High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The 1939–40 Winter Offensive was one of the major engagements between the National Revolutionary Army and Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The offensive was a fiasco, "destroyed what confidence Nationalist forces had left and reconfirmed their prior reluctance to seriously engage the Japanese." Nationalist war accounts have ignored and even denied it was launched, which one historian has described as a "devastating defeat" on the part of the Chinese. By April 1940, the Japanese Army had successfully forced the operation to a halt. However, a Japanese counteroffensive in the northern theater failed to seize Ningxia and was defeated in Suiyuan.