On August 18–19 Hitler virtually begged Stalin to receive Ribbentrop in Moscow without delay to conclude the pact that would be, in effect, a military alliance. Thus reassured in the West, Stalin dared to act boldly against Japan. Zhukov supervised final preparations for his attack.
Zhukov held back his forward deployments until the last minute. On August 18 he still had only four infantry regiments, a machine gun brigade, and Mongolian cavalry east of the Halha. Operational security was extremely tight. A week before the attack, Soviet radio traffic in the area virtually ceased. Only Zhukov and a handful of key officers worked on the attack plan, assisted by a single typist. Line officers and the chiefs of supporting services received information on a need-to-know basis regarding only their specific functions and goals. The date for the attack was shared with unit commanders from one to four days in advance, depending on seniority. Noncoms and ordinary soldiers learned of the offensive one day in advance and got specific operational orders three hours before the attack began.
Heavy rain grounded Japanese aerial reconnaissance from August 17 to midday on the 19th, but on that day Captain Oizumi Seisho, in a Japanese scout plane, observed the massing of Soviet forces near the west bank of the Halha. Enemy armor and troops were advancing toward the river, not in columns of march but in dispersed combat formations. He saw no new bridges but spotted pontoons stacked among the trees near the river. Oizumi dropped a hastily scrawled warning in a message tube to a frontline Japanese unit and sped back to his base to report. The air group commander sent out additional reconnaissance planes that discovered that the Japanese garrison on Fui Heights, near the northern end of Komatsubara’s line, was being encircled by Soviet armor and mechanized infantry—a fact that was also observed by alarmed Japanese officers on and near the heights. These last-minute discoveries on August 19, however, were not reported to KwAHQ and had no effect on the alertness or readiness of Sixth Army and the 23rd Division, whose leaders remained calm on the eve of the storm.92 As so often happens in militaries the world over, there was a fatal gap between those who gather intelligence and those in a position to act upon it.
On the night of August 19–20, under cover of darkness, the bulk of the Soviet First Army Group crossed the Halha into the expanded Soviet enclave on the east bank. The two weeks of nightly Soviet sound effects shows paid off. Japanese perimeter troops failed to distinguish the rumbling noises of the actual deployment from the oft-heard simulation.
Zhukov’s order of battle was as follows:
Northern force, commanded by Colonel Alekseenko—6th Mongolian Cavalry Division, 601st Infantry Regiment (82nd Division), 7th Armored Brigade, 2 battalions of the 11th Tank Brigade, 82nd Artillery Regiment, and 87th Anti-tank Brigade.
Central force, where Zhukov was located, commanded by his deputy, Colonel Petrov—36th Motorized Infantry Division, 82nd Infantry Division (less one regiment), 5th Infantry Machine Gun Brigade.
Southern force, commanded by Colonel Potapov—8th Mongolian Cavalry Division, 57th Infantry Division, 8th Armored Brigade, 6th Tank Brigade, 11th Tank Brigade (less two battalions), 185th Artillery Regiment, 37th Anti-tank Brigade, one independent tank company.
A mobile strategic reserve built around the 212th Airborne Regiment, the 9th Mechanized Brigade, and a battalion of the 6th Tank Brigade was held west of the Halha River.93
Map 6. August 20–30 Soviet Offensive
The Soviet offensive was supported by massed artillery—a feature that would become a hallmark of Zhukov’s operations in the war against Germany. In addition to nearly three hundred antitank and rapid-fire guns, Zhukov deployed over two hundred field and heavy artillery pieces on both sides of the Halha. Specific artillery batteries were assigned to provide supporting fire for each attacking infantry and armored unit at the battalion level and higher.
