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

by Stuart D. Goldman

  As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the beating that the Red Army inflicted on the Japanese at Nomonhan made a deep impression. It was well remembered at Imperial General Headquarters in 1941 and was one of the factors that entered into Japan’s decision for war with the United States rather than joining Germany and attacking the Soviet Far East. That decision was not inevitable. It could conceivably have gone the other way, altering the course of the war and—if the Soviet Union had been defeated in 1941–42—possibly altering world history.

  Playing this game of what-might-have-been involves piling conjecture upon hypothetical conjecture. Plausibility declines in proportion to the accumulation of conjectures. The object here is not to rewrite the history of the Second World War, but to suggest some of the implications of the Nomonhan incident as a turning point, or even more modestly, as a small but significant—and oft overlooked—factor in a profoundly important sequence of events.

  Nomonhan and Limited War

  Since 1945 there have been a number of conflicts that can be called limited wars. Without attempting to develop a comprehensive definition, limited war here is understood to be international military conflict involving strategic-size forces over a substantial period of time, with at least one of the belligerents refraining from the use of its full war-fighting capability.32 Implicit also is that the belligerents’ objectives must be limited. Similarly, for a limited war to remain limited, at least one party must be willing to accept a compromise settlement or a limited defeat; otherwise the war will escalate or continue interminably.

  Since the Korean conflict of 1950–53, a good deal has been written about limited war and about the prospects for limited warfare between great powers. Much of this writing has been theoretical and speculative, given the small number of modern limited wars among the major powers. It is noteworthy that the Nomonhan incident was the first instance in modern (post-Napoleonic) history of limited war between great powers. It represents a neglected but illuminating case study of the character of limited war.

  One of the most interesting aspects of this case is its unusual juxtaposition of civilian versus military control of decision making. Never in modern history has the military establishment of a great power been so utterly and ruthlessly subordinated to the political leadership as the Red Army in the 1930s after the purge. By contrast, Japan in the era of the Pacific War was as close as any modern great power has come to an actual military dictatorship. During the Soviet-Japanese conflicts of 1937–39, the two belligerents were polar opposites on the continuum of civil-military relations, virtual caricatures of the two most extreme outcomes of the struggle for control between civilian and military elites. Consequently, the Soviet-Japanese conflict can be useful in evaluating the relative utility of civilian versus military control of decision making in a limited-war situation.

  In the Amur River incident of 1937, the Soviet Union was trying to uphold the principle of unimpaired sovereignty over islets around which the main navigable river channel had shifted, which gave the Manchukuoan/Japanese side a plausible claim to the islets. The principle was significant primarily because of its implications for the strategically important Heihsiatzu Island near Khabarovsk. Both sides indulged in a provocative game of tit-for-tat, leading to the Japanese shelling of three Soviet gunboats on June 30. Kwantung Army followed up its attack by unilaterally occupying the disputed islets on July 6, in violation of the diplomatic arrangement reached days earlier in Moscow. One day later the Marco Polo Bridge incident erupted on the outskirts of Peking. A narrowly military assessment of the situation by the Soviet High Command would have called for forceful retaliation on the Amur to back up their interpretation of the riverine border and maintain the credibility of the Red Army while the Japanese were preoccupied by the military confrontation with China. A forceful Soviet thrust toward Northern Manchuria at that time is one of the few things that might have deterred Japan from plunging into war with China. The political leadership in Moscow eschewed such a course, preferring to back down on the Amur so as not to distract the Japanese from escalating in China. This was an intelligent Soviet calculation, contributing to the expansion of the China War, which resulted in a fundamental shift in the East Asian balance of power to Moscow’s advantage.

  In Japan in mid-1937, where the military was in the ascendancy, although not yet in full control, the situation was viewed differently. Even though Japan “won” the military showdown on the Amur River, the incident gave rise to disharmony between local and central army authorities. Kwantung Army resented what it perceived as General Staff interference in its local command prerogatives, a harbinger of the feuding between KwAHQ and AGS that would contribute to the debacle at Nomonhan. More important was the interpretation put on the outcome of the Amur River incident. Soviet acquiescence in the face of Japanese force was seen by the Japanese as a sign of weakness, a timely test of Soviet intentions and capabilities which influenced Japanese policy in China following the Marco Polo Bridge incident: Russia was not to be feared.33

  After the outbreak of the China War, Japan’s military leaders showed a striking inflexibility in planning vis-à-vis the USSR. Some persisted in believing that the Soviets would remain intimidated and irresolute, as in the early 1930s, despite Japan’s entanglement in the China War. Others, more conscious of the sapping of Japan’s strength in China, felt that especially because of the China War, Japan must maintain its tough posture toward Moscow so as not to betray any sign of weakness, which might embolden the Russians. It was the relatively cautious Colonel Inada at AGS who conceived the plan of a reconnaissance-in-force by General Suetaka Kamezo’s 19th Division at Changkufeng to retest Soviet intentions prior to the Wuhan operation in Central China.

