In 1931, the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo. The Japanese dispatched hundreds of thousands of colonists to Manchukuo, which possessed raw materials and agricultural resources that were in short supply in Japan. The United States and the League of Nations both condemned the invasion, but none of the great powers made any move to evict Japan from the region, and the Japanese appeared poised to further expand their empire. In a direct challenge to the Western powers, Japan proclaimed the Amau doctrine, which stated that Japan alone held responsibility for maintaining order in East Asia. In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came into power in Germany. At first, many in the United States thought of Hitler as something of a comic figure, but Hitler quickly consolidated his power in Germany and attacked the post-war order established by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler preached a racist doctrine of Aryan superiority, and his central foreign policy goal was the acquisition of territory to Germany's east, which he sought to repopulate with Germans.