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

by Stuart D. Goldman

  The battered Japanese defenders by then were completely overmatched. Soviet artillery fire came pouring in at the rate of two rounds per second. When the last of the Japanese artillery was knocked out, they no longer had effective defense against the flame-throwing tanks. From several miles away, Colonel Sumi could see the heights enveloped in clouds of black smoke, penetrated by spurts of red flame “spitting like the tongues of snakes.”105

  After the night of August 22, trucks carrying ammunition, food, and water could no longer get through to Fui Heights. The next afternoon, Colonel Ioki’s radio, his last link to the 23rd Division, was destroyed. His remaining men fought on with small arms and grenades and that night repulsed Soviet infantry with bayonet charges. By the morning of the 24th, Ioki had about two hundred able-bodied men left of his original eight hundred. Soviet tanks and infantry had penetrated his defenses at several points, forcing him to constrict his perimeter. Red flags flew on the eastern edge of the heights. Ioki gathered his few remaining officers at his command tent to discuss last measures. With very little ammunition and almost no food and water left, their situation was hopeless. But Ioki held that even though they were cut off from the division and might only be able to hold out for a few more hours, his orders were to defend Fui Heights to the last man. Several of his subordinates argued that further defense was not only hopeless but meaningless. They urged Ioki to attempt to break out that night and, with reinforcements and fresh supplies, retake the heights later. Faced with these two awful choices, the young lieutenant colonel drew his pistol and attempted to shoot himself but was restrained by an officer who begged him to order a pullout. Rather than see his men blown to bits and incinerated, Ioki decided to abandon Fui Heights, without orders, and retire to the east. Those who were unable to walk were issued hand grenades with the unspoken instruction to blow themselves up rather than be captured. On the night of August 24–25, after the moon went down, with active resistance on the heights quelled and Soviet attention drawn to hot spots further south, Ioki’s battered remnant slipped out and encountered a Manchukuoan cavalry patrol the next morning, which summoned trucks that carried them to Chaingchunmiao, forty miles away. The Russians who occupied Fui Heights on August 25 counted the corpses of over six hundred Japanese officers and men.106

  After capturing the strategic Fui Heights, the Soviet northern force began to roll up and envelop the Japanese northern flank in a wide, sweeping movement south and east from the heights toward Nomonhan. A day after the fall of Fui Heights, elements of the northern force’s 11th Tank Brigade linked up with the southern force’s 8th Armored Brigade near Nomonhan. A steel ring had been forged around the Japanese Sixth Army.

  As the Japanese northern and southern flanks dissolved under the pressure of Zhukov’s relentless assaults, General Komatsubara’s command as an integrated force ceased to exist. By August 25 the Japanese lines were completely cut and organized resistance continued only in three encircled pockets. The remnants of two battalions of General Morita’s “brigade” tried to renew their ill-fated offensive on August 25 and actually managed to advance 150 yards but were hammered by Soviet artillery and tanks and suffered even heavier casualties than the day before.

  The only hope for the surrounded Japanese troops lay in a relief force breaking through the Soviet encirclement from the outside. However, Kwantung Army was spread thin in Manchuria and because of its shortage of trucks, was unable to transport even the 7th Division from Hailar to the combat zone in time to affect the decision.

  By August 26 the encirclement grew thicker and the three main pockets of Japanese resistance were tightly invested, making a large-scale breakout all but impossible. Potapov unleashed a two-pronged assault with his 6th Tank Brigade and 80th Infantry Regiment. Artillery from the Japanese 28th Regiment managed to check the left wing of the armored attack, but the Soviet right wing overran elements of Sumi’s 26th Regiment, and the Japanese were forced to pull back into a tighter enclave. The 28th Regiment’s Colonel Morita, the fencing master who claimed to be immune to bullets, like a character in an Akira Kurosawa film, was killed by a burst of machine gun fire while standing boldly atop a trench to encourage his men.107

