Nomonhan Incident

     Japan had waged war against Russia four times in the 20th Century, all in the space of 50 years.  The first, Russo-Japanese War of 1905 was a very successful venture for Japan.  It had gained valuable territory in the form of former Russian concessions in Manchuria.  In fact winning the war against Russia made it that much easier for Japan to annex Korea.  Japan had also gained tremendous prestige as a world power, for it had defeated a major European power.  The fact is that although Japan had won some impressive battles, including the sinking of the Russian battleship Varyak, the war was actually fought to a standstill.  It ended up more or less like a boxing match where a decision is awarded to one fighter for having scored more "points."  In the eyes of the European powers and the United States, Japan had scored more points so victory was awarded to Japan.  The United States and Europe did not want the Russian Bear to get too confident about its power, they wanted to cut it down to size so it could be controlled!  Whatever the case, Japan was declared a winner.
     In 1918, only a little over a decade after the Russo-Japanese War, the European allies decided to intervene in the Russian Revolution on the side of the Tsarist regime.  Japan was then an ally of the European powers and the United States, so Japan was one of the first to land troops in Vladivostok and move inland.  While the European powers and the United States who participated in this misguided adventure had no ulterior motive other than to prevent the Bolsheviks from taking over, such was not the case with Japan.  Japan managed to take control of the Sakhalin Island and other lesser islands close to Japan which it refers to as the Northern Territory.  In case of Sakhalin, an island about the size of Japan's main island of Honshu, Japan decided to colonize it and simply took it away from the Soviets.  The resistance that the Japanese faced was very weak, just some rag-tag, disorganized groups of guerrillas here and there.  On Sakhalin island itself, there was no resistance.  Japan brought over 25,000 Korean slave labor force to build the infrastructure for its colonists.  Once that was completed, the Japanese colonists moved in and in 1925 Japan declared that Sakhalin was now a Japanese Colony.  No one protested, except the new Soviet Union which had only recently, in 1922, emerged from its civil war.  So, although the Soviets complained, no one listened.
     In 1931, after the "Manchurian Incident," Manchuria became Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet regime, a "bastard child" as some Japanese critics called it.  In 1937 after the so-called "Marco Polo Bridge Incident," another staged incident by the Japanese.  Japan invaded China and within a year had occupied a great chunk of the real estate.  But apparently, that was not enough for some of the officers in the Kwantung Army.  They wanted more!  Starting from around 1932, the Japanese constantly made incursions into Mongolia from the Manchurian side.  Between 1932 and 1934 there were over 151 incidents of border skirmishes between the Japanese troops and the Soviet trained Mongolian Army.  Although the Japanese Army was having great success in China, fighting against poorly trained and unmotivated Nationalist troops, they found the Mongols to be a lot more difficult to deal with and could not just roll over them as they were accustomed to doing in China.  So, the frequency of incursions increased both in size and intensity.  Between 1935 and 1936 alone there were over 150 incidents of border skirmishes.  Then in 1939, an infamous Kwantung Army General Tsuji Masanobu, launched a major attack across the border into Mongolia using somewhere in the area of around 75,000 troops.
     As with most Japanese military campaigns of that period, initially the Japanese had success.  The Kwantung Army had superiority in artillery and air power.  The Japanese pilots were seasoned from their experience in China, while the Soviet and Mongolian pilots were relatively inexperience.  In one sortie, the Japanese pilots recorded 19 kills of Soviet planes in 15 minutes!  The Japanese also had a very low opinion of the Soviet soldiers.  They remembered the rag-tag groups that they faced during their time in Siberia when they seized Sakhalin.  They felt confident that they could just crush the Soviet opposition.  This was a totally undeclared war.  The Kwantung Army was acting completely on its own!  But they didn't count on having to face a brilliant Soviet General, little known at that time, General Giorgi Zhukov.  Zhukov, a brilliant tactician and strategist who was later to become the architect of the destruction of German Army on the Eastern Front, literally shocked the Japanese with his tactics and crushed the Japanese forces at a place called Nomonhan in Mongolia.  The actual main battle took place at a location called Khalkhin Gol, so the incident is known as the Battle of Khalkhin Gol or the Nomonhan Incident.  This undeclared war began in May and ended in September, only five months, but it took its toll.  There were approximately 60,000 casualties, and the Japanese troops who fought bravely, were decimated.  Japan, and Kwantung Army in particular were spiritually crushed.  They were not quite invincible like they thought they were.  They could not just run roughshod over the Mongolian and Soviet Troops like they have been doing against the Chinese.  In fact, it was the pride of the Japanese Army, the Kwantung Army that was run over roughshod!
     The Nomonhan Incident should have alerted everyone of Soviet Union's capability and Zhukov's brilliance as a general.  But, like so many things, no one paid attention.  Zhukov employed exactly the same tactics several times on the Eastern Front, each time it resulted in a rout of the Nazis.  Although Hitler may not have paid any attention to Zhukov's success at Nomonhan, the Japanese certainly did.  It is for this reason that Japan never moved the Kwantung Army out of Manchuria.  They were sure that the Soviets would come storming across the border, sooner or later.  They were right, of course, but that didn't take place until August of 1945, in a "declared war."