Dan Snow's History Hit - VJ Day: 75 Years

Episode Date: August 15, 2020

75 years ago today, on 15 August 1945, Victory over Japan Day marked the end of one of the most devastating episodes in British military history, and the final end of the Second World War. It's estimated there were 71,000 British and Commonwealth casualties of the war against Japan, and the deaths of more than 2.5 million Japanese civilians and military personnel. After a press conference at the White House on 14 August, where President Truman confirmed the rumours of an Allied victory over Japan, Clement Attlee remarked: "The last of our enemies is laid low." We've made a bumper edition of the pod to commemorate such a significant event. You'll here from Rana Mitta, Ashley Jackson and the UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. 75 years ago today, the Second World War in the Pacific came to an end. I say Pacific, but of course it was a vast theatre of conflict, stretching all the way from the Indian Ocean through Southeast Asia, up through great swathes of China, and into the Pacific Islands and the Japanese home islands themselves. This was an end to the Second World War. It wouldn't be an end to the fighting, of course, as liberation movements sprang up around the former European colonies of Asia, and the Civil War broke out very shortly in China, which saw the Nationalists pitted against the Communists in a series of titanic clashes. But it was the end of the Second World War, the defeat, the final defeat

of the Japanese Empire. To mark this occasion, I've been doing live streams on History Hit Live on Timeline, which is YouTube's biggest and best history channel. You can check out Timeline and our History Hit Lives once a week over there. I did two really good ones in the last couple of weeks. One was with Professor Ashley Jackson of King's College, London. He's been on the podcast many times before. He used to teach me. He's a teacher of mine at university.

And he's such a fantastic communicator. And he was telling me about the British imperial struggle against Japan. And I've also, on this podcast, got Professor Rana Mitter, historian at Oxford, a brilliant communicator, talking about China's war with Japan. China, always overlooked in the story of the Second World War, vitally important and an extraordinary tale which we should all know more about. This is my little effort to make sure China is not forgotten on this important anniversary.

We've had discussion of the American war in the Pacific recently with the Guadalcanal podcast, but there are others coming out as well. So we're trying to look at VJ Day in its entirety. You're also going to hear from the UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. He's a former soldier and I wanted to find out what his view on VJ Day was and that of the British government, because we are marking VJ Day in here in the UK with a big COVID compliant ceremony up in the National Arboretum in the heart of England. So I'll be there covering that for the BBC, but it's great to have Defence Secretary Ben Wallace on the show as well.

If you want to listen to all the back episodes of this podcast, if you want to watch hundreds of hours of documentaries about history, please do so at History Hit TV. It's like a Netflix for history. And you go there and use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and then you get a month for free. You get one month for free you get one month after that for just one pound euro dollar two months i mean that should get you

through the worst of the covid spike come on we've been i've been saying that for the last six months but there we go so for just one pound euro or dollar you get two months of unlimited history viewing and listening pleasure that's pretty sweet that is pretty sweet so in the meantime everyone enjoy this bumper episode of History Hit, and take a little time out today to think about the civilians, the veterans, who were caught up in the gigantic, gigantic fighting in the war in Asia and the Pacific. Right, let's get started. First of all, we're going to hear from Professor Ashley Jackson.

He's talking about Britain and its empire and its struggle with the Japanese. Ashley, how are you? Good to have you back on. Very good to see you again. Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm very well. Well, let's talk about the opening stage. First of all, let's just go very, very basic. What was Japan's game taking on the USA, the world's largest industrial power, and at the same time, Britain, which was the world's largest imperial power, and they were both of them the two largest naval powers in the world. What was Japan thinking?

Well, first of all, I think that it wasn't thinking very straight. I think you've got, like in Germany, you have a leadership which has a very poor strategic appreciation of things. And I think that when they actually do go to war and realise they're at war with both of these great, particularly maritime powers, they hope they can get their gains very quickly, throw a ring around them and get the Allies to the peace table. So they know they can't beat them, but they hope that they could, if could if you like you know get their massive empire in the Dutch East Indies in the Pacific in Southeast Asia get to the peace table and keep their games it's kind of slightly 18th century idea of strategy isn't it it's very old so anyway let's talk about the opening stages because Japan of course

has some big successes straight away we'll talk about the Americans on another occasion but with the Brits japan successful in malay singapore into burma absolutely i mean it is the most incredible imperial land grab in history you know in the course of sort of six months you knock out the americans the dutch the french the british and gather grab this enormous empire i think that becomes a major problem for the japanese is they've done so well to start with the problem then is holding on to it and why do they do so well is it is it like you see in the west are they kind of martyrs of blitzkrieg warfare as well are they have the European nations empires were they a little bit racist were they sort of dismissive of the Japanese ability to make war what was their reason for this initial success

I think as you say first of all they've had a lot of fighting experience already they've got a lot better kits than they're given credit for at the time I think as you say there's an awful lot rather like with the Turks in the first world war that there is a general dismissiveness of the fighting capabilities and prowess of the Japanese strange because forces like the Royal Navy have been very very aware of what the Imperial Japanese Navy is doing in the 1930s and what have you so I think that that militarily they fight extremely well, very often against horrendously unprepared forces. I think crucially, for example, when you look at Malaya, Singapore,

once the British have lost command of the sea, once their air power has gone, then they're in real trouble on land. But it's also partly, let's not be too down on the Allies at the time, you're also just having to start supplying the Soviet Union. So a lot of good kit that could maybe have gone to Malaya to, say, replace obsolete air platforms like the Rooster Buffaloes is being shunted up to the Soviet Union. So Hong Kong falls, an enclave on the coast of China.

Then Malaya, Singapore, famously disastrous day. Churchill calls it the darkest day in British military history. on the coast of China, then Malaya, Singapore, famously disastrous day, Churchill calls it the darkest day in British military history. But is Burma, is that another, when they advance up through Burma and start to threaten the jewel of the British Empire, South Asia, you know, the Indian Peninsula, is that another level of threat? Absolutely. And again, it's just astonishing. You know, you get this real sense that this was never supposed to happen. Molly Panser Downs refers to the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse, saying it's like having two enormous guard dogs suddenly shot in your yard.

You know, the propaganda, the expectations were that Singapore's strategy, allied naval might, would never allow the Japanese to get so far. So when they actually get through Burma so quickly the massive fleeing of allied particularly British Burma army, all the civilians fleeing back to India, you've actually got the Japanese at the gates of India which is the high watermark if you like of their expansion and then of course this has all sorts of tumultuous political

ramifications, does it not? The whole Quit India movement that comes shortly afterwards let's not also forget you've got serious fighting in places like Borneo, Java, Sumatra preceding that, the Battle of the Java Sea, which really mops up the remainder of Allied naval power post Prince of Wales and repulses sinking. And so you've really got an astonishing combined arms attack across huge distances that the Allies are simply unprepared to meet and leave in panic and chaos. Let's check now, we've got a clip from a documentary available on Timeline, which is, as everyone knows, YouTube's best history channel.

Let's take a look at Australia finding itself dueling with Japan. The day after the fall of Singapore, John Curtin, the Australian Prime Minister, said that the battle for Australia has begun. That every human being in this country is now, whether he or she likes it, at the service of the government to work in the defence of Australia. And it did seem probable that Japan would continue to drive south. They had so far been unstoppable on land. In July 1942, you're looking at probably the most critical time of the Pacific War.

