We were talking last episode about how the western allies tried to contain the spread of communism in Europe, but I mentioned that Communism was spreading in Asia as well. This is about to be a problem in China, which, on the face of it, seems an unlikely hotbed for communism.

Back in 1912, before both world wars, the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing dynasty, collapsed. The Qing had ruled China since the 1600’s, but the dynasty had fallen into disarray, and China was really being ruled by a loose system of sort of feudal warlords. When the dynasty collapsed in 1912, it was replaced by the Chinese Republic, but the republic’s hold on power wasn’t very strong, and in many places, the warlords still ruled.

In 1921, the Chinese Communist party was created, and in 1927, a civil war broke out between the communists and the nationalists, who were strongly anti-communists.

As you might remember from episode 124, which was about the Allied victory in Europe, Germany was basically cut in half by the invading Soviets in the East, and the Allies in the West. The Soviets had captured Berlin, and they had also occupied the eastern part of Germany. But they also had occupied all of eastern Europe, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. And they had no intention of giving those countries up.

Ok, WWII is over, and so I’m done talking about famous battles and cool fighter planes for a while. But I do feel that I need to go back and talk about a really important and horrific story of WWII, and how that affects our modern world. And that is the story of the Holocaust. It’s not a pleasant thing to talk about, but it’s really important, and has a big impact on the world after WWII, and on our modern world as well.

And just a bit of a warning here, this episode is a bit longer than most, because I feel like I needed to re-cover some history that we’ve already talked about in older episodes.