...Hot summer of '39... Soviet-Mongolian troops encircled and defeated a large group of Japanese troops in the area of the Khalkhin Gol River. Having taught the samurai a bloody lesson and strengthened the eastern borders, the Soviet leadership turned all its attention to the western ones... So it was. What would happen if the troops of the Transbaikal and Far Eastern fronts, taking advantage of the favorable military-political situation and their overwhelming advantage in manpower and equipment, developed the Khalkhin-Gol success and struck in Manchuria and Northeast China? And they defeated the Kwantung Army of Japan not in the fall of '45, but in the fall of '39?.. But, after all, everything could have happened just like that...