Madame Chiang was an unexpected presence at the Cairo Conference in November 1943, the only World War Two summit at which China was represented. Sitting at the conference table in a black satin dress with a chrysanthemum pattern and split skirt, black tulle bows in her hair and shoes decorated with big brass nails, she made a considerable impact. Nobody knew quite what her role was, but she made the most of the occasion. Her perfect English, learned during ten years at school in America, enabled her to correct the interpretersâ?? translations of what her husband was saying â?? he didnâ??t speak any foreign languages. Her interventions were so frequent and wide-ranging that the Western delegations wondered who was really setting Chinese policy. As Generalissimo Chiang obfuscated and his generals refused to present their war plans, the British chief of staff, Alan Brooke, thought her â??the leading spirit of the twoâ??, while adding: â??I would not trust her very far.â??
Roosevelt, determined to reach an understanding with Stalin at the Big Three summit in Tehran immediately after the Cairo conference, had invited Chiang Kai-shek to attend. By spending time with Chiang rather than Churchill, he hoped to play down any notion of a US-British special relationship that might alienate the Soviet dictator. He didnâ??t consult the British before asking Chiang, and Churchill was grumpy about the attention devoted to China. After a series of chaotic discussions between the military leaders, which Brooke and George Marