Peace In Their Time

Episode 149 - Restoration

When events in China cooled off, the ones back in Japan heated up. With the exit of Japan from the League of Nations in 1933, the unilateralist approach was chosen to secure the empire. But even then, there was disagreement on approach that would create conflict on the home islands that were only starting to get resolved by the time formal war with China broke out in 1937. 

 

Bibliography for this episode: 

 

1. McClain, James L A Modern History of Japan WW Norton & Company Inc, 2002
2. Duus, Peter The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 6: The Twentieth Century Cambridge University Press 1988
3. Young, Louise Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism University of California Press 1998

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com

Episode 148 - Jewel of the Empire

Today we wrap up our close-in look at the puppet state of Manchukuo and cover what drove the state and kept it a function part of the Japanese Empire. The short answer is money, but there were also fitful attempts at building an identity mixed in there too. Not terribly successful ones, but enough that there was a veneer of legitimacy covering up the abject servitude. 

 

Bibliography for this episode: 

 

1. McClain, James L A Modern History of Japan WW Norton & Company Inc, 2002
2. Duus, Peter The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 6: The Twentieth Century Cambridge University Press 1988
3. Young, Louise Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism University of California Press 1998
4. Jowett, Philip S. Rays of the Rising Sun: Armed Forces of Japan's Asian Allies 1931-45 Helion & Company Limited 2004
5. Duara, Prasenjit Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukup and the East Asian Modern Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc 2003
6. Matsusaka, Yoshihisa Tak The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904-32 Harvard University Asia Center 2001
7. Mitter, Rana The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern China University of California Press 2000
8. Paine, S.C.M. The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War Cambridge University Press 2017
9. Paine, S.C.M. The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 Cambridge University Press 2012 

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com

Episode 147 - In For a Penny, In For a Pound

Turns out that when you build an artificial state via conquest and exploitation that it doesn't lend itself to stability. The establishment of Manchukuo in early 1932 didn't clear out the hundreds of thousands of unemployed soldiers, partisans, and bandits roaming the countryside. It would take years of campaigning to instill even a sense of control, and the Chinese collaborators would at best make for unreliable allies. And to top it all off, officers in the Kwantung Army decided that more expansion would lead to stability. 

 

Bibliography for this episode: 

 

1. McClain, James L A Modern History of Japan WW Norton & Company Inc, 2002
2. Duus, Peter The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 6: The Twentieth Century Cambridge University Press 1988
3. Young, Louise Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism University of California Press 1998
4. Jowett, Philip S. Rays of the Rising Sun: Armed Forces of Japan's Asian Allies 1931-45 Helion & Company Limited 2004
5. Duara, Prasenjit Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukup and the East Asian Modern Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc 2003
6. Matsusaka, Yoshihisa Tak The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904-32 Harvard University Asia Center 2001
7. Mitter, Rana The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern China University of California Press 2000
8. Paine, S.C.M. The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War Cambridge University Press 2017
9. Paine, S.C.M. The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 Cambridge University Press 2012 

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com

Episode 146 - Indigestion

While the Kwantung Army ran roughshod over Manchuria in defiance of all orders coming out of Tokyo, events back in the Home Islands didn't remain static. The crisis caused a nationalistic frenzy among leaders, in the media, and in public opinion. A surge of domestic terrorism in the spring of 1932 would fatally undermine elected government, as Hirohito and his advisors turned towards hand-picked leaders they believed could navigate Japan through the crisis they were in. 

 

Bibliography for this episode: 

 

1. McClain, James L A Modern History of Japan WW Norton & Company Inc, 2002
2. Duus, Peter The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 6: The Twentieth Century Cambridge University Press 1988
3. Young, Louise Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism University of California Press 1998

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com

Episode 145 - The Mukden Incident

The first big aggression of the chaotic 30s proved not to come from Europe, but East Asia. And the Japanese invasion of Manchuria wasn't even a deliberate act of state policy, but the consequence of renegade Japanese officers taking matters into their own hands. But once events got underway, the government in Tokyo proved incapable of stopping the expansion of conflict on the Asian mainland. 

