Consequences of Japanese occupied Mongolia

In the 1930s the Red Army has yet to do anything that would impress the Japanese into believing they were invincible.

Actually, the Japanese were scared shitless, because they had a fairly good idea of how the USSR was building up.

From the battle of Khalkin-Gol we can observe that Soviet troops under the best Soviet commander of his generation (Zhukov) can indeed defeat the Japanese in open terrain.

Mrm. A lot of recent scholarship suggests Zhukov was average; check out Thunder in the East, if you're curious about the more recent view of the Soviet military machine.

Another myth is the Red Army being far stronger pre-purge. They were certainly weakened to some extent but even pre-purge the Red Army was a mess. Most of the high ranking officers purged were political leaders anyways.

Cite?
 

Hnau

Banned
If anything the Nazis will be less confident in Barbarossa, I agree. But I still believe that with a practically fully mobilized Red Army, more experience and men, and most on the other side of the Urals, the Nazis are going to face a Russian horde streaming down from the mountains in December of 1941. Nevertheless, a less arrogant invasion strategy, continued weapons research, and Nazi winter warfare equipment will be great advantages in and of themselves. Hmmm... I think in this scenario you could make a case for the war turning out however you want it to.
 
Even accepting (pretty dubious) idea that Soviets would not invade Mongolia to assist anti-Chinese revolutionaries there if it wasn't for Ungern, I don't think that having Mongolia (devoid of railways) would tempt Japanese to attack USSR more than having Trans-Siberian railway running virtually on the other side of the border did IOTL. You have to remember that getting from Mongolia to Transsib means either going through 150 km (as crow flies) of $hittiest roadless mountain forest one can imagine or fighting Soviet armour through 300 km of opent terrain (tanker's paradise). Japanese testing of the water could be different ITTL (something instead of Nomonhan), but result would be the same (or even more disastrous for the Japanese, taking into account that Zhukov had to truck every sack of flour, drop of gasoline or rifle round 700 km from the nearest railway station IOTL). Those experiences will likely force Japanese to wait for appropriate moment, something they did IOTL.

Mrm. A lot of recent scholarship suggests Zhukov was average; check out Thunder in the East, if you're curious about the more recent view of the Soviet military machine.
While probably not being military genius, Zhukov was "averagely good" and he had what it takes to make Soviet war machine work.

The Russians were not known as a scary warmachine at the time. They lost to Japan in 1905, lost to Germany in 1917, then went through the ignominy of a ruinous civil war in which the British, Americans, Japanese, Czechs, Greeks, Poles, among others all had their zones of influence on Russian soil. In the 1930s the Red Army has yet to do anything that would impress the Japanese into believing they were invincible.
Japanese, being well-established in logistic paradise (or what passes for it in Far East) of the Northern China had similar mindset, picking on Soviets in 1938 in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Khasan Look how much good it did to them.
 
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