General Nakajima was treated to a sobering reception in Tokyo when he returned with the news from Kwantung Army. He was sternly rebuked by his colleagues and sent back to Hsinking on September 4 with a still more strongly worded Imperial Order commanding Kwantung Army to stand down at once. Predictably, the Kwantung Army Staff now felt betrayed and pleaded with the unfortunate Nakajima for a reversal of the order, or at least for permission to reenter the battlefield in force for the ostensible purpose of recovering the bodies of their fallen comrades, sensitive equipment, and regimental colors that may have been left behind. This time, Nakajima would not be swayed. Head in hands, he turned aside their adamant requests and arguments with the repeated declaration, “It is an Imperial Order. It must be obeyed.”123
General Ueda felt this placed him in an intolerable position. He appealed over Nakajima’s head to the chief of the General Staff, Prince Kanin, indicating that unless Kwantung Army were granted permission to “clear the battlefield” and recover the bodies of its fallen dead, he would respectfully request removal from command. On September 6, General Ueda received a “rigid and stern” confirmation that the Imperial Order would stand, with an “insulting” directive added by AGS Colonel Inada that “with respect to implementation, you will submit prompt reports on your actions.”124 A day later Ueda was relieved of his command. He promptly retired. Central authorities then conducted a general house cleaning of KwAHQ. Generals Isogai and Yano, Colonels Hattori and Terada, and Major Tsuji, among others, were transferred out. The inner clique at KwAHQ was broken and scattered—at least temporarily.125
At the same time, the Japanese Foreign Ministry instructed Ambassador Togo Shigenori in Moscow to open negotiations with the Soviet government for a speedy settlement of the incident. Togo was authorized to accept the boundary claimed by the Soviet/MPR side as the basis for a temporary cease-fire agreement, pending a formal redemarcation of the boundary. After an initial show of coolness, Foreign Commissar Molotov responded favorably to the Japanese overture and in a few days the details were worked out. Meanwhile, the world’s attention was fixed on Germany’s invasion of Poland (September 1) and the outbreak of war in Europe.
In the agreement that was concluded on September 15, Molotov did not even insist on Japan’s formal recognition of the Soviet/MPR version of the boundary as the basis for a cease-fire. Instead, both sides agreed to accept the frontline positions of their troops in the area as the temporary frontier, a line that, in fact, roughly corresponded to the Soviet/MPR claim. The Molotov-Togo agreement further stipulated that all hostilities cease at 2:00 a.m. (Moscow time) September 16, and that a commission with representatives from the USSR, the MPR, Japan, and Manchukuo be established to redemarcate the boundary.126
At 4:00 on the afternoon of September 18, in a tent set up in the no-man’s-land between the opposing forces, Soviet and Japanese military delegations met to work out details of the truce. The delegates on both sides were courteous and cooperative, and the discussions proceeded smoothly. At a second meeting the next day, they concluded the local arrangements, which provided for exchange of prisoners and corpses and stipulated that the cease-fire line established by local commanders would have no official bearing on the ultimate determination of the boundary.127 The new Kwantung Army leadership and the well-disciplined Red Army leadership scrupulously observed these provisions. Prisoners were exchanged and the military episode was closed.
