The History Buff's Guide to World War II (3 page)

7
. MANCHURIAN INCIDENT (1931)

In 1931 the South Manchurian Railway Company of Japan owned several hundred miles of track as well as mines, hospitals, schools, administration centers, libraries, repair depots, factories, and recreational parks within Manchuria. Assigned to guard these interests was an elite and largely independent division of Japanese officers and men known as the Kwantung Army.

On the night of September 18 a small explosion ruptured a few feet of rail line just outside the regional capital of Mukden. Company officials and most of the enlisted soldiers believed the explosion to be an act of terrorism perpetrated by Chinese Nationalists seeking revenge against the growing Japanese presence.

In reality, rogue Kwantung officers staged the event to justify complete occupation of the Chinese province. Their ruse paid immediate dividends. Within twenty-four hours their troops overran Mukden and fanned out into the countryside. In a matter of months most of Manchuria fell and fighting spread as far as Shanghai. By March 1932, Kwantung officers established the puppet state of Manchukuo, incorporating nearly all of Manchuria. The moderate Japanese government did not support the Kwantung Army’s actions, yet it did not intervene for fear of appearing antipatriotic. As the League of Nations maneuvered to penalize Japan, the island nation withdrew from the League.
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The “Manchurian Incident” launched Japan’s conversion from civil to military rule, unmasked the inherent infirmity of the League of Nations, and laid the groundwork for a comprehensive war in the Far East. Years later many Asians scholars and civilians pointed to 1931 as the actual start of the Second World War.
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The Japanese-appointed ruler of Manchukuo was Henry Pu Yi, the thirteenth and last Manchu emperor of China.

8
. ABYSSINIA (1935–36)

In 1830 Europe owned only a few colonial possessions in Africa, mostly along the coasts. A century later almost every African country lived under one European banner or another. Largest among the land-holders were Britain and France, followed by Belgium, Portugal, and Spain. A latecomer to the game, Italy held most of Somalia. But Benito Mussolini desired a Second Roman Empire, and he used a minor 1934 border clash between Italian and Ethiopian troops to deploy more soldiers to the area. In 1935 he ordered an invasion.
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The Ethiopians—undertrained, poorly equipped, and divided—were little match against Fascist Italy’s aircraft, armored vehicles, and mustard gas. By spring 1936, the fighting was over, save for sporadic guerrilla activity. An exuberant Italian public derived much pride from their victory in the seven-month war, not from defeating the feeble armies of Haile Selassie or the oppressive heat of East Africa, but by succeeding despite edicts and sanctions from the League of Nations.
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Italian military expenditures decreased steadily after the war, whereas defense budgets for nearly every other major state increased. Yet Italy’s aggression and the futility of League condemnation signaled a European rebirth of might making right.

During and briefly after the war, Italian toy stores carried sets of lead soldiers featuring Fascist Italians pitted against Royalist Abyssinians.

9
. SPANISH CIVIL WAR (1936–39)

Attempting to build a democratic republic following years of dictatorship, the best-laid plans of progressive reformers withered and failed in 1930s Spain. Resisting all change were the traditional powers of church, landowners, and the military. Demanding radical change were destitute peasants and laborers. General strikes by the latter “Republicans” degraded into violence by 1936, including the burning of hundreds of churches and the murder of more than a thousand priests. In retribution, church and military “Nationalists” resorted to mass executions.

By late 1936, this internal struggle became an international contest of extreme ideologies. Entering on the side of Gen. Francisco Franco’s Nationalists were 40,000 Italian and 20,000 German soldiers, engineers, and advisers. Assisting the fractured but larger contingency of Republicans were scores of Britons, Czechs, French, Poles, Yugoslavs, nearly 3,000 Americans, and 40,000 Soviets.

Despite inferior numbers, the Nationalists and their allies possessed superior weaponry. Spanish cities, particularly Madrid and Falset, were subjected to repeated aerial bombings. Submarines hounded merchant shipping off the Mediterranean coast. By the winter of 1938–39, civilians in Madrid were down to a few ounces of food per day, and thousands began to die of starvation and exposure.

By spring 1939, Franco had attained unconditional surrender and established Spain as a dictatorship once more. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany gained invaluable military experience from the fighting and untold confidence from the outcome. The war killed 600,000 people.
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At the end of the war, Franco’s Fascist Spain received immediate diplomatic recognition from the governments of France, Great Britain, and the United States.

10
. THE CHINA INCIDENT (1937)

For all intents and purposes, the Second World War did not begin at an American naval base on December 7, 1941, or on the German-Polish border on September 1, 1939. The bloodiest conflict yet in human history started after a bloodless volley a few miles from Peking on July 7, 1937.

On a late summer’s night, while on maneuvers near the Marco Polo Bridge, Japanese troops received a smattering of small-arms’ fire. Officers claimed the shots originated from a nearby Chinese garrison and demanded the right to search neighboring cities. Local officials refused, resulting in a series of small skirmishes.

