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

by Stuart D. Goldman

  As a complement to the strategy in Spain, Soviet policy in East Asia was, in Adam Ulam’s succinct appraisal, “a masterful blend of appeasement, sufficient firmness to impress Japan that a war would be extremely costly and risky, and encouragement of the Chiang Kai-shek regime to resist further Japanese encroachments and not to reach a modus vivendi with Japan.”16

  Soviet appeasement of Japan, especially in the years 1931–35, was discussed in the preceding chapter. Soviet firmness toward Japan began cautiously in the mid-1930s with the Soviet military buildup and reached its peak at the Battles of Changkufeng and Nomonhan, which will be treated in detail in subsequent chapters. The Soviet policy of playing off China against Japan, introduced earlier, can be pursued a bit further here.

  The declarations and resolutions of the Seventh Comintern Congress suggest that Moscow perceived a clear and present Japanese threat to the Soviet Far East. The instructions to the Chinese Communist Party also illustrate Stalin’s hope of deflecting the Japanese army away from the Soviet borders and toward China.17 The greatest obstacle to the achievement of that goal was Chiang Kai-shek, who at that time was pursuing a policy of temporary accommodation with Japan in order to consolidate his control in the interior and destroy his rivals, notably the Chinese Communists.

  The factors that brought Chiang to completely reverse his policies between 1935 and 1937 are still shrouded in mystery. The voluminous Communist propaganda denouncing Chiang’s “collaboration” with the Japanese imperialists and urging a Chinese popular front against Japan, while useful in revealing the main thrust of Soviet policy, was hardly influential with Chiang. There is evidence to suggest that the Chinese Communists did exercise considerable influence with the “Young Marshal,” Chang Hsueh-liang (son of the assassinated Chang Tso-lin, and former warlord of Manchuria), and with his officers, and that this influence was instrumental in precipitating the Xian incident.18 In December 1936 Chiang Kai-shek, visiting the northern city of Xian, was incarcerated by the Young Marshal, creating a political crisis. The ensuing negotiations between Chiang and representatives of his Nationalist government, the Communists, the Young Marshal, and several other warlords, remain shrouded in mystery and provoke controversy among scholars to this day. By most accounts, the imprisoned generalissimo is believed to have pledged to end the civil war against the Communists and adopt a hard line against the Japanese.

  At the same time, the Soviet government was engaged in negotiations with Chiang’s Nationalist government in Nanking for a treaty that would ally China with the USSR in opposition to Japan. The main drift of these negotiations can be glimpsed from a conversation between the United States chargé d’affaires in Moscow and the Chinese ambassador. The Chinese diplomat told his American colleague that D. V. Bogomolov, the Soviet ambassador to Nanking, “had been free in making oral assurances of Soviet readiness to assist China in case of war with Japan… . Bogomolov and influential groups in China friendly to the Soviet Union continued during the spring and summer of 1937 to endeavor to make the Chinese Government believe that if it would undertake to offer armed resistance to Japan it could confidently expect the armed support of the Soviet Union.”19

  During the course of the concurrent Chinese Communist and Soviet Russian negotiations with the Nationalist government in Nanking, there occurred the Marco Polo Bridge incident of July 7, 1937, which soon grew into a full-scale Sino-Japanese War. Naturally this overcame any lingering reservations in Nanking, and in rapid succession Chiang agreed to a united front treaty of friendship and nonaggression with the USSR (August 21) and a popular front alliance with the Chinese Communists (September 22). However, simultaneous with these negotiations in China, and immediately prior to the Marco Polo Bridge incident, a sharp border clash occurred between Soviet and Japanese forces on the Amur River. This little-known conflict adds to our understanding of the international context in which the China War began.