You're coming on from months and months of just constant Japanese victories. They've swept everything that stood before them in the Southeast Asia and then swept down through Dutch East Indies, taken a whole raft of Pacific islands. The extraordinary speed with which Japan had swept over the lands they now labelled the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere owed much to surprise, to planning, to determination, so that when they were checked on one of the most hellish battlefields it is possible to imagine, it was as though a myth had been exposed. So how big was the threat to Australia really, actually?

Is it impossible to imagine the Japanese advancing all the way down onto that continent as well, is it? At the time, it looked like the Japanese could do absolutely anything they wanted. They were rolling everything over before them. So why not? The Australians are preparing for them to land. They obviously attack Darwin, and they're in Hobart, along with, say, German mine layers and what have you.

So I think the threat is very, very, German mine layers and what have you. So I think the threat is very, very real. You've got the Brisbane line, we can have a defensive line when US forces start pouring into Australia as well. And so I think that the threat is really real. And also the great concern for the Australians is we've got our main fighting strength over in the Middle East, you get this massive ding dong between the Aussie Prime Minister and the British Prime Minister about getting these divisions back from Egypt and the Western Desert, what the Australian Prime Minister memorably says to Churchill is, you've got to remember what for you is the Far East is for us the Near North. And so I guess part of the problem though, actually, is the Japanese have got at this

stage of the war a little bit of a... Things are progressing well in the Pacific. They have the option of invading Northern Australia. They push as far as Sri Lanka with naval forces. It's just this perimeter is offering endless opportunities. Absolutely, and I think that's part of their problem, is they've got almost an embarrassment of choice, but then strategically they don't know what to do as well as they might. So what they should have done, easy to say sitting here in Oxfordshire, is to knock out the Royal

Navy in the Indian Ocean and shore up that western perimeter. So do your attacks on Trincomalee and Colombo in April 1942 and make sure you get them. It very nearly happens, You very nearly have the biggest naval battle since Jutland off the southeast tip of Ceylon in April 1942, leading to a British retreat. You mentioned Kenya. They go back to Kilindini Naval Base in Mombasa. And what's interesting about the whole Indian Ocean side, I suppose, is that what the British managed to do, of course, with Allied aid, particularly American aid aid is they hold the indian ocean i would argue this is more important than burma as a contribution a british imperial contribution to the final defeat of japan and certainly the um if you like termination of its phase of expansion and that's because oceans are able to transport stuff goods troops food but what was absolutely crucial what we could not have lost

and could have had war changing, I'm not saying war losing potential, was the sea lines of communication supplying the Western Desert because you can't go through the Med anymore, and getting the oil out of the Persian Gulf and getting the 25% of lend-lease to the Soviet Union that goes by. So Indian Ocean sea lanes are absolutely crucial to the entire war effort of the Allies, and that's defended.

It's why, for example, we take Madagascar in May 1942, because the Japanese are going over that far. And what's also interesting, finally, on that, is just to remember that if the Axis had played it better, they were seriously thinking, you know, the Italians and the Japanese, you know, the Italians and the Red Sea, they were in contact about linking up.

If they had all managed to hook up, then things could have looked very, very different for Britain, the British Empire and the Allies in that vast region. I'll never forget, even though you and I now look the same age, you were once my teacher at university and you've aged a lot better than I have. And so I remember you telling me that you said that the Axis were totally useless at strategy, that they never, there wasn't a one combined operation in the whole of the Second World War between Japan and Germany.

Absolutely. In this theatre, towards the end of the war, the Japanese are letting German U-boats use, say, Penang in Malaya. But even then, they've got all these local niggles between the Japanese and the Germans. So essentially, from tactical level up, the alliance is appalling

compared to the alliance that is forged on the other side. You mentioned Burma a couple of times. How important is that push back into Burma? How important were local groups of indigenous Burmese in helping the British Empire regain a foothold? Well, absolutely. I mean, I think that it is where the Japanese are stored. And at the end of the day, this is going to turn out to be theits along with west african divisions and all the rest of it but as you say sort of you know hill people in burma those who are happy to work with the british against the japanese is hugely important as it is throughout the theater so you think about things like the malaya people anti-japanese army you know chinese people in malaya being the main resistance along with soe force 136 operatives and what have you. So I think the pushback once the tide has been stemmed is hugely important and really turns the tide.

You mentioned the 14th Army there. As you said, it was mainly Indian. Let's just give everyone a sense of the British imperial input. I mean, there were African troops and there were Indian troops. I mean, it was a multinational force. Absolutely. You've got East and african forces teeth arm never mind you know rear echelon troops it is overwhelmingly an indian army but also don't forget you know lots of british formations as well um one of the best memoirs is of course george mcdonald fraser's quartered safe out here he says about bj day i didn't know where i was on bj day that's because i was a private i didn't know where i was and who i'd just been fighting

so it really is like the eighth army an multinational, multi-ethnic formation. But I think you're right to emphasise the fact that, you know, not just as a military activity, but the home front effect. It is indigenous people which are being hugely impacted by war occupation, allied occupation and enemy occupation across this region. What about other British thrusts? Because the British weren't just fighting in Burma, there was Borneo, Pacific Islands, Fiji, Solomons was there as well? Yeah absolutely, I mean I think that the extent, I mean often what happens with the British narrative and I mean this distinct from say the Australian and New Zealand narrative where they understand things I think more holistically than we do is my sense what we've always tended

to do is is we have Singapore as this full stop we get boots out of Singapore that's us against the Japanese and then we tool around in Burma a bit um and and then we get um you know Kohima and Infal and and you know the Americans win the Pacific For me, it's just a nonsense, because all the way through from December 1941 until August 1945, British Imperial service men and women are risking their lives, land, sea and air, across this vast theatre. So cruiser patrols, submarine patrols down to the Antarctic to check for enemy bases and things like that. As you say, there's fighting in Borneo.

Huge numbers of Imperial service personnel going to the bag, trying to defend Java and Sumatra. And as you say, you've then got the Australians in places like New Guinea, major, major lengthy infantry, slogging matches,

but then also the vast amount of preparation, all of the home front themes, all of the digging trenches, ARP rationing. This is happening in Fiji, the Coast watchers in the solomon so you know i think broadening ourselves away from burma which is obviously quite a fixation for the british um and looking more broadly mount baton says when he takes the

vj day salute in ceylon in 45 he says i've got 1.4 million service personnel under me 500 000 japanese and 200 000 Allied prisoners of war, which gives you a sense of just the vastness of what's happening within that command. And then we can add on the Pacific as well, and there's even more. Speaking of Mountbatten, just tell us a little bit about him. He was Southeast Asia Command, was it? And it was, again, as you say, a giant British and Allied operation. Absolutely. It's one of the few where you have a British Supreme Commander, if that matters.

It certainly did to people at the time. It separates off from India command, this idea that India needs to just look after generating the Indian army. And the fighting in Burma, the fighting at sea needs to be taken over by this brand new Southeast Asia command, initially based in Delhi, it then moves to the Central Highlands in Ceylon in a place called Kandy. And so that's really prosecuting that war. The big problem there, though, is that a lot of the operations that are planned to retake bits of Indonesia, to retake Malaya with, you know, an Eastern-style D-Day operation zipper, is they're dependent upon American things like landing ships. And it's a way that the Americans can have, if you like, a big controlling influence on the operations that we are able to put on in that theatre. Finally on that, what I would say is

what's absolutely fascinating are the huge debates, the intergalactic debates, which really hamstring British strategy between the Prime Minister and the Chiefs of Staff. The Prime Minister just wants to liberate British territories for prestige reasons with British troops. The Chiefs of staff are largely saying, let's just get our forces to the Pacific and take on the Japanese home islands alongside the Americans, because that will have a greater strategic effect and also curry very important post-war political favour with the USA.

