In 1938, Russia and Japan Almost Went to War (And History Would Have Been Changed Forever)

Michael Peck

Security, Asia

What would have happenned? 

Tactically, the battle highlighted the weaknesses of an infantry-centric army fighting a conventional battle against mechanized forces in open terrain. It also broke the comforting myth that morale beats firepower (though the reverse isn't always true, either, as the U.S. discovered in Vietnam). "Doctrine could only carry it so far when there were too few Japanese tanks and too few artillery pieces to influence decisively the outcome of the battle," Drea writes. "This left the Japanese infantrymen armed with gasoline-filled bottles to face counterattacks by Soviet tanks and infantry supported by artillery."

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.

But the bigger consequence to history was what didn't happen. In the summer of 1941, as the Soviet Union seemed about to collapse under the Nazi blitzkrieg, Japan had a choice. It could strike north and seize Siberia, while the bulk of the Red Army fought in Europe. Or it could strike south, at the resource-abundant Pacific colonies of the British, Dutch and Americans.

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

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.

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