Japan Sent 1 Million Soldiers to China… And Never Won | 5 Fatal Mistakes

[Beijingwalker]

Japan Sent 1 Million Soldiers to China… And Never Won | 5 Fatal Mistakes​

Nov 7, 2026

December 1937. Japanese troops march into Nanjing, the capital of China, and Tokyo celebrates. Japan's generals are sure the war is almost over and that Chiang Kai-shek will have to ask for peace. He never does.

The war goes on for eight more years. Japan wins battle after battle and sends more than a million soldiers into China, and still it never wins. In the end, its war in China drags Japan into a war with the United States, and into total defeat.

How did the strongest army in Asia lose a war it kept on winning? These are the 5 fatal mistakes of Japan's war in China: expecting a short war, turning the Chinese people against them, slamming the door on peace, holding the cities but losing the country, and choosing war with America over leaving China.

 

[Beijingwalker]

Japan, even during its heydays in its whole hisotry, couldn't defeat a very divided, fragmented China where every regional warlord was busy fighting each other instead of foreign troops.

What China was like right before the Japanese invasion