1946: The Making of the Modern World

When, as an historian, I tried to trace the roots of all these events and stories I returned continually to one reference point: 1946. The immediate post-war year laid the foundations of the modern world.

During the war, China became vitally important to the Americans. Japan occupied most of eastern China and Manchuria, but not all the country. The US needed the Chinese to continue the fight against Japan, ensuring that as many Japanese soldiers as possible remained in China, away from the American troops in the Pacific islands.

Of the sixty million or so dead in the Second World War nearly a quarter were Chinese. It is a grim statistic rarely mentioned in Western accounts. After the Soviet Union, China suffered the greatest war casualties.