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

by Stuart D. Goldman

  22. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 117; JDA, Kanto Gun, 484. Coox, Nomonhan, 276. Sasaki, Der Nomonhan Konflikt, 83. Soviet accounts acknowledge the Japanese air raid of June 27 but claim, unbelievably, to have shot down one hundred attacking planes against thirty-three Soviet losses, Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 21.

  23. R. Bold interview, July 2011; Baabar, History of Mongolia, trans. by D. Suhjargalmaa et al. (Cambridge, UK: White Horse Press, 1999), 389; Michael Parrish, Sacrifice of the Generals: Soviet Senior Officer Losses (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2004), 211.

  24. Inada used the word “Baka,” which translates literally as “animal,” but carries a far stronger and deeply insulting meaning. For details of this emotional exchange between KwAHQ and AGS, see Tsuji, Nomonhan, 118–19; and Inada, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu,” 291.

  25. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 270.

  26. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 119.

  27. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3, 270–71; JDA, Kanto Gun, 486.

  28. Coox, Nomonhan, 279–81.

  29. Ibid., 287; JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 274–77.

  30. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 119; Inada, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu,” 291.

  31. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 44–45ff.

  32. JDA, Kanto Gun, 495.

  33. Sevost’yanov, “Voennoe i Diplomaticheskoe Porazhenie Yaponni,” 78.

  34. Zhukov, Memoirs, 150–51; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 23.

  35. JDA, Kanto Gun, 501.

  36. Ibid., 503–5.

  37. Ibid., 514–15; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 25–26; Zhukov, Memoirs, 151–53.

  38. Coox, Nomonhan, 316.

  39. Ibid., 379.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 101; JSSM, VI, 79–82.

  42. Ibid., XI, Pt. 3b, 295; JDA, Kanto Gun, 507–10.

  43. Ibid., 518.

  44. Ibid., 521–22, 524.

  45. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 306.

  46. Coox, Nomonhan, 341; Zhukov, Memoirs, 153; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 26.

  47. JDA, Kanto Gun, 173–74.

  48. Naturally, there were officers who rejected this doctrine in favor of a more objective, empirical outlook, but they ran against the grain of deep tradition. The most notable such exception was General Nagata Tetsuzan, who reached the powerful post of chief of the Bureau of Military Affairs in the Army Ministry by virtue of sheer intellectual brilliance. Nagata was a believer in materiel and firepower and sought to restructure the army, and indeed the entire nation, on the basis of his vision of “total war.” In August 1935 Nagata was assassinated by Lieutenant Colonel Aizawa Saburo, who deplored Nagata’s materialist outlook. Aizawa became a public hero and his trial a cause célèbre, the inspiration for the notorious Tokyo Army Mutiny of February 26, 1936. Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy, 262–67.

  49. In an interview in 1955, Colonel Sumi bitterly recalled the recriminating attitude of KwAHQ, “saying that the defeat was not due to their operational plan, but to the inadequate command of the front line commanders, they decided to punish us, but without formal procedures.” JSSM, XI, Pt. 3c, 402–3. Sumi held a confidential letter written to him on July 10, 1939, by his commanding officer, General Sonobe Waichiro, the respected commander of Kwantung Army’s 7th Division, who was promoted to the command of the China Expeditionary Army in August 1939. In this letter, General Sonobe heaped criticism on KwAHQ for inadequate intelligence and poor planning of the July offensive. Sumi had kept secret for thirty-four years this indiscrete letter written by the venerated Sonobe. Its publication in 1973 was carried as a feature story in Japan’s premiere newspaper. Asahi Shinbun, August 15, 1973.

  50. Zhukov, Memoirs, 152.

  51. Cited in Andrew Nagorski, The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 121.

  52. Erickson, The Soviet High Command, 567–68.

  53. Zhukov, Memoirs, 154.

  54. DGFP, VI, 1,059–62; VII, 67–69. This theme is developed at length in chapter 6.

  55. Military Intelligence Report, U. S. Military Attaché in Moscow to Department of Army, July 6, 1939, Ser. No. N.A. 2657-H-452/3.

  56. Zhukov, Memoirs, 155; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 31, 36–37.

  57. JDA, Kanto Gun, 536–45.

  58. Zhukov, Memoirs, 164, 240; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 40.

  59. JDA, Kanto Gun, 581.

  60. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 101.

  61. JDA, Kanto Gun, 609.

  62. Ibid., 572; Coox, Nomonhan, 532.

  63. Ibid., 544–45.

  64. Ibid., 609.

  65. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 156.

  66. Ibid., 163.

  67. Ibid., 166–67; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 102.

  68. Ibid.; Gen Dai Shi, X, Pt. 3, 79–81.

  69. JDA, Kanto Gun, 582.

  70. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 168.

