Nobuyuki Abe (24 November 1875 – 7 September 1953) was the Prime Minister of Japan from 30 August 1939 to 16 January 1940, succeeding Kiichiro Hiranuma and preceding Mitsumasa Yonai.
Biography[]
Nobuyuki Abe was born on 24 November 1875 in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan; he was the brother-in-law of Shigeyoshi Inoue. He volunteered in the First Sino-Japanese War while a student, and in 1897 he graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and went to the war college with Sadao Araki. From 1918 to 1921, he commanded the Japanese 3rd Field Artillery Regiment in the Siberian Intervention of the Russian Civil War. In 1927, he was promoted to Lieutenant-General in the IJA. In 1939, the collapse of the Kiichiro Hiranuma government led to the IJA seeking to appoint Kazushige Ugaki as the new Prime Minister. Ugaki fell ill, so Abe was seen as a moderate compromise as the new PM. He sought to end the Second Sino-Japanese War as soon as possible and wanted to prevent World War II from happening by opposing the alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (which would be formed in the September 1940 Tripartite Pact). On 16 January 1940 he left office due to opposition from both the army (for his inexperience in war) and from politicians, and he was sent to supervise Wang Jingwei's puppet state in China. After the war's end, he was acquitted of war crimes and died in 1953.