World War II was the largest war in human history, with a population of at least 2 billion or so involved in 61 countries, with a total of more than 90 million military and civilian casualties. The culprits of this world war are the fascist Axis countries dominated by Nazi Germany, the Japanese Empire, and the Kingdom of Italy, of which we are most familiar with Japan.
On September 18, 1931, Japan launched the September 18 Incident and occupied the three northeastern provinces of China, thus forming the first source of war in the East. On July 7, 1937, the Japanese army provoked the July 7 Incident at the Lugou Bridge and began to launch a comprehensive war of aggression against China, which further deepened international tensions.
Japan's arrogance at that time was unprecedented, because the difference in armaments between the two sides was so great that at the beginning the invading army was almost disclosed, so they even threatened to "destroy China in three months." This is undoubtedly wishful thinking, as China's anti-Japanese sentiment has become more and more high, and the Japanese army has been unable to move forward after a few months of arrogance.
In 1940, the German-Italian-Japanese Triple Alliance Treaty was signed in Berlin, and the United States stepped up its assistance to China in the War of Resistance and tightened economic sanctions against Japan. It should be known that the United States has always remained neutral in the early and middle period of the outbreak of World War II, and Japan has also imported many important strategic resources into the United States.
Although After the Meiji Restoration, Japan's national strength has developed unprecedentedly. But after all, it is a small country, and the land area is not enough. Therefore, resources are also very scarce, such as oil, steel and other important resources are all imported from foreign countries, these resources are the root of the war, the United States economic sanctions against Japan is undoubtedly cut off the lifeblood.
Logically, Japan should have retreated to its hometown as soon as it did not have the resources. But the Japanese were not reconciled, they had invested so much financial resources and troops, how could they be willing to lose everything? But at that time, the United States was too powerful to know how to start. The Japanese cabinet thought left and right, and could not find a way to deal with it.
It was as they turned the globe that they discovered something was wrong. They discovered a major secret, that is, in Southeast Asia, which had never been occupied by anyone at that time, as long as they captured Southeast Asia, they could reopen the dilemma of resource scarcity.
In the early morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy's aircraft carrier suddenly sneaked into pearl harbor, the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet base in Hawaii, and the Pacific War broke out, and the United States officially declared war on Japan. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese then bombed the rest of Southeast Asia.
On April 9, 1942, Japan occupied Bataan, after which Japan controlled the central Pacific, and after the opening of the Pacific Theater, the U.S. army spared no effort to counterattack Japan, and Japan began to retreat. The defeat at the Battle of Midway had predicted the final outcome of the Japanese army, but the Japanese army was still dying.
On the eve of the end of World War II, China, Britain, and the United States jointly issued the Potsdam Proclamation. The purpose was to get Japan to surrender as soon as possible and end this senseless war, but the Japanese cabinet ignored this, and the United States, in a fit of rage, dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan immediately announced its surrender like a deflated balloon. Of course, a large part of the reason why the U.S. counteroffensive against Japan went so smoothly was that China contained most of the Japanese military, and China's contribution in World War II was questioned.