Japan Invades Manchuria
On 18 September 1931, officers of Japan's Kwantung Army staged the Mukden Incident — a carefully orchestrated explosion on the South Manchuria Railway — and used it as a pretext to seize the entire Manchurian province of northeastern China within five months. The Japanese military acted largely without authorisation from the civilian government in Tokyo, which was too weak and intimidated to rein in the army. The League of Nations dispatched the Lytton Commission, whose 1932 report condemned Japan's actions but resulted only in Japan's withdrawal from the League in 1933. The episode revealed the fatal impotence of collective security: when a major power resolved to use force, the League could investigate and condemn but could not act. Manchuria became Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state, and the precedent emboldened aggressive powers everywhere — Italy, Germany, and Japan itself in subsequent years.
- Year: 1931 CE
- Category: Military
