The Causes and Consequences of World War II - Asia for Asians

The Causes and Consequences of World War II HIST 1301 | History Asia for Asians The 1930s rivalry between China and Japan ignited the spark that sparked the outbreak of World War II. The rejection of Japan's proposed racial equality amendment to the Treaty of Versailles, which occurred more recently, may have been the catalyst. Japan has a longstanding sense of racism in the West that dates back to the eighteenth century. Australia and the British delegation had insisted on doing this. While Japan obviously considered itself as the new leader of the area, part of its underlying philosophy was to purge Asia of Western colonial influences. Russia had previously possessed the privilege of leasing the South Manchuria Railway in northeastern China, but Japan had retained this right since the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. But Japan has positioned its forces in northeastern China, claiming the right to govern a large area outside the railway zone. These troops set off explosives along the South Manchuria Railway track in 1931, accusing Chinese saboteurs of the deed. This provided Japan with a justification to invade and seize Manchuria, commonly known as Manchukuo, under the guise of protecting its interests. The Japanese incited several violent skirmishes with Chinese forces in Shanghai in an attempt to divert attention away from this tragedy, which is popularly known as the Mukden tragedy, on a global scale. On May 5, 1932, the First Shanghai Incident came to an end with a cease-fire. Concurrently, the Manchukuo-based Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army persisted in growing its reach and scope of operations. By pushing towards the Great Wall in the south, the army expanded its sphere of influence to include more of China. The Tanggu Truce was eventually ended on May 22, 1933, by the Guomindang administration (GMD, sometimes spelt "Kuomintang") and the Japanese. This resulted in the formation of a demilitarised zone that ran 100 kilometres south of the Great Wall and effectively separated Manchukuo from the country of China. The Japanese Empire then used Manchukuo, which had abundant coal and iron ore resources, as an industrial engine to secure North China, thwart the expansion of communism or Soviet influence, and lay the groundwork for a larger fight. Since 1927, there has been a civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the nationalist GMD government. When President Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi)1 ordered the GMD soldiers, who had been driven from Manchukuo by the Japanese, to attack the Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong at their adjacent base in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province, they had moved south of the Great Wall. In response to Japan's aggressiveness, the Chinese people disapproved of the notion of Chinese battling Chinese. During the Xian Incident in December 1936, Manchurian troops captured Chiang Kai-shek in Xian, China, forcing him to negotiate the end of the Civil War and the formation of the Second United Front, which would unite the CCP and GMD against Japan. Firefights broke out between them and Chinese forces at the Marco Polo Bridge, which is located 10 miles west of Beijing. After swiftly defeating the Chinese army, the Japanese took control of the region around Beijing and Tianjin. Then, Chiang Kai-shek made the decision to move the battle to the Shanghai area, where he appeared to have a numerical advantage and superior forces. In response, the Japanese launched a massive attack, severely mauling the GMD forces by November 1937. They withdrew to Nanjing, the capital of China, in the west after losing 250,000 soldiers. Chinese soldiers kept moving westward while Japanese forces drew closer to Nanjing. Chinese resistance in Nanjing came to an end on December 12, 1937, and Japanese soldiers stormed the helpless city, unleashing a terrible seven-week reign of horror and pillage. According to foreign witnesses in the city, 20,000 Chinese women and girls were victims of sexual assault. Approximately thirty thousand Chinese troops who were not able to be evacuated were put to death, and it's possible that up to twelve thousand civilians also perished. Several historians estimate that 300,000 people perished. (Such disparities in numbers might arise from disagreements among historians over whether fatalities are relevant to a particular event.) The incident was brought up at the Tokyo War Crimes tribunals following the war and came to be known as the "Rape of Nanking" (the older spelling of Nanjing). Japan stepped up its attempts to pacify China. Some GMD forces put up fierce struggle in certain areas after retreating even farther west to protect the GMD's new temporary capital at Chongqing, but by 1938, they had been severely driven back. Chiang Kaishek ordered the Yellow River's dikes to be opened in order to stop the Japanese from advancing farther. This caused significant floods in parts of central China, killing an estimated 400,000 people and uprooting 10 million more. The USS Panay, a warship on the Yangtze River that was removing Chinese and American citizens from Nanjing at the time, was sunk by the Japanese in December 1937. In addition to apologising and taking ownership of the Panay event, the Japanese government also paid reparations of more than $2 million, or at least $37 million in current currency. During all of this, American public opinion continued to remain unsure about joining any conflict, albeit gradually turning in favour of China. The Great Depression and the emergence of fascism in Europe appeared to portend the end of the previous global order controlled by the West. Politicians, journalists, academics, and military officials in Japan believed that their country could create a "new order" of regional dominance. Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka discussed his idea for a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as a model for Japan's rise to global power status in a radio speech from August 1940. A book that expanded on his ideas for freeing Asians from European dominance and driving out the "white race bloc" that was stifling Asia's potential was published a year later. Japan's aggressive actions in Asia were publicly stated with the goal of establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere by 1941, and this goal persisted until Japan's surrender in 1945. The Japanese military and civilian governments eventually started to explore a push into Southeast Asia as a result of reaching a deadlock in China and realising that they needed additional natural resources to continue the war and achieve their aim of establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. A clash between the United States and its colony, the Philippines, would unavoidably result from such a move. Japan developed a fervently optimistic war strategy against the United States that included attacking Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, the home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.