The Red Army's victory that shaped the Second World War * The story
of a little-known Soviet-Japanese conflict that influenced the outbreak and
shaped the course of the Second World War
In the summers of 1937, 1938, and 1939, Japan and the Soviet Union fought a series of
border conflicts, the first being on the Amur
River days before the outbreak of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. In
1938, division-strength units fought a bloody two-week battle at Changkufeng
near the Korea-Manchuria-Soviet border. The Nomanhan conflict (May-September
1939) on the Manchurian-Mongolian frontier, was a small undeclared war, with
over 100,000 troops, 500 tanks and aircraft, and 30,000-50,000 killed and
wounded. In the climactic battle, 20th-31st August, the Japanese were
annihilated. This coincided precisely with the conclusion of the German-Soviet
Nonaggression Pact, the green light to Hitler's invasion of Poland
and the outbreak of the Second World War one week later. This book relates these
developments and weaves them together.
The fact that these events coincided was not accidental. Europe was
sliding toward war as Hitler prepared to attack Poland. Stalin
sought to avoid a two-front war against Germany and Japan. His ideal
outcome would be for the fascist/militarist capitalists (Germany, Italy, and Japan) to fight the bourgeois/democratic
capitalists (Britain, France,
and perhaps the United
States), leaving the Soviet
Union on the sidelines while the capitalists exhausted themselves.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact pitted Germany against Britain and France and allowed Stalin to deal decisively with
an isolated Japan, which he did at
Nomanhan.
