IB History: The Road to War — notes, maps and essay questions

Chapter 1: The World the Slump Made

The Depression and a closing world. World trade’s dollar value fell by roughly two-thirds between 1929 and 1933. Governments also raised barriers: the United States passed Smoot–Hawley in 1930, and Britain adopted imperial preference in 1932. Japan already possessed an empire, yet its leaders saw competitors controlling markets and raw materials elsewhere. If trade was being organized into protected blocs, some reasoned, Japan needed a larger bloc of its own. Manchuria became a ‘lifeline’; Hitler would later call the east ‘living space.’

The Washington order and its limits. The Washington treaties of the 1920s offered rules for the Pacific: naval ratios, the Open Door in China and consultation among powers. Their force depended on governments respecting them or acting when they were broken. The League had no army, and Britain and the United States were unwilling or unable to commit force to reverse the seizure of Manchuria. China could appeal to agreements, but the agreements did not automatically bring protection.

The army and the cabinet. Japan’s army claimed a direct relationship with the Emperor rather than ordinary subordination to the prime minister. That left Tokyo with a difficult problem when officers in the field disobeyed. Kwantung Army officers guarding the Manchurian railway concession assassinated the warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928 and escaped effective punishment. In 1931 the army minister sent a general to check another plot, but word of the visit reached the officers concerned. Civilian weakness would matter when they acted.

China’s divided position. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists had nominally unified China in 1928, but their government faced rival warlords and communist bases in the south. Catastrophic Yangtze floods added to its troubles in 1931. Japanese radicals expected Nanking to seek legal help abroad rather than offer effective immediate military resistance. They were less attentive to what repeated concessions and humiliation could do over time: resentment could strengthen Chinese nationalism.

Chapter 2: Mukden: The First Unpunished Gamble

A railway concession and a larger ambition. Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905 had given it control of the South Manchuria Railway zone, which the Kwantung Army guarded. The region’s coal, soy and iron made it valuable; beyond the concession lay land governed by Zhang Xueliang, whose troops faced competing demands. Ishiwara Kanji, a principal planner, believed a final war with America inevitable. On that assumption, acquiring Manchuria’s resources now would prepare Japan for a future defense.

The army and its civilian government. Wakatsuki Reijirō’s government sent General Tatekawa to restrain the officers. One account says the conspirators entertained him before setting off the charge. Once the invasion began, each new gain confronted ministers as an accomplished fact. The army’s control over its cabinet minister also gave it power to threaten a government by withdrawing him. In May 1932 naval officers assassinated Prime Minister Inukai, the last party politician to head a Japanese government before 1945. As the conquest proceeded, civilian authority weakened.

China’s choice of resistance. Chiang’s policy of ‘first internal pacification, then external resistance’ reflected his judgment that China could not yet defeat Japan. Some of his strongest forces were engaged against the communists. Holding them back from a general war preserved them and helped China present Japan as the aggressor before world opinion. It also allowed Japanese troops to advance at comparatively low cost, while Chiang faced sustained protest at home. His appeal to international law came with a political price.

The limits of the League. An investigation was within the League’s power; military enforcement depended on its members. Britain had an Asian empire and naval commitments to protect, and Depression budgets discouraged new risks. The Lytton inquiry took months, during which Japan conquered Manchuria and established Manchukuo. Its careful report could tell governments what had happened. Reversing the result required a further decision by those governments.

The perimeter, then the tide. Japan’s advance continued for roughly the six months Yamamoto had described. Malaya, Singapore in February 1942, the Indies and the Philippines fell; Singapore was a particularly severe imperial capitulation. Then the Battle of the Coral Sea checked an advance in May. At Midway in June, American carriers absent from Pearl Harbor helped sink four of the six Japanese carriers that had attacked it. The WW2 atlas takes up the war that this atlas ends by beginning.

The arsenal opens both doors. Roosevelt could pursue “Europe first” more easily with public support after Germany’s declaration. Lend-Lease was already supplying Britain and the USSR, and became a means of sustaining the global coalition. By war’s end the program had provided about $50 billion in matériel, including Studebaker trucks used by the Soviet Union and food shipped to Britain.

Asia’s empires never come back. The tan across the southern half of the map represents empires whose authority Japan’s victories shook. An Asian power had defeated European colonial forces in weeks. After 1945 European governments attempted to restore their rule, but India became independent in 1947 and Indonesia in 1949; Indochina followed after wars covered in the Cold War atlas. Japan’s conquest was defeated, yet the imperial world it attacked did not survive unchanged.