Outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War
A skirmish at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing on 7 July 1937 — which the Japanese army used as a pretext, though the incident may have begun with a missing soldier — escalated within weeks into full-scale invasion as Japanese forces drove deep into China proper. Beijing and Tianjin fell in July; the Battle of Shanghai (August-November 1937) was one of the most intense urban battles in history, killing hundreds of thousands on both sides as Chiang Kai-shek committed his best divisions to defend the city. Shanghai fell in November and the Nationalist capital Nanjing fell on 13 December 1937. The fall of Nanjing was followed by six weeks of mass atrocity — the 'Rape of Nanjing' — in which Japanese troops killed between 100,000 and 300,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war, conducted mass rapes, and looted and burned the city. The scale of the violence, documented at the time by Western observers and journalists remaining in the city, shocked international opinion without producing intervention. Chiang Kai-shek moved the Nationalist capital to Chongqing and continued resistance; the Communists under Mao Zedong operated a second front from Yan'an. The war committed Japan to an open-ended continental occupation that drained its economy, strained its oil supply, and ultimately drove the decision to seize Southeast Asian resources — the chain that led to Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
- Year: 1937 CE
- Category: Political
