ABSTRACT
The last really important battle of the Russo-German war took place in the Kursk-Orel section of the front in July-August 1943. After this the Germans were slowly pressed back, and the victory of the Soviet Union was obviously only a matter of time. The major aim of both Stalin and Roosevelt at that time was a foreign policy partnership between their two countries in the post-war world. Stalin clearly mistrusted Mao, over whose regime he had even less control than over Jiang's, and plainly he hoped to play off the CCP and KMT, advancing Soviet interests in the borderlands and keeping China somewhat weak and divided but avoiding an all-out civil war. Roosevelt envisaged a China at peace under Jiang, but was much more afraid of the remaining Japanese war potential than Stalin appears to have been and ready to pay heavily for Soviet entry into the war with Japan. The Nationalist and Communist Chinese were long since embarked on a struggle to the death: efforts at compromise between them were merely tactical, for each knew that in the last resort a united China could only contain one of them. Jiang Kaishek opposed the Russians, looking for salvation to America, despite the existence of a weak pro-Soviet wing in the KMT, but the Chinese Communists tried to keep their foreign policy options as open as possible.
