What is the real meaning of Changkufeng?” there are many answers. For General Suetaka and the men of the 19th Division, it was an experience that would be remembered with bitterness and pride. The general and his officers who hungered for battle had their fill, albeit under circumstances far from their choosing. To many 19th Division veterans, remembering comrades who bled and died on those barren slopes, Changkufeng may have seemed a pointless and tragic waste. Yet they fought bravely under harrowing conditions, holding their position to the bitter end. And the end brought retreat—humiliation—and direct praise from the emperor—elation.51 A bittersweet legacy.

  For the Red Army, the battle was not only the first major test of its mettle, but was an important gauge of the impact of the purge. While General Shtern and the Red Banner Far Eastern Army did not fight brilliantly, they performed creditably under difficult circumstances. The U.S. military attaché in Moscow concluded that “any adverse effects on Red Army efficiency which may have been occasioned by the purge have now been overcome… . The recent events around Lake Hassan have shown that the personnel of the Red Army is not only dependable, but that it can be called upon for extraordinary exploits of valor, that the material with which the Red Army is equipped is adequate and serviceable, if, indeed, it is not entitled to higher rating.”52

  The U.S. military attaché in China, Colonel (later General) Joseph Stillwell, reached a similar, if more succinct, conclusion: “the Russian troops appeared to advantage, and those who believe the Red Army is rotten would do well to reconsider their views.”53 A year later, however, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II, no such reconsideration of views had taken place. Most British, French, German, and Japanese military leaders clung to the idea that the Red Army was a “paper tiger.”

  The top Soviet leadership in any case seemed pleased with the performance of the army. Shtern was given command of the entire TransBaikal Military District—Marshal Blyukher’s old job—and was promoted to colonel general in 1940.54 Medals and decorations were bestowed generously on the “Heroes of Lake Khasan,” as they were proclaimed. At the annual celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution in Red Square on November 7, 1938, Marshal Voroshilov delivered a particularly bellicose speech. Referring to the recent fighting at Lake Khasan, he warned that if another such border violation occurred, the Red Army would not confine itself merely to repelling the incursion, noting that “it is more convenient and easier for us to crush the enemy in his own territory.”

  Perceptions in Tokyo were quite different. Disagreements within and between the army and the government regarding the handling of the Changkufeng incident persisted in divergent evaluations of the episode. Many military men and government officials felt that the honor and prestige of the Imperial Army had suffered a serious blow at Changkufeng. This attitude was especially prevalent in Kwantung Army, which felt doubly mortified because the defeat had occurred on Manchukuoan territory, which was that army’s sacred duty to defend.

  Colonel Inada, however, denied that it was a defeat at all, arguing that his reconnaissance mission had been executed according to plan and ended with the return of the reconnaissance force to its original position. The probe, he said, accurately revealed Soviet intentions vis-à-vis Japan and the China War: the USSR would defend its frontiers vigorously but showed no intention of launching or preparing to launch a major assault against Japan. Consequently, he concluded, Japan could go ahead with the Wuhan operation without fear of a Soviet “stab in the back.”55

  Many of the activists at IGHQ denied being particularly interested in the reconnaissance aspect of the affair but supported Inada’s plan mainly because it proposed attacking the Soviet troops that had occupied Changkufeng. Major General Hashimoto Gun’s concurrence in this is particularly significant because he was Inada’s boss, chief of the Operations Division. This casts doubt on the accuracy of Inada’s interpretation. Even allowing that Inada’s concept of a reconnaissance probe may have been the guiding spirit behind General Suetaka’s actions on July 29–31, other serious questions remain. The editors of the respected Gen Dai Shi (Modern History Documents) strongly criticize Inada’s idea of a reconnaissance-in-force, arguing that IGHQ failed to draft any plans in the event that the Soviet Union actually did respond massively to the “probe.” Preliminaries for the Wuhan operation had begun on June 15. At the time of the Changkufeng fighting, they claim, the Wuhan operation was already in motion.56 A leading authority on Japanese military history states this view more strongly: “But what if the Soviet Union had dared to intervene in the Sino-Japanese struggle at that particular point? One may suppose that Japan might not have been able to escape the danger of losing both Manchuria and Korea, even if the Japanese forces had stopped the Wuhan operation and headed north. In this respect it can be said that Japan was playing with fire.”57

  Yet the army leaders showed little recognition of having been “burned” at Changkufeng. Misled by the limited scope of the fighting, AGS drew few “lessons learned.” The demonstrated superiority, both quantitative and qualitative, of Soviet materiel (artillery, tanks, aircraft, etc.) was almost entirely ignored. The Imperial Army’s low opinion of the Red Army’s fighting effectiveness was not revised as a result of Changkufeng. The 19th Division had, after all, held its ground against a Soviet force three to four times its size, hadn’t it? Also, “the example remained that arbitrary action undertaken by a local unit, even when close to violating an Imperial Order, was accepted without censure.”58 This attitude of disrespect toward the Red Army as well as toward the restraining influence of the government in Tokyo was especially prevalent in Kwantung Army, where it would have grave consequences a year later.

