When Diplomacy Fails Podcast

Our biggest episode yet!Episode 36: Ordering Chinese picks up from the last episode, this time from the perspective of the Chinese, as in late September they were clearly faced with something of a quandary. Stalin was ramping up his campaign to urge the Chinese to intervene, and in response, the Chinese claimed that since Kim Il-sung had yet to ask for help, Beijing could not give it. Stalin thus set to work engineering his plan into motion, and ensuring that the North Koreans would indeed ask for help. It was only to be expected that as the military situation worsened for Pyongyang in light of the Inchon landings, that Kim would see sense and appeal to the communist comrade in Beijing. Indeed, it was likely that he would have no choice but to do otherwise, thanks to the Soviet unwillingness to aid the NKPA in its time of need. In case Soviet involvement in the war was discovered by the West, Stalin insisted, the Soviets would have to pull the plug of support for the Northern Army. These threats were del