debor044

The Second Sino-Japanese Conflict of 1931-1945 saw thousands of different regiments, divisions, units, and armies, nationalities fighting throughout what is today Mainland China, Myanmar (Burma), Mongolia, and Korea. Torn apart by revolution and civil war from 1911-1930, China faced a great challenge to its national sovereignty when the mighty Japanese military decided to press its economic and political claims in Manchuria and Northern China beginning in 1930-1931. Japanese Army artillery in Manchuria, 1931 One of the most unique Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) units to fight in the earliest portion of the great Sino-Japanese conflict of 1931-1945 was the Skull Regiment, known alternatively as the Skull Squadron and as the “Manchurian Stormtroopers” for their unique regimental iconography and symbols. The Japanese Skull Regiment was seemingly inspired by the German Totenkopf, or Death’s Head regiments/brigades of the 18th-20th centuries.  Formed originally during the reign of King Fr...

After the Russian Revolution but before the communist 'Red' Bolsheviks had yet to secure a total victory during the Russian Civil War (1917-1923), Soviet leadership under Lenin, Trotsky, and later Joseph Stalin (b.1878-1953), looked to the Far East to establish a sphere of influence as a buffer to Imperial Japan’s growth in the East and Pacific Ocean following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The Japanese Empire spent most of the 1920’s and 1930’s refining and building their military capabilities for their planned economic and cultural domination of Asia which would begin in China and Soviets sensed that the Far East would become a vital diplomatic and military frontier later on.   Hence the early heightening of Soviet political and military presence in Mongolia at the tail end of the Russian Civil War in 1920-1921.  The 'Bloody White Baron of Mongolia': Baron Roman Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg  After crushing most if not all of the White resistance on the Russia...

The Battle of Khalkhin Gol, known to the Japanese during the period as the Nomonhan Incident, is one of the most important conflicts of World War II that is often completely ignored or only a minor footnote in most concise or comprehensive popular history and academic studies of World War II. This border conflict fought on the edges between China and Mongolia developed into a major conflict during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, dating back to previous border clashes during and after the Russian Civil War in the early 20's. The conflict quickly escalated in the spring of 1939 into a "small" conflict with a contained front that became a major theater of war by the time the Red Army claimed victory in September 1939-just as World War II had begun with the invasion of Poland. Japanese Officers observing the Nomonhan Front, 1939 Critical to the later events of World War II itself, Khalkhin Gol was one of the most decisive and important conflicts fought during the last months...