  The Kremlin apparently learned an important lesson from Changkufeng. The Japanese army had not behaved as Soviet leaders expected it would. Despite Japan’s deepening involvement in China, the Imperial Army had dared to challenge the Red Army at Changkufeng. But for the intervention of the emperor, the fighting might have escalated far beyond the levels actually attained. The Changkufeng incident was a disturbing reminder to Stalin that the Japanese threat to his eastern flank, which was thought to have been neutralized by the China War, was still present. What if the anti-Soviet elements in Tokyo and in the Japanese army forces in the field had prevailed and raised the stakes by committing major ground and air forces and expanding the geographical scope of the battle? In view of the political situation in the USSR and the mounting Czech crisis, in which the Western democrac
ies showed little inclination forcibly to resist German eastward expansion, Moscow might have been compelled to sue for a diplomatic settlement rather than risk war with Japan. Thus, it could be said that Japan was not the only one “playing with fire” at Changkufeng.

  In the event, moderation prevailed in Tokyo and the Japanese backed down. But Chosen Army was not Kwantung Army, and the surprisingly firm resistance of Chiang Kai-shek’s forces would not indefinitely tie down the main strength of the Japanese army. Furthermore, the Soviet tactical victory at Changkufeng was followed within weeks by the strategic defeat at the Munich Conference, which brought German troops closer to the Soviet borders. The specter of a coordinated German-Japanese attack almost surely lurked in the mind of the paranoid dictator Stalin, although he was at least able to derive satisfaction from the way the conflict at Lake Khasan ended.

  On August 11, the day of the cease-fire agreement, Premier Konoye remarked to Baron Harada about the recent fighting, “It’s cleared up for the time being, but we must be more careful from now on.”59 But at Kwantung Army Headquarters, a very different conclusion was drawn. Soon after the cease-fire, Kwantung Army began pressing to have the Manchurian salient and the Soviet-occupied Changkufeng Hill removed from Chosen Army responsibility and reassigned officially to Kwantung Army. Authorities in Tokyo concurred, and on October 8, 1938, responsibility for the disputed area was transferred to Kwantung Army. Even the onset of subfreezing weather that autumn did not cool the desire for revenge that smoldered at Kwantung Army Headquarters.

  Map 3. Nomonhan Disputed Border

  CHAPTER 4

  ______________________________

  NOMONHAN: PRELIMINARIES

  A glance at the map 3 (opposite) shows Manchukuo and the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) each extending a bulging protrusion into the other’s territory. While both of these projections could be viewed as potentially aggressive “thrusts” into hostile territory, each also faced the possibility of being enveloped and absorbed by the empire into whose territory it extended. A northward thrust from western Manchuria through Mongolia would threaten to sever the MPR and the Soviet Far East from the rest of the USSR. Conversely, a pincer attack from Mongolia and the Soviet Maritime Province would threaten to envelop and strangle Manchukuo. This underlines the strategic significance of the MPR-Manchukuo frontier in the 1930s. One of the most sensitive sectors of that troubled frontier was the thick Mongolian salient projecting eastward about 150 miles into west central Manchukuo. There, in mid-1939, the Soviet-Japanese power struggle exploded into large-scale combat. This conflict, called the Nomonhan incident by the Japanese and the Battle of Khalkhin Gol by the Soviets and Mongolians,1 far exceeded the Changkufeng incident in duration, intensity, and significance. Lasting four months, with thirty to fifty thousand killed or wounded, the Nomonhan conflict was a small undeclared war—the first instance in the modern age of limited war between great powers.

  The Setting

  The Mongolian salient is a semiarid area of mostly flat, sometimes gently undulating, sandy plains and grassland studded with occasional short scrub pines and low shrubs. The extreme continental climate is harsh. In May the days can be hot, with frigid nights. In July and August, the daytime temperature regularly rises above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but the nights remain cold. Mosquitoes and enormous horseflies swarm in the summer, making netting imperative. There is little rainfall, but in the summer, especially in August, dense fogs often rise at dawn. After September the temperature falls sharply, serious snows begin in October, and readings of –30 degrees Fahrenheit are common in midwinter. This region, which combines some of the worst points of North Africa and North Dakota, is sparsely populated. The primary indigenous group is composed of two related but distinct Mongol tribes.

  The Buriat (Barga) Mongols moved into the Nomonhan area from the northwest in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries, probably as a result of the Russo-Chinese Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), which ceded to Russia what previously had been their territory. The Buriats, migrating southeastward away from Russian control, were organized and recognized by Manchu emperors in 1732 to 1735. The new Buriat lands lay east of the river they called Khalkhin Gol (gol is the Mongolian word for river), in a territory that one day would be called Manchukuo.

