Japan vs. Russia: Before World War II, These Two Nations Fought a Mini-War

Michael Peck

Security,

So who won? 

For all its bluster, Japan had been a taught a lesson it would not forget. Or, rather, the tactical lessons would be forgotten five years later, when Japanese soldiers again had to turn themselves into human anti-tank mines in a vain attempt to defeat American Sherman tanks.

This is a story of a battle that was, and a war that wasn't.

(This first appeared several years ago.)

Between 1938 and 1939, the Soviet Union and the Japanese Empire fought a series of clashes along the border between Japanese-occupied Manchuria, Russian-controlled Mongolia and the Siberian frontier near Russia's vital Pacific port of Vladivostok.

The prizes were the rich resources of Manchuria, and beyond that, which of the two would be the dominant power in Northeast Asia. But even more important was the ultimate outcome of the Manchurian battles, which culminated in Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War between Japan and the United States.

It might be hard to believe that all this began with a few insignificant hills and steppe. Yet both sides had tangled before. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the new Japanese Empire—dismissed by the Tsar's forces as racially inferior Asiatics—sank the Russian navy, outfought the Russian army and seized the strategically important harbor of Port Arthur (which the Russians themselves had previously extorted from China). During the Russian Civil War in 1919, Japan sent 70,000 troops to support the anti-Communist White Army. The Imperial Japanese forces nearly annexed Siberia before withdrawing.

There was little love lost between either side, especially in the ultra-militaristic atmosphere of the 1930s. Japan lurched towards fascism while Stalin bulked up Soviet industrial and military power for the inevitable clash with capitalism. Indeed, the Russo-Japanese conflict was in some ways a battle of mirror images. Whether it meant dying for Stalin or the Emperor, both sides cared nothing for how many of their men perished on the battlefield.

The fuse was first lit at the beginning of the 1930s, when Japan's aggressive Kwantung Army—on its own initiative—occupied China's Manchurian territory in 1931, creating a disputed 3,000-mile frontier between Japan and Russia.