Summary
While this engagement is little-known in the West, it played an important part in subsequent Japanese conduct in World War II. This defeat, together with other factors, moved the Imperial General Staff in Tokyo away from the policy of the North Strike Group, favored by the Army, which wanted to seize Siberia as far as Lake Baikal for its resources. Other factors included the signing of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, which deprived the Army of the basis of its war policy against the USSR. Nomonhan earned the Army the displeasure of the Emperor, not so much due to its defeat, but because it initiated such an undeclared war without authorization. Now the South Strike Group, favored by the Navy, which wanted to seize the resources of Southeast Asia, especially the petroleum and mineral-rich Dutch East Indies, started to gain ascendancy. Because the European colonial powers were weak and being defeated in the war with Germany, coupled with their embargoes on Japan (especially of vital oil) in the second half of 1941, the result was the attack on Pearl Harbor, on 7 December that year. Despite plans being carried out for war against the USSR, the Japanese would never make an offensive movement against the Soviet Union again. In 1941, the two countries signed agreements respecting the borders of Mongolia and Manchukuo and pledging neutrality towards each other. They remained at peace until the Soviet Union declared war on Japan during the closing days of WWII and attacked Japanese forces in Manchuria.
It was the first victory for the soon-to-be-famous Soviet general Georgy Zhukov, earning him the first of his four Hero of the Soviet Union awards. The other generals, Grigoriy Shtern and Yakov Smushkevich, whose roles were no less important and who also earned the Hero, would instead be executed in the 1941 Purges. Zhukov himself was promoted and transferred west to the Kiev district. The battle experience gained by Zhukov was put to good use in December 1941 at the Battle of Moscow. Zhukov was able to use this experience to launch the first successful Soviet counteroffensive against the German invasion of 1941. Many units of the Siberian and other trans-Ural armies were part of this attack, and the decision to move the divisions from Siberia was aided by the Soviet masterspy Richard Sorge in Tokyo, who was able to alert the Soviet government that the Japanese were looking south and were unlikely to launch another attack against Siberia in the immediate future. A year after flinging the Germans back from Moscow, Zhukov planned and executed the Red Army's offensive at the Battle of Stalingrad, using a technique very similar to Khalkhin Gol, in which the Soviet forces held the enemy fixed in the center, built up a mass of force in the area undetected, and launched a pincer attack on the wings to trap the enemy army.
The Japanese, however, made no major strategic changes. They continued to underestimate their adversaries, deploying piecemeal units instead of mass units, emphasizing the courage and determination of the individual soldier to make up for the lack of firepower, protection, or overwhelming numbers. The problems that faced them at Khalkhin Gol, most importantly their deployment of only two light infantry divisions, and two tank regiments, would plague them again when the Americans and British recovered from their defeats of late 1941 and early 1942 and turned to the conquest of the Japanese Empire.
At the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, fourteen Japanese were charged with having "initiated a war of aggression . . . against the Mongolian People's Republic in the area of the Khalkhin-Gol River" and also with having waged a war "in violation of international law" against the USSR. Kenji Doihara, Hiranuma KiichirÅ, and SeishirÅ Itagaki were convicted on these charges.
The Mongolian town of Choibalsan, in the Dornod aimag (province) where the battle was fought, is the location of the "G.K. Zhukov Museum", dedicated to Zhukov and the 1939 battle. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia also has a "G.K. Zhukov Museum" with information about the battle of Khalkhin Gol.
Read more about this topic: Battles Of Khalkhin Gol
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