Noah Smith at Noahpinion:
The photo above is from the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939. This “battle” lasted four months, and was actually just the main phase of an undeclared war between Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union that effectively began in 1935, four years before the official start of the Second World War. The USSR won the conflict through superior use of tanks, foreshadowing the eventual outcome of WW2 itself.
This example illustrates that although World War 2 officially began when Germany invaded Poland, conflicts that either foreshadowed the final conflagration or eventually merged with it began years earlier, in the mid-1930s. WW2 had foothills. I wrote about this back in 2024:
Americans are still not worried enough about the risk of world war
It’s possible that the world will avoid a world war in the first half of the 21st century. But if one does occur, I think future historians will see it as having had foothills as well.
More here.
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