Part of the problem is that World War II didn’t really happen. You have a bunch of different wars going on at the same time…the Sino-Japanese wars, Germany’s war with the Anglo-French alliance, the Soviet war with Eastern Europe, the German-Soviet war, Japan’s war with the British Empire, and the Japanese-US War in the Pacific. All of these are collectively “World War II”, but each of them only make up a part of what we mean by “World War II”.
And **Little Nemo ** seems to want to ignore the fact that Japan and Germany were not allied in 1937, which to most people is a defining factor when talking about WW2. Actually Germany was supporting the Chinese against the Japanese invasion in 1937. (Which BTW was made clear from earlier post). And actual Germans where most likely killed by Japanese. Which BTW was the OP of this thread.
I would suggest that this thread get moved over to Great Debates. Maybe then the billions of people that support the idea that WW2 started in 1937 will check in. 
Gosh… Well sincer you’re so ‘clever’, perhaps you could explain the connection between the 1937 conflict and Pearl Harbour.
**You haven’t given a cite for your allegation ** that masses of people think the China-Japan conflict was part of WW2.
**You haven’t explained why your claim ** that “The actual war was confined to Europe and North Africa” doesn’t include the impressive list I gave of the war being fought in Syria, Burma, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Borneo, Java, Madagascar, Rangoon, the Pacific and Japan.
Which is your opinion?
- the above places are in Europe and North Africa
- the above conflicts were not part of WW2
- you were completely wrong to make that statement (and you have no knowledge of the Asian theatre of war)
The Anti-comintern pact was signed in November of '36, so they were allied in 1937, just not against the Chinese. But the Germans did recognize Manchuko.
I don’t speak Chinese, so I don’t know if these links are traditional and simplified or mainland China and Taiwan or what, but bothof these wiki links, which I found from the language bar of the English version of the World War II article, show dates of 1939-1945. Seems bleedin’ obvious to me that Little Nemo appropriated 1.3 billion votes without asking 'em first what they actually thought.
My position would be that once Germany invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war.
Both sides then brought in their allies (for example Australians fighting in Singapore, Indians fighting in Burma, Malaysians in Malaya etc).
Since the UK sent troops to all these places, what did this have to do with China?
Why didn’t the uK get involved with Japan in 1937?
I really don’t agree.
The Allies in WW2 included the UK, France, the US + the Soviet Union. The Axis included Germany, Japan and Italy.
Once Germany broke its treaty with the Soviet Union, the UK allied with Stalin and sent masses of supplies to the Soviets. We lost loads of shipping. According to you, this wasn’t part of the same conflict? 
Please explain why the Sino-Japanese wars have anything to do with the others.
Also if these were only a part of WW2, what other conflicts are you including?
Japan invaded China in 1937. The Roosevelt Administration was on the side of the Nationalist Chinese, so in order to put economic pressure on Japan to convince them to end the war in China, they began cutting off supplies of raw materials, culminating in an oil embargo in August of 1941. It was in the hopes of forcing the US to lift the oil embargo that led Japan to attack Pearl Harbor in December of that year.
The UK didn’t declare war on Japan until December of 1941, when Japan attacked Malaya, and bombed Singapore and Hong Kong. The Japanese did that, though, not because Japan was Germany’s ally (because, remember, in 1939, 1940, and until December of 1941, Britain, in spite of being at war with Germany, was at peace with Japan), but instead because Japan wanted British resources in Malaya and Burma, specifically, rubber, which they needed in order to maintain their war machine.
Well, as long as the Soviets were at war with Germany, Britain was glad to help the Soviets…every German soldier killed in the Soviet Union meant one less German soldier the British had to face. But the war between Britain and Germany had been going on for two years by the time Hitler invaded the Soviets and they started fighting him. Before that, the Soviets were glad to trade with Hitler, and take advantage of their non-aggression pact with him to conquer large parts of Eastern Europa (the Baltics, eastern Poland, Besserabia, Finland) And, unlike with the US, Britain and the Soviets never coordinated attacks. In the west, for instance, there were combined operations between American, British, and Commonwealth forces. Obviously, there wasn’t ever organized coordination between British/American and Soviet forces, except for general spheres of influence agreements made at the end of the war.
But what I’m saying is that the war in the Pacific doesn’t have much to do with the war in Europe in general. Some of the same countries that were fighting Germany also fought Japan, but that was pretty much it. And the Sino-Japanese war shaped all the actions of the Japanese in the Pacific war.
Glee, it’s pretty clear from some of your comments that you really don’t know all that much about the history of World War II.
Japan was looking to take over China. They invaded China in 1937. The Chinese resisted and continued fighting until Japan surrendered in 1945. The Chinese Front was one of the major theatres of combat in World War II and it included American troops fighting in China.
