1946 ― The Making of the Modern World

In 1946, Victor Sebestyen creates a taut, panoramic narrative and takes us to meetings that changed the world: to Berlin in July 1945, when Truman tells Stalin we have successfully tested the bomb; to Ye’nan, China, in January 1946, when General George Marshall tells the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong that Americans won’t send troops to China, assuring the Communists will attain power; to Delhi, India, in April 1946, when UK Cabinet Members tell Pandit Nehur and Mahatma Gandhi that the British will leave India within a few months, ending two centuries of British imperialism; to Jerusalem in May 1946, when representatives of David Ben Gurion and moderate Zionists meet with Menachem Begin and Jewish terrorist groups and agree on a plan to drive the British from Palestine. The bombing of King David Hotel resulted, accelerating the creation of Israel.

Drawing on new archival material and many interviews, Sebestyen analyzes these major postwar decisions as he discusses the economic collapse, starvation, ethnic cleansing, and displacement that followed the war. He gives a vivid, bleak, and detailed picture of the suffering of the populations from Europe to Asia. It was the year when it was decided that there would be a Jewish homeland, when Europe would be split by the Iron Curtain, when independent India would become the world’s biggest democracy, and when the Chinese communists would win a civil war that positioned them to become a great power.

(With 16 pages of black-and-white photographs.)

VICTOR SEBESTYEN was born in Budapest. He has worked on many newspapers, includingThe Times, The Daily Mail, and The London Evening Standard. He has also written for American publications, includingThe New York Times. He is currently associate editor at Newsweek.