A Battle That Never Gets Discussed

Pearl Harbor, Midway, the Battle of El Alamein, the allied invasion of Italy, Normandy, the Blitz, the battle of Leningrad, the battle of Attu....all the great battles and legacies of World War II....only occur because of seventy cavalry horsemen from the Soviet Union....who were in search of greener pastures for their horses, and they happen to cross the line splitting Mongolia (a part of the Soviet Union then) and China, which was controlled by the Japanese.

Maybe it was a bad map.  Maybe the officer was incompetent at reading maps.  Maybe they guessed wrong on the route and just rode an extra mile too far.  The results of this one afternoon sets the stage totally different for Germany, Japan, the Soviets and the US. 

This is one of my little history essays which lays out this German moment in history where strategy mattered. 

The date was 11 May 1939.

It's an odd piece of history that no high school teacher will touch, and the vast number of college history professors will simply leave there....not to be part of the class or any discussion. This crossing of the line...in the interest of greener pastures....is what creates a odd revision to the overall plan of Germany and Japan for conquering the majority of the civilized world.

You'd shake your head.....how seventy odd horsemen did something stupid, and rewrote the outcome of World War II....but it's a interesting tale.

The Japanese will react on this day to the "intrusion" of the Soviet cavalry men and their horses. There will be shots fired, and a retreat by the Soviet-Mongolian force. 

Two days later....the Soviet-Mongolian force will return in greater numbers, and effectively destroy the local Japanese force in the area. The small battle here should have been the end.....but it wasn't. 

Within six weeks....both sides were pulling in extra troops, and the Japanese force mounted a major attack against the Soviets. Air battles were conducted....aircraft were destroyed on the ground, and a full-scale, but limited action was occurring. But there's a problem....the Japanese commander didn't ever ask the Japanese high command back in Japan for permission.  No one ever says much over why but one has to think that if he'd asked for permission....they might have said no.

Things got hectic once they figured out the whole thing going on. This wasn't going along with the BIG strategy of the German and Japanese alliance. You see...the BIG plan was....Germany would only have one front to worry about once they'd stream rolled over into France and taken control, and that front would be the western front.

The Japanese....as part of the strategy....would stage operations at some point in 1942....in the far east, and threaten the Soviet Union from the Siberian region. Stalin had sent out a major part of his military to Siberia, and the better of troops, tanks and aircraft were in that region. Japan would keep them busy, and eventually win.....and be rewarded with everything in Siberia.

Hitler's force would only face a limited military capability around the western portion of the Soviet Union, and within a year or two....have kicked Stalin out of Moscow. You can imagine phase two....where they return to the British situation....easily threaten them....and within weeks to months....establish a treaty where Britain will fall. The royal family will leave for Canada, and a German-friendly government will be in place.

Yeah, that resigned British King would have likely been brought back, and put on the throne.....just to establish some legit nature. At that point, there'd be three nations of significance.....the Germans, the Japanese, and the US.

By 1944....the US would be standing there with limited options.

Well....but back to the Mongolian episode. In this moment of Japanese "stall"....the Soviets quickly plan and execute a massive summer campaign against the Japanese force in the region. It will be referred to....as the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.

 Around mid-September of 1939....the Japanese will come to agree to a ceasefire. There are massive losses for both camps. A force of roughly 55,000 Soviet troops will face a slightly superior number of Japanese troops (roughly 80,000). But the Soviets will have 500 tanks in the region....of a superior quality, and have three times the number of aircraft. The Japanese land-force? It never had the technical capabilities that the Soviets had.

Maybe the Japanese Navy was a four-star force....but you can't say that for the Japanese Army.

This ceasefire will be a hotly discussed topic back at Japan's military headquarters. The Japanese will claim roughly sixteen thousand dead or wounded, with the Soviets claim at nine thousand (it might have been significantly more, but the Soviets just weren't ever that honest over the number business).

So Japan reevaluated the whole strategy that Hitler's team had laid out. After Khalkhin Gol....they really didn't want to go back into Siberia and conduct another loser of a war. So, a new strategy was drawn up....which meant that Hitler had to fight two fronts.....and Stalin would move his best troops and tanks west....to defeat Hitler. The Japanese strategy would mean that they'd have to intimidate and really annihilate the US at Pearl Harbor.....thus creating a war against an enemy who probably wouldn't have been part of the game for two or three more years (then it'd be too late to help Britain or the Soviets).

So seventy cavalrymen....with their seventy horses.....in search of greener pastures....trip up the Hitler strategy....change the dynamics of World War II in a matter of minutes, and change the balance of history forever.

Why does it not ever get mentioned?

I would speculate over three basic reasons. First, altogether, there's never more than 130,000 troops combined....in this battle. Second, it's in the middle of nowhere, and no journalists ever report the stages or outcomes of daily events. For the most part, you have to accept various accounts (some false) from both the Japanese and Soviet achieves to tell part of the story. Third, it's not some grand episode, or some crown prince murdered, or some massive invasion. It's simply seventy guys with hungry horses. And that's not really hot history stuff that would be worth listening to in a boring history class.

For Germans?  Well, here's the thing.  Had this little cavalrymen episode not occurred, then the whole layout of the Moscow and Leningrad expedition would have changed, and Hitler would have had a totally different threat in 1943 and 1944.