Although tentative plans for a joint German-Japanese approach against the USSR were hinted on in the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact, the years 1938 and 1939 were already decisive for Japan's decision to not expand northward (i.e., against the USSR) but to the south. The Empire decisively lost two border fights against the Soviets, the Battles of Lake Khasan and Khalkin Gol, thereby convincing itself that the Imperial Japanese Army, lacking heavy tanks and the like, would be in no position to challenge the Soviet Army at that time. Nevertheless, Hitler's anti-Soviet sentiment soon led to further rapprochements with Japan, since he still believed that Japan would join Germany in a future war against the Soviet Union, either actively by invading southeast Siberia, or passively by binding large parts of the Red Army, which was fearing an attack of Japan's Kwantung Army in Manchukuo, numbering ca. 700,000 men as of the late 1930s.