72. Gustav Hilger and Alfred G. Meyer, The Incompatible Allies (New York: Macmillian, 1953), 288–89, 383–84; DGFP, IV, 616–20.
73. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 263–64.
74. Great Britain, Foreign Office, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 3rd series (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office), vol. IV, 360–1, 392–93 (hereafter cited as DBFP).
75. It is not clear what Beck feared more at this point: Soviet guarantees, implying permission for the Red Army to enter Poland, or the effect that such an alliance might have on Hitler. For a conversation between Beck and the British ambassador in Warsaw on this question, see DBFP, IV, 453–54.
76. Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), 403.
77. These discussions are summarized in Aster, 1939, 80–97.
78. Ibid., 115.
79. Chamberlain at cabinet meeting, April 19, 1939, Ibid., 164.
80. DBFP, V, 228–29.
81. Ibid., V, 331; Aster, 1939, 183, 272.
82. Roberts, The Unholy Alliance, 147.
83. In a memorandum to Ribbentrop on May 25, 1939, Weizsacker wrote of the oblique Soviet overture: “A German move in Moscow at the present time is only of value if it is taken seriously by the Russians; otherwise it would be worthless or even dangerous: that is, Moscow would … play it off against us in Tokyo.” DGFP, VI, 586. To his ambassador in Moscow, Weizsacker urged prudence, lest unsolicited German cordiality call forth “a peal of Tartar laughter.” Ibid., 597–98.
84. Ernst von Weizsacker, Memoirs (London: Victor Gollancz, 1951), 126–27.
85. Ernst L. Presseisen, Germany and Japan: A Study in Totalitarian Diplomacy, 1933–1941 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1958), 126–27.
86. DGFP, VI, 396–97.
87. Ibid., 337–38.
88. Sorge’s chief collaborator was Ozaki Hotsumi, a leftist journalist who was employed at that time as a foreign policy consultant in the office of Japanese premier Konoye Fumimaro. Ozaki was able to provide Sorge with accurate information on the German-Japanese negotiations and Japan’s determination to make it an anti-Soviet alliance. Robert Whymant, Stalin’s Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 114–15.
Chapter 3: Changkufeng
1. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3a, 26–27.
2. Erickson, The Soviet High Command, 505–6.
3. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 82–83. For a full discussion of the occupation of alternating hills, see Inada Masazumi, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu” (“Confrontation with the Soviet Far Eastern Army”), Chisei, Special Issue no. 5, December 1956, 278.
4. Details of Lyushkov’s defection are based on Alvin D. Coox, “L’Affaire Lyushkov,” Soviet Studies 19 (January 1968), unless otherwise noted.
5. From a verbatim transcript of the interrogation of Lyushkov in Tokyo. U.S. Department of the Army, Military Intelligence Reports (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Service), Record Group 165, Maj. Frank W. Hane, Acting Military Attaché in Moscow, to Department of the Army, May 12, 1939, ser. no. 2037-1997/11 (hereafter cited as Military Intelligence Reports).
6. Inada, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu,” 279; Gen Dai Shi X (Modern History Documents X) Nichu Senso, 3 (Japan-China War, Pt. 3), ed. Tsunoda Jun (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1964), xxxii (hereafter cited as Gen Dai Shi).
7. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3a, 55–56; Erickson, The Soviet High Command, 494–95; Haslam, The Threat from the East, 114.
8. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 83.
9. Ibid.; Tsuji, Nomonhan, 38–39.
10. Inada, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu,” 279–80.
11. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 89–93.
12. Ibid., 84; Inada, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu,” 280.
13. M. V. Novikov, “U Ozera Khasan” (“At Lake Khasan”), Voprosy Istorii (August 1968),205.
14. The Saionji-Harada Memoirs, trans. Supreme Commander Allied Powers (Pacific) (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Service), Record Group 331, Pt. XV, 2, 189–91.
15. Alvin D. Coox, “Qualities of Japanese Military Leadership: The Case of Suetaka Kamezo,” Journal of Asian History 2 (1968), 32–43.
16. Chokoho Jiken no Keii (Development of the Changkufeng Incident), a Chosen Army Headquarters document, cited in Gen Dai Shi, 9–10.
17. JDA, Kanto Gun, 349.
18. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 85.
19. Gen Dai Shi, xxxi–ii.
20. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 85.
21. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3a, 63; V. Ezhakov, “Boi u Ozera Khasan” (“The Battle at Lake Khasan”), Voenno-Istoricheskie Zhurnal (July 1968), 124.