  71. JDA, Kanto Gun, 582–83.

  72. Ibid., 597–98.

  73. This development is examined in detail in chapter 6.

  74. Chalmers Johnson, An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964), 150–52.

  75. Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 31, 34.

  76. Ibid., 31, 36, 37.

  77. Zhukov, Memoirs, 155.

  78. JSSM, X, 51. Not only was Kwantung Army’s air activity restrained by orders from Tokyo, but early August also brought two solid weeks of miserable weather in which virtually all reconnaissance flights were grounded. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 103.

  79. Gen Dai Shi, X, Pt. 3, 86–87; JSSM, XI, Pt. 3b, 353; JDA, Kanto Gun, 589, 628–29.

  80. Coox, Nomonhan, 560.

  81. Ibid., 559.

  82. Opinion of Colonel Nishihara Yukio, formerly of Kwantung Army Intelligence Section, expressed in an interview on December 7, 1973.

  83. JDA, Kanto Gun, 245.

  84. Inada, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu,” 293.

  85. Kitagami Norio and Nara Hiroshi, “Kanto Gun Tokushu Himitsu 731 Butai ni Yoru Hijindoteki Hanzai” (“Inhuman Crimes of Kwantung Army’s Special Secret Troop 731”), Nichu 2, no. 12 (December 1972), 26; Tracy Dalby, “Japan’s Germ Warriors,” Washington Post, May 26, 1983, A1, 25.

  86. In his memoirs, Zhukov mistakenly attributes this to Remizov, who was killed in action in July. Zhukov, Memoirs, 157–58.

  87. Ibid., 155–56; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 37–40.

  88. Zhukov, Memoirs, 156–57.

  89. Tsuji, Nomonhan, 177–78.

  90. Kwantung Army’s consistent intelligence failures are summarized in JDA, Kanto Gun, 626–27.

  91. The author is indebted to Colonel Nishihara Yukio for this idea, which he developed at length in an interview in December 1973.

  92. Coox, Nomonhan, 585–87.

  93. Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 37–40.

  94. Ibid., 40–42; Zhukov, Memoirs, 159–60.

  95. JSSM, VII, Pt. 2, 102.

  96. Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 43–44.

  97. Ibid., 44–45; JDA, Kanto Gun, 632–36.

  98. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3c, 383.

  99. JSSM, IV, 64.

  100. The I-16, a cantilevered-winged monoplane with retractable landing gear, was introduced in the mid-1930s and formed the backbone of the Soviet air force in 1939.

  101. Ibid., 77–78.

  102. Coox, Nomonhan, 708.

  103. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3c, 384–89; JDA, Kanto Gun, 641–55; Tsuji, Nomonhan, 186.

  104. Nagorski, The Greatest Battle, 121.

  105. Coox, Nomonhan, 677.

  106. Ibid., 678–81; P. Ruslanov (pseudonym?), “Marshal Zhukov,” Russian Review 15, no. 3 (July 1956), 190; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 47; JDA, Kanto Gun, 636–38, 657–59, 685–86.

  107. Coox, Nomonhan, 752.

  108. Imai Takeo, ed., Kindai no Senso, XV, Chugoku to no Tatakai (Modern Wars, Vol. XV, War Against China) (Tokyo: Jinbutsu Orai Sha, 1965), 192.

  109. Coox, Nomonhan, 769.

  110. Imai, Kindai no Senso, 195.

  111. J
DA, Kanto Gun, 669; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 49.

  112. Ibid., 52–53; Zhukov, Memoirs, 160–62.

  113. Coox, Nomonhan, 958.

  114. Ibid., 810–11.

  115. Ibid., 826–27.

  116. Ibid., 836; JSSM, XI, Pt. 3c, 431–32.

  117. Kwantung Army officially admitted having lost 17,000–18,333 men at Nomonhan, but when Manchukuoan forces and other supporting units are included, the total may exceed 23,000. JDA, Kanto Gun, 462, 713; Shishkin, Khalkhin-Gol, 56.

  118. Kolomiets, “Boi u Reki Khalkhin-Gol.”

  119. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 133.

  120. Coox, Nomonhan, 853.

  121. Letter from Lieutenant Colonel Terada of Kwantung Army Operations Section to Colonel Inada, chief of AGS Operations Section, cited in Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 133.

  122. Ibid.; Tsuji, Nomonhan, 222. One is reminded of Field Marshal Michel Ney’s mission to arrest Napoleon after the deposed emperor returned from St. Helena to France before the Battle of Waterloo.