How fascinating. What an interesting debate. Churchill trying to cling on to the British Empire. Well, absolutely. You get things like that. I mean, you mentioned Hong Kong. It's fascinating there, you know, when the Canadians and the other forces surrender there in Christmas 41, as you mentioned earlier on. The problem you've then got at the end is we want to rush to get to Hong Kong

because we fear that otherwise Chiang Kai-shek is going to get it, and it's actually in his command zone, all the Americans. And Roosevelt was already, during the war, been trying to get us to gift Hong Kong to the Chinese as a gesture of goodwill. So he's always in Anthony Eden's and Churchill's ears, saying, why don't you just give the Chinese,

they're our new fourth policeman in the post-war world, give them Hong Kong, which, of course, as you can imagine, Churchill says, I will not relinquish an inch of British territory, talking to you about Hong Kong. Fascinating stuff. The other thing I must mention on that is what's really interesting is what this does is it brings to an end that long 19th century British interest in places like Canton and Shanghai.

We finally, in 1943, sign over our 19th century rights to all of the treaty ports and our patrols on the Yangtze and all of those kinds of things. Really, really quite interesting. So the end of an era in many ways of a different kind of British imperialism.

Speaking of British imperialism though they do put together a gigantic pacific fleet right at the end of the war to assist the Americans. Did they really need much help from the Brits? Yeah well I think that the size you know as you say it is the most powerful British fleet afloat at the time and probably the most powerful ever assembled. And yet it is given the designation by the Americans of, I think, Task Force 51. So this is part of Britain's resolve, is we want to be, we want to fulfil our obligation to Australia, New Zealand, colonies throughout the Pacific and the Americans. We want the American public to know, and the British public and everyone else, that we were there in the Pacific War, because obviously you don't know how long it's going to go on for.

We're expecting to send 40 bomber squadrons, loads of troops. The casualties are going to be vast because you are going to have to invade and delay the Japanese home island. So this is, if you like, the token of earnest of British and imperial contributions to the war there. So they are facing Japanese kamikaze pilots. You know, when V-Day is happening, we are, you know, getting bombed all over the place. You know, armoured flight decks are taking a pounding. And so this is very much a part of, you know, Britain's commitment to defeating Japan.

The fleet has trained up in the Indian Ocean. You've had things like USS Saratoga in late 44 coming into the Indian Ocean to operate alongside the British carriers attacking Indonesian targets as a big rehearsal for the British deployment. One of the things the Americans insist upon is that we develop a fleet train and so there's quite a lot of new revolutionary Royal Navy technology and

operational practices being developed to navigate the vast distances in this ocean often using ships that were meant for much you know designed for much narrower seas and and operations nearer bases in waters nearer to britain uh the the war comes to an end before that terrible d-day against japanese home islands in part because of the nuclear weapons that were deployed 75 years ago this very week how without going into that whole story which is subject to several podcasts about the moment but the japanese government's realize it's hopeless at that point do they yes i think so and i did i saw you talking about it on on the news uh a day or two ago um i mean i think what you get this real disconnect don't you still got propaganda being

beamed into people in japan to you know watch out for allied spies and and so you've got a population that really has been really shielded from what's happening in in the wider world and obviously an elite a governing elite which is simply not prepared to um to give up the ghost of course that's the fear i mean that's why you know people are so a lot of people are mad for vj day back in the UK, is because they fear that their sons are going to have to go and fight in a war that might last until 1950, with projections of absolutely enormous Allied casualties as house-to-house fighting against suicidally inclined resistors is faced.

And then we've got VJ Day. Now, you've got some accounts of what people remember, well-known people, what they were up to on VJ Day, which I thought was the end of the Second World War. We forget it wasn't all about the war in Europe. This was the end of this giant global conflict. Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, as the British have to go into these occupied places, disarm the Japanese, but also then get involved in, say, civil wars that are developing, for example, to resist Dutch rule in Indonesia. So a lot of mainly Indian soldiers are going to be fighting in these places long after VJ Day. So what I've got here is Nigel Nicholson. His son says it's amazing in his diaries, very influential war diaries, he just doesn't mention

vj day at all um he says that the japanese war arouses no interest at all but only nauseated distaste and so a lot of people back in the uk at the time of vj day are much more interested in the domestic agenda of the labour government the situation in europe with the looming threat of the soviet union the future of poland that kind of thing that's not the same for everyone um someone called francis partridge who's a member of the Bloomsbury Group, she's in Cornwall on holiday, and she hears the Ceylonian that ferries people over to the Scilly Islands, hooting its horn in the harbour of St Helens. And then there's what she describes as a pagan festival on the Scilly Islands, a torch that's a procession to mark VJ Day. I've then

got a great one from Evelyn Waugh, and he's with his family in Ickleford in Hitchin, and he says, peace declared, public holiday, remain more or less drunk all day. And then the following day, hangover. Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister's grandson, came to visit, a boisterous boy with a head too big for body. Randolph Churchill built a bonfire, which Auburn War then falls into. And then they have a floodlit green ceremony and what have you. But perhaps more interesting is the fact that you've got in India, crowds flock to the Taj Mahal in Delhi, and there are dances and route marches and a victory parade. In Brisbane, people in Ponchu flock to Aztec Square, where you've got the eternal flame as a marker to the dead of the previous World War. And then in View Fort, all the way over in St Lucia in the Caribbean,

the locals are wowed by massive air displays by American Lockheed P-38s that are on a base that the British have leased to them. And even in distant Mauritius, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, you've got 50,000 people on VJ Day congregating at the Shantamar race course so this really is you know these just a few snapshots from bits of the British Empire but this is something just like VJ Day and you know Kelsa Freeze that is commemorated by people who finally have the burden of war lifted be that the burden of the violence of war or just the you know the awful home front strictures that war has brought to them.

Lovely stories. I mean, that Churchill war mash-up party sounded like quite the occasion. I mean, some loose ends. One is, let's talk about the POWs, the interned peoples in the East. They suffered, well, of course, Soviet prisoners suffered extraordinarily badly in Europe, but in terms of the British experience,

it was worse probably in the Far East, wasn't it? Yes, absolutely. I mean, for, you know, British, Australian, Dutch, you know, you name it. I mean, you've got huge numbers of civilian and military POW camps. You've then got the tragedy of internees being carted off to places like Japan as slave

labourers, often dying aboard vastly overcrowded ships as the ultra-successful US Navy is just, you know, sort of slotting anything that moves, that belongs to the Japanese. And I think, you know, you've then got the harrowing elements, most famously things like the Burma-Thailand death railway. And you have a massive repatriation exercise. So the huge numbers of British Imperial forces, particularly air forces, carriers and what have you, are being used to ferry troops back. They often stop in Ceylon once they've been liberated, given food, and built up as much as they can before they begin the onward journey back to the UK.

