The Battle of Xinkou was a decisive engagement of the Taiyuan Campaign, the second of the 22 major engagements between the National Revolutionary Army and Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The battle of Xinkou marked the first large-scale cooperation between the provincial army (Yan Xishan’s Shanxi troops), Chinese Communists (Eighth Route Army), and Chiang Kai-shek’s Central Army (14th Group Army) during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Although the Chinese defenders fought bravely on a united front against the enemy during this campaign, they had a large shortage of firepower, especially with the ill-equipped 8th route army. A personal account of General Li Mo'an stated that the only weapon the Chinese infantry had against Japanese tanks was Molotov cocktails, and many defenders on the left flank were simply run over by tanks.

The Chinese forces ultimately lost the battle, paying the price of 100,000 troops dead, injured or missing, and were forced to retreat. However, they were able to kill some 20,000 Japanese troops, wound thousands more, and destroy dozens of tanks and more than 24 aircraft, setting a record high for the scale of damage inflicted to the Japanese in a single battle in Northern China.