Battles of Khalkhin Gol

할힌골 전투

Division-scale fighting from May to September 1939 along the Khalkhin Gol (Halha River) in eastern Mongolia, between Soviet and Mongolian forces on one side and the Kwantung Army and Manchukuoan troops on the other. Japan named it the Nomonhan Incident after a nearby village. It began with small clashes between border patrols in May, passed through a Japanese river crossing in July, and culminated on 20 August when Georgy Zhukov attacked with 57,000 troops, 498 tanks, and 557 aircraft. Infantry pinned the Japanese in the centre while armour swung around both flanks, and the double envelopment destroyed the Japanese 23rd Division by 31 August. Soviet and Mongolian dead and missing: 9,703; Japanese dead: 8,629. The defeat broke the Imperial Japanese Army's Strike North faction in favour of Strike South, and the double envelopment Zhukov first executed here was repeated at Stalingrad.