Editing False flag (section)

===Second Sino-Japanese War===
{{Main|Mukden incident}}
[[File:193109 mukden incident railway sabotage.jpg|thumbnail|Japanese experts inspect the scene of the "railway sabotage" on the [[South Manchurian Railway]].]]
In September 1931, [[Seishirō Itagaki]] and other [[Empire of Japan|Japanese]] mid- to junior-grade officers, without the knowledge of the Tokyo government, fabricated a pretext for invading [[Manchuria]] by blowing up a section of railway. Though the explosion was too weak to disrupt operations on the rail line, the Japanese nevertheless used the [[Mukden incident]] to seize Manchuria and create a [[puppet government]] in the form of the nominally independent state of [[Manchukuo]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Weland |first=James |title=Misguided Intelligence: Japanese Military Intelligence Officers in the Manchurian Incident, September 1931 |date=1994 |journal=[[The Journal of Military History]] |volume=58 |issue=3 |pages=445–460 |jstor=2944134 |doi=10.2307/2944134}}</ref>