Japanese crush the Soviets in Battle of Khalkhin Gol

No, the POD happens beforehand. The japanese get some REAL tanks, not those tin cans they had in WW2. So, assuming a POD in the mid 1930s, where Japan wakes up to the fact that their tanks are being neglected, and successfully design a medium tank, perhaps an earlier version of the Type 1 Chi-He, and mayhaps a heavy tank.......

I know this would require furthur PODs, especially since during WW2, tank production was neglected for Naval construction, with much high grade steel going to the Navy. Assume ITTL more steel gets allocated for the army. Oh, and Japan also, as a side note, develops and deploys transport trucks (IOTL the japanese suffered supply shortages here because of lack of this type of transport)

So, assume that Japan, with a greater emphasis on medium Tanks, and also avoiding encirclement, crushes the Soviet First Soviet Mongolian Army Group, and moves toward Lake Baikal, and it's attendant resources.

What happens then?
 
No, the POD happens beforehand. The japanese get some REAL tanks, not those tin cans they had in WW2. So, assuming a POD in the mid 1930s, where Japan wakes up to the fact that their tanks are being neglected, and successfully design a medium tank, perhaps an earlier version of the Type 1 Chi-He, and mayhaps a heavy tank.......

I know this would require furthur PODs, especially since during WW2, tank production was neglected for Naval construction, with much high grade steel going to the Navy. Assume ITTL more steel gets allocated for the army. Oh, and Japan also, as a side note, develops and deploys transport trucks (IOTL the japanese suffered supply shortages here because of lack of this type of transport)

So, assume that Japan, with a greater emphasis on medium Tanks, and also avoiding encirclement, crushes the Soviet First Soviet Mongolian Army Group, and moves toward Lake Baikal, and it's attendant resources.

What happens then?

So, the IJN had less ships and planes.


And the Soviets suffered a minor defeat and they realized it will be better for them to reform their armies and tactics severals severals months before the Winter War.
 
So, the IJN had less ships and planes.


And the Soviets suffered a minor defeat and they realized it will be better for them to reform their armies and tactics severals severals months before the Winter War.

perhaps, or perhaps Zhukov, the driving force behind those reforms, gets a bullet behind the ear or the gulag treatment.....
 
perhaps, or perhaps Zhukov, the driving force behind those reforms, gets a bullet behind the ear or the gulag treatment.....

It would be more likely to be Shtern, Zhukov wasn't in charge during the Battle and if it was a Soviet defeat, it wouldn't be associated with him but rather with the purged Marshal.

This is way too much of a handwave however, why are the Japanese making medium or heavy tanks in the first place?
 
It would be more likely to be Shtern, Zhukov wasn't in charge during the Battle and if it was a Soviet defeat, it wouldn't be associated with him but rather with the purged Marshal.

This is way too much of a handwave however, why are the Japanese making medium or heavy tanks in the first place?

read the OP
 
Khalkhin Gol was a rude shock to the IJA, one of the reasons Japan wasn't pushing for another round with the Soviet Bear.

But suppose observers in Spain report that the Soviet T-26's and BT-5's are better than their Type 95 HA-GO, Type 89 OT-SU and the all-but-worthless tankettes. Realizing that a conflict is likely the IJA demands something be done about this and they demand help from Germany...
 
The OP isn't an explanation, why do the Japanese 'wake up' to this fact when it's contrary to the war they're fighting in China and the war they're planning to fight in SE Asia?

I don't have the history knowledge to be able to retrace a POD back years. But I assume this isn't too improbable.....
 
I don't have the history knowledge to be able to retrace a POD back years. But I assume this isn't too improbable.....

It is, the Japanese have no real understanding of armoured warfare. Even with the clear superiority of armour in their defeat at Khalkyn Gol they still never learned, wthen the Soviets came back to finish the job in 1945 they found essentially the same tactics and the same pathetically weak tanks facing them.

The Japanese could get a draw if they were smarter, that's about as well as they could do.
 
Well the problem here would be a much weaker IJN with a stronger competing IJA. Heavy tanks would be quite frankly useless in most of Japan's potential theaters: Jungles, islands, Chinese light infantry. And even if they decide to use it against the Soviets further they would have to scarp their navy to make any strategic gains in the vastness of Siberia .

And like The Red said the IJA would need experience, training, industrial output, manpower all of which would have to be pulled out from other sectors of a nation equivalent to fascist Italy in economic strength with equally poor judgement. Even if they pull it off the cost would probably prohibitive.
 
In the Chokoho Incident/Battle of Lake Khasan (張鼓峰事件), the IJA was able to repulse several attacks by Soviet tanks. On Hill 54, I beleive they turned back a force of 50 tanks. This was largely a result of the tanks being lightly-armored interwar models, used in penny packets. Still, it seems to have had the result of convincing the IJA that their 20mm AT guns were sufficient. If, for whatever reason, the Soviets did better, then perhaps the IJA would adopt better AT guns in greater number? In 1937 or 1938 it shouldn't be too hard to get the lisence for a nice high-velocity 25mm or 37mm gun. If adopted in numbers, that should let the IJA do comparatively better during the period, without taking too much steel away from the IJN. Given how Japan was constantly worried about Soviet attacks in the period, I could see them going ahead with such a plan, if they become convinced that Soviet tanks are a real threat.
 
Why/how does Japan get *real* tanks? They didn't have any need for them short of a direct, true offensive and if they have them, that's not going to mitigate the flaws exposed in Khalkhin Ghol. Japanese tactics/doctrine was fundamentally that of pre-WWI armies, focusing on massed attacks and ignoring willfully firepower's ability to stop those attacks before they fairly get started. There's no new weapon that's going to fix *that* problem, and the only real way to remotely improve Japanese performance is to square this particular sphere and convince Imperial Japanese generals that firepower really can defeat elan/cran/spirit and thus investing in firepower saves manpower. Unfortunately for Japan its successes were misread as being due to that spirit factor and not to superior tactical and strategic organization relative to their enemies, which means when they face an enemy whose overall strength/ability moves beyond the concepts of the pre-1914 way of war.....
 
Japan was largely an unmechanized army, them arbitrarily deciding that they need tanks will not change this. The Soviets will still win against any Japanese offensive in Mongolia, even if the Japanese manage to pull off a nigh-impossible win against the Red Army at Khalkhin Gol. The Japanese have no reason to push into Siberia aside from Vladivostok, realizing that it was defended by a numerically and technologically superior force was merely icing on the cake, everything Japan wants is in China and the Pacific area.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Based on Japan's basic strategic mindset, I would imagine that this would happen immediately after pigs fly.

The Japanese had no idea of what was needed on the modern combined arms battlefield. Whether this was due to the fact they didn't fight on the Western Front in WW I (my favorite theory on the subject) of if it was based more on their well demonstrated lack of concern for the lives of their troops/airmen/sailors or some other factor the simple fact is that they didn't have strategic thought or tactics on the subject.
 
Japanese infantry did some pretty impressive feats, and were quite possibly the best skilled at being light infantry, but the had neither the manpower, industrial power, and knowhow to conduct motorized warfare.
 

The Vulture

Banned
That assumes the Imperial Army would be given priority over the Navy on available resources like steel to use on something untested like tank warfare, which I don't see happening given Japanese doctrine of the time.
 
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