  In the Changkufeng incident, both sides exercised considerable restraint, ensuring that the conflict would not escalate seriously. The Japanese refrained from reinforcing the 19th Division, despite its mounting losses, while the Soviets refrained from expanding the breadth of the battlefield, despite the unfavorable terrain at Changkufeng. This is an excellent example of tacit mutual agreement between belligerents to keep a conflict limited. But again, the Soviet political leadership earns higher marks. Inada’s idea of testing the Soviets at Changkufeng has been criticized for faulty timing (the bulk of the Japanese army in China was already committed to the Wuhan operation) and for inadequate preparations in the event that the USSR responded by initiating large-scale combat at that time. Although the terrain at Changkufeng favored General Suetaka, the overall strategic situation was unfavorable to Japan, which apparently was recognized in Moscow. The Soviets gauged the situation accurately, applying enough military pressure to force the Japanese to back down, but not so much as to cause Japan to conciliate Chiang Kai-shek and redirect her military attention toward the USSR.

  A year later, at the time of the Nomonhan incident, military men were fully in the saddle in Tokyo.34 During the tension of that four-month-long limited war, which occurred at a critical phase in worldwide diplomacy on the eve of the World War, the superiority of Soviet political leadership over Japanese military leadership was decisive. Throughout May and June, the central authorities in Tokyo, preoccupied with China, paid little attention to the growing conflict at Nomonhan, leaving it to the discretion of the notably indiscrete Kwantung Army. In Moscow the highest levels of leadership took a direct hand as early as the third week of the incident.35

  From beginning to end, Kwantung Army authorities dealt with the Nomonhan incident as an isolated event, an irksome, potentially dangerous challenge best nipped in the bud. When Kwantung Army attempted to achieve a “local solution,” its idea was to destroy the local enemy forces on the spot, thus eradicating the problem. In escalating the scope and intensity of combat, Kwantung Army authorities became preoccupied to the point of obsession with matters of honor and prestige. They consistently failed to apprehend the international dimensions of the problem. They did not even make a broad military assessment, which would have made clea
r Japan’s strategic weakness vis-à-vis the USSR. Instead, with tunnel vision, they focused on the Halha River, oblivious of the outside factors that would overwhelm them. Throughout the crisis, political authorities in Tokyo were unable, and central military authorities unwilling, to assert effective control over their field army until it was too late.

  The Soviet political leadership, however, fully aware of von Clausewitz’s dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means, recognized that the military problem at Nomonhan could best be dealt with in its broadest context. Soviet military action was coordinated with and subordinated to political action, with a fine sense of timing, so that in August their blow struck with double effect. Even at the moment of victory, the Red Army was kept in tight rein. There was no intoxication with success, no attempt to further exploit their victory at Nomonhan, no retaliatory—and in their view, perhaps justifiable—pursuit of the disorganized Japanese forces beyond the frontier. Instead, Zhukov’s First Army Group halted at the boundary originally claimed by the Soviet-MPR side, and there courteously treated the vanquished foe to bring the conflict to a speedy conclusion. This led Colonel Inada to observe that, “Kwantung Army’s declared policy, ‘not to invade, not to be invaded,’ actually was followed more consistently by the Soviet Union. One might have to say that despite being our enemies and under the control of a dictatorship, their moderation in command was praiseworthy.”36

  Writing in 1950, only months after receiving amnesty for alleged war crimes, the ubiquitous Tsuji Masanobu, former Operations Staff officer, future Japanese Diet member,37 offered the following explanation—half apology, half excuse—of events at Nomonhan:

  When I compare without prejudice the opinion of KwAHQ, which dealt with the Nomonhan incident only from the point of view of Manchukuo, with that of AGS, which handled the incident from a global point of view, I have to admit that we at KwAHQ could have acted more wisely, if we and those at AGS had kept cool heads. However, a commander is not a mathematician. On the battlefield where blood is shed and bones are cracked, men tend to react emotionally rather than rationally. The high command must bear this fact in mind, taking care to issue orders with understanding and sensitivity so that front line units do not become excessively emotional, but will remain willing to obey any instructions from the high command.38

  However, the high command’s most serious error at Nomonhan was not insensitivity or meddling but, that it was too lax in its dealings with KwAHQ. If anything, AGS was too sensitive to and understanding of the proud traditions of Kwantung Army, whose independence gave rise to arrogance and insubordination. First through inattention, then irresolution, AGS allowed Kwantung Army to persist in a course of action known to be fraught with peril, in defiance of the General Staff’s avowed policy.

  If there is truth to the old adage that war is too serious a matter to be entrusted to generals, then the Nomonhan incident suggests that this is especially true of limited war, which by definition has larger nonmilitary components.

  EPILOGUE

  All but one of the five major belligerents in the Second World War fought on two or more fronts. Only the United States proved strong enough to accomplish this successfully, prevailing simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific. The others suffered limited or total defeat. Britain barely survived the early going in Europe and lost most of its Far Eastern holdings to Japan, to have them restored temporarily in 1945 by dint of American arms. Adolf Hitler’s armies fought in North Africa, the Balkans, on the Soviet front, and in Western Europe and were defeated in all. Japan fought the United States across the Pacific and multiple enemies in the China-India-Burma theater and, like Germany, was defeated in detail. Of the big five, only the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin avoided the trap of a two-front war,1 which in 1941–42 would probably have been disastrous for the Soviet Union. For all Stalin’s faults as a wartime leader, this stands as one of his greatest accomplishments.

