Praeger Studies of Foreign Policies of the Great Powers – serie

This comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of Japanese policy between the two world wars utilizes both English and Japanese sources to present Japan as an independent agent, not a state whose policy was determined by the actions of other countries. Beginning with Japan's disappointment with the Versailles Peace Treaty in 1919, Nish examines the roots of Japanese discontent and feelings that ambitions in China were being unreasonably restrained. He explains British and American policies in the region as reactive, but concludes that their responses helped to determine which factions would dominate Japan's political arena. This non-partisan account is even-handed in apportioning responsibility for the events leading to the Second World War.While some Japanese politicians in the 1920s tried to follow the international path, there were others who tended to side with the army in establishing Japan's position, first in Manchuria and later in North and Central China in the 1930s. Conscious of the nation's unpopularity in the western world, Japan allied itself with Germany and Italy in the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 and the Tripartite Alliance of 1940. To pursue its own national objectives, Japan joined her allies in making war on the United States and the colonial empires of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Its forces succeeded in overrunning many colonial territories; and, with a view to easing the problems of occupying them, Japan liberalized its harsh military policies, granting independence to Burma and the Philippines and welcoming Asian leaders to Tokyo for the Greater East Asian Conference of November 1943.

Italy emerged from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 with the feeling that it had been denied its just rewards by ungrateful allies and that its victory was thus mutilated. Integrating this vengefulness into his diplomacy in the 1920s, Mussolini undertook a policy of selected treaty revision aimed at the breakup of the newly created state of Yugoslavia through covert operations. These stratagems proved futile. Ignoring the threat posed by Nazi Germany's obvious determination to annex Austria, whose continued independence was key to Italy's security in Europe, Mussolini successfully invaded Ethiopia in October 1935, with only lukewarm opposition from France and Britain. Subsequently, in July 1936, he unwisely intervened on the side of the insurgent general Francisco Franco against the Republican government in Madrid. Instead of the expected speedy victory, Italy got bogged down in a prolonged civil war, which rendered Mussolini even more dependent on Nazi Germany. To preserve his standing in Berlin, he did not lift a finger when the Third Reich marched into Austria in 1938. Convinced of the growing decadence of the Western democracies, Mussolini turned to forge the Rome-Berlin Axis. But given Italy's military weakness, Mussolini was bound to be Hitler's junior partner. When the Duce talked of turning the Mediterranean Sea into an Italian lake in February 1939, he found himself trapped in Hitler's military iron cage. Parity in the Axis was the Duce's own peculiar myth. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Mussolini declared nonbelligerency since he was in no position to wage war. He intended to bide his time in order to see who would win or, in the event of a stalemate, to step in as a mediator. But when the Nazi steamroller crushed France, Mussolini felt he had only one option—war on the side of Germany. By tying himself to Hitler's war chariot, Mussolini sacrificed the national interests of his country and doomed his Fascist regime to ultimate destruction.

This comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of Japanese policy between the two world wars utilizes both English and Japanese sources to present Japan as an independent agent, not a state whose policy was determined by the actions of other countries. Beginning with Japan's disappointment with the Versailles Peace Treaty in 1919, Nish examines the roots of Japanese discontent and feelings that ambitions in China were being unreasonably restrained. He explains British and American policies in the region as reactive, but concludes that their responses helped to determine which factions would dominate Japan's political arena. This non-partisan account is even-handed in apportioning responsibility for the events leading to the Second World War.While some Japanese politicians in the 1920s tried to follow the international path, there were others who tended to side with the army in establishing Japan's position, first in Manchuria and later in North and Central China in the 1930s. Conscious of the nation's unpopularity in the western world, Japan allied itself with Germany and Italy in the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 and the Tripartite Alliance of 1940. To pursue its own national objectives, Japan joined her allies in making war on the United States and the colonial empires of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Its forces succeeded in overrunning many colonial territories; and, with a view to easing the problems of occupying them, Japan liberalized its harsh military policies, granting independence to Burma and the Philippines and welcoming Asian leaders to Tokyo for the Greater East Asian Conference of November 1943.