in an almost secret encounter that involved a million soldiers. More than likely this defeat helped convince the Japanese to proceed with the Tanaka Plan or Southern strategy for the conquest of the Far East and the Pacific, rather than invade Siberia, where the Soviets had their best troops. After their defeat in Mongolia and other concerns, the Japanese Navy's arguments for the Southern naval strategy had prevailed over the Army's Northern Siberian military strategy.

Now we know there is more to the story thanks to two books: 1) Stalin's Secret Agents — The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government (2012) by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein and 2) Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR's White House Triggered Pearl Harbor (2012) by John Koster. Soviet Agents of Influencein the FDR administration led by the spy Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, acted at the behest of Moscow and Stalin, to push the Japanese into war against the United States to protect the USSR.

Harry Dexter White pushed the Japanese into a corner. In the summer of 1941, Japan deficient and desperately needing raw materials and oil, resources crucial to its survival, was deliberately blocked access to them by the FDR administration. By late 1941 further deprived of oil and vital resources, Japan was forced to go to war and manipulated to attack, not the Soviet Union but the U.S., protecting the USSR from invasion from the east and being attacked and crushed on two fronts.

And on October 9, the master spy Richard Sorge radioed