Podcasts about Mongolian

Last time we spoke about General Zhukov's arrival to the Nomohan incident. The Kwantung Army's inexperienced 23rd Division, under General Komatsubara, suffered heavy losses in failed offensives, including Colonel Yamagata's assault and the annihilation of Lieutenant Colonel Azuma's detachment, resulting in around 500 Japanese casualties. Tensions within the Japanese command intensified as Kwantung defied Tokyo's restraint, issuing aggressive orders like 1488 and launching a June 27 air raid on Soviet bases, destroying dozens of aircraft and securing temporary air superiority. This provoked Moscow's fury and rebukes from Emperor Hirohito. On June 1, Georgy Zhukov, a rising Red Army tactician and tank expert, was summoned from Minsk. Arriving June 5, he assessed the 57th Corps as inadequate, relieved Commander Feklenko, and took charge of the redesignated 1st Army Group. Reinforcements included mechanized brigades, tanks, and aircraft. Japanese intelligence misread Soviet supply convoys as retreats, underestimating Zhukov's 12,500 troops against their 15,000. By July, both sides poised for a massive clash, fueled by miscalculations and gekokujo defiance.   #190 Zhukov Unleashes Tanks at Nomohan Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. At 4:00 a.m. on July 1, 15,000 heavily laden Japanese troops began marching to their final assembly and jump-off points. The sun rose at 4:00 a.m. and set at 9:00 p.m. that day, but the Japanese advance went undetected by Soviet/MPR commanders, partly because the June 27 air raid had temporarily cleared Soviet reconnaissance from the skies. On the night of July 1, Komatsubara launched the first phase. The 23rd Division, with the Yasuoka Detachment, converged on Fui Heights, east of the Halha River, about eleven miles north of its confluence with the Holsten. The term "heights" is misleading here; a Japanese infantry colonel described Fui as a "raised pancake" roughly one to one-and-a-half miles across, about thirty to forty feet higher than the surrounding terrain. For reasons not fully explained, the small Soviet force stationed on the heights was withdrawn during the day on July 1, and that night Fui Heights was occupied by Komatsubara's forces almost unopposed. This caused little stir at Zhukov's headquarters. Komatsubara bided his time on July 2.   On the night of July 2–3, the Japanese achieved a brilliant tactical success. A battalion of the 71st Infantry Regiment silently crossed the Halha River on a moonless night and landed unopposed on the west bank opposite Fui Heights. Recent rains had swollen the river to 100–150 yards wide and six feet deep, making crossing difficult for men, horses, or vehicles. Combat engineers swiftly laid a pontoon bridge, completing it by 6:30 a.m. on July 3. The main body of Komatsubara's 71st and 72nd Infantry Regiments (23rd Division) and the 26th Regiment (7th Division) began a slow, arduous crossing. The pontoon bridge, less than eight feet wide, was a bottleneck, allowing only one truck at a time. The attackers could not cross with armored vehicles, but they did bring across their regimental artillery, 18 x 37-mm antitank guns, 12 x 75-mm mountain guns, 8 x 75-mm field guns, and 4 x 120-mm howitzers, disassembled, packed on pack animals, and reassembled on the west bank. The crossing took the entire day, and the Japanese were fortunate to go without interception. The Halha crossing was commanded personally by General Komatsubara and was supported by a small Kwantung Army contingent, including General Yano (deputy chief of staff), Colonel Hattori, and Major Tsuji from the Operations Section. Despite the big air raid having alerted Zhukov, the initial Japanese moves from July 1–3 achieved complete tactical surprise, aided by Tsuji's bold plan. The first indication of the major offensive came when General Yasuoka's tanks attacked predawn on July 3. Yasuoka suspected Soviet troops south of him attempting to retreat across the Halha to the west bank, and he ordered his tanks to attack immediately, with infantry not yet in position. The night's low clouds, no moon, and low visibility—along with a passing thunderstorm lighting the sky—made the scene dramatic. Seventy Japanese tanks roared forward, supported by infantry and artillery, and the Soviet 149th Infantry Regiment found itself overwhelmed. Zhukov, hearing of Yasuoka's assault but unaware that Komatsubara had crossed the Halha, ordered his armor to move northeast to Bain Tsagan to confront the initiative. There, Soviet armor clashed with Japanese forces in a chaotic, largely uncoordinated engagement. The Soviet counterattacks, supported by heavy artillery, halted much of the Japanese momentum, and by late afternoon Japanese infantry had to dig in west of the Halha. The crossing had been accomplished without Soviet reconnaissance detecting it in time, but Zhukov's counterattacks, the limits of Japanese armored mobility across the pontoon, and the heat and exhaustion of the troops constrained the Japanese effort. By the afternoon of July 3, Zhukov's forces were pressing hard, and the Japanese momentum began to stall. Yasuoka's tanks, supported by a lack of infantry and the fatigue and losses suffered by the infantry, could not close the gap to link with Komatsubara's forces. The Type 89 tanks, designed for infantry support, were ill-suited to penetrating Soviet armor, especially when faced with BT-5/BT-7 tanks and strong anti-tank guns. The Type 95 light tanks were faster but lightly armored, and suffered heavily from Soviet fire and air attacks. Infantry on the western bank struggled to catch up with tanks, shot through by Soviet artillery and armor, while the 64th Regiment could not keep pace with the tanks due to the infantry's lack of motorized transport. By late afternoon, Yasuoka's advance stalled far short of the river junction and the Soviet bridge. The infantry dug in to withstand Soviet bombardment, and the Japanese tank regiments withdrew to their jump-off points by nightfall. The Japanese suffered heavy losses in tanks, though some were recovered and repaired; by July 9, KwAHQ decided to withdraw its two tank regiments from the theater. Armor would play no further role in the Nomonhan conflict. The Soviets, by contrast, sustained heavier tank losses but began to replenish with new models. The July offensive, for Kwantung Army, proved a failure. Part of the failure stemmed from a difficult blend of terrain and logistics. Unusually heavy rains in late June had transformed the dirt roads between Hailar and Nomonhan into a mud-filled quagmire. Japanese truck transport, already limited, was so hampered by these conditions that combat effectiveness suffered significantly. Colonel Yamagata's 64th Infantry Regiment, proceeding on foot, could not keep pace with or support General Yasuoka's tanks on July 3–4. Komatsubara's infantry on the west bank of the Halha ran short of ammunition, food, and water. As in the May 28 battle, the main cause of the Kwantung Army's July offensive failure was wholly inadequate military intelligence. Once again, the enemy's strength had been seriously underestimated. Moreover, a troubling realization was dawning at KwAHQ and in the field: the intelligence error was not merely quantitative but qualitative. The Soviets were not only more numerous but also far more potent than anticipated. The attacking Japanese forces initially held a slight numerical edge and enjoyed tactical surprise, but the Red Army fought tenaciously, and the weight of Soviet firepower proved decisive. Japan, hampered by a relative lack of raw materials and industrial capacity, could not match the great powers in the quantitative production of military materiel. Consequently, Japanese military leaders traditionally emphasized the spiritual superiority of Japan's armed forces in doctrine and training, often underestimating the importance of material factors, including firepower. This was especially true of the army that had carried the tactic of the massed bayonet charge into World War II. This "spiritual" combat doctrine arose from necessity; admitting material superiority would have implied defeat. Japan's earlier victories in the Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, the Manchurian incident, and the China War, along with legendary medieval victories over the Mongol hordes, seemed to confirm the transcendent importance of fighting spirit. Only within such a doctrine could the Imperial Japanese Army muster inner strength and confidence to face formidable enemies. This was especially evident against Soviet Russia, whose vast geography, population, and resources loomed large. Yet what of its spirit? The Japanese military dismissed Bolshevism as a base, materialist philosophy utterly lacking spiritual power. Consequently, the Red Army was presumed to have low morale and weak fighting effectiveness. Stalin's purges only reinforced this belief. Kwantung Army's recent experiences at Nomonhan undermined this outlook. Among ordinary soldiers and officers alike, from the 23rd Division Staff to KwAHQ—grim questions formed: Had Soviet materiel and firepower proven superior to Japanese fighting spirit? If not, did the enemy possess a fighting spirit comparable to their own? To some in Kwantung Army, these questions were grotesque and almost unthinkable. To others, the implications were too painful to face. Perhaps May and July's combat results were an aberration caused by the 23rd Division's inexperience. Nevertheless, a belief took hold at KwAHQ that this situation required radical rectification. Zhukov's 1st Army Headquarters, evaluating recent events, was not immune to self-criticism and concern for the future. The enemy's success in transporting nearly 10,000 men across the Halha without detection—despite heightened Soviet alert after the June 27 air raid—revealed a level of carelessness and lack of foresight at Zhukov's level. Zhukov, however, did not fully capitalize on Komatsubara's precarious position on July 4–5. Conversely, Zhukov and his troops reacted calmly in the crisis's early hours. Although surprised and outnumbered, Zhukov immediately recognized that "our trump cards were the armored detachments, and we decided to use them immediately." He acted decisively, and the rapid deployment of armor proved pivotal. Some criticized the uncoordinated and clumsy Soviet assault on Komatsubara's infantry on July 3, but the Japanese were only a few hours' march from the river junction and the Soviet bridge. By hurling tanks at Komatsubara's advance with insufficient infantry support, Mikhail Yakovlev (11th Tank Brigade) and A. L. Lesovoi (7th Mechanized Brigade) incurred heavy losses. Nonetheless, they halted the Japanese southward advance, forcing Komatsubara onto the defensive, from which he never regained momentum. Zhukov did not flinch from heavy casualties to achieve his objectives. He later told General Dwight D. Eisenhower that if the enemy faced a minefield, their infantry attacked as if it did not exist, treating personnel mine losses as equal to those that would have occurred if the Germans defended the area with strong troops rather than minefields. Zhukov admitted losing 120 tanks and armored cars that day—a high price, but necessary to avert defeat. Years later, Zhukov defended his Nomonhan tactics, arguing he knew his armor would suffer heavy losses, but that was the only way to prevent the Japanese from seizing the bridge at the river confluence. Had Komatsubara's forces advanced unchecked for another two or three hours, they might have fought through to the Soviet bridge and linked with the Yasuoka detachment, endangering Zhukov's forces. Zhukov credited Yakovlev, Lesovoi, and their men with stabilizing the crisis through timely and self-sacrificing counterattacks. The armored car battalion of the 8th MPR Cavalry Division also distinguished itself in this action. Zhukov and his tankmen learned valuable lessons in those two days of brutal combat. A key takeaway was the successful use of large tank formations as an independent primary attack force, contrary to then-orthodox doctrine, which saw armor mainly as infantry support and favored integrating armor into every infantry regiment rather than maintaining large, autonomous armored units. The German blitzkrieg demonstrations in Poland and Western Europe soon followed, but, until then, few major armies had absorbed the tank-warfare theories championed by Basil Liddell-Hart and Charles de Gaulle. The Soviet high command's leading proponent of large-scale tank warfare had been Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. His execution in 1937 erased those ideas, and the Red Army subsequently disbanded armored divisions and dispersed tanks among infantry, misapplying battlefield lessons from the Spanish Civil War. Yet Zhukov was learning a different lesson on a different battlefield. The open terrain of eastern Mongolia favored tanks, and Zhukov was a rapid learner. The Russians also learned mundane, but crucial, lessons: Japanese infantry bravely clambering onto their vehicles taught Soviet tank crews to lock hatch lids from the inside. The BT-5 and BT-7 tanks were easily set aflame by primitive hand-thrown firebombs, and rear deck ventilation grills and exhaust manifolds were vulnerable and required shielding. Broadly, the battle suggested to future Red Army commander Zhukov that tank and motorized troops, coordinated with air power and mobile artillery, could decisively conduct rapid operations. Zhukov was not the first to envision combining mobile firepower with air and artillery, but he had rare opportunities to apply this formula in crucial tests. The July offensive confirmed to the Soviets that the Nomonhan incident was far from a border skirmish; it signaled intent for further aggression. Moscow's leadership, informed by Richard Sorge's Tokyo network, perceived Japan's renewed effort to draw Germany into an anti-Soviet alliance as a dangerous possibility. Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov began indicating to Joachim von Ribbentrop and Adolf Hitler that Berlin's stance on the Soviet–Japanese conflict would influence Soviet-German rapprochement considerations. Meanwhile, Moscow decided to reinforce Zhukov. Tens of thousands of troops and machines were ordered to Mongolia, with imports from European Russia. Foreign diplomats traveling the Trans-Siberian Railway reported eastbound trains jammed with personnel and matériel. The buildup faced a major bottleneck at Borzya, the easternmost railhead in the MPR, about 400 miles from the Halha. To prevent a logistics choke, a massive truck transport operation was needed. Thousands of trucks, half-tracks, gun-towing tractors, and other vehicles were organized into a continuous eight-hundred-mile, five-day shuttle run. The Trans-Baikal Military District, under General Shtern, supervised the effort. East of the Halha, many Japanese officers still refused to accept a failure verdict for the July offensive. General Komatsubara did not return to Hailar, instead establishing a temporary divisional HQ at Kanchuerhmiao, where his staff grappled with overcoming Soviet firepower. They concluded that night combat—long a staple of Japanese infantry tactics—could offset Soviet advantages. On July 7 at 9:30 p.m., a thirty-minute Japanese artillery barrage preceded a nighttime assault by elements of the 64th and 72nd Regiments. The Soviet 149th Infantry Regiment and supporting Mongolian cavalry were surprised and forced to fall back toward the Halha before counterattacking. Reinforcements arrived on both sides, and in brutal close-quarters combat the Japanese gained a partial local advantage, but were eventually pushed back; Major I. M. Remizov of the 149th Regiment was killed and later posthumously named a Hero of the Soviet Union. Since late May, Soviet engineers had built at least seven bridges across the Halha and Holsten Rivers to support operations. By July 7–8, Japanese demolition teams destroyed two Soviet bridges. Komatsubara believed that destroying bridges could disrupt Soviet operations east of the Halha and help secure the border. Night attacks continued from July 8 to July 12 against the Soviet perimeter, with Japanese assaults constricting Zhukov's bridgehead while Soviet artillery and counterattacks relentlessly pressed. Casualties mounted on both sides. The Japanese suffered heavy losses but gained some positions; Soviet artillery, supported by motorized infantry and armor, gradually pushed back the attackers. The biggest problem for Japan remained Soviet artillery superiority and the lack of a commensurate counter-battery capability. Japanese infantry had to withdraw to higher ground at night to avoid daytime exposure to artillery and tanks. On the nights of July 11–12, Yamagata's 64th Regiment and elements of Colonel Sakai Mikio's 72nd Regiment attempted a major assault on the Soviet bridgehead. Despite taking heavy casualties, the Japanese managed to push defenders back to the river on occasion, but Soviet counterattacks, supported by tiresome artillery and armor, prevented a decisive breakthrough. Brigade Commander Yakovlev of the 11th Armored, who led several counterattacks, was killed and later honored as a Hero of the Soviet Union; his gun stands today as a monument at the battlefield. The July 11–12 action marked the high-water mark of the Kwantung Army's attempt to expel Soviet/MPR forces east of the Halha. Komatsubara eventually suspended the costly night attacks; by that night, the 64th Regiment had suffered roughly 80–90 killed and about three times that number wounded. The decision proved controversial, with some arguing that he had not realized how close his forces had come to seizing the bridge. Others argued that broader strategic considerations justified the pause. Throughout the Nomonhan fighting, Soviet artillery superiority, both quantitative and qualitative, became painfully evident. The Soviet guns exacted heavy tolls and repeatedly forced Japanese infantry to withdraw from exposed positions. The Japanese artillery, in contrast, could not match the Red Army's scale. By July 25, Kwantung Army ended its artillery attack, a humiliating setback. Tokyo and Hsinking recognized the futility of achieving a decisive military victory at Nomonhan and shifted toward seeking a diplomatic settlement, even if concessions to the Soviet Union and the MPR were necessary. Kwantung Army, however, opposed negotiations, fearing it would echo the "Changkufeng debacle" and be read by enemies as weakness. Tsuji lamented that Kwantung Army's insistence on framing the second phase as a tie—despite heavy Soviet losses, revealed a reluctance to concede any territory. Differences in outlook and policy between AGS and Kwantung Army—and the central army's inability to impose its will on Manchukuo's field forces—became clear. The military establishment buzzed with stories of gekokujo (the superiority of the superior) within Kwantung Army and its relations with the General Staff. To enforce compliance, AGS ordered General Isogai to Tokyo for briefings, and KwAHQ's leadership occasionally distanced itself from AGS. On July 20, Isogai arrived at General Staff Headquarters and was presented with "Essentials for Settlement of the Nomonhan Incident," a formal document outlining a step-by-step plan for Kwantung Army to maintain its defensive position east of the Halha while diplomatic negotiations proceeded. If negotiations failed, Kwantung Army would withdraw to the boundary claimed by the Soviet Union by winter. Isogai, the most restrained member of the Kwantung Army circle, argued against accepting the Essentials, insisting on preserving Kwantung Army's honor and rejecting a unilateral east-bank withdrawal. A tense exchange followed, but General Nakajima ended the dispute by noting that international boundaries cannot be determined by the army alone. Isogai pledged to report the General Staff's views to his commander and take the Essentials back to KwAHQ for study. Technically, the General Staff's Essentials were not orders; in practice, however, they were treated as such. Kwantung Army tended to view them as suggestions and retained discretion in implementation. AGS hoped the Essentials would mollify Kwantung Army's wounded pride. The August 4 decision to create a 6 Army within Kwantung Army, led by General Ogisu Rippei, further complicated the command structure. Komatsubara's 23rd Division and nearby units were attached to the 6 Army, which also took responsibility for defending west-central Manchukuo, including the Nomonhan area. The 6 Army existed largely on paper, essentially a small headquarters to insulate KwAHQ from battlefield realities. AGS sought a more accountable layer of command between KwAHQ and the combat zone, but General Ueda and KwAHQ resented the move and offered little cooperation. In the final weeks before the last battles, General Ogisu and his small staff had limited influence on Nomonhan. Meanwhile, the European crisis over German demands on Poland intensified, moving into a configuration highly favorable to the Soviet Union. By the first week of August, it became evident in the Kremlin that both Anglo-French powers and the Germans were vying to secure an alliance with Moscow. Stalin knew now that he would likely have a free hand in the coming war in the West. At the same time, Richard Sorge, the Soviet master spy in Tokyo, correctly reported that Japan's top political and military leaders sought to prevent the escalation of the Nomonhan incident into an all-out war. These developments gave the cautious Soviet dictator the confidence to commit the Red Army to large-scale combat operations in eastern Mongolia. In early August, Stalin ordered preparations for a major offensive to clear the Nomonhan area of the "Japanese samurai who had violated the territory of the friendly Outer Mongolian people." The buildup of Zhukov's 1st Army Group accelerated still further. Its July strength was augmented by the 57th and 82nd Infantry Divisions, the 6th Tank Brigade, the 212th Airborne Brigade, numerous smaller infantry, armor, and artillery units, and two Mongolian cavalry divisions. Soviet air power in the area was also greatly strengthened. When this buildup was completed by mid-August, Zhukov commanded an infantry force equivalent to four divisions, supported by two cavalry divisions, 216 artillery pieces, 498 armored vehicles, and 581 aircraft. To bring in the supplies necessary for this force to launch an offensive, General Shtern's Trans-Baikal Military District Headquarters amassed a fleet of more than 4,200 vehicles, which trucked in about 55,000 tons of materiel from the distant railway depot at Borzya. The Japanese intelligence network in Outer Mongolia was weak, a problem that went unremedied throughout the Nomonhan incident. This deficiency, coupled with the curtailment of Kwantung Army's transborder air operations, helps explain why the Japanese remained ignorant of the scope of Zhukov's buildup. They were aware that some reinforcements were flowing eastward across the Trans-Siberian Railway toward the MPR but had no idea of the volume. Then, at the end of July, Kwantung Army Intelligence intercepted part of a Soviet telegraph transmission indicating that preparations were under way for some offensive operation in the middle of August. This caused a stir at KwAHQ. Generals Ueda and Yano suspected that the enemy planned to strike across the Halha River. Ueda's initial reaction was to reinforce the 23rd Division at Nomonhan with the rest of the highly regarded 7th Division. However, the 7th Division was Kwantung Army's sole strategic reserve, and the Operations Section was reluctant to commit it to extreme western Manchukuo, fearing mobilization of Soviet forces in the Maritime Province and a possible attack in the east near Changkufeng. The Kwantung Army commander again ignored his own better judgment and accepted the Operations Section's recommendation. The main strength of the 7th Division remained at its base near Tsitsihar, but another infantry regiment, the 28th, was dispatched to the Nomonhan area, as was an infantry battalion from the Mukden Garrison. Earlier, in mid-July, Kwantung Army had sent Komatsubara 1,160 individual replacements to make up for casualties from earlier fighting. All these reinforcements combined, however, did little more than replace losses: as of July 25, 1,400 killed (including 200 officers) and 3,000 wounded. Kwantung Army directed Komatsubara to dig in, construct fortifications, and adopt a defensive posture. Colonel Numazaki, who commanded the 23rd Division's Engineer Regiment, was unhappy with the defensive line he was ordered to fortify and urged a slight pullback to more easily defensible terrain. Komatsubara, however, refused to retreat from ground his men had bled to take. He and his line officers still nourished hope of a revenge offensive. As a result, the Japanese defensive positions proved to be as weak as Numazaki feared. As Zhukov's 1st Army Group prepared to strike, the effective Japanese strength at Nomonhan was less than 1.5 divisions. Major Tsuji and his colleagues in the Operations Section had little confidence in Kwantung Army's own Intelligence Section, which is part of the reason why Tsuji frequently conducted his own reconnaissance missions. Up to this time it was gospel in the Japanese army that the maximum range for large-scale infantry operations was 125–175 miles from a railway; anything beyond 200 miles from a railway was considered logistically impossible. Since Kwantung Army had only 800 trucks available in all of Manchukuo in 1939, the massive Soviet logistical effort involving more than 4,200 trucks was almost unimaginable to the Japanese. Consequently, the Operations Staff believed it had made the correct defensive deployments if a Soviet attack were to occur, which it doubted. If the enemy did strike at Nomonhan, it was believed that it could not marshal enough strength in that remote region to threaten the reinforced 23rd Division. Furthermore, the 7th Division, based at Tsitsihar on a major rail line, could be transported to any trouble spot on the eastern or western frontier in a few days. KwAHQ advised Komatsubara to maintain a defensive posture and prepare to meet a possible enemy attack around August 14 or 15. At this time, Kwantung Army also maintained a secret organization codenamed Unit 731, officially the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army. Unit 731 specialized in biological and chemical warfare, with main facilities and laboratories in Harbin, including a notorious prison-laboratory complex. During the early August lull at Nomonhan, a detachment from Unit 731 infected the Halha River with bacteria of an acute cholera-like strain. There are no reports in Soviet or Japanese accounts that this attempted biological warfare had any effect. In the war's final days, Unit 731 was disbanded, Harbin facilities demolished, and most personnel fled to Japan—but not before they gassed the surviving 150 human subjects and burned their corpses. The unit's commander, Lieutenant General Ishii Shiro, kept his men secret and threatened retaliation against informers. Ishii and his senior colleagues escaped prosecution at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials by trading the results of their experiments to U.S. authorities in exchange for immunity. The Japanese 6th Army exerted some half-hearted effort to construct defensive fortifications, but scarcity of building materials, wood had to be trucked in from far away—helped explain the lack of enthusiasm. More importantly, Japanese doctrine despised static defense and favored offense, so Kwantung Army waited to see how events would unfold. West of the Halha, Zhukov accelerated preparations. Due to tight perimeter security, few Japanese deserters, and a near-absence of civilian presence, Soviet intelligence found it hard to glean depth on Japanese defensive positions. Combat intelligence could only reveal the frontline disposition and closest mortar and artillery emplacements. Aerial reconnaissance showed photographs, but Japanese camouflage and mock-ups limited their usefulness. The new commander of the 149th Mechanized Infantry Regiment personally directed infiltration and intelligence gathering, penetrating Japanese lines on several nights and returning crucial data: Komatsubara's northern and southern flanks were held by Manchukuoan cavalry, and mobile reserves were lacking. With this information, Zhukov crafted a plan of attack. The main Japanese strength was concentrated a few miles east of the Halha, on both banks of the Holsten River. Their infantry lacked mobility and armor, and their flanks were weak. Zhukov decided to split the 1st Army Group into three strike forces: the central force would deliver a frontal assault to pin the main Japanese strength, while the northern and southern forces, carrying the bulk of the armor, would turn the Japanese flanks and drive the enemy into a pocket to be destroyed by the three-pronged effort. The plan depended on tactical surprise and overwhelming force at the points of attack. The offensive was to begin in the latter part of August, pending final approval from Moscow. To ensure tactical surprise, Zhukov and his staff devised an elaborate program of concealment and deception, disinformation. Units and materiel arriving at Tamsag Bulak toward the Halha were moved only at night with lights out. Noting that the Japanese were tapping telephone lines and intercepting radio messages, 1st Army Headquarters sent a series of false messages in an easily decipherable code about defensive preparations and autumn-winter campaigning. Thousands of leaflets titled "What the Infantryman Should Know about Defense" were distributed among troops. About two weeks before the attack, the Soviets brought in sound equipment to simulate tank and aircraft engines and heavy construction noises, staging long, loud performances nightly. At first, the Japanese mistook the sounds for large-scale enemy activity and fired toward the sounds. After a few nights, they realized it was only sound effects, and tried to ignore the "serenade." On the eve of the attack, the actual concentration and staging sounds went largely unnoticed by the Japanese. On August 7–8, Zhukov conducted minor attacks to expand the Halha bridgehead to a depth of two to three miles. These attacks, contained relatively easily by Komatsubara's troops, reinforced Kwantung Army's false sense of confidence. The Japanese military attaché in Moscow misread Soviet press coverage. In early August, the attaché advised that unlike the Changkufeng incident a year earlier, Soviet press was largely ignoring the conflict, implying low morale and a favorable prognosis for the Red Army. Kwantung Army leaders seized on this as confirmation to refrain from any display of restraint or doubt, misplaced confidence. There were, however, portents of danger. Three weeks before the Soviet attack, Colonel Isomura Takesuki, head of Kwantung Army's Intelligence Section, warned of the vulnerability of the 23rd Division's flanks. Tsuji and colleagues dismissed this, and General Kasahara Yukio of AGS also went unheeded. The "desk jockey" General Staff officers commanded little respect at KwAHQ. Around August 10, General Hata Yuzaburo, Komatsubara's successor as chief of the Special Services Agency at Harbin, warned that enemy strength in the Mongolian salient was very great and seriously underestimated at KwAHQ. Yet no decisive action followed before Zhukov's attack. Kwantung Army's inaction and unpreparedness prior to the Soviet offensive appear to reflect faulty intelligence compounded by hubris. But a more nuanced explanation suggests a fatalistic wishful thinking rooted in the Japanese military culture—the belief that their spiritual strength would prevail, leading them to assume enemy strength was not as great as reported, or that victory was inevitable regardless of resources. Meanwhile, in the rational West, the Nazi war machine faced the Polish frontier as Adolf Hitler pressed Stalin for a nonaggression pact. The German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact would neutralize the threat of a two-front war for Germany and clear the way for Hitler's invasion of Poland. If the pact was a green light, it signaled in both directions: it would also neutralize the German threat to Russia and clear the way for Zhukov's offensive at Nomonhan. On August 18–19, Hitler pressed Stalin to receive Ribbentrop in Moscow to seal the pact. Thus, reassured in the West, Stalin dared to act boldly against Japan. Zhukov supervised final preparations for his attack. Zhukov held back forward deployments until the last minute. By August 18, he had only four infantry regiments, a machine gun brigade, and Mongolian cavalry east of the Halha. Operational security was extremely tight: a week before the attack, Soviet radio traffic in the area virtually ceased. Only Zhukov and a few key officers worked on the plan, aided by a single typist. Line officers and service chiefs received information on a need-to-know basis. The date for the attack was shared with unit commanders one to four days in advance, depending on seniority. Noncommissioned officers and ordinary soldiers learned of the offensive one day in advance and received specific orders three hours before the attack.   Heavy rain grounded Japanese aerial reconnaissance from August 17 to midday on the 19th, but on August 19 Captain Oizumi Seisho in a Japanese scout plane observed the massing of Soviet forces near the west bank of the Halha. Enemy armor and troops were advancing toward the river in dispersed formations, with no new bridges but pontoon stocks spotted near the river. Oizumi sent a warning to a frontline unit and rushed back to report. The air group dispatched additional recon planes and discovered that the Japanese garrison on Fui Heights, near the northern end of Komatsubara's line, was being encircled by Soviet armor and mechanized infantry—observed by alarmed Japanese officers on and near the heights. These late discoveries on August 19 were not reported to KwAHQ and had no effect on the 6th Army and the 23rd Division's alertness on the eve of the storm. As is common in militaries, a fatal gap persisted between those gathering intelligence and those in a position to act on it. On the night of August 19–20, under cover of darkness, the bulk of the Soviet 1st Army Group crossed the Halha into the expanded Soviet enclave on the east bank.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. By August, European diplomacy left Moscow confident in a foothold against Germany and Britain, while Sorge's intelligence indicated Japan aimed to avoid a full-blown war. Stalin ordered a major offensive to clear Nomonhan, fueling Zhukov's buildup in eastern Mongolia. Kwantung Army, hampered by limited logistics, weak intelligence, and defensive posture, faced mounting pressure. 