The same, of course, happening to Australasia as well. So, you know, like I say, Mountbatten reckons that he's got 200,000 allied POWs under his command area. So, you know, it really is one of the tragic stories of the war, because so many of those who are captured, be it in Borneo or in Malaya, simply don't make it home. many of those who are captured, be it in Borneo or in Malaya, simply don't make it home. What about the lasting impact of the war in Southeast Asia? European empires are never able to re-establish themselves. Is that because of the damage? Is it because the empire goes fundamentally out of fashion following the Second World War and its extreme imperialism, or because of the sort of damage to the prestige that you see to the Dutch, the French, the Brits, with defeats at the hands

of an Asiatic people? Absolutely. I mean, I think that perhaps one of the most egregious examples is that of India. The war puts into warp speed India's progression towards independence because you have to make the Crips offer in 1942, which is if you stay with us during the war and bide your time, you can be independent at the end of it. So that caps out of the bag. So Indian independence is hugely accelerated by the emergency of war and the fact that Singapore has fallen and all the rest of it in 1942. But the British have every intention of trying to stay on, because they now see that Malaya in particular is a huge dollar-earning cash cow. They want to moderate and modify the political situation there

and create a governor-generalship, a new dominion of Southeast Asia. But this doesn't end up happening. Part of the problem is, as in other parts of the world, you've trained up people who will now be able to oppose you very well. So the Malayan people answer the Japanese army, which is an ally in getting rid of the problem is, as in other parts of the world, you've trained up people who will now be able to oppose you very well. So the Malayan People Anti-Japanese Army, which is an ally in getting rid of the Japanese, then becomes the main vehicle of the communist threat that you end up fighting during the Malayan emergency. And then, as you say, one of the biggest things is the fact that, you know, Europe's day has, if you like, passed. And the new superpowers, America in particular want a very very different way of doing business

in the world so they are not going to happily watch the british march um back in so it takes time to unravel but there's no doubt that as you say that you know essentially british rule dutch rule french rule has been hold below the waterline by the extraordinary circumstances of war stimulating local nationalisms and just changing the whole international climate. Well, thanks very much to Professor Ashley Jackson. Next, we're going to hear from the brilliant historian, Professor Rana Mitter, and he's talking about China, the forgotten ally of the Second World War. Rana, China and Japan were fighting years before Britain and Nazi Germany, fighting years before Britain and Nazi Germany, before the USA and Japan.

What was, this is some big questions here, but what was the state of China in 1937? What was its condition? Well, absolutely, Dan, because I think many of the viewers of History Hits will know a great deal about the European front of war and the situation which led to that final showdown between Hitler and the democracies in 1939 but may not be aware that a very different part of the conflict was brewing you know two years earlier in 1937 out in East Asia and in some ways China in 1937 was a country that could have gone in a very different direction had it not been for the outbreak of war with Japan. So in the early 20th century, those three decades or so, China had seen a huge amount of change. The last emperor, some of you might even know Bernardo Bertolucci's great film from about 30 years ago in which the

boy emperor of China was essentially forced to abdicate from the throne back in 1911, and then once the last emperor had been essentially forced off by a revolution, China went through a period of tremendous turmoil. On the one hand, it was torn apart from within warlords, militarist leaders basically controlled different parts of China and fought with each other for control of the whole thing. But foreigners also were, in a phrase of the time, carving up China like a melon, a very evocative phrase, and talking about the fact that when it came to rights on trade, or when it came to actually even seizing bits of territory, Hong Kong, perhaps one of the most famous examples, China wasn't really in

control of its own territory. So some Chinese said that by the time you got to the mid-20th century, China was being attacked both from inside and outside. But it's worth noting, just to finish the thought, that for the last decade before the outbreak of World War II in China, in other words, from 1928 to 1937, for the first time in decades, China had a government that was authoritarian, in some ways very flawed in its activities, but nonetheless was looking to solidify and unify China under its rule. And its leader at that time was a man whose name was once very famous, now a little faded, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist or Kuomintang party. So at that point, China was a dictatorship, but it was one run by a nationalist leader who wanted to pull China together,

give it sovereign status in the world. And that was the type of Chinese situation which then came crashingly, devastatingly into conflict when the war with Japan broke out. And let's talk about that war with Japan. I mean, people were slicing up China like a melon. Japan, did it feel that it was late to this imperial game, this game of colonization that they wanted? Was China going to be their imperial hinterland, just like Southern Asia had been for the British Empire or Southeast Asia for the French? Absolutely right, Dan. The word empire is crucial to understanding why that confrontation between China and Japan came about. Put very simply, you could argue that the whole history of the late 19th, early 20th century that led up to that conflict was the outbreak of a battle between two incompatible and powerful ideological forces. One force was Japanese imperialism, the other force Chinese nationalism. So it's worth remembering that Japan was also a country that in the 1930s

had come a long way in a very short time. Just over half a century before, Japan had been what in some ways might be a sort of cliche view of the society as being inwardly directed with samurais, with swords basically being the major military force, in some ways quite cut off from the world, although not as cut off as the legend sometimes has it. But thanks to a series of sort of internal and external changes, from the 1860s, Japan had turned itself into perhaps the fastest modernizing country in the history of the world until China in the 1980s, maybe 100 years later. Japan developed its own army.

It modernized its economy. It built railways. And amongst other things, in a very short period of time, it built an empire, because it wanted to be like the big boys or even girls, you might say, at the top table of empire, the British, the French, even the Americans. And so over and over again in Korea, in Manchuria, in Taiwan, the Japanese were taking over large parts of Asian territory to make their own empire. And coming up against that over those years, the 1910s, 20s, 30s, China became a much more nationalist state. Its youth, its patriotic youth basically gathered in demonstrations in the

streets in cities like Beijing and Shanghai saying, no, we don't accept this invasion. We don't accept this weakness of our country. we want to fight back. So this growing nationalist sense in China, this growing imperialist drive in Japan, they came together to create this clash, which we now think of as World War II in East Asia. We'll push ahead a little bit. The Japanese are in possession of chunks of northern China. I want to talk about the so-called Marco Polo Bridge incident, because I think, I mean, I know there's been some strange outbreaks of war over the millennia, but fewer of them, surely more bizarre than what happened that night. Can you just, can you take us through it?

Such a strange story. You're absolutely right, Dan. I mean, as you said, even up to that point, 1937, various parts of Chinese and related territory had been taken by the Japanese. And it's worth noting that there were Japanese troops garrisoned in northern China, around Beijing, that sort of area. Not official invading troops, but basically placed there by some rather dubious international treaties. But then on the night of 7th of July 1937, a very local incident span out of control. The local incident was almost comic. Basically, local Chinese troops basically came up against local Japanese troops. And the Japanese commander at the time saw that a couple of his men were missing. And he thought that they'd been

kidnapped or they'd been shot by the Chinese and made an incident out of it. Now, we don't have the absolute gospel word on this, but a lot of evidence suggests that these two chaps actually lipped off for a pee behind a wall. and they hadn't told their commanding officer, and they were so terrified of being court-martialed or disciplined that they just sort of slipped away and didn't mention it, and they eventually turned up again. By that time, there had been essentially a shooting incident between the local Japanese and Chinese troops, and within the space of hours and then days, this escalated massively into a conflict not just between two sets of garrison troops but between two nations. So if you want a European comparison, rather than

