…On June 1st of 1939 the head of the NKVD in the Far East defected to the Japanese in order to avoid being executed in Stalin’s purges. He brought with him complete information on the state of the Soviet forces and border defenses in the Far East, and a partial picture of those in the neighboring trans-Baikal district. This information revealed that the Soviets were very ill prepared for combat in the region, even discounting the effects of the ongoing purges. Elements of the IJA, especially in the Kwangtung Army in Manchuria, wanted to use this information to start a campaign against the USSR. The so called Strike North Faction, lead by the secretive Black Dragon Society or Kokuryu-kai, believed that a war with the USSR was the ideal way to secure the future of Japan by conquering everything east of Lake Baikal.
The higher headquarters of the IJA and the Japanese government realized that an all-out war with the USSR would be a great challenge even without the ongoing distraction of the fighting in China, with it such a war was considered to be disastrous. That said they did take note of how weak the Soviet forces in the area were and that a limited border offensive might bear fruit. Namely that a bite and hold operation could grab an area of strategic terrain and hold it against reasonable sized counteroffensives. Thus such an operation could be used as a bargaining chip to get the Soviets to cut aid to the Nationalist Chinese. It was thus decided on June 30th to launch a limited border offensive to apply pressure on the Soviets.
The target of this offensive would be the Changkufeng Heights west of Lake Khasan on the Korean-Soviet border. This location was chosen so that it would be the Korean Army involved, as not to embolden the Kwangtung Army into greater recklessness, and that it was already disputed between the two sides. The marshy territory nearby and single unpaved road for a supply route would make it difficult for the Soviets to deploy armored forces and heavy artillery while its proximity to the port of Rajin and a nearby railroad would make it easy for the Japanese to supply.
At 12:30 in the morning local time on July 25th a reinforced division of the IJA Korean Army crossed the border and rapidly seized the disputed area before digging in. Three days later the Soviets attempted a division level counterattack and were repulsed with heavy losses after inflicting only minor losses. A week after that a Corps level attack was launched on the Japanese position in concert with a large scale air strike, this was similarly repulsed with heavy losses. Given the Soviet lack of a railhead in the area an Army level attack would take another week to prepare and in that time the Japanese deployed a second division to the area and further dug in.
Given the loss of over a hundred tanks and aircraft already, along with almost 1500 dead and the expenditure of a good percentage of the areas ammunition stocks the Soviet high command was having second thoughts about continuing the counterattacks. A Japanese proposal on August 7th to withdraw from the area in stages alongside a cessation of Soviet aid to the Chinese was seriously considered in Moscow. Unfortunately for the Japanese the incident at Lake Khasan had already been joined by another incident.
Elements of the Kwangtung Army, feeling left out of the glory that the Chinese Armies and Korean Army were earning, decided to earn some glory of their own. On August 1st elements of the Kwangtung Army crossed the border into Mongolia near the town of Nomonhan, intending to occupy the disputed area east of the Khalkha River and evict the Mongolian units grazing their horses there. They expected only light resistance based on the information gleaned from the June 1st defection.
Unfortunately for them Mongolia was part of the Trans-Baikal theatre not the Far Eastern one and their information on the Soviet forces there was far less complete. Rather than one infantry and one cavalry regiment, there was a full infantry division and two cavalry regiments, effectively matching the Japanese invaders and slowing them down. The Japanese were able to continue to advance up until August 10th, when IJA headquarters ordered the IJAAF to stop offensive actions in the theatre. They had not managed to seize the entirety of the disputed area and had expended most of their stocks of ammunition in doing so. The Kwangtung Army forces thus had to stop to allow their strained supply situation to recover.
The Soviet high command looked at the situation and realized that they had an opportunity. The Trans-Baikal theatre was in better shape than the Far Eastern one. The area around Nomonhan further favored them logistically, with the Japanese having a more strained supply situation than they did. There was an opportunity to hand the Japanese a stinging defeat and avoid having to give any concessions. They rushed reinforcements into the area and skirmishing began to escalate.
By the 25th of August the Japanese were losing 100 men a day around Nomonhan and realized that the situation could escalate into a full scale war with the Soviets. Reinforcements bound for China were diverted to Manchuria, but were held at Harbin to prevent the Kwangtung Army from using them to escalate the situation.
On September 5th the Soviet forces near Nomonhan had grown to three infantry, two motorized infantry, two armored and two cavalry divisions, along with two independent armored brigades and almost a thousand aircraft, a concentration made possible by the seizure of every free motor vehicle in the Trans-Baikal, Central Asian and Far Eastern Theatres to provide logistical support. The IJA forces in the area consisted of two infantry divisions, two tank regiments, two Manchurian cavalry regiments and 200 aircraft by that point. Having received intelligence that Hitler was about to try something in Czechoslovakia Stalin ordered that the situation along the Japanese borders be ended immediately.
On September 6th Soviet forces launched a large scale double envelopment on the Japanese west of Nomonhan. Supported by a huge number of bombers the nearly a thousand armored fighting vehicles of the Red Army punched through about a twentieth of their number of Japanese opponents, rapidly destroying the lead Japanese tank regiment and the flanking cavalry units. The lead IJA 25th division found itself encircled by the evening of the 8th. Attempts to break the encirclement on the 10th and 11th merely cost the Japanese their other tank regiment and half of the 9th division’s strength. On the 14th after expending enormous amounts of firepower the isolated Japanese 25th division was functionally destroyed, and with it all Japanese forces east of the Soviet claimed border.
On the 17th The Soviets and Japanese came to an agreement that the Japanese would withdraw from the Changkufeng heights and that the Soviets would return all captured prisoners and equipment. This would quickly be followed by a non-aggression pact, which would allow both parties to turn their attention to matters elsewhere they deemed more vital…
…The Soviet border incidents had the effect of giving the Chinese a two month respite in the vital battle for Wuhan as IJA headquarters would not release further reinforcements until October given the potential of a future flare up. Furthermore the incidents discredited the Strike North Faction within the Japanese military, Nomonhan had demonstrated that they lacked the logistics to make large sweeping advances into Soviet territory. Furthermore even the success at Changkufeng came with costs, the semi-static fighting their used up an enormous amount of heavy artillery ammunition, a full scale fight with the USSR would quickly drain the Japanese stockpiles dry. War with the USSR would thus not be an easy victory like their previous war with Czarist Russia but a long hard slog in the best of conditions. The Navy dominated Strike South Faction thus gained considerable political leverage…
…The Soviet victory over the Japanese at Nomonhan had been relatively costly. Despite a ten to one advantage in armor, a five to one advantage in airpower, a three to one advantage in manpower and a two to one advantage in artillery they had taken heavy losses. They had lost 30,000 men, as many as the entire IJA force, along with 250 tanks and 150 armored cars and 200 aircraft by most reliable estimates. Given these losses against forces that were, outside of the armored and air units, second or third rate by IJA standards, a Japanese invasion remained a major threat in their eyes, especially with the failure to dislodge them from Changkufeng…
…The Soviet commander, one Georgy Zhukov, had pulled off the first true successful large scale mechanized operation, well before any of the German “Blitzkriegs”. For this he was rewarded with a 7.62mm revolver bullet to the back of the head from the NKVD due to Stalin’s paranoia, along with several other individuals key to this victory…
-Into the Abyss: The leadup to the Second World War, Harper and Brothers, New York, 2009
I was so very tempted to make a Magic Bushido Hands joke when mentioning the Black Dragon Society
On a more serious note yeah Sanna is a fictional character. When hammering 3 or now that I think of it 4 sets of TL outlines to make this TL I needed at least an OTL strength Italy, but at the same time Italy gets f*cked over more in WWI, so I need someone who acts a lot differently than the Moose in charge
As for FDR and *Munich, he got some credit unfairly for OTL Munich, for basically just some supportive phone calls, same thing happened here
