Then why not start in 1931, when Japan took Manchuria and set up a puppet State? That was the start of hostilities between China and Japan. China never recognised it. The Japanese even put the last Chinese Emperor, Henry Pu-Yi, on its throne, signaling their intent to undo the Chinese Revolution of 1911.OpanaPointer wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 5:46 pm Major Combatants: Japan and China were at war in 1937. I won't challenge Eurocentrism, it's easy forget things not so close to home.
1931-1936 was a time of constant battle in northeast China between the Japanese and various Chinese Armies, whether Manchu, warlord, Communist, etc (China's central government was still quite weak and Chiang Kai-Shek's Army did not even really control the north) under the Japanese propaganda name of "the pacification of Manchukuo",
And then, in 1936, Germany basically tore up the Treaty of Versailles, which had ended World War I, by reoccupying the Rhineland with German troops. This set a chain of events in motion violating the Treaty of Versailles - Austria, Czechoslovakia - which led up to the formal declaration of war in 1939. But, with Germany showing, at every juncture, that the Treaty of Versailles was dead, peace had already finished, despite the vain attempts of Chamberlain and Daladier to prop it up.