  123. Ibid., 225; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 133–34.

  124. Coox, Nomonhan, 870–71.

  125. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3c, 333–36. The subsequent careers of some of these officers, particularly Hattori and Tsuji, and their role in the coming of the Pacific War, are discussed in chapter 7.

  126. Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 136–37.

  127. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3c, 456–69.

  128. Japanese Army Ministry Archives, September 25, 1939. “Directive of Kwantung Army Chief of Staff: Control of Officers and Men of Kwantung Army Regarding the Nomonhan Incident,” U.S. National Archives and Record Service, Microfilm N.A. 16382, T-788, R139, frame 18,886–88.

  129. JSSM, XI, Pt. 3c, 432–35; Tsuji, Nomonhan, 226; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 137.

  130. Nihon Kindai Shiryo Kenkyuka, Nippon Riku-Kaigun no Seido Shoshiki Jinji (System, Organization, and Personnel of the Japanese Army and Navy) (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1971).

  131. P. A. Nevolin, ed., Geroi Khalkhin-Gola (Heroes of Khalkhin-Gol) (Perm: Perm Publishing House, 1966); Zhukov, Memoirs, 162–71.

  Chapter 6: Nomonhan, the Nonaggression Pact, and the Outbreak of World War II

  1. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany, 573.

  2. God Krizisa, vol. 1, 482–483.

  3. DGFP, VI, 574–80; Trumbull Higgins, Hitler and Russia: The Third Reich in a Two-Front War (New York: MacMillan, 1966), 19–20.

  4. DGFP, VI, no. 529; Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners, Predators, 112–13; Roberts, The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War, 77.

  5. DVP, no. 378, Astakhov’s record of the conversation with Schulenburg.

  6. Chamberlain spoke thus at the June 9, 1939, meeting of the Foreign Policy Committee of his cabinet, cited in Aster, 1939, 267.

  7. DBFP, V, 749.

  8. Aster, 1939, 273.

  9. Ibid., 281.

  10. Watt, How War Came, 380–83.

  11. The date was pushed back twice to September 1. Hitler feared that if he postponed the attack beyond the first days of September the autumn rains would bog down his offensive and prevent the rapid victory he needed. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany, 634ff.

  12. Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky admitted this to Foreign Minister Lord Halifax on March 31, 1939. DBFP, IV, 556–58.

  13. The Polish government would not budge on this despite the most intense British and French pressure. In desperation on August 19, Paris instructed General Doumenc to lie to the Russians and claim that Warsaw had agreed to grant access to the Red Army. By then it was a moot point. Stalin agreed that day to receive Ribbentrop in Moscow to conclude the nonaggression pact.

  14. DBFP, VII, 576–77.

  15. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 275.

  16. Watt, How War Came, 231, 376.

  17. DGFP, VI, 955–56.

  18. God Krizisa, vol. 2, no. 504.

  19. Ibid., no. 511.

  20. DVP, no. 445, Astakhov’s record of the conversation with Ribbentrop.

  21. Information revealed by the Russian Commission on the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, Pravda, December 24, 1989.

  22. An early account that attributes to the Nomonhan incident a significant role in the Soviet decision for the nonaggression pact is the Swiss historian Walter Hofer’s Die Entfesselung des Zweiten Weltkrieges, 82ff. G. N. Sevost’yanov states that among other reasons, the pact with Germany was “necessary” in order to prevent solidification of a German-Italian-Japanese alliance against the Soviet Union. Sevost’yanov, “Voenno i Diplomaticheskoe Porazhenie Yaponii,” 83. This point is treated in greater detail in G. N. Sevost’yanov, Politika Velikikh Derzhav Na Dal’ nem Vostoke Nakanune Vtoroi Mirovoi Voini (Policies of the Great Powers in the Far East on the Eve of the Second World War) (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Sotsialino-Ekonomicheskoi Literatury, 1961), 514–18. The best treatment of this linkage until now in Western writing is Haslam’s The Soviet Union and the Threat from the East, 133–34.

  23. World News and Views, June 3, 1939, 645–48.

  24. Suvorov, The Chief Culprit, 116.

  25. DGFP, VI, 1,059–62.

  26. Ibid., VII, 67.

  27. God Krizisa, vol. 2, no. 542.

  28. DGFP, VII, 77.

  29. Ibid., 84.

  30. Ibid., 121–23.

  31. Ibid., 225.

  32. DBFP, VII, 114–15, 225, 237.

  33. DGFP, VII, 540–41.

  34. Coox, Nomonhan, 880–4.

  35. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 271–72.

  36. F. C. Jones, Japan’s New Order in East Asia: Its Rise and Fall, 1937–1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 185.

