The Tormented Alliance

“An extraordinarily well-researched, comprehensive, and original analysis of the troubled encounter between the United States and Nationalist China . . . . Fredman’s research in Chinese sources, including municipal records in China and Myanmar, is remarkable. His prodigious investigative efforts enable him to give historians what they had been needing most, a thorough account of how Chinese government officials, military officers, and civilians interacted with and perceived their U.S. allies.”—Diplomatic History

“Extensive and thorough. . . . [A] sharp critique of the American military alliance with China during the war years.”—Journal of American-East Asian Relations

“An original and important study that approaches the topic from a new perspective: from the bottom up.”—H-Diplo

“Fredman has approached the topic armed with tenacity and sources galore.
He has gone beyond the typical questions of Japanese war crimes or Stillwell’s nutty diary, creating a lively text whose larger argument and specific contentions are worthy of debate.”—The China Quarterly

“Based on newly available Chinese sources, Fredman’s excellent book will quickly become the standard for examining U.S.-GMD relations.”—Journal of American History

“Lively and pugilistic . . . The Tormented Alliance is an important work, and quite convincing as an account of the Sino-U.S. experience in China during the 1940s.”—War on the Rocks

“For years, one element of the China theater of World War II and the Chinese Civil War was under examined—the role of the more than 120,000 U.S. servicemen who were deployed there during that era. Zach Fredman has written a powerful, deeply researched study using Chinese and Western sources that shows how central those Americans were to the tumultuous changes that shaped wartime and postwar China.”—Rana Mitter, author of China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism

“A superb book. With brisk writing, a compelling narrative arc, and an abundance of evidence from an astonishing variety of sources, The Tormented Alliance shows with great ingenuity the changing perception of the American military by Chinese soldiers.”—Andrew J. Rotter, author of Empires of the Senses: Bodily Encounters in Imperial India and the Philippines