At the beginning of 1945, relations between America and the Chinese Communists couldn t have been closer. Chinese leaders talked of America helping to lift China out of poverty; Mao Zedong himself held friendly meetings with U.S. emissaries. By year s end, Chinese Communist soldiers were setting ambushes for American marines; official cordiality had been replaced by chilly hostility and distrust, a pattern which would continue for a quarter century, with the devastating wars in Korea and Vietnam among the consequences.
In China 1945, Richard Bernstein tells the incredible story of...