This week on Where's That Bar Cart: Monty sides with the Mongolian opinion of the Winter Olympics, we review the Mandarin restaurant extensively, break down Thomas Kaberle's career, and estate planning at a golf simulator.Thanks to Comedy Records and to each and every one of you who listens, watches, and supports our podcast. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel @ComedyRecords. Swing well out there. Follow us at:- @wheresthatbarcart- linkt.ree/wheresthatbarcart- @dpurcomic- @montymofoscott- @nickdurie- @comedyrecordsMusic by Devin BatesonThank you to Comedy Records

Last time we spoke about the beginning of the Nomohan incident. On the fringes of Manchuria, the ghosts of Changkufeng lingered. It was August 1938 when Soviet and Japanese forces locked in a brutal standoff over a disputed hill, claiming thousands of lives before a fragile ceasefire redrew the lines. Japan, humiliated yet defiant, withdrew, but the Kwantung Army seethed with resentment. As winter thawed into 1939, tensions simmered along the Halha River, a serpentine boundary between Manchukuo and Mongolia. Major Tsuji Masanobu, a cunning tactician driven by gekokujo's fire, drafted Order 1488: a mandate empowering local commanders to annihilate intruders, even luring them across borders. Kwantung's leaders, bonded by past battles, endorsed it, ignoring Tokyo's cautions amid the grinding China War. By May, the spark ignited. Mongolian patrols crossed the river, clashing with Manchukuoan cavalry near Nomonhan's sandy hills. General Komatsubara, ever meticulous, unleashed forces to "destroy" them, bombing west-bank outposts and pursuing retreats. Soviets, bound by pact, rushed reinforcements, their tanks rumbling toward the fray. What began as skirmishes ballooned into an undeclared war.   #189 General Zhukov Arrives at Nomohan Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Though Kwantung Army prided itself as an elite arm of the Imperial Japanese Army, the 23rd Division, formed less than a year prior, was still raw and unseasoned, lacking the polish and spirit typical of its parent force. From General Michitaro Komatsubara downward, the staff suffered a collective dearth of combat experience. Intelligence officer Major Yoshiyasu Suzuki, a cavalryman, had no prior intel background. While senior regimental commanders were military academy veterans, most company and platoon leaders were fresh reservists or academy graduates with just one or two years under their belts. Upon arriving in Manchukuo in August 1938, the division found its Hailar base incomplete, housing only half its troops; the rest scattered across sites. Full assembly at Hailar occurred in November, but harsh winter weather curtailed large-scale drills. Commanders had scant time to build rapport. This inexperience, inadequate training, and poor cohesion would prove costly at Nomonhan. Japan's army held steady at 17 divisions from 1930 to 1937, but the escalating China conflict spurred seven new divisions in 1938 and nine in 1939. Resource strains from China left many under-equipped, with the 23rd, stationed in a presumed quiet sector, low on priorities. Unlike older "rectangular" divisions with four infantry regiments, the 23rd was a modern "triangular" setup featuring the 64th, 71st, and 72nd. Materiel gaps were glaring. The flat, open terrain screamed for tanks, yet the division relied on a truck-equipped transport regiment and a reconnaissance regiment with lightly armored "tankettes" armed only with machine guns. Mobility suffered: infantry marched the final 50 miles from Hailar to Nomonhan. Artillery was mostly horse-drawn, including 24 outdated Type 38 75-mm guns from 1907, the army's oldest, unique to this division. Each infantry regiment got four 37-mm rapid-fire guns and four 1908-era 75-mm mountain guns. The artillery regiment added 12 120-mm howitzers, all high-angle, short-range pieces ill-suited for flatlands or anti-tank roles. Antitank capabilities were dire: beyond rapid-fire guns, options boiled down to demolition charges and Molotov cocktails, demanding suicidal "human bullet" tactics in open terrain, a fatal flaw against armor. The division's saving grace lay in its soldiers, primarily from Kyushu, Japan's southernmost main island, long famed for hardy warriors. These men embodied resilience, bravery, loyalty, and honor, offsetting some training and gear deficits. Combat at Nomonhan ramped up gradually, with Japanese-Manchukuoan forces initially outnumbering Soviet-Mongolian foes. Soviets faced severe supply hurdles: their nearest rail at Borzya sat 400 miles west of the Halha River, requiring truck hauls over rough, exposed terrain prone to air strikes. Conversely, Hailar was 200 miles from Nomonhan, with the Handagai railhead just 50 miles away, linked by three dirt roads. These advantages, plus Europe's brewing Polish crisis, likely reassured Army General Staff and Kwantung Army Headquarters that Moscow would avoid escalation. Nonetheless, Komatsubara, with KwAHQ's nod, chose force to quash the Nomonhan flare-up. On May 20, Japanese scouts spotted a Soviet infantry battalion and armor near Tamsag Bulak. Komatsubara opted to "nip the incident in the bud," assembling a potent strike force under Colonel Takemitsu Yamagata of the 64th Infantry Regiment. The Yamagata detachment included the 3rd Battalion, roughly four companies, 800 men, a regimental gun company, three 75-mm mountain guns, four 37-mm rapid-fires, three truck companies, and Lieutenant Colonel Yaozo Azuma's reconnaissance group, 220 men, one tankette, two sedans, 12 trucks. Bolstered by 450 local Manchukuoan troops, the 2,000-strong unit was tasked with annihilating all enemy east of the Halha. The assault was set for May 22–23. No sooner had General Komatsubara finalized this plan than he received a message from KwAHQ: "In settling the affair Kwantung Army has definite plans, as follows: For the time being Manchukuoan Army troops will keep an eye on the Outer Mongolians operating near Nomonhan and will try to lure them onto Manchukuoan territory. Japanese forces at Hailar [23rd Division] will maintain surveillance over the situation. Upon verification of a border violation by the bulk of the Outer Mongolian forces, Kwantung Army will dispatch troops, contact the enemy, and annihilate him within friendly territory. According to this outlook it can be expected that enemy units will occupy border regions for a considerable period; but this is permissible from the overall strategic point of view". At this juncture, Kwantung Army Headquarters advocated tactical caution to secure a more conclusive outcome. Yet, General Michitaro Komatsubara had already issued orders for Colonel Takemitsu Yamagata's assault. Komatsubara radioed Hsinking that retracting would be "undignified," resenting KwAHQ's encroachment on his authority much as KwAHQ chafed at Army General Staff interference. Still, "out of deference to Kwantung Army's feelings," he delayed to May 27 to 28. Soviet air units from the 57th Corps conducted ineffective sorties over the Halha River from May 17 to 21. Novice pilots in outdated I 15 biplanes suffered heavily: at least 9, possibly up to 17, fighters and scouts downed. Defense Commissar Kliment Voroshilov halted air ops, aiding Japanese surprise. Yamagata massed at Kanchuerhmiao, 40 miles north of Nomonhan, sending patrols southward. Scouts spotted a bridge over the Halha near its Holsten junction, plus 2 enemy groups of ~200 each east of the Halha on either Holsten side and a small MPR outpost less than a mile west of Nomonhan. Yamagata aimed to trap and destroy these east of the river: Azuma's 220 man unit would drive south along the east bank to the bridge, blocking retreat. The 4 infantry companies and Manchukuoan troops, with artillery, would attack from the west toward enemy pockets, herding them riverward into Azuma's trap. Post destruction, mop up any west bank foes near the river clear MPR soil swiftly. This intricate plan suited early MPR foes but overlooked Soviet units spotted at Tamsag Bulak on May 20, a glaring oversight by Komatsubara and Yamagata. Predawn on May 28, Yamagata advanced from Kanchuerhmiao. Azuma detached southward to the bridge. Unbeknownst, it was guarded by Soviet infantry, engineers, armored cars, and a 76 mm self propelled artillery battery—not just MPR cavalry. Soviets detected Azuma pre dawn but missed Yamagata's main force; surprise was mutual. Soviet MPR core: Major A E Bykov's battalion roughly 1000 men with 3 motorized infantry companies, 16 BA 6 armored cars, 4 76 mm self propelled guns, engineers, and a 5 armored car recon platoon. The 6th MPR Cavalry Division roughly 1250 men had 2 small regiments, 4 76 mm guns, armored cars, and a training company. Bykov arrayed north to south: 2 Soviet infantry on flanks, MPR cavalry center, unorthodox, as cavalry suits flanks. Spread over 10 miles parallel to but east of the Halha, 1 mile west of Nomonhan. Reserves: 1 infantry company, engineers, and artillery west of the river near the bridge; Shoaaiibuu's guns also west to avoid sand. Japanese held initial edges in numbers and surprise, especially versus MPR cavalry. Offsets: Yamagata split into 5 weaker units; radios failed early, hampering coordination; Soviets dominated firepower with self propelled guns, 4 MPR pieces, and BA 6s, armored fighters with 45 mm turret guns, half track capable, 27 mph speed, but thin 9 mm armor vulnerable to close heavy machine guns. Morning of May 28, Yamagata's infantry struck Soviet MPR near Nomonhan, routing lightly armed MPR cavalry and forcing Soviet retreats toward the Halha. Shoaaiibuu rushed his training company forward; Japanese overran his post, killing him and most staff. As combat neared the river, Soviet artillery and armored cars slowed Yamagata. He redirected to a low hill miles east of the Halha with dug in Soviets—failing to notify Azuma. Bykov regrouped 1 to 2 miles east of the Halha Holsten junction, holding firm. By late morning, Yamagata stalled, digging in against Soviet barrages. Azuma, radio silent due to faults, neared the bridge to find robust Soviet defenses. Artillery commander Lieutenant Yu Vakhtin shifted his 4 76 mm guns east to block seizure. Azuma lacked artillery or anti tank tools, unable to advance. With Yamagata bogged down, Azuma became encircled, the encirclers encircled. Runners reached Yamagata, but his dispersed units couldn't rally or breakthrough. By noon, Azuma faced infantry and cavalry from the east, bombardments from west (both Halha sides). Dismounted cavalry dug sandy defenses. Azuma could have broken out but held per mission, awaiting Yamagata, unaware of the plan shift. Pressure mounted: Major I M Remizov's full 149th Regiment recent Tamsag Bulak arrivals trucked in, tilting odds. Resupply failed; ammo dwindled. Post dusk slackening: A major urged withdrawal; Azuma refused, deeming retreat shameful without orders, a Japanese army hallmark, where "retreat" was taboo, replaced by euphemisms like "advance in a different direction." Unauthorized pullback meant execution. Dawn May 29: Fiercer Soviet barrage, 122 mm howitzers, field guns, mortars, armored cars collapsed trenches. An incendiary hit Azuma's sedan, igniting trucks with wounded and ammo. By late afternoon, Soviets closed to 50 yards on 3 fronts; armored cars breached rear. Survivors fought desperately. Between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m., Azuma led 24 men in a banzai charge, cut down by machine guns. A wounded medical lieutenant ordered escapes; 4 succeeded. Rest killed or captured. Komatsubara belatedly reinforced Yamagata on May 29 with artillery, anti tank guns, and fresh infantry. Sources claim Major Tsuji arrived, rebuked Yamagata for inaction, and spurred corpse recovery over 3 nights, yielding ~200 bodies, including Azuma's. Yamagata withdrew to Kanchuerhmiao, unable to oust foes. Ironically, Remizov mistook recovery truck lights for attacks, briefly pulling back west on May 30. By June 3, discovering the exit, Soviet MPR reoccupied the zone. Japanese blamed:  (1) poor planning/recon by Komatsubara and Yamagata,  (2) comms failures,  (3) Azuma's heavy weapon lack. Losses: ~200 Azuma dead, plus 159 killed, 119 wounded, 12 missing from main force, total 500, 25% of detachment. Soviets praised Vakhtin for thwarting pincers. Claims: Bykov 60 to 70 casualties; TASS 40 killed, 70 wounded total Soviet/MPR. Recent Russian: 138 killed, 198 wounded. MPR cavalry hit hard by Japanese and friendly fire. Soviet media silent until June 26; KwAHQ censored, possibly misleading Tokyo. May 30: Kwantung Chief of Staff General Rensuke Isogai assured AGS of avoiding prolongation via heavy frontier blows, downplaying Soviet buildup and escalation. He requested river crossing gear urgently.   This hinted at Halha invasion (even per Japanese borders: MPR soil). AGS's General Gun Hashimoto affirmed trust in localization: Soviets' vexations manageable, chastisement easy. Colonel Masazumi Inada's section assessed May 31: 1. USSR avoids expansion.  2. Trust Kwantung localization.  3. Intervene on provocative acts like deep MPR air strikes. Phase 1 ended: Kwantung called it mutual win loss, but inaccurate, Azuma destroyed, heavy tolls, remorse gnawing Komatsubara. On June 1, 1939, an urgent summons from Moscow pulled the young deputy commander of the Byelorussian Military District from Minsk to meet Defense Commissar Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. He boarded the first train with no evident concern, even as the army purges faded into memory. This rising cavalry- and tank-expert, Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, would later help defend Moscow in 1941, triumph at Stalingrad and Kursk, and march to Berlin as a Hero of the Soviet Union.Born in 1896 to a poor family headed by a cobbler, Zhukov joined the Imperial Army in 1915 as a cavalryman. Of average height but sturdy build, he excelled in horsemanship and earned the Cross of St. George and noncommissioned status for bravery in 1916. After the October Revolution, he joined the Red Army and the Bolshevik Party, fighting in the Civil War from 1918 to 1921. His proletarian roots, tactical skill, and ambition propelled him: command of a regiment by 1923, a division by 1931. An early advocate of tanks, he survived the purges, impressing superiors as a results-driven leader and playing a key role in his assignment to Mongolia. In Voroshilov's office on June 2, Zhukov learned of recent clashes. Ordered to fly east, assess the situation, and assume command if needed, he soon met acting deputy chief Ivan Smorodinov, who urged candid reports. Europe's war clouds and rising tensions with Japan concerned the Kremlin. Hours later, Zhukov and his staff flew east. Arriving June 5 at Tamsag Bulak (57th Corps HQ), Zhukov met the staff and found Corps Commander Nikolai Feklenko and most aides clueless; only Regimental Commissar M. S. Nikishev had visited the front. Zhukov toured with Nikishev that afternoon and was impressed by his grasp. By day's end, Zhukov bluntly reported: this is not a simple border incident; the Japanese are likely to escalate; the 57th Corps is inadequate. He suggested holding the eastern Halha bridgehead until reinforcements could enable a counteroffensive, and he criticized Feklenko. Moscow replied on June 6: relieve Feklenko; appoint Zhukov. Reinforcements arrived: the 36th Mechanized Infantry Division; the 7th, 8th, and 9th Mechanized Brigades; the 11th Tank Brigade; the 8th MPR Cavalry Division; a heavy artillery regiment; an air wing of more than 100 aircraft, including 21 pilots who had earned renown in the Spanish Civil War. The force was redesignated as the First Army Group. In June, these forces surged toward Tamsag Bulak, eighty miles west of Halha. However, General Michitaro Komatsubara's 23rd Division and the Kwantung Army Headquarters missed the buildup and the leadership change, an intelligence failure born of carelessness and hubris and echoing May's Azuma disaster, with grave battlefield consequences. Early June remained relatively quiet: the Soviet MPR expanded the east-bank perimeter modestly; there was no major Japanese response. KwAHQ's Commander General Kenkichi Ueda, hoping for a quick closure, toured the Fourth Army from May 31 to June 18. Calm broke on June 19. Komatsubara reported two Soviet strikes inside Manchukuo: 15 planes hit Arshan, inflicting casualties on men and horses; 30 aircraft set fire to 100 petroleum barrels near Kanchuerhmiao. In fact, the raids were less dramatic than described: not on Kanchuerhmiao town (a 3,000-person settlement, 40 miles northwest of Nomonhan) but on a supply dump 12 miles south of it. "Arshan" referred to a small village near the border, near Arshanmiao, a Manchukuoan cavalry depot, not a major railhead at Harlun Arshan 100 miles southeast. The raids were strafing runs rather than bombs. Possibly retaliation for May 15's Japanese raid on the MPR Outpost 7 (two killed, 15 wounded) or a response to Zhukov's bridgehead push. Voroshilov authorized the action; motive remained unclear. Nonetheless, KwAHQ, unused to air attacks after dominating skies in Manchuria, Shanghai (1932), and China, was agitated. The situation resembled a jolt akin to the 1973 North Vietnamese strike on U.S. bases in Thailand: not unprovoked, but shocking. Midday June 19, the Operations Staff met. Major Masanobu Tsuji urged swift reprisal; Colonel Masao Terada urged delay in light of the Tientsin crisis (the new Japanese blockade near Peking). Tsuji argued that firmness at Nomonhan would impress Britain; inaction would invite deeper Soviet bombardments or invasion. He swayed Chief Colonel Takushiro Hattori and others, including Terada. They drafted a briefing: the situation was grave; passivity risked a larger invasion and eroded British respect for Japanese might. After two hours of joint talks, most KwAHQ members supported a strong action. Tsuji drafted a major Halha crossing plan to destroy Soviet MPR forces. Hattori and Terada pressed the plan to Chief of Staff General Rensuke Isogai, an expert on Manchukuo affairs but not operations; he deferred to Deputy General Otozaburo Yano, who was absent. They argued urgency; Isogai noted delays in AGS approval. The pair contended for local Kwantung prerogative, citing the 1937 Amur cancellation; AGS would likely veto. Under pressure, Isogai assented, pending Ueda's approval. Ueda approved but insisted that the 23rd Division lead, not the 7th. Hattori noted the 7th's superiority (four regiments in a "square" arrangement versus the 23rd's three regiments, with May unreliability). Ueda prioritized Komatsubara's honor: assigning another division would imply distrust; "I'd rather die." The plan passed on June 19, an example of gekokujo in action. The plan called for reinforcing the 23rd with: the 2nd Air Group (180 aircraft, Lieutenant General Tetsuji Gigi); the Yasuoka Detachment (Lieutenant General Masaomi Yasuoka: two tank regiments, motorized artillery, and the 26th Infantry of the 7th). Total strength: roughly 15,000 men, 120 guns, 70 tanks, 180 aircraft. KwAHQ estimated the enemy at about 1,000 infantry, 10 artillery pieces, and about 12 armored vehicles, expecting a quick victory. Reconnaissance to Halha was curtailed to avoid alerting the Soviets. Confidence ran high, even as intel warned otherwise. Not all leaders were convinced: the 23rd's ordnance colonel reportedly committed suicide over "awful equipment." An attaché, Colonel Akio Doi, warned of growing Soviet buildup, but operations dismissed the concern. In reality, Zhukov's force comprised about 12,500 men, 109 guns, 186 tanks, 266 armored cars, and more than 100 aircraft, offset by the Soviets' armor advantage. The plan echoed Yamagata's failed May 28 initiative: the 23rd main body would seize the Fui Heights (11 miles north of Halha's Holsten junction), cross by pontoon, and sweep south along the west bank toward the Soviet bridge. Yasuoka would push southeast of Halha to trap and destroy the enemy at the junction. On June 20, Tsuji briefed Komatsubara at Hailar, expressing Ueda's trust while pressing to redeem May's failures. Limited pontoon capacity would not support armor; the operation would be vulnerable to air power. Tsuji's reconnaissance detected Soviet air presence at Tamsag Bulak, prompting a preemptive strike and another plan adjustment. KwAHQ informed Tokyo of the offensive in vague terms (citing raids but withholding air details). Even this caused debate; Minister Seishiro Itagaki supported Ueda's stance, favoring a limited operation to ease nerves. Tokyo concurred, unaware of the air plans. Fearing a veto on the Tamsag Bulak raid (nearly 100 miles behind MPR lines), KwAHQ shielded details from the Soviets and Tokyo. A June 29–30 ground attack was prepared; orders were relayed by courier. The leak reached Tokyo on June 24. Deputy Chief General Tetsuzo Nakajima telegrammed three points: 1) AGS policy to contain the conflict and avoid West MPR air attacks;  2) bombing risks escalation;  3) sending Lieutenant Colonel Yadoru Arisue on June 25 for liaison. Polite Japanese diplomatic phrasing allowed Operations to interpret the message as a suggestion. To preempt Arisue's explicit orders, Tsuji urged secrecy from Ueda, Isogai, and Yano, and an advanced raid to June 27. Arisue arrived after the raid on Tamsag Bulak and Bain Tumen (deeper into MPR territory, now near Choibalsan). The Raid resulted in approximately 120 Japanese planes surprising the Soviets, grounding and destroying aircraft and scrambling their defense. Tsuji, flying in a bomber, claimed 25 aircraft destroyed on the ground and about 100 in the air. Official tallies reported 98 destroyed and 51 damaged; ground kills estimated at 50 to 60 at Bain Tumen. Japanese losses were relatively light: one bomber, two fighters, one scout; seven dead. Another Japanese bomber was shot down over MPR, but the crew was rescued. The raid secured air superiority for July.   Moscow raged over the losses and the perceived failure to warn in time. In the purge era, blame fell on suspected spies and traitors; Deputy Mongolian Commander Luvsandonoi and ex-57th Deputy A. M. Kushchev were accused, arrested, and sent to Moscow. Luvsandonoi was executed; Kushchev received a four-year sentence, later rising to major general and Hero. KwAHQ celebrated; Operations notified AGS by radio. Colonel Masazumi Inada rebuked: "You damned idiot! What do you think the true meaning of this little success is?" A withering reprimand followed. Stunned but unrepentant, KwAHQ soon received Tokyo's formal reprimand: "Report was received today regarding bombing of Outer Mongolian territory by your air units… . Since this action is in fundamental disagreement with policy which we understood your army was taking to settle incident, it is extremely regretted that advance notice of your intent was not received. Needless to say, this matter is attended with such farreaching consequences that it can by no means be left to your unilateral decision. Hereafter, existing policy will be definitely and strictly observed. It is requested that air attack program be discontinued immediately" By Order of the Chief of Staff  By this time, Kwantung Army staff officers stood in high dudgeon. Tsuji later wrote that "tremendous combat results were achieved by carrying out dangerous operations at the risk of our lives. It is perfectly clear that we were carrying out an act of retaliation. What kind of General Staff ignores the psychology of the front lines and tramples on their feelings?" Tsuji drafted a caustic reply, which Kwantung Army commanders sent back to Tokyo, apparently without Ueda or other senior KwAHQ officers' knowledge: "There appear to be certain differences between the Army General Staff and this Army in evaluating the battlefield situation and the measures to be adopted. It is requested that the handling of trivial border-area matters be entrusted to this Army." That sarcastic note from KwAHQ left a deep impression at AGS, which felt something had to be done to restore discipline and order. When General Nakajima informed the Throne about the air raid, the emperor rebuked him and asked who would assume responsibility for the unauthorized attack. Nakajima replied that military operations were ongoing, but that appropriate measures would be taken after this phase ended. Inada sent Terada a telegram implying that the Kwantung Army staff officers responsible would be sacked in due course. Inada pressed to have Tsuji ousted from Kwantung Army immediately, but personnel matters went through the Army Ministry, and Army Minister Itagaki, who knew Tsuji personally, defended him. Tokyo recognized that the situation was delicate; since 1932, Kwantung Army had operated under an Imperial Order to "defend Manchukuo," a broad mandate. Opinions differed in AGS about how best to curb Kwantung Army's operational prerogatives. One idea was to secure Imperial sanction for a new directive limiting Kwantung Army's autonomous combat actions to no more than one regiment. Several other plans circulated. In the meantime, Kwantung Army needed tighter control. On June 29, AGS issued firm instructions to KwAHQ: Directives: a) Kwantung Army is responsible for local settlement of border disputes. b) Areas where the border is disputed, or where defense is tactically unfeasible, need not be defended. Orders: c) Ground combat will be limited to the border region between Manchukuo and Outer Mongolia east of Lake Buir Nor. d) Enemy bases will not be attacked from the air. With this heated exchange of messages, the relationship between Kwantung Army and AGS reached a critical moment. Tsuji called it the "breaking point" between Hsinking and Tokyo. According to Colonel Inada, after this "air raid squabble," gekokujo became much more pronounced in Hsinking, especially within Kwantung Army's Operations Section, which "ceased making meaningful reports" to the AGS Operations Section, which he headed. At KwAHQ, the controversy and the perception of AGS interference in local affairs hardened the resolve of wavering staff officers to move decisively against the USSR. Thereafter, Kwantung Army officers as a group rejected the General Staff's policy of moderation in the Nomonhan incident. Tsuji characterized the conflict between Kwantung Army and the General Staff as the classic clash between combat officers and "desk jockeys." In his view, AGS advocated a policy of not invading enemy territory even if one's own territory was invaded, while Kwantung Army's policy was not to allow invasion. Describing the mindset of the Kwantung Army (and his own) toward the USSR in this border dispute, Tsuji invoked the samurai warrior's warning: "Do not step any closer or I shall be forced to cut you down." Tsuji argued that Kwantung Army had to act firmly at Nomonhan to avoid a larger war later. He also stressed the importance, shared by him and his colleagues, of Kwantung Army maintaining its dignity, which he believed was threatened by both enemy actions and the General Staff. In this emotionally charged atmosphere, the Kwantung Army launched its July offensive. The success of the 2nd Air Group's attack on Tamsag Bulak further inflated KwAHQ's confidence in the upcoming offensive. Although aerial reconnaissance had been intentionally limited to avoid alarming or forewarning the enemy, some scout missions were flown. The scouts reported numerous tank emplacements under construction, though most reports noted few tanks; a single report of large numbers of tanks was downplayed at headquarters. What drew major attention at KwAHQ were reports of large numbers of trucks leaving the front daily and streaming westward into the Mongolian interior. This was interpreted as evidence of a Soviet pullback from forward positions, suggesting the enemy might sense the imminent assault. Orders were issued to speed up final preparations for the assault before Soviet forces could withdraw from the area where the Japanese "meat cleaver" would soon dismember them. What the Japanese scouts had actually observed was not a Soviet withdrawal, but part of a massive truck shuttle that General Grigori Shtern, now commander of Soviet Forces in the Far East, organized to support Zhukov. Each night, Soviet trucks, from distant MPR railway depots to Tamsag Bulak and the combat zone, moved eastward with lights dimmed, carrying supplies and reinforcements. By day, the trucks returned westward for fresh loads. It was these returning trucks, mostly empty, that the Japanese scouts sighted. The Kwantung interpretation of this mass westbound traffic was a serious error, though understandable. The Soviet side was largely ignorant of Japanese preparations, partly because the June 27 air raid had disrupted Soviet air operations, including reconnaissance. In late June, the 23rd Division and Yasuoka's tank force moved from Hailar and Chiangchunmiao toward Nomonhan. A mix of military and civilian vehicles pressed into service, but there was still insufficient motorized transport to move all troops and equipment at once. Most infantry marched the 120 miles to the combat zone, under a hot sun, carrying eighty-pound loads. They arrived after four to six days with little time to recover before the scheduled assault. With Komatsubara's combined force of about 15,000 men, 120 guns, and 70 tanks poised to attack, Kwantung Army estimated Soviet-MPR strength near Nomonhan and the Halha River at about 1,000 men, perhaps ten anti-aircraft guns, ten artillery pieces, and several dozen tanks. In reality, Japanese air activity, especially the big raid of June 27, had put the Soviets on alert. Zhukov suspected a ground attack might occur, though nothing as audacious as a large-scale crossing of the Halha was anticipated. During the night of July 1, Zhukov moved his 11th Tank Brigade, 7th Mechanized Brigade, and 24th Mechanized Infantry Regiment (36th Division) from their staging area near Tamsag Bulak to positions just west of the Halha River. Powerful forces on both sides were being marshaled with little knowledge of the enemy's disposition. As the sun scorched the Mongolian steppes, the stage was set for a clash that would echo through history. General Komatsubara's 23rd Division, bolstered by Yasuoka's armored might and the skies commanded by Gigi's air group, crept toward the Halha River like a predator in the night. Fifteen thousand Japanese warriors, their boots heavy with dust and resolve, prepared to cross the disputed waters and crush what they believed was a faltering foe. Little did they know, Zhukov's reinforcements, tanks rumbling like thunder, mechanized brigades poised in the shadows, had transformed the frontier into a fortress of steel. Miscalculations piled like sand dunes: Japanese scouts mistook supply convoys for retreats, while Soviet eyes, blinded by the June raid, underestimated the impending storm. Kwantung's gekokujo spirit burned bright, defying Tokyo's cautions, as both sides hurtled toward a brutal reckoning. What began as border skirmishes now threatened to erupt into full-scale war, testing the mettle of empires on the edge. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Patrols in May led to failed Japanese offensives, like Colonel Yamagata's disastrous assault and the Azuma detachment's annihilation. Tensions rose with air raids, including Japan's June strike on Soviet bases. By July, misjudged intelligence set the stage for a major confrontation, testing imperial ambitions amid global war clouds.

Hello my curious archaeogastronomers!A brand new episode is out, and it's all about the long history of fermented dairy foodstuffs from the vast regions of Central Asia.Fermented dairy products from Central Asia have been to space! Resilient and nutritious, and good for the bronze age and the space age, are truly interstellar travelers of our civilization! We all know yoghurt and kefir but have you heard of kumis, chortan, gooroot?For this reason I 've employed the expertise and knowledge of Dr Simi Rezai Ghassemi, to tell me all about the amazing, uknown, and life giving fermented dairy products of Central Asia countries, from Azerbaijan, to Iran, all the way to Mongolian steppe! The 4000 year old mummified remains of a woman known as "The Beauty of Xiaohe" have fermented dairy (kefir? cheese?) as necklace. A seemingly unbroken tradition of drying and preserving dairy for the long harsh environments of Central Asia since time immemorial...So who indeed invented the first kefir? This side of Caucasus or the desserts of China? All the above and much more on today's episode!More about the mummies found in Tarim Basin:https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/ancient-mummies-of-the-tarim-basin/Find out more about Dr Simi below:Web: https://simiskitchenblog.wordpress.comSubstack: https://srezaighassemi.substack.comIntagram: https://www.instagram.com/simiskitchen/Equinox: https://equinoxpub.com/projects/fermented-dairy-of-central-asiaAnyway enjoy our fascinating chat here!Love,Thom & The Delicious LegacySupport the podcast on Ko-Fi and Patreon for ad-free episodes! https://ko-fi.com/thedeliciouslegacypodcasthttps://www.patreon.com/c/thedeliciouslegacySupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-delicious-legacy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From Vacation Mode to Purpose-Driven TravelLike many of us, Ting Ting didn't always travel with intention. Early trips were about fun, escape, and ticking destinations off a list. But over time, something shifted. Nature-based experiences, cultural immersion, and meaningful connections started to matter more than luxury or convenience.She describes herself as a traveler who lives between extremes — sometimes deeply planned, sometimes wildly spontaneous. And honestly? That balance is part of the magic. Whether it's booking a flight last-minute or committing to a long retreat-style journey, Ting Ting believes travel should feel alive, not scripted.“Traveling should be about connection and purpose.”  What It's Really Like Traveling as a Retreat LeaderTraveling solo is one thing. Traveling as a retreat leader is a whole different adventure.Ting Ting explains that hosting group trips means holding space for others while navigating unfamiliar environments — often in destinations that challenge comfort zones. Safety, hydration, logistics, emotions… it's all part of the role. But seeing a destination through fresh eyes — even places she's visited many times, like Egypt — never gets old.And yes, she lovingly compares leading groups to herding kittens.   Mongolia: An Ancestral Adventure Like No OtherThis episode's heart beats strongest in Mongolia.After discovering her Mongolian ancestry through a DNA test, Ting Ting felt called to experience the land not as a tourist — but as someone seeking connection. What followed was one of her most intense and transformative journeys yet.She lived with nomadic families, rode horses across vast open landscapes, and learned from Eagle Hunters whose traditions have been passed down for generations.“Mongolia offers a deep connection to ancestry.”The Reality of Nomadic LifeLet's clear something up: nomadic life is not the romantic fantasy Instagram makes it out to be.Days start before sunrise. Every task has a purpose. Every resource is used fully — even burning yak dung for heat. Ting Ting shares how living this way revealed just how resilient, resourceful, and deeply connected to nature these communities are.“Nomadic life is more challenging than it appears.”The experience was humbling, grounding, and eye-opening — and yes, included outdoor bathrooms, long days, and moments of real discomfort.  Why Ancestry Travel Hits DifferentThere's something powerful about traveling somewhere tied to your roots.Ting Ting reflects on how knowing her ancestry changed the way she experienced Mongolia — how the land, people, and traditions felt familiar in an unexplainable way. It wasn't just about learning history; it was about belonging.Ancestry travel, she explains, isn't always easy — but it often leads to the deepest growth.  Facing Fear & Traveling Off the GridMongolia and China often feel intimidating to travelers — and Ting Ting doesn't sugarcoat that reality. Extreme weather, challenging terrain, and cultural differences are part of the deal.But safety, she emphasizes, comes from understanding local customs, traveling with intention, and staying curious instead of fearful.Some moments tested her limits. Some moments made her question why she signed up. And those moments? They're often the ones that change you the most.  Adventure Destinations Around the WorldWhile Mongolia stands out as one of her most demanding trips, Ting Ting has led adventures across the globe — from Egypt to Bali to Mexico.Each destination offers something different:Egypt surprises travelers with warmth, history, and human connection.Bali and Puerto Escondido, Mexico require intentional planning to stay authentic.Group travel amplifies experiences in ways solo trips can't.The key? Going deeper than the highlights and staying open to the unexpected.  Travel Tips You'll Actually Want to RememberBefore booking your next adventure or retreat-style trip, Ting Ting offers some real-world advice:Expect discomfort — growth lives therePrepare for cultural differencesUnderstand health requirements (yes, vaccines matter)Pack intentionally (you don't need as much as you think)Learn from past travel mistakes — everyone has them“Personal growth often comes from challenging experiences.”  Who Are Adventure Retreats Really For?Adventure retreats aren't just for hardcore explorers — but they're also not for everyone.They're perfect for travelers craving connection, personal growth, and meaningful experiences. If you need total control, predictability, or luxury at every turn, easing into adventure travel might be the move.The reward? Perspective, confidence, and memories that stick with you long after you return home.  Final TakeawayThis episode is a reminder that travel isn't just about where you go — it's about who you become along the way.Whether you're drawn to ancestry travel, off-the-grid destinations, or adventure with purpose, Ting Ting Guan's story proves that the most meaningful journeys often challenge us — and change us. 

In this WWII Prequel, the Empire of Japan and the Soviet Union fight over the Mongolian border, a stretch of lifeless steppe with no cover, trees, or established supply lines. In what has been dubbed a "border conflict" tens of thousands of men, thousands of trucks, and hundreds of tanks are rushed to the frontline that only barely escapes spiraling into a much larger war...at least for a few years. Sources: Edward Drea. Nomohan: Japanese-Soviet Tactical Combat, 1939. Edward Drea. Tradition and Circumstances: The Imperial Japanese Army's Tactical Response to Khalkhin Gol. Glenn Barnett. Russo-Japanese Clash at the Battle of Nomohan. WWII History. May 2005. 4#3 Amnon Sella. Nomohan: Khalkin Gol: The Forgotten War. Journal of Contemporary History (1983) 18#4 Anthony Beevor. The Second World War. Alexi Shishov. Russia and Japan. The history of military conflicts

Last time we spoke about The Battle of Suixian–Zaoyang-Shatow. Following the brutal 1938 capture of Wuhan, Japanese forces aimed to solidify their hold by launching an offensive against Chinese troops in the 5th War Zone, a rugged natural fortress in northern Hubei and southern Henan. Under General Yasuji Okamura, the 11th Army deployed three divisions and cavalry in a pincer assault starting May 1, 1939, targeting Suixian and Zaoyang to crush Nationalist resistance and secure flanks. Chinese commander Li Zongren, leveraging terrain like the Dabie and Tongbai Mountains, orchestrated defenses with over 200,000 troops, including Tang Enbo's 31st Army Group. By May 23, they recaptured Suixian and Zaoyang, forcing a Japanese withdrawal with heavy losses, over 13,000 Japanese casualties versus 25,000 Chinese, restoring pre-battle lines. Shifting south, Japan targeted Shantou in Guangdong to sever supply lines from Hong Kong. In a massive June 21 amphibious assault, the 21st Army overwhelmed thin Chinese defenses, capturing the port and Chao'an despite guerrilla resistance led by Zhang Fakui. Though losses mounted, Japan tightened its blockade, straining China's war effort amid ongoing attrition.   #188 From Changkufeng to Nomonhan Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Well hello again, and yes you all have probably guessed we are taking another detour. Do not worry I hope to shorten this one a bit more so than what became a sort of mini series on the battle of Changkufeng or Battle of Lake Khasan. What we are about to jump into is known in the west as the battle of khalkin Gol, by the Japanese the Nomohan incident. But first I need to sort of set the table up so to say. So back on August 10th, 1938 the Litvinov-Shigemitsu agreement established a joint border commission tasked with redemarcating the disputed boundary between the Soviet Union and Japanese-controlled Manchukuo. However, this commission never achieved a mutually agreeable definition of the border in the contested area. In reality, the outcome was decided well before the group's inaugural meeting. Mere hours after the cease-fire took effect on the afternoon of August 11, General Grigory Shtern convened with a regimental commander from Japan's 19th Division to coordinate the disengagement of forces. With the conflict deemed "honorably" concluded, Japan's Imperial General Headquarters mandated the swift withdrawal of all Japanese troops to the west bank of the Tumen River. By the night of August 13, as the final Japanese soldier crossed the river, it effectively became the de facto border. Soviet forces promptly reoccupied Changkufeng Hill and the adjacent heights—a move that would carry unexpected and profound repercussions. Authoritative Japanese military analyses suggest that if negotiations in Moscow had dragged on for just one more day, the 19th Division would likely have been dislodged from Changkufeng and its surrounding elevations. Undoubtedly, General Shtern's infantry breathed a sigh of relief as the bloodshed ceased. Yet, one can't help but question why Moscow opted for a cease-fire at a juncture when Soviet troops were on the cusp of total battlefield triumph. Perhaps Kremlin leaders deemed it wiser to settle for a substantial gain, roughly three-quarters of their objectives, rather than risk everything. After all, Japan had mobilized threatening forces in eastern Manchuria, and the Imperial Army had a history of impulsive, unpredictable aggression. Moreover, amid the escalating crisis over Czechoslovakia, Moscow may have been wary of provoking a broader Asian conflict. Another theory posits that Soviet high command was misinformed about the ground situation. Reports of capturing a small segment of Changkufeng's crest might have been misinterpreted as control over the entire ridge, or an imminent full takeover before midnight on August 10. The unexpected phone call from Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov to the Japanese embassy that night—proposing a one-kilometer Japanese retreat in exchange for a cease-fire along existing lines—hints at communication breakdowns between Shtern's headquarters and the Kremlin. Ironically, such lapses may have preserved Japanese military honor, allowing the 19th Division's evacuation through diplomacy rather than defeat. Both sides endured severe losses. Initial Japanese press reports claimed 158 killed and 740 wounded. However, the 19th Division's medical logs reveal a grimmer toll: 526 dead and 914 injured, totaling 1,440 casualties. The true figure may have climbed higher, possibly to 1,500–2,000. Following the armistice, the Soviet news agency TASS reported 236 Red Army fatalities and 611 wounded. Given Shtern's uphill assaults across open terrain against entrenched positions, these numbers seem understated. Attackers in such scenarios typically suffered two to three times the defenders' losses, suggesting Soviet casualties ranged from 3,000 to 5,000. This aligns with a Soviet Military Council investigation on August 31, 1938, which documented 408 killed and 2,807 wounded. Japanese estimates placed Soviet losses even higher, at 4,500–7,000. Not all victims perished in combat. Marshal Vasily Blyukher, a decorated Soviet commander, former warlord of the Far East, and Central Committee candidate, was summoned to Moscow in August 1938. Relieved of duty in September and arrested with his family in October, he faced charges of inadequate preparation against Japanese aggression and harboring "enemies of the people" within his ranks. On November 9, 1938, Blyukher died during interrogation a euphemism for torture-induced death.Other innocents suffered as well. In the wake of the fighting, Soviet authorities deported hundreds of thousands of Korean rice farmers from the Ussuri region to Kazakhstan, aiming to eradicate Korean settlements that Japanese spies had allegedly exploited. The Changkufeng clash indirectly hampered Japan's Wuhan offensive, a massive push to subdue China. The influx of troops and supplies for this campaign was briefly disrupted by the border flare-up. Notably, Kwantung Army's 2nd Air Group, slated for Wuhan, was retained due to the Soviet threat. Chiang Kai-shek's drastic measure, breaching the Yellow River dikes to flood Japanese advance routes—further delayed the assault. By October 25, 1938, when Japanese forces captured Hankow, Chiang had relocated his capital to distant Chungking. Paradoxically, Wuhan's fall cut rail links from Canton inland, heightening Chiang's reliance on Soviet aid routed overland and by air from Central Asia. Japan secured a tactical win but missed the decisive blow; Chinese resistance persisted, pinning down a million Japanese troops in occupation duties. What was the true significance of Changkufeng? For General Koiso Suetaka and the 19th Division, it evoked a mix of bitterness and pride. Those eager for combat got their share, though not on their terms. To veterans mourning fallen comrades on those desolate slopes, it might have felt like senseless tragedy. Yet, they fought valiantly under dire conditions, holding firm until a retreat that blended humiliation with imperial praise, a bittersweet inheritance. For the Red Army, it marked a crucial trial of resolve amid Stalin's purges. While Shtern's forces didn't shine brilliantly, they acquitted themselves well in adversity. The U.S. military attaché in Moscow observed that any purge-related inefficiencies had been surmounted, praising the Red Army's valor, reliability, and equipment. His counterpart in China, Colonel Joseph Stilwell, put it bluntly: the Soviets "appeared to advantage," urging skeptics to rethink notions of a weakened Red Army. Yet, by World War II's eve, many British, French, German, and Japanese leaders still dismissed it as a "paper tiger." Soviet leaders appeared content, promoting Shtern to command the Transbaikal Military District and colonel general by 1940, while honoring "Heroes of Lake Khasan" with medals. In a fiery November 7, 1938, speech, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov warned that future incursions would prompt strikes deep into enemy territory. Tokyo's views diverged sharply. Many in the military and government saw it as a stain on Imperial Army prestige, especially Kwantung Army, humiliated on Manchukuo soil it swore to protect. Colonel Masanobu Tsuji Inada, however, framed it as a successful reconnaissance, confirming Soviet border defense without broader aggression, allowing the Wuhan push to proceed safely. Critics, including Major General Gun Hashimoto and historians, questioned this. They argued IGHQ lacked contingency plans for a massive Soviet response, especially with Wuhan preparations underway since June. One expert warned Japan had "played with fire," risking Manchuria and Korea if escalation occurred. Yet, Japanese commanders gleaned few lessons, downplaying Soviet materiel superiority and maintaining disdain for Red Army prowess. The 19th Division's stand against outnumbered odds reinforced this hubris, as did tolerance for local insubordination—attitudes that would prove costly. The Kremlin, conversely, learned Japan remained unpredictable despite its China quagmire. But for Emperor Hirohito's intervention, the conflict might have ballooned. Amid purges and the Czech crisis, Stalin likely viewed it as a reminder of eastern vulnerabilities, especially with Munich advancing German threats westward. Both sides toyed with peril. Moderation won in Tokyo, but Kwantung Army seethed. On August 11, Premier Fumimaro Konoye noted the need for caution. Kwantung, however, pushed for and secured control of the disputed salient from Chosen Army by October 8, 1938. Even winter's chill couldn't quench their vengeful fire, setting the stage for future confrontations. A quick look at the regional map reveals how Manchukuo and the Mongolian People's Republic each jut into the other's territory like protruding salients. These bulges could be seen as aggressive thrusts into enemy land, yet they also risked encirclement and absorption by the opposing empire. A northward push from western Manchuria through Mongolia could sever the MPR and Soviet Far East from the USSR's heartland. Conversely, a pincer movement from Mongolia and the Soviet Maritime Province might envelop and isolate Manchukuo. This dynamic highlights the frontier's strategic volatility in the 1930s. One particularly tense sector was the broad Mongolian salient extending about 150 miles eastward into west-central Manchukuo. There, in mid-1939, Soviet-Japanese tensions erupted into major combat. Known to the Japanese as the Nomonhan Incident and to the Soviets and Mongolians as the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, this clash dwarfed the earlier Changkufeng affair in scale, duration, and impact. Spanning four months and claiming 30,000 to 50,000 casualties, it amounted to a small undeclared war, the modern era's first limited conflict between great powers. The Mongolian salient features vast, semiarid plains of sandy grassland, gently rolling terrain dotted with sparse scrub pines and low shrubs. The climate is unforgivingly continental: May brings hot days and freezing nights, while July and August see daytime highs exceeding 38°C (100°F in American units), with cool evenings. Swarms of mosquitoes and massive horseflies necessitate netting in summer. Rainfall is scarce, but dense morning fogs are common in August. Come September, temperatures plummet, with heavy snows by October and midwinter lows dipping to –34°C. This blend of North African aridity and North Dakotan winters supports only sparse populations, mainly two related but distinct Mongol tribes. The Buriat (or Barga) Mongols migrated into the Nomonhan area from the northwest in the late 17th to early 18th centuries, likely fleeing Russian expansion after the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk. Organized by Manchu emperors between 1732 and 1735, they settled east of the river they called Khalkhin Gol (Mongolian for "river"), in lands that would later become Manchukuo. The Khalkha Mongols, named for the word meaning "barrier" or "shield," traditionally guarded the Mongol Empire's northern frontiers. Their territories lay west of the Buriats, in what would become the MPR. For centuries, these tribes herded livestock across sands, river crossings, and desert paths, largely oblivious to any formal borders. For hundreds of years, the line dividing the Mongolian salient from western Manchuria was a hazy administrative divide within the Qing Empire. In the 20th century, Russia's detachment of Outer Mongolia and Japan's seizure of Manchuria transformed this vague boundary into a frontline between rival powers. The Nomonhan Incident ignited over this contested border. Near the salient's northeastern edge, the river, called Khalkhin Gol by Mongols and Soviets, and Halha by Manchurians and Japanese, flows northwest into Lake Buir Nor. The core dispute: Was the river, as Japan asserted, the historic boundary between Manchukuo and the MPR? Soviet and MPR officials insisted the line ran parallel to and 10–12 miles east of the river, claiming the intervening strip. Japan cited no fewer than 18 maps, from Chinese and Japanese sources, to support the river as the border, a logical choice in such barren terrain, where it served as the sole natural divider. Yet, Soviets and Mongolians countered with evidence like a 1919 Chinese postal atlas and maps from Japanese and Manchukuoan agencies (1919–1934). Unbeknownst to combatants, in July 1939, China's military attaché in Moscow shared a 1934 General Staff map with his American counterpart, showing the border east of the river. Postwar Japanese studies of 18th-century Chinese records confirm that in 1734, the Qing emperor set a boundary between Buriat and Khalkha Mongols east of the river, passing through the hamlet of Nomonhan—as the Soviets claimed. However, Kwantung Army Headquarters dismissed this as non-binding, viewing it as an internal Qing affair without Russian involvement. Two former Kwantung Army officers offer a pragmatic explanation: From 1931 to 1935, when Soviet forces in the Far East were weak, Japanese and Manchukuoan authorities imposed the river as the de facto border, with MPR acquiescence. By the mid- to late 1930s, as Soviet strength grew, Japan refused to yield, while Mongolians and Soviets rejected the river line, sparking clashes. In 1935, Kwantung Army revised its maps to align with the river claim. From late that year, the Lake Buir Nor–Halha sector saw frequent skirmishes between Manchukuoan and MPR patrols. Until mid-1938, frontier defense in northwestern Manchukuo fell to the 8th Border Garrison Unit , based near Hailar. This 7,000-man force, spread thin, lacked mobility, training, and, in Kwantung Army's eyes, combat readiness. That summer, the newly formed 23rd Division, under Kwantung Army, took station at Hailar, absorbing the 8th BGU under its command, led by Lieutenant General Michitaro Komatsubara. At 52, Komatsubara was a premier Russian specialist in the Imperial Army, with stints as military attaché in the USSR and head of Kwantung's Special Services Agency in Harbin. Standing 5'7" with a sturdy build, glasses, and a small mustache, he was detail-oriented, keeping meticulous diaries, writing lengthy letters, and composing poetry, though he lacked combat experience. Before departing Tokyo in July 1938, Komatsubara received briefings from Colonel Masazumi Inada, AGS Operations Section chief. Amid planning for Changkufeng, Inada urged calm on the Manchukuo-MPR border given China's ongoing campaigns. Guidelines: Ignore minor incidents, prioritize intelligence on Soviet forces east of Lake Baikal, and study operations against the Soviet Far East's western sector. Familiar with the region from his Harbin days, Komatsubara adopted a low-key approach. Neither impulsive nor aggressive, he kept the green 23rd Division near Hailar, delegating patrols to the 8th BGU. An autumn incident underscores his restraint. On November 1, 1938, an 8th BGU patrol was ambushed by MPR forces. Per Japanese accounts, the three-man team, led by a lieutenant, strayed too close to the border and was attacked 50 meters inside Manchukuo. The lieutenant escaped, but his men died. Komatsubara sent an infantry company to secure the site but forbade retaliation. He pursued body recovery diplomatically, protested to MPR and Soviet officials, and disciplined his officers: garrison leaders got five days' confinement for poor troop training, the lieutenant thirty days. Despite this caution, pressures at AGS and KwAHQ were mounting, poised to thrust the 23rd Division into fierce battle. Modern militaries routinely develop contingency plans against potential adversaries, and the mere existence of such strategies doesn't inherently signal aggressive intentions. That said, shifts in Japan's operational planning vis-à-vis the Soviet Union may have inadvertently fueled the Nomonhan Incident. From 1934 to 1938, Japanese war scenarios emphasized a massive surprise assault in the Ussuri River region, paired with defensive holding actions in northwestern Manchuria. However, between mid-1938 and early 1939, a clandestine joint task force from the Army General Staff  and Kwantung Army's Operations Departments crafted a bold new blueprint. This revised strategy proposed containing Soviet forces in the east and north while unleashing a full-scale offensive from Hailar, advancing west-northwest toward Chita and ultimately Lake Baikal. The goal: sever the Transbaikal Soviet Far East from the USSR's core. Dubbed Plan Eight-B, it gained Kwantung Army's endorsement in March 1939. Key architects—Colonels Takushiro Hattori and Masao Terada, along with Major Takeharu Shimanuki—were reassigned from AGS to Kwantung Army Headquarters to oversee implementation. The plan anticipated a five-year buildup before execution, with Hattori assuming the role of chief operations staff officer.  A map review exposes a glaring vulnerability in Plan Eight-B: the Japanese advance would leave its southern flank exposed to Soviet counterstrikes from the Mongolian salient. By spring 1939, KwAHQ likely began perceiving this protrusion as a strategic liability. Notably, at the outbreak of Nomonhan hostilities, no detailed operational contingencies for the area had been formalized. Concurrently, Japan initiated plans for a vital railroad linking Harlun Arshan to Hailar. While its direct tie to Plan Eight-B remains unclear, the route skirted perilously close to the Halha River, potentially heightening KwAHQ's focus on the disputed Mongolian salient. In early 1939, the 23rd Division intensified reconnaissance patrols near the river. Around this time, General Grigory Shtern, freshly appointed commander of Soviet Far Eastern forces, issued a public warning that Japan was gearing up for an assault on the Mongolian People's Republic. As Plan Eight-B took shape and railroad proposals advanced, KwAHQ issued a strikingly confrontational set of guidelines for frontier troops. These directives are often cited as a catalyst for the Nomonhan clash, forging a chain linking the 1937 Amur River incident, the 1938 Changkufeng debacle, and the 1939 conflict.Resentment had festered at KwAHQ over perceived AGS meddling during the Amur affair, which curtailed their command autonomy. This frustration intensified at Changkufeng, where General Kamezo Suetaka's 19th Division endured heavy losses, only for the contested Manchukuoan territory to be effectively ceded. Kwantung Army lobbied successfully to wrest oversight of the Changkufeng salient from Chosen Army. In November 1938, Major Masanobu Tsuji of KwAHQ's Operations Section was sent to survey the site. The audacious officer was dismayed: Soviet forces dominated the land from the disputed ridge to the Tumen River. Tsuji undertook several winter reconnaissance missions. His final outing in March 1939 involved leading 40 men to Changkufeng's base. With rifles slung non-threateningly, they ascended to within 200 yards of Soviet lines, formed a line, and urinated in unison, eliciting amused reactions from the enemy. They then picnicked with obentos and sake, sang army tunes, and left gifts of canned meat, chocolates, and whiskey. This theatrical stunt concealed Tsuji's real aim: covert photography proving Soviet fortifications encroached on Manchukuoan soil. Tsuji was a singular figure. Born of modest means, he embodied a modern samurai ethos, channeling a sharp intellect into a frail, often ailing body through feats of extraordinary daring. A creative tactician, he thrived in intelligence ops, political scheming, aerial scouting, planning, and frontline command—excelling across a tumultuous career. Yet, flaws marred his brilliance: narrow bigotry, virulent racism, and capacity for cruelty. Ever the ambitious outsider, Tsuji wielded outsized influence via gekokujo—Japan's tradition of subordinates steering policy from below. In 1939, he was a major, but his pivotal role at Nomonhan stemmed from this dynamic. Back in Hsinking after his Changkufeng escapade, Tsuji drafted a response plan: negotiate border "rectification" with the Soviets; if talks failed, launch an attack to expel intruders. Kwantung Army adopted it. Deputy Chief of Staff Major General Otozaburo Yano flew to Tokyo with Tsuji's photos, seeking AGS approval. There, he was rebuffed—Changkufeng was deemed settled, and minor violations should be overlooked amid Tokyo's aversion to Soviet conflict. Yano's plea that leniency would invite aggression was countered by notes on Europe's tensions restraining Moscow. Yano's return sparked outrage at KwAHQ, seen as AGS thwarting their imperial duty to safeguard Manchukuo. Fury peaked in the Operations Section, setting the stage for Tsuji's drafting of stringent new frontier guidelines: "Principles for the Settlement of Soviet-Manchukuoan Border Disputes." The core tenet: "If Soviet troops transgress the Manchukuoan frontiers, Kwantung Army will nip their ambitions in the bud by completely destroying them." Specific directives for local commanders included: "If the enemy crosses the frontiers … annihilate him without delay, employing strength carefully built up beforehand. To accomplish our mission, it is permissible to enter Soviet territory, or to trap or lure Soviet troops into Manchukuoan territory and allow them to remain there for some time… . Where boundary lines are not clearly defined, area defense commanders will, upon their own initiative, establish boundaries and indicate them to the forward elements… . In the event of an armed clash, fight until victory is won, regardless of relative strengths or of the location of the boundaries. If the enemy violates the borders, friendly units must challenge him courageously and endeavor to triumph in their zone of action without concerning themselves about the consequences, which will be the responsibility of higher headquarters." Major Tsuji Masanobu later justified the new guidelines by pointing to the "contradictory orders" that had hamstrung frontier commanders under the old rules. They were tasked with upholding Manchukuo's territorial integrity yet forbidden from actions that might spark conflict. This, Tsuji argued, bred hesitation, as officers feared repercussions for decisive responses to incursions. The updated directives aimed to alleviate this "anxiety," empowering local leaders to act boldly without personal liability. In truth, Tsuji's "Principles for the Settlement of Soviet-Manchukuoan Border Disputes" were more incendiary than conciliatory. They introduced provocative measures: authorizing commanders to unilaterally define unclear boundaries, enforce them with immediate force "shoot first, ask questions later", permit pursuits into enemy territory, and even encourage luring adversaries across the line. Such tactics flouted both government policy and official army doctrine, prioritizing escalation over restraint. The proposals sparked intense debate within Kwantung Army's Operations Section. Section chief Colonel Takushiro Hattori and Colonel Masao Terada outranked Tsuji, as did Major Takeharu Shimanuki, all recent transfers from the Army General Staff. Tsuji, however, boasted longer tenure at Kwantung Army Headquarters since April 1936 and in Operations since November 1937, making him the de facto veteran. Hattori and Terada hesitated to challenge the assertive major, whose reputation for intellect, persuasion, and deep knowledge of Manchuria commanded respect. In a 1960 interview, Shimanuki recalled Tsuji's dominance in discussions, where his proactive ideas often swayed the group. Unified, the section forwarded Tsuji's plan to Kwantung Army Command. Commander Lieutenant General Kenkichi Ueda consulted Chief of Staff General Rensuke Isogai and Vice Chief General Otozaburo Yano, seasoned leaders who should have spotted the guidelines' volatility. Yet, lingering grudges from AGS "interference" in past incidents like the Amur River and Changkufeng clouded their judgment. Ueda, Isogai, and Tsuji shared history from the 1932 Shanghai Incident: Tsuji, then a captain, led a company in the 7th Regiment under Colonel Isogai, with Yano as staff officer and Ueda commanding the 9th Division. Tsuji was wounded there, forging bonds of camaraderie. This "clique," which grew to include Hattori, Terada, and Shimanuki, amplified Tsuji's influence. Despite Isogai's initial reservations as the group's moderate voice, the guidelines won approval. Ueda issued them as Kwantung Army Operations Order 1488 on April 25, 1939, during a division commanders' conference at KwAHQ. A routine copy reached AGS in Tokyo, but no formal reply came. Preoccupied with the China War and alliance talks with Germany, AGS may have overlooked border matters. Colonel Masazumi Inada, AGS Operations head, later noted basic acceptance of Order 1488, with an informal expectation—relayed to Hattori and Terada—of prior consultation on violations. KwAHQ dismissed this as another Tokyo intrusion on their autonomy. Some Japanese analysts contend a stern AGS rejection might have prevented Nomonhan's catastrophe, though quelling Kwantung's defiance could have required mass staff reassignments, a disruptive step AGS avoided. Tsuji countered that permitting forceful action at Changkufeng would have deterred Nomonhan altogether, underscoring the interconnectedness of these clashes while implicitly critiquing the 1939 battle's location. Undeniably, Order 1488's issuance on April 25 paved the way for conflict three weeks later. Japanese records confirm that Khalkha Mongols and MPR patrols routinely crossed the Halha River—viewed by them as internal territory, 10 miles from the true border. Such crossings passed uneventfully in March and April 1939. Post-Order 1488, however, 23rd Division commander General Michitaro Komatsubara responded aggressively, setting the stage for escalation. The Nomonhan Incident ignited with a border clash on May 11–12, 1939, that rapidly spiraled into a major conflict. Over a dozen "authoritative" accounts exist, varying in viewpoint, focus, and specifics. After cross-referencing these sources, a coherent timeline emerges. On the night of May 10–11, a 20-man Mongolian People's Republic border patrol crossed eastward over the Halha River (known as Khalkhin Gol to Mongols and Soviets). About 10 miles east, atop a 150-foot sandy hill, lay the tiny hamlet of Nomonhan, a cluster of crude huts housing a few Mongol families. Just south flowed the Holsten River, merging westward into the broader Halha. By morning on May 11, Manchukuoan forces spotted the MPR patrol north of the Holsten and west of Nomonhan. In the MPR/Soviet perspective, Nomonhan Hill marked the Mongolia-Manchuria border. To Manchukuoans and Japanese, it sat 10 miles inside Manchukuo, well east of the Halha. A 40-man Manchukuoan cavalry unit repelled the Mongolians back across the river, inflicting initial casualties on both sides—the Manchukuoans drawing first blood. The MPR patrol leader exaggerated the attackers as 200 strong. The next day, May 12, a 60-man MPR force under Major P. Chogdan evicted the Manchukuoans from the disputed zone, reestablishing positions between the Halha and Nomonhan. The Manchukuoans, in turn, reported facing 700 enemies. Sporadic skirmishes and maneuvering persisted through the week. On May 13, two days post-clash, the local Manchukuoan commander alerted General Michitaro Komatsubara's 23rd Division headquarters in Hailar. Simultaneously, Major Chogdan reported to Soviet military command in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital. What began as a Mongolian-Manchukuoan spat was poised to draw in Soviet and Japanese patrons. Attributing the May 10–11 violation hinges on border interpretations: both sides claimed the Halha-Nomonhan strip. Yet, most accounts concur that Manchukuoan forces initiated the fighting. Post-May 13 notifications to Moscow and Tokyo clarify the record thereafter. Midday on May 13, Komatsubara was leading a staff conference on the newly issued Kwantung Army Operations Order 1488—Major Tsuji Masanobu's aggressive border guidelines. Ironically, the first Nomonhan combat report arrived mid-discussion. Officers present recall Komatsubara deciding instantly to "destroy the invading Outer Mongolian forces" per Order 1488. That afternoon, he informed Kwantung Army Headquarters of the incident and his intent to eradicate the intruders, requesting air support and trucks. General Kenkichi Ueda, Kwantung commander, approved Komatsubara's "positive attitude," dispatching six scout planes, 40 fighters, 10 light bombers, two anti-aircraft batteries, and two motorized transport companies. Ueda added a caveat: exercise "extreme caution" to prevent escalation—a paradoxical blend of destruction and restraint, reflective of KwAHQ's fervent mood. Ueda relayed the details to Tokyo's Army General Staff, which responded that Kwantung should handle it "appropriately." Despite Kwantung's impulsive reputation, Tokyo deferred, perhaps trusting the northern strategic imbalance, eight Japanese divisions versus 30 Soviet ones from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok, would enforce prudence. This faith proved misguided. On May 14, Major Tsuji flew from KwAHQ for aerial reconnaissance over Nomonhan, spotting 20 horses but no troops. Upon landing, a fresh bullet hole in his plane confirmed lingering MPR presence east of the Halha. Tsuji briefed 23rd Division staff and reported to Ueda that the incident seemed minor. Aligning with Order 1488's spirit, Komatsubara deployed a force under Lieutenant Colonel Yaozo Azuma: an armored car company, two infantry companies, and a cavalry troop. Arriving at Nomonhan on May 15, Azuma learned most MPR forces had retreated westward across the Halha the prior night, with only token elements remaining, and those withdrawing. Undeterred, he pursued. The advance met scant resistance, as foes had crossed the river. However, Japanese light bombers struck a small MPR concentration on the west bank, Outpost Number 7, killing two and wounding 15 per MPR reports; Japanese claimed 30–40 kills. All agree: the raid targeted undisputed MPR territory. Hearing of May 15's events, Komatsubara deemed the Mongolians sufficiently rebuked and recalled Azuma to Hailar on May 16. KwAHQ concurred, closing the matter. Soviet leaders, however, saw it differently. Mid-May prompted Soviet support for the MPR under their 1936 Mutual Defense Pact. The Red Army's 57th Corps, stationed in Mongolia, faced initial disarray: Commander Nikolai Feklenko was hunting, Chief of Staff A. M. Kushchev in Ulan Ude with his ill wife. Moscow learned of clashes via international press from Japanese sources, sparking Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov's furious inquiry. Feklenko and Kushchev rushed back to Ulaanbaatar, dispatching a mixed force—a battalion from the 149th Infantry Regiment (36th Division), plus light armor and artillery from the 11th Tank Brigade—to Tamsag Bulak, 80 miles west of the Halha. Led by Major A. E. Bykov, it bolstered the MPR's 6th Cavalry Division. Bykov and Cavalry Commander Colonel Shoaaiibuu inspected the site on May 15, post-Azum's departure. The cavalry arrived two days later, backed by Bykov (ordered to remain west of the river and avoid combat if possible). Some MPR troops recrossed, occupying the disputed zone. Clashes with Manchukuoan cavalry resumed and intensified. Notified of renewed hostilities, Komatsubara viewed it as defiance, a personal affront. Emboldened by Order 1488, he aimed not just to repel but to encircle and annihilate. The incident was on the verge of major expansion. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The ghosts of the Changufeng incident have come back to haunt both the USSR and Japan. Those like Tsuji Masanobu instigated yet another border clash that would erupt into a full blown battle that would set a precedent for both nations until the very end of WW2. 

