Battles of Khalkhin Gol

Background

Japan's seizure of Manchuria in 1931 put the Kwantung Army face to face with Soviet forces along a 3,000-mile frontier. The puppet state of Manchukuo inherited a quarrel with the Mongolian People's Republic over where their border ran. Japan held that it followed the Khalkhin Gol, which the Japanese called the Halha; the Mongolians and Soviets put it about 16 km further east, just beyond the hamlet of Nomonhan. The strip between was sandy, featureless steppe. A Soviet–Mongolian mutual assistance pact in 1936 brought Soviet troops into Mongolia, and by 1938 the 57th Special Rifle Corps was stationed there. That summer's bloody clash at Lake Khasan (Changkufeng) persuaded Kwantung Army staff that the purges had crippled the Red Army.

The Kwantung Army had become largely autonomous, apt to act without Tokyo's approval or against it. In April 1939 its operations staff issued Operations Order 1488, drafted by Major Tsuji Masanobu: border violations were to be punished decisively, units might enter Soviet or Mongolian territory to do it, and where the border was unclear local commanders could decide for themselves where it lay. Neither the army high command nor the government wanted a war with the Soviet Union, but the operations section, spurred by Tsuji, kept widening the fight.

About two weeks later, on 11 May, seventy to ninety Mongolian horsemen crossed the river looking for grazing and water and were driven back by Manchukuoan cavalry. They returned on 13 May. Lieutenant General Komatsubara Michitarō, whose 23rd Division at Hailar held the sector, thought a quick application of force would settle it.

The armies

The Japanese 23rd Division was green, and Kwantung Army staff officers such as Tsuji would have preferred to hand the battle to the 7th Division, the elite division in Manchuria. Japanese doctrine relied on fighting spirit, night attack and flank manoeuvre to beat a materially stronger enemy in a short, decisive war. Against tanks the infantry had 37 mm guns, mines and Molotov cocktails. Two tank regiments, 73 tanks of Types 89, 95 and 97, fought in early July and were then withdrawn. By August the 6th Army under Ogisu Rippei controlled the front, with its headquarters and supply strained; motor transport was short, about 600 trucks in early July.

The Soviet force grew from the 57th Special Corps into Zhukov's 1st Army Group. More than four-fifths of its tanks were light BT-5s and BT-7s, backed by BA-6 and BA-10 armoured cars carrying the same 45 mm gun; its artillery soon outgunned the Japanese. Smushkevich arrived with a group of 42 veteran pilots after early air defeats. Zhukov supplied the army by truck over roughly 600–750 km from the railhead, with a fleet that reached at least 4,000 vehicles.

The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Army fought from the first day: its border guards and cavalry opened the incident, its armoured cars served in July, and its 6th and 8th Cavalry Divisions and a motor transport battalion took part in the August offensive under Marshal Choibalsan, with Corps Commissar Lhagvasuren as Zhukov's deputy for the Mongolian cavalry.

The battle

May: the Azuma detachment. By 21 May Soviet and Mongolian troops, which the Japanese estimated at 300–400 men with guns and light tanks, were fortifying both banks of the Holsten, the tributary that joins the Khalkhin Gol from the east. Komatsubara sent Colonel Yamagata Takemitsu with a 1,000-man task force. While Yamagata struck the enemy's northern flank, Lieutenant Colonel Azuma Yaozo's reconnaissance unit was to swing ahead to block the Kawamata bridge, the enemy's only way back across the river. Azuma, expecting only border guards and cavalry, left his 37 mm guns behind. This is CDB90's Nomonhan – Opening Engagement (259, 28–30 May). At dawn on 28 May his 220 men, about 2 km short of the bridge, were attacked on both flanks by Soviet and Mongolian infantry and ten tanks, and shelled by artillery from the west bank. Yamagata's battalion was pinned and could not reach them; ammunition parties were shot down in the dark. On 29 May about 400 infantry with tanks attacked again, and Azuma was killed leading seventy men in a breakout. His unit lost 105 killed and 34 wounded, 63 per cent. On 30 May the Japanese recovered their dead and withdrew. Komatsubara and the Kwantung Army called it a draw. In the air the Japanese, with the new Ki-27 fighter, had the better of May and June.

