August 20-31, 1939
Few battles are less known or more significant than
Georgii Zhukov's decisive defeat of a Japanese force of seventy-five thousand men on the Mongolian-Manchurian border in the waning days of August 1939, just as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was being signed and
World War II was about to begin. Handicapped by lengthy supply lines and facing crack units of the hitherto undefeated Japanese Kwantung Army, Zhukov, in a classic double envelopment and using his armor as a spearhead, first surrounded and then employed withering artillery to destroy his Japanese opponents. In doing so, according to Soviet sources, more than sixty thousand casualties and prisoners were inflicted on the Japanese—more than Tokyo received in that entire year in their concurrent war against China.
As a result, the Japanese warlords gave up forever their aspirations for an empire that would have included both Inner and Outer Mongolia, the Soviet Maritime Provinces, and key portions of Siberia, and chose instead to focus on obtaining the resources of Southeast Asia, leading to war with the United States rather than with the Soviet Union. Thus Khalkin-Gol had the vital effect of keeping Tokyo neutral toward the USSR throughout World War II. Among other things, this allowed
Joseph Stalin to transfer key divisions from Siberia to the West, which played a vital role in saving Moscow from the Nazi onslaught in December 1941 (see
Moscow, Campaigns for).
Marshall Brement
