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Hirohito, consulting with his generals, led by his great-uncle Prince Kotohito, chief of staff, and his premier Prince Konoe was assured the war would be ‘finished up in two or three months’. Konoe, cultured and pragmatic, a fan of Oscar Wilde, was convinced, after attending the Versailles conference, that the western powers were racist colonialists determined to break Japan.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to concentrate a large force at the most critical point,’ asked Hirohito, ‘and deliver one overwhelming blow?’ The war minister agreed: it must be ‘total war’ but ‘undeclared’ to avoid western or Soviet intervention. On 28 July 1937, the correct date for the start of the Second World War, the Japanese launched a full offensive against Beijing and the port of Tianjin. On 8 August, the old capital was captured along with much of northern China.

Chiang Kai-shek was agonizing over when to resist ‘the dwarf bandits’, asking ‘Existence or obliteration?’ If he did not resist, he risked losing power; if he did, he risked defeat. He agreed to negotiate with Mao on a united front against Japan. In Xi’an, Chiang met Mao’s lieutenant Zhou Enlai. But the Communists manipulated the patriotism of the Manchurian warlord, the Young Marshal, Zhang Xueliang, who, disgusted by the generalissimo’s vacillations, devised a plot to force Chiang’s hand. The Young Marshal’s troops stormed Chiang’s villa, killing his guards, and discovered the generalissimo hiding on a mountainside in his nightshirt and without his dentures. His wife, Meiling Song, considered attacking the town but instead rushed to join her husband. Mao wanted Chiang killed, but Stalin, afraid of Japanese attack, ordered his release. Chiang agreed to Stalin’s plan for an anti-Japanese alliance, receiving his son back as a prize.

On his release, chastened and humiliated, Chiang defended Shanghai with 500,000 men. Hirohito agreed with his generals to order Japanese forces 200,000 strong to storm Shanghai. Nine thousand Japanese were killed as against almost 250,000 Chinese. The Japanese were outraged by their losses, and their troops were ordered to treat civilians and non-civilians the same: they took no prisoners, butchering thousands in Shanghai. On 13 December, they seized the capital Nanjing. General Matsui Iwane, commander of the front, and Hirohito’s uncle Prince Yasuhiko Asaka as commander of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force ordered harsh reprisals as a preliminary to a parade. On the first day, 32,000 people were killed. Asaka’s order was ‘Kill all captives’. All told, Asaka’s troops may have killed as many as 340,000 Chinese; some 20,000 women were raped, mutilated and killed.^* The killing, an expression of rage for Chinese resistance and a demonstration of Japanese racial superiority, continued for six weeks. Hirohito and his generals were responsible, but even General Matsui became ‘depressed’, adding, ‘I feel sorry for the tragedies, but the Army must continue unless China repents.’ Matsui and Asaka were recalled, but Hirohito praised Matsui and decorated Asaka.

Chiang took a stand at Wuhan but was routed, moving his capital to Chungking in the interior. In his Shaanxi fiefdom, Mao settled down for a long guerrilla war, remarking on the irony that ‘Those who’ve seized the latrine pit can’t shit while the people who are bloated have no pit.’ In his capital, Yan’an, he increased his forces from 30,000 to 440,000, but left frontal warfare to Chiang. By 1938, the Japanese controlled most of coastal China, with Chiang and Mao holding out in the interior, but they were committed to a war they would never finish and could not afford. In this rapidly changing kaleidoscope, there was only one certainty understood by all players: the coming conflict, said Stalin, would be a ‘war of machines’, and that meant that ‘mastery of oil’ in Churchill’s words ‘was the prize’. Those who controlled it would be the masters.

OIL KINGS – THE CONQUEST OF ARABIA: ABDULAZIZ AND REZA

The shah had clashed with the British, demanding a bigger share of Iranian oil. By threatening to cancel the concession altogether, he got better terms. It was the beginning of a transfer in power from Europe to Asia. But the friction poisoned Reza’s court.^*

Reza hoped to secure the dynasty for his son, Mohammad, who now arrived home from Swiss boarding school with the effete school odd-job man Ernest Perron, eleven years older: ‘a curious fellow’, wrote a British diplomat, ‘dressed like a musical comedy bohemian who also writes characters from the palm of your hand and makes the most surprising statements about your vie sexuelle!’ The shah, terrified of homosexuality, was horrified and attacked Perron with his whip, ordering his expulsion until his daughters persuaded him to let him stay. The shah appointed him gardener. Whatever Perron’s role it was emotional, not sexual: the crown prince had lost his virginity to a Swiss maid, and embarked on a lifetime of womanizing.