22. Ibid., 125.
23. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3a, 63; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 86.
24. Ibid., 86.
25. Ibid., 87.
26. JDA, Kanto Gun, 367–68. Suetaka “got the message” from Tokyo. The “medium” was a process of indirect communication called hara ge, literally, “belly-talk,” a highly cultivated practice in Japan.
27. Alvin D. Coox, The Anatomy of a Small War: The Soviet-Japanese Struggle for Changkufeng/Khasan, 1938 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), 48.
28. This reconstruction of the battle is based on JSSM, XI Pt. 3a, 71–94; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 87; Ezhakov, “Boi U Ozera Khasan”; and Novikov, “U Ozera Khasan,” 206–8.
29. JDA, Kanto Gun, 364; Coox, Anatomy of a Small War, 167.
30. In his first message to Chosen Army Headquarters at 5:40 a.m., Suetaka claimed that “since the enemy near Shachaofeng staged an advance, the Sato unit dealt them a counterattack.” Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 87.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., 88.
33. Erickson, The Soviet High Command, 498; Novikov, “U Ozera Khasan,” 206.
34. N. F. Kuzmin, Na Strazhe Mirnovo Truda (On Guard for the Workers of the World) (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1959), 202; JSSM, XI, Pt. 3a, 97–98.
35. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3a, 98; JDA, Kanto Gun, 373.
36. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 89.
37. From the gist of Shigemitsu’s memoirs, Litvinov seems to have convinced the ambassador that Soviet forces then held the disputed heights and that the repeated attacks were being launched by the Japanese in an effort to dislodge them. Soviet authorities took pains to create this same false impression in their press. Litvinov himself may have believed this. Shigemitsu Mamoru, Japan and Her Destiny, ed. by F. S. G. Piggott, trans. by Oswald White (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1958), 159; Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, III, 296–98.
38. On August 4, 1938, Litvinov told the U.S. chargé in Moscow that he “knew” Japan did not seek war with the Soviet Union and that the Soviet government had no intention of backing down at Changkufeng. FRUS, 1938, III, 470. Moscow’s confidence may have been reinforced by intelligence reports from their spy Richard Sorge in Tokyo.
39. Military Intelligence Reports, U.S. Military Attaché in China, Colonel Joseph Stillwell, to Department of Army, August 17, 1938, ser. no. N.A. 2657-H-452/26.
40. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3a, 112.
41. State Department Archives, U.S. Chargé in Moscow Kirk to Secretary of State, August 4, 1938, ser. no. 761.93 Manchuria/154.
42. FRUS, 1938, III, 463.
43. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 89; State Department Archives, U.S. Consul in Harbin, to Secretary of State, August 5, 1938, ser. no. 761.93 Manchuria/160.
44. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3a, 115.
45. Ibid.; JDA, Kanto Gun, 399.
46. Saionji-Harada Memoirs, 2,219.
47. Shigemitsu, Japan and Her Destiny, 163; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 91.
48. Opinion of the editors, JDA, Kanto Gun, 406.
49. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3a, 121–23; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 92; Haslam, The Threat from the East, 119.
50. Ibid., 119–20.
51. On October 15, 1938, Prince Kanin, chief of AGS, met with the emperor, who expressed his praise for th
e valor of the 19th Division, which had fought under “very difficult circumstances,” and his sorrow over the loss of life. He instructed Prince Kanin to tell this to the troops. JDA, Kanto Gun, 410.
52. Military Intelligence Reports, U.S. Military Attaché in Moscow Colonel Raymond Faymonville to Department of Army, September 22, 1938, ser. no. N.A. 2037-1833/66.
53. Ibid., Stillwell in China to Department of Army, August 17, 1938, ser. no. N.A. 2657-H-452/26.
54. Shtern commanded the Soviet Eighth Army in the Winter War against Finland in 1939–40. He was executed on Stalin’s orders in October 1941, one of many generals purged during the initial phase of the German-Soviet war.
55. Inada, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu,” 284–85.
56. Gen Dai Shi, X, Pt. 3, xxxv–xxxviii.
57. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 94.
58. Ibid.
59. Saionji-Harada Memoirs, 2,220.
Chapter 4: Nomonhan: Preliminaries
1. The Japanese call it Nomonhan jiken (the Nomonhan incident) after the tiny hamlet of Nomonhan near the battlefield. The Soviet side calls it Boi u Khalkhin Gol (the battle at the Khalkhin River), using the Mongol name of the river that figured prominently in the fighting. For reasons of economy and ease of pronunciation for Western readers, the Japanese name is used in this study.
2. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 95–96; IMTFE Exhibits 764–66; Military Intelligence Reports, U.S. Military Attaché in Moscow to Department of the Army, July 24, 1939, ser. no. N.A. 2657-H-439/181.
3. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 72–73; JDA, Kanto Gun, 318–19, 442–44.
4. This interpretation is based on Tsuji’s account in Nomonhan, 72–73, and on an interview with Colonel Nishihara Yukio (see chapter 2, note 29).
5. JDA, Kanto Gun, 321; State Department Archives, U.S. Consul in Mukden, William R. Langdon, to Secretary of State, June 1, 1939, ser. no. 761.9315 Manchuria/118. While at KwAHQ in Hsinking, Langdon shrewdly observed a carelessly displayed Kwantung Army wall map of 1933 showing the Manchukuo-MPR boundary running through the middle of Lake Buir Nor, while the 1936 map showed a boundary that put all of Lake Buir Nor within Manchukuo. Langdon concluded that “the inference is that in the intervening years ‘Manchukuo’ unilaterally rectified the frontier to its advantage, giving rise to the border conflicts of 1935 and the present time.” This cartographic sleight of hand is independently confirmed by a U.S. military attaché report from China and by IMTFE Exhibit 764, which features a map published by the Kwantung Army in 1934 and obtained from the Japanese Imperial Library in 1946, showing the boundary precisely as claimed by the MPR and the USSR, i.e., through the middle of Lake Buir Nor and thence running some miles east of the Halha River.
6. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3 b, 197–203; JDA, Kanto Gun, 438; Coox, Nomonhan, 175. The Special Services Agency was Japan’s version of America’s World War II–era OSS, responsible for intelligence, counterintelligence, and other clandestine activities.
7. JDA, Kanto Gun, 438.
8. Japan Army Ministry Archives, Kyokai Jiken Toku Hokoku (Special Report on Border Incidents), December 1938, contained in U.S. National Archives and Record Service, Alexandria, Virginia, N.A. 16065, T782, Reel 109, frames 18,732–40. This is General Komatsubara’s official report of the incident to army minister Itagaki.
9. JSSM, I, 20–32, 105–7.
10. lnada, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu,” 285; JDA, Kanto Gun, 297.
11. Cited in Coox, Nomonhan, 188.
12. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 40–41. Additional details of Tsuji’s unusual diversionary tactics were provided by Colonel Nishihara Yukio in an interview on November 29, 1973.
13. Tsuji’s father was a charcoal maker, a lowly occupation in Japan.
14. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 40–41; JDA, Kanto Gun, 415–17.
15. Ibid., 415–17, 422.
16. Shimada Toshihiko, Kanto Gun (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Sha, 1965), 135; Tsuji, Nomonhan, 46–47; JSSM, XI, Pt. 1, 99–102.
17. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 45–46.
18. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 96.
19. JDA, Kanto Gun, 436.
20. Ibid., 435–36.
21. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 44; JDA, Kanto Gun, 436.
22. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 96; Gen Dai Shi, X, Pt. 3, 2; JDA, Kanto Gun, 420–21, 425–26.
23. Gen Dai Shi, X, Pt. 3, xlvii, 72.
24. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 42.
25. Soviet and Japanese newspaper accounts from 1939 can be discounted as largely propagandistic fabrications. The indictment by the Soviet prosecutor at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial and the Japanese defense can be found in IMTFE, 7,840–54ff. Other official and semiofficial Soviet versions can be found in A. Deborin et al., Istoriia Velikoi Otechtestvennoi Voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1941–1945 (History of the Great Fatherland War of the Soviet Union, 1941–1945), I (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1960), 237 (cited hereafter as IVOVSS); S. N. Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1954), 10–13; and G. N. Sevost’yanov, “Voenno i Diplomaticheskoe Porazhenie Yaponii v Periode Sobytiy u Reki Khalkhin-Gol” (“The Military and Diplomatic Defeat of Japan in the Period of the Events at the Khalkhin-Gol River”), Voprosy Istorii (August 1957), 63–84. Some important Japanese accounts can be found in Tsuji, Nomonhan, 67–77; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 96; JDA, Kanto Gun, 440–42, JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 215–18; and numerous records in the Archives of the Japanese Defense Agency, especially the Operations Log of Kwantung Army and Nomonhan Jiken Keiko no Gaiyo (Summary of the Course of the Nomonhan Incident), written by Colonel Hattori Takushiro in November 1939; and Nomonhan Jiken Kankei Tzuzuri (Nomonhan Incident Files). A detailed account based on exhaustive research in Japanese sources is in Coox, Nomonhan, 188–89.