  The Khalkha Mongols take their name from the Mongol word khalkha, which means “barrier” or “shield.” The Khalkha tribes traditionally had inhabited the northern frontier of the Mongol empire. They were the gate wardens, the barrier of the north. The Khalkha lands lay west of, but adjacent to, those of the Buriats, in a territory that one day would be called the Mongolian People’s Republic. These neighboring Mongol tribes had tended and followed their flocks and herds across the sand, river fords, and desert tracks for centuries, heedless and, for the most part, unaware of any boundary line.

  For several hundred years, the line separating the Mongolian salient from western Manchuria had been a vague administrative boundary between components of the Ch’ing empire. Then in the twentieth century, Russia detached Outer Mongolia from China, Japan seized Manchuria, and this vague, ill-defined boundary became the dividing line between two antagonistic empires.

  The Nomonhan incident began, not surprisingly, over a disputed borderline. Near the northeastern corner of the Mongolian salient, the river known to the Mongols (and Soviets) as the Khalkhin Gol, and to Manchurians (and Japanese) as the Halha River, flows along a northwesterly course, emptying into Lake Buir Nor. The dispute revolved around whether or not this river was, as the Japanese claimed, the historic and official boundary between Manchukuo and the MPR. The Soviet and MPR governments maintained that the border did not follow the river, but a line roughly parallel to, and some ten to twelve miles east of, the river. Thus, both Manchukuo and the MPR claimed the land lying between the river and the line east of the river.

  Over time, Japanese authorities presented no fewer than eighteen different maps of Chinese as well as Japanese origin supporting their claim that the Halha River was the boundary. This claim also had logic and practicality on its side: the river is the only natural boundary in that semiarid wasteland. Nonetheless, Soviet and Mongolian authorities amassed an impressive array of cartographic evidence backing their claim of a borderline east of the Halha River. These include a Chinese postal atlas map of 1919 and maps published by several agencies of the governments of Japan and Manchukuo between 1919 and 1934. Unknown to either side at the time of the conflict, in July 1939 the Chinese military attaché in Moscow gave his American counterpart a detailed Chinese General Staff map (circa 1934) showing a borderline east of the river.2

  Postwar Japanese research in eighteenth-century Chinese sources confirms that in 1734 the Ch’ing emperor established a boundary line between the Buriat and Khalka Mongols that ran east of the Halha River and through the tiny hamlet of Nomonhan, as the Soviets claimed. However, it appears that Kwantung Army Headquarters (KwAHQ) did not consider that decision binding, because it was not the product of an international agreement but merely an internal administrative decision within the Chinese empire to which Russia was not a party.3

  A plausible explanation suggested by two former Kwantung Army staff officers is that from 1931 to 1935, when the Soviet Far Eastern Army was relatively weak, Kwantung Army and Manchukuoan authorities enforced the Halha River as the de facto border and MPR authorities acquiesced. In the mid- to late 1930s, as Soviet Far Eastern strength grew, the Japanese did not want to show any signs of weakness by backing away from their earlier position. Mongolian and Soviet authorities, however, no longer accepted the Halha River line, leading to disputes and conflict.4

  In 1935 Kwantung Army officials altered the boundary line markings on their maps of the Lake Buir Nor–Halha River area, in conformity with their claim of the river as boundary.5 Beginning in late 1935, this sector of the frontier became the scene of frequent disputes and shooting incidents between Manchukuoan and MPR border patrols and their supporting units.

  Until m
id-1938, responsibility for frontier security in Northwestern Manchukuo rested primarily with the Eighth Border Garrison Unit (BGU), headquartered near Hailar. The 8th BGU was composed of some seven thousand Manchukuoan troops in widely dispersed units. It had little mobility or field training and, in Kwantung Army’s view, low combat effectiveness. In the summer of 1938, a new Japanese infantry division was formed, designated as the 23rd Division, assigned to Kwantung Army, and based at Hailar. The 8th BGU was then subordinated to the 23rd Division commander, Lieutenant General Komatsubara Michitaro.

  General Komatsubara, then fifty-two years old, was one of the Imperial Army’s leading Russian experts, having served two tours as a military attaché in the Soviet Union and later as head of Kwantung Army’s Special Services Agency in Harbin, a Russian-populated city in northern Manchuria. Komatsubara stood five feet, seven inches tall and was solidly built, wore eyeglasses, and sported a small mustache. Personally meticulous, the general kept exhaustively detailed dairies; wrote long, detailed letters; and composed poems. He had no prior combat experience.6

  In July 1938, before leaving Tokyo to assume his new command, Komatsubara was briefed by Colonel Inada Masazumi, chief of the AGS Operations Section. Inada, who was just then drafting plans for the reconnaissance-in-force at Changkufeng, advised Komatsubara that, in view of the major combat operations in Central China, AGS hoped that his section of the Manchukuo-MPR border would remain quiet. Inada suggested these guidelines: Do not be too concerned about, or overreact to, minor border incidents. Focus on gathering information about Soviet forces East of Lake Baikal. Study plans for military operations against the western sector of the Soviet Far East.7