In the early hours of August 20, the sky began to lighten over the semiarid plain, with the false promise of a quiet Sunday morning. The air was clear as the sun began to warm the ground that had been chilled overnight. General Komatsubara’s troops were in no special state of readiness when the first wave of more than two hundred Soviet bombers winged over the Halha River at 5:45 a.m. and began pounding their positions. When the bombers withdrew, a thunderous artillery barrage began, continuing for two hours and forty-five minutes. That was precisely the time needed for the bombers to refuel, rearm, and return to the battlefield for a second run over the Japanese positions. Finally, all the Soviet artillery hurled an intensive fifteen-minute barrage at the forwardmost Japanese positions.94
Komatsubara’s men huddled in their trenches under the heaviest bombardment to which they or any other Japanese force ever had been subjected. The devastation, physical and psychological, was tremendous, especially in the forward positions. The shock and vibration of incoming bombs and artillery rounds also caused their radio-telegraph keys to chatter so uncontrollably that the frontline troops could not communicate with the rear, compounding their confusion and helplessness.95
At 9:00 a.m. Soviet armor and infantry began to move out all along the line while their covering artillery fire continued. A dense morning fog near the river helped conceal their approach, which in some sectors brought them to within small-arms range before they were sighted by the enemy. The surprise and disarray on the Japanese side was so complete, and their communications so badly disrupted, that Japanese artillery did not begin firing in support of their frontline troops until about 10:15 a.m. By that time, many forward positions were overrun.96 Japanese resistance stiffened at many points by midday and soon fierce combat raged along the front some forty miles from end to end.
In the first day’s fighting, Colonel M. I. Potapov’s southern force achieved the most striking success. The 8th MPR Cavalry Division routed the Manchukuoan cavalry holding Komatsubara’s southern flank and Potapov’s armor and mechanized infantry bent the whole southern segment of the Japanese front inward about eight miles in a northwesterly direction.
Zhukov’s central force advanced only 500–1,500 yards in the face of furious resistance, but the frontal assault engaged the center of the Japanese line so heavily that Komatsubara could not reinforce his flanks.
Two MPR cavalry regiments and supporting armor and mechanized infantry from Colonel Ilya Alekseenko’s northern force easily overran two Manchukuoan cavalry units that guarded the northern flank of the Japanese line, about two miles north of the Fui Heights. But the heights themselves constituted a natural strong point, and there Alekseenko’s advance was halted at what became the northern anchor of the Japanese line.97
As the first phase of the Soviet offensive gathered momentum, General Ogisu, the brand-new Sixth Army commander, assessed the situation. Still unaware of the strength of Zhukov’s forces, he reported reassuringly to KwAHQ that “the enemy intends to envelop us from our flanks, but his offensive effectiveness is weak… . Our positions in other areas are being strengthened. Set your mind at ease.”98 This optimistic report contributed to Kwantung Army’s delay in reinforcing the 23rd Division. Some at KwAHQ suspected that this might be another limited Soviet push, like that of August 7–8, that soon would end. Others worried that it was a diversionary action prior to a large-scale offensive at some more likely sector of the three-thousand-mile-long frontier. KwAHQ was concerned, but not alarmed, about Komatsubara’s position.
On August 21 and 22 Potapov’s southern force pierced the Japanese main defense line at several points, breaking the southern sector of the line into a number of segments that the attackers sealed off, encircled, and ground down. Soviet armor, mechanized infantry, and artillery moved swiftly and with deadly efficiency. Survivors described how each pocket of resistance experienced its own individual period of hell. After the Japanese heavy weapons in a pocket were neutralized, Soviet artillery and tanks gradually tightened the ring, with the Soviet guns eventually firing at point-blank range over open sights. Flame-throwing tanks incinerated hastily constructed fortifications and underground shelters. Infantr
y mopped up with grenades, small arms, and bayonets. By the end of Wednesday, August 23, Potapov had dismembered the entire Japanese defensive position south of the Holsten River. Only one significant pocket of resistance still held out. Meanwhile, Potapov’s 8th Armored Brigade looped around behind the Japanese, reached a point southeast of the village of Nomonhan, some eleven miles east of the river junction, on the boundary claimed by the MPR, and took up a blocking position there athwart the most likely line of retreat of Japanese units south of the Holsten.
In those two days, the Japanese center gave up only a few grudging yards, while the northern flank, anchored at Fui Heights, held fast.
Air combat raged over the battlefield. Soviet air force units provided tactical air support for their armor and infantry while Kwantung Army’s 2nd Air Group strove to thwart that effort and to hit the attacking Soviet ground forces. Prior to the Nomonhan incident, the Japanese air force had never faced a modern opponent in the air. Japanese fliers had romped largely unchallenged in the skies over Manchuria and China from 1931 to 1939. At Nomonhan, however, the Soviets now enjoyed an advantage of roughly 2:1 in aircraft and pilots. This put an increasingly heavy burden on the Japanese air squadrons, which had to fly incessantly, often against heavy odds. Fatigue began to take its toll and losses mounted. Soviet and Japanese accounts give wildly different, and equally unbelievable, tallies of victories and losses in the air combat, but in the words of an official Japanese air force assessment after the battle, “Nomonhan brought out the bitter truths of the phenomenal rate at which war potential is sapped in the face of superior opposition.”99
As was the case in tank combat, the Soviet preponderance in the air was qualitative as well as quantitative. In June and early July, the Soviet I-16 fighter plane had not fared well against the Japanese Type 97 fighter.100 However, in the lull before their August offensive, the Soviets brought in an improved model of the I-16 with armor-plated fuselage and windshield, which made it virtually impervious to the light 7.7-mm machine guns of the Type 97 fighter. The Japanese countered by arming some of their planes with heavier 12.7-mm machine guns, which were somewhat more effective against the new I-16s. But the Soviet flyers discovered that the Type-97’s unprotected fuel tank was an easy mark, and Japanese planes soon were being set ablaze in the air with horrifying regularity.101
On August 23, as Ribbentrop arrived in Moscow to conclude the pact that would seal Poland’s fate and unleash war in Europe, the situation at Nomonhan was deemed sufficiently serious by Kwantung Army to warrant transferring the 7th Division to Hailar for a support mission. Tsuji volunteered to fly to Nomonhan and provide a firsthand assessment. This move was made too late, because August 23–24 proved to be the crucial phase of the battle.
On Tuesday night, August 22, at Japanese Sixth Army headquarters—a safe distance from the battlefield—General Ogisu called for a counterattack to throw back the Soviet forces that were enveloping and crushing the Japanese southern flank. Komatsubara planned the counterattack in minute detail and entrusted its execution to his 71st and 72nd Regiments, led by General Kobayashi Koichi, and the 26th and 28th Regiments of the 7th Division, commanded by General Morita Norimasa. On paper this force looked like two infantry brigades. Only the 28th Regiment, however, was near full strength, although its troops were tired after having marched some twenty-five miles to the front the day before. This regiment’s peerless and fearless commander was Colonel Morita Toru (unrelated to General Morita). The chief kendo fencing master of the Imperial Army, Morita claimed to be invulnerable to bullets. The other three regiments were seriously under strength, partly because of combat attrition, partly because several of their battalions were deployed at other parts of the front, unavailable for the counterattack. The forces that Kobayashi and Morita commanded that day amounted to less than one regiment each.
It was not until the night of the 23rd that deployment and attack orders filtered down to the Japanese regiment, battalion, and company commanders. Because of insufficient truck transport capability and the difficulty of navigating in the essentially trackless terrain in darkness, the units were delayed in reaching their assigned positions in the early morning of August 24 and some did not arrive at all. Two battalions of the 71st Regiment did not reach Kobayashi in time, and his attack force that morning consisted of two battalions of the 72nd Regiment. Colonel Sumi’s depleted 26th Regiment did not arrive in time, and General Morita’s assault force consisted of two battalions of the 28th Regiment and a battalion-equivalent independent garrison unit newly arrived at the front. Because of the delays in assembling the assault force, the Japanese did not have time to reconnoiter enemy positions adequately before the attack. What had been planned as a dawn assault would begin between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. in broad daylight.
The light plane carrying Tsuji on the last leg of his flight from Hsinking-Hailar-Nomonhan was attacked by Soviet fighter planes and made a forced landing on the battlefield behind the 72nd Regiment’s staging area. Tsuji managed to make his way to General Kobayashi’s command post by truck and on foot, which would place him closer to the fighting than even he anticipated.
