Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria in 1939

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"A Strange War," observed a 20 July 1939 New York Times editorial about the fighting between the Soviet Red Army and the Imperial Japanese Army on the Mongolian steppes. The Times derided both combatants' claims as exaggerated but inadvertently touched on the distinctive feature of the fighting when it described the battle as "raging in a thoroughly out-of-the-way corner of the world where it cannot attract a great deal of attention." Geography, the combatants' compulsive secrecy, and the subsequent outbreak of World War II in September 1939 all combined to overshadow the most massive use of tanks theretofore recorded. The Soviets used over 1,000 tanks during the fighting and, under the command of General Georgi K. Zhukov, evidenced skill and sophistication at mechanized warfare. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), essentially an infantry force, fared poorly, and fell victim to a Soviet double envelopment.

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