being like September 1939 when there were confrontations between Hitler, Chamberlain, Deladier, it's much more like Franz Ferdinand and Sarajevo. The shooting of one archduke whose car took a wrong turn was an unexpected event that ballooned out of control and these two soldiers going off for a quick relief stop outside Beijing, about 30 miles outside Beijing in July 1937, suddenly turned into one of the most vicious wars that Asia had ever seen. And how does China respond to that Japanese invasion? And is this the moment we probably need to bring in the communists as well and their relationship with the Chinese government? One of the reasons we have such a good idea of exactly how the major players on the Chinese side

reacted to this is that back in the mid-20th century, Chinese politicians were very good at keeping diaries. And this is one of the things that comes in part from the Confucian philosophical practice where you're supposed to write your records today and reflect over them. And obviously we historians down would love it if as many politicians and ordinary people as possible wrote those kind of diaries. So we have the diaries of both the nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and not diaries, but plenty of documentation from Mao Zedong, Chairman Mao as he would later become leader of the Communist Party. And what becomes clear from reading both of their sets of documents is that they knew that 1937, July, was a pivotal moment. Chiang Kai-shek's diaries, which I've translated and used in my

book, China's War with Japan, which talks about this period, is that he knew that this was a turning point moment. He writes in his diary, almost in a piece of sort of self-reflection, is this the moment to, you know, to turn the other cheek again, or are we going to confront the Japanese invaders? And as we now know, the answer was yes. And on the communist side, they had, of course, been fighting the nationalists, the Kuomintang, for years. The famous Long March of the mid-1930s was the communists retreating from southern China

and finding a new bolt hole, you might say, in northwestern China to flee their Chinese civil war opponents. But at this moment in 1937, both sides reluctantly but realistically came together to say, for the duration of the war against the Japanese, we need to work together. And a united front was formed between the Chinese nationalists and Chinese communists with the shared aim that whatever else happened, they would push back and resist against the Japanese invasion because they knew that that was the greatest danger at that moment that China faced. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire

Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. And what about support from allies from outside China, the West, the USA? Where are those powers at this point? The outside world looked on at what was happening in China, the outbreak of what was for the first few months an undeclared war between China and Japan,

and was in some ways very muted in its response. Now, we know enough about the European history this time to know that European powers are pretty distracted by things going on in Europe at that stage. But all the same, it's remarkable about how little active involvement there was from the outside world. We have plenty of British diplomatic documents that basically say, wish the Chinese would get on and surrender, and then we can get on with doing business with both sides. But having said that, there are two or three areas where we should acknowledge that there was assistance from the outside. Soviet fighter pilots, not as official Soviet troops, but technically as volunteers, to come in and help defend the skies over cities like Shanghai in the first terrifying months of the war when the Japanese were basically sweeping all before them in eastern and northern China in the first phase

of the war, 1937-38. So the Soviet fighter pilots were very important in helping with that. The British also did more than perhaps they let on in terms of financial aid, and a certain amount was done through Hong Kong, for instance, at that time. And a little later on, not immediately, but certainly as time went on, the Americans also provided volunteer supports, known to history and to the world as the Flying Tigers, but technically the American Volunteer Group, who provided a certain amount of behind-the-scenes assistance. So the world wasn't absent. But if we're going to get to the bottom line, between 1937 and 1941, China's nationalists and communists were essentially fighting on the ground pretty close to alone. And that was something which should not be taken away from them. So Rana, amazing, forgotten, overlooked battles by people, particularly, of course, in the Western Europe and North America. Can you take us

through some of those ones? Beijing, Shanghai, things like that. Were they big set-piece battles? There absolutely were big set-piece battles. And one of the things that actually really angers many Chinese today is the fact that these major battles, which I think we should think of as the first battles of World War II in Asia, are so little known outside the Chinese context. But let me just take one simply because it has so many of the elements of European warfare that we're familiar with from other wars, and that's the Battle of Shanghai, which took place between August and November of 1937. And this war had everything, as long as that everything was tragic. It had aerial warfare, but one of the most awful incidents on 14th of August 1937 was that Chinese nationalist planes accidentally

were supposed to be bombing a Japanese ship, the Izumo, and accidentally instead let their bombs out over a major shopping area in the neutral international settlement area of Shanghai, near some of the biggest hotels, department stores at that time. And the people in the middle of their shopping, in the middle of their restaurant dining, were smashed into smithereens by this bombing. So it was a tragic start to the fighting. But then over the weeks and months, they really got literally dug in, trenches dug in the streets of Shanghai. And again, some people watching may well have been to Shanghai, maybe even be from Shanghai, I hope. We'll know today it's a cosmopolitan, sophisticated city.

Imagining that city of boulevards and major streets with every single part of them dug up and barbed wire and fences and soldiers basically defending against the Japanese, very, very major trauma for the city itself. So the Battle of Shanghai eventually ended with the retreat of the Chinese defenders into the interior of the country. But it made it very clear early on that the Japanese assumption

that China would fall like a pack of cards. I mean, the Japanese emperor's advisors and politicians in Japan were saying, oh, China's going to surrender within three months. You know, we invade in August, we'll be not home by Christmas for the Japanese, obviously, but nonetheless, we finish by the end of the year. And then years and years later, they were still there because of battles like Shanghai, where the Chinese made it clear they would resist. One other I'll mention briefly, just because it should be better known, a smaller battle, the Battle of Taiyajuan in April 1938, up in Shandong province on the sort of northeastern coastal area, central China, I should say. Not a huge battle.

Shanghai, big set-piece battle in the streets, as I say, with hundreds of thousands of warriors. Taichung, much smaller, maybe only a few thousand or so. But it was a rare occasion when the Chinese managed to trap the Japanese in an ambush and annihilate them. And although the battle's result was reversed within a few weeks, nonetheless, it was a huge morale booster for the Chinese that they had managed actually with inferior weapons and a smaller number of men to actually push back against the Japanese war machine. And Colonel Chu Hao-Tien, the commanding

officer of the Chinese side at that time, became a bit of a legend as a result of that. So these are real battles with real lives lost and real strategic significance there. And you mentioned hundreds of thousands of warriors in the case of Shanghai. I mean, how many men are under arms across the whole of East Asia? I mean, the scale of this fighting is extraordinary.

It's absolutely extraordinary. So it's worth remembering that, for instance, one of the major contributions of the Chinese war effort, beginning in 1937 and going on all the way to 1945, was at its height, more than half a million, actually close to 600,000 Japanese troops were being held down in China. In other words, by China not surrendering, the entire beginning of what became eventually the Pacific War, as well as the China War in Asia, was being underpinned by Chinese resistance in terms of the Chinese soldiers themselves.