KwAHQ ordered troops to be very cautious in discussing or writing home about the conflict. Company commanders were directed to censor their men’s mail. But the magnitude of the battle was too great to be hushed up and soon news of the defeat became common knowledge throughout Manchuria and the home islands.128
The reputation of the Kwantung Army was further sullied by a series of episodes in which KwAHQ took harsh measures against certain field officers who were deemed to have performed unsatisfactorily under fire at Nomonhan. Colonel Takatsukasa Shinki, an artillery regiment commander, was forced to retire for having allowed his guns to be captured. Colonel Sakai, who commanded the 72nd Infantry Regiment, committed suicide under pressure prior to being court-martialed for an unauthorized retreat. Several pilots, who had been shot down and captured and then repatriated, were hounded into shooting themselves. Colonel Hasabe Riei, who commanded two battalions of the 8th BGU that were driven from a strategic position south of the Holsten, was called to Sixth Army headquarters, where Generals Ogisu and Komatsubara “suggested” that he cleanse himself of shame by committing suicide, which he did. Most controversial of all was the case of Lieutenant Colonel Ioki, who had commanded the small force that was driven from the strategically important Fui Heights on August 23 after having held out against overwhelming odds for three days. While hospitalized for wounds received in battle, Ioki was ordered to commit suicide to atone for his unauthorized retreat and to “uphold the dignity of the army.” At first he refused, insisting that such a judgment was unjust under the circumstances and that he and his men had fought valiantly against a greatly superior force. His accusers were unmoved, however, and Ioki eventually did as he was directed, thus joining his comrades who had died on Fui Heights.129 Nor was he the last casualty. General Komatsubara, utterly dejected and forlorn, his previously black hair now shockingly white, languished for several months at KwAHQ, an unwanted reminder of defeat. In December, he was recalled to Tokyo and a month later officially retired, after thirty-five years of military service. He served briefly in a defense policy research institute. A broken man at age fifty-four, he died of stomach cancer on October 6, 1940, little more than a year after the destruction of his 23rd Division.130
In the opposite camp, of course, the atmosphere was quite different. The terrible purge of the Red Army had come to an end and now with victory at Nomonhan came legitimate cause for self-confidence and congratulation. Zhukov’s First Army Group had performed admirably. They and their commander knew it. Appropriate outside recognition soon was forthcoming. The Soviet press continued to treat the Nomonhan incident in a relatively restrained manner, especially in contrast to the trumpeting a year earlier at the time of the Changkufeng incident. Nonetheless, countless citations and decorations were awarded to the Heroes of Khalkhin-Gol, as they were called, including a liberal number of the coveted Order of Lenin and Hero of the Soviet Union medals. Zhukov and Shtern were among the recipients of the latter. Scores of individuals and some whole units were decorated. The MPR leader Khorloogiin Choibalsan visited the First Army Group in late September 1939 and showered them with praise, with promises of the eternal gratitude of the Mongolian people, and with still more decorations. In early May 1940 Zhukov again was summoned to Moscow. By the time he arrived, a new government decree had reestablished the rank of General of the Army, which had been abolished some years earlier. Zhukov was among the first group of five officers named to that rank. He was further honored by a personal interview with Stalin, the first meeting between the two men. During the interview, Zhukov gave a detailed account of the battle and received Stalin’s praise and appointment to the command of the strategically vital Kiev Special Military District. Years later, Zhukov paid the highest tribute of all to the veterans of his First Army Group when he noted in his memoirs that “the units which had fought in Mongolia in 1939 … when moved to the Moscow area in [December] 1941, fought against the Germans so well that no praise is too high for them.”131
The large-scale shifting of Red Army forces from Europe to Asia and back again to Europe in a short period of time illustrates that Russia is a geostrategic connecting link between Europe and East Asia. That linkage is examined in the next chapter, highlighting the relationship between the seemingly isolated conflict at Nomonhan and the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe.
CHAPTER 6
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NOMONHAN, THE NONAGGRESSION PACT, AND THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II
We have seen that Soviet foreign policy alone was not primarily responsible for endin
g Moscow’s diplomatic isolation in the late 1930s. After the Munich Conference seemed to signal the failure of the popular front/united front policy, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, and Poland’s Joseph Beck all inadvertently strengthened Josef Stalin’s hand in the early months of 1939. However, once the high cards were put into his hand, Stalin made the most of them. His conduct of the negotiations with Britain and France and with Germany from April to August was masterful.
