Japan wins Khalkhin Gol

What if Japan won the battle of Khalkhin Gol and the Soviet-Japanese border wars continued? What if they developed into a full scale war?

The implications here are fairly interesting, the Soviets really have their attention stuck in the east against a major power so no Winter War seems likely. In fact the soviets are very occupied indeed...Europe has to be all but ignored...
So many potential ways this could work out...
 

Geon

Donor
Battle of Khalkin Gol

If Japan opted to continue the war assuming they won the Battle of Khalkin Gol I suspect they would be very foolish. They would be making the same mistake the Germans made in 1941 when they invaded Russia. At the time of the Battle of Khalkin Gol Germany was nowhere near as ready as they were in 1941 and would have been able to offer only moral support to the Japanese. In addition, what would be Japanese objectives? Everything they needed for their economy was south in Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, and China, not north in Russia. The only objective that might have been at all useful was Vladivostok, and there is no way that Stalin would let that go without a fight.

I suspect within a short period of time the Japanese army would start to be pushed back and they would be forced to draw manpower from their Chinese front. Fighting on two fronts the Japanese would face eventual collapse. The price of winning Khalkin Gol would most likely have been loss of Manchuria and Korea. In addition no Pacific War to keep the Western European powers distracted likely means that Hitler moves far more carefully.

Geon
 
Frankly speaking, the Japanese cannot win Khalkin Gol. Their advance was a Soviet trap which Shtern more or less encouraged. They were also hampered by the air force essentially being grounded during the fight. Presuming the Soviets don't want them to advance, they won't thus the border holds around the status quo and the 23rd Division is given a bloddy nose instead of being crippled.

Seeing as neither side really want this conflict, it pretty much ends up the same as OTL, status quo on the border, the Soviets and Japanese maybe being a little more cautious/complacent respectively. The Soviets would have the best cassus belli but to get the PoD you need for this draw would imply that they had lost interest in the area or where more focused on trying to solidify peace in east asia.

Check out Storm in the East if you want where the Soviets win a earlier Khalkin Gol style conflict and go on to pursue a much more aggressive foreign policy against Japan.
 

Markus

Banned
This started as a border conflict and Japanese doctrine called for swift offensive action to push back the intruders. Had the IJA somehow been able to do that, they would not have presued the Red Army across the border. At least not much and not for long.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
What if Japan won the battle of Khalkhin Gol and the Soviet-Japanese border wars continued? What if they developed into a full scale war?

The implications here are fairly interesting, the Soviets really have their attention stuck in the east against a major power so no Winter War seems likely. In fact the soviets are very occupied indeed...Europe has to be all but ignored...
So many potential ways this could work out...

The Soviets had their attention in the east: the Far Eastern military headquarters was kept at full power and well supplied throughout the entire war, and had more and more powerful tanks and artillery than the entire IJA.
 
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