But the communist troops, who are very important in areas like guerrilla warfare, increase in numbers quite significantly over the course of the war. So at the beginning of the war, they're relatively small. We're talking about a few hundred thousand, perhaps at their most. By the end of the war, over a million men are under arms on the communist side. And the Nationalist Army, who do actually the main set-piece battle fighting, we're talking there, depending on how you count it, that's three or four million men under arms, bearing in mind that we are not talking at this stage about the kind of top-down, disciplined, national army that Britain or Germany or even the United States, then as you know better than I do, Dan, they're only the

17th biggest army in the world, I think, at that stage. It expands hugely during World War II. China has more men under arms than any of these countries, but they're not centrally trained. They are basically warlord armies, regional armies brought together in a very uneasy alliance. And one of the acts of skill for which the Chinese leadership, including Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, need to be better appreciated is how they brought these very disparate forces to some position of being able to push back against this technologically far more disciplined enemy, the Japanese. It was a huge achievement, which shouldn't be underestimated. I guess also we shouldn't underestimate the scale of forced migration of refugees,

of people fleeing from fighting, because it seemed to be going on in extended lines. You must have seen families, individuals traveling for miles. One of the under-reported stories of that era, which I think deserves much more attention, and again, I felt almost in a way honored to write about in the book because it's so little known, is that between 80 and 100 million Chinese, something like perhaps a sixth of the population of the country, became refugees in their own country during the course of the eight years of the war. And while some of them eventually ended up returning home and some had to stay under Japanese occupation, we do know that a very large number of them

made their way either to the communist-based areas, and that's a story that perhaps has become better known in later years, but also to the areas controlled by the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek out in southwest China, because China moved its capital. Nanjing famously was invaded by the Japanese,

a horrific massacre, the so-called Rape of Nanking, which killed thousands and thousands of people, happened there. But the Chinese government had moved inland to the city of Chongqing, then known in the West as Chongqing. And it wasn't just a move of the government. It was also the fleeing of thousands and thousands of millions, actually, of refugees who had to be given jobs, welfare provision, health care, all the sort of things that we associate often with much more advanced societies actually were happening within China, too. To use a phrase that we've sometimes heard of Britain, China became not just a country at war, but a warfare state in which every aspect of life, including refugee

flight, became part of the wider strategy. So when the Japanese attack America in Pearl Harbor, in the naval headquarters of the Pacific Fleet, do the Americans think of themselves as now joining China in this war against, or Japan, or are they fighting Japan? They look around and go, by the way, we've got we've got my enemy's enemy can also be my ally. So Pearl Harbor which for many westerners particularly Americans is thought of as the beginning of the war in Asia isn't actually of course the beginning of the war in Asia at all particularly if you're Chinese and aware that you've been fighting for four and a half years and when we look at Chiang Kai-shek's diaries what I think is fascinating

is that his reaction when he hears about Pearl Harbor is very, very similar to that of Winston Churchill in London. Churchill famously, as you know, Dan, says that, you know, it's a terrible thing, but actually it means at last the U.S. is going to be coming into the global conflict. And of course, a week later, Germany declares war on the U.S. as well at that point. Claire's war on the US as well at that point. But Chiang, who has been trying, Chiang Kai-shek, who's been trying for years and years to get anyone to join in, the British, the Americans, even the Soviets, finally realizes that Pearl Harbor means that he will win.

He'll be on the winning side because the military and technological might of the United States will be part of the mixture. So for the Americans, I think it's fair to say that it's not regarded as something wholly new, not least because the Chinese themselves have been lobbying quite a bit in the US. And you can find wonderful posters, you just Google them on the internet

and see them of China being, calling itself first to fight. And of course it was literally true. They'd been fighting the Japanese very early on and in a sense feeling that they were kind of holding the place until the Americans could get into it. But of course, the isolationist pressures, which were, of course, relevant to Europe as well, meant that it was very difficult for Roosevelt, for Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State and other people in any very open could see which direction things were going in and were certainly making significant preparations for a conflict at some point, even though Pearl Harbor

itself, famously as we know, did take them by huge surprise. And what was the nature of the US alliance with China? Was it formal, friendly, close, or was it awkward? I would say that the alliance between the United States and China between 1941 and 1945 and World War II was both essential, particularly from China's point of view, and deadly, also from China's point of view. China could not have been on the winning side. It could not be one of the victorious allied powers had the Americans, indeed the British, not been there. But having said that, the nature of the alliance basically made it almost impossible in the end for China in the state that it was to survive as a state. I think a revolution was almost inevitable by the end of World War II. So briefly to explain what I mean by that. Many people watching this podcast

will know about the overall picture of the global war that was taking place. And they will know, for reasons that I think in strategic terms are very understandable, that it was very unlikely, impossible actually, that China would be the first point of defense for a global strategy. I mean, there was a Europe first strategy. And then of course, the desire to make sure that the Pacific eventually was dominated so that the Japanese home islands could essentially be brought to defeat. But think for a moment, if you are China, if you're Chiang Kai-shek, indeed, if you're Mao Zedong, and you spent the last four and a half years fighting, it is perfectly natural that you would consider that China was an actor that deserved not only some slack, but also

a significant amount of support. And so, for instance, it's worth remembering that Western ground troops were not used in China at any point during their war. They were used in Burma, famously, twice in 1942 and 1944. They were not used on the Chinese mainland. Some air force troops, yes, and some troops behind the lines in terms of keeping things going, but not in terms of combat. So to some extent, the Chinese felt that during the alliance with the Americans and the British as well, they were being treated as a sort of second or third class ally, while being expected to act as if they were a first class ally. And there's one particular quote from Chiang Kai-shek's diaries that I think summarizes this rather well. He says, for me, meeting Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin and working with them is like meeting up with a hoodlum, a thief, and a murderer, and having to work with them. He doesn't at any point say which

one was which in that description. And I point out he's talking about his allies, not his enemies, but it does in some ways explain why Chiang and the Chinese felt that, despite all their flaws, of which they had many, they were treated more casually by their allies, particularly the United States, than necessarily should have been the case. And perhaps the best example of that is the American chief of staff, General Joseph Stilwell, Vinegar Joe, as he was nicknamed, who very quickly developed a very toxic relationship with his commander-in-chief, Chiang Kai-shek, which in some ways symbolized the difficulty in the relationship. And so what form did American aid take if it's not in troops on the ground? Is it in vehicles, in money, supplies? What's going on?

The American assistance was essential to keeping China going, and an awful lot of it was monetary. So Lend-Lease, a well-known aspect of the American support for its allies during World War II, applied to China as well. But it's worth looking at the relative figures. For every year of the war when there was a formal alliance, so from 42 up to 45, less than 1% of total lend-lease spending actually went to China. Most of it went to the British Empire or to the Soviet Union. And a lot of what there was was actually kind of, in fact, dominated by the American chief of staff, General Stilwell, who I've mentioned.

So while there were plenty of stories, many of them entirely justified from Americans during the war that the Chinese leadership was corrupt. It was stealing the money. It was sort of siphoning off the petrol. It was stealing the military vehicles and using them for private purposes, all sorts of highly dodgy things, much of which was true and not surprising in an impoverished agrarian country, which had been fighting essentially on its own for four and a half years before the Allies came along.

Nonetheless, the total scale of assistance to China in that war, comparable to the size and scale of the China conflict, was relatively small. The other element which is very well worth noting is, of course, what I've symbolized with the American military leadership under General Joseph Stilwell and the Cambridge University historian Hans van der Veen, whose book China at War I would also highly recommend, talks in some detail about the way in which American or Western and Chinese methods of war really clash with each other. You know, Stilwell was very much about taking the offensive. You know, when Burma was lost in 1942, wanted to push back in and get it right back. Chiang Kai-shek brought up on a much more, in some ways, defensive form of traditional Chinese warfare.

Also, it was his country, not Stilwell's, that he was talking about. So that clash of military mindsets between the Americans and Chinese, as well as the questions of funding, finance, corruption, and so forth, all of this made a very, very toxic brew in the American-Chinese relationship at the time. And as I say, don't forget the British were very much part of that mixture too. Just before we talk about the extraordinary importance and legacy of the conflict, the fighting swings back and forth. I mean, as late as early 1945, the Japanese are on the advance in China, aren't they? They absolutely are. The very last part of the war in Asia, starting from spring 1944 to the very beginning of 1945, sees one of the biggest advances, biggest campaigns by the

Japanese army in years, Operation Ichigo, number one, which essentially was a last desperate attempt. Basically, the Chinese, not Chinese, the Japanese were playing sort of double or quits by that stage. They knew that the home islands were becoming vulnerable. They knew the Pacific was going horribly wrong, had been ever since Midway, of course, in 1942. And they thought that trying to subdue China once and for all was really the last thrust that they could make. And this was a huge and devastating attack on nationalist China in particular, in which the Japanese didn't win. But essentially, it knocked the heart out of the remaining parts of the nationalist Chinese wartime effort as well. part of the nationalist Chinese wartime effort as well. And it's worth remembering that we now know that World War II in Asia ended very suddenly in August 1945, 75 years ago this week, of course,

in part because of the atomic bombings, as well as the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. But except for the small number of people who knew about the atomic bomb project, most planners, including Chinese planners and indeed Japanese planners, assumed the war in Asia would go on well into 1946 and possibly beyond that. So from the point of view of people fighting in early 1945, it doesn't feel necessarily like the end of the war at all. And so you mentioned that it's actually that early 45 offensive was catastrophic for the Chinese government. offensive was catastrophic for the Chinese government. Let's come on in that case to the end of the war. What condition was China in on VJ Day, 75 years ago this week? 75 years ago this week, the atomic bombs had dropped a few days before, the Soviets had invaded Manchuria, and then on August the 14th, in fact, the unofficial announcement came,

then the official surrender the day after, the Japanese emperor made it clear that the war was coming to an end. I mean, again, we turn to Chiang Kai-shek's diary, where day by day he was recording his feelings. And it's worth remembering something slightly odd that people don't necessarily know, which is that Chiang Kai-shek, amongst other things, had converted to Methodism because of his wife, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who was a bit of a secret weapon in her own right.

She was Wellesley College trained, fluent speaker of English, was essentially his ambassador to America, not formally, but in practice, probably the single most important woman in global politics at that time. She and Eleanor Roosevelt are probably the two. So she had helped influence him to turn towards Christianity. And many of his diary entries are very Christian. When the war came to an end, he wrote, basically, I believe that the Psalms were right on this one. And the Psalm that he cites is one where it says, my enemies have been destroyed and they have cast out the wicked. So he was feeling in a pretty vengeful tone of

frame of mind at that moment. And the china that he still presided over in august 1945 was a paradox and it's a paradox dan that i think shapes everything that happens afterwards even to the present day which is that in august 1945 china was simultaneously stronger than it had been at any point in history for a century and weaker than it had been for a century. Weaker because the stuffing had been knocked out of it. It had been, had its roads destroyed, its railways destroyed, its economy was, you know, absolutely smashed into pieces. Large parts of China had been occupied by the Japanese and, you know, the currency had been degraded. All of that. People were just exhausted, weary, starving, dead, millions of dead. And yet, China in 1937 was

a semi-colonized country. By 1945, it was about to get a permanent place, which it still has today, on the UN Security Council. It was named as one of the shapers of the post-war world. And it was a non-Western country whose leader had sat at the conference in Cairo two years earlier, next to the Prime Minister of the British Empire and the President of the United States of America in a way that no Chinese leader had ever done before in history. That paradox of immense strength and weakness at the same time essentially set the stage for China's post-war experience. What was the weakness of the Chinese state?

Did that make it, I won't say easy, but make it vulnerable to the communist challenge? I think that you cannot understand the communist revolution in China without understanding how devastating better than anyone else, was none other than Mao Zedong, Chairman Mao, as he became. Because a quarter of a century later, when diplomatic relations between communist China and Japanese opened up, I think it was Mr. Tanaka, the then prime minister of Japan, went to Beijing. And it was said, I've never quite managed to track down the source, but I've heard it from many sources, that Mr. Tanaka apologized that he, as a young man, had been a soldier in China long before he became a politician as part of the invading forces. And he apologized to Mao for that. Mao was supposed to have said to him, oh, Mr. Tanaka, no need to apologize. If you hadn't invaded China, then we communists would never have come to power.

And I think it's worth noting that during those years of the civil war in China, 1946 to 9, essentially the hollowness, the fragility of everything that might hold China together had been destroyed by the war and the nationalist government, even coming back to power after the defeat of Japan, couldn't bring it back together, whether it was transport networks, whether it was the currency, which went into hyperinflation, whether it was the fact that huge amounts of money were needed to reconstruct China and nobody, even the Americans, had that much money. The UN program, UNRWA, gave them, I think, $600 million. It was a huge amount, more than any other country in the world. It wasn't nearly enough. But worse than that, a sense of demoralization, which underpinned

China at that stage, this awful war that had killed so many and torn families apart. The communists were able to basically take that up and say, this existing government that you have now, it's not a government that can really transform society in the revolutionary way that China needs. And that sort of sense of purpose, combined, of course, with the very practical issue of excellent Soviet military training and weaponry for the communist troops, which shouldn't be underestimated, came together to lead to an eventual victory over the Chinese nationalists. Mao Zedong arrived in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the Tiananmen, in October 1949 and declared the People's Republic

of China. Chiang Kai-shek and his troops eventually fled to Taiwan. At the end of 1949, they never have come back. So bringing her up to the present day as well, how is the Second World War remembered in China? Is what came after hugely important, or are people able to talk about the Second World War remembered in China? Is what came after hugely important, or are people able to talk about the Second World War in isolation? The Second World War today, Dan, in China is not history at all. It's very much current affairs. For about 20, 25 years in China, during the era of Chairman Mao, the Second World War was talked about. There were plenty of revolutionary operas about evil Japanese. There were movies such as, classes such as Dilei Jan, Lightning War, about the kind of tunnels being dug and communist guerrillas basically fighting

the evil Japanese. But the real enemies in those days weren't the Japanese. They were the internal enemies who Mao fought in the greatly forward and cultural revolution, these brutal examples of internally directed violence and terror. It wasn't really until the 1980s when Mao had died and the Cultural Revolution was discredited, the Chinese sort of rediscovered World War II and started, without ever admitting it, actually rehabilitating the memory of all the stuff I've been talking about, the nationalist government and its record against the Japanese. So 40 years ago, talking about Chiang Kai-shek, the old enemy of Mao, as actually an anti-Japanese hero, was completely off the table.

Now you can go to his old house. I've been to it several times in Chongqing and see very respectfully the way in which his relics and his artefacts and so forth are kept there. And everywhere you go, in all sorts of different aspects of life in China today, people still use the Second World War, both as a sort of, you know, we're both British, so we understand it's a sort of comfort food. You know, in Britain today, people often talk about contemporary politics, COVID, Brexit, through the lens of, you know, it's a bit like World War II, even when it really isn't. Well, the Chinese do the same thing, not so much in

terms of obviously those issues, although Xi Jinping did talk about the fight against COVID as being what he called Renmin Danzhou, people's war, which of course is exactly what Mao said about the war against the Japanese. But also in terms of people trying to produce movies that sort of produce a new kind of patriotic feeling in which they feel that the young Chinese today should be more than just consumers of consumer goods or buyers of nice flats and fast automobiles and all that. They should also have some sense of purpose. And therefore, on websites and movies, television programs and microblog sites

where people kind of swap ideas with each other, thinking about and remembering the history of World War II is actually something of a growth industry in China today to try and give people that wider sense that they're part of a historical moment, which, and I think this is the important thing for China's leaders and the China's people, just for once, regardless of whatever you think about it, China fought against an outside invader and won. I mean, just to end on this point about it winning, in terms of Japanese resources, allocation of resources, just how important was China's contribution to final victory? In terms of the overall Allied victory in World War Two, you mean?

Yeah. I think it is very important. And I think this is one of the things that's worth keeping in mind as we have debates, as historians will have for, I'm sure, decades to come, about who really won World War II. I don't share the position that you do here in China sometimes, that China is more important than any other actor in World War II. I think that that's expanding it far out of what's realistic. But I think there is a crucial set of elements that shouldn't be underestimated. First of all, if China had surrendered in 1938, as most observers expected it to do, because it was weak, without allies, and very, very vulnerable, if Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong had not continued to fight against

the Japanese, then I think the shape, not just of the war in Asia, but the global war would be very different. China would have essentially been a Japanese colony, perhaps for decades. The Japanese army could have occupied the country and turned instead to the Soviet Union, to Southeast Asia, even to British India. None of that happened because more than half a million Japanese troops were still held down in that quagmire. So I think that's an important contribution. And second, and I think more broadly speaking, it's worth remembering that even if China's role in the wider war was to essentially act as one of the theaters of war which would keep going while there was first conquest of Europe and then of course the conquest of the Pacific if China had collapsed at any point that strategy would have been much much harder and it became very important to

Roosevelt and others to make sure that China stayed in the war So I think it's fair to say that we should not take the performance in China simply at the estimation of political propagandists in China, but we also should not follow the path that I'm afraid too many Western observers, I think, have done over the years of suggesting that it was a backwater, it really didn't matter at all, that it was not of any importance at all, because apart from anything else, China's victory mattered to the Chinese, and considering that the Chinese then has now a very significant proportion of the Earth's population, that's no small contribution, even without the geopolitical significance,

which I think is also quite large. Rana, thank you so much. Your book is called, everyone needs to go and get it, the book in the UK and most of the world is called China's War with Japan, The Struggle for Survival, published by Penguin. In the United States, it's called Forgotten Ally, China's World War II, and it's published by Mariner. But it's the same book. And as ever, I'd be delighted if people found out more about this extraordinary war by reading it. Ordinary War by reading it. Land a Viking longship on island shores,

scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. It's fantastic stuff there from Ryan Amir. So thank you very much to him.

And we're going to finish now. We're very honoured to have on the podcast, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. Secretary of State, thank you for joining us on History Hit. You've made marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day a priority since you took office. Why do you feel it's so important to remember this date? Because I think, first of all, it was the actual end of the Second World War. VE Day was obviously the end of hostilities closest to home and was also obviously where the media, where the public, where many troops were already back.

But at the same time, thousands of men and women from across the Commonwealth was giving their lives for not only Britain, but for the values and to challenge totalitarian rule for many months afterwards. And I think it's really, really important we don't't forget them and the multinational aspect of that fight the role the commonwealth played the role people from ethnic minorities played is really really important that we remember our armed forces are more than just a narrow group of people they are about values they are about tolerance and different parts of society and different parts of world. We shouldn't forget at all what happened in VJ Day.

And I think people have probably, because of the nuclear detonations, shied away from talking about it. But that was one aspect, and people will debate that forever. But this was a war. 71,000 British people gave their lives and Commonwealth people in that fight. Horrendous conditions conditions and we shouldn't forget it. The 14th Army as you've said was one of the most diverse in history but they've become known as the Forgotten Army. What do you think their legacy is for the people of Britain and the Commonwealth today? Well I think we need to do more to make it a better legacy. I mean, their legacy should be that we were collectively a great part of the fight, that we collectively stood for the same values, hopefully, of tolerance,

rule of law, respect for each other, and that we were better together than we were against each other. And I think what I want that to be is that the things that we fought the war for, those values are true today. And the duty for me and our armed forces in the United Kingdom is to uphold those values, not abandon those values. And we should be doing even more to use their memory to inspire more BAME recruitment into the United Kingdom armed Forces, more international partnering together around the world and strengthening those values that I think we all hold dear. What kind of events have been going on and are continuing to mark this anniversary? Well, yesterday at Sandhurst, I took on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen the Sovereign's Parade,

which involved well over 20 nations, cadets from around the world involved in that parade. I laid a wreath alongside a United States cadet, actually, to remember the dead. And today we've obviously had, I started at 5.40 in the morning on HMS Belfast, one of the actual ships that was in theatre at the time. And we are marking both remembrance, but also, I think, sacrifice, and also the multinational nature of this conflict. I think that's really important that we do that and remembering also that that was the end, that was the end of the war and it's time to do what we can for those veterans still alive to

celebrate and remember them. Presumably it's the last major anniversary associated with the Second World War that we will be able to mark with the living presence of veterans. Has that made it particularly poignant for you? I think because another hat I wear, I'm president of the Scots Guards Association in Lancashire and Lancashire was very badly hit in the Far East. The Blackpool Regiment, 137th Royal Artillery Regiment, was entirely effectively obliterated in both what was then Malaya and indeed the prisoner war camps. So Lancashire was hit and so seeing veterans effectively one by one deplete effectively from our ranks means it is important and it is a motive to me because once they're gone they're

gone and you know we should use this to celebrate that multinational effort, that inter-ethnic effort that we took. It is important for me. And I totally agree that we're in a place where there won't be many years left of this. You say yourself you've served in the army. You've also said you're an admirer of Field Marshal Slim, who Lord Mountbatten described as the finest general World War II produced. What was it about him that you find so inspiring? I think it was that he did two things in his leadership. One was he used his skills to bring together

very, very different peoples from all over the world. 80% of his million man, as they called it, army, were from the Commonwealth. To be able to bring them together, to work together in a very, very difficult environment in the jungle for a collective response was an extraordinary feat. You know, it's one thing to have all of the same all lined up on a battlefield and you all come from the same background, you tell everyone what to do. But to do what he did, often a long way

away from resupply, and to use unconventional methods to see off a very determined Japanese force, I think is inspiring. And he valued people's qualities, not their colour and who they were. And I think that is where they came from. He just valued them as fellow soldiers. And I think he is, to me, quite inspiring. It's about quality. And that's ultimately what makes good armed forces. You mentioned that the 14th Army had to fight in very difficult terrains. Is there a continuing impact of their work on the armed forces today? Yes, Viscount Slim and the 14th Army effectively drove into the mainstream of the army the concept of sort of close air support, unconventional behind enemy lines

methods of warfare, using different methods to outwit the enemy, is what we do today and is what the integrated review that we're working on is going to embrace even more. You know, the threats we face today are often what we would call sub-threshold. They're not in open warfare. They're in places around the world where Britain and Britain's allies' interests are usurped or corrupted. And that means we're going to have to be unconventional. And we have to embrace that unconventional nature in our armed forces if we are to modernise. Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace, thank you for joining us on History Hit. Thank you very much. Thank you. Pen can change the world.

He tells us what is possible, not just in the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well. I have faith in you. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts podcasts and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps and basically boosts up the chart, which is good. And then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favor. Thanks. you