When most people are asked when the Second World War began, the answer is almost always the same: September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland after “pushing the envelope” with Sudetenland especially.
It is a reasonable answer, but it is also a distinctly European one. A grade-school level one, but nonetheless the most popular answer, even among many academics.
Years before German troops crossed into Poland, war had already erupted in East Asia. More importantly, the international order created after the First World War had already begun to unravel. One of the central figures in that process was an Imperial Japanese Army officer named Kanji Ishiwara.
Though largely forgotten outside specialist circles, Ishiwara helped engineer one of the twentieth century’s most consequential acts of aggression, the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931. His actions resulted in Japan’s conquest of Manchuria, exposed the impotence of the League of Nations, and demonstrated that determined military aggression could succeed despite international condemnation. While Adolf Hitler did not require Ishiwara to formulate his own expansionist ambitions, Japan’s success became one of the clearest demonstrations that the post-1919 international system lacked the means, or the political will, to enforce the peace it claimed to guarantee.[1]
For these reasons, many historians view Manchuria not as an isolated regional crisis but as one of the first major cracks in the international order that ultimately collapsed into global war.
An Intellectual Soldier
Kanji Ishiwara (1889-1949) was not an ordinary military officer.
Graduating from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy before attending the Army Staff College, Ishiwara became known as one of Japan’s most intellectually gifted strategists. He immersed himself in military history, geopolitics, economics, and the writings of the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz. He also drew heavily upon Nichiren Buddhism, developing a belief that history was progressing toward a decisive “Final War” between great civilizations.[2]
Unlike many later militarists, Ishiwara did not envision endless conquest for its own sake. Instead, he believed Japan needed to secure sufficient industrial resources and strategic depth to prepare for what he believed would eventually be an unavoidable conflict with the United States.
To accomplish this, Japan required Manchuria.
Why Manchuria Was So Important
Manchuria represented one of East Asia’s richest industrial frontiers.
The region possessed extensive coal reserves, iron ore deposits, timber, fertile agricultural land, hydroelectric potential, and an expanding railway network. For a resource-poor island nation increasingly dependent upon imported raw materials, Manchuria appeared indispensable.[3]
Japan already maintained military forces there through the Kwantung Army, officially tasked with protecting Japanese investments and the South Manchuria Railway.
Many officers believed those limited responsibilities should become permanent occupation.
Tokyo’s civilian government disagreed, thus Ishiwara decided to act without authorization.
Manufacturing a Casus Belli
On the evening of September 18, 1931, officers of the Kwantung Army secretly placed a small explosive charge beneath the South Manchuria Railway outside Mukden (today’s Shenyang).
The explosion caused remarkably little damage.
In fact, railway traffic resumed almost immediately.
Nevertheless, Japanese officers immediately blamed Chinese troops for sabotage and launched long-prepared military operations throughout Manchuria.[4]
The invasion had not been authorized by Japan’s civilian government.
Rather, it was initiated by middle-ranking officers convinced that military success would force politicians to accept a fait accompli.
They were correct.
Within months, Japanese forces controlled nearly all of Manchuria.
The puppet state of Manchukuo was proclaimed in 1932 with the last Qing emperor, Puyi, installed as its nominal ruler under Japanese supervision.[5]
The Failure of Collective Security
The international consequences proved even more significant than the invasion itself.
The League of Nations dispatched the Lytton Commission to investigate Japanese claims.
After months of interviews and field investigations, the commission concluded that Japan possessed legitimate economic interests in Manchuria but that its military occupation and establishment of Manchukuo could not be legally justified.[6]
The League condemned Japan’s actions.
Nothing happened.
No military coalition formed.
No effective sanctions were imposed.
No serious effort was made to restore Chinese sovereignty.
Instead, Japan simply withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933 while retaining every major territorial gain it had achieved through force.[7]
For supporters of collective security, the implications were devastating.
If one of the world’s great powers could openly violate international agreements without meaningful consequences, then the credibility of the League rested largely on words rather than action.