  The Amur River Incident

  By the end of 1936, the Soviet Far Eastern Army had grown to sixteen infantry divisions supported by 1,200 tanks and an equal number of aircraft. Although this force had to cover an immense territory, it was, nonetheless, a formidable array. As the year 1937 wore on, however, it became evident that all was not well with the Red Army. The great purge that Stalin had begun two years earlier was growing in scope and ferocity and was spreading to the armed forces. On June 11, 1937, Pravda announced the startling news that Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the guiding spirit behind the modernized Red Army, together with seven other high-ranking generals, had been found guilty, in secret trial, of “habitual and base betrayal of military secrets to a certain hostile fascist power, and working as spies to accomplish the downfall of the Soviet state and to restore capitalism.” On the following day it was revealed that the eight men had been shot. These eight generals had held some of the most important posts in the armed forces. Their execution implied that the security of the Red Army—in more ways than one—was gravely compromised. In the next two years, Stalinist purges, also known as the Great Terror, wrought havoc throughout the Soviet armed forces.

  Of the five marshals of the Red Army, three were shot, as were all eleven deputy commissars for defense. Seventy-five of the eighty members of the Military Collegium perished. Every military district commander was liquidated, as were the heads of the Army Political Administration and the Frunze Military Academy. Of the fifteen army commanders, only two survived. Fifty-seven out of eighty-five corps commanders were shot, as were 110 of the 195 division commanders. At the brigade level, only 220 of the 406 colonels survived. In the Soviet Far Eastern forces the attrition rate was even higher, with 80 percent of the staff being removed in one way or another. According to some sources, between one-fourth and one-third of the entire officer corps was executed, imprisoned, or discharged within a period of eighteen months.20

  The purge led many outside observers to believe that the Red Army had been severely, and perhaps mortally, wounded. As early as June 28, 1937, Major General Homma Masaharu of the Japanese AGS, just back from a trip to Moscow, concluded in a report published in an Osaka newspaper that the recent executions in its high command were threatening the Red Army with disintegration and, therefore, it need no longer be considered a threat to Japan.21 Only two days after the publication of this analysis, there occurred the most serious Soviet-Japanese border fighting up to that time.

  On June 30, 1937, Japanese forces fired on three Soviet gunboats in the Amur River, between Manchuria and the USSR, sinking one, damaging the others, and causing considerable loss of life. There is still debate over who fired the first shots, but the significance of this clash and its portents for subsequent Soviet-Japanese relations are clear.

  The Russo-Chinese Treaties of Aigun and Peking (1858, 1860) dealt vaguely with the technical aspects of the river boundaries. However, in accordance with a common international practice known as the thalweg doctrine, the median line of the river’s principal navigable channel was taken as the boundary, with the sovereignty of islands determined on the basis of their relation to the main channel. Islands north of the Amur’s main channel were considered Russian, while those south of the main channel belonged to China. There seem to have been no serious disputes over the status of these hundreds of mostly small river islands before 1931.

  When Japanese troops replaced Chinese along the southern bank of the Amur, tension increased along the great waterway whose Chinese name means “black dragon.” One of the principal causes of the tension was of natural rather than political origin, because in the seventy-five years since the Treaties of Aigun and Peking, the main channel of the Amur River had shifted in several areas as a result of storms, floods, and other natural causes. Such phenomena caused political problems. When, for example, the main channel of the river that had run along the southern shore of an island shifted and began to pass the island on its northern shore instead, the sovereignty of the island might be called into question. Furthermore, the northern channel, which previously ha
d been an internal waterway of the nation possessing the northern shore, now might be considered an international waterway open to free navigation.

  Just such a case arose among a group of small islands some seventy miles southeast of the Soviet city of Blagoveshchensk. There, to the chagrin of Soviet authorities, the main channel had shifted from the southern to the northern side of the islands. The Soviets argued that the shift of the main channel was transitory and did not affect the sovereignty of the islands. They constructed ferroconcrete barriers in the northern channel, closing it to navigation, in keeping with their interpretation of the international boundary.22 In the spring of 1937, ice floes from the thaw of the Amur carried away some of the barriers the Soviets had erected. Seizing upon this opportunity, on May 31 several vessels of the Manchukuoan River Defense Flotilla steamed through the northern channel in the vicinity of the largest (3.5 by 5 miles) of the disputed islands, called Kanchatzu Island by the Manchurians, Bolshoi Island by the Russians. This feat was given wide publicity throughout the Manchukuoan press. The Soviet side did not resist this “forcing” of the northern channel, but on June 19 a detachment of some twenty Soviet soldiers occupied Kanchatzu Island, chasing away some Manchurians who had been panning for gold. The next day, Manchukuoan police and soldiers tried to come ashore to investigate but were driven off by Soviet gunfire. On June 22 more Soviet troops arrived and were seen digging defensive positions. A squadron of Soviet gunboats appeared in the area.23

