Consequences
The heightened tensions of the Marco Polo bridge Incident led directly into full scale war with the Battle of Beiping-Tianjin at the end of July and the Battle of Shanghai in August.
There are some disputes among historians over the incident, some historians believe the incident was an unintentional accident and some believe that the incident may have been fabricated by the Japanese Army in order to provide a pretext for the invasion of China. A thesis supported by the expansionist colonial ambitions of Japan at the time, a common sentiment felt by many Japanese at the time that "Asia should be ruled by Asians" in replacing European colonial rulers with Japanese rulers throughout Asia.
One far-right Japanese historian has alleged that the incident was staged by the Chinese Communist Party, who hoped that the incident would lead to a war of attrition between the Japanese army and the Kuomintang (Guomingdang).
Read more about this topic: Marco Polo Bridge Incident
Famous quotes containing the word consequences:
“Results are what you expect, and consequences are what you get.”
—schoolgirl’s definition, quoted in Ladies’ Home Journal (New York, Jan. 1942)
“There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities.”
—Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917)
“Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation’s press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)