Julie Veloo (born 1960) is a Canadian humanitarian, expedition leader, and lifelong adventurer whose journey has become inseparable from Mongolia. The youngest of six children, Julie earned her degree in French from the University of British Columbia in 1985, then built a life of global experience travelling with her husband, Chelvan and their two sons - living in Canada, Irian Jaya, Australia, the United States, and ultimately Mongolia, where her mission found its true direction. A polyglot fluent in French, Spanish, German, and Mongolian, she's known for building trust across cultures and working deeply within local communities.Julie is also a passionate equestrian and outdoorswoman who has ridden more than 50,000 kilometres across and around Mongolia. Remarkably, she was 50 years old the first time she ever rode a horse and that experience was in Mongolia at what would become Horse Trek Mongolia - her second home when she's in Mongolia.  What began as a late start became a defining reinvention, proving that courage and transformation don't belong to the young—they belong to the willing.Today, Julie serves as Vice President of the Veloo Foundation, changing the lives of children and families in need through education, nutrition, community libraries, and expanding medical and dental access. She is also behind some of  Mongolia's most iconic long-distance charity rides, including the 10 day , 700 km Gobi Gallop and the ambitious 4,000-kilometre Blue Wolf Totem Expedition—projects that blend adventure with impact, and storytelling with real-world change. In addition to these roles she finds time to manage marketing for Moon's Gift Gers, her social enterprise which manufactures and sells top quality gers around the world and uses the profits to support her work with Veloo Foundation.https://www.veloofoundation.com/http://www.horsetrekmongolia.com/https://www.moonsgiftgers.com/Send us a textSupport the showCan't get enough of the Journey On Podcast & it's guests? Here are two more ways to engage with them. Find exclusive educational content from previous podcast guests which include webinars, course and more: https://courses.warwickschiller.com If you want to meet your favorite podcast guest in person, you can attend our annual Journey On Podcast Summit either in person or via live stream: https://summit.warwickschiller.com Become a Patreon Member today! Get access to podcast bonus segments, ask questions to podcast guests, and even suggest future podcast guests while supporting Warwick: https://www.patreon.com/journeyonpodcastWarwick has over 900 Online Training Videos that are designed to create a relaxed, connected, and skilled equine partner. Start your horse training journey today!https://videos.warwickschiller.com/Check us out on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WarwickschillerfanpageWatch hundreds of free Youtube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/warwickschillerFollow us on Instagram: @warwickschiller

In this episode, Ryne and Ayrton sit down with Josh Mazza for a wild journey across two extreme corners of the world. Josh shares his incredible experience travelling through Mongolia and working alongside traditional eagle hunters, learning about their deep cultural connection with hunting eagles and the realities of life in one of the planet's harshest landscapes.The conversation then shifts from the vast Mongolian steppe to the frozen north of Canada, where Josh guides tourists on unforgettable trips to see polar bears in the wild. He unpacks what it's really like working with apex predators, the importance of ethical wildlife tourism, and the challenges of balancing conservation with human curiosity.From ancient traditions to Arctic giants, this episode is packed with adventure, insight, and a whole lot of respect for the animals that rule these extreme environments. ❄️

Today we'll be talking about Thailand's newly dubbed status as being the ‘Sick Man of Asia,' allegations of election tampering and vote buying ahead of this weekend's vote, and a little later, Thai influencers weigh in on the prospect of Disney in the land of smiles.

When the Mongolian language started to disappear from classrooms in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China's north, many turned to the internet to keep their language and culture alive. A new investigation shows those remaining online spaces are being targeted by the Chinese government.

What if your 11% success rate means you're absolutely crushing it? In this episode, Paul Kirchoff shares how he helps small growth businesses and their leaders accelerate success through EPX Global, a breakthrough AI-centric acceleration platform and ecosystem. As an avid entrepreneur, investor, and global adventurer, Paul is the founder and CEO of EPX Global, where members around the world drive faster business success, max out amazing experiences, and push individual performance to new levels. Paul is also the Founder and CEO of DominoOne, an impact accelerator and crowdsourced problem-solving platform. Paul built two marketing software/agency companies and multi-billion dollar business units at Dell Computer Corporation as an early employee. He's a member of the 113-year-old Explorers Club, DJs electronic music, wrote a corporate thriller novel (giving proceeds to cancer research), and made a film about racism. Paul is developing frontier-level expertise in operationalizing artificial intelligence across the enterprise in every department. Paul reveals two relationships that transformed him in ways nobody has ever answered this question before: a Mongolian eagle hunter he met in the far eastern corner of Mongolia, an older gentleman who had zero knowledge of America, spoke no English, and lived in a yurt with horses and golden eagles as pets, teaching Paul about authentic human connection beyond labels and systems, which became the core culture he built into his technology platform where single moms are valued equally with astronauts; and a police officer who arrested him at 32 after a casual happy hour (though Paul was sober), leading to community service at a center for the deaf and blind where he spent weeks rewinding VHS tapes while listening to thought leaders teach cutting-edge SEO and digital marketing, which gave him the advanced knowledge to start his marketing agency that became successful and sold 13 years later, ultimately leading to his trip to Mongolia and the realization he needed to build EPX Global.   [00:04:00] What Paul Does at EPX Global Tech veteran CEO with many startups, sold companies, shut down companies Early employee at Dell Computer Corporation before anyone in Austin knew who Michael Dell was Built EPX Global as AI-centric ecosystem for small growth businesses and their leaders Heavy artificial intelligence expertise helping companies accelerate success, health, and experiences [00:05:00] Making Everything Go Faster Helps accelerate time to best performance unique to genetics on health side Helps companies accelerate success with AI, connections, and knowledge Makes sure people don't forget to dance under the Milky Way because life is short [00:06:00] Living in Service of Others Used to be financial goals and status symbols when younger, none of that matters now Addicted to a blank sheet of paper, gifted to solve or invent anything Respect for fellow humans (all a unit of one on their own unique journey) Living in service of others by replicating himself with technology [00:07:00] Building a Top Marketing Agency Built and sold one of top demand generation agencies in world Controlled front page of Google, Facebook called asking how they converted traffic Always on cutting edge of deploying technology in marketing (technical + psychology) [00:08:20] AI Systems for Every Business Size Wanted to build AI systems for small businesses (missing factor for 10x resources) Also doing business transformation consulting for billion-dollar companies Helping bigger companies go from where they are to AI-first operations [00:09:20] The 60% Revenue Increase Every Month Networking ecosystem connects people to solutions for health, happiness, business, capital People battling depression got connected to biohacking guys, transformed their lives One client company 60-70% higher revenue every single month with zero change to headcount [00:11:00] Being the X Factor AI systems deployed handle support, become AI salesperson, become AI marketing team Small businesses can grow beyond traditional chains with 10x resources All about being X factor in people's lives or facilitating X factor with someone else [00:14:00] The 11% Success Rate Discovery Expert guest on platform said his success rate is 14% (very successful guy) Paul did the math on his own attempts, came out to 11% success rate Entrepreneurs put enormous pressure on themselves, need different perspective [00:16:00] Trust in an AI World Real meaningful relationships becoming more and more valuable with AI Building networking assistant governed by user (uses your reasoning to find value) Human connection and that magnetic field around our hearts makes us who we are [00:19:40] When Social Media Became Entertainment Facebook, Instagram, TikTok devolved into micro entertainment channels (not networking) Feeds filled with ads and sponsored posts, no actual networking EPX Global has no ads, every connection based on merit of what you want [00:20:20] Photorealistic Fake Content AI video (Sora, Veo) can create photorealistic content that's completely fake Consumer backlash coming for authenticity in connections Business will embrace AI efficiency (hyper-efficient usually wins) [00:23:00] Two People, No Names Never anyone Paul looks up to or admires or wants to be like who affected his life Been blessed to meet incredible people (Pope, Richard Branson's Island, etc.) Two people come to mind that transformed everything Both people Paul has no idea where they are or their names [00:24:20] Far Eastern Mongolia Was entrepreneur working 14 hours a day for decade plus, one-trick pony success Knew needed to desperately change something, chose adventure Took group to far eastern corner of Mongolia to ride horses with eagle hunters Met older gentleman in yurt who had zero knowledge of America or United States [00:25:40] The Man with Golden Eagles Man spoke zero English, wore fox neck tie, had pet golden eagles (40 pounds) Paul realized this is furthest from his life as tech guy (opposite side of life) Both excited to meet each other as new friends with zero in common [00:27:00] Single Moms and Astronauts Brought that spiritualness and core value into network he built Despite super achievers (swimming oceans, skiing Everest, gold medals), none of that matters Single mom raising five good kids might be more impressive than astronaut [00:27:40] The Saturday Night Traffic Stop At 32, coming out of casual happy hour, got pulled over Told officer honestly: "I had two drinks over last hour, I'm clearly fine" Officer said he seemed like nice guy but made him do sobriety test Got arrested and taken downtown (was actually sober, officer kept saying he was nicest person) [00:28:40] Community Service for the Deaf and Blind Offered to do community service to get charge expunged Chose center for deaf and blind, job was rewinding VHS tapes in warehouse Asked supervisor if he could listen to music, supervisor said yes [00:29:20] SEO Lessons in His Ears Instead of music, put in thought leaders teaching SEO and digital marketing For weeks on end, hours a day, learning cutting-edge techniques from pioneers After that, was so advanced in knowledge that led to starting agency Agency became successful and powerful, sold it 13 years later [00:30:00] The Chain of Events If officer hadn't arrested him, wouldn't have had that learning experience Wouldn't have had confidence to start agency that got him burnt out Wouldn't have gone to Mongolia and realized need to build network [00:31:00] In the Canyon Before the Summit At the time was devastated, seemed horrible (younger without perspective) Now incredibly grateful it happened When in the canyon, you're about to go to the summit [00:32:20] When Identity Gets Wrapped Up Greatest risk to mental health is when identity tied to something other than happiness If identity wrapped up in labels (AI whisperer, top guy), devastated when things go wrong Separate identity from accomplishments to stomach any ups and downs [00:38:00] The Leader in the Back AI exercise: meditate on what you look like as future leader Paul's image: crowd moving down valley, Paul in the back (slightly bigger) Leader in back can move crowds (not showing off Maserati or boat) [00:39:00] A Multitude of Miracles However someone gets through life (good/bad parents, heartbreak, etc.) shapes them Everyone made it to this one moment in time (mathematically massive miracle) When you respect everyone like that, you operate without ability to judge or be judged [00:39:40] Operating Without Fear When you don't judge or feel judged, you operate without expectations Without expectations means without fear of future negative ramifications Can be yourself, be present, love everybody, still compete   KEY QUOTES "I did the math and my success rate is like 11%. And I feel like I'm fairly successful, right? I've learned to not really give a shit about what your definition of success is." - Paul Kirchoff "There's zero in common, zero knowledge about each other. And it was one of the most remarkable moments because it shows you this level of connection that's possible when you drop labels and systems and passports and everything else." - Paul Kirchoff "If that guy wouldn't have arrested me, I wouldn't have started an agency, wouldn't have gotten burnt out, wouldn't have gone to Mongolia, and wouldn't be on this call today." - Paul Kirchoff CONNECT WITH PAUL KIRCHOFF 

Ancient tribes stayed incredibly strong and almost never got sick by following timeless habits that most modern people have completely forgotten.I sat down with Hilda Labrada (aka Holistic Hilda), host of the Wise Traditions podcast (16M+ downloads), to talk about the real practices she discovered while living with Maasai warriors, Mongolian herders, Aboriginal elders, Quechua communities, and more.We cover the six free ancestral secrets she teaches for massive energy, resilience, and healthspan; things science is finally catching up to.Hilda shares raw stories from 100-year-old elders who said “we never got sick,” what really happened when entire tribes started eating modern processed foods, and why sunlight, cold exposure, real food, and deep human connection might matter more than the newest supplement stack."Modern science is catching up to ancestral wisdom." – Hilda LabradaReclaim your BIRTHRIGHT To Optimal Health, Fertility, and Wholeness!Head over to https://www.birthright.co/ and use HILDA15 for 15% off your purchaseSupport the show and get 50% off MCT oil with free shipping – just leave us a review on iTunes and let us know!https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-beyond-the-norms/id1714886566 Mentioned in the Episode:- Wise Traditions Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wise-traditions/id1072618042  - Mother Code Course: https://www.holistichilda.com/course About Hilda LabradaHilda Labrada is an integrative nutrition certified health coach, world traveler, and host of the Wise Traditions podcast supported by the Weston A. Price Foundation. After surviving open-heart surgery at age nine, she dedicated her life to discovering what keeps people truly healthy. She has explored Mongolia, Ethiopia, Ecuador, Kenya, Australia, and Albania, living among indigenous tribes to document their ancestral wisdom and traditional food practices that modern science is only now beginning to validate.Connect with Hilda Labrada:- Website: https://holistichilda.com - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holistichilda - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@holistichilda - YouTube: www.youtube.com/@HolisticHilda Connect with Chris Burres:- Website: https://www.myvitalc.com/ - Website: http://www.livebeyondthenorms.com/ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisburres/ - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@myvitalc - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisburres/ DisclaimerThe content shared in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice of any kind, nor does it include any specific claims or guarantees. The views expressed are based on personal experiences, research, and individual perspectives, and are meant to inspire and inform listeners on topics related to wellness, lifestyle, and personal development.We strongly encourage all listeners to consult with a qualified pr

Jalsa Urubshurow, founder and CEO of Nomadic Expeditions and Three Camels Lodge, talks with James Shillinglaw of Insider Travel Report at last month's ILTM Cannes luxury travel show about his thoroughly original company offering tours of Mongolia, India, Nepal and Tibet, as well as Three Camel Lodge in Mongolia. Born in the U.S. to Mongolian parents, Urubshurow offers a fascinating account Mongolian politics and culture and how to experience it with his luxury tour operator. For more information, visit www.nomadicexpeditions.com and www.threecamellodge.com.  All our Insider Travel Report video interviews are archived and available on our Youtube channel  (youtube.com/insidertravelreport), and as podcasts with the same title on: Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Listen Notes, Podchaser, TuneIn + Alexa, Podbean,  iHeartRadio,  Google, Amazon Music/Audible, Deezer, Podcast Addict, and iTunes Apple Podcasts, which supports Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro and Castbox. 

This week, Jason is joined by Megan Eugenio aka Overtime Megan!Megan has been working with Overtime, a digital sports brand, aimed at the next generation of sports fans and athletes since early 2020. Her engaging personality and basketball knowledge helped her quickly gain a large audience on the Overtime platform, becoming one of their most recognizable faces. Over the last few years, her social media following has grown to over 3 million followers, and she continues to dip her toes in various areas in the sports and entertainment industries, including a recent guest appearance on NFL Red Zone with host Scott Hanson.Megan Eugenio opens up about breaking into a male-dominated industry while staying true to her unapologetically girly self and keeping an open mind along the way. She shares the unexpected path that led her to Overtime within a month of starting school, working just four hours a week for $15 an hour as a college freshman, and eventually signing her talent contract. Megan discusses the importance of education, why having knowledge in your arsenal matters, and whether she'd ever consider leaving Overtime as she expands her reach into new ventures. She also dives into blind confidence, managing nerves, handling her Snapchat being hacked, and navigating the dark side of the internet after a public scandal. Megan reflects on building thick skin, leaning on a strong support system, her dream job, the hardest part of dating, and her biggest tips for succeeding on social media.Megan reveals all this and so much more in another episode you can't afford to miss!Host: Jason TartickCo-Host: David ArduinAudio: John GurneyGuest: Megan EugenioStay connected with the Trading Secrets Podcast! Instagram: @tradingsecretspodcast Youtube: Trading SecretsFacebook: Join the Group All Access: Free 30-Day Trial Trading Secrets Steals & Deals!Upwork:Instead of spending weeks sorting through random resumes, Upwork Business Plus sends a curated shortlist of expert talent to your inbox in hours. Trusted, top-rated freelancers vetted for skills and reliability.... and rehired by businesses like yours. Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you'll get $500 in credit. Go to Upwork.com/SAVE now and claim the offer before 1/31/2025.Momentous:Creatine isn't just for muscle gains - it's essential daily fuel for your brain, body, and long-term performance. Momentous Creapure ® Creatine is backed by leading performance experts like Dr Andrew Huberman and Dr Stacy Sims. Go to livemomentous.com, and use promo code TRADINGSECRETS for up to 35% off your first subscription orderQuince:Quince has everything you need: men's Mongolian cashmere sweaters, wool coats, leather and suede outerwear that actually hold up to daily wear and still look good. Refresh your winter wardrobe with Quince. Go to Quince.com/tradingsecrets for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.

The Mongol Rally is a one-of-kind intercontinental car race, the "greatest motoring adventure on the planet" according to the organizers. Participants must drive from London to eastern Russia, across Mongolia, in a small engine car (1000-1200cc) at their own pace and their own peril. Radio producer and friend-of-the-show Scott Gurian survived the 11,000 mile journey in his tiny, 1 liter car and joins us to talk about it. Sign up for the Mongolian Rally here. Check out Scott's podcast Far From Home here. This January, our archive episodes—presented every Friday—will cover the theme of ADVENTURE! Because we could all use a little more adventure in our lives, and January is the perfect time to start thinking about the adventures we want to take during the new year. ***The Bittersweet Life podcast has been on the air for an impressive 10+ years! In order to help newer listeners discover some of our earlier episodes, every Friday we are now airing an episode from our vast archives! Enjoy!*** ------------------------------------- COME TO ROME WITH US: Our third annual Bittersweet Life Roman Adventure is in the books! If you'd like to join us in 2026, and be part of an intimate group of listeners on a magical and unforgettable journey to Rome, discovering the city with us as your guides, find out more here. ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started. BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more. TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue. START PODCASTING: If you are planning to start your own podcast, consider Libsyn for your hosting service! Use this affliliate link to get two months free, or use our promo code SWEET when you sign up. SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps. WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us. JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured! NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon. TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!  

Who was the real Marco Polo, and did his journey along the Silk Road actually happen? Today, we follow the life of the Venetian traveler Marco Polo from his early days through his epic adventure to the court of Kublai Khan. We'll talk about how his father first met the Great Khan, his long journey to China, what it was like working in the advanced Mongolian court, the origins of The Travels of Marco Polo, and even the surprising origins of the Marco Polo pool game...Welcome to History Camp!