  Local Japanese forces sent a report to Kwantung Army headquarters of what they viewed as a Soviet invasion of Manchukuo. On June 22 the Army General Staff in Tokyo received the news and seemed to take a strong stand. AGS sent the following message to the Kwantung Army chief of staff, General Tojo Hideki (who would become Japan’s wartime leader from 1941 to 1944): “If territory clearly belonging to Manchukuo has been seized illegally by Soviet troops, we believe that the effects upon our future operations could be serious; therefore, you are instructed to take appropriate steps to restore the previous situation.”24 Kwantung Army thereupon dispatched elements of the 49th Infantry Regiment (1st Division) to the vicinity of the trouble, with orders to drive the Soviet troops from the disputed island. At the same time, a stiff diplomatic protest was sent to the Soviet consul in Harbin and the foreign ministry in Moscow.

  It was hotheaded young officers of the 1st Division who had led the notorious Tokyo Army mutiny of February 26, 1936, a bloody attempted coup d’état that had strong ties to right-wing anti-Soviet circles in Japan. In the aftermath of the abortive coup, the proud 1st Division was posted (exiled) to Manchukuo, where it had served uneventfully for more than a year. Now suddenly it was again poised for action, ready to strike a blow against the hated Bolsheviks.

  In this highly charged atmosphere, events moved rapidly. In Tokyo on June 28, a tense conference was held at AGS. Faced with the possibility of large-scale combat in Northern Manchukuo, the General Staff reversed its earlier decision, concluding that, “the problem of these islands located so remotely did not warrant risking a major commitment of the national strength.” ASG decided, instead, to try to resolve the dispute through diplomatic channels. Orders were sent to Kwantung Army headquarters canceling the earlier sanctioned attack by the 1st Division.25

  On June 28 in Moscow, when Japan’s ambassador, Shigemitsu Mamoru, met with Deputy Foreign Minister Boris Stomonyakov, the two diplomats stated their governments’ respective positions. The next day, however, in a meeting between Shigemitsu and Litvinov, the foreign commissar took a surprisingly conciliatory position. While maintaining that the islands were indeed Soviet territory, he stated that, “apart from the matter of principles, the USSR has no objection to a withdrawal from the disputed points; hence the Japanese troops should pull out also” (italics added).26 This was a more forthcoming response than the Japanese might have expected, because previous Soviet practice had been to refuse any compromise concerning the sovereignty of Soviet territory. Did this apparent concession by Litvinov derive from Soviet doubts as to the validity of their case, or their ability to back it up with force? The latter seems more likely, with the purge about to annihilate Red Army leadership. In any case, on the next day, June 30, before word of the talks in Moscow reached the scene of the dispute, fighting erupted.

  On June 30 resentment and frustration was intense at Kwantung Army headquarters and in the 1st Division. Ever since the order from AGS canceling the imminent counterattack planned by the 1st Division, “a sense of humiliation knifed through Kwantung Army, which felt that it had suffered a loss of prestige in its command prerogatives toward its subordinate units.”27 On the afternoon of the June 30, three small Soviet gunboats28 steamed into the southern channel between the disputed islands and the Manchurian shore. The Soviets considered this the main channel of the river, hence an international waterway, while the Japanese maintained that it was an internal waterway of Manchukuo. The Soviet show of force in the contested waterway infuriated the Japanese troops on the southern shore, who were smarting under what they considered the unjustified constraint imposed by AGS. Despite the cautionary instructions from Tokyo, the local units would not be restrained. Employing rapid-fire 37-mm artillery, a battery of the 1st Division’s 49th Infantry Regiment opened fire on the Soviet gunboats, sinking one, driving a second ashore on a shoal, and forcing the third to retire from the scene. Thirty-seven Soviet sailors were killed in the attack, including several survivors of the sunken vessel who, while swimming for the northern shore, were machine gunned by Japanese troops on the opposite bank.29

