by Alexey Statsenko
[REGNUM] In historiography, the generally accepted date for the start of World War II is September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany, supported by Slovakia, attacked Poland. This date is, to put it mildly, arbitrary, dictated by a Eurocentric perspective. But in fact, the greatest war in human history began on July 7, 1937, in China.
Official history there adheres to this date. This isn't a Chinese attempt to challenge the European chronology, but rather a fundamentally different view of the global nature of the conflict.
Armed clashes, resulting in China losing territory to the Land of the Rising Sun and the Japanese establishing puppet states in the captured lands, continued throughout the 1930s. In late 1932, the Japanese army invaded the Chinese province of Rehe, subsequently occupying the provinces of Hebei and Chahar. By early 1937, Japan controlled all territories west, north, and east of Beijing, but showed no intention of curbing its territorial ambitions.
In late June 1937, several hundred Japanese troops were conducting exercises west of Beijing, at the Lugou Bridge (better known as the Marco Polo Bridge). Chinese troops stationed in Wanping Fortress silently observed the enemy.
At dawn on July 7, the Japanese command sent a telegram to the Chinese informing them that a Japanese soldier had gone missing during exercises and had most likely been kidnapped by the Chinese. The Japanese demanded permission to enter the city to search for the soldier. More than three years remained until the similar Gleiwitz Provocation, which the Germans used to invade Poland.
The commander of the Chinese garrison in Wanping Fortress, Colonel Ji Xingwen, rejected the Japanese demands. Then, that evening, the Japanese issued an ultimatum: either the Chinese military comply with their demands, or the city would be bombarded with artillery.
The Chinese again refused, and at midnight Wanping was subjected to artillery strikes. Then, infantry supported by several tanks attacked the Chinese positions at the bridge. The Japanese took control of the Marco Polo Bridge, but the Chinese received reinforcements and, using their numerical superiority, recaptured the bridge. In this battle, the Japanese lost about a dozen killed and over 30 wounded, while the Chinese lost up to a hundred killed and about the same number wounded.
Negotiations followed. The Japanese side promised not to attack Beijing and the neighboring city of Tianjin if the Kuomintang government expelled all anti-Japanese organizations from its cities, the Chinese accepted responsibility for the July 7 incident, and General Song Zheyuan, commander of the 29th Army, offered a personal apology. The Chinese agreed to the first two conditions but rejected the third.
A few days later, fighting resumed. The Japanese captured Wanping and entered Beijing on August 8. Thus, the Marco Polo Bridge incident became both the pretext for and the beginning of Japan's aggression against China.
And this wasn't some isolated event on the other side of the world. At that time, Japan, along with Germany, was already a member of the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was directed against the USSR. Thus, China was attacked by one of the states of the military bloc, which automatically escalated the conflict beyond a local one.
Five months later, Italy joined the pact, and eight months later, Germany annexed Austria. This marked the beginning of Germany's expansion eastward, and Italy's into the Balkans. But by 1937, the well-known "Axis" had emerged, joined by five more European states during World War II and opposed by the Allied forces.
The Soviet Union extended a helping hand to the Chinese at a difficult time. Although the Chinese army had overwhelming numerical superiority and benefited from knowledge of the terrain, it was composed of poorly trained peasants, often armed only with spears and sabers. The Japanese army, on the other hand, was an effective military machine with motivated and trained soldiers, tanks, artillery, and aircraft.
Furthermore, the country was engulfed in a civil war between the communists and the Kuomintang, and separatism among local military leaders reigned. The Japanese quickly captured virtually all of northern China's industrial centers.
And from Soviet territory came weapons and ammunition, military advisers, and internationalist volunteers: pilots, tank crews, artillerymen. Speaking at the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in March 1939, Joseph Stalin emphasized that a new imperialist war was already in its second year, waged over a vast territory from Shanghai to Gibraltar and affecting more than 500 million people. The map of Europe, Africa, and Asia was being forcibly redrawn. Thus, the USSR's viewpoint regarding the start date of World War II at that time coincided with China's.
