Upcoming Episodes!

Episode 206 - Vinegar Joe and the Generalissimo (coming March 4!): Mike leads our discussion of the American experience in China during the first half of World War II. Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin Roosevelt, and General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell are the central figures in this episode, which explores many aspects of the war's often-overlooked China-Burma-India Theater and introduces us to the Flying Tigers, the Burma Road, Merrill’s Marauders, and the “Over the Hump” airlift from India to China. Roosevelt’s postwar goals for China, differing advice FDR gets as to how to handle Chiang, and Stilwell’s fraught relationship with Chiang drive our narrative, as issues of military strategy, operations, logistics, and reform lead to disagreement between “Vinegar Joe” and the Generalissimo — and to their disdain for one another.

Episode 207 - Flying Tigers and Burmese Roads (coming March 18!): Mike again leads us in our narrative of how America continued to fall short of its goals for China in World War II during the second half of the war. We meet General Claire Chennault of Flying Tigers fame, whose ideas for how to fight in China contradict those of his bitter rival General Joseph Stilwell but gain favor with Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang — and, at least for a while, with Franklin Roosevelt. Ultimately, the war in China ends in frustration for America, and Mike, Marshall, and Blake discuss how the historiography of the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II is changing — but still can obscure a more basic American misunderstanding of Chiang, his government, his military, and his Communist rivals during the war. They also review the obstacles that prevented the Nationalists and Communists from making common cause in China — which will lead to a resumption of their civil war after World War II ends.