Plausibility check - Soviets school Japanese Army before 1939

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Since the Japanese takeover of Manchuria there had been a variety of border incidents with the Soviets, escalating to multiple armed clashes from 1935 to 1939.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Japanese_border_conflicts#Small_battles

The two largest and most significant battles came toward the end of the period, at Lake Khasan in 1938 and Khalkin-Gol in 1939. The Soviets are considered to have gotten the better of the Japanese in both of these.

However, it was only in the aftermath of the Khalkin-Gol/Nomonhan battle of 1939 that Tokyo took notice, put the officers of the Kwangtung Army on a leash and compelled much more cautious and correct behavior on the Soviet and Mongolian borders. Presumably, this restraint by high commands in Tokyo and Manchuria was brought on by the particularly severe demonstration of Soviet superiority in equipment and maneuver during the summer 1939 clash.

The "lesson" of the 1939 clash, "don't mess with the Soviets" stuck & caused behavior modification that earlier clashes did not.

Is it plausible for an earlier clash to have taught the Japanese this lesson definitively? Could it have been as simple as Japanese forces probing in the same portion of the Manchukuo-Mongolian border in an earlier year (1932, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 or 38)? Would the Soviet command have been capable of giving the offending Japanese a beating in any of those years?

In turn, might an earlier definitive "lesson" for Japan have accelerated the conclusion of a Japanese-Soviet neutrality pact? Or, if such a clash occurred before the Marco Polo bridge incident of July 1937, might it have made Japan more resistant to getting pulled into an escalated war with China, for fear of a Soviet intervention?
 
I don't think the northern border was secure for years after Manchuria was "captured" - northern Manchuria still sporadically came under bandit and nominal warlord control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Zhanshan
An example.

For the border clashes themselves, Khalkin-gol was significant because of the high Japanese casualties - nearly 8000 died. Now, if this occurred anytime during the early 1930s, I certainly believe the Japanese would sue for peace with the Soviets.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
I don't think the northern border was secure for years after Manchuria was "captured" - northern Manchuria still sporadically came under bandit and nominal warlord control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Zhanshan
An example.

Well, I suppose the Japanese lost that many men because Khalkin-Gol was their largest commitment to a border incident and they positioned their forces on ground the Soviets were determined to win back.

So, I guess this could have somehow happened a few years earlier.

From the link Zeppelinair provided, it looks like the Manchurian pacification was keeping the Japanese too busy to claim bits of Mongolia at least through 1934.

I'm thinking about the earliest a clash could have occurred in Khalkin-Gol, to a similar result to OTL, would have been about 1936.


Over the entirety of the 1930s, including the purge years, the Soviet army was probably only getting better year by year in terms of equipment and quantity.

Even if purges of promising weapons designers presented long-term opportunity costs, it's doubtful that such purging prevented any weapons that would have been ready to use from being in Soviet army hands between 36 and 39.

On the other hand, the officer corps and "command climate" in the Soviet officer corps had to decline overall during the purges of 36 to 39. Most good ideas, tactics, techniques and procedures the Soviet Army had in 1939, they probably had already developed by 1936.
 
If for some reason the Soviets don't take kindly to the Japanese setting up Manchukuo, they there's nothing stopping them from intervening in Harbin to "protect" the (White) Russians there as well as their rights to the railroad. But given how Stalinist politics worked, I think the Soviets wanted to play it safe and not look like aggressors.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
I think if the Russians try to resist the Japanese 1932, it would be risky and out-of--character for two reasons -

It would screw with collectivization and the 1st 5 year plan objectives coming due in 33'

..and, the Soviet army did not have the same crushing edge in mechanized forces, heavy artillery and monoplane aircraft over the Japanese in the early 30s that it gained by the mid to late 1930s.

Of course the Japanese army was less disadvantaged in terms of equipment, but it was numerically smaller in the early 1930s compared to the middle and later 1930s.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I think that on the whole the Soviets tended not to be risk-takers; if they could not be sure of getting what they wanted from the Japanese (which, in this scenario, could vary between kicking them out of Manchuria entirely or just contesting the northern parts), and also could not be sure about the Chinese and international reaction, then intervention would not be a "good" option.
 
Top