The start of 2026 represents a new beginning with new opportunities. Join Ed and Wayne as they usher in the New Year with our friend Batjargal Tuvshintsengel. We know him as “Bat” from our Mongolian ministry, and now he serves as Vice President of Ministry Support. Sit in on this valuable conversation that reviews the important ministry vision for 2026 and the challenges that are before us. The FEBC team is excited about the focus on investing in the next generation of leaders. You'll catch a vision for what's ahead in 2026 and learn how to pray for another exciting year of reaching the unreached with the Gospel…Until All Have Heard.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight's show features Asian Refugees United and Lavender Phoenix in conversation about art, culture, and organizing, and how artists help us imagine and build liberation. Important Links: Lavender Phoenix: Website | Instagram Asian Refugees United: Website | Instagram | QTViệt Cafe Collective Transcript: Cheryl: Hey everyone. Good evening. You tuned in to APEX Express. I'm your host, Cheryl, and tonight is an AACRE Night. AACRE, which is short for Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality is a network made up of 11 Asian American social justice organizations who work together to build long-term movements for justice. Across the AACRE network, our groups are organizing against deportations, confronting anti-blackness, xenophobia, advancing language justice, developing trans and queer leaders, and imagine new systems of safety and care. It's all very good, very important stuff. And all of this from the campaigns to the Organizing to Movement building raises a question that I keep coming back to, which is, where does art live In all of this, Acts of resistance do not only take place in courtrooms or city halls. It takes place wherever people are still able to imagine. It is part of how movements survive and and grow. Art is not adjacent to revolution, but rather it is one of its most enduring forms, and tonight's show sits in that very spirit, and I hope that by the end of this episode, maybe you'll see what I mean. I;d like to bring in my friends from Lavender Phoenix, a trans queer API organization, building people power in the Bay Area, who are also a part of the AACRE Network. This summer, Lavender Phoenix held a workshop that got right to the heart of this very question that we're sitting with tonight, which is what is the role of the artist in social movements? As they were planning the workshop, they were really inspired by a quote from Toni Cade Bambara, who in an interview from 1982 said, as a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make the revolution irresistible. So that raises a few questions worth slowing down for, which are, who was Toni Cade Bambara? What does it mean to be a cultural organizer and why does that matter? Especially in this political moment? Lavender Phoenix has been grappling with these questions in practice, and I think they have some powerful answers to share. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to angel who is a member of Lavender Phoenix. Angel: My name is Angel. I use he and she pronouns, and I'm part of the communications committee at LavNix. So, let's explore what exactly is the meaning of cultural work.  Cultural workers are the creators of narratives through various forms of artistic expression, and we literally drive the production of culture. Cultural work reflects the perspectives and attitudes of artists and therefore the people and communities that they belong to. Art does not exist in a vacuum. You may have heard the phrase before. Art is always political. It serves a purpose to tell a story, to document the times to perpetuate and give longevity to ideas. It may conform to the status quo or choose to resist it. I wanted to share a little bit about one cultural worker who's made a really big impact and paved the way for how we think about cultural work and this framework. Toni Cade Bambara was a black feminist, cultural worker, writer, and organizer whose literary work celebrated black art, culture and life, and radically supported a movement for collective liberation. She believed that it's the artist's role to serve the community they belong to, and that an artist is of no higher status than a factory worker, social worker, or teacher. Is the idea of even reframing art making as cultural work. Reclaimed the arts from the elite capitalist class and made clear that it is work, it does not have more value than or take precedence over any other type of movement work. This is a quote from an interview from 1982 when Toni Cade Bambara said, as a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible. But in this country, we're not encouraged and equipped at any particular time to view things that way. And so the artwork or the art practice that sells that capitalist ideology is considered art. And anything that deviates from that is considered political, propagandist, polemical, or didactic, strange, weird, subversive or ugly. Cheryl: After reading that quote, angel then invited the workshop participants to think about what that means for them. What does it mean to make the revolution irresistible? After giving people a bit of time to reflect, angel then reads some of the things that were shared in the chat. Angel: I want my art to point out the inconsistencies within our society to surprised, enraged, elicit a strong enough reaction that they feel they must do something. Cheryl: Another person said, Angel: I love that art can be a way of bridging relationships. Connecting people together, building community. Cheryl: And someone else said. Angel: I want people to feel connected to my art, find themselves in it, and have it make them think and realize that they have the ability to do something themselves. Cheryl: I think what is rather striking in these responses that Angel has read aloud to what it means to make art that makes the revolution irresistible isn't just aesthetics alone, but rather its ability to help us connect and communicate and find one another to enact feelings and responses in each other. It's about the way it makes people feel implicated and connected and also capable of acting. Tony Cade Bambara when she poses that the role of cultural workers is to make the revolution irresistible is posing to us a challenge to tap into our creativity and create art that makes people unable to return comfortably to the world as is, and it makes revolution necessary, desirable not as an abstract idea, but as something people can want and move towards  now I'm going to invite Jenica, who is the cultural organizer at Lavender Phoenix to break down for us why we need cultural work in this political moment. . Speaker: Jenica: So many of us as artists have really internalized the power of art and are really eager to connect it to the movement.  This section is about answering this question of why is cultural work important.  Cultural work plays a really vital role in organizing and achieving our political goals, right? So if our goal is to advance radical solutions to everyday people, we also have to ask ourselves how are we going to reach those peoples? Ideas of revolution and liberation are majorly inaccessible to the masses, to everyday people. Families are being separated. Attacks on the working class are getting worse and worse. How are we really propping up these ideas of revolution, especially right in America, where propaganda for the state, for policing, for a corrupt government runs really high. Therefore our messaging in political organizing works to combat that propaganda. So in a sense we have to make our own propaganda. So let's look at this term together. Propaganda is art that we make that accurately reflects and makes people aware of the true nature of the conditions of their oppression and inspires them to take control of transforming this condition. We really want to make art that seeks to make the broader society aware of its implications in the daily violences, facilitated in the name of capitalism, imperialism, and shows that error of maintaining or ignoring the status quo. So it's really our goal to arm people with the tools to better struggle against their own points of views, their ways of thinking, because not everyone is already aligned with like revolution already, right? No one's born an organizer. No one's born 100% willing to be in this cause. So, we really focus on the creative and cultural processes, as artists build that revolutionary culture. Propaganda is really a means of liberation. It's an instrument to help clarify information education and a way to mobilize our people. And not only that, our cultural work can really model to others what it's like to envision a better world for ourselves, right? Our imagination can be so expansive when it comes to creating art. As organizers and activists when we create communication, zines, et cetera, we're also asking ourselves, how does this bring us one step closer to revolution? How are we challenging the status quo? So this is exactly what our role as artists is in this movement. It's to create propaganda that serves two different purposes. One, subvert the enemy and cultivate a culture that constantly challenges the status quo. And also awaken and mobilize the people. How can we, through our art, really uplift the genuine interests of the most exploited of people of the working class, of everyday people who are targets of the state and really empower those whose stories are often kept outside of this master narrative. Because when they are talked about, people in power will often misrepresent marginalized communities. An example of this, Lavender Phoenix, a couple years ago took up this campaign called Justice for Jaxon Sales. Trigger warning here, hate crime, violence against queer people and death. Um, so Jaxon Sales was a young, queer, Korean adoptee living in the Bay Area who went on a blind like dating app date and was found dead the next morning in a high-rise apartment in San Francisco. Lavender Phoenix worked really closely and is still connected really closely with Jaxon's parents, Jim and Angie Solas to really fight, and organize for justice for Jaxon and demand investigation into what happened to him and his death, and have answers for his family. I bring that up, this campaign because when his parents spoke to the chief medical examiner in San Francisco, they had told his family Jaxon died of an accidental overdose he was gay. Like gay people just these kinds of drugs. So that was the narrative that was being presented to us from the state. Like literally, their own words: he's dead because he's gay. And our narrative, as we continue to organize and support his family, was to really address the stigma surrounding drug use. Also reiterating the fact that justice was deserved for Jaxon, and that no one should ever have to go through this. We all deserve to be safe, that a better world is possible. So that's an example of combating the status quo and then uplifting the genuine interest of our people and his family. One of our key values at Lavender Phoenix is honoring our histories, because the propaganda against our own people is so intense. I just think about the everyday people, the working class, our immigrant communities and ancestors, other queer and trans people of color that really fought so hard to have their story told. So when we do this work and think about honoring our histories, let's also ask ourselves what will we do to keep those stories alive? Cheryl: We're going to take a quick music break and listen to some music by Namgar, an international ethno music collective that fuses traditional Buryat and Mongolian music with pop, jazz, funk, ambient soundscapes, and art- pop. We'll be back in just a moment with more after we listen to “part two” by Namgar.    Cheryl: Welcome back.  You are tuned in to APEX express on 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB B in Berkeley and online at kpfa.org.  That song you just heard was “part two” by Namgar, an incredible four- piece Buryat- Mongolian ensemble that is revitalizing and preserving the Buryat language and culture through music. For those just tuning in tonight's episode of APEX Express is all about the role of the artist in social movements. We're joined by members of Lavender Phoenix, often referred to as LavNix, which is a grassroots organization in the Bay Area building Trans and queer API Power. You can learn more about their work in our show notes. We talked about why cultural work is a core part of organizing. We grounded that conversation in the words of Toni Cade Bambara, who said in a 1982 interview, as a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible. We unpacked what that looks like in practice and lifted up Lavender Phoenix's Justice for Jaxon Sales campaign as a powerful example of cultural organizing, which really demonstrates how art and narrative work and cultural work are essential to building power Now Jenica from Levner Phoenix is going to walk us through some powerful examples of cultural organizing that have occurred in social movements across time and across the world. Speaker: Jenica: Now we're going to look at some really specific examples of powerful cultural work in our movements. For our framework today, we'll start with an international example, then a national one, a local example, and then finally one from LavNix. As we go through them, we ask that you take notes on what makes these examples, impactful forms of cultural work. How does it subvert the status quo? How is it uplifting the genuine interest of the people? Our international example is actually from the Philippines. Every year, the Corrupt Philippines president delivers a state of the nation address to share the current conditions of the country. However, on a day that the people are meant to hear about the genuine concrete needs of the Filipino masses, they're met instead with lies and deceit that's broadcasted and also built upon like years of disinformation and really just feeds the selfish interests of the ruling class and the imperialist powers. In response to this, every year, BAYAN, which is an alliance in the Philippines with overseas chapters here in the US as well. Their purpose is to fight for the national sovereignty and genuine democracy in the Philippines, they hold a Peoples' State of the Nation Address , or PSONA, to protest and deliver the genuine concerns and demands of the masses. So part of PSONA are effigies. Effigies have been regular fixtures in protest rallies, including PSONA. So for those of you who don't know, an effigy is a sculptural representation, often life size of a hated person or group. These makeshift dummies are used for symbolic punishment in political protests, and the figures are often burned. In the case of PSONA, these effigies are set on fire by protestors criticizing government neglect, especially of the poor. Lisa Ito, who is a progressive artists explained that the effigy is constructed not only as a mockery of the person represented, but also of the larger system that his or her likeness embodies. Ito pointed out that effigies have evolved considerably as a form of popular protest art in the Philippines, used by progressive people's movements, not only to entertain, but also to agitate, mobilize and capture the sentiments of the people. This year, organizers created this effigy that they titled ‘ZomBBM,' ‘Sara-nanggal' . This is a play on words calling the corrupt president of the Philippines, Bongbong Marcos, or BBM, a zombie. And the vice president Sara Duterte a Manananggal, which is a, Filipino vampire to put it in short, brief words. Organizers burnt this effigy as a symbol of DK and preservation of the current ruling class. I love this effigy so much. You can see BBM who's depicted like his head is taken off and inside of his head is Trump because he's considered like a puppet president of the Philippines just serving US interests. Awesome. I'm gonna pass it to Angel for our national perspective. Angel: Our next piece is from the national perspective and it was in response to the AIDS crisis. The global pandemic of HIV AIDS began in 1981 and continues today. AIDS is the late stage of HIV infection, human immunodeficiency virus, and this crisis has been marked largely by government indifference, widespread stigma against gay people, and virtually no federal funding towards research or services for everyday people impacted. There was a really devastating lack of public attention about the seriousness of HIV. The Ronald Reagan administration treated the crisis as a joke because of its association with gay men, and Reagan didn't even publicly acknowledge AIDS until 19 85, 4 years into the pandemic. Thousands of HIV positive people across backgrounds and their supporters organize one of the most influential patient advocacy groups in history. They called themselves the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power or ACT up. They ultimately organize and force the government and the scientific community to fundamentally change the way medical research is conducted. Paving the way for the discovery of a treatment that today keeps alive, an estimated half million HIV positive Americans and millions more worldwide. Sarah Schulman, a writer and former member of ACT Up, wrote a list of ACT UPS achievements, including changing the CDC C'S definition of aids to include women legalizing needle exchange in New York City and establishing housing services for HIV positive unhoused people. To highlight some cultural work within ACT Up, the AIDS activist artist Collective Grand Fury formed out of ACT Up and CR and created works for the public sphere that drew attention to the medical, moral and public issues related to the AIDS crisis. Essentially, the government was fine with the mass deaths and had a large role in the active killing off of people who are not just queer, but people who are poor working class and of color. We still see parallels in these roadblocks. Today, Trump is cutting public healthcare ongoing, and in recent memory, the COVID crisis, the political situation of LGBTQ people then and now is not divorced from this class analysis. So in response, we have the AIDS Memorial Quilt, this collective installation memorializes people who died in the US from the AIDS crisis and from government neglect. Each panel is dedicated to a life lost and created by hand by their friends, family, loved ones, and community. This artwork was originally conceived by Cleve Jones in SF for the 1985 candlelight March, and later it was expanded upon and displayed in Washington DC in 1987. Its enormity demonstrated the sheer number at which queer folk were killed in the hiv aids crisis, as well as created a space in the public for dialogue about the health disparities that harm and silence our community. Today, it's returned home to San Francisco and can be accessed through an interactive online archive. 50,000 individual panels and around a hundred thousand names make up the patchwork quilt, which is insane, and it's one of the largest pieces of grassroots community art in the world. Moving on to a more local perspective. In the Bay Area, we're talking about the Black Panther Party. So in October of 1966 in Oakland, California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for self-defense. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of black communities against the US government and fought to establish socialism through organizing and community-based programs. The Black Panthers began by organizing arm patrols of black people to monitor the Oakland Police Department and challenge rampant rampant police brutality. At its peak, the party had offices in 68 cities and thousands of members. The party's 10 point program was a set of demands, guidelines, and values, calling for self-determination, full employment of black people, and the end of exploitation of black workers housing for all black people, and so much more. The party's money programs directly addressed their platform as they instituted a free B Breakfast for Children program to address food scarcity Founded community health clinics to address the lack of adequate, adequate healthcare for black people and treat sickle cell anemia, tuberculosis, and HIV aids and more. The cultural work created by the Black Panther Party included the Black Panther Party newspaper known as the Black Panther. It was a four page newsletter in Oakland, California in 1967. It was the main publication of the party and was soon sold in several large cities across the US as well as having an international readership. The Black Panther issue number two. The newspaper, distributed information about the party's activities and expressed through articles, the ideology of the Black Panther Party, focusing on both international revolutions as inspiration and contemporary racial struggles of African Americans across the United States. Solidarity with other resistance movements was a major draw for readers. The paper's international section reported on liberation struggles across the world. Under Editor-in-Chief, David Du Bois, the stepson of WEB Du Bois, the section deepened party support for revolutionary efforts in South Africa and Cuba. Copies of the paper traveled abroad with students and activists and were tra translated into Hebrew and Japanese. It reflected that the idea of resistance to police oppression had spread like wildfire. Judy Juanita, a former editor in Chief Ads, it shows that this pattern of oppression was systemic. End quote. Paper regularly featured fiery rhetoric called out racist organizations and was unabashed in its disdain for the existing political system. Its first cover story reported on the police killing of Denzel Doel, a 22-year-old black man in Richmond, California. In all caps, the paper stated, brothers and sisters, these racist murders are happening every day. They could happen to any one of us. And it became well known for its bold cover art, woodcut style images of protestors, armed panthers, and police depicted as bloodied pigs. Speaker: Jenica: I'm gonna go into the LavNix example of cultural work that we've done. For some context, we had mentioned that we are taking up this campaign called Care Not Cops. Just to give some brief background to LavNix, as systems have continued to fail us, lavender Phoenix's work has always been about the safety of our communities. We've trained people in deescalation crisis intervention set up counseling networks, right? Then in 2022, we had joined the Sales family to fight for justice for Jaxon Sales. And with them we demanded answers for untimely death from the sheriff's department and the medical examiner. Something we noticed during that campaign is that every year we watch as people in power vote on another city budget that funds the same institutions that hurt our people and steal money from our communities. Do people know what the budget is for the San Francisco Police Department? Every year, we see that city services and programs are gutted. Meanwhile, this year, SFPD has $849 million, and the sheriff has $345 million. So, honestly, policing in general in the city is over $1 billion. And they will not experience any cuts. Their bloated budgets will remain largely intact. We've really been watching, Mayor Lurie , his first months and like, honestly like first more than half a year, with a lot of concern. We've seen him declare the unlawful fentanyl state of emergency, which he can't really do, and continue to increase police presence downtown. Ultimately we know that mayor Lurie and our supervisors need to hear from us everyday people who demand care, not cops. So that leads me into our cultural work. In March of this year, lavender Phoenix had collaborated with youth organizations across the city, youth groups from Chinese Progressive Association, PODER, CYC, to host a bilingual care, not cops, zine making workshop for youth. Our organizers engaged with the youth with agitating statistics on the egregious SFPD budget, and facilitated a space for them to warm up their brains and hearts to imagine a world without prisons and policing. And to really further envision one that centers on care healing for our people, all through art. What I really learned is that working class San Francisco youth are the ones who really know the city's fascist conditions the most intimately. It's clear through their zine contributions that they've really internalized these intense forms of policing in the schools on the streets with the unhoused, witnessing ice raids and fearing for their families. The zine was really a collective practice with working class youth where they connected their own personal experiences to the material facts of policing in the city, the budget, and put those experiences to paper.   Cheryl: Hey everyone. Cheryl here. So we've heard about Effigies in the Philippines, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the Black Panther Party's newspaper, the Black Panther and Lavender Phoenix's Care Cop zine. Through these examples, we've learned about cultural work and art and narrative work on different scales internationally, nationally, locally and organizationally. With lavender Phoenix. What we're seeing is across movements across time. Cultural work has always been central to organizing. We're going to take another music break, but when we return, I'll introduce you to our next speaker. Hai, from Asian Refugees United, who will walk us through, their creative practice, which is food, as a form of cultural resistance, and we'll learn about how food ways can function as acts of survival, resistance, and also decolonization. So stay with us more soon when we return.   Cheryl: And we're back!!. You're listening to APEX express on 94.1 KPFA, 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley. 88.1. KFCF in Fresno and online@kpfa.org. That was “Juniper” by Minjoona, a project led by Korean American musician, Jackson Wright.  huge thanks to Jackson and the whole crew behind that track.  I am here with Hai from Asian Refugees United, who is a member QTViet Cafe Collective. A project under Asian Refugees United. QTViet Viet Cafe is a creative cultural hub that is dedicated to queer and trans viet Liberation through ancestral practices, the arts and intergenerational connection. This is a clip from what was a much longer conversation. This episode is all about the role of the artist in social movements and I think Hai brings a very interesting take to the conversation. Hai (ARU): I think that what is helping me is one, just building the muscle. So when we're so true to our vision and heart meets mind and body. So much of what QTViet Cafe is, and by extension Asian refugees and like, we're really using our cultural arts and in many ways, whether that's movement or poetry or written word or song or dance. And in many ways I've had a lot of experience in our food ways, and reclaiming those food ways. That's a very embodied experience. We're really trying to restore wholeness and health and healing in our communities, in our bodies and our minds and our families and our communities that have been displaced because of colonization, imperialism, capitalism. And so how do we restore, how do we have a different relationship and how do we restore? I think that from moving from hurt to healing is life and art. And so we need to take risk and trying to define life through art and whatever means that we can to make meaning and purpose and intention. I feel like so much of what art is, is trying to make meaning of the hurt in order to bring in more healing in our lives. For so long, I think I've been wanting a different relationship to food. For example, because I grew up section eight, food stamps, food bank. My mom and my parents doing the best they could, but also, yeah, grew up with Viet food, grew up with ingredients for my parents making food, mostly my mom that weren't necessarily all the best. And I think compared to Vietnam, where it's easier access. And there's a different kind of system around, needs around food and just easier access, more people are involved around the food system in Vietnam I think growing up in Turtle Island and seeing my parents struggle not just with food, but just with money and jobs it's just all connected. And I think that impacted my journey and. My own imbalance around health and I became a byproduct of diabetes and high cholesterol and noticed that in my family. So when I noticed, when I had type two diabetes when I was 18, made the conscious choice to, I knew I needed to have some type of, uh, I need to have a different relationship to my life and food included and just like cut soda, started kind of what I knew at the time, exercising as ways to take care of my body. And then it's honestly been now a 20 year journey of having a different relationship to not just food, but health and connection to mind, body, spirit. For me, choosing to have a different relationship in my life, like that is a risk. Choosing to eat something different like that is both a risk and an opportunity. For me that's like part of movement building like you have to. Be so in tune with my body to notice and the changes that are needed in order to live again. When I noticed, you know, , hearing other Viet folks experiencing diet related stuff and I think knowing what I know also, like politically around what's happening around our food system, both for the vie community here and also in Vietnam, how do we, how can this regular act of nourishing ourselves both be not just in art, something that should actually just honestly be an everyday need and an everyday symbol of caregiving and caretaking and care that can just be part of our everyday lives. I want a world where, it's not just one night where we're tasting the best and eating the best and being nourished, just in one Saturday night, but that it's just happening all the time because we're in right relationship with ourselves and each other and the earth that everything is beauty and we don't have to take so many risks because things are already in its natural divine. I think it takes being very conscious of our circumstances and our surroundings and our relationships with each other for that to happen. I remember reading in my early twenties, reading the role of, bring Coke basically to Vietnam during the war. I was always fascinated like, why are, why is Coke like on Viet altars all the time? And I always see them in different places. Whenever I would go back to Vietnam, I remember when I was seven and 12. Going to a family party and the classic shiny vinyl plastic, floral like sheet on a round table and the stools, and then these beautiful platters of food. But I'm always like, why are we drinking soda or coke and whatever else? My dad and the men and then my family, like drinking beer. And I was like, why? I've had periods in my life when I've gotten sick, physically and mentally sick. Those moments open up doors to take the risk and then also the opportunity to try different truth or different path. When I was 23 and I had just like crazy eczema and psoriasis and went back home to my parents for a while and I just started to learn about nourishing traditions, movement. I was Very critical of the us traditional nutrition ideas of what good nutrition is and very adamantly like opposing the food pyramid. And then in that kind of research, I was one thinking well, they're talking about the science of broths and like soups and talking about hard boiling and straining the broth and getting the gunk on the top. And I'm like, wait, my mom did that. And I was starting to connect what has my mom known culturally that now like science is catching up, you know? And then I started just reading, you know, like I think that my mom didn't know the sign mom. I was like, asked my mom like, did you know about this? And she's like, I mean, I just, this is, is like what ba ngoai said, you know? And so I'm like, okay, so culturally this, this is happening scientifically. This is what's being shared. And then I started reading about the politics of US-centric upheaval of monocultural agriculture essentially. When the US started to do the industrial Revolution and started to basically grow wheat and soy and just basically make sugar to feed lots of cows and create sugar to be put in products like Coke was one of them. And, and then, yeah, that was basically a way for the US government to make money from Vietnam to bring that over, to Vietnam. And that was introduced to our culture. It's just another wave of imperialism and colonization. And sadly, we know what, overprocessed, like refined sugars can do to our health. And sadly, I can't help but make the connections with what happened. In many ways, food and sugar are introduced through these systems of colonization and imperialism are so far removed from what we ate pre colonization. And so, so much of my journey around food has been, you know, it's not even art, it's just like trying to understand, how do we survive and we thrive even before so many. And you know, in some ways it is art. 'cause I making 40 pounds of cha ga for event, , the fish cake, like, that's something that, that our people have been doing for a long time and hand making all that. And people love the dish and I'm really glad that people enjoyed it and mm, it's like, oh yeah, it's art. But it's what people have been doing to survive and thrive for long, for so long, you know? , We have the right to be able to practice our traditional food ways and we have the right for food sovereignty and food justice. And we have the right to, by extension, like have clean waters and hospitable places to live and for our animal kin to live and for our plant kin to be able to thrive. bun cha ga, I think like it's an artful hopeful symbol of what is seasonal and relevant and culturally symbolic of our time. I think that, yes, the imminent, violent, traumatic war that are happening between people, in Vietnam and Palestine and Sudan. Honestly, like here in America. That is important. And I think we need to show, honestly, not just to a direct violence, but also very indirect violence on our bodies through the food that we're eating. Our land and waters are living through indirect violence with just like everyday pollutants and top soil being removed and industrialization. And so I think I'm just very cognizant of the kind of everyday art ways, life ways, ways of being that I think that are important to be aware of and both practice as resistance against the forces that are trying to strip away our livelihood every day. Cheryl: We just heard from Hai of Asian refugees United who shared about how food ways function as an embodied form of cultural work that is rooted in memory and also survival and healing. Hai talked about food as a practice and art that is lived in the body and is also shaped by displacement and colonization and capitalism and imperialism. I shared that through their journey with QTV at Cafe and Asian Refugees United. High was able to reflect on reclaiming traditional food ways as a way to restore health and wholeness and relationship to our bodies and to our families, to our communities, and to the earth. High. Also, traced out illness and imbalance as deeply connected to political systems that have disrupted ancestral knowledge and instead introduced extractive food systems and normalized everyday forms of soft violence through what we consume and the impact it has on our land. And I think the most important thing I got from our conversation was that high reminded us that nourishing ourselves can be both an act of care, an art form, and an act of resistance. And what we call art is often what people have always done to survive and thrive Food. For them is a practice of memory, and it's also a refusal of erasure and also a very radical vision of food sovereignty and healing and collective life outside of colonial violence and harm. As we close out tonight's episode, I want to return to the question that has guided us from the beginning, which is, what is the role of the artist in social movements? What we've heard tonight from Tony Cade Bambara call to make revolution irresistible to lavender Phoenix's cultural organizing here, internationally to Hai, reflections on food ways, and nourishing ourselves as resistance. It is Really clear to me. Art is not separate from struggle. It is how people make sense of systems of violence and carry memory and also practice healing and reimagining new worlds in the middle of ongoing violence. Cultural work helps our movements. Endure and gives us language when words fail, or ritual when grief is heavy, and practices that connect us, that reconnect us to our bodies and our histories and to each other. So whether that's through zines, or songs or murals, newspapers, or shared meals, art is a way of liberation again and again. I wanna thank all of our speakers today, Jenica, Angel. From Lavender Phoenix. Hi, from QTV Cafe, Asian Refugees United, And I also wanna thank you, our listeners for staying with us. You've been listening to Apex Express on KPFA. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and keep imagining the world that we're trying to build. That's important stuff. Cheryl Truong (she/they): Apex express is produced by Miko Lee, Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar. Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hien Nguyen, Nikki Chan, and Cheryl Truong  Cheryl Truong: Tonight's show was produced by me, cheryl. Thanks to the team at KPFA for all of their support. And thank you for listening!  The post APEX Express – January 1, 2026 – The Role of the Artist in Social Movements appeared first on KPFA.

There's a certain quiet confidence that comes from longevity. You don't need to thump your chest when the résumé does the talking. This GMM podcast brings together Thad Schultz, one of the most experienced coaches in swimming, and Erkhes Enkhtur, a rising international talent rewriting Mongolian swimming history books from the lanes of SPIRE Academy.

Ganhuyag “Gan” Chuluun Hutagt is a leading Mongolian banking executive and entrepreneur with 30+ years of experience shaping the country's […]

On The Trail Of Genghis Khan - Tim Cope (Book)My Substack (Subscribe)*Leave a review on Apple or Spotify* (nothing does more to help grow the show)---Previous guests on the podcast similar to this!Jack Weatherford - Genghis Khan & The Making Of The Modern WorldRobyn Davidson - Australian Living Legend. Documenter Of Nomads.Jon Lee Anderson - New Yorker Staff Writer, A Life Of Adventure.---Tim Cope underwent a three year journey traversing the entire Eurasian steppe, starting in Karakorum, the old Mongolian capital, westwards through Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and finally Hungary until he reached the Danube river. The journey took him three years to complete and 4 horses. He picked up a dog along the way, and his journey saw him robbed, threatened, welcomed and exposed to murderous heat and cold.I first wrote to Tim 4 years ago… so we've maintained a very spotty correspondence in anticipation for today. Tim Cope is is an Australian adventurer, author, filmmaker, photographer, expedition guide - a fluent Russian speaker - a bloody good writer and someone generous enough to offer me their time and invite me into their home here in rural Victoria. Timestamps.00:00 - Tim Cope02:50 - The Magic Of The Steppe10:10 - Tim's Coma & Writing13:15 - Tim's Backstory24:50 - On The Trail Of Genghis Khan33:01 - The Eurasian Steppe37:41 - The Decline Of Nomadic Cultures46:27 - Entering Into Kazakhstan & Finding A Dog1:02:55 - Tim's Growing Reputation On The Steppe1:10:50 - Alcoholism On The Steppe1:19:12 - Abandoned Goldmine For The Winter1:38:45 - Prostitution 1:50:00 - Tim's Father Passing Away2:05:46 - Hungary2:12:30 - The Problem Of Fitting Back In2:24:50 - Success & Book Publishing2:31:00 - How Mongolia Has Changed2:44:10 - Tim's Evolving Thoughts On Both Russia & Ukraine

In today's episode, host James Cox sits down with Chicago‑born jazz virtuoso Brian Culbertson – a multi‑instrumentalist, composer, producer, and the man behind the acclaimed album “Day Trip.”From Brian's early days tinkering on piano at eight, picking up trombone in the school band, and discovering the magic of a home studio at twelve, to his modern‑day workflow that blends live horns, synth‑laden beats, and the Output Arcade plug‑in that sparked the track “Sandcastles,” the conversation drifts through:The instrument journey: why piano became his songwriting hub, how drums shaped his groove sense, and the challenge of playing piano passages that push his limits.Music theory & learning: a down‑to‑earth take on why theory is “baby steps” and how a good teacher can make it approachable for anyone.Creative influences: everything from Earth, Wind & Fire and Tower of Power to classical, EDM, Mongolian metal (The Hu) and dark hip‑hop—showing how eclectic listening fuels fresh ideas.Production vs. performance: why the studio feels like home, the painstaking process of polishing a record, and the tricks he uses to translate studio vibes to a live stage.The “Day Trip” story: how nine songs were written in just four days with co‑writer Nicholas Cole, and the emotional contrast between rapid bursts of inspiration and years‑long labors of love.Beyond the music: Brian's passion for wine, the creation of his signature blends, the Napa Valley Jazz Getaway he co‑hosts, and the balance of artistry with entrepreneurship.Get ready for a deep dive into a musician's mindset, a handful of quirky anecdotes (no secret studio rituals—just a shower and a good vibe), and plenty of tips for anyone who dreams of turning a musical spark into a polished record.Press play, lean back, and let the conversation remind you why, when words fall short, music always finds a way to speak.

Conductor Ben Gernon and Music Director Katy Richardson join Jeffrey Boakye and Anna Phoebe as they add another five tracks, taking us from the Mongolian landscape to a sunrise in Lesbos, a famous TV theme, and some seriously wronged wives.Producer: Jerome Weatherald Presented with musical direction by Jeffrey Boakye and Anna PhoebeThe five tracks in this week's playlist:Wolf Totem by The HU  Daybreak (Lever du jour) by Maurice Ravel Stranger Things Theme by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein Madeline by Lily Allen Ex-Wives from SIX: The MusicalOther music in this episode:Music for 18 Musicians by Philip Glass Creep by Radiohead The Lonely Goatherd by Julie Andrews Morgul by Ay-Kherel Dancing On My Own by Robyn Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics I Feel Love by Donna Summer Running Up That Hill (Deal With God) by Kate Bush

This episode on the HOZ Comedy Podcast with Joey, the crew sits down with the hilarious Kat Diaz for a wild ride through comedy origins, career leaps, and the chaos of millennial life. They kick things off with Kat's viral humor, OnlyFans jokes, and turtle talk before diving into everything from Mongolian listeners to South Park's weirdest moments. Joey opens up about playing deaf basketball, developing her comedy voice, and the nostalgic mysteries of CatDog. The conversation flips to Kat's own beginnings in stand-up and improv, dream projects, and their shared struggles balancing travel, life, and writing daily jokes.Kat also shares her journey from Iowa to Chicago, getting laid off twice, and deciding to go all-in on comedy. They wrap with hot takes on the “Lesbian Mafia” in the comedy scene, pet adoption, upcoming shows, and the grind behind the laughs. It's raw, funny, and full of behind-the-scenes truth — a must-listen for comedy fans. Tap in, laugh out loud, and share the madness.

This week's show is with Isaac Wortley and Eddy Elsey, both practicing apprentices of a traditional Mongolian lineage holder, who founded Mother Tree Shamanism. Isaac is an English shaman, who experienced a calling from a very young age. This led him to search out an authentic traditional teacher of Mongolian shamanism. Over ten years ago, he was initiated by his teacher, the founder of Mother Tree Shamanism, and has been an apprentice ever since. He has also studied traditional Mongolian/Tibetan medicine for last three years. He currently lives in the Midlands in England providing shamanic and traditional medicine services for people in the West. Eddy has been studying as an apprentice with Mother Tree Shamanism for the last 3 years after transitioning to traditional shamanism from his previous background in neo-shamanism. He lives between the Midlands and London, and works as a traditional massage therapist. He is passionate about helping people discover authentic and traditional forms of spirituality. In this episode, Lian, Isaac and Eddy explore why traditional shamanism matters so deeply for those of us in the West. They touch on Eddy's descent into illness through neo-shamanic practice, the shock of meeting Mongolian shamans who can name events and symptoms with startling clarity, and the gap between learning shamanism in a weekend and a cosmology that allows a traditional shaman guide a herder to lost cattle on the steppe. From there the conversation turns to the forgotten role of the shamanist, the everyday person who knows how to live in balance - a first aider rather than a surgeon, metaphorically speaking, and what spiritual hygiene might look like in British life rather than faraway cultures. Listen if you have ever felt your life unravel around the edges from shamanic work, wondered whether your symbols and visions are actually helping, or wished for community instead of having to do it all on your own. We'd love to know what YOU think about this week's show. Let's carry on the conversation… please leave a comment wherever you are listening or in any of our other spaces to engage. What you'll learn from this episode: How understanding spiritual hygiene and universal law changes the way you move through sacred sites, daily rituals and the hidden consequences of your practice Why becoming a shamanist, with grounded cosmology and everyday balance, may soothe the hunger to be a practitioner more than yet another training ever could What happens when shamanism becomes practical again, from dealing with health and relationships to the tangible, measurable changes that follow real ritual Resources and stuff spoken about: Mother Tree Shamanism on Facebook & Instagram Eddy's Website & Instagram Join UNIO, The Community for Wild Sovereign Souls: This is for the old souls in this new world… Discover your kin & unite with your soul's calling to truly live your myth. Be Mythical Join our mailing list for soul stirring goodness: https://www.bemythical.com/moonly Discover your kin & unite with your soul's calling to truly live your myth: https://www.bemythical.com/unio Go Deeper: https://www.bemythical.com/godeeper Follow us: Facebook Instagram TikTok YouTube Thank you for listening! There's a fresh episode released each week here and on most podcast platforms - and video too on YouTube. If you subscribe then you'll get each new episode delivered to your device every week automagically. (that way you'll never miss a show).

Send us a textShiva: Both Severe and TenderIn this episode, we explore Baba's profound discourse “Shiva – Both Severe and Tender,” which reveals how Shiva reshaped early human civilization. We look at how Shiva ended clan-based divisions, uplifted women, introduced marriage, and inspired unity across Aryan, non-Aryan, and Mongolian communities. We also discuss His revolutionary contributions to music, dance, and phonetics, and His creation of Shaeva Dharma — a universal, non-ritualistic spiritual path beyond all narrow sentiments. Above all, we reflect on Shiva's unique blend of firmness in principle and deep tenderness in personal conduct, a combination that transformed society and continues to inspire humanity today.

We continue the story of the Shulinkou Air Station and the American military in the early 1960s. We tackle Taiwan's infamous gravel-truck killers (urban legend or fact?), get slapped by Typhoon Gloria, and have our duck-hunting excursion interrupted by the Generalissimo's latest China invasion plans. And we follow the trail of controversial crimes and court verdicts which led to the ROC and U.S. finally signing a Status of Forces Agreement. On a lighter note, we also take time out for some catered Mongolian barbecue.Do us a favor and rate/review/comment...thanks!

In this episode we cover the Mamluk push out of Egypt, proving to be one of the few great powers that were able to stop the Mongolian Tide, and push them out of the Holy Land. While on a punitive Campaign against those who aided the Mongolians, the Mamluks conquered the last remaining city of the Crusader Kingdoms, marking an end to the Crusader Era. The Holy Land had fallen, and military orders were stateless, and this destabilization had severe consequences for the Greeks living in the restored Roman Empire.The History of Modern Greece Podcast covers the events from Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, to the years under the Ottoman Empire, and 1821 when the Greeks fought for independence... all the way to the modern-day.Website: www.moderngreecepodcast.comSOCIAL MEDIA: Go here to chat with us. https://www.instagram.com/historyofmodern%20greece/https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578023316172or email us at... historyofmoderngreece@gmail.comMusic by Mark Jungerman: www.marcjungermann.comCheck out our 2nd Podcast: www.antecedors.com

Alun's seen Orangutans in Borneo but how? We dive inside Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre and ask whether it's an ethical sanctuary or a zoo-like tourist attraction.Alun's final moments in Cebu, Philippines, were action-packed and fraught with danger. He narrowly escaped the island amid the devastation caused by Typhoon Tino. Our hearts go out to everyone affected, and we wish the people of the Philippines a safe and speedy recovery.Tales of a Trip returns with a Central Asian adventure! No engine? No problem! Expect large amounts of vodka and some traditional Mongolian hospitality.Submit your travel stories: https://www.tripologypodcast.com/talesofatripSupport us on Patreon to access the Lost & Found section. This week Adam shares his disliking for his landlord.Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tripologypodcastNeed travel insurance? We recommend SafetyWing! Click here to get started: ⁠⁠⁠https://safetywing.com/?referenceID=26035801&utm_source=26035801&utm_medium=AmbassadorRequire an onward flight? Please use this fantastic flight rental service: ⁠⁠⁠https://onwardticket.com/tripologypodcast⁠⁠⁠Discord: https://discord.gg/2w9t7YqKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tripologypodcast/Website: https://www.tripologypodcast.comX: https://x.com/tripologypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tripologypodcastThank you for your continued support. It means the world.

On this episode of Count Me In, Adam Larson sits down with Naranzul Ganzoring, a passionate entrepreneur and management accounting advocate from Mongolia. Zula shares her inspiring journey from falling in love with accounting as a student, to launching her own Finsight Academy and bringing international finance certifications to her home country. She opens up about the challenges she's faced as a young business owner, her drive to unite Mongolian accounting professionals, and what motivates her to balance entrepreneurship, parenthood, and teaching. Hear firsthand how Zula is helping shape the future of finance in Mongolia — breaking down barriers, building community, and empowering the next generation of management accountants. Whether you're in finance, education, or just looking for an uplifting story about innovation and impact, this is a conversation you won't want to miss!

Maral Porretta is a stylist and creative director who blends fashion, storytelling, and culture into everything she touches. Her work is rooted in authenticity and the belief that style is a language that connects people.She built her career through content creation, community building, and a sharp creative eye that pulls from her experiences in fashion, entrepreneurship, and global travel. Her perspective is shaped by her Mongolian heritage, her time in the corporate world, and her commitment to showing up as her real self online.Maral is also the founder of Club Kind, a new cultural café and laundromat concept opening in Halifax that's designed to bring people together through creativity, good energy, and a sense of belonging. Her mission is to build spaces and stories that make people feel seen, inspired, and part of something bigger.

In this episode of The Fighter and the Kid, Brendan and Bryan sit down with comedian and wrestler Nick Simmons, who joins right as the guys finally address the years of Reddit hate, online criticism, and the wild narratives fans have created about the show.They dive into the hilarious but eye-opening ways women underestimate real strength, why self-defense fantasies don't match physics, and how pepper spray, bear spray, and knives work in real-world scenarios.Nick shares his insane PCP pandemic home-intruder story — including the break-ins, the stairwell fight, the loose slice of pizza, and the moment the cops let the guy go… right before he bit one officer's nose and an EMT's Achilles tendon.They compare this to the Anthony Smith intruder fight, breaking down why meth and PCP shut off the “governor” in the brain and create freak-level strength.From there, the guys get into Mongolian and Polynesian genetics, strength competitions, football concussions, stingers, and the brutal gap between normal athletes and genetic freaks.Nick also opens up about moving from NYC to Austin, meeting his girlfriend's intimidating dad, being a regular at iconic NYC clubs, and the new comedic grind of trying to get passed at The Comedy Mothership.The guys finish by roasting each other's outfits, shoes, and the chaos of performing comedy while your friends try to mess with your head backstage.A funny, honest, chaotic episode with one of the best young comics in Austin.DraftKings - Download the DraftKings Pick6 app now and use code FIGHTER. That's code FIGHTER — New DraftKings customers can play just $5, and get $50 in Pick6 credits.O'Reilly Auto Parts- https://oreillyauto.com/FIGHTERTrue Classic - True Classic - Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at https://trueclassic.com/fighter ! #trueclassicpodMagic Mind - https://magicmind.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

His works are bold, powerful, and memorable. Taiwan-based Mongolian artist Tsengkun Engkhbold talks about how he got his start in Taiwan, and how his father's works served as an inspiration for his art. Enkghbold holds a joint exhibition with his father in December. Hosted by I-C-R-T's Hope Ngo. -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

God's presence and timing are our true security, and a relationship with Him is what enables us to face life's fiercest threats with peace. Discover how a promise from Psalm 91 turned a Mongolian mother's winter crisis into peace.

