This research paper discusses the role of China in the origin, course and the outcome of World War II. Because of internal Chinese divisions, weaknesses in the Chinese Nationalist government and the priorities accorded to other theaters of war, China never played the role envisaged for it by some Allied leaders and war planners; nevertheless, events there served to enmesh Japan in an unsustainable military adventure on the Asian mainland and to weaken its overall war effort.
World War II began at different times for different nations. For Britain, France, Poland and Germany, it began in 1939, for Italy in 1940, for Russia in June 1941, for the United States with the Pearl Harbor attack and the German declaration of war in December 1941. For China and Japan, it began with the clash of arms on the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking in July 1937. The principal significance of the first phase of the Sino-Japan War between 1937-1945 to the broader world war is that it helped draw Japan and United States into conflict in the Pacific.
Ever since it enunciated its Open Door policy toward China at the turn of the century, the United States had supported the territorial and political integrity of China and opposed its dismemberment at first by the European colonial powers and later Japan. As Schaller points out, "during the first half of the twentieth century, an almost unimaginable chaos engulfed China," revolution, warlordism, famine, civil strife and since the Japanese had seized Manchuria in 1931 and parts of northern China between 1933 and 1936, war with the formidable Japanese war machine (2). That war intensified with full scale land, air and sea attacks on China's major coastal and eastern cities which fell to the Japanese in 1937-1938.
According to Tang Tsou, the United States prior to 1938, "made no attempt to enforce [its Open Door principles by the application of national power" (7). Schaller says that "before 1937 one of Ro...