  At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the United States sought Soviet participation in the war against Japan. The first atomic bomb test was still six months in the future. U.S. military planners anticipated having to invade the Japanese home islands, at the cost of perhaps half a million U.S. casualties. Undefeated Japanese armies still occupied Manchuria, Korea, and much of China. The United States wanted the Red Army in the fight. With the defeat of Nazi Germany ensured, Stalin agreed to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s request. Noting that it would take several months to transfer sufficient Red Army forces from Europe to the Far East, Stalin pledged to declare war on Japan three months after Germany’s capitulation. Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 8, 1945. Exactly three months later, on August 8, the Soviet Union declared war.

  At Yalta in February, neither Roosevelt nor Stalin knew for sure that the atomic bomb would work, much less that two days before the Soviet Union declared war, Hiroshima would already have been destroyed. On August 9, the day after the Soviet declaration, the second bomb fell on Nagasaki. But hours before that, at one minute past midnight, the Red Army launched a massive invasion of Manchuria. The three-pronged assault, commanded by Marshal Aleksandr Vasilievsky, comprised 89 divisions, 1.5 million men, 3,700 tanks, and an equal number of aircraft—a battle-hardened force that had defeated the bulk of the German army. This tidal wave crashed upon a Kwantung Army that had long since been hollowed out. Its first-rate divisions had all been sent to fight in the Pacific, along with most of its heavy weapons. On paper, Kwantung Army comprised twenty-four infantry divisions and twelve brigades, but these were scrapings from the bottom of the manpower barrel, mostly raw recruits, the elderly, and infirm. Of its 230 serviceable combat aircraft, only 55 were modern fighters and bombers. What little armor it had consisted mainly of the light tank and armored car types that had proved inadequate six years earlier at Nomonhan. The outcome of this unequal contest was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese did not have a chance.

  The Red Army of 1945 had learned the art of mobile combined arms warfare in the most harsh and unforgiving testing ground. Some Kwantung Army units put up stiff resistance for a few days but soon were overwhelmed. The three Soviet army groups advanced an average of sixty miles a day, bypassing some isolated Japanese strong points.

  At noon on August 15, the voice of Emperor Hirohito was broadcast on radio throughout the empire, announcing what is understood as the surrender of Japan. That did not immediately end the fighting. The emperor did not use the word “surrender.” Instead, speaking in the archaic language of the Imperial Court, he stated that the government had agreed to accept the allies’ “Joint Declaration” and called upon his people to pave the way for peace “by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is unsufferable.” Few of his listeners comprehended that the “Joint Declaration” was the Potsdam Declaration of July 1945 in which the allies set the terms for Japan’s surrender. Some thought he was calling on them for further sacrifice in defense of the homeland. At the end of the speech, a radio announcer tried to clarify that the emperor’s message meant that Japan was surrendering.

  Not all of Japan’s military men were willing to accept this verdict. Imperial General Headquarters did not immediately transmit a cease-fire order to Kwantung Army. Communications were spotty and some elements of that army did not receive the order until much later. Some others either did not understand it or ignored it. Pockets of serious resistance continued, as did the Soviet advance. The last Kwantung Army strongpoint near Hutou on the Ussuri River was wiped out on August 22. Sporadic fighting continued until August 27–30.2 Meanwhile, the Red Army pushed into northern Korea and made amphibious landings on Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, pursuing Stalin’s aim to retake the territory lost to Japan in 1905.

  By the end of August, it was over. On September 2, on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, General Douglas MacArthur presided over the formal surrender ceremony. The instrument of surrender was signed by Japan’s foreign minister and army chief of staff, by MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz, and
by representatives of the allied powers. Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevyanko signed for the Soviet Union.

  That autumn approximately 600,000 Japanese troops were marched north into captivity, to toil in labor camps throughout the length and breadth of the Soviet Union. Two hundred thousand worked on the Baikal-Amur Mainline project, a railway to run parallel to, but well north of, the Trans-Siberian. Some 60,000–70,000 Japanese detainees died of disease, exposure, and hunger, most in the winter of 1945–46. Repatriation began in 1946, peaked in 1947–48, and continued in dribs and drabs until 1956.

  The Soviets turned over much of the captured Japanese weaponry to the Chinese Communists. Soviet occupation authorities in Manchuria also facilitated the consolidation of Chinese Communist control in that region. These measures contributed to the triumph of Mao Tse-tung’s forces over Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

  The instrument of surrender signed on September 2 was not a peace treaty. Japan concluded separate peace treaties with the victors—but not with the Soviet Union. That was blocked by disputes over the repatriation of detainees, Japanese fishing rights, and territorial questions. There has been no formal peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union or its successor, the Russian Federation. Russia’s occupation of what they call the Southern Kuriles, known in Japan as the Northern Territories, continues to poison relations between the two countries to this day.