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Battle of Khalkhin Gol

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Manchuria
Lake Khasan – Khalkhin Gol – August Storm

The Battle of Khalkhin Gol, sometimes spelled Halhin Gol or Khalkin Gol and known in Japan as the Nomonhan Incident (after a nearby village on the border between Mongolia and Manchuria), was the decisive engagement of the undeclared Soviet-Japanese Border War (1939), or Japanese-Soviet War. It should not be confused with the conflict in 1945 when the USSR declared war in support of the other Allies of World War II and launched Operation August Storm.

Contents

Background

After the occupation of Manchukuo and Korea, Japan turned its military interests to Soviet territories. The first major Soviet-Japanese border incident (Battle of Lake Khasan) happened in 1938 in Primorye.

In 1939, Manchuria was a client state of Japan, known as Manchukuo. The Japanese maintained that the border between Manchukuo and Mongolia was the Halha River (also known in Russian as the Halhin Gol, or the Khalkhin Gol), while the Mongolians and their Soviet allies maintained that it ran some 16 kilometres (10 miles) east of the river, just east of Nomonhan village.

The principal occupying army of Manchukuo was the Kwantung Army of Japan consisting of some of the best Japanese units in 1939. Soviet forces consisted of the Trans-Baikal Front district responsible for the defense of the border between Siberia and Manchuria.

Prelude

The incident began on 11 May 1939, when a Mongolian cavalry unit of some 70-90 men entered the disputed area in search of grazing for their horses, and encountered Manchukuoan cavalry who drove them out of the disputed territory. Two days later the Mongolian force returned and the Manchukoans were unable to evict them.

At this point the Japanese Kwantung Army became involved -- a reconnaissance unit under Lt. Col. Yaozo Azuma was sent to engage the Mongolians on 14 May, but they retreated west of the river with few losses. Joseph Stalin ordered STAVKA, the Red Army's high command, to develop a plan for a counterstrike against the Japanese. To lead the attack, Georgy Zhukov, a young officer of promise, was chosen.

The Mongolians and Soviets continued to build up forces in the area, and Azuma's force returned a week later. This time the Japanese forces were surrounded by superior numbers of Soviet and Mongolian infantry and tanks, and on 28-29 May the Azuma force was destroyed, suffering 8 officers and 97 men killed and one officer and 33 men wounded, with 63% casualties.

Throughout June, however, there were continuing reports of Soviet and Mongolian activity on both sides of the river near Nomonhan, and small-scale attacks on isolated Manchukoan units. At the end of the month the local Kwantung commander, Lt. Gen. Michitaro Komatsubara, was given permission to "expel the invaders". The Japanese operation started on 1 July and was initially successful in crossing the Halha river. However, by the evening of 3 July the attack stalled and the Soviet forces, led by Zhukov, threw the Japanese back over the river. The front then stabilized with only minor actions for the summer.

The battle

Finally, in mid-August, Zhukov decided it was time to break the stalemate. He deployed approximately 50,000 Russian and Mongolian troops of the 57th Special Corps to defend the east bank of the Halhin Gol River, then crossed the river on 20 August to attack the elite Japanese forces with three infantry divisions, massed artillery, a tank brigade, and the best planes of the Red Air Force. Japanese forces at the time of the Soviet counterattack had crossed the river and held the Khalkin Gol mountain ranges nearest the river. However, within days of the Soviet attack, Japanese forces were obliged to abandon their foothold across the river due to Japanese forces lacking adequate anti-tank weapons. On 27 August the Japanese attempted to break out of the encirclement, but failed. When the surrounded forces refused to surrender, Zhukov wiped them out with artillery and air attacks. The battle ended 31 August with the complete destruction of the Japanese forces. Remaining Japanese units retreated back across the river.

Japanese doctrine relied heavily upon close infantry tactics which remained as the primary doctrine of the Japanese army in their 1905 Army Field manual and again in their 1938 updated Army Field manual. Japanese forces were supposed to make contact with the enemy main body with armored cars. Infantry forces would then assemble in a triangluar attack pattern with artillery in the rear and light tanks acting as auxiliary support for the infantry. The battle was of course a complete disaster for the Japanese Imperial Army. Soviet doctrine relied upon using mass concentrations of armor in the shape of a box. Light tank units would be the front of the box with medium tanks such as the T-28 consisting of the rest of the box. Behind the main box, the Soviet forces followed on with infantry supported by heavy tanks also arranged in a box configuration. Against Soviet tanks, the Japanese did not posses any real anti-tank means to stop the masses of Soviet armor. Due to the desert climate of the region, Soviet tank gunners were generally able to see their opponents at long ranges and shell the Japanese with impunity.

