1937 – 1945
Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in 1937 expanded an imperial war that had begun with the seizure of Manchuria in 1931. Nationalist China bore most conventional fighting while Communist forces waged resistance and expanded their political base; Chinese civilians endured occupation, bombing, forced labor, famine, biological warfare, and mass atrocity. Japanese forces murdered and raped on a vast scale at Nanjing, although estimates vary rather than resolving to a precise 200,000–300,000 count. Chinese Nationalist decisions also caused catastrophic civilian losses, most notably the 1938 Yellow River flood. After 1941 the conflict became a central theater of the wider Asia-Pacific war and ended with Japan’s 1945 surrender, after perhaps 15–20 million or more Chinese deaths.
Chapter-by-chapter narrative with maps, primary sources, and key events.
Explore battles on a live map with a timeline slider and territory overlays.
Deep-dive into every major engagement — commanders, casualties, significance.
Biographical flip cards with real portraits, facts, and full biography pages.
Trace each figure's full life journey — birth, education, battles, and death — on a live map.
Scroll-driven visualization of casualties — each dot a thousand lives.
Weapons, war machines, and the military innovations that defined how this conflict was fought.
Cause-and-effect chains tracing the war's long shadow on history.
War crimes, massacres, and the darkest chapters of this conflict — documented for history.
Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in 1937 expanded an imperial war that had begun with the seizure of Manchuria in 1931. Nationalist China bore most conventional fighting while Communist forces waged resistance and expanded their political base; Chinese civilians endured occupation, bombing, forced labor, famine, biological warfare, and mass atrocity. Japanese forces murdered and raped on a vast scale at Nanjing, although estimates vary rather than resolving to a precise 200,000–300,000 count. Chinese Nationalist decisions also caused catastrophic civilian losses, most notably the 1938 Yellow River flood. After 1941 the conflict became a central theater of the wider Asia-Pacific war and ended with Japan’s 1945 surrender, after perhaps 15–20 million or more Chinese deaths.
Second Sino-Japanese War was fought from 1937 to 1945.
Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between Republic of China and Imperial Japan.
An estimated 21,255,700 people died in Second Sino-Japanese War, including roughly 4,255,700 military and 17,000,000 civilian deaths. Figures are scholarly estimates and vary by source.
Major engagements included Operation Ichigo, Yellow River Flood (Huayuankou Incident), Battle of Wuhan, and Battle of Shanghai.