There's a certain kind of freedom that comes with slowing down: giving yourself time to stay, to notice, and to let a place leave its mark on you.Over the years, Weronika Szalas's mindset has shifted more and more toward slow travel — working in the winters and touring in the summers. This year, she spent nearly five months on the road with her partner, bikepacking through Central Asia.In this episode of Detours, Weronika all about her adventures on the road, from Google Translate disasters to long days on remote tracks, quiet dinners with strangers, and finally making it to Kyrgyzstan, a place she'd dreamed of for years.We get into:How slow travel changed the way she experiences new placesThe emptiness of the Mongolian steppe and navigating without a shared languageThe surreal reality of riding through Western China and dealing with constant surveillanceHighlights from bikepacking in Kyrgyzstan including Karakol, Peak Lenin, Juku Pass, and the Pamir Highway/Bartang ValleyHow her definition of freedom has evolved, and what it feels like to settle back into regular life after months outsideLISTENER SHOUTOUT: As a little bonus content this week we have a voice note from Kara Woolgar who finished the Arizona Trail 800 as her FIRST EVER bikepacking race! Congrats Kara and thanks so much for sharing your story!Follow Weronika on Instagram: @weronika.szalas Follow Mel on Instagram: @melwwebbFollow Detours on Instagram: @detourscyclingFollow Albion on Instagram: @albion.cyclingUse code DETOURS15 to get 15% off your next order from AlbionIf you love this show please consider pledging your support to sustain producing this show: https://buymeacoffee.com/detourspodcast

This episode with Jim is great, he's a one of a kind story teller with a one of a kind story and there's so much about this episode that will leave you nodding your head and thinking about the horses that changed your life. Jim shares stories that feel more like scenes from a novel: escaping the Iranian revolution, chasing foxes in a scarlet hunt coat, and riding reindeer with native people in the Mongolian wilderness. From Tehran to Norco to Patagonia, horses have been the throughline in his life. We talk about how deep that bond runs, what it means to ride with feeling, and why he still whispers to his mares before bed.Key topics:Growing up between Iran and the US with horses always at the centerHis father's escape from revolutionary Iran on horseback with Kurdish tribalsBuilding a new life in California and returning to horses through foxhuntingRiding adventures across Mongolia, Patagonia, and beyondWhat it means to be a sensitive rider and why he always chooses maresFollow us on Instagram @horsepeoplepodcast and hit the follow button on Spotify to make sure you don't miss the next one!

Welcome back to When Words Fail, Music Speaks—the show that battles depression one riff at a time. I'm your host, James Cox, a proud “handicapped” rocker on a mission to prove that music has no language barriers.In today's episode we sit down with Askhan, the visionary founder, vocalist, and creative force behind Nine Treasures, the Mongolian folk‑metal outfit that's been turning heads worldwide. Fresh off the release of their new album and a landmark signing with Metal Blade Records, Oscar shares how the band fuses ancient Mongolian melodies—complete with the haunting horse‑head fiddle—into thunderous modern metal.We'll explore how Askhan balances reverence for his cultural heritage with personal storytelling, the Buddhist ideas that quietly shape his songwriting, and the collaborative shift that let his bandmates take the reins on half the new record. From his favorite global metal influences—Pantera, Megadeth, In Flames, and Children of Bodø—to his secret love of liquid drum‑and‑bass for relaxation, Askhan reveals the eclectic soundtrack that fuels his creative engine.Finally, we ask the big “what‑if” questions: which dead‑or‑alive artist would he love to collab with (hint: think Limp Bizkit), what message he wants the next generation of Mongolian metal musicians to carry forward, and the most powerful fan moment that proved music truly saves lives.Grab your headphones, settle in, and let the fusion of myth, metal, and mindfulness guide you through another powerful conversation—because when words fail, music always speaks.

Hello again Pacific War Week by Week listeners, it is I your dutiful host Craig Watson with more goodies from my exclusive patreon podcast series. This is actually going to be a two parter specifically looking at the failure and responsibility of Emperor Hirohito during the 15 year war Japan unleashed in 1931. Again a big thanks to all of you for listening all these years, you are all awesome.   Hello everyone, a big thanks to all of you who joined the patreon and voted for this to be the next episode, you all are awesome.    Now I realize very well when I jumped into my former patreon episode on Ishiwara Kanji, I fell into a rabbit hole and it became a rather long series. I wanted to get this one done in a single episode but its also kind of a behemoth subject, so I will do this in two parts: this episode will be on Hirohito's failure and responsibility in regards to the China War from 1931-1941. The next one will cover Hirohito's failure and responsibility in the world war from 1941-1945.   I am not going to cover the entire life of Hirohito, no what I want is to specifically cover his actions from 1931-1945. Nw I want you to understand the purpose of this episode is to destroy a narrative, a narrative that carried on from 1945-1989. That narrative has always been that Emperor Hirohito was nothing more than a hostage during the war years of 1931-1945. This narrative was largely built by himself and the United States as a means of keeping the peace after 1945. However upon his death in 1989 many meeting notes and diaries from those who worked close to him began emerging and much work was done by historians like Herbert P Bix and Francis Pike. The narrative had it that Hirohito was powerless to stop things, did not know or was being misled by those around him, but this is far from the truth. Hirohito was very active in matters that led to the horrors of the 15 year war and he had his own reasons for why or when he acted and when he did not.   For this episode to be able to contain it into a single one, I am going to focus on Hirohito's involvement in the undeclared war with China, that's 1931-1941. For those of you who don't know, China and Japan were very much at war in 1931-1937 and certainly 1937 onwards, but it was undeclared for various reasons. If you guys really like this one, let me know and I can hit Hirohito 1941-1945 which is honestly a different beast of its own.   For those of you who don't know, Hirohito was born on April 29th of 1901, the grandson of Emperor Meiji. Hirohito entered the world right at the dawn of a new era of imperial rivalry in Asia and the Pacific. According to custom, Japanese royals were raised apart from their parents, at the age of 3 he was placed in the care of the Kwamura family who vowed to raise him to be unselfish, persevering in the face of difficulties, respectful of the views of others and immune to fear. In 1908 he entered elementary education at the age of 7 and would be taught first be General Nogi Maresuke who notoriously did not pamper the prince. Nogi rigorously had Hirohito train in physical education and specifically implanted virtues and traits he thought appropriate for the future sovereign: frugality, diligence, patience, manliness, and the ability to exercise self-control under difficult conditions. Hirohito learnt what hard work was from Nogi and that education could overcome all shortcomings. Emperor Meiji made sure his grandson received military training.   When Emperor Meiji died in 1912, Hirohito's father, Yoshihito took the throne as emperor Taisho. Taisho for a lack of better words, suffered from cerebral meningitis at an early age and this led to cognitive deficiency's and in reality the Genro would really be running the show so to say. When Taisho took the throne it was understood immediately, Hirohito needed to be prepared quickly to take the throne. After Meiji's funeral General Nogi politely told the family he could no longer be a teacher and committed seppuku with his wife. He wrote a suicide letter explained he wanted to expiate his disgrace during the russo japanese war for all the casualties that occurred at Port Arthur, hardcore as fuck. Hirohito would view Nogi nearly as much of an iconic hero as his grandfather Meiji, the most important figure in his life.   Hirohito's next teacher was the absolute legendary Fleet Admiral Togo Heihachiro who would instill national defense policy into him. Hirohito would be taught Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahans theories as all the great minds were taught at the time. Now I know it sucks but I cant delve deep into all this. What I want you to envision is a growing Man, instilled with the belief above all else, the Kokutai was most important. The Kokutai was the national essence of Japan. It was all aspects of Japanese polity, derived from history, tradition and customs all focused around the cult of the Emperor. The government run by politicians was secondary, at any given time the kokutai was the belief the Emperor could come in and directly rule.   If you are confused, dont worry, I am too haha. Its confusing. The Meiji constitution was extremely ambiguous. It dictated a form of constitutional monarchy with the kokutai sovereign emperor and the “seitai” that being the actual government. Basically on paper the government runs things, but the feeling of the Japanese people was that the wishes of the emperor should be followed. Thus the kokutai was like an extra-judicial structure built into the constitution without real legal framework, its a nightmare I know.    Let me make an example, most of you are American I imagine. Your congress and senate actually run the country, wink wink lets forget about lobbyists from raytheon. The president does not have actual executive powers to override any and all things, but what if all Americans simply felt he did. Thus everyone acted in accordance to his wishes as they assumed them to be, thats my best way of explaining Japan under Hirohito.    Emperor Taisho dies in 1926, and Hirohito takes the throne ushering in the Showa Era. He inherited a financial crisis and a military that was increasingly seizing control of governmental policies. Hirohito sought to restore the image of a strong charismatic leader on par with his grandfather Meiji, which was sorely lacking in his father Taishos reign. He was pressured immediately by the Navy that the national sphere of defense needed to be expanded upon, they felt threatened by the west, specifically by the US and Britain who had enacted the Washington Naval Treaty. Hirohito agreed a large navy was necessary for Japan's future, he was a proponent of the decisive naval battle doctrine, remember his teacher was Togo.    From the very beginning Hirohito intensely followed all military decisions. In 1928 the Japanese covertly assassinated the warlord of Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin. The current prime minister Tanaka Giichi had performed a thorough investigation of the incident and presented his report to Hirohito on December 24th of 1928. He told Hirohito he intended to court martial the criminals, purge the army and re-establish discipline. However the rest of Tanaka's cabinet wished to allow the army to deal with the matter and quiet the entire thing down. Hirohito responded by stating he had lost confidence in Tanaka and admonished his report. Hirohito allowed the army to cover up the incident, he sought to have it hushed up as well. Thus Hirohito had indulged the army in its insubordination and the kwantung army officers now felt they could take matters into their own hands.   Also in 1928 the Tanaka cabinet failed to endorse the international protocol banning chemical and biological warfare. The next year the privy council, pressured by the military, failed to ratify the full geneva convention of prisoners of war. Hirohito in response began doing something Emperor Meiji never had done, he began to scold officials to force them to retire from positions. Tanaka Giichi was bullied out. Hirohito then stated his endorsement of Hamaguchi Osachi as Tanaka's successors.   Just a few months after Hamaguchi cabinet formed, Hirohito overrode the advice of his naval chief of staff and vice chief of staff, Admiral Kato and Vice Admiral Suetsugu. The Americans and British were hinting they might form a naval alliance against Japan if she did not abide by the Washington Conference mandates on naval tonnage. Kato and Suetsugu refused to accept the terms, but prime minister Hamaguchi stood firm against them. The navy leaders were outraged and accused Hamaguchi of signing the treaty without the support of the Navy General Staff thereby infringing upon the “emperor's right of supreme command”. Two months after signing the treaty, Hamaguchi was assassinated and upon learning of this Hirohito's first concern apparently was “that constitutional politics not be interrupted”. The military felt greatly emboldened, and thus began the age of the military feeling “its right of supreme command”. Generals and Admirals fought back against arms reduction talks, discipline within the officer corps loosened, things spiraled out of control. Alongside this came the increasing cult of the emperor, that they were all doing this in his name.   When rumors emerged of the emerging Mukden Incident in 1931, Hirohito  demanded the army be reigned in. Attempts were made, but on September 18th of 1931, Kwantung army officer detonated an explosion at Liut'iaokou north of Mukden as a false flag operation. The next day the imperial palace were given a report and Hirohito was advised by chief aide de camp Nara Takeji “this incident would not spread and if the Emperor was to convene an imperial conference to take control of the situation, the virtue of his majesty might be soiled if the decisions of such a conference should prove impossible to implement”. This will be a key theme in Hirohito's decision making, protect the kokutai from any threats.   As the Mukden incident was getting worse, the Kwantung officers began to demand reinforcement be sent from the Korea army. The current Wakatsuki cabinet met on the issue and decided the Mukden incident had to remain an incident, they needed to avoid a declaration of war. The official orders were for no reinforcements of the Korea army to mobilize, however the field commander took it upon his own authority and mobilized them. The army chief of staff Kanaya reported to Hirohito the Korea army was marching into Manchuria against orders. At 31 years of age Hirohito now had an excellent opportunity to back the current cabinet, to control the military and stop the incident from getting worse. At this time the military was greatly divided on the issue, politically still weak compared to what they would become in a few years, if Hirohito wanted to rule as a constitutional monarch instead of an autocratic monarch, well this was his chance. Hirohito said to Kanaya at 4:20pm on September 22nd “although this time it couldn't be helped, [the army] had to be more careful in the future”. Thus Hirohito accepted the situation as fait accompli, he was not seriously opposed to seeing his army expand his empire. If it involved a brief usurpation of his authority so bit, as long as the operation was successful. Within two weeks of the incident, most of Japan had rallied being the kwantung army's cause. Hirohito knew it was a false flag, all of what they had done. Hirohito planned the lightests punishments for those responsible. Hirohito then officially sanctioned the aerial strike against Chinchou, the first air attack since ww1.   A message had gone out to the young officers in the Japanese military that the emperors main concern was success; obedience to central command was secondary. After the Mukden incident Prime Minister Wakatsuki resigned in december after failing to control the army and failing to contain the financial depression. The new Priminister Inukai took to action requesting permission from Hirohito to dispatch battalions to Tientsin and a brigade to Manchuria to help the Kwantung army take Chinchou. Hirohito responded by advising caution when attacking Chinchou and to keep a close eye on international public perception. Nevertheless Chinchou was taken and Hirohito issued an imperial rescript praising the insubordinate Kwantung army for fighting a courageous self defense against Chinese bandits. In a few more years Hirohito would grant awards and promotions to 3000 military and civil officials involved in the Manchurian war. When incidents broke out in Shanghai in 1932 involved the IJN, Tokyo high command organized a full fledged Shanghai expeditionary force under General Shirakawa with 2 full divisions. But within Shanghai were western powers, like Britain and America, whom Hirohito knew full well could place economic sanctions upon Japan if things got out of hand. Hirohito went out of his way to demand Shirakawa settle the Shanghai matter quickly and return to Japan.   And thus here is a major problem with Hirohito during the war years. On one end with Manchuria he let pretty much everything slide, but with Shanghai he suddenly cracks the whip. Hirohito had a real tendency of choosing when he wanted to act and this influenced the military heavily. On May 15th of 1932, young naval officers assassinated prime minister Inukai at his office. In the political chaos, Hirohito and his advisors agreed to abandon the experiment in party cabinets that had been the custom since the Taisho era. Now Hirohito endorsed a fully bureaucratic system of policy making, cabinet parties would no longer depend on the two main conservative parties existing in the diet. When the diet looked to the genro as to who should be the next prime minister, Hirohito wrote up “his wishes regarding the choice of the next prime minister”. Loyal officials backed Hirohito's wishes, the cult of the emperor grew in power. To the military it looked like Hirohito was blaming the party based cabinets rather than insubordinate officers for the erosion of his own authority as commander in chief. The young military officers who already were distrustful of the politicians were now being emboldened further.    After Manchuria was seized and Manchukuo was ushered in many in the Japanese military saw a crisis emerge, that required a “showa restoration' to solve. There were two emerging political factions within the military, the Kodoha and Toseiha factions. Both aimed to create military dictatorships under the emperor. The Kodoha saw the USSR as the number one threat to Japan and advocated an invasion of them, aka the Hokushin-ron doctrine, but the Toseiha faction prioritized a national defense state built on the idea they must build Japans industrial capabilities to face multiple enemies in the future. What separated the two, was the Kodoha sought to use a violent coup d'etat to do so, the Toseiha were unwilling to go so far. The Kodoha faction was made up of junior and youthful officers who greatly distrusted the capitalists and industrialists of Japan, like the Zaibatsu and believed they were undermining the Emperor. The Toseiha faction were willing to work with the Zaibatsu to make Japan stronger. Hirohito's brother Prince Chichibu sympathized with the Kodoha faction and repeatedly counseled his brother that he should implement direct imperial rule even if it meant suspending the constitution, aka a show restoration. Hirohito believed his brother who was active in the IJA at the time was being radicalized. Chichibu might I add was in the 3rd infantry regiment under the leadership of Colonel Tomoyuki Yamashita.   This time period has been deemed the government by assassination period. Military leaders in both the IJA and IJN and from both the Kodoha and Toseiha began performing violence against politicians and senior officers to get things done.    A enormous event took place in 1936 known as the february 26 incident. Kodoha faction officers of the IJA attempted a coup d'etat to usher in a showa restoration. They assassinated several leading officials, such as two former prime ministers and occupied the government center of Tokyo. They failed to assassinate the current prime minister Keisuke Okada or take control over the Imperial palace. These men believed Japan was straying from the Kokutai and that the capitalist/industrialists were exploiting the people of the nation by deceiving the emperor and usurping his power. The only solution to them was to purge such people and place Hirohito as an absolute leader over a military dictatorship.    Now the insurrectionists failed horribly, within just a few hours they failed to kill the current prime minister, and failed to seize the Sakashita Gate to the imperial palace, thus allowing the palace to continue communicating with the outside, and they never thought about what the IJN might do about all of this. The IJN sent marines immediately to suppress them. The insurrectionists had planned to have the army minister General Kwashima who was a Kodoha backer, report their intentions to Hirohito who they presumed would declare a showa restoration. They falsely assumed the emperor was a puppet being taken hostage by his advisers and devoid of his own will.   At 5:40am on February the 26th Hirohito was awakened and informed of the assassinations and coup attempt. From the moment he learnt of this, he was outraged and demanded the coup be suppressed and something I would love to highlight is he also immediately demanded his brother Prince Chichibu be brought over to him. Why would this be important? Hirohito believed the insurrectionists might enlist his brother to force him to abdicate. Hirohito put on his army uniform and ordered the military to “end it immediately and turn this misfortune into a blessing”. Hirohito then met with Kwashima who presented him with the insurrectionists demands to “clarify the kokutai, stabilize national life and fulfill national defense, aka showa restoration”. Hirohito scolded Kwashima and ordered him to suppress the mutiny. On the morning of the 27th Hirohito declared administrative martial law on the basis of Article 8 of the Imperial Constitution, pertaining to emergency imperial ordinances. Formally he was invoking his sovereign power to handle a crisis. Hirohito displayed an incredible amount of energy to crush the mutiny as noted by those around him at the time. Every few hours he demanded reports to be given to him by top officials and at one point he was so angry he threatened to lead the Imperial Guard division himself to go out and quell it. Hirohito met with Chichibu and its alleged he told his brother to end any relationships he had with the Kodoha members. By february 29th, Hirohito had firmly crushed the mutiny, most of the ringleaders were arrested. In april they were court martialed secretly without even given a chance to defend themselves in court and 17 were executed by firing squad in July. As a result of it all, the Kodoha faction dissolved and the Toseiha faction reigned supreme.    On the morning of July 8th of 1937 came the Marco Polo Bridge incident, a nearly identical false flag operation to what occurred at Mukden in 1931. Hirohito's reaction was first to consider the possible threat of the USSR. He wondered if the communists would seize the opportunity to attack Manchukuo. This is what he said to Prime Minister Konoe and army minister Sugiyama “What will you do if the Soviets attack us from the rear?” he asked the prince. Kan'in answered, “I believe the army will rise to the occasion.” The emperor repeated his question: “That's no more than army dogma. What will you actually do in the unlikely event that Soviet [forces] attack?” The prince said only, “We will have no choice.” His Majesty seemed very dissatisfied.    Hirohito demanded to know what contingency plans existed. After this he approved the decision of the Konoe cabinet to move troops into Northern China and fixed his seal to the orders of dispatch. The emperor had tacitly agreed to it all from the start. With each action taken for the following months, Hirohito would explicitly sanction them after the fact. In his mind he kept thinking about a fight with the USSR, he believed he had no choice in the China matter. All of his top ranking officials like Sugiyama would tell him “even if war with China came… it could be finished up within two or three months”. Hirohito was not convinced, he went to Konoe, to imperial conferences, to other military officials to get their views. None convinced him but as Hirohito put it  “they agreed with each other on the time factor, and that made a big difference; so all right, we'll go ahead.”     Two weeks into the conflict, the kwangtung army and Korean army were reinforced by 3 divisions from Japan and on July 25th were reaching Beijing. What did the man who was not responsible in such decision making say? On July 27 Hirohito sanctioned an imperial order directing the commander of the China Garrison Force to “chastise the Chinese army in the Peking-Tientsin area and bring stability to the main strategic places in that region.” Hirohito wanted a killing blow to end the war, and thus he escalated the incident. Historian Fujiwara Akira noted “it was the [Konoe] government itself that had resolved on war, dispatched an army, and expanded the conflict,” and Hirohito had fully supported it”   Chiang Kai-shek abandoned northern China pulling into the Interior and unleashed a campaign in Shanghai to draw the Japanese into a battle showcased in front of western audiences. Chiang Kai-shek tossed the creme of his military all into Shanghai to make it as long and explosive as possible to try and win support from other great powers. On August 18 Hirohito summoned his army and navy chiefs for a pointed recommendation. The war, he told them, “is gradually spreading; our situation in Shanghai is critical; Tsingtao is also at risk. If under these circumstances we try to deploy troops everywhere, the war will merely drag on and on. Wouldn't it be better to concentrate a large force at the most critical point and deliver one overwhelming blow? Based on our attitude of fairness, Do you, have in hand plans for such action? In other words, do we have any way worked out to force the Chinese to reflect on their actions?”   The chiefs of staff returned 3 days later with an aerial campaign to break China's will to fight and strategic cities needed to be seized. Hirohito gave his sanction and on August 31st gave the order “for the Dispatch of the North China Area Army. [D]estroy the enemy's will to fight and wipe out resistance in the central part of Hepei Province,” Over the course of weeks Hirohito sanctioned 6 troop mobilizations to the Shanghai area where the fighting had bogged down. Then he sanctioned 3 divisions from Taiwan to Shanghai, but for units in northern Manchuria to stand guard firmly in case the USSR attacked. The entire time this was happening both China and Japan referred to it as an incident and not a real war lest either of them lose the backing of their great power allies. Japan needed oil, iron and rubber from America, China was likewise received materials from the USSR/America/Britain and even Germany.    By november the war was not going well and Hirohito had the Imperial Headquarters established within his palace as a means to exercise his constitutional role as supreme commander, the army and navy would act in concert. For a few hours in the morning a few days every week, the chiefs of staff, army and navy ministers and chiefs of operations would meet with Hirohito. At these imperial conferences Hirohito presided over and approved decisions impacting the war. This was Hirohito's device for legally transforming the will of the emperor into the will of the state. Hirohito not only involved himself, sometimes on a daily basis he would shape strategy and decide the planning, timing and so on of military campaigns. He even intervened in ongoing field operations. He monitored and occasionally issued orders through commanders to subordinate units. Now I can't go through the entire 1937-1945 war and showcase all the things he did but I will highlight things I think we're important.    On November 9th, the Shanghai battle was finally falling apart for the Chinese as they began a withdrawal to the Nanking area some 180 miles away. The Japanese forces chased them and for the first time were really coming into direct contact with Chinese civilians, when it came to Shanghai most had evacuated the areas. The Japanese burned, plundered and raped villages and towns as they marched towards Nanking. On december 1st, Hirohito's imperial HQ ordered the 10th army and Shanghai expeditionary force to close in on Nanking from different directions, a pincer maneuver. Prince Asaka took command of the Shanghai expeditionary force and General Matsui commanded the Central China Area Army consisted of the Shanghai force and 10th army. Asaka led the forces to assault the walled city of Nanking with a population estimated to be 4-5 hundred thousand and it would fall on December 13th. Was there an order to “rape Nanking”, no. The Imperial HQ did not order the total extermination of the Chinese in Nanking, they had ordered an encirclement campaign. However, the standing orders at this time were to take no prisoners. Once Nanking fell, the Japanese began to execute en massage military prisoners and unarmed troops who surrendered willingly. There was a orgy of rape, arson, pillage and murder. The horror was seen in Nanking and the 6 adjacent villages over the course of 3 months far exceeding any atrocities seen during the battle for Shanghai or even the march to Nanking. General Nakajima's 16th division on its first day in Nanking was estimated to have murdered 30,000 POWs. Estimate range insanely, but perhaps 200,000 POW's and civilians were butchered over the course of 6 weeks.   Prince Asaka the 54 year old grand uncle to Hirohito and other members of the Imperial Family commanded the attack on Nanking and supervised the horrors. 49 year old General Prince Higashikuni chief of the army air force alongside Prince Kan'in knew of the atrocities occurring. Army minister Sugiyama knew, many middle echelon officers of the Imperial HQ knew. Hirohito was at the top of the chain of command, there is no way he was not informed. Hirohito followed the war extensively, reading daily reports, questioned his aides. It was under his orders that his army “chastise China”, but did he show any concern for the breakdown of his army's discipline? There is no documented evidence he ordered an investigation, all we are met with as historians is a bizarre period of silence. Hirohito goes from supervising the war with OCD precision, to silence, then back to normal precision. Did Hirohito show anything publicly to show angry, displeasure or remorse, at the time he energetically began spurring his generals and admirals on their great victories and the national project to induce “Chinese self-reflection”.    On November 24th Hirohito gave an after the fact sanction to the decision of General Matsui to attack and occupy Nanking. Hirohito was informed the city was going to be bombarded by aircraft and artillery and he sanctioned that as well. That was basically him removing any restrictions on the army's conduct. On December 14th the day after Nankings fall, he made an imperial message to his chiefs of staff expressing his pleasure at the news of the city's capture and occupation. Hirohito granted General Matsui an imperial rescript for his great military accomplishments in 1938 and gave the order of the golden early to Prince Asaka in 1940. Perhaps Hirohito privately agonized over what happened, but publicly did nothing about the conduct of his armed forces, especially in regards to the treatment of POW's.   Emperor Hirohito was presented with several opportunities to cause cease-fires or peace settlements during the war years. One of the best possible moments to end it all came during the attack on Naking when Chiang Kai-sheks military were in disarray. Chiang Kai-shek had hoped to end the fighting by enticing the other great powers to intervene. At the 9 power treaty conference in Brussel in november of 1937, Britain and the US proposed boycotting Japan. However the conference ended without any sanctions being enacted upon Japan. The Konoe government and Imperial HQ immediately expanded the combat zone. Chiang Kai-shek in desperation accepted a previous offer by Germany to mediate. Oscar Trautmann, the German ambassador to China attempted to negotiate with Japan, but it failed. China was offered harsh terms; to formally recognize Manchukuo, cooperate with it and Japan to fight communism, permit the indefinite stationg of Japanese forces and pay war reparations.    On January 9th of 1938, Imperial HQ formed a policy for handling the China incident which was reported to Hirohito. Konoe asked Hirohito to convene an imperial conference for it, but not to speak out at it  “For we just want to formally decide the matter in your majesty's presence.” Konoe and Hirohito were concerned with anti expansionists within the army general staff and wanted to prevent German interference in Japanese affairs. On January 11th, the policy was showcased and adopted, there would be no peace until Chiang kai-shek's regime was dissolved and a more compliant regime followed. Hirohito presided over the conference in full army dress uniform and gave his approval. He sat there for 27 minutes without uttering a word, appearing to be neutral in the matter, though in fact he was firmly backing a stronger military policy towards China.    The Konoe cabinet inaugurated a second phase to the China incident, greatly escalating the war. By this point in time Japanese had seen combat casualties at 62,007 killed, 160,000 wounded. In 1939 it would be 30,081 killed, 55,970 wounded, then 15,827 killed and 72,653 wounded in 1940. Major cities were under Japanese control ranging from the north east and south. Chiang Kai-shek fled to Chongqing, the war was deadlocked without any prospect of victory in sight.    On July 11 of 1938, the commander of the 19th division fought a border clash with the USSR known to us in the west as the battle of Lake Khasan. It was a costly defeat for Japan and in the diary of Harada Kumao he noted Hirohito scolded Army minister Itagaki “Hereafter not a single soldier is to be moved without my permission.” When it looked like the USSR would not press for a counter attack across the border, Hirohito gave the order for offensives in China to recommence, again an example of him deciding when to lay down the hammer. Konoe resigned in disgrace in 1939 having failed to bring the China war to an end and being outed by his colleagues who sought an alliance with Germany, which he did not agree with. His successor was Hiranuma a man Hirohito considered a outright fascist. Hiranuma only received the job because he promised Hirohito he would not make enemies of Britain or the US by entering in a hasty alliance with Nazi Germany. However his enter prime ministership would be engulfed by the alliance question.   In May of 1939 there was another border clash with the USSR, the battle of Khalkhin Gol. This one was much larger in scale, involving armored warfare, aircraft and though it seems it was not used, the Japanese brought biological warfare weapons as well. The Japanese had nearly 20,000 casualties, it was an unbelievable defeat that shocked everyone. Hirohito refrained from punishing anyone because they technically followed orders based on a document “outline for dealing with disputes along the manchurian soviet border” that Hirohito had sanctioned shortly before the conflict arose.   In July of 1939, the US told Hiranuma's government they intended not to renew the US-Japan treaty of commerce and navigation. Until this point Roosevelt had been very lenient towards Japan, but now it looked to him war would break out in europe and he wanted Japan to know they could expect serious economic sanctions if they escalated things. Hirohito complained to his chief aide de camp Hata Shunroku on August 5th “It could be a great blow to scrap metal and oil”. Then suddenly as Japan was engaging in a truce with the USSR to stop the border conflict, Germany shocked the world and signed a nonaggression pact with them. This completely contravened the 1936 Japan-German anti-comintern pact. Hiranuma resigned in disgrace on august 28th.    Hirohito was livid and scolded many of his top officials and forced the appointment of General Abe to prime minister and demanded of him “to cooperate with the US and Britain and preserve internal order”. Then Germany invaded Poland and began a new European War. Abe's cabinet collapsed from the unbelievable amount of international actions by January 14th 1940. Hirohito appointed Admiral Yonai as prime minister  and General Tojo to vice army minister. As we have seen Hirohito played a active role appointing high level personnel and imposed conditions upon their appointments.    Hirohito dictated what Yonai was to do, who he was to appoint to certain positions so on and so forth. When a large part of the military were calling for an alliance with Germany, Hirohito resisted, arguing Japan should focus on the China war and not ally itself to Germany unless it was to counter the USSR. Three months passed by and Germany began invading western europe. Norway fell, Denmark fell, Luxembourg, Belgium, the netherlands and then France, it was simply stunning. While Japan had been locked in a deadlock against China, Germany was crushing multiple nations with ease, and this had a large effect on asia. Britain, France and the Netherlands could not hope to protect their holdings in asia. But Hirohito kept pressuring Yonai not to begin any talks of an alliance, and the military leaders forced Yonai's cabinet to collapse.    So Hirohito stood by while Hiranuma, Abe and Yonai met each crisis and collapses. He watched as the China war went nowhere and the military was gradually pushing for the Nanshin-ron doctrine to open a southern war up with the west. Not once did he make a public effort on his lonesome to end the war in China. Japan's demands of China were unchanged, relations with the west were getting worse each day. The China war was undeclared, hell it was from the Japanese viewpoint “chastising China”. Japan was no respecting any rules of war in China, atrocities were performed regularly and for that Hirohito shared responsibility. For he alone was free to act in this area, he needed to act, but he did not. He could have intervened and insisted on respecting the rules of war, especially in regards to POW's and the results could have been dramatically different. Hirohito bore direct responsibility for the use of poison gas upon Chinese and Mongolian combatants and non combatants even before the undeclared war of 1937.    Then on July 28th of 1937 Hirohito made his first directive authorizing the use of chemical weapons which was transmitted by the chief of the army general staff prince Kan'in. It stated that in mopping up the Beijing-Tientsin area, “[Y]ou may use tear gas at suitable times.” Then on September 11th of 1937 he transmitted again through Kan'in the authorization to deploy special chemical warfare units in Shanghai. Gas weapons were one weapon the imperial HQ, aka Hirohito held effective control over throughout the China war. Front line units were never free to employ it at their own discretion, it required explicit authorization from the imperial HQ. During the Wuhan offensive of August to October 1938, imperial HQ authorized the use of poison gas 375 separate times. Hirohito authorized on May 15th of 1939 the carrying out of field studies of chemical warfare along the Manchukuo-soviet border.  In 1940 Hirohito sanctioned the first experimental use of bacteriological weapons in China, though there is no documented evidence of this, given the nature of how he micro managed everything it goes without saying he would have treated it the same as the poison gas. He was a man of science, a person who questioned everything and refused to put his seal on orders without first examining them. Imperial HQ directives went to unit 731 and as a rule Hirohito overlooked them. There again is no documents directly linking him to it, but Hirohito should be held responsibility for strategic bombing campaigns performing on cities like Chongqing. Alongside such horror Hirohito sanctioned annihilation campaigns in China. Such military campaigns were on the scale of what occurred at Nanking. Take for example the Hebei offensive which saw the infamous “three alls policy, burn all, kill all, steal all”.    Before Pearl Harbor and the ushering in of the war against the west, look at the scene that had unfolded. China and Japan were not officially at war until December of 1941. Not to say it would have been easy by any means, but look at the countless opportunities the man, emperor, so called god if you will, held in his hands to stop it all or at the very least stop escalating it. Why did he not do so? To protect the Kokutai. Above all else, the role and survival of the emperor's divinity over the people of Japan was always at the forefront of his mind. He did what he thought was always necessary to thwart threats internal and external. He allowed his military to do horrible things, because they did so in his name, and likewise they were a threat to him. I know its abrupt to end it like this, but for those of you who perhaps say to yourself “well he really was powerless to stop it, they would have killed him or something”, who chose suddenly to intervene in 1945 and made the decision to surrender?

