The World

Both Stalin and Truman were uncertain whether Germany, divided between Soviet and western zones, should ever be reunited. As the Cold War intensified, Truman was sceptical; Stalin initially favoured reunification. But Berlin, deep in Stalin’s eastern zone, remained divided between the powers. In 1948, hoping to solve the German conundrum by driving the Americans out of Berlin, Stalin blockaded the western zones; Truman instead ordered an airlift to Berlin. Stalin now realized that America would resist Communist advances on all fronts and that a united neutral Germany was impossible, so he installed a Soviet vassal state in his eastern sector. The Americans fostered a West German democracy and needed German sophistication to use against the Communists. Hitler’s anti-Soviet intelligence chief Gehlen set up West Germany’s intelligence service, his missile expert Werner von Braun worked on US missiles; several of the Holocaust Wannsee planners were released.^* Krupp was restored to run his industrial empire. America prescribed a bold tonic for European sickness: a massive aid programme, the Marshall Plan. Stalin rejected it and launched new repressions. His blundering threats led the western democracies, recovering thanks to US aid and sharing a growing confidence in their open societies, to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance against the Communists, who would soon form their own. America, inspired by its missionary religious origins, embraced the conviction that openness, elections and markets would ultimately produce progress towards democracy and capitalism everywhere. Stalin’s USSR, fusing its Marxist quasi-religious mission with traditional anti-western Russian nationalism, was convinced it too would lead the world towards its version of progress.

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Stalin’s success in the west encouraged him in the east, where Korea became the Asian Berlin. Soviet troops occupied the northern half, the Americans the south. Planning a Communist client state, Stalin struggled to find vassals. Finally Beria discovered a Korean-born Communist whose Christian parents had founded one of the first anti-Japanese groups, and who had fought during the 1930s in Mao’s armies before escaping into Russia. The thirty-three-year-old Kim Song-ju was unknown in Korea, but he cleverly adopted as nom de guerre the name of a famous, possibly mythological fighter: ‘Tiger’ Kim Il-sung. Kim embraced Stalinism mixed with Korean nationalism.

In March 1948, when Marshall’s truce collapsed, Chairman Mao seized Manchuria from Generalissimo Chiang, who in turn captured Mao’s headquarters at Yen’an. Mao rode away with his wife Jiang Qing and lieutenant Zhou Enlai. Basing himself near Beijing, he ordered his best general, Lin Biao, to advance southwards. The Japanese war had hollowed out Chiang’s China; victory destroyed him. Although he was uninterested in lucre, the Songs were a study in malversation: Madame Chiang lived like an empress, her brother, premier T. V. Song, made $300 million in currency speculations. Chiang sacked T.V. but promoted commanders so inept they may have been Communist moles. Chiang ranted against the Songs; Meiling flew to New York.

In April 1949, Mao took the capital Nanjing. After Chiang prayed tearfully at his mother’s tomb, he flew to Taiwan where, months later, Meiling joined him.^* Mao invited her sister, Madame Sun – Qingling – whom he addressed as ‘Dear Elder Sister’, to join him in Beijing: ‘Show us how to build a new China.’ Mao met her at the station, and appointed her vice-chairman; Premier Zhou Enlai gave her the palace where Puyi had been born (‘I’m getting the royal treatment,’ she boasted).^*

Mao decided to move the capital to Beijing, setting up his home – a comfortable villa, the Library of Chrysanthemum Fragrance, with a giant bed piled with books – in the heavily guarded Zhongnanhai compound of the Forbidden City that became his Kremlin. Zhongnanhai is still the metonym for the Chinese leadership. Mao was interested not in money but in comfort and security, using around fifty refurbished villas, ordering the army to choose girls from their theatrical groups to serve in his own troupe, available for sex with the chairman, which his defence minister Marshal Peng called ‘selecting imperial concubines’. His wife, Jiang Qing, did not interfere.