Total Victory Quotes
Although most of the American Military Experts thought the strategy a loser, Presidential Assistant Harry Hopkins made an inspection trip to Russia and recommended to President Roosevelt that we support Russia. The Russian strategy defeated the Germans but the Russian losses were horrendous—over 20 million killed. See {626597} for the Clausewitz commandment he refers to.
In World War II, all the Chinese political organizations united to fight the Japanese invaders. The Communists however did most of the fighting and took the heaviest casualties. He proposed turning on their weakened allies and that was accepted by Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader. They attacked the Communists under Mao and Cho En Lai and forced them to flee across the country in the “Long March”. The Nationalists and their warlords were hated by the majority of the Chinese, especially the peasants who provided help and support to the Communists while they made their escape. They then regrouped and attacked the Nationalists in the Chinese Revolution and this time Chiang Kai-shek, Bai Chongxi and the other Chinese Leaders fled. With few people to help them, they had to flee to Taiwan, and the Communists took over China. Some historians believe that it was Chiang Kai-shek’s strategy all along to hold his soldiers back and let the Communists bear the casualties with the intention of turning on then when the Japanese were expelled. Others claim that Chiang’s relatively unaggressive military action against the Japanese reflected his typical conservatism and avoidance of risk and there was no intention to attack the Communists after the war and the alliance was made in good faith. Note that the leading Muslims in China (where they are a significant minority) were allied with the Chinese Christians against the Communists. Bai Chongxi had a special Muslim newspaper which regularly published religious quoted from the Koran and the Hadith purporting to support and justify Chiang Kai-shek, a Christian, as the rightful leader of China. This was another example of Islam being hijacked for a narrow political purpose. Also, note his use of the word “bandits”. This is a huge insult in the Chinese language culture. So of course the Nationalists used it to refer to the Communists—See {613286} .
This speech was given in the early days of WWII when it was far from clear that we would win.