The pattern intensified through the rest of the summer. Both sides broke truce after truce. Deployments expanded. Fighting escalated. Equipped with superior armored vehicles, bombers, fighters, and heavy artillery, Japan quickly gained the initiative, occupying most of northeast China and defeating the Nationalist Army in Shanghai. Negotiations became impossible in December 1937, when Japanese forces conquered the capital city of Nanking and initiated a succession of atrocities.
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Thereafter, Japan fully engaged China, fought several pitched battles with the Soviet Union along the Mongolian border, and started to look longingly southward toward European and American possessions for precious war resources, especially oil. Predictably, Tokyo’s fragile ties with London and Washington began to fray. Inversely, alliances with Rome and Berlin grew stronger, inspiring hawks in Tokyo to believe a new world order was about to dawn.

By conservative estimates, at least two hundred thousand Chinese civilians were killed during the three-week Rape of Nanking. This is three times the number of British civilians killed during the Second World War.

ATTEMPTS AT DIPLOMACY

It is common to view the pre–World War II diplomatic era as an exercise in excessive optimism candied with unrealistic peace initiatives and sanguine appeasements. A closer view reveals a very different picture. Rather than being naive, international negotiations of the period were predominantly cynical. Instead of addressing trade, finance, or humanitarian assistance, most major summits revolved around issues of warfare, either to settle old scores or to make future engagements more “humane.”

In the ultimate expression of self-preservation, diplomats and heads of state consistently rejected the creation of economic or political partnerships of any kind. Contending that rigid alliances had led to the deadliest war in history, statesmen opted for flexible arrangements of short duration. Unfortunately, the strategy of keeping everything and everyone at arm’s length proved incompatible with embracing lasting change.

Listed in chronological order are the ten most prominent bilateral and international meetings that transpired between 1918 and 1938. Included are their reasons for commencement, their primary players, and their outcomes.

1
. WASHINGTON NAVAL TREATIES (1921–22)

On the surface, it would seem a waste of time and perfectly good warships for Great Britain, Japan, and the United States to contemplate a three-way naval disarmament. All three were allies. Japan and Britain even had a friendship treaty at the time. No other country came close to their command of the seas. Then again, capping the size and number of battleships, large cruisers, and the recent novelty of aircraft carriers was extremely farsighted. The three navies were rebuilding at a pace that threatened to accelerate into an arms race.

In Washington, D.C., from November 1921 to February 1922, the three states, plus a host of others, including France and Italy, debated how best to find a balance. All agreed to build no large warships for ten years. The United States was to dismantle or cancel production of thirty battleships, Britain would lose twenty-three, and Japan twenty-five. No new Pacific fortifications were to be constructed, and existing ones would not be expanded. The United States and Britain would have equal amounts of capital ships, with Japan allotted a lesser ratio (the so-called 5:5:3 Agreement). A “Four Power Pact” between Britain, France, Japan, and the United States respected each other’s holdings in the Pacific, and a “Nine Power Treaty” secured the territorial integrity of China. Members of President Warren G. Harding’s Republican Party hailed these measures as “the greatest peace document ever drawn.”
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Within fifteen years every treaty negotiated at the Washington conference had either been canceled or broken.

2
. THE GENEVA PROTOCOL (1924–25)

In 1915 poison gases made a toxic debut in the trenches of northern France. The effects of chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas were so visually and physically repulsive that there was universal consensus to forever ban the use of these agents.
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In June 1925 in Geneva, twenty-nine countries endorsed the “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous, or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare,” better known as the Geneva Protocol. This was one treaty that endured the Second World War—barely.

During World War II Japan experimented on prisoners, killing several thousand at the infamous Detachment 731 in Manchuria. German generals recommended using nerve gas on the eastern front. The United States contemplated using gas in Okinawa. Masks were standard equipment for all regular ground troops and draft animals. Both the Axis and Allies possessed mass quantities of agents and stored them in several forward positions. But for a few accidents, the ghastly clouds did not return to the battlefield.
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The United States was one of the founding signatories of the Geneva Protocol but did not ratify it until 1975.

3
. THE LOCARNO CONFERENCE (1925)

Church bells rang and crowds gathered in Locarno to celebrate what French foreign minister Aristide Briand called “the beginning of an era of trust.”
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Germany had just signed an agreement to respect forever the existing borders of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Relinquishing claims to Alsace and Lorraine, Germany also agreed to keep its industrial belt of the Rhineland eternally demilitarized. In return, the Allies were to end the occupation of the Rhine Valley by 1930 (five years earlier than the Versailles Treaty stipulated) and accept Germany into the League of Nations. With bold optimism, Western Europe praised the grand “spirit of Locarno.”

Unfortunately, this “spirit” meant different things to different people. To the architect of the conference, German foreign minister Gustav Stresemann, this treaty placed Germany back among the powers of Europe, with the right to renegotiate the less desirable elements of the Versailles Treaty. To many in France and Britain the agreement looked like a German plea for forgiveness and a promise to behave. To many in Czechoslovakia and Poland the treaty appeared to liberate Germany from the risk of a two-front war. Time would prove the Czechs and Poles correct.
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For their efforts in the Locarno Conference, foreign ministers Briand and Stresemann won the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.

4
. THE KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT (1928)

On April 6, 1927, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of America’s entry into the First World War, French foreign minister Aristide Briand sent a note of gratitude to the people of the United States. He spoke of perpetual friendship between France and America and invited Secretary of State Frank Kellogg to join him in condemning military aggression. Kellogg overlooked Briand’s invitation—until it started to receive considerable public attention. He soon realized the offer was an unintended curse.
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