  37. Kutakov, Japanese Foreign Policy, 154–55, 8.

  Chapter 7: Nomonhan Casts a Long Shadow

  1. Erickson, The Soviet High Command, 567–68; Bell, The Origins of the Second World War, 198.

  2. Anthony Cave Brown and Charles B. MacDonald, On a Field of Red: The Communist International and the Coming of World War II (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981), 534.

  3. JSSM, I, 111.

  4. Japan Army Ministry, Chairman, Investigating Committee, “Kwantung Army, Report on Study of Nomonhan Incident,” U.S. National Archives and Record Service, Microfilm N.A. 14550, T-803, R109, frames 19,024–27; Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 108.

  5. Ibid.

  6. This idea has made its way into Japanese popular culture. The Nomonhan incident is the climactic event in the sprawling and popular 1973 cinematic dramatization of Japan’s road to war, Senso to Ningen (War and Humanity), in which Soviet power at Nomonhan is, if anything, exaggerated. The Japanese defenders, the screen, and the audience are overwhelmed by endless and seemingly unstoppable waves of Soviet tanks.

  7. DGFP, XIII, 40–41; 61–63; 110–13; 375–79.

  8. Cited in Nagorski, The Greatest Battle, 157.

  9. Ibid., 446–49.

  10. lbid., 798–800.

  11. One exception is Gerard M. Friters, who states that “It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that Japanese strategy in World War II might have been different if the miniature war started by Japanese and Manchukuoan troops in the Nomonkhon [sic.] area … had not resulted in severe defeat.” Gerard M. Friters, Outer Mongolia and Its International Position (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949), 240.

  12. Kutakov, Japanese Foreign Policy, 153–54.

  13. Inada, “Soren Kyokutogun to no Taiketsu,” 298.

  14. Hayashi Saburo, Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War, ed. Alvin D. Coox, trans. Oswald White (Quantico, Va.: The Marine Corps Association, 1959), 117.

  15. Watanabe Tsuneo, ed., From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor: Who Was Responsible? (Tokyo: Yomiuri Shinbun, 2006), 114.

  16. John Toland, The Rising Sun (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), 114–15.

  17. Tanaka Ryukichi, Nihon Gunbatsu Ante Shi (History of the Hidden Feuds Within the Japanese Army) (Tokyo: Seiwado Shoten, 1947), 143–44; Maxon, The Control
of Japanese Foreign Policy, 47. Tanaka’s trustworthiness as a witness for both the prosecution and the defense at the IMTFE has been questioned. See Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), 492–94.

  18. Presseisen, Germany and Japan, 307.

  19. Shimada, Kanto Gun, 155–58.

  20. Erickson, The Soviet High Command, 599.

  21. S. Isaev, “Meropriyatiya KPSS po ukrepleniyu dal’nevostochnykh rubezhei v 1931–1941 gg” (“Measures of the CPSU to Strengthen the Far Eastern Border, 1931–1941”), Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal 9 (1981), 67, cited in Haslam, The Threat from the East, 143.

  22. Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, 199.

  23. Erickson, The Soviet High Command, 567–68.

  24. Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, 234. Ozaki Hotsumi, a leftist journalist, was a China expert and a full-time policy adviser to Premier Konoye.

  25. Ibid., 244.

  26. Erickson, The Soviet High Command, 631–32.

  27. This idea is supported by experts. See for example, Nagorski, The Greatest Battle; and R. H. S. Stolfi, Hitler’s Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

  28. Cited in Nagorski, The Greatest Battle, 5. Nevzorov, a retired army colonel, is a member of the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

  29. Nagorski, The Greatest Battle, 311.

  30. Ibid., 312.

  31. Petro G. Grigorenko, Memoirs, trans. Thomas Whitney (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 132.

  32. This definition excludes civil wars such as Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s. Such terms as “strategic-size forces” and “substantial period of time” are relative and subjective but are meant to exclude low-intensity conflicts regardless of duration (such as the Arab-Israeli conflict between 1957 and 1966) as well as sharp military clashes of short duration (such as the Sino-Soviet battle on the Ussuri River in March 1969).

  33. “The fact that the Japanese Army forged ahead with the dispatch of troops to China after the outbreak of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, without worrying about the Soviet response, derived from such estimates [of the Amur River incident].” Hata, Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi, 81.

  34. At the end of the war, Baron Hiranuma, a defendant at the IMTFE, was asked by the Soviet prosecutor whether he, as premier, ever gave orders to end the hostilities at Nomonhan. “As the supreme command of the army was not controlled by the government,” he replied, “I could not give such orders, but I expressed my views on the necessity of ceasing hostilities to the War Minister, General Itagaki, orally.” IMTFE, 7,854–56. This was considered a self-serving evasion by the prosecution, but it was the plain truth.