fast coming to an end. If Japan were to consolidate her gains and seize additional territory from China in another cheap local war, she would have to move fast before China became too determined or strong.
In July 1937, following the precedent of the “Manchurian Incident,” military extremists provoked a new “incident” near Peking in North China. Again the grounds for conflict were extremely flimsy, and again it seems that the local Japanese units were acting without the knowledge or the expressed approval of the government and possibly without the knowledge of higher army authorities. But again the Japanese civil government meekly supported the war brought on by the militarists. Japanese troops quickly seized the two principal cities of North China, Peking and Tientsin, and overran large parts of North China and Inner Mongolia. Fighting again broke out around Shanghai as it had during the conquest of Manchuria.
The aim of the militarists was obviously to bite off as much of North China and Inner Mongolia as possible before Chinese Nationalist authority over that region became too strong. But the militarists had miscalculated; it was already too late to seize North China by a localized war. The Chinese were determined to wage a full scale war to protect themselves from foreign domination.
Chinese resistance irritated the Japanese militarists, but it did not worry them. They would accept the challenge and crush all opposition by capturing the capital at Nanking. The campaign around Shanghai, although costly, was pushed to a successful conclusion, and Japanese armies marched on to Nanking, which fell in