In August 1939, while Hitler invaded Poland, the real turning point of World War II happened on the Mongolian steppe—and nobody noticed.

The Japanese Army went into battle believing they were invincible. They came out so traumatized they abandoned their entire plan to invade Siberia and decided to attack Pearl Harbor instead.

This is the story of Khalkhin Gol, the forgotten battle that redirected the entire Pacific War.

Today, the battlefield at Khalkhin Gol is empty steppe, marked only by scattered monuments that few visit. The Khalkha River still flows through grassland that looks much as it did in 1939.

But this forgotten place was where the trajectory of World War II fundamentally shifted. It was where Japan learned the limits of spiritual power against material reality. It was where the Soviet Union demonstrated the mechanized warfare doctrine that would eventually destroy Nazi Germany.

It was where the decision was made, not consciously but inevitably that led to Pearl Harbor and everything that followed. There, in a place whose name most people can’t pronounce, fighting a battle most have never heard of, the Empire of Japan suffered a defeat so complete that it redirected the entire course of the war.

Some anti-communist undertones, and not much in terms of images or footage related to the battle, but otherwise a good military history documentary on possibly one of the most consequential battles of WW2 (up there with Stalingrad and the Battle of Moscow) that you may not have even heard of.