Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945

by Rana Mitter

While Western attention focused on the darkening situation in Europe, a battle that would shape the conflict in East Asia took place on the borders of Outer Mongolia, Manchukuo, and the eastern part of the Soviet Union. Through much of 1938 and early 1939 one faction of the Japanese Imperial Army had attempted to pressure the Soviets on their eastern border. It appeared that the USSR might be an easy target; Stalin’s paranoid purges meant that many of the Red Army’s best officers had been executed or sent to Siberia. In May 1939 a dispute flared up near the village of Nomonhan between troops stationed in the Soviet client state of Mongolia and Japanese troops from Manchukuo. Within days both sides had built up their forces, with nearly 60,000 Soviet troops facing nearly 40,000 troops of the Kwantung Army. For the next four months, until mid-September, the two powers fought an epic battle that