Craig Watson
speaker
4,699 appearances
13 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 17 Aug
Craig Watson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.
Appearances
The nationalists had more success in cultivating the United States.
At the Nine Power Conference in Brussels in November of nineteen thirty-seven, the Chinese delegation failed to persuade Washington to impose sanctions on Japan and confront it directly.
By the middle of nineteen thirty eight, however, American views were beginning to shift.
As Japan pushed deeper into southern China, it became increasingly obvious that the occupied territory would be closed to foreign trade.
In December of nineteen thirty eight, Treasury Secretary Henry Bogenthau arranged a private American loan of twenty five million to China to be repaid through shipments of tongue oil.
A varnish product whose real importance lay not in itself, but in what the arrangement signified.
A quiet American expression of faith that Chongqing would survive.
Shankai Shek also held onto the hope of an even less likely partnership.
He had become fiercely anti-communist during the 1920s, yet in the early years of the anti-Japanese War, his greatest hope still rested on Soviet entry into the conflict.
Soviet advisors and pilots had aided China from 37 to 39, but the USSR never formally declared war on Japan.
Still, as Japanese aggression in Northern Asia intensified, it remained possible that the Soviets would eventually be drawn in.
Then, as so often happened whenever Chang tried to impose some control over the course of the war, events beyond China's borders altered the struggle in fundamental ways.
While Western attention remained fixed on Europe's darkening horizon, a battle with major consequences for East Asia unfolded on the frontiers of Outer Mongolia, Mount Chukuo, and the Eastern Soviet Union.
Throughout much of nineteen thirty eight and early nineteen thirty nine, one faction within the Japanese Imperial Army sought to pressure the Soviets along their eastern frontier.
The USAR appeared vulnerable.
Stalin's paranoid purges had executed or exiled many of the Red Army's best officers.
In May of nineteen thirty nine, fighting broke out near Nomohan, between the forces from the Soviet backed parts of Mongolia and Japanese troops from Manchukuo.
Within days both sides had reinforced heavily, until nearly sixty thousand Soviet troops faced about forty thousand soldiers from the Kwangtong Army.
Over the next four months until mid-September, they fought a major battle ending in a decisive Japanese defeat, and establishing the reputation of one General Zukov, who would later become one of Stalin's most celebrated wartime commanders.
The much derided Soviet army had fought with formidable effectiveness, and the result was not only a ceasefire, but also a non-aggression pact between the two sides, extinguishing in one stroke Chankhashek's hopes for a Chinese Soviet military alliance.
Showing 461–480 of 4,699 · page 24 of 235
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