  News of the Japanese attack reached Moscow quickly and the Soviet government lodged a protest with the Japanese. What is more significant, however, is that there was no immediate Soviet retaliation. In fact, the Litvinov-Shigemitsu talks went on without interruption. Just two days after the sinking, on July 2, Litvinov agreed to a Soviet withdrawal from the disputed island on the understanding that the Japanese forces too would be withdrawn from the immediate vicinity.30 On July 4 Soviet troops evacuated the island. Moscow seemed anxious to avoid further trouble and let the matter drop, even after Manchukuoan troops occupied Kanchatzu Island on July 6.31 The issue was settled; Kanchatzu was, de facto, a Manchukuoan possession.

  Two historically significant questions arise from this Amur River incident: Why did the USSR act so boldly in blocking the northern channel and occupying the contested island? Why did Moscow then back down so abjectly when the Japanese used force? The islands themselves had no obvious value; the largest of the group, Kanchatzu, had only one permanent inhabitant, a Manchurian lighthouse keeper. However, the principle involved in determining the islands’ sovereignty, the principle to which Litvinov referred on June 29, was important to the Soviets. For if Moscow conceded that the natural shift of the main channel there created a new international boundary, that same principle would be applicable elsewhere. And several hundred miles downstream on the Amur, that principle could have had more serious consequences.

  Heihsiatzu Island, the most strategically important of the Amur islands, is situated at the juncture of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers and screens Khabarovsk from Manchuria. Here too, the main channel had shifted from south to north of the island.32 Khabarovsk was the second largest city in the Soviet Far East and the administrative center of the Far Eastern Army. If the channel north and east of Heihsiatzu Island were recognized as the boundary, Japanese naval vessels would be within their rights to steam right up to the city’s docks and Japanese artillery on the island would have the ability to fire at point-blank range into the city. This would have been strategically intolerable for the Soviets; hence their insistence on the principle at Kanchatzu. The Japanese, for their part, could claim with some justice that for the Soviets to hold an island on one side of the actual main channel and the mainland on the opposite side of that channel would enable them effectively to dominate navigation of the river, in violation of the spirit and letter of the 1858 and 1860 treaties between Russia and China.33

&nb
sp; This does not account for the mild Soviet reaction to the sinking of June 30 and the Japanese occupation of Kanchatzu Island on July 6. The Soviet response—or lack of response—to these challenges was probably dictated by two factors. The first was Moscow’s sense of military vulnerability, intensified by the purge that had just begun to convulse the leadership of the Red Army. In spite of that, it is unusual for the Kremlin to have allowed such a flagrant and well-publicized challenge to pass without response or retaliation of some sort. The response need not have been immediate. Nearly three weeks elapsed between the “forcing” of the northern channel by the Manchukuoan River Defense Flotilla and the Soviet occupation of Kanchatzu. But on the very next day after the Japanese occupied Kanchatzu, momentous events occurred hundreds of miles away, on the outskirts of Peking (Beijing). There, on July 7, the Marco Polo Bridge incident erupted, which, within a few weeks, was to expand into a full-scale Sino-Japanese war in all but name. But who, on July 8, could be sure what direction those events would take? With its excellent intelligence service, Moscow knew there were powerful elements in both Nanking and Tokyo striving to avert a major Sino-Japanese conflict. And it was perfectly clear that such a conflict would be a veritable godsend to the Soviet Union at that moment. As Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Potemkin later told the French ambassador, Alexander Coulondre, “The weakening of Japan,” because of its operations in China, had the effect of “reducing the pressure which it exercises on our Manchurian frontier.”34 Thus, after July 7 the importance of the Amur River issue was, for Moscow, eclipsed by the events in Northern China. In July 1937 Stalin was careful to take no action that might distract the Japanese from their pursuits in China and remind them of the Soviet threat and the dangers of a two-front war. So the Amur River incident, overtaken by events in China, was dropped, although not forgotten, by Moscow.