This lecture is to discuss Germany's strategy in Asia and Germany's strategy of a global war vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. As we discussed in a previous lecture, Germany in 1936 signed a military alliance with Japan relating to the prospect of war with the Soviet Union. It is very important to understand that Japan had a long-term interest in seizing control of Siberia and actually trying to seize control of part of Siberia after World War I, but was forced out by Western powers. It is also a point that China - nationalist forces in China - also wanted to seize control of parts of Siberia, and bitterly resented the fact that Russia had seized control of Outer Mongolia in 1911, and had seized control of the maritime prominent provinces from China during the turmoil that China experienced in the 1860s. So, there were links between nationalist forces in Japan and nationalist forces in China. There's a very interesting picture which we have on our website of Chiang Kai-shek meeting Toyama Mitsuru, head of the Japanese Black Dragon Society in 1927 in Tokyo.
What is the term Black Dragon? The term Black Dragon comes from the Amur River in China showing the focus of the Japanese nationalists in seizing control of Siberia. Now, in 1931, the Japanese seized control of Manchuria How and why they did this is somewhat of still a matter of confusion when we say how exactly - who - was really behind this You must understand that in 1930,. the Soviet Union seized control of part of Manchuria, due to a technical dispute over payments for railroad which we won't need to go into now. But it's very important to understand that the Japanese felt that if they didn't seize Manchuria - which was then technically not part of China, it was run by an independent warlord - they felt that the odds were very high that the Soviet Union would seize control of Manchuria, and it's possible that their concerns were not the ill-conceived.
One of the key Japanese advocates for seizing control of Manchuria was Ishihara, who was probably one of the great visionaries of 20th-century Japanese military policy. Ishihara was a very smart guy. He correctly saw that for Japan to seize control of Manchuria would create huge problems in Japan's relationship with China. He very emphatically told the military leaders in Manchuria that they needed to be absolutely certain that they did not in any way threaten further encroachments on Chinese territory. Unfortunately, people such as Tojo and other hotheads and bureaucrats in the Manchurian Army, did not listen to this and steadily moved the border with China southward until in 1937 Japanese troops were literally at the gates of Beijing. This was a prescription for disaster, and in the summer of 1937, disaster struck.
Japanese forces and Chinese forces under somewhat mysterious circumstances got into a conflict with each other, which escalated into full-scale war. This war was an absolute disaster for everybody except the Soviet Union. It was a complete disaster for Germany because it meant that its two allies in Asia, Japan and China, were involved in a war with each other. It was a disaster for China, insofar as they had just gotten themselves into a huge war. It was a total disaster for Japan, because it completely demolished their plans for rearmament and just completely screwed up the entire structure of the Japanese military. As a result, the German plans for a military alliance with Japan vis-à-vis the Soviet Union were severely damaged.
Now a side that needs to be understood is that Germany's relationship with China was also a very big deal and predated the alliance with Japan. There was no formal alliance but the German military mission to China was a very big deal, and China in 1933 was probably Germany's closest ally. The German military mission to China was headed up by nobody less than general Von Siecht, the former head of the German Army, which supervised the military reorganization of Germany in the 1920s, and the secret German rearmament. So Germany's relationship with China was a very big deal, and the hope was that China would eventually join the anti-Comintern pact. The disaster of 1937 pretty well blew all that up, and this meant that the entire Eastern strategy of Germany's policy was now in a complete shambles, and Germany would be forced into choosing between China and Japan, which in 1938 it basically - for all intents and purposes - sided with Japan, and though it still tried to maintain good relations with China. So that is the second big disaster of 1937.