For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. China was the fourth great allypartner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britainyet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West. In this emotionally gripping book, which draws on newly unsealed Chinese archives, Rana Mitter unfurls the story of China's World War II as never before, rewriting the larger history of the war in the process. He focuses on three towering leaders and extends the time line of the war back to 1937, whenJapanese and Chinese troops began to clash, two years before Hitler invaded Poland.