Last time we spoke about the Changsha fire. Chiang Kai-shek faced a brutal choice: defend Wuhan to the last man or flood the land to slow the invaders. He chose both, pushing rivers and rallying a fractured army as Japanese forces pressed along the Yangtze. Fortresses at Madang held long, but the cost was high—troops lost, civilians displaced, a city's heart burning in the night. Wuhan fell after months of brutal fighting, yet the battle did not break China's will. Mao Zedong urged strategy over martyrdom, preferring to drain the enemy and buy time for a broader struggle. The Japanese, though victorious tactically, found their strength ebbing, resource strains, supply gaps, and a war that felt endless. In the wake of Wuhan, Changsha stood next in the Japanese crosshairs, its evacuation and a devastating fire leaving ash and memory in its wake. Behind these prices, political currents swirled. Wang Jingwei defected again, seeking power beyond Chiang's grasp, while Chongqing rose as a western bastion of resistance. The war hardened into a protracted stalemate, turning Japan from an aggressive assailant into a wary occupier, and leaving China to endure, persist, and fight on.   #175  The Soviet-Japanese Border Conflicts Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. So based on the title of this one, you probably can see we are taking a bit of a detour. For quite some time we have focused on the Japanese campaigns into China proper 1937-1938. Now the way the second sino-japanese war is traditionally broken down is in phases. 1937-1938, 1939-1942 and 1942-1945. However there is actually even more going on in China aside from the war with Japan. In Xinjiang province a large full blown Islamic revolution breaks out in 1937. We will be covering that story at a later date, but another significant event is escalating border skirmishes in Manchukuo. Now these border skirmishes had been raging ever since the USSR consolidated its hold over the far east. We talked about some of those skirmishes prior to the Sino-Soviet war in 1929. However when Japan created the puppet government of Manchukuo, this was a significant escalation in tensions with the reds. Today we are going to talk about the escalating border conflicts between the Soviets and Japan. A tongue of poorly demarcated land extends southeast from Hunchun, hugging the east bank of the Tumen River between Lake Khasan to the east and Korea to the west. Within this tongue stands Changkufeng Hill, one of a long chain of highlands sweeping from upstream along the rivers and moors toward the sea. The twin-peaked hill sits at the confluence area several miles northwest of the point where Manchuria, Korea, and the Russian Far East meet. The hill's shape reminded Koreans of their changgo, which is a long snare drum constricted at the center and tapped with the hands at each end. When the Manchus came to the Tumen, they rendered the phonetic sounds into three ideographic characters meaning "taut drum peaks" or Chang-ku-feng. The Japanese admired the imagery and preserved the Chinese readings, which they pronounce Cho-ko-ho. From their eastern vantage, the Russians called it Zaozernaya, "hill behind the lake." Soviet troops referred to it as a sugar-loaf hill. For many years, natives and a handful of officials in the region cultivated a relaxed attitude toward borders and sovereignty. Even after the Japanese seized Manchuria in 1931, the issue did not immediately come to a head. With the expansion of Manchukuo and the Soviet Far East under Stalin's Five-Year plans, both sides began to attend more closely to frontier delimitation. Whenever either party acted aggressively, force majeure was invoked to justify the unexpected and disruptive events recognized in international law. Most often, these incidents erupted along the eastern Manchurian borders with the USSR or along the 350-mile frontier south of Lake Khanka, each skirmish carrying the seeds of all-out warfare. Now we need to talk a little bit about border history. The borders in question essentially dated to pacts concluded by the Qing dynasty and the Tsardom. Between the first Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 and the Mukden Agreement of 1924, there were over a dozen accords governing the borders. Relevant to Changkufeng were the basic 15-article Convention of Peking, supplementing the Tientsin Treaties of November 1860, some maps made in 1861, and the eight-article Hunchun Border Protocol of 1886. By the 1860 treaty, the Qing ceded to Tsarist Russia the entire maritime province of Siberia, but the meaning of "lands south of Lake Khanka" remained rather vague. Consequently, a further border agreement was negotiated in June 1861 known as "the Lake Khanka Border Pact", by which demarcations were drawn on maps and eight wooden markers erected. The border was to run from Khanka along ridgelines between the Hunchun River and the sea, past Suifenho and Tungning, terminating about 6 miles from the mouth of the Tumen. Then a Russo-Chinese commission established in 1886 drew up the Hunchun Border Pact, proposing new or modified markers along the 1860–1861 lines and arranging a Russian resurvey. However, for the Japanese, in 1938, the Chinese or Manchu texts of the 1886 Hunchun agreement were considered controlling. The Soviets argued the border ran along every summit west of Khasan, thereby granting them jurisdiction over at least the eastern slopes of all elevations, including Changkufeng and Shachaofeng.  Since the Qing dynasty and the house of Romanov were already defunct, the new sovereignties publicly appealed to opposing texts, and the Soviet side would not concede that the Russian-language version had never been deemed binding by the Qing commissioners. Yet, even in 1938, the Japanese knew that only the Chinese text had survived or could be located.    Now both the Chinese and Russian military maps generally drew the frontier along the watershed east of Khasan; this aligned with the 1861 readings based on the Khanka agreement. The Chinese Republican Army conducted new surveys sometime between 1915 and 1920. The latest Chinese military map of the Changkufeng area drew the border considerably closer to the old "red line" of 1886, running west of Khasan but near the shore rather than traversing the highland crests. None of the military delimitations of the border was sanctified by an official agreement. Hence, the Hunchun Protocol, whether well known or not, invaluable or worthless, remained the only government-to-government pact dealing with the frontiers.  Before we jump into it, how about a little summary of what became known as the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts. The first major conflict would obviously be the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. Following years of conflict between the Russian Empire and Japan culminating in the costly Battle of Tsushima, Tsar Nicholas II's government sought peace, recognizing Japan's claims to Korea and agreeing to evacuate Manchuria.  From 1918 to 1920, the Imperial Japanese Army, under Emperor Taishō after the death of Meiji, assisted the White Army and Alexander Kerensky against the Bolshevik Red Army. They also aided the Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia to facilitate its return to Europe after an Austrian-Hungarian armoured train purportedly went astray. By 1920, with Austria-Hungary dissolved and Czechoslovakia established two years earlier, the Czechoslovak Legion reached Europe. Japan withdrew from the Russian Revolution and the Civil War in 1922. Following Japan's 1919-1920 occupations and the Soviet intervention in Mongolia in 1921, the Republic of China also withdrew from Outer Mongolia in 1921. In 1922, after capturing Vladivostok in 1918 to halt Bolshevik advances, Japanese forces retreated to Japan as Bolshevik power grew and the postwar fatigue among combatants increased. After Hirohito's invasion of Manchuria in 1931–1932, following Taishō's death in 1926, border disputes between Manchukuo, the Mongolian People's Republic, and the Soviet Union increased. Many clashes stemmed from poorly defined borders, though some involved espionage. Between 1932 and 1934, the Imperial Japanese Army reported 152 border disputes, largely tied to Soviet intelligence activity in Manchuria, while the Soviets accused Japan of 15 border violations, six air intrusions, and 20 cases of "spy smuggling" in 1933 alone. Numerous additional violations followed in the ensuing years. By the mid-1930s, Soviet-Japanese diplomacy and trust had deteriorated further, with the Japanese being openly labeled "fascist enemies" at the Seventh Comintern Congress in July 1935. Beginning in 1935, conflicts significantly escalated. On 8 January 1935, the first armed clash, known as the Halhamiao incident, took place on the border between Mongolia and Manchukuo. Several dozen cavalrymen of the Mongolian People's Army crossed into Manchuria near disputed fishing grounds and engaged an 11‑man Manchukuo Imperial Army patrol near the Buddhist temple at Halhamiao, led by a Japanese military advisor. The Manchukuo Army sustained 6 wounded and 2 dead, including the Japanese officer; the Mongols suffered no casualties and withdrew after the Japanese sent a punitive expedition to reclaim the area. Two motorized cavalry companies, a machine‑gun company, and a tankette platoon occupied the position for three weeks without resistance. In June 1935, the first direct exchange of fire between the Japanese and Soviets occurred when an 11‑man Japanese patrol west of Lake Khanka was attacked by six Soviet horsemen, reportedly inside Manchukuo territory. In the firefight, one Soviet soldier was killed and two horses were captured. The Japanese requested a joint investigation, but the Soviets rejected the proposal. In October 1935, nine Japanese and 32 Manchukuoan border guards were establishing a post about 20 kilometers north of Suifenho when they were attacked by 50 Soviet soldiers. The Soviets opened fire with rifles and five heavy machine guns. Two Japanese and four Manchukuoan soldiers were killed, and another five were wounded. The Manchukuoan foreign affairs representative lodged a verbal protest with the Soviet consul at Suifenho. The Kwantung Army of Japan also sent an intelligence officer to investigate the clash. On 19 December 1935, a Manchukuoan unit reconnoitering southwest of Buir Lake clashed with a Mongolian party, reportedly capturing 10 soldiers. Five days later, 60 truck‑borne Mongolian troops assaulted the Manchukuoans and were repulsed, at the cost of three Manchukuoan dead. On the same day, at Brunders, Mongolian forces attempted three times to drive out Manchukuoan outposts, and again at night, but all attempts failed. Further small attempts occurred in January, with Mongolians using airplanes for reconnaissance. The arrival of a small Japanese force in three trucks helped foil these attempts; casualties occurred on both sides, though Mongolian casualties are unknown aside from 10 prisoners taken. In February 1936, Lieutenant-Colonel Sugimoto Yasuo was ordered to form a detachment from the 14th Cavalry Regiment to "drive the Outer Mongol intruders from the Olankhuduk region," a directive attributed to Lieutenant-General Kasai Heijuro. Sugimoto's detachment included cavalry guns, heavy machine guns, and tankettes. They faced a force of about 140 Mongolians equipped with heavy machine guns and light artillery. On February 12, Sugimoto's men drove the Mongolians south, at the cost of eight Japanese killed, four wounded, and one tankette destroyed. The Japanese began to withdraw, but were attacked by 5–6 Mongolian armored cars and two bombers, which briefly disrupted the column. The situation was stabilized when the Japanese unit received artillery support, allowing them to destroy or repel the armored cars. In March 1936, the Tauran incident occurred. In this clash, both the Japanese Army and the Mongolian Army deployed a small number of armored fighting vehicles and aircraft. The incident began when 100 Mongolian and six Soviet troops attacked and occupied the disputed village of Tauran, Mongolia, driving off the small Manchurian garrison. They were supported by light bombers and armored cars, though the bombing sorties failed to inflict damage on the Japanese, and three bombers were shot down by Japanese heavy machine guns. Local Japanese forces counter-attacked, conducting dozens of bombing sorties and finally assaulting Tauran with 400 men and 10 tankettes. The result was a Mongolian rout, with 56 Mongolian soldiers killed, including three Soviet advisors, and an unknown number wounded. Japanese losses were 27 killed and 9 wounded. Later in March 1936, another border clash occurred between Japanese and Soviet forces. Reports of border violations prompted the Japanese Korean Army to send ten men by truck to investigate, but the patrol was ambushed by 20 Soviet NKVD soldiers deployed about 300 meters inside territory claimed by Japan. After suffering several casualties, the Japanese patrol withdrew and was reinforced with 100 men, who then drove off the Soviets. Fighting resumed later that day when the NKVD brought reinforcements. By nightfall, the fighting had ceased and both sides had pulled back. The Soviets agreed to return the bodies of two Japanese soldiers who had died in the fighting, a development viewed by the Japanese government as encouraging. In early April 1936, three Japanese soldiers were killed near Suifenho in another minor affray. This incident was notable because the Soviets again returned the bodies of the fallen servicemen. In June 1937, the Kanchazu Island incident occurred on the Amur River along the Soviet–Manchukuo border. Three Soviet gunboats crossed the river's center line, disembarked troops, and occupied Kanchazu Island. Japanese forces from the IJA 1st Division, equipped with two horse-drawn 37 mm artillery pieces, quickly established improvised firing positions and loaded their guns with both high-explosive and armor-piercing shells. They shelled the Soviet vessels, sinking the lead gunboat, crippling the second, and driving off the third. Japanese troops subsequently fired on the swimming crewmen from the sunken ships using machine guns. Thirty-seven Soviet soldiers were killed, while Japanese casualties were zero. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested and demanded the Soviet forces withdraw from the island. The Soviet leadership, apparently shocked by the incident and reluctant to escalate, agreed to evacuate their troops. By 1938 the border situation had deteriorated. The tangled terrain features, mountain, bog, stream, forest, and valley, would have complicated even careful observers' discernment of the old red line drawn in 1886. Fifty years later, the markers themselves had undergone a metamorphosis. Japanese investigators could find, at most, only 14 to 17 markers standing fairly intact between the Tumen estuary and Khanka—roughly one every 25 miles at best. The remainder were missing or ruined; five were found in new locations. Marker "K," for example, was 40 meters deeper inside Manchuria, away from Khanka. Japanese military experts noted that of the 20 markers originally set along the boundaries of Hunchun Prefecture alone, only four could be found by the summer of 1938. The rest had either been wrecked or arbitrarily moved and discarded by Russian or Chinese officials and inhabitants. It is even said that one missing marker could be seen on display in Khabarovsk. The Chinese had generally interpreted the boundary as the road line just west of Khasan, at least in practice. Free road movement, however, had become a problem even 20 years before the Japanese overran Manchuria in 1931–1932 during the so-called Manchurian Incident. The Japanese adopted, or inherited, the Chinese interpretation, which was based on the 1886 agreement on border roads; the key clause held that the frontier west of Khasan would be the road along the lake. Japanese sources emphasize that local residents' anger toward gradual Soviet oppression and penetrations westward into Manchurian territory fueled the conflict. Many natives believed the original boundaries lay east of the lake, but the Soviets adjusted the situation to suit their own convenience. In practice, the Russians were restricting road use just west of Khasan by Manchurian and Korean residents. There was speculation that this was a prelude to taking over the ridgelines, depending on the reaction of the Manchukuoan–Japanese side. Villagers who went to streams or the lake to launder clothing found themselves subjected to sniper fire. Along a 25-mile stretch of road near Shachaofeng, farmers reported coming under fire from new Soviet positions as early as November 1935. Nevertheless, Japanese and Koreans familiar with the Tumen area noted agrarian, seasonal Korean religious rites atop Changkufeng Hill, including fattened pigs sacrificed and changgo drums beaten. Village elders told Japanese visitors in 1938 that, until early the preceding year, no Russians had come as far as Changkufeng Hill. Looking only at the border sector around Changkufeng, the easy days were clearly behind us. In the summer of 1938, Gaimusho "Foreign Ministry" observers described the explosive situation along the Korea–Manchuria–USSR borders as a matter of de facto frontiers. Both sides pressed against each other, and their trigger-happy posture was summed up in the colloquial refrain: "Take another step and we'll let you have it." Near dawn on 13 June 1938, a Manchurian patrol detected a suspicious figure in the fog swirling over Changlingtzu Hill on the Siberian–Manchurian frontier. Challenged at 15 feet, the suspect hurled two pistols to the ground and raised his hands in surrender. At headquarters, the police soon realized this was no routine border-trespassing case. The man was a defector and he was a Russian general, in fact he was the director of all NKVD forces in the Soviet Far East. Beneath a mufti of spring coat and hunting cap, he wore a full uniform with medals. His identification card No. 83 designated him as G. S. Lyushkov, Commissar 3rd Class, countersigned by Nikolai Yezhov, NKVD head in Moscow. Lyushkov was promptly turned over to the Japanese military authorities, who transferred him to Seoul and then to Tokyo under close escort. On 1 July, the Japanese press was permitted to disclose that Lyushkov had sought refuge in Japan. Ten days later, to capitalize on the commissar's notoriety and to confound skeptics, the Japanese produced Lyushkov at a press conference in Tokyo. For the Japanese and foreign correspondents, who met separately with him, Lyushkov described Soviet Far East strength and the turmoil wracking the USSR, because for those of you unfamiliar this was during the Stalinist purges. Clearly, the Japanese had gained a unique reservoir of high-level intelligence and a wealth of materials, including notes scratched in blood by suspects incarcerated at Khabarovsk. A general tightening of Russian frontier security had recently been reported. Natives of Fangchuanting asserted that a Soviet cavalry patrol appeared in June, seemingly for the first time. Contact with Yangkuanping, northwest of Khasan, was severed. More importantly, Japanese Army Signal Corps intelligence detected a surge of Soviet message traffic from the Posyet Bay district. After Lyushkov's defection, a drastic reshuffle in the local Russian command apparently occurred, and responsibility for border surveillance seems to have been reallocated. Japanese records indicate that the Novokievsk security force commander was relieved and the sector garrison replaced by troops from Vladivostok. Gaimusho intelligence also received reports that a border garrison unit had been transferred from Khabarovsk or Chita to the Tumen sector. The Kwantung Army signal monitors also intercepted two significant frontline messages on 6 July from the new Russian local commander in the Posyet region, addressed to Lieutenant General Sokolov in Khabarovsk. Decoded, the messages suggested (1) that ammunition for infantry mortars amounted to less than half the required supply; and  (2) a recommendation that higher headquarters authorize Russian elements to secure certain unoccupied high ground west of Khasan.  The commander noted terrain advantages and the contemplated construction of emplacements that would command Najin and the Korean railway. As a start, at least one Russian platoon should be authorized to dig in on the highest ground (presumably Changkufeng) and deploy four tons of entanglements to stake out the Soviet claim. Korea Army Headquarters received a telegram from the Kwantung Army on 7 July conveying the deciphered messages. On the same day, the 19th Division in North Korea telephoned Seoul that, on 6 July, three or four Soviet horsemen had been observed reconnoitering Manchurian territory from atop a hill called Changkufeng. The alarming intelligence from the Kwantung Army and the front warranted immediate attention by the Korea Army. Some Kwantung Army officers doubted the significance of the developments, with one intelligence official even suggesting the Russian messages might be a deliberate ploy designed to entrap the Japanese at Changkufeng. On 7–8 July, all staff officers in Seoul convened at army headquarters. The name of Changkufeng Hill was not well known, but maps and other data suggested that neither the Japanese nor the Russians had previously stationed border units in the ridge complex west of Khasan. As early as March 1936, Army Commander Koiso Kuniaki had distributed maps to subordinate units, indicating which sectors were in dispute. No patrol was to enter zones lacking definitive demarcation. Until then, the only Japanese element east of the Tumen was a Manchurian policeman at Fangchuanting. Ownership of the high ground emerged as an early issue. A number of other points were raised by  the Kwantung Army: At present, Soviet elements in the area were negligible. The intrusion must not be overlooked. The Russians could be expected to exploit any weakness, and half-measures would not suffice, especially regarding the Japanese defense mission along a 125-mile frontier. In Japanese hands, Changkufeng Hill would be useful, but two excellent observation posts already existed in the neighboring sector of the Manchurian tongue. With dissidence and purges underway, the Russians may have judged it necessary to seal border gaps, particularly after Lyushkov's defection. They may also have sought to control Changkufeng to offset Japanese dominance of the high ground to the north. Soviet seizure of Changkufeng would upset the delicate status quo and could provoke a contest for equivalent observation posts. In broader terms, it mattered little whether the Russians sought a permanent observation post on Changkufeng Hill, which was of relatively minor strategic value. Japan's primary concern lay in the China theater; Changkufeng was peripheral. The Japanese should not expend limited resources or become distracted. The matter required consultation with the high command in Tokyo. In the absence of more comprehensive intelligence, the assembled staff officers concluded that the Korea Army should, at a minimum, ignore or disregard Soviet actions for the time being, while maintaining vigilant observation of the area. The consensus was communicated to Major General Kitano Kenzo, the Korea Army chief of staff, who concurred, and to Koiso. Upon learning that the recommendation advocated a low posture, Koiso inquired only whether the opinion reflected the unanimous view of the staff. Having been assured that it did, he approved the policy. Koiso, then 58, was at the threshold of the routine personnel changes occurring around 15 July. He had just been informed that he would retire and that General Nakamura Kotaro would succeed him. Those acquainted with Koiso perceived him as treating the border difficulties as a minor anticlimax in the course of his command tour. He appeared unemphatic or relaxed as he prepared to depart from a post he had held for twenty-one years. Although neither Koiso nor his staff welcomed the Soviet activities that appeared under way, his reaction likely reflected a reluctance to make decisions that could constrain his soon-to-arrive successor. On 8 July Koiso authorized the dispatch of warnings to the 19th Division at Nanam, to the Hunchun garrison, and to the intelligence branch at Hunchun. These units were instructed to exercise maximum precautions and to tighten frontier security north of Shuiliufeng. In response to the initial appearance of Soviet horsemen at Changkufeng, the Kucheng Border Garrison Unit of the 76th Infantry Regiment maintained close surveillance across the Tumen. By about noon on 9 July, patrols detected approximately a dozen Russian troops commencing construction atop Changkufeng. Between 11 and 13 July, the number of soldiers on the slopes increased to forty; there were also thirty horses and eleven camouflaged tents. Operating in shifts on the western side, thirty meters from the crest, the Russians erected barbed wire and firing trenches; fifty meters forward, they excavated observation trenches. In addition to existing telephone lines between Changkufeng, Lake Khasan, and Kozando, the Russians installed a portable telephone net. Logistical support was provided by three boats on the lake. Approximately twenty kilometers to the east, well within Soviet territory, large forces were being mobilized, and steamship traffic into Posyet Bay intensified. Upon learning of the "intrusion" at Changkufeng on 9 July, Lt. General Suetaka Kamezo, the commander of the 19th Division, dispatched staff officers to the front and prepared to send elements to reinforce border units.  The special significance of Suetaka and his division stemmed from a series of unusual circumstances. Chientao Province, the same zone into which Lyushkov had fled and the sector where Soviet horsemen had appeared, fell within Manchukuo geographically and administratively. Yet, in terms of defense, the configuration of the frontier, the terrain, and the transportation network more closely connected the region with North Korea than with southeastern Manchuria. Approximately 80% of the population was of Korean origin, which implied Japanese rather than Manchukuoan allegiance. Consequently, the Korea Army had been made operationally responsible for the defense of Chientao and controlled not only the three-battalion garrison at Hunchun but also the intelligence detachment located there. In the event of war, the Korea Army's mission was defined as mobilization and execution of subsidiary operational tasks against the USSR, under the control and in support of the Kwantung Army.  The Korea Army ordinarily possessed two infantry divisions, the 19th in North Korea and the 20th stationed at Seoul, but the 20th Division had already departed for China, leaving only the 20th Depot Division in the capital. Beyond sparse ground units, devoid of armor and with weak heavy artillery, there were only two air regiments in Korea, the nearest being the unit at Hoeryong. The Korea Army was designed to maintain public security within Korea as well as fulfill minimal defensive responsibilities. Such an army did not require a full-time operations officer, and none was maintained. When needed, as in mid-1938, the task fell to the senior staff officer, in this case Colonel Iwasaki Tamio. In peacetime, training constituted the primary focus.  Thus, the 19th Division was entrusted with defending northeastern Korea. Its commander, Suetaka, a seasoned infantryman, resented the fact that his elite force had never engaged in combat in China. He intensified training with zeal, emphasizing strict discipline, bravery, aggressiveness, and thorough preparation. Japanese veterans characterized him as severe, bullish, short-tempered, hot-blooded, highly strung, unbending, and stubborn. Nonetheless, there was widespread respect for his realistic training program, maintained under firm, even violent, personal supervision. His men regarded Suetaka as a professional, a modern samurai who forged the division into superb condition. Privately, he was reputed for sensitivity and warmth; a Japanese phrase "yakamashii oyaji" captures the dual sense of stern father and martinet in his character. At the outset, however, Suetaka displayed little aggression. Although not widely known, he did not welcome the orders from army headquarters to deploy to the Tumen. Until late July, he remained somewhat opposed to the notion of dislodging the Soviets from the crest, a proposition arising from neither the division staff nor, initially, Suetaka himself. Colonel Sato noted that, for a week after reports of Soviet excavation at Changkufeng, the division's response was limited to preparations for a possible emergency, as they perceived the matter as a local issue best settled through diplomacy. Korea Army officers acknowledged that, around the time the Soviets consolidated their outpost strength at Changkufeng, an informal and personal telegram arrived in Seoul from a Kwantung Army Intelligence field-grade officer who specialized in Soviet affairs. If the Korea Army hesitated, the Kwantung Army would be obliged to eject the Russians; the matter could not be ignored. While the telegram did not demand a reply and struck several officers as presumptuous and implausible, the message was promptly shown to Koiso. Koiso was driven to immediate action, he wired Tokyo asserting that only the Korea Army could and would handle the incident. One staff officer recalled "We felt we had to act, out of a sense of responsibility. But we resented the Kwantung Army's interference." The Korea Army staff convened shortly after receipt of the unofficial telegram from Hsinking. Based on the latest intelligence from the division dated 13 July, the officers prepared an assessment for submission to the army commander. The hypotheses were distilled into three scenarios: The USSR, or the Far East authorities, desires hostilities. Conclusion: Slightly possible. The USSR seeks to restrain Japan on the eve of the pivotal operations in China: the major Japanese offensive to seize Hankow. Conclusion: Highly probable. The Posyet district commander is new in his post; by occupying the Changkufeng ridges, he would demonstrate loyalty, impress superiors, and seek glory. Conclusion: Possible. Late on 13 July or early on 14 July, Koiso approved the dispatch of a message to the vice minister of war, and the Kwantung Army chief of staff:  "Lake Khasan area lies in troublesome sector USSR has been claiming . . . in accordance with treaties [said Secret Message No. 913], but we interpret it to be Manchukuoan territory, evident even from maps published by Soviet side. Russian actions are patently illegal, but, considering that area does not exert major or immediate influence on operations [Japan] is intending and that China Incident is in full swing, we are not going to conduct counterattack measures immediately. This army is thinking of reasoning with Soviets and requesting pullback, directly on spot. . . . In case Russians do not accede in long run, we have intention to drive Soviet soldiers out of area east of Khasan firmly by use of force."  The message concluded with a request that the Tokyo authorities lodge a formal protest with the USSR, on behalf of Manchukuo and Japan, and guide matters so that the Russians would withdraw quickly. Dominant in Japanese high command thinking in 1938 was the China theater; the Changkufeng episode constituted a mere digression. A sequence of Japanese tactical victories had preceded the summer: Tsingtao fell in January; the Yellow River was reached in March; a "reformed government of the Republic of China" was installed at Nanking several weeks later; Amoy fell in early May; Suchow fell on the 20th. With these gains, northern and central fronts could be linked by the Japanese. Yet Chinese resistance persisted, and while public statements anticipated imminent Chinese dissension, private admissions acknowledged that the partial effects of Suchow's fall were ominous: control might pass from Chiang Kai-shek to the Communists, Chinese defiance might intensify, and Soviet involvement could ensue. A Hankow drive appeared desirable to symbolize the conclusion of the military phase of hostilities. The Japanese and their adversaries were in accord regarding the importance of the summer and autumn campaigns. Even after Suchow's fall, the government discouraged public insinuations that enemy resistance was collapsing; when Chiang addressed the nation on the first anniversary of hostilities, Premier Konoe prophetically proclaimed, "The war has just begun." Colonel Inada Masazum served as the Army General Staff's principal figure for the Changkufeng affair, occupying the position of chief of the 2nd Operations Section within the Operations Bureau in March 1938. A distinguished graduate of the Military Academy, Inada completed the War College program and held a combination of line, instructional, and staff assignments at the War College, the Army General Staff, and the War Ministry. He was recognized as a sharp, highly capable, and driveful personality, though some regarded him as enigmatic. Following the capture of Suchow, Imperial General Headquarters on 18 June ordered field forces to undertake operational preparations for a drive to seize the Wuhan complex. Inada favored a decisive move aimed at achieving a rapid political settlement. He acknowledged that Soviet intervention in 1938, during Japan's involvement in China, would have been critical. Although Japanese forces could still defeat the Chinese, an overextended Japanese Army might be fatally compromised against the Russians. Soviet assistance to China was already pronouncedly unwelcome. The Soviets were reported to possess roughly 20 rifle divisions, four to five cavalry divisions, 1,500 tanks, and 1,560 aircraft, including 300 bombers with a range of approximately 3,000 kilometers, enabling reach from Vladivostok to Tokyo. Soviet manpower in Siberia was likely near 370,000. In response, Japanese central authorities stressed a no-trouble policy toward the USSR while seeking to "wall off" the border and bolster the Kwantung Army as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, the envisaged correction of the strategic imbalance could not occur before 1943, given shortages in ammunition, manpower, and materiel across existing theaters in China. By the end of 1937 Japan had committed 16 of its 24 divisions to China, bringing the standing force to roughly 700,000. Army General Staff planners reallocated three ground divisions, intended for a northern contingency, from north to central China, even as the Kwantung Army operated from a less favorable posture. Attitudes toward the northern problem varied within senior military circles. While concern persisted, it was not universal. As campaigns in China widened, planning at the high command level deteriorated, propagating confusion and anxiety to field armies in China. The Japanese Navy suspected that the Army general staff was invoking the USSR as a pretext for broader strategic aims—namely, to provoke a more consequential confrontation with the USSR while the Navy contended with its own strategic rivalries with the Army, centered on the United States and Britain. Army leaders, however, denied aggressive intent against the USSR at that time. The Hankow plan encountered substantial internal opposition at high levels. Private assessments among army planners suggested that a two-front war would be premature given operational readiness and troop strength. Not only were new War Ministry officials cautious, but many high-ranking Army general staff officers and court circles shared doubts.  Aggressive tendencies, influenced by subordinates and the Kwantung Army, were evident in Inada, who repeatedly pressed Tada Shun, the deputy army chief of staff, to endorse the Wuhan drive as both necessary and feasible, arguing that the USSR would gain from Japan's weakening without incurring substantial losses. Inada contended that Stalin was rational and that time favored the USSR in the Far East, where industrial buildup and military modernization were ongoing. He argued that the Soviet purges impeded opportunistic ventures with Japan. He posited that Nazi Germany posed a growing threat on the western front, and thus the USSR should be avoided by both Japan, due to China and Russia, due to Germany. While most of the army remained engaged in China, Tada did not initially share Inada's views; only after inspecting the Manchurian borders in April 1938 did he finally align with Inada's broader vision, which encompassed both northern and Chinese considerations. During this period, Inada studied daily intelligence from the Kwantung Army, and after Lyushkov's defection in June, reports suggested the Soviets were following their sector commander's recommendations. Russian troops appeared at Changkufeng, seemingly prepared to dig in. Inada recollects his reaction: "That's nice, my chance has come." I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The simmering Soviet–Japanese border clashes centered on Changkufeng Hill near Lake Khanka, set within a broader history of contested frontiers dating to Qing and Tsarist treaties. Japan, prioritizing China, considered Changkufeng peripheral but ready to confront Soviet encroachment; Moscow aimed to consolidate border gains, with high-level war planning overlaying regional skirmishes. Conflict loomed over Manchuria.

