Sarah Paine: belief

Transcript context

…How about in China? What are the odds that after the war, the nationalist could have consolidated control of China? It's difficult. The nationalists don't get the credit for all the fighting of Japan. There was no way to get Lend Lease aid to them during the war. If you want to get Lend Lease aid, and you've got to have ports and railway systems. And if you look at China, the Japanese did a very effective blockade of China's coast. So we're trying to fly stuff over the hump, which is the Himalayas, and you're flying jet fuel over the hump so that the planes can then use them. It means that there's no way to supply the nationalist armies. Yeah, they do some things in Burma, which arguably is a terrible mistake. I suspect it would have been far better leaving Chiang kai shek with all that stuff and then it would have been useful for him in the final stages of the war to get a few wins against the Japanese to make him look good. But basically the Japanese had eviscerated his armies. And then think about it as the communists. You constantly blame the incumbent government. “Oh, all of our problems. It's all about the nationalist corruption.” And they are corrupt. Don't get me wrong. But the reason they're having troubles is because of the Japanese. So the Japanese did end the nationalists. One interesting point you made in your book was that not only were so many nationalists killed in the conflict with Japan, but there was a selection effect that the most competent and brave were the first soldiers to die. And that left not the best of the crop left to fight the communists.…

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