How an American racing driver and war in Mongolia helped to defeat Hitler

Of all the ‘practice’ wars that preceded the main events of the second world war, including the Spanish civil war and the winter war between Finland and the Soviet Union, the least well known is the four-month war on the Mongolia-Manchurian border between the Soviet Union and Japan that ended in September 1939. 

This is not surprising, perhaps, because British attention was (and still is) more focused on Hitler’s invasion of Poland that took place two weeks earlier. Even the participants downplay the importance of a war that took place in a remote corner of Mongolia. Japan refers to it as the Nomonhan Incident while Russia calls it the Battle of Khalkin Gol after the river that runs through the region.

Britain is not famed for its geopolitical interest in Mongolia. But the fate of this country as well as Siberia did briefly occupy the minds of our diplomats, politicians and soldiers from the end of the first world war. Strangely this short war, fought across a river some 6,000 miles from Great Britain would have a significant impact on Britain in the second world war.