Chapter 5 assesses the CCP’s efforts to industrialize China during the Third Front campaign. I demonstrate that the Third Front constrained development by dedicating economic resources to costly projects in the interior instead of focusing on less expensive coastal endeavors. The Cultural Revolution also elevated construction costs by hindering the completion of projects. The Third Front, however, was the sole economic policy that Party leaders formulated at the time to develop inland areas, and despite its many problems, it helped to lessen regional economic differences. The industrialization of inland China in turn provided a foundation for post-Mao economic growth by accelerating the movement of regional resources, linking the interior more tightly into national networks, and fostering the CCP’s aspiration to industrialize whole regions.

Chapter 2 examines how the CCP recruited millions of workers to construct the Third Front. Party officials sought to socially engineer a labor force that embraced Maoist norms and disregarded difficulties that moving to remote inland areas brought to their family or their own person. In practice, people responded to recruitment in various ways. Some thought of expanding China’s industrial defenses as a way of manifesting their devotion to Chinese socialism. Many others were more concerned about the material benefits and burdens that Third Front participation would bring to their region, factory, family, or self. Shanghai leaders urged central planners not to neglect the coast, whereas administrators in inland provinces requested more skilled workers and equipment. Urban residents fretted over what housing, schooling, and cultural activities would be available in China’s impoverished hinterlands. Rural youth, on the other hand, were eager to earn higher wages. But many of their parents were worried about losing household labor and the possibility that their children might be accidentally injured or die. Overall, my research illustrates that the consequences of enlisting in the Third Front were not always clear and that the value of being involved varied according to one’s geographical, social, and economic position.

On January 13, 1978, an article appeared on page four of the People’s Daily that at first glance was of no particular significance. It was about a man named Zhang Xianzhong who worked at a rural cotton-processing factory in Hubei province. A fire had recently broken out at his workplace, and he had run around with an extinguisher to protect machinery and cotton. Zhang’s determination to safeguard China’s collective property was impressive, and his “revolutionary heroic spirit of putting his life on the line” was worthy of praise.

Chapter 4 chronicles everyday life in the first Third Front project that Mao proposed – the steel town of Panzhihua in southern Sichuan. I demonstrate that Maoist ideas about how to build Chinese socialism profoundly impacted daily affairs in Panzhihua. In accordance with Maoism’s productivist ethos, officials focused on increasing production and building high-tech industry. Workers, meanwhile, were housed for years in barracks-style tents and provided with minimal consumer goods. Many Panzhihua residents did not experience the austerity of everyday life in ways that the Party considered appropriate to a good Maoist subject. Some recruits did not accept the CCP’s expectation that they be satisfied with building socialism wherever the Party decided was best. Others tired of their hectic work schedule and were bored with Panzhihua’s limited cultural life. Urban recruits desired to be with family in distant locations and move to a city higher up in socialist China’s socioeconomic order. Rural folk also wished to be with family but in contrast to urbanites they considered gaining access to the welfare provisions of a state–owned enterprise to be a route out of rural poverty. On both sides of the urban–rural divide, practices of daily life became the contested ground of Maoist developmentalism.

This chapter covers events in Europe from the summer of 1944 to the end of the war. Four invasions carried out on mainland Europe penetrate the outer defensive perimeter of the Third Reich: (1) the landing in Normandy in June, followed by the pursuit of the enemy to the western borders of the Reich; (2) the August 1944 invasion of southern France; (3) the offensive in Belarus in late June, Operation BAGRATION, followed by the retreat of the shattered Wehrmacht across the Baltic region and eastern Poland; (4) south of the Carpathian Mountains the Red Army advance across Hungary. The surrounded Nazi regime refuses to consider surrender and embarks on a policy of Total War. The December 1944 attempt by the Wehrmacht to mount counter-attacks, most famously the Ardennes offensive (the Battle of the Bulge). The Allies, meanwhile hold high-level conferences at Tehran and Yalta to discuss future strategy and post-war arrangements. The final defeat of Germany in five concentric campaigns: (1) western Poland and northeastern Germany; (2) the Rhineland; (3) western Germany and Bavaria; (4) Austria; and (5) the final battle for Berlin. The suicide of Hitler and the German surrender.

This chapter is about Allied plans to ‘wear down’ Greater Germany by strategic bombing, and to weaken its hold on occupied territory by encouraging an underground Resistance; some Allied leaders saw these methods as an alternative to a direct ground attack. Resources of the German war economy. Food production and war industry. The limited economic utilisation by the Germans of occupied territory. Forced (slave) labour as a key German asset. Albert Speer and the efforts to intensify the war economy. German technical innovation and ‘miracle weapons’. The Allied war economies in comparison. Development of strategic bombing by Britain and the USA. Relationship between strategic bombing and the ground campaigns. German missile programmes; the American the atomic bomb project. Occupation by Germany and collaboration with the occupiers. Development of the European Resistance, supported from Britain by the SOE. Role of the Communists in the Resistance. The Partisan movement in Russia and Yugoslavia. The effectiveness of the Resistance, relative to Allied conventional forces. Lack of large-scale opposition to Hitler in Germany, despite the July 1944 bomb plot. The resilience of the Nazi regime requires, in the end, occupation by ground armies; ‘wear down’ by underground movements and air bombing is not enough.

This chapter deals with the early stages of World War II in Europe, which was to some extent a repetition of World War I, but with a German victory in May-June 1940. Allied and German grand strategy. The Soviet-Finnish war. Russian annexation of the three Baltic states. The German invasion of neutral Norway, with naval and ground battles against the Allied forces. Churchill replaces Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Planning on both sides for the main Western Front in 1940. The German Blitzkrieg invasion of France and the Low Countries. The Allied evacuation of Dunkirk, the second phase of the invasion, and the French surrender. Air battle over Britain. Inability of the German Army to invade Britain, and Hitler’s decision to invade Russia.

This chapter covers the formal end to the war in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and makes some general conclusions about the nature of World War II and its outcome. Post-war meetings from 1945 to 1973. Historians debate the events of the war. Winners and losers: medium- and long-term gains and losses by the various participating countries. The role of each of the major Allied countries, and their interdependence. Relative importance of military and economic forces in the outcome of the war. Political factors, most notably the extravagant ambitions of the leaders of the Third Reich. The long-term transformative effect of Allied victory.

This chapter deals with the final stages of the war against Japan in 1945. The condition of Japan and its war effort. The beginning of effective long-range bombing against Japanese cities. The Battle of Okinawa. Japan’s unwillingness to surrender, and plans for defensive battles in Japan itself. American invasion plans. The American-British Potsdam Declaration, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Role of the Emperor Hirohito in Japan’s final decision to capitulate. Historical debates about the use of atomic bomb. The Russian ground campaign in Manchuria, and the arrival of the Red Army in northeast China and Korea. The reaction of the Chinese Nationalists to the sudden collapse of Japan. The end of the war in Southeast Asia, and the arrival of British and other Allied forces in European colonies that had been occupied by Japan.