  The Japanese 120-mm howitzers became so overheated as they blasted away under the scorching August sun that their breech mechanisms swelled and would no longer eject spent shell casings. Sweating Japanese gunners had to leap from behind the shelter of their gun emplacements after each round and ram wooden rods down the howitzers’ barrels to eject the fouled shell casings, thus greatly reducing both their rate of fire and their life expectancy.108 All of Komatsubara’s artillery units suffered a bitter fate. Most were deployed well behind the front lines with their gun emplacements facing west, toward the Halha. As the Soviet offensive developed, however, the attackers, after piercing the Japanese lines at many points and looping behind them, often attacked the Japanese batteries from the east, that is, from their rear. Even when gun crews were able to turn some of their pieces around to face east, they had not preregistered fields of fire in that direction and were not very effective. Furthermore, most of their supporting infantry had already been drawn off for counterattacks and to defend the perimeter. One by one the Japanese gun batteries were smashed by Soviet artillery and tank fire and overrun by armor and infantry. Japanese gun crews, like their tanker comrades, were expected to defend their guns to the last man. The guns themselves, like regimental battle flags, were considered the “soul” of the unit, never to be taken intact by the enemy. In extremis, the guns, especially sensitive parts like optics, were to be destroyed. Crews were expected to share the fate of their weapons. Few survived. Among those who did was a PFC from an annihilated howitzer unit who was ordered to drive one of the few surviving vehicles, a Dodge sedan loaded with seriously wounded men, eastward to safety during the night. Near dawn, he came to a Holsten River bridge that he had to cross before daylight if he were to have any chance of reaching Japanese lines. Soviet sentries guarded the bridge. The terrified PFC approached the bridge cautiously and then floored the gas pedal. The sentries jumped forward, raised their rifles to fire, and shouted at him. Out of sheer instinct, the driver honked his horn at them, whereupon the guards stepped back and saluted the sedan as it sped by and kept racing east.109

  With their supply of drinking water consumed, and unable to reach the Halha or Holsten Rivers for replenishment, the commander of the easternmost of the Japanese enclaves ordered his men to drain the water from the radiators of their vehicles.110 Drinking that foul liquid at the expense of immobilizing their remaining transport meant the defenders knew their situation to be hopeless.

  On August 27 the rest of the Japanese 7th Division—two fresh infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, and their supporting units, barely five thousand men—finally reached the northeastern segment of the ring that Zhukov had forged around Komatsubara’s forces. One day’s hard fighting revealed that the relief force lacked the strength to break the Soviet encirclement. General Ogisu ordered the 7th Division to pull back and redeploy around his own Sixth Army headquarters, about four miles east of the village of Nomonhan and of the border claimed by the enemy.111 There would be no outside relief for Komatsubara’s forces.

  Throughout August 27–28, Soviet aircraft, artillery, armor, and infantry pounded the three Japanese strong points, compressing them into ever-smaller pockets and gradually grinding them down. The surrounded Japanese fought ferociously and inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviet infantry, but the issue was no longer in doubt. The outcome was inevitable and close at hand. After the remaining Japanese artillery batteries were silenced, Soviet tanks held free sway over the battlefield. One by one the major pockets of Japanese resistance were overrun. Numerous small and medium-size groups of Japanese infantry did manage to slip through the fluid Soviet lines and make it back to safety east of the border claimed by the MPR, where they were unmolested by the Red Army. Effective large-scale Japanese combat operations, however, soon came to an end.
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  Elements of Potapov’s 57th and 82nd Divisions eliminated the last remnants of Japanese resistance south of the Holsten by the evening of August 27. North of the Holsten, during the night of August 28–29, a group of about four hundred Japanese tried to slip eastward through the Soviet lines along the river bank. They were detected by the 293rd Regiment (57th Division), which swooped down on them. The fleeing Japanese refused to surrender and were wiped out attempting to recross the Holsten.112

  Japanese soldiers’ refusal to surrender is well documented throughout the Second World War. Surrender was so unspeakably dishonorable that the Japanese Army Field Manual was silent on the subject of proper conduct if captured. For officers, death was not merely preferable to surrender, it was expected, and in some cases, required. According to the army’s penal code (promulgated in 1908 and not revised until 1942), it was dereliction of duty for a commander to surrender, whether or not he “did his best” to resist. If he did his best, he was subject to imprisonment; if not, the punishment was death.113