The negotiations among the European powers in that fateful spring and summer are well documented and have been thoroughly analyzed from a variety of perspectives. It is unnecessary to reconstruct them all here in detail. However, in May 1939, when Stalin appeared to have things going his way in Europe, but before Hitler had given a clear indication that a German-Soviet agreement was possible, the Nomonhan incident erupted—a conflict initiated and escalated by the Kwantung Army. For a few months, the possibility of Soviet-Japanese war was revived, and with it the specter in Moscow of a two-front war. It is illuminating to review Soviet negotiations with Britain, France, and Germany in the spring and summer of 1939 with an eye toward East Asia, a perspective that provides new insight into the events leading to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact and the outbreak of the Second World War.
Nomonhan and the Nonaggression Pact
In the second week of May, when the fighting began at Nomonhan, negotiations between Germany and the USSR scarcely had passed beyond a cautious sniffing out of one another’s position. Moscow dropped several hints that an understanding with Nazi Germany was possible. Most notable was the announcement on May 4 that Maksim Litvinov had been removed as foreign commissar and replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov. Litvinov, an urbane diplomat of Jewish origin and married to an Englishwoman, had long been the foremost Soviet spokesman for the united front policy and an implacable critic of Nazi Germany. If an accommodation were sought with Hitler, Litvinov was a poor choice to lead the effort. Molotov had little international experience but possessed a certain gravitas. As chairman of the Council of Commissars, he was the nominal head of government. More important, he was one of Stalin’s closest lieutenants. This shift in personnel seemed to have the desired effect in Berlin, where the press was directed on May 5 to cease all polemical attacks against the Soviet Union and Bolshevism.1
On the same day, Karl Schnurre, head of the German Foreign Ministry’s East European trade section, informed the Soviet chargé d’affaires, Georgie Astakhov, that the German-controlled Czech arms manufacturer Skoda would honor existing contracts for arms deliveries to Russia. Astakhov inquired if, with Litvinov’s departure, Germany might be interested in resuming the negotiations for a trade treaty that Berlin had broken off months earlier. On May 17 Astakhov was again discussing trade relations with Schnurre when he declared, as noted above, that “there were no conflicts in foreign policy between Germany and the Soviet Union and that therefore there was no reason for any enmity between the two countries” and that Russia’s negotiations with Britain and France appeared unpromising. The next day Ribbentrop personally instructed his ambassador to Russia, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, to flash a green light for trade talks. Having baited the hook, the Soviet reply was, in effect, “not so fast.” Molotov insisted that first a “political basis” had to be established for economic negotiations.2
There remained, understandably, tremendous suspicion on both sides. Stalin feared that Berlin might use reports of German-Soviet negotiations as a wedge to break up a possible triple alliance between the USSR, Britain, and France. The perfect mirror image was Hitler’s fear that Stalin might use reports of German-Soviet negotiations as a wedge in Tokyo to break up a possible Germany, Italy, Japan alliance.
Conclusion of the tripartite military alliance among Germany, Italy, and Japan in 1939 was stymied by their conflicting views of who was the primary enemy. Berlin wanted the pact aimed at Britain and France; Tokyo wanted it directed against the Soviet Union. These talks, however, continued through August 1939. And Japan’s continued efforts to draw Germany into an anti-Soviet military alliance were reported in detail to Moscow by the Soviet spy Richard Sorge in Tokyo.
Frustrated with Japanese objections to their designs, Hitler and Benito Mussolini first concluded the bilateral “Pact of Steel” on May 22. The next day, the führer treated his assembled generals to one of his rambling politico-military discourses. He stressed the inevitability of war with Poland, which would not be bloodless, as in the case of Czechoslovakia. English opposition, if it arose, would be crushed militarily. Hitler then noted, “It is not impossible that Russia will show herself to be disinterested in the destruction of Poland. Should Russia take steps to oppose us, our relations with Japan may become closer.” Uncharacteristically, Hitler’s words were leaked to the press almost immediately.3 Five days later, on May 28, the first pitched battle of the Nomonhan campaign began. The timing of Hitler’s speech with the foray of the Yamagata detachment was quite accidental, but that coincidence may have seemed ominous in Moscow.
Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop may have pondered Molotov’s statement that a “political basis” had to be established before moving forward with economic negotiations, but they made no prompt reply. To move things along, on June 14 Astakhov provided a broad hint to Parvan Draganov, the Bulgarian ambassador in Berlin who both the Russians and Germans used as an unofficial intermediary. Astakhov explained that the USSR must choose among three alternatives: sign a treaty with England and France, continue inconclusive negotiations with them, or reach an agreement with Germany. The third, said Astakhov, “was closest to the desires of the Soviet Union.” Astakhov further stated, according to Draganov, that “if Germany would declare that she would not attack the Soviet Union or that she would conclude a non-aggression pact with her, the Soviet Union would probably refrain from concluding a treaty with England.” As expected, Draganov informed the German Foreign Ministry of this conversation the next day.4 Two days later, Schulenburg met with Astakhov in Berlin and informed the Soviet chargé that Germany recognized the connection between economic and political relations, that Germany was ready for far-reaching conversations, and that he had this directly from Ribbentrop, who fully reflected Hitler’s views.5
The diplomatic situation was complicated. The Soviets were conducting overt and laborious negotiations with Britain and France, and while Stalin may have been fairly sure of his ground, there was still room for doubt. After all, the French guarantee to Czechoslovakia had been no less unequivocal than the recent Anglo-French pledge to Poland. The democracies had knuckled under to Hitler’s threats before; no one could be absolutely certain it would not happen again, least of all the chronically suspicious Soviet dictator. Nor can it be said, even at that late date, that Stalin’s suspicions were groundless. Chamberlain’s reluctance to ally with the USSR was not merely ill-disguised, but undisguised, perhaps intentionally so. By June Chamberlain was forced to concede grudgingly that an alliance with Moscow would at least have a considerable “psychological value at the present time.” But having bent that far, he was determined to “drive a hard bargain,” because he “did not think that Russia could now afford to break off negotiations.”6 This attitude was reinforced by William C. Bullitt, the American ambassador in Paris, who advised the British that, while he was convinced of the need of an agreement with the Soviets, he was “still more convinced that we shall never reach it if we give them the impression that we are running after them.”7 Bullitt’s advice was well received in London, partly because of his personal experience as his country’s first ambassador to the USSR, partly because of his presumed closeness to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and partly because it was exactly what the prime minister wanted to hear, since it confirmed his own antipathy toward the USSR. The depth of Chamberlain’s negative attitude toward Moscow at this time is revealed in declassified British documents. On July 2 he wrote confidentially that “I am so skeptical of the value of Russian help that I should not feel our position was greatly worsened if we
had to do without them.”8 Some two weeks later, despite having received intelligence information concerning secret German-Soviet talks, the minutes of the cabinet meeting of July 19 show that “the Prime Minister said that he could not bring himself to believe that a real alliance between Russia and Germany was possible.”9
Still, despite his distaste for the business, Chamberlain recognized that the negotiations with Moscow were necessary. Even if ultimately no real Anglo-Soviet alliance were reached, the appearance of progress in that direction was deemed indispensable, both as a deterrent to Hitler’s aggression against Poland and to satisfy the growing revulsion in the British public and in Parliament against the now-discredited policy of appeasement. And so the talks limped on.
The halting pace of these negotiations, however, was not entirely the result of British half-heartedness. Stalin too was intent on driving a hard bargain, and in his own way was responsible for protracting the talks. The negotiations were conducted in Moscow, and the Soviet side almost invariably replied more promptly to queries and proposals than did the British, who often took several weeks to respond. But the Soviet replies, while prompt, were problematic. Time and again Molotov asked questions, raised issues, and made demands that resulted in delay. “Would Britain and France pledge to defend the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland?” “Would Britain and France come to Russia’s aid if she were attacked by Japan?” “Would Britain and France fight Germany if Hitler bullied Poland or Romania into accepting a German takeover?” These questions were not irrelevant or trivial, but in each case issues were raised that resulted in long deliberations and delay.
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