A Dangerous Precedent
Historians increasingly view the Manchurian Crisis as one of the defining failures of the interwar international order.
Margaret MacMillan argues that the inability of the League to enforce its own principles significantly weakened confidence in the Versailles system.[8]
Richard Overy likewise notes that the crisis demonstrated the unwillingness of Britain and France to risk military confrontation in defense of collective security.[9]
Louise Young describes Manchuria as the laboratory in which Japan developed many of the political, economic, and military structures that would later sustain its wartime empire.[10]
Meanwhile, historian Rana Mitter emphasizes that the invasion marked the beginning of a conflict in China that would eventually merge into the wider global war after 1941.[11]
The lesson was unmistakable.
Military aggression could succeed.
International outrage was survivable.
Treaties alone would not stop expansion.
Did Hitler Learn From Japan?
It would be an overstatement to argue that Adolf Hitler invaded Europe because of events in Manchuria.
His ideological program had been publicly articulated years earlier in Mein Kampf.
However, historians broadly agree that Japan’s successful defiance of the League of Nations demonstrated the weakness of collective security and contributed to an international climate in which revisionist powers became increasingly confident.[12]
Within a few years:
Germany reintroduced conscription.
Germany remilitarized the Rhineland.
Italy invaded Ethiopia.
Germany annexed Austria.
Germany dismantled Czechoslovakia.
Germany invaded Poland.
Each successive violation met resistance that proved politically limited or militarily absent.
The international system established after World War I steadily lost credibility.
Ishiwara’s Historical Irony
Ironically, Ishiwara later opposed Japan’s prolonged war against China after 1937.
He believed the conflict consumed manpower and industrial resources that Japan should instead preserve for what he considered the inevitable future struggle with the United States.
His disagreements with Japan’s military leadership eventually marginalized him politically.
Yet his earlier achievement remained irreversible.
The conquest of Manchuria provided Japan with enormous industrial capacity, strategic depth, and raw materials that sustained much of its later wartime expansion.[13]
The Real Beginning of World War II?
Whether World War II began in 1931, 1937, or 1939 depends largely upon perspective.
European history traditionally emphasizes Poland.
Chinese historians frequently identify the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
Many modern global historians instead argue that the conflict developed gradually through interconnected regional wars that eventually merged into one worldwide struggle.
Seen through that broader lens, the Mukden Incident deserves recognition not merely as a Japanese invasion of northeastern China but as one of the pivotal moments that undermined the post-First World War international order.
Kanji Ishiwara did not start World War II by himself.
History is never that simple.
But by demonstrating that aggressive conquest could succeed despite international condemnation, he helped create the conditions under which global war became increasingly likely.
The road to 1939 did not begin in Poland.
One of its earliest and most consequential milestones lay in Manchuria.
References and Footnotes
- Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2001).
- Alvin D. Coox, Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939 (Stanford University Press, 1985), introductory chapters.
- Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (University of California Press, 1998).
- James William Morley, The Japanese Thrust into Siberia, 1918; and Young, Japan’s Total Empire, chapters 2-3.
- Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).
- League of Nations, Report of the Commission of Enquiry (Lytton Report) (Geneva, 1932).
- Akira Iriye, The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific (Longman, 1987).
- Margaret MacMillan, The War That Ended Peace (Random House, 2013).
- Richard Overy, The Origins of the Second World War (Routledge, revised edition).
- Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire.
- Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival (Penguin, 2013).
- Richard Overy, The Origins of the Second World War; Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark (Oxford University Press, 2011).
- S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Recommended Reading
- Louise Young – Japan’s Total Empire
- Rana Mitter – China’s War with Japan, 1937-1945
- Akira Iriye – The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific
- S.C.M. Paine – The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949
- Richard Overy – The Origins of the Second World War
- Zara Steiner – The Triumph of the Dark
- Margaret MacMillan – The War That Ended Peace
- League of Nations – Report of the Commission of Enquiry (Lytton Report, 1932)
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