26. This reconstruction of events is based on JDA, Kanto Gun, 441–42; Sasaki Chiyoko, Der Nomonhan Konflikt, unpublished doctoral dissertation (Bonn: Friedrich-Whilhelms-Universitat, 1968), 55–61, which makes use of Mongolian as well as Japanese and Soviet sources; and interviews in July 2011 with R. Bold, Director of the Mongolian General Intelligence Agency and a Nomonhan scholar.
27. JDA, Kanto Gun, 441.
28. Ibid., 442; JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 215–16.
29. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 75–77.
30. IMTFE, 7,850; JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 220–21.
31. R. Bold interview, July 2011; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 13–15.
32. Several sources agree that the usually cautious Komatsubara was spurred to action by Order 1488. JDA, Kanto Gun, 438; Tsuji, Nomonhan, 77; Sasaki, Der Nomonhan Konflikt, 72.
33. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 204; Coox, Nomonhan, 176–80.
34. Ibid., 200; JDA, Kanto Gun, 443.
35. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 222–23.
36. JDA, Kanto Gun, 446–47.
37. Coox, Nomonhan, 203; R. Bold interview, July 2011.
38. Shimada, Kanto Gun, 140–41; Coox, Nomonhan, 203–4.
39. Ibid., 246; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 15–16; R. Bold interview, July 2011.
40. Whether this was a gross error of omission by Yamagata, as Coox implies (Coox, Nomonhan, 232), or was due to technical radio problems, the result proved deadly for Azuma.
41. Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 16–17.
42. JDA, Kanto Gun, 451.
43. Ibid., 454–55; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 17–19; JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 232–37; Coox, Nomonhan, 209–12.
44. Ibid., 236–39.
45. JDA, Kanto Gun, 462.
46. Coox, Nomonhan, 248; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 19.
47. Maksim Kolomiets, “Boi u Reki Khalkhin-Gol” (“Battle at the Khalkhin-Gol River”), Frontovaya Illyustratsiya, February 2002, 28.
48. This is suggested by an AGS message to KwAHQ on May 30, 1939, congratulating that army on its “recent great success” at Nomonhan. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 243–44.
49. Ibid., 244; JDA, Kanto Gun, 445–46.
50. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 98.
51. JDA, Kanto Gun, 466.
52. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 97.
Chapter 5: Nomonhan: A Lesson
in Limited War
1. Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), 147–48.
2. Ibid., 149–50.
3. Ibid., 150–51; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 19–20.
4. Gen Dai Shi, X, Pt.3, 74. All important Japanese accounts of the Nomonhan incident refer to Soviet air raids on June 19. Soviet accounts do not deny them specifically, but make no mention of any such air raids. In the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, it seems reasonable to conclude that the air raids did occur.
5. JDA, Kanto Gun, 468–69; interview with Colonel Nishihara Yukio, former Kwantung Army intelligence officer, November 29, 1973. There is some confusion on this last point. Komatsubara’s report speaks of “bakugeki,” which means aerial bombardment. But in the Japanese military lexicon of that day there was no specific word for “strafe.” Bakugeki was used to denote both bombing and strafing. None of the official reports of this incident mention bombers or the kind of damage usually associated with bombing. JDA, Kanto Gun, 478.
6. R. Bold interview, July 2011.
7. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 97–99; JDA, Kanto Gun, 469.
8. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 249–50.
9. JDA, Kanto Gun, 469–71; Gen Dai Shi, X, Pt. 3, 75; Tsuji says it was his idea not to inform Tokyo of the planned attack. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 99–101.
10. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 256–59.
11. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 98–99.
12. JDA, Kanto Gun, 475.
13. Coox, Nomonhan, 263–64.
14. JDA, Kanto Gun, 626.
15. Sevost’yanov, “Voennoe i Diplomaticheskoe Porazhenie Yaponii,” 70–71.
16. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 286–88; Tsuji, Nomonhan, 105–6.
17. Ibid., 108.
18. JDA, Kanto Gun, 473, 476; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 99.
19. Ibid.; Tsuji, Nomonhan, 110. A Kwantung Army staff officer, Katakura Tadashi, allegedly leaked the information while in Tokyo on June 24. It is not clear whether or not his action was intentional.
20. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 267; JDA, Kanto Gun, 482.
21. Ibid.; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 99.
Nomonhan, 1939: The Red Army's Victory That Shaped World War II Page 29