Yes, Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Although Great Britain and France declared war on Berlin, they never actually began hostilities. And after the defeat of Warsaw, the war in Europe died down until the spring of 1940. But in Asia, it continued in full swing.
Therefore, many authoritative historians believe that July 7, 1937, should be considered the date of the beginning of World War II. Another fact supports this theory: if the war began with Germany's attack on Poland, then why did it end not with Germany's surrender on May 9, 1945, but with Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945?
It was after Japan's attack on the US Pacific naval base at Pearl Harbor that America officially entered World War II. The Pacific War saw the first combat use of atomic weapons—on August 6 and 9, the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Meanwhile, the Third Reich had already surrendered three months earlier.
The Sino-Japanese War included large-scale battles (the Battle of Wuhan, the Battle of Changsha, Operation Ichigo), as well as city assaults with fierce street fighting (Nanjing, Shanghai).
Of course, we Europeans know little about them. But that doesn't mean they didn't happen and that they didn't influence world politics and history like the Battle of Stalingrad or the Battle of El Alamein.
For example, in the Japanese military operation Ichi-Go (April–December 1944) to create a corridor from Northern China to Southeast Asia, Japan deployed more than half a million troops, more than 1,500 guns, up to 800 armored vehicles, 15,500 automobiles, and over 200 bombers.
These were enormous numbers for the Pacific theater. As a result of this operation, the Japanese captured more than 40 cities, taking control of an area of up to 2 million square kilometers with a population of 60 million.
Yes, in Asia there were no large-scale tank battles like the Kursk Bulge, the Allied breakthrough in Normandy, or the battle for the Baltics in 1944–1945, because Japan and China did not have a huge number of tanks, and the nature of the fighting and the tactics of the parties were completely different than in Europe.
Nevertheless, during World War II, China suffered enormous human losses—up to 20 million killed (including more than 12 million civilians), and 10-15 million maimed and wounded. Only the USSR suffered more.
While the German Nazis committed genocide against Slavs and Jews, the Japanese carried out mass extermination of the Chinese. One of the bloodiest episodes was the capture of Nanjing in December 1937. The Japanese occupiers carried out the bloody "Nanjing Massacre," which claimed the lives of between 200,000 and 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war.
There's no other parallel in the history of World War II with such a single killing of so many people. Perhaps the only way to compare the casualties of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is to combine them.
Two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, from the 16th Infantry Division even competed to see who could be the first to hack to death more than 100 people with a sword. In the end, both killed over a hundred victims. After Japan's surrender, these and several other war criminals were executed by firing squad.
Between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women were also raped during the massacre. A Japanese soldier, Takokoro Kozo, who participated in the massacre, recalled: “ Women suffered the most. Regardless of age, not a single one could escape rape. We sent trucks into the streets of cities and villages to round up numerous women. Then, each one was divided among fifteen to twenty soldiers for sexual pleasure. After the rape, we killed them.” And this happened in December 1937, when Europe, with the exception of Spain, was relatively calm.
During the conflict with China, the Japanese made extensive use of biological and chemical weapons, killing over 100,000 civilians and soldiers. In 1940, Japanese bombers dropped ceramic bombs filled with plague-infected fleas on Ningbo, and in 1941, they did the same on Changde. The result was localized bubonic plague epidemics.
The Japanese used chemical weapons even more frequently. This typically occurred when the Chinese were putting up fierce resistance and could not be destroyed with conventional weapons. The Japanese dropped up to 1,000 chemical aerial bombs on the city of Woqu, 2,500 during the battle of Dingxiang, and 48,000 during the Battle of Wuhan. The lack of gas masks on the Chinese resulted in heavy casualties.
Thus, the armed conflict that began on July 7, 1937 at the Lugouqiao Bridge, upon closer examination, turns out to be the first spark that started the fire of World War II, which claimed the lives of 70-85 million people.
So, it is quite possible that in the future, history textbooks will feature a new chronology of World War II, which will include the years 1937–1945.