The U.S. no longer deluded itself that Japan’s forces in China could be defeated by the Chinese. Washington thus turned to the only other power capable of doing so—the Soviet Union. Through the winter of 1944–45, with increasing urgency Washington solicited Russian participation in the war against Japan. Chiang believed that he had played his cards with brilliant skill, by preserving American support for his regime on his own terms, without conceding any scintilla of domestic reform. Yet the consequence would be a great Russian army’s descent upon Manchuria, with the endorsement of the United
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