June and July: the Japanese offensives (not in CDB90). Zhukov arrived on 5 June. On 27 June Kwantung Army aircraft bombed the Soviet base at Tamsag-Bulag without Tokyo's permission. On 2 July the 71st and 72nd Infantry Regiments crossed the river by a single pontoon bridge and took the Baintsagan heights on the west bank. Zhukov threw in the 11th Tank Brigade, 7th Motorised Armoured Brigade and 24th Motorised Rifle Regiment, about 186 tanks and 266 armoured cars, without waiting for infantry. They blunted the attack at heavy cost, at least 120 vehicles lost, and by 5 July the Japanese were back across the river. On the east bank Yasuoka's tanks attacked by night on 2 July, lost half their strength and failed to reach the bridge. A last offensive on 23–25 July, after a bombardment of more than 25,000 rounds, gained little; Japanese casualties since May now exceeded 5,000. The front settled into attrition along some 30 km of the east bank. Soviet probes on 3 and 7–8 August were thrown back, and the Japanese routed elements of the Mongolian 8th Cavalry Division.

August: the double envelopment. Zhukov built up in secret, feeding the Japanese false radio and telephone traffic, and struck on 20 August, four days before a planned Japanese offensive. This is CDB90's Nomonhan – Soviet Counteroffensive (260, 20 August – 1 September). The opening air and artillery strike came early in the morning (Wikipedia says 05:45, Russian sources 06:15, with the ground attack at 09:00). The Central Group under Petrov pinned the Japanese line, gaining only 500–1,000 m on the first day. The Southern Group under Potapov, with the main armour, over 320 tanks and an armoured car brigade, turned the Japanese left and drove north towards Nomonhan; the Northern Group under Alekseenko ran into stubborn resistance on the Fui heights (Hill 721). Komatsubara took the northern fight for the main effort and sent reinforcements there, while the southern armour isolated the 8th Border Guards and 2/28th Infantry. After four days flame-throwing tanks took the Fui heights, and the two pincers met near Nomonhan on 25–26 August, trapping the 23rd Division. A relief attempt from 24 to 26 August and a breakout on 27 August both failed. Artillery and aircraft reduced the pocket; by 31 August the Japanese had been cleared from the territory Mongolia claimed. The Soviets stopped at that line and dug in. After small Japanese attacks failed on 4 and 8 September, a ceasefire signed on 15 September took effect on 16 September.

Aftermath

Japan lost some 17,000–20,000 men, the Soviets and Mongolians about 26,000–28,000, though Soviet claims of Japanese losses ran as high as 61,000. Japanese commanders paid: Yamagata and Colonel Hasebe of the 8th Border Guards killed themselves, and Ueda, Ogisu, Komatsubara, Yasuoka and Tsuji were relieved. Zhukov won the first of his Hero of the Soviet Union awards; Shtern and Smushkevich were also decorated, and both were executed in 1941. Japan raised tank output and introduced a 47 mm anti-tank gun, yet, Drea argues, the army's basic conclusion was that Nomonhan had proved the value of spiritual power.

The larger consequences are argued over. The Nazi–Soviet pact of 23 August left Japan isolated, and the Hiranuma cabinet fell. Japan and the Soviet Union signed a neutrality pact on 13 April 1941, and when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June Japan stayed out, planning but never launching an attack. Coox called Nomonhan the crucial unspoken reason the army recoiled from war with Russia in 1941; Drea judges the southward turn predominantly economic, with Nomonhan a definite factor; Goldman ties the battle to the pact and to Tokyo's and Moscow's 1941 decisions. Popular accounts link it to the Far Eastern divisions sent to Moscow in late 1941; Tsuji, who had helped start the fight, argued against a northern strike in 1941. In Mongolia the battle is a national commemoration, with Zhukov museums in Ulaanbaatar and Choibalsan.

Wargaming it

Khalkhin Gol is three different games. The May action is a skirmish or company-level fight: Azuma's 220 men dug into sand with their helmets, short of ammunition, while Yamagata tries to break through to them. The July crossing at Baintsagan suits battalion and regimental tactical rules, with a single pontoon bridge as the Japanese lifeline, unsupported Soviet armour attacking dug-in infantry with mines, 37 mm guns and petrol bombs, and a night tank attack on the east bank. August is an operational problem at regiment or division scale and a day per turn: three Soviet groups, a fixing attack in the centre and armour on both wings, against a Japanese commander who must guess where the main blow falls.

The terrain is subtle rather than empty. The west bank is higher and gives Soviet artillery command of the east, the Holsten splits the Japanese front in two, and sand dunes without landmarks make navigation and spotting hard; hidden deployment and dummy traffic matter. Air power sits in the background throughout, with the Japanese ahead early and the Soviets ahead in August.

What ifs: Komatsubara reading the southern thrust correctly on 20 August; the 7th Division given the battle in June; a second bridge in July; Zhukov pressing on across the border instead of halting.

Maps and pictures