Just before the Japanese counterattack began, a dense fog drifted across part of the battlefield, obscuring visibility and limiting the effectiveness of Soviet and Japanese artillery. Using the fog to mask their movement, lead elements of the 72nd Regiment made straight for a distant stand of scrub pine visible vaguely ahead of them. As they approached the cover of the trees, however, they were astonished to see the scrub pines begin to move away. The stand of trees actually was a well-camouflaged Soviet tank force. At the Japanese infantry’s approach, the tanks quickly looped around to the south, jeopardizing any further Japanese advance. As the fog cleared, the Japanese troops found themselves confronting a very large enemy force. Renewed Japanese artillery fire was answered by a vastly heavier Soviet barrage. Kobayashi and Morita discovered, too late, that their counterattack had marched directly into the teeth of far-more-powerful Soviet forces. It is described in one account as “The Charge of Two Light Brigades.”102
Kobayashi’s 72nd Regiment found itself in the path of a massive tank attack and had the misfortune of encountering the very first prototype models of the Soviet T-34 tank, which, with its thick sloping armor and its high-velocity 76-mm gun, was the most powerful tank in the world in 1939. In addition, the Soviet BT-5/7 tanks had been improved since early July, when so many had been set aflame by gasoline bombs and small explosive charges. New model BT-7s powered by diesel, rather than gasoline, engines were less easily ignited. On the gasoline engine vehicles, the Soviets installed wire netting over the ventilation grill and exhaust manifold, which reduced the effectiveness of hand-thrown gasoline bombs.
The Japanese infantry regiments were lacerated that day, with casualties near 50 percent. Nearly every battalion and company commander was lost in the action. General Kobayashi was gravely wounded by a tank shell fragment and nearly trampled to death by some of his fleeing, panic-stricken troops. He was saved by a wounded young lieutenant who dragged him to safety and commandeered a truck to carry the general to the rear. Kobayashi survived the battle and the Pacific War but died in a Soviet POW camp in 1950.
General Morita’s 28th Regiment fared little better. It was pinned down some five hundred yards from the Soviet front lines by intense artillery fire. Unable to advance but unauthorized to retreat, Morita’s men dug into the loose sand and attempted to withstand the murderous Soviet bombardment. They were cut to pieces. Shortly after sunset, the remnants of the Japanese attack force received orders to withdraw, but by then the two regiments had been shattered. Tsuji, ever a survivor, managed to rejoin Komatsubara at his command post. Upon receiving combat reports from the 72nd and 28th Regiments, General Komatsubara “evinced deep anxiety.” Sixth Army chief of staff Major General Fujimoto Tetsukuma, at Komatsubara’s command post, “appeared bewildered,” announced that he was returning to his headquarters, and asked if Tsuji would accompany him. The major decl
ined and later recalled that he and Komatsubara could barely conceal their astonishment at Fujimoto’s abrupt departure at such a time.103
Meanwhile, at the other end of the line, Colonel Alekseenko’s northern force had been hammering at Fui Heights for three days without success. That vital position was held by a mixed force of some eight hundred men led by Lieutenant Colonel Ioki Eiichiro, consisting of two infantry companies; one company each of cavalry, armored reconnaissance, and combat engineers; and three artillery batteries (37-mm and 75-mm guns). Although the attacking Soviet forces were far more powerful, the heights and their defensive works—barbed wire surmounting deep bunkers connected by trenches—constituted a strongpoint to which the defenders clung tenaciously, inflicting heavy losses on Alekseenko’s men. The unexpectedly strong Japanese defense at Fui Heights disrupted the timing of the entire Soviet offensive. By August 23 Zhukov was exasperated and losing patience with the lack of progress in the north.
Some of Zhukov’s comrades-in-arms recall a personable chief who, in happy times, played the accordion and urged them to drink and sing along with him. But now, as so often when under stress, his harshness and short temper came to the fore. Zhukov summoned Alekseenko to the telephone. When the commander of the northern force expressed doubt about being able to storm the heights immediately, Zhukov berated him, relieved him of his command on the spot, and entrusted the attack to Alekseenko’s chief of staff. After a few hours, Zhukov called again, and finding that the man he had just appointed also was slow in executing the attack, fired the second commander as well and sent over a member of his own staff to take charge. We do not know exactly what epithets may have been ringing in the ears of the two officers Zhukov dismissed, but later firsthand accounts of his temper record that “useless bag of shit” was not the harshest term he flung at subordinates, even generals, who did not measure up.104 That night, reinforced by the 212th Airborne Regiment, more heavy artillery, and a detachment of flame-throwing tanks, the northern force renewed its assaults on Fui Heights.
Nomonhan, 1939: The Red Army's Victory That Shaped World War II Page 21