In this episode, we trace how the horse-head fiddle has evolved in the People's Republic of China — from a traditional steppe instrument to a cultural symbol reshaped through state representation and modern performance. We discuss how it is made, taught, and performed in China, how it is portrayed in Chinese institutions, and how young Mongols today engage with the instrument as a way to express identity, creativity, and belonging in contemporary China. Our guest, Ying Song from Zhejiang University, is a PhD candidate in sociology whose research focuses on the horse-head fiddle and its role in shaping Mongolian identity. Beyond academia, she has also curated cultural exhibitions and organized numerous Mongolian music-sharing events, which you can find in the link below. Ning Ao is a PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE) at Lund University. Her research looks at generational differences among Chinese Mongols. Episode producer: Ning Ao Ying Song's Rednote Page Ying Song's Email: songying182@163.com Swedish physician and missionary Joel Eriksson in Inner Mongolia The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia) Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland) Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania) Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland) Norwegian Network for Asian Studies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode, we trace how the horse-head fiddle has evolved in the People's Republic of China — from a traditional steppe instrument to a cultural symbol reshaped through state representation and modern performance. We discuss how it is made, taught, and performed in China, how it is portrayed in Chinese institutions, and how young Mongols today engage with the instrument as a way to express identity, creativity, and belonging in contemporary China. Our guest, Ying Song from Zhejiang University, is a PhD candidate in sociology whose research focuses on the horse-head fiddle and its role in shaping Mongolian identity. Beyond academia, she has also curated cultural exhibitions and organized numerous Mongolian music-sharing events, which you can find in the link below. Ning Ao is a PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE) at Lund University. Her research looks at generational differences among Chinese Mongols. Episode producer: Ning Ao Ying Song's Rednote Page Ying Song's Email: songying182@163.com Swedish physician and missionary Joel Eriksson in Inner Mongolia The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia) Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland) Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania) Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland) Norwegian Network for Asian Studies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

We interviewed former Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert about her work on the Golden State Killer case and the 1991 yogurt shop murders investigation.Check out our upcoming book events and get links to buy tickets here: https://murdersheetpodcast.com/eventsOrder our book on Delphi here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/shadow-of-the-bridge-the-delphi-murders-and-the-dark-side-of-the-american-heartland-aine-cain/21866881?ean=9781639369232Or here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Shadow-of-the-Bridge/Aine-Cain/9781639369232Or here: https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Bridge-Murders-American-Heartland/dp/1639369236Join our Patreon here! https://www.patreon.com/c/murdersheetSupport The Murder Sheet by buying a t-shirt here: https://www.murdersheetshop.com/Check out more inclusive sizing and t-shirt and merchandising options here: https://themurdersheet.dashery.com/Send tips to murdersheet@gmail.com.The Murder Sheet is a production of Mystery Sheet LLC.It's fall. The air's crisp. The sky's darker in the evening. The holidays are drawing closer. Time to bundle up and get cozy with the latest sweaters, outerwear, and essential layers from Quince.We love our sponsor Quince. We shop there all the time. We love getting luxury goods for less. Quince has prices that are 50% less than similar brands because they cut out the middlemen to get you quality items at a reasonable price. Washable silk tops and skirts, Italian wool coats, and of course their signature mongolian cashmere sweaters. As the temperatures drop, I'm once again returning to my black V-Neck Sweater and a dark blue Turtleneck Sweater, both in Mongolian cashmere. I love how they feel. But I'm also mixing things up with two new purchases. One, my Mongolian cashmere fisherman crewneck sweater in ivory. It's so cozy. And the other is a black 100% washable silk long sleeve mini dress, for the holidays.I love my two new Quince sweaters, too. They're warm and keep me comfortable against the autumn chill. Check them out. Also, Aine has a cute blue beret that I love and she has begun wearing.I love that beret.Step into the holiday season with layers made to feel good, look polished, and last— from Quince. Perfect for gifting or keeping for yourself. Go to Quince dot com slash msheet for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash msheet to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince dot com slash msheetSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The last time we spoke, Ishiwara had been spending considerable amounts of time with the Kwantung Army staff trying to figure out a way to push the envelope on seizing Manchuria. Ishiwara and his like minded colleagues had tried everything to persuade the Imperial Japanese army high command to initiate a course of action, but everytime the message was the same “wait, wait until next year, we can't do this at this time”. In 1931 Ishiwara and Itagaki organized the last major expedition into Northern Manchuria to get the newest recruited Kwantung officers up to speed and ready for plans they had been cooking up. Captain Nakamura Shintaro disappeared on the way back to Port Arthur. The Kwantung officers took the initiative, one could call it “Gekokujo / ruling from below” because without approval, in fact basically against the orders of high command they mobilized their forces outside their designated railway zone and headed for Mukden to quote “get the Chinese military to help investigate the Nakamura disappearance”. When Tokyo HQ got a whiff of this they dispatched a telegram immediately demanding the Kwantung officers get their men back and not use the Nakamura incident as a way of “solving the Manchurian problem”   For Ishiwara this was the last straw. He doubled down and pushed for a plot to provoke military conflict outside of Mukden. As he wrote in almost a messianic Nichiren conviction ‘I will be the pillar of Japan; I will be the eyes of Japan; I will be the great vessel of Japan” . During the last hectic weeks, General Honjo Shigeru arrived to take command of the Kwantung Army and there is no solid evidence Ishiwara and his radical group had disclosed their plans to him. However when everything began to move into motion, Honjo agreed to Ishiwara's military solution for the Manchurian problem.   On september 18th of 1931, a bomb was planted by the Kwantung army upon the south manchurian railway tracks at Liutiaokou. There was an explosion and the Kwantung army immediately claimed it to be a Chinese plot and moved with skill and precision to overrun the Peitaying Barracks. General Honjo's first reaction was hesitation, but then he committed additional units to aid the radicals and upon seeing the chaos unfold, ordered the seizure of all of Mukden in the process. Investigators would find the actions of Honjo over the course of the next few days to be quite indecisive. At first he seemed to be attempting to localize the incident, but then, likely as a result of Ishiwara and Itagaki pressuring him, relented to ordering a general assault on all Chinese positions in the area. Thus what was a isolated incident, transformed into a major offensive, and that major offensive was largely directed by two of Honjo's subordinates, as you may guess Ishiwara and Itagaki.   Now after the bomb explosion, the next 10 days saw southern and central Manchuria suddenly under the control of the Kwantung army. Itagaki as a senior staff officer and full colonel, was technically Ishiwara's superior, but for the next 4 months it appears Ishiwara was the main driver behind the military actions. Itagaki was quote to say to a friend during the offensive “Never mind Honjo, it's Ishiwara's War”. And indeed, being so far from Tokyo HQ's control, it really was Ishiwara's war. Tokyo dispatched official orders on September the 19th opposing the offensive, despite a lot of sympathy for the cause amongst the high commanders. Ishiwara and Inagaki had been planning this for months, they were willing to risk it all, so they disobeyed and carried on. Ishiwara began by first coercing Honjo for reinforcements and freedom to take initiative, as he was quoted asking ‘to pursue actively the security and order of all of Manchuria”.   Now obviously Ishiwara and Itagaki wanted to expand the offensive through the officials means firstmost, but they definitely went around the officials channels as well. One devious method they employed was to create chaos for civilians in Manchurian cities, thus increasing the need for better security for Japanese residents. This would allow the Kwantung army troops to deploy past their set perimeters. Immediately after what is now called “the Mukden incident”, military agents were dispatched to Kirin to create some chaos within the city. Reports of incidents from Kirin began to poor into the Kwantung Army HQ alongside Ishiwara demanding Honjo dispatch forces to Kirin to protect Japanese residents there. He also advocated for demanding reinforcements from the Korea Army, but Honjo was unwilling to go that far. It seems Ishiwara feared missing a golden opportunity and chose another course of action. On the night of the 20th, he gathered together a bunch of younger Kwantung officers such as Itagaki's assistant, Captain Katakura Tadashi and told them “I can't do anything more to budge the commander and so i'm giving up my responsibilities for the direction of operations. Katakura, you take over”. Well it seems this little ploy had the intended effect as all the young officers immediately began pressuring Honjo to support Ishiwara's demands to advance to Kirin, many of them threatening to resign. After several hours of the officers nagging, Honjo related and authorized the despatch of troops.    The operation against Kirin was carried out in lightning fast speed. Ishiwara directed the bulk of the 2nd division led by General Tamon Jiro to rush over to Kirin by rail. They entered the city without firing a single shot and forced the local Chinese commander to proclaim the independence of the province from Zhang Xueliang's regime. Within hours after this, the Korea army responded to a aid request sent out by the Kwantung Army staff on september 21st and began moving into Manchuria. Within only 48 hours the Japanese military had seized Kirin which lay outside the Kwantung operational zone and the Korea army was invading Manchuria without any approval from Tokyo, military discipline thus had been shattered.    Chief of staff Kanaya Hanzo had issued specific orders to limit the scope of the Kwantung army's operations and entrusted discretionary authority to the field commanders for certain emergency situations, usually of a local nature. The Kirin expedition did not exactly fall within any of these boundaries. Bolstered by their success, Ishiwara and Itagaki followed up the Kirin operation by pressing for an advance upon Harbin. As you might recall from the previous episode, the entire idea of taking Manchuria was built upon speed and precision. The Kwantung army had tiny forces compared to the immediate Chinese forces in Manchuria. However here they were blocked by directives sent from Tokyo HQ which forbade the movement of Kwantung troops beyond the south manchuria railway, up to this point they had limited their actions along those margins. Ishiwara attempted arguing something on more political lines. He argued Japan should aid Manchurian independence and sent the idea straight to Tokyo central HQ. In a sharp rebuff on October 3rd, Tokyo HQ affirmed its opposition to expanding the hostilities and rejected the political idea.   With the hard no from Tokyo HQ, the Kwantung radicals thought the only course of action was to cause even more chaos to force the issue. Ishiwara took the lead again, trying to toss Tokyo HQ off balance. Ishiwara personally went out on October the 8th, dressed in military pilot gear and slipped into one of five Chinese aircraft that had been seized at Mukdens airfield. He then personally led a raid, though later in life, such as at the Tokyo War crimes trials he would argue the flight was supposed to be just a reconnaissance of enemy activities at Chinchou. As he asserted, it was only at the last minute, some intelligence sprang up that anti-aircraft guns had been installed at Chinchou and thus the Kwantung army Commander had given permission to neutralize them if fired upon. Ishiwara stated that he and the 4 other aircraft accompanying him were fired upon and thus they dropped around 75 bombs on Chinchou, yes quite the course of events. As you might guess, more contemporary accounts would indicate this was a premeditated effort designed to freak out Tokyo.    The raid against Chinchou did indeed freak out Tokyo, the staff there began to fear the west would begin tossing condemnation upon them. Tokyo high command was in a bad spot. They felt obliged to back up the Kwantung army publically, by issuing post-facto approval of the many chaotic attacks, but internally they were livid. Major Endo Saburo of the intelligence division was sent to Manchuria to investigate the Chinchou situation. Saburo said upon asking Ishiwara what occurred, he responded that he had acted under the principle of field initiative and that was the reason why he never informed Tokyo in advance. Saburo also noted the manner in which he spoke to him indicated that Saburo alongside the intelligence division should mind their own business. Saburo also found out there were murmurs in Manchuria that if Tokyo high command did not get onboard, the Kwantung army was prepared to go it alone. It seemed the radical Kwantung officers would even go against the imperial japanese army command to get what they wanted. Ishiwara went as far as to send this telegram to Tokyo “For the sake of the nation we are doing our very best in Manchuria, but if the Japanese government constantly interferes we cannot complete our great work. Then the Kwantung army will have to come to the point where we will have to break the glorious history of the imperial army and separate ourselves from the empire”.If you thought this was pretty nuts, a rumor also emerged that Ishiwara and Itagaki were going to use an independent Manchuria as a base to perform a coup d'etat against the Japanese government, to overthrow the capitalists strangling the people and to establish a national socialist regime built around the emperor. For those of you who know your 1930's Japanese government by assassination history, you know exactly what this rumor is about, a little something that will occur in 1936. Whether Ishiwara and Itagaki actually intended to do this is unknown, but they certainly put out the word.   On october 18th, war minister Minami Jiro sent a telegram over to the Kwantung army ordering them to cease any and all talk of making Manchuria independent or trying to take control of it. Alongside that, they sent operations section, Colonel Imamura Hitoshi to Manchuria to talk some sense into Ishiwara and Itagaki. They all met at a restaurant in Mukden where Imamura began by explaining the purpose of his mission, but before he could even really begin, Ishiwara blurted out “whats the matter? Doesn't central headquarters have any backbone?” A great way to start a meeting to be sure. Imamura tried to explain the situation, but Ishiwara said “if we follow the spineless Tokyo approach we'll never settle the Manchurian problem”. Imamura replied “we can't accomplish anything by following the arbitrary decision of field elements, which may create a crisis that will shake the whole army. In such a problem it is essential for the whole nation to be unified”. To this Ishiwara apparently said really loudly in the restaurant that he was sleepy, rolled over on the tatami and closed his eyes. Imamura furious haha, get up quickly after denouncing his so called hosts for conducting official IJA business at a restaurant and left. The next day they all met again, where Ishiwara and Itagaki kept speaking about the necessity to create an independent state, since there was no hope of the Chinese reforming Manchuria. After Imamura left that meeting, Ishiwara said to Itagaki “Imamura is a fine fellow, but he doesn't understand China”.   And so despite the chaos and mania, the Kwantung Army had been restrained from pursuing any sustained military action through october. Ishiwara as you would imagine kept arguing they had to advance into northern manchuria. In early november Ishiwara got lucky again, finding a pretext in more destroyed railways. The rail bridges over the Nonni river south of Tsitsihar had allegedly been blown up by hostile Chinese forces. When Japanese engineer units showed up to repair the damaged tracks they were fired upon by Chinese forces. To the high officials in Tokyo it looked like a justifiable reason to take defensive measures. This was also being meet with Kwantung intelligence information being sent to Tokyo that Chinese forces in northern Manchuria were planning a southward offensive. Ishiwara had provided some rather exaggerated reports to the Japanese public to manipulate their opinion through the press which in turn put pressure on Tokyo into supporting an advance into northern manchuria.   Tokyo authorized a defensive operation, limited to time and distance aimed at defending the Japanese positions at the Nonni River bridges. Kwantung army forces began moving north and soon were engaged in heavy fighting around the railway area of Tahsing. Ishiwara personally led men during this, it would actually be the only time in his military career to do so. General Honjo, rightfully feared the Kwantung forces were getting out of hand sent a cabled on November 5th announcing under the “rinsan inmei / provisional mandate”, the general staff was assuming direct command authority in Manchuria. As you can imagine Ishiwara and his like minded Kwantung officer colleagues were livid. Honjo followed this up by stating he would resign if they did not comply, but Ishiwara brushed off the provisional mandate stating “that the directive from the chief of staff is just a personal, not an imperial order. No matter how many we get of those we shouldn't' care. We'll just go ahead with our plans”. On november 17, the Kwantung army began advancing upon the city of Tsitsihar seizing it 2 days later.    Facing yet another terrible situation publicly, the IJA high command allowed the Kwantung to advance upon Tsitsihar, but then uproar started abroad, forcing them to order the city evacuated. Ishiwara then began a huge argument amongst the staff stating the evacuation was unacceptable because of the sacrifices the forces had already made. But Honjo was standing firm. Then a few days later, Chinese forces began to assemble at Chinchou  and there had been some conflicts emerging between Japanese and chinese forces at Tientsin. Well Ishiwara immediately went to work demanding Honjo launch an offensive on Chinchou as a first step of linking their forces closer to Tientsin incase they were overwhelmed. To secure the advance, they also asked the Korea army to help out. Yet again Tokyo was tossed the hot potato. Tokyo high command ordered an immediate cease to the offensive and a withdrawal east of the Liao river. The Kwantung army paused, not so much before of the order, but because the Korea army refused to participate in the offensive against Chinchou, and they were most definitely needed.    Ishiwara faced a dilemma, without the reinforcements the entire offensive might be doomed. And then fatefully, Premier Wakatsuki was outed on December 11th.War Minister Minami and Chief of staff Kanaya, both who tried to moderate the Kwantung army's offensives were replaced by Araki Sadao an aggressive leader of the Kodoha Faction, known in english as “the imperial way faction”. To explain a bit, within the Japanese military there were cliques, kind of like the warlords cliques in many ways. They fought to direct the future operations of the IJA and even IJN to an extent. There were two main ones that influenced the 1930's heavily, the Kodoha and Toseiha (control faction). The Kodoha were not an organized political party, nor did they have an official standing within the IJA, but they were certainly influential. Kodoha members tended to be younger officers in the IJA, particularly those in the Kwantung army. General Sadao Araki was a founder of the faction and they were heavily influenced by Bushido, Fascism and the Kokutai. They sought a return to “the good old days” as one says. They say liberal democracy as a poison hurting Japan. They viewed the capitalists, industrialists and elites of Japan, ie the politicians, bureaucrats and Zaibatsu leaders to be responsible for ruining the once great nation. They wanted to see the Emperor take back full power, in what they would call a “showa restoration”. Their number one enemy, as was viewed by most of the Japanese military at this time, was the USSR and communism as a whole. Thus they were also by proxy in favor of the Hokushin-ron “northern strike policy” which was the Japanese theoretical war plan to invade the USSR. Now I don't want to go to far down the rabbit whole, but due note they were counter balanced by another faction known as the Toseiha faction, who were I guess to put it lightly, more moderate. The Toseiha were headed by Hideki Tojo famously and they opposed the Kodoha faction on a few grounds, one important one being, they did not want to cause a violent revolution to usher in the Emperor dominance. The Toseiha shared a lot of principles with the Kodoha, but they did not favor the Hokushin-ron strategy and instead adopted the Nanshin-ron strategy “southern strike” into southeast asia and the resource rich dutch east indies. It goes without saying the Toseiha faction enjoyed better relations with the IJN. So just to place this story within the political realm we are speaking, these two factions began to compete heavily for dominance 1931 onwards.   With Araki Sadao and some help from Prince Kan'in who was a Kodoha sympathizer things dramatically changed in Tokyo command. All of a sudden, offensive operations against Chinese forces in Manchuria became “bandit suppression” campaigns. The Kwantung army with Tokyo's full backing soon pursued all their military objectives, set out by Ishiwara and Itagaki since September. Chinchou and Shanhaikwan were seized in early January of 1932; Tsitsihar by February and by spring of 1932 Ishiwara argued to the staff they should complete the full seizure of Manchuria both north and south. In April that year he laid out “Manshu haiti heiryaku / the program for pacification of manchuria”. This new plan called for the seizure of Hailar in the north because “it was pivotal to the defense against the USSR”. It also called for seizing Jehol province because “it was an important condition to the independence of Manchuria”. By the end of the year Hailar was taken and in 1933 the Kwantung army was marching upon Jehol.   It goes without saying Ishiwara was central to the conquest of Manchuria. The Kwantung Army and IJA overall had numerous options laid bare to them to solve the Manchurian problem, but Ishiwara's primary concern was total control over Manchuria for its resources, strategic position and to obtain a continental base for a war against America. To Ishiwara, taking all of Manchuria was necessary to prepare for the Final War. Without Ishiwara it is certain there would have been conflict in Manchuria between Japan and China, but would Japan have outright seized the province? Ishiwara spent years planning and pushing the envelope. When the plan was unleashed, it would turn out Ishiwara and his colleagues did not have a concrete timetable for conquest and lacked quite a few contingency plans. Despite the chaotic nature of it all, the conquest of Manchuria was a stunning success. So much so, Ishiwara said to a friend of his, Satomi Kishio in 1932 “Even if Japan has to face the entire world, she can't be beaten”.   Ironically as many of you know, Japan's actions in Manchuria cost her greatly. Japan was now hated by the Chinese, well much more so. The west condemned Japan's actions, alongside the USSR. As my professor first taught me in a class about the Pacific War when I was a wee lad in his early 20's “It all was about Manchuria, everything started with Manchuria, and it ended with Manchuria in 1945”. The Manchuria affair started Japan on an inevitable course to fight the China War, which inturn led her to fight the west. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. The entire affair also brings into question the subject of military discipline. Many look at the Gekokujo variable as an explanation as to how people like Ishiwara and Itagaki got away with all they did. You know, these militarist hardtype junior officers just ran amok, performed some rebellious acts defying their superiors, forcing their hands to become accomplices. Now don't get me wrong Gekokujo definitely played a hand, particularly when you look at Ishiwara. But it does not take away from the fact there simply was a high level of indiscipline within the Japanese army.   Ishiwara would have been 100% fully aware what his actions might result in, hell the guy before him, Colonel Komoto Daisaku is a great example. Ishiwara spent a long time with Komoto and saw the man's career broken as he was exiled for the Huanggutun incident. But Ishiwara was not only focus on Manchuria, he had a close eye on the political situation in Tokyo. Ishiwara knew the 1931 cabinet was crumbling, he knew certain high officials like Araki Sadao were in fast track position for promotions and their sympathies were with his cause. Ishiwara was betting, certain sympathizers such as Kodoha faction aligned ones would take seats of power necessary to help push his cause. His gamble more than paid off. All the main actors in the Manchurian affair were rewarded for their accomplishments. Ishiwara received the Order of the Golden Kite 3rd class. More importantly he returned to Japan as a rockstar hero, the younger IJA officers were enthralled by him. Ironically Ishiwara had fostered indiscipline within the army more so, that when he went up the ladder becoming a member of the Tokyo staff it would bite him in the ass.   Manchukuo and racial harmony   Now Ishiwara's dream of taking control over Manchuria was almost purely a means to end end: ie to obtain resources and a strategic position to face America. Once Manchuria was under their control, Ishiwara directed his attention towards another goal aside from this, that of racial cooperation among the asian peoples. Manchukuo or rather Ishiwara's view of what it could be was a springboard of his vision for a East-Asian league, something that had a firm basis in his Final War theory. During Ishiwara's tour of duty in Manchuria in 1932, this Pan-Asian idea of what Manchukuo could be is what set him apart from many of his Kwantung Army colleagues, it also marked him to be very unorthodox within the IJA.    Manchukuo as many of you probably know, was a sham puppet state created to legitimize Japan's seizure of Manchuria. The Japanese high command simply sought to use the guise of an indigenous movement for independence to hide the fact the simply invaded a part of China and stole it. To do this they went as far as grabbing the last Qing emperor, Puyi and tossing him upon the throne of the new state of Manchukuo while they tossed up principles of racial harmony. For obvious reasons this was all done. You can't control a region full of a population that rightfully hates you without trying to win them over. Now what the Japanese did have going for them, was there did exist elements in Manchuria who sought independence. This was Manchuria, the heart of Nurhaci's Manchu people, don't get me started on what a Manchu exactly is by the way, listen to the fall and rise of China podcast for that. The Japanese had a lot to work with, it could be seen as a righteous Qing revival, or simply giving power back to the Manchu. There was also a large presence of Mongolians, and yes Inner Mongolia would come into all of this. Manchuria came into the nationalist fold late and not exactly willingly. Also the fear of the USSR was not something Japan had alone, Manchuria had struggled against the USSR for a very long time. There was also of course a large Japanese settler population in Manchuria who obviously welcomed the seizure. The Zhang Xueliang regime was not exactly too too friendly to the Japanese within the borders and a lot of discriminatory measure had been exacted upon them. When Zhang Xueliang had joined the Nationalists this had basically spelt doom upon them, at some point they knew they would be kicked out.   While the offensives were in full swing, Ishiwara and Itagaki met with other influential Kwantung Officers to figure out how they could exert control over Manchuria. Officer Katakura, chief of staff Miyake, Dohihara Kenji of the Mukden special service organ all met, looking over a previous plan created by Colonel Dohihara, for a multi racial autonomous nation of Manchuria. It was to be headed by the last Qing emperor, Puyi and needed to possess complete autonomy in internal matters, but its defense and foreign relations would be entrusted to Japan. Ishiwara drafted the plans by September 22nd and they were telegrammed to Tokyo on October 2nd. Tokyo high command disproved of the objectives, but nonetheless worked with the Kwantung army for 5 months on the creation of a new state based on two major principles: the so-called indigenous movement for Manchurian independence and the administrative planning for the Kwantung army to control it.    The Kwantung army went to work using the traditional structure of Manchuria, local self governing bodies. They bribed, persuaded and threatened as many as they could throughout 1931 carefully cultivating a local autonomy movement against the Kuomintang hardliners. One of the first things they created was “Jichi Shidobu self-government guidance board”, whose organ was responsible for coordinating various regional movements for independence to work with the Kwantung army to, in the words of Miyake “guide Manchuria to self-government”. The head of this board was appointed to the Mukden elder statesmen Yu Ch'ung-han, a man educated in Japan and previous advisor to Zhang Zuolin. His board would consist of 20 Japanese and 10 Manchurian members. Such organs were opened Japanese civilians in Manchuria and they flocked to them to support the so called multiracial political structure, because they could bend it to their own benefit.   The Kwantung army began tossing the slogans “racial harmony, racial equality and the righteous way” around heavily. The Kwantung army control over Manchuria was hashed out easily by establishing Japanese advisors over all organs who held ultimate veto authority, they would be appointed at all levels of government, thus everything was in reality Japanese controlled. Everything was going according to Ishiwara's vision….or was it? You would think so, and Ishiwara was definitely pushing all of this forward, but by 1933 he suddenly became a ferocious critic of the very beast he had helped create. 

As permafrost in Siberia continues to melt and the steppe in the Gobi turns to desert, people in Mongolia are faced with overlapping climate crises. Some nomadic herders describe climate change as the end of a world. They are quick to add that the world has ended before for Indigenous people in North Asia, as waves of colonialism have left the steppe with a complicated web of apocalypses. A Song for the Horses by K. G. Hutchins examines cases in which people respond to the pressures of climate change by drawing on cultural heritage to foster social resiliency. In this episode, K. G. joins me to discuss his research on the morin khuur, or “horse fiddle,” in Mongolia, and how Mongolians use the traditional instrument to express and envision human and more-than-human futures against the backdrop of anthropogenic climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

As permafrost in Siberia continues to melt and the steppe in the Gobi turns to desert, people in Mongolia are faced with overlapping climate crises. Some nomadic herders describe climate change as the end of a world. They are quick to add that the world has ended before for Indigenous people in North Asia, as waves of colonialism have left the steppe with a complicated web of apocalypses. A Song for the Horses by K. G. Hutchins examines cases in which people respond to the pressures of climate change by drawing on cultural heritage to foster social resiliency. In this episode, K. G. joins me to discuss his research on the morin khuur, or “horse fiddle,” in Mongolia, and how Mongolians use the traditional instrument to express and envision human and more-than-human futures against the backdrop of anthropogenic climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BOOK TITLE: The Decisive Decade: American Grand Strategy for Triumph over China AUTHOR: Jonathan DT Ward HEADLINE: China's Response to Geographical Weakness: Expansionism and Global Power Projection China has historically faced geographical weaknesses, lacking natural borders in regions like the Tibetan Plateau, Mongolian and Xinjiang Deserts, and the South China Sea. To address this, China, under Xi Jinping, is converting its global economic power into military power, initially focused on the Indo-Pacific. Their strategy includes the Belt and Road Initiative to consolidate economic geography across Eurasia and Africa, projecting military power globally, which defines an expansionist approach. 1950S PEKING UNIVERSITY

Jack Weatherford is an anthropologist and historian specializing in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep476-sc See below for timestamps, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Jack's Books: https://amzn.to/3ISziZr Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World: https://amzn.to/4l45LsY The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: https://amzn.to/4l22uud Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: https://amzn.to/4fpOQA4 Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China: https://amzn.to/40JEll1 SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Allio Capital: AI-powered investment app that uses global macroeconomic trends. Go to https://alliocapital.com/ ZocDoc: App that helps patients find healthcare providers. Go to https://zocdoc.com/lex Fin: AI agent for customer service. Go to https://fin.ai/lex Oracle: Cloud infrastructure. Go to https://oracle.com/lex Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex MasterClass: Online classes from world-class experts. Go to https://masterclass.com/lexpod LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (00:44) - Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections (10:44) - Origin story of Genghis Khan (52:30) - Early battles & conquests (1:05:11) - Power (1:07:33) - Secret History (1:20:58) - Mongolian steppe (1:24:16) - Mounted archery and horse-riding (1:32:36) - Genghis Khan's army (1:48:49) - Military tactics and strategy (2:01:13) - Wars of conquest (2:05:37) - Dan Carlin (2:15:37) - Religious freedom (2:31:24) - Trade and the Silk Road (2:40:10) - Weapons innovation (2:41:40) - Kublai Khan and conquering China (3:23:31) - Fall of the Mongol Empire (3:50:26) - Genetic legacy (4:00:20) - Lessons from Genghis Khan (4:10:36) - Human nature (4:13:47) - Visiting Mongolia (4:33:15) - Lex: Dan Carlin (4:36:06) - Lex: Gaza PODCAST LINKS: - Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips