Matt Bevan

Henry Luce led the way, naming Madame Chiang and her husband Time Magazine's Man and Wife of the Year and bringing her to America on a US tour.

And with Luce's backing, she toured America to rapturous welcomes.

At the time, the US was trying to stay out of the conflict which had escalated into World War II.

Madam Chiang addressed Congress and begged the Americans for more resources.

As the war continued, her husband, Chiang Kai-shek, was publicly portrayed as being one of the key Allied leaders.

It was genuinely one of the most impressive propaganda campaigns of the 20th century.

To the rest of the world, the Chiangs were a heroic power couple, leading a Christian democratic crusade against the barbarians.

But the image that Henry Luce had crafted for them was very different to reality.

To start with, Chiang Kai-shek's claim to being the undisputed leader of China was

problematic.

He has been fighting the communists since 1924.

That civil war that you may recall from the highly simplified history I gave earlier may have been paused in order to fight off the Japanese, but it was by no means over.

If and when the Japanese were defeated, Mao Zedong and his enormous communist forces would be back to try and overthrow him.

On top of that, the allied officials who actually had to work with Chiang Kai-shek had experienced a very different version of the Generalissimo than the one who was portrayed on the cover of Time magazine.

Lord Mountbatten of the British Navy said negotiating with him was enough to drive people absolutely mad.

US Army General David Barr described Chiang as the world's worst leader.

But it was General Joseph Stilwell, head of US forces in China, who turned hatred of Chiang into a literal art form.

In his diary and personal letters to his wife, he called the Generalissimo a peanut dictator.

He said he wished that Chiang was dead and wrote poetry about stabbing him in the face with a harpoon.

In the opinion of the American military leadership, Japan's defeat would not be because of Chiang Kai-shek, but despite him.