Professor Rana Mitter tells Conversation With why the war began with Japan’s conflict with China, not when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the date most history books use.
- Posted 16 Mar 2017 08:56
Historian and political scientist, Rana Mitter.
OXFORD – Many history texts use 1939 as the date marking the start of the Second World War. More America-centric accounts use 1941, the year Japan attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
However, using recently-released documentation, Oxford University professor of history Rana Mitter argues that the real start of the global conflict was 1937 – when Japan attacked China in what has been called the Marco Polo Bridge incident, outside of Beijing.
Prof Mitter’s book, The Forgotten Ally, points out that the terrible eight-year-long conflict took a massive toll on China, with more than 14 million Chinese dead.
By comparison, military and civilian casualties for the US and United Kingdom combined totaled around 900,000. Tiếp tục đọc “World War II started in 1937 in Asia, not 1939 in Europe, says Oxford historian”
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