Japan's war in China had already produced attacks, atrocities, and incidents involving foreign people, aircraft, and shipping, including the sinking of USS Panay. Fighting with Soviet forces on China's northern frontier added another active danger. European rearmament debates, the Munich settlement, Italian claims against France, and the unfinished Spanish Civil War competed for attention at the same time. These overlapping crises made an East Asian naval showdown dangerous and easy for governments focused elsewhere to misread.
Chapter · 1:51-6:44
The crisis setting before Tsingtao
The incident is placed amid the Sino-Japanese War, attacks on foreign interests, Soviet-Japanese fighting, and a Europe already strained by Munich and the Spanish Civil War.