PACIFIC WAR TIMELINE

1938


January: Japan: Prime Minister Konoe resigns after failure to win the quick victory promised in China or to bring about peace negotiations with the Kuomintang.


16 January: Japan: Admiral Yonai becomes Prime Minister.


21 January: Great Britain: Churchill warns of anti-western sentiment of the new government in Japan.


12 March: Germany: Anschluss (Union) of Austria with Germany announced.


March: Japan: Prime Minister Konoe passes the draconian National Mobilization Act, which gives the government controls over trade unions, strategic industries, education, prices, dividends, rationing and media.


Konoe creates Patriotic Industrial Society. The Sanpo as it becomes known leads to the virtual abolishment of trade unions by 1941.


May: Manchuria: Under General Tojo Japan’s army in Manchuria has increased from 95,000 to 400,000.


28 May. Mongolia: Border clashes develop into the two-month Battle of Nomonhan in which the Japanese Army suffers a clear defeat against a Russian Army led by Zhukov that possesses far better tanks.


30 September: Germany: British Prime Minister Chamberlain appeases Hitler at Munich meeting.


15 October: Germany: Nazi occupation of Czech Sudetenland.


9 November: Germany: ‘Kristallnacht’ (Night of the broken glass) Nazi SA paramilitary forces begin pogrom against the Jews.

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