 

Bibliography for this episode: 

 

1. McClain, James L A Modern History of Japan WW Norton & Company Inc, 2002
2. Duus, Peter The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 6: The Twentieth Century Cambridge University Press 1988
3. Young, Louise Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism University of California Press 1998
4. Jowett, Philip S. Rays of the Rising Sun: Armed Forces of Japan's Asian Allies 1931-45 Helion & Company Limited 2004
5. Duara, Prasenjit Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukup and the East Asian Modern Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc 2003
6. Matsusaka, Yoshihisa Tak The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904-32 Harvard University Asia Center 2001
7. Mitter, Rana The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern China University of California Press 2000
8. Paine, S.C.M. The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War Cambridge University Press 2017
9. Paine, S.C.M. The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 Cambridge University Press 2012 

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com

Episode 144 - Sayonara Internationalism

Today marks the start of our second miniseries covering the Japanese Empire! That nation had spent the 20s grappling with an underperforming economy, a more active democracy, and how to ensure national security on its own terms. Turns out, none of those issues had been properly addressed, and the Great Depression would form a sad denouement to all the work done during the prior decade. 

 

Bibliography for this episode: 

 

1. McClain, James L A Modern History of Japan WW Norton & Company Inc, 2002
2. Duus, Peter The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 6: The Twentieth Century Cambridge University Press 1988
3. Mason, RHP & JG Caiger A History of Japan Tuttle Publishing 1997

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com

Episode 143 - The Third Reich

Power had been won, but for Adolf Hitler, that wasn't enough. War was the goal of the new regime, and it needed the people firmly behind it. Where Imperial Germany failed, the Nazis would succeed. German society would be configured so that it would support the regime even after all hope of victory was lost. That's the topic of today's episode, how the people were bound to the new state. 

 

1. Evans, Richard The Third Reich in Power Penguin Books 2005
2. Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998
3. Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976
4. Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020
5. Gellately, Robert Hitler's True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis Oxford University Press 2020

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com

Episode 142 - The Night of the Long Knives

With internal opposition crushed, there remained just one problem for Hitler's new regime. The SA had been the vanguard of the Nazis, and had fought the National Socialist fight on the streets for years. But their independence, and the vocal threats of revolution coming from SA Chief of Staff Ernst Rohm, practically demanded a response. The enemies of the Brownshirts closed in through the first half of 1934, culminating in an internal purge that would only further cement Hitler's control of the nation. 

 

1. Evans, Richard The Third Reich in Power Penguin Books 2005
2. Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998
3. Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976
4. Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020
5. Gellately, Robert Hitler's True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis Oxford University Press 2020

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com

Episode 141 - Brownies

This week is a break from the main narrative, and I head back to the 20s to cover the development of the SA, as well as touch on the origins of their off-shoots and eventual rivals, the SS. The relationship between Hitler and the Brownshirts would be fraught from almost the get-go, and ironically it would be the their mutual success in the removal of all other threats to the Nazi Party that would open the SA to be purged themselves. 

 

Bibliography for this episode: 

 

1. Siemens, Daniel Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts Yale University Press 2017
2. Hohne, Heinz The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS Penguin Books 1969

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com

Episode 140 - Bonfire of Weimar

Hitler coming to power in Germany was bad enough, but a marked turn in the nation's trajectory came after the Reichstag fire. That incident, so random but also so impactful that it would spawn theories that it was a false flag by the Nazis, was the moment where the seizure of power went into overdrive. Nothing would ever be the same after it. 

 

1. Evans, Richard The Coming of the Third Reich Penguin Books, 2003
2. Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998
3. Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976
4. Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020
5. Hett, Benjamin Carter The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic St. Martin's Press 2018
6. Barth, Rudiger and Hauke Friederichs The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic Pegasus Books 2021

 

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com