The Massacre That Made Mao - April 12, 1927

On April 12, 1927, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the violent purge of Communist Party members in Shanghai, hiring the city's most powerful criminal gang to do it, setting off the Chinese Civil War and launching an outcome he would spend the rest of his life trying to reverse. This episode explores the multiple truths at the heart of the Shanghai Massacre: the strategic logic that made it make sense, the human cost that made it a catastrophe, and the extraordinary historical irony that Chiang's decisive "victory" handed Mao Zedong exactly the conditions he needed to eventually win. The Taiwan Strait is in today's headlines. The argument started here.