Mao

E mais uma "unintended consequence" da grande "vitoria" que foi a Segunda Guerra e Yalta:

"(...)Mao now stands revealed as one of the greatest monsters of the 20th century alongside Hitler and Stalin. Indeed, in terms of sheer numbers of deaths for which he responsible, Mao, with some 70 million, exceeded both.(...)

(...) He is shown during his command of armed forces in the countryside in the late 1920s and early 30s to have lived off the produce of the local peasants to the extent of leaving them destitute. He consciously used terror as a means to enforce his will on the party and on the people who came under his rule

Among the most significant of their discoveries is that the myth of the Long March was a sham. Chiang Kai-shek in effect made a safe passage for the Reds through particular provinces where his rule was weak, so that his pursuing forces could overcome the local warlords. Moreover, Chiang was constrained from destroying the Reds because his son was held hostage in Moscow. Even the fabled crossing of the Dadu chain bridge, when, according to Mao, his heroic soldiers managed to cross the narrow bridge against heavy machine-gun fire, is shown to be a complete invention. The indefatigable authors consulted Nationalist sources, interviewed local historians and even visited the scene.

Mao is shown to have been completely dependent on Soviet support and to have taken the view that the Chinese communists would succeed only if they were able to link up with the Soviet Union and receive massive assistance. This eventually happened in Manchuria in 1946-47. The American General Marshall, who had attempted to mediate in the civil war, had unwittingly saved the communist armies by imposing a truce in the summer of 1946 that lasted for four months. It was this truce that prevented Chiang's armies from crushing the retreating Reds. The ceasefire enabled the latter to be massively replenished by the Soviet side and then reverse the tide to win in Manchuria and then gain the rest of China.

(...) Mao himself comes across as a uniquely self-centred man whose strength was his utter disregard for others, his pitilessness, his single-mindedness, his capacity for intrigue and his ability to exploit weakness. He neglected his wives, whom he treated cruelly, and had no time for his children. He loved food and reading and had an infinite supply of young women. Mao lacked personal courage and had some 50 villas built for him in different parts of China, which were constructed to withstand bombing and even nuclear attack.

Mao had none of the skills usually associated with a successful revolutionary leader. He was no orator and he lacked either idealism or a clear ideology. He was not even a particularly good organiser. But he was driven by a personal lust for power. He came to dominate his colleagues through a mixture of blackmail and terror. And he seems to have enjoyed every minute of it. Indeed what he learned from his witnessing of a peasant uprising in his home province of Hunan in 1927 was that he derived a sadistic pleasure from seeing people put to death in horrible ways and generally being terrified. During the Cultural Revolution he watched films of the violence and of colleagues being tortured (...)"

Bad element Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have revealed Mao as one of the 20th century's greatest monsters, says Michael Yahuda