ABSTRACT
During the night of 18 September 1931, units of the Japanese army stationed in Kwantung blew up some three feet of line on the railway near Mukden. The Mukden incident was planned by a group of dissident officers who were determined to force the Japanese Government to reject the system of international co-operation established at the Washington conference of 1921-22. The Kwantung army was encouraged by the response of the powers to China's pleas, and decided to extend their operations to drive the Chinese forces from Manchuria and even from Inner Mongolia. Border clashes with Soviet forces on the Manchurian-Mongolian border soon escalated into a major armed conflict in which the Japanese suffered an embarrassing defeat. It was, however, a salutary lesson in that it discouraged those who were keen on a war with the USSR. Hitler stressed that German-Russian relations were deteriorating rapidly and would not consider a four-power pact.
