The Marco Polo Bridge Incident was a military mishap that launched a sequence of events that ended up causing the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945. The Incident happened on July 7th, 1937, and by the end of the month, China and Japan were engaged in a war. Some suggest that this Incident was the true beginning of the Second World War, rather than its conventional European starting point in 1939. While this perspective has a certain valid rationale to it, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident did not happen suddenly, and the Sino-Japanese war had been building up for decades before it. If a similar rationale is used, the true beginning of the Second World War, or, at least, the Pacific War, could be pushed even further back in time. It is uncertain when the deciding turning point was in history that set Japan onto the warpath. While the Sino-Japanese war was undeniably crucial, to call it the true beginning of the Second World War would be folly. The Sino-Japanese war is more correct to be considered part of the global economic and diplomatic buildup to the Second World War.
Japan had had imperialist ambitions that had surfaced even before the First World War. By the end of the XIX century, Japan was believed to be overpopulated, and the citizens were encouraged to emigrate. As a result of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, many Japanese workers and soldiers gained a foothold in Manchuria, a territory in Northern China (Wilson, p. 252). The Japanese then captured Manchuria outright in the 1931 Mukden Incident, which strained their relationships with China. Establishing agriculture in Manchuria was important to Japan, which the Chinese Nationalist government resisted. Tensions persisted for several years, until several factors coincided on July 7th, 1937, when The Marco Polo Bridge Incident happened. The Incident itself was a minor skirmish, which resulted from the Chinese military exercises and a single missing Japanese soldier possibly being misunderstood as an act of aggression (Crowley, p. 281). The Chinese Communist Party, which was in opposition to the ruling party at the time, quickly seized the situation and began provoking an all-out war between China and Japan (Miwa, p. 321). It appears to have worked, and small battles began throughout China due to misunderstandings and hot tempers in both militaries.
The German government initially attempted to mediate the situation between China and Japan. The Japanese military was advocating for war to keep China from unifying and to fulfill the Japanese imperialist ambitions. After the Incident, Germany was torn between its commitments to both China and Japan. The war would lead to strengthening the Communist Party, which would result in an alliance with the Soviet Union. Moreover, Japan was an ally of Germany, and withdrawing support from China could mean worsening their diplomatic relations and allowing the Soviet Union to fill the vacuum. Thus, Germany remained neutral and attempted to mediate an end to the Sino-Japanese war in November of 1937 (Liu, p. 160). However, there was disarray between the Japanese government and its army, and the attempts at diplomacy were derailed by increased aggression. The peace terms that the Japanese dignitaries proposed would essentially turn China into a vassal state with demilitarized zones and favorable financial policies.
Germany attempted to relay the terms between sides and facilitate discussion, but the Japanese military victories changed the landscape of power in China. Germany was asked to deliver new, increasingly predatory peace terms to the Chinese government, while the Japanese army continued to wage war. The third set of peace terms was considered by the German diplomats to be intentionally unfavorable. The Japanese fully intended to destroy any chance at peace and sabotage the German mediation, as winning the war would be more beneficial than ending it. In January of 1938, the Germans decided against mediating peace and instead chose to withdraw their support from China, fully allying themselves with Japan (Liu, p. 170). The Soviet Union, which initially planned to support China, also withdrew its support in the fall of 1938, forcing China to seek aid from the US (Garver, p. 315). Thus, the Axis-Allies dichotomy was beginning to take shape, and Western nations were involved in the Sino-Japanese war.
The Sino-Japanese war finally turned into the seed for the Pacific war in 1940. Germany was successfully waging war against Europe by that time, and capturing British colonies in the East was Japan’s ambition. However, the naval officers warned the Imperial Army that an American retaliation was likely (Sagan, p. 898). The US demanded that Japan cease its expansionist efforts under the threat of a total oil embargo. Japan depended on the imported oil, and could not maintain its Navy without it, but neither could it abandon its conquest of China and other East Asian territories. The rising hostilities caused America to unintentionally impose an oil embargo, while the Japanese Navy only had enough fuel for a year of operation. With limited time, and not enough strength to engage the US in open war, Japan was desperate. As Japan was likely also to wage war against the Soviet Union, it could not afford to weaken itself.
All of the buildup during the Sino-Japanese War has put Japan in this precarious position. The Japanese dignitaries could not afford to lose their Empire with all its conquests in China and East Asia. Other military commitments prevented Japan from seeking a humiliating peace. Thus, on December 7th, 1941, Japan attacked the US, has decided to engage in a desperate war against a superior enemy.
Works Cited
- Crowley, James B. “A Reconsideration of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 22, no. 3, 1963, pp. 277-291.
- Garver, John W. “Chiang Kai-shek’s Quest for Soviet Entry into the Sino-Japanese War.” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 102, no. 2, 1987, pp. 295-316.
- Liu, James T. C. “German Mediation in the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-38.” The Far Eastern Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 2, 1949, pp. 157-171.
- Miwa, Kimitada I. “The Chinese Communists’ Role in the Spread of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident into a Full-Scale War.” Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 18, no. 1/4, 1963, pp. 313-328.
- Sagan, Scott D. “The Origins of the Pacific War.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 18, no. 4, 1988, pp. 893-922.
- Wilson, Sandra. “The “New Paradise”: Japanese Emigration to Manchuria in the 1930s and 1940s.” The International History Review, vol. 17, no.2, 1995, pp. 249–286.