Aftermath

Following the battle, the Red Army attacked what remained of the Japanese forces and drove them back into Manchukuo. On 16 September the Japanese asked for a cease-fire and nearly two years later signed a treaty in which they agreed to abide by the existing border.

Some sources have suggested, that Stalin had been informed by German secret service, that Germany had no hostile intentions against the USSR for the time being. This implicated the possiblity of temporarily redeployment of some elite units of the Red Army western boarder guard troops. Stalin took the chance and relocated all the few already existing full-mechanized units to the eastern theatre for employment against the Japanese. As stated, these were vastly inferior in comparison re. tanks/armoured cars. Japanese were surprised by the highly mechanized status of what they believed to be "local command troops, some even took those just emerging mechanized units as a already generally existing standard of the Red Army. The devastating outcome of this "testing of red army strength" in the end convinced the Japanese Army to choose the "southern strike" (attacking the more promising and comparatively more weakly defended South East Asia areas), and to dismiss the "northern strike" option. As known, Soviet spy Dr. Sorge informed his superiors of the Japanese decision to "go south", as he already had correctly predicted the German attack of June 22, Stalin could remove his Siberian elites and throw into the battle of Moscow in December, 1941. So the Nazis gave the Japanese (merely distrusted allies then - both sides had racist objections against each other) a good punch at Khalkin Gol by indirect means, but in the end it turned out to be one of biggest cynical jokes in modern history...

Of the 30,000 troops on the Japanese side, 8,440 were killed and 8,766 wounded. The Red Army committed 57,000 infantry, 498 tanks, and 346 armoured cars to the battle, and claimed total losses (killed and wounded) of 9,284 men. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, new documents about the battle changed the numbers considerably. The actual number of losses in the battle was 23,926, of whom 6,831 killed, 1,143 reported missing and 15,952 wounded. While the Red Army did win the battle, it was not as one-sided a battle as previously believed.#redirect [[Template:fact]]

Japanese forces employed the following weapons in the battle:

Tanks

Artillery Infantry weapons Soviet forces employed the following weapons in the battle:

Tanks

Artillery Infantry weapons

Influence on World War II

Although this engagement is little-known in the West, it had profound implications on the conduct of World War II. It may be said to be the first decisive battle of World War II because it determined that the two principal Axis Powers, Germany and Japan, would never geographically link up their areas of control (at least through Russia - there was still the possibility that they would link up via the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, but this, too, was impossible by mid-Spring, 1942), since the defeat convinced the Imperial General Staff in Tokyo that the policy of the North Strike Group, favored by the army, which wanted to seize Siberia as far as Lake Baikal for its resources, was untenable. Instead the South Strike Group, favored by the navy, which wanted to seize the resources of Southeast Asia, especially the petroleum- and mineral-rich Dutch East Indies, gained the ascendancy, leading directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor two and a half years later in December 1941.

It was the first victory for the famed Soviet general Georgy Zhukov. The battle experience gained by the Siberian army was put to good use in December 1941 outside Moscow, under the command of Zhukov, when Siberian divisions spearheaded the first successful Soviet counteroffensive against the German invasion of 1941. The decision to move the divisions from Siberia was aided by the Soviet's masterspy Richard Sorge in Tokyo, who was able to alert the Soviet government that the Japanese were looking south and were unlikely to launch another attack against Siberia in the immediate future.

The after effects of the battle remained far reaching for Japan: expansion into the Siberia remained checked for 1939 but the Imperial Japanese High Command still wished to eventually try to invade Siberia in the near future. This meant that an offensive posture was assumed by the Kwantung army in Manchuria. Defense of Manchuria was kept at a minimum since the Japanese command assumed that eventually Mongolia and parts of Siberia bordering Manchuria would be taken. These views would be disastrous to Japan when the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria in 1945 during their operation 'August Storm'. Without defenses in place, Manchuria would easily fall to the USSR by September 1945.

Other effects from the battle included renewed Japanese interests into South East Asia and China. The Marco Polo incident also was a direct result of Japan concentrating in expanding into China after their rebuff into Mongolia at Khalkin-Gol. By invading China, Japan would then eventually become entangled in World War II. The Soviet Union also benefited from the battle. The battle proved the failure of Japanese doctrine against Soviet doctrine. This significant finding would heavily contribute to the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan in 1945 and invading Manchuria.

See also

External links

 

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