  Stemming from the same samurai concept of martial honor (Bushido, “the way of the warrior”) was a special fanaticism concerning regimental colors. Upon formation, a regiment received its battle flag from the emperor. According to Shinto, the state religion, the emperor was divine. Regimental colors were not merely symbolically revered, they were treated literally as sacred objects. On the afternoon of August 28, with what remained of his 64th Regiment ripped apart by Soviet gunfire, Colonel Yamagata saw no alternative to burning the regimental colors—his highest priority—then committing suicide. Part of the flag pole had been shattered by an artillery shell and the imperial chrysanthemum ornamental crest had been damaged. Yamagata, Colonel Ise, an artillery regiment commander, an infantry captain, a medical lieutenant, and a foot soldier, the last survivors of the headquarters unit, faced east, gave three “banzai” shouts for the emperor, soaked the pennant in gasoline and lit it. Yamagata, Ise, and the captain then shot themselves. The flag and standard, however, were not entirely consumed by flames and the two survivors buried the unburned remnants beneath the unmarked body of Yamagata, whose insignias of rank had been stripped off. The medical officer and soldier managed to escape and eventually report these last rites to Sixth Army headquarters, where the deaths of the two colonels was regretted but great agitation ensued over whether the regimental colors had been entirely destroyed and thus kept from falling into enemy hands. The uncertain fate of the imperial crest was also a source of anxiety and vexation.114

  On August 29 Lieutenant Colonel Higashi Muneharu, who had taken over command of the 71st Regiment, faced the same dilemma Yamagata had a day earlier. The regimental standard was broken into four pieces and, together with the flag and chrysanthemum crest, were drenched with fuel and set afire. The fire kept going out and the tassels proved especially hard to burn. It took forty-five minutes to finish the job, all the while under enemy fire. That done, Higashi asked all who were able to join him in a suicide charge, and the severely wounded to “please kill themselves bravely when the enemy approached.” Soviet machine gun fire and grenades felled Higashi and all his followers within moments.115

  When on August 29 it became clear to Komatsubara that all hope was lost, he resolved to share the fate of his 23rd Division. Entrusting his last will and testament to his personal aide, the general stripped off and buried his epaulets and insignia, had his code books burned, and prepared to commit suicide. Just then, General Ogisu, Sixth Army commander, summoned Komatsubara to the radio. Learning of the latter’s intent, Ogisu ordered Komatsubara to save himself and attempt to lead as many of his men as possible out of the encirclement. Shortly before midnight on August 30, the bulk of the Soviet armor temporarily pulled back to refuel and take on more ammunition. Some of the Soviet infantry that had been in continuous action for ten days also pulled back a bit. Komatsubara and some four hundred survivors of his command seized that opportunity to slip through the Soviet lines. Carrying their wounded with them and guiding themselves by the stars, this remnant of the 23rd Division managed to reach the safety of Chiangchunmiao on the morning of August 31. Again Major Tsuji was among the survivors. En route, Komatsubara was so distraught he had to be physically restrained from taking his own life. A fellow officer took his pistol and two husky corporals “helped” the general walk by holding on to his arms, preventing him from drawing his sword.116

  Aftermath

  On August 31 Zhukov declared the disputed territory between the Halha River and the boundary line that ran through Nomonhan to be cleared of enemy troops. The Sixth Army had been annihilated, with between 18,000 and 23,000 men killed and wounded from May to September (not counting Manchukuoan losses). The casualty rate in Komatsubara’s 23rd Division was 76 percent. Sumi’s 26th Regiment (7th Division) suffered 91 percent casualties. In addition, Kwantung Army lost many of its tanks and heavy guns and nearly 150 aircraft. It was the worst military defeat in modern Japanese history up to that time. The Soviet side later claimed that total Japanese casualties exceeded 50,000, undoubtedly an inflated figure.117

  For years, Soviet-MPR authorities claimed to have sustained 9,284 casualties, surely an underestimate. A detailed unit-by-unit accounting of losses published in Moscow in 2002 puts the Soviet total at 25,655 (9,703 killed, 15,952 wounded), plus 556 MPR casualties.118 That Soviet casualties may have exceeded Japanese can be taken as a tribute to the fierceness of the Japanese defense or a critique of profligate expenditure of blood by Zhukov. Nevertheless, there was no escaping the fact that the Red Army had given an impressive demonstration of its strength and that Kwantung Army had suffered a serious defeat. Knowledgeable Japanese and Soviet sources agree that in view of the annihilation of General Komatsubara’s forces and the predominance of Soviet air power in the area, if Zhukov had pressed his advantage beyond Nomonhan toward Hailar, local Japanese forces “would have fallen into uncontrollable confusion,” Hailar would have fallen, and all of western Manchuria would have been gravely threatened.119 But while that may have been possible militarily, there was no such intent in Moscow. Zhukov’s First Army Group obediently halted at the boundary line originally claimed by the MPR. At this point, says a Japanese military historian, “Kwantung Army completely lost its head.”

  KwAHQ was literally enraged by the developments on the battlefield. Besides the mauling of the Sixth Army at Nomonhan, there was tremendous anxiety about the fate of regimental colors. In particular, it was feared that Colonel Yamagata might not have had time to destroy the imperial crest of the 64th Regiment’s colors, which might then have wound up in Soviet hands. Thousands of dead and wounded had been left on the battlefield. To preserve “face” and regain leverage against the enemy, a swift and powerful counterstroke was required.120

  At Hsinking, they decided to launch an all-out war against the USSR then and there. They would throw the 7th, 2nd, 4th,, and 8th Divisions into the Sixth Army, along with all the heavy artillery in Manchukuo, in order to crush the enemy. Recognizing their deficiency in armor, artillery, and air power, they hastily conceived a plan that called for a series of successive night attacks beginning on September 10. This plan was preposterous for a variety of reasons: September 10 was a totally unrealistic target date in view of Kwantung Army’s limited logistical capacity. What did Kwantung Army planners think the Red Army would be doing during the daytime, with their superior tank, artillery and air power? Furthermore, it was madness to begin a major strategic offensive in northwest Manchuria in the autumn, when extreme cold weather soon would immobilize all forces. (The weather turned very cold and heavy snow began to fall at Nomonhan on September 9.) And finally, Japan’s “ally” Germany had just concluded an alliance with Soviet Russia, isolating Japan diplomatically.

  These facts all were known at KwAHQ, but they pushed ahead with their plans anyway. Recognizing that if they began an offensive in the autumn, “severe cold weather will soon make major operations impossible,” Kwantung Army notified AGS that it should use the winter mon
ths well, so that it would, “kindly be prepared to mobilize the entire Japanese Army to engage in the decisive struggle against the USSR in the spring.”121

  This time, however, Kwantung Army would not plunge Japan into another huge conflict with unforeseeable consequences. The military debacle at Nomonhan coincided with the more far-reaching diplomatic disaster of the Hitler-Stalin pact. The course of action that Kwantung Army and its hawkish supporters in Tokyo had been advocating so vigorously—close military cooperation with Germany against the Soviet Union—was dramatically discredited in a single week. Defeated by the Red Army and deserted by Hitler, the civilian and military proponents of the pro-German, anti-Soviet policy were bewildered and infuriated. The government of Premier Hiranuma Kiichiro resigned abruptly on August 28. At AGS and the Army Ministry, more cautious elements rose to the fore, temporarily.

  Upon receiving Kwantung Army’s proposal for an all-out attack against the Soviet Union, authorities in Tokyo finally concluded that Kwantung Army command had overstepped all permissible bounds and had to be brought back into contact with reality and under strict control. General Nakajima, deputy chief of AGS, flew to Hsinking with Imperial Order 343, commanding Kwantung Army to hold its position near the disputed frontier with “minimal strength” to ensure a quick end to hostilities and a prompt diplomatic settlement. But in meeting with Nakajima, the KwAHQ Staff, led by the Operations Section, clung passionately to its convictions. Incredibly, Nakajima was won over by the staff’s fervent spirit and gave verbal approval for Kwantung Army’s general offensive to begin on September 10. The emotional atmosphere at KwAHQ was fantastic and spirits soared that night as the officers toasted the great victory they predicted.122