Most of the countries in the world supported China in the war, including the United States and United Kingdom. In 1941, the United States imposed an oil embargo on Japan to try to force them to leave China. Japan decided instead to declare war on the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European powers that were supporting China. Japan also figured it could conquer most of South-East Asia easily because the European colonial powers were busy fighting Germany and couldn’t defend their possessions in Asia.
Hopefully you can now see how the Sino-Japanese War was a direct cause of the war between Japan and the United States in the same manner that the German-Polish War was a direct cause of the war between Germany and the United Kingdom.
Let me get this straight, Kendall. You’re offering “第二次世界大戰（簡稱二次大戰、二戰；1939年－1945年），是至今為止，人類社會所進行規模最大，傷亡最慘重，破壞性最大的全球性戰爭。交戰雙方是以蘇聯、美國、英國、中國、法國等國組成的同盟國，與以德國、日本、意大利等法西斯國家組成的軸心國集團。戰爭進展到最高潮時，全球有61個國家和地區參戰，有19億以上的人口被捲入戰爭，戰火遍及歐洲、亞洲、美洲、非洲及大洋洲五大洲；交戰雙方同時也在大西洋、太平洋、印度洋及北冰洋四大洋展開戰鬥。最後，第二次世界大戰以同盟國的勝利結束。” as a cite?
Well, in that case, let me offer the following counter-cite from the same page. If you look in the box, you’ll see “日期： 1937年7月7日或1939年9月1日 - 1945年9月2日” given as the dates for the war. Or for the benefit of those who don’t have our gift for Chinese, I could cite the English Wikipedia, like this article which says “From 1937 to 1941, China fought alone. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Second Sino-Japanese War merged into the greater conflict of World War II.”
Was the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 a world war?
I think that it’s pretty hard to argue that the 2nd Sino-Japanese war wasn’t a precursor to WW2. But until the Japanese attacked the US in 1941 it was just a war between two states, without the world-wide scale that is associated with a world war. In comparison, due to the widespread holdings of the European powers that began fighting after the German invasion of Poland, that struggle had a world-wide scale from the very beginning.
John ‘Bluto’ Blutarsky is one I can think of off the top of my head.
What a second. Isn’t this exactly what I’ve been saying and the exact opposite of what you’ve been saying?
Actually, Japan invaded China (Manchuria) in 1931, and announced the creation of the (puppet) state of Manchukuo in 1932. Only 23 out of 80 member nations in the League of Nations recognise Manchukuo as a legitimate state. Manchukuo - Wikipedia
In 1937, full scale war erupts between Japan and China. This continuation of Japanese aggression into China led, eventually, to various economic embargos by the U.S. (Japan’s largest trading partner) that were mirrored by other nations, such as the UK and Netherlands. Second Sino-Japanese War - Wikipedia
Up to this point, the fighting between Japan and China only occured within the national boundries and coastline of China, and this is why it is not seen by outside scholars as being a world war. The scholars within China possibly have a different view.
These embargos prompted the Japanese military hierarchy to contemplate invasions of the Dutch East Indies and Malaya, in order to secure valuable raw materials such as oil, rubber, and tin. The Japanese assumed that the U.S. would not remain neutral in the event of a Japanese attack on the UK and Netherlands, so the U.S. holdings of the Phillippines and Guam were included in their initial invasion plannings right from the get-go. When the Japanese invaded Malaya (a little after midnight, Dec 8, Malaya time), it actually occured a few hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
At this point, what was a “regional” war (Japan v. China) became somewhat intertwined with the the ongoing European war, and it pushed the U.S. out of it’s isolationist mindset.
Japan’s war aims were never linked or coordinated with the European Axis allies, beyond some limited exchange of technical research and blueprints of war weapons (like aircraft and gun designs). They just happened to be fighting some of the same major enemies (the U.S., the UK and the Commonwealth nations, Netherlands, France, etc.).
The European war, that began in earnest in Sept '39, is considered global in scope because:
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The western Allied nations were geographically spread around the globe. (Australia, South Africa, Canada.)
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Some military fighting occured around the globe. (German Uboats operated in the Indian Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, and the South Atlantic, a couple German surface raiders operated in these areas, as well as the Pacific, attacking small isolated radio relay stations, the Italians fought land campaigns in East and North Africa.)
As a minor bit of nit-pickery, I believe that when the British went to war on Germany, they also generously declared on behalf of the Empire and Crown Colonies. So the Indians etc. weren’t allies brought in later, they were included from day one as an integral part of the british forces. The Australians, Canadians etc. got to decide for themselves.
Oh, and if we are going to make a big deal out of the size of the countries involved, this would presumably have been World War III?
Not that whole thing, no. Just the dates and the source.
Wikipedia allows people to transfer to different languages of the same article after they’ve accessed the English version. I can do this for the World War II article here. Then I can click on other languages that I know (i.e. Deutsch and 日本語), and it brings up the same article about the same subject in another language. The title of the German article is “Zweiter Weltkrieg”, which means “Second World War”. Similarly, the Japanese title of the very same article “第二次世界大戦” also means “Second War World”. That is what those symbols mean. They are pronounced “dainijisekaitaisen”.
My Japanese isn’t great, but yes, I’m sufficiently comfortable with Chinese characters that it wasn’t too great a stretch for me to seek out the Chinese wiki. And lo! What do I see but the characters “第二次世界大戰” as the title of the article.
Do I speak Chinese? No. But just this once, I’m gonna go out on a limb and risk my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor and hazard a guess that the title of that article is “Second World War”. I don’t know how to pronounce that, but somehow, for some reason, my legs aren’t all a-quiver with fear from this risky leap from the Chinese characters that I’m somewhat familiar with in Japanese to the Chinese characters in Chinese.
Allow me, then, to go further and say that the character “年” means “year” in Japanese, and that in the “Second World War” article (both the Chinese version “第二次世界大戰” and the Japanese version “第二次世界大戰”), the same character appears when referring to the numbers 1939 and 1945.
To find a different set of dates, Little Nemo, you had to change articles and transfer to the Second Sino-Japanese War article (also called “Zweiter Japanisch-Chinesischer Krieg”, “日中戦争”, and “中国抗日战争” (so there is a difference between the symbols in Japanese and Chinese in this case, though I can vouch that the Japanese version does, in fact, mean “Sino-Japanese War”, or better, “Japanese-Chinese War”, and that it does refer to the second)). This war did, indeed, begin in earnest in 1937 and was incorporated into World War II in 1939.
I don’t know how much simpler to make this. When just Japan and China were fighting, it was not a world war. Then in 1939 it became a part of World War II.
These aren’t “factual” distinctions. These are matters of convention, as Exapno has already noted. But the convention does appear to be the same across the United States, Germany, Japan, and China. Now maybe I’m wrong about that and my Japanese is insufficient for me to puzzle out these guesses. But the logic here is entirely straightforward. If you choose to ignore these conventions, and declare that World War II began before 1939, then you appear not to have the support of those 1.3 billion Chinese people you were claiming for your own.
I welcome correction if I’m wrong, but at the moment, all of this still seems bleedin’ obvious to me despite your bizarre claims to the contrary.
Just to be a stinker, I’d like to note that from May to September 1939, while Japan and China were fighting elsewhere, the USSR and Japan fought an undeclared war in Mongolia.
But was WWII really a world war? Sure, the Germans and the Japanese signed an alliance and had a lot of mutual enemies, but otherwise didn’t have much coordination. Not at all like WWI, when the Japanese Navy sent destroyers to the Mediterranean, the Russians fought in France, and the British fought alongside the Japanese against the Germans in China.
Both the Santee Sioux and the Confederate States of America fought their mutual enemy of the US in 1862, but nobody linked them under the same war.
Why not call the 1860’s a world war? Combat was more widespread over the globe than in the 1940’s:
1860-1873 Russian Conquests of Central Asia
1860-1861 Second Maori War
1861-1865 American Civil War
1861-1867 Franco-Mexican War
1863-1865 January Uprising in Poland.
1863-1868 Japanese Civil War
1863-1866 Third Maori War
1864 Second Schleswig War (aka Second Danish-German War)
1864-1868 Snake War (US vs Paiutes)
1864-1870 War of the Triple Alliance (aka Paraguay War)
1865-1866 Chincha Islands War (Spain against Chile and Peru)
1866 Austro-Prussian War (aka Seven Weeks War)
1866-1868 Red Cloud’s War
1868-1869 Boshin War in Japan
1868-1878 Ten Years’ War (Cuba)
from Wikipedia’s list of wars, not mentioning the conclusion of theTaiping Rebellion with 20 million deaths.
Kendall, Little Nemo’s Chinese source for the dates 1937-1945 comes from the same Chinese 第二次世界大战 page. Look at the info box on the right, like he/she said to.
Ah, I see. Thanks for pointing that out, and apologies to Nemo for missing it.
It says pretty much what we would expect it to say (unless I’m more than embarrassingly wrong about the characters) Date: 1937/7/7 or 1939/9/1 - 1945/9/2. I’m not exactly sure what this “counter-cite” is supposed to prove, though, except that Mr. Mapcase has been right all along. Some people believe it started in '37, but the rest of the people (including most of the rest of the world) think it started in '39. Nemo doubted that, and asked EM “And you assume they all agree with you because…” The wiki makes that absurdly easy to answer.