IB History The Outbreak of War Notes

The Path from Manchuria to Full-Scale War (1931-1937)

1. The Kwantung Army staged the Mukden Incident in September 1931, using a fabricated railway explosion as a pretext to seize all of Manchuria within five months.
2. Japan established the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932 under the former Qing emperor Puyi, giving Japan access to Manchuria's coal, iron, and agricultural resources.
3. When the League of Nations adopted the Lytton Report condemning the occupation in February 1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League, signalling that international opinion would not restrain its expansion.
4. Between 1933 and 1936, Japan's China Garrison Army steadily expanded into northern China. The Tanggu Truce (1933) created a demilitarised zone south of the Great Wall, giving Japan a buffer and a foothold beyond Manchuria.
5. The Umezu-He Agreement (June 1935) forced China to remove its troops and Guomindang offices from Hebei Province, effectively handing political control of the region to Japan without a formal invasion.
6. Japan created the puppet state of Mengjiang in Inner Mongolia (1936), extending its network of buffer states across northern China and securing access to wool, livestock, and strategic territory bordering the Soviet Union.
7. Japan withdrew from the Second London Naval Conference (1935-1936) after failing to secure parity with the US and Britain, freeing itself to build a larger navy without treaty limitations.
8. By 1936, Japan controlled or influenced a vast arc of territory from Manchuria through Inner Mongolia to Hebei through a combination of puppet states, demilitarised zones, and local collaborators, all achieved without provoking a full-scale war.

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident and Escalation (July 1937)

1. On 7 July 1937, a skirmish between Japanese and Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge (Lugouqiao) near Beijing began as a minor clash over a missing soldier during night exercises, but neither side was willing to back down.
2. Japan demanded a formal apology and the right to search the nearby town of Wanping. Chiang Kai-shek refused, and both sides began pouring reinforcements into the area, turning a local incident into a national confrontation.
3. By the end of July 1937, Japanese forces had occupied Beijing and Tianjin, and most of northern China fell under Japanese control within weeks, confirming that the bridge incident had triggered a full-scale invasion.
4. In August 1937, Chiang deliberately opened a second front at Shanghai, deploying his best German-trained divisions to fight where Western powers had commercial interests, hoping to internationalise the conflict and attract foreign intervention.
5. This was a calculated gamble: Chiang chose to fight a war he knew China could not win quickly, betting that Japan would exhaust itself in a prolonged conflict. The era of appeasement and local truces was over.

The Fall of Shanghai and Nanjing (1937)