China After World War II: A Nation Divided In August 1945, people across China could finally celebrate the defeat of Imperial Japan after years of invasion, occupation, destruction, and death. Yet peace did not bring unity. Beneath the celebrations stood two powerful Chinese movements that had temporarily cooperated against Japan but remained bitter rivals: the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communist movement led by Mao Zedong. With their common en

My Name is Lucius D. Clay: The General Who Would Not Abandon Berlin I was born in Marietta, Georgia, in 1898, the son of a United States senator. I entered West Point and graduated in 1918, but my career would not be defined by battlefield glory. I became an engineer, and I learned early that wars and nations are won not only with rifles, but with roads, supplies, factories, transportation, and organization. An officer must understand how things work, how people work together

Berlin After World War II: One City Divided Among Four Powers Berlin was a shattered capital at the center of a defeated nation. Years of Allied bombing and the final Battle of Berlin had damaged or destroyed enormous sections of the city, while hundreds of thousands of residents faced shortages of food, fuel, housing, and basic necessities. Nazi Germany surrendered in May, but peace did not mean that Berlin immediately returned to normal. Instead, the former German capital b

My Name is Dean Acheson: Architect of American Containment I was born in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1893, into a household where public affairs, education, and duty were taken seriously. I studied at Yale and Harvard Law School, and afterward served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. The law taught me to examine arguments carefully, but government would teach me something equally important: nations cannot conduct foreign policy on good intentions alone.

The Question Facing America: Retreat or Remain Engaged? (1945–1947) World War II was over, Nazi Germany had been defeated, and Japan had surrendered. American soldiers were returning home by the millions, and families hoped that years of sacrifice had finally brought lasting peace. Yet beyond America's shores, much of Europe lay devastated, governments were struggling to rebuild, and tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were growing rapidly. Americans now f

My Name is Clement Attlee: British Prime Minister I served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the difficult years immediately following the Second World War. I was never a man given to theatrical speeches or grand displays. I preferred careful work, plain language, and practical results. Yet I found myself governing Britain at one of the great turning points of modern history, when an exhausted world emerged from one terrible war only to discover that another kind

The Red Army Moves West: Soviet Liberation Becomes Soviet Occupation The Red Army Moves West: Soviet Liberation Becomes Soviet Occupation (1944–1945). In the final years of World War II, an enormous military force surged westward across Eastern Europe. The Soviet Red Army was driving Nazi Germany back toward Berlin, liberating territories that had suffered years of German occupation. For millions of people, the arrival of Soviet soldiers meant that Nazi rule was finally colla

My Name is Joseph Stalin: Revolutionary, Dictator, and Leader of the Soviet Union For nearly three decades I stood at the center of the Soviet Union. I was born Ioseb Jughashvili on December 18, 1878, in Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire. My father was a shoemaker, and my mother hoped I would become a priest. Poverty and hardship surrounded my childhood. I attended a theological seminary in Tiflis, but revolutionary ideas interested me more than the priesthood. T

An Alliance Built to Defeat Hitler Not to Last was one of the strangest partnerships of World War II. The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union became the three great powers of the Allied coalition, but they were far from natural friends. Their governments, economies, and ideas about individual freedom were dramatically different. What brought them together was not a shared vision of the future but a common and terrifying enemy: Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. As

My Name is General Alfred Jodl: German High Command Officer I was a German soldier, a staff officer, and eventually Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command. For much of the Second World War, I stood inside the rooms where Germany's military campaigns were discussed, ordered, altered, and ultimately lost. I had been trained to believe that a soldier's responsibility was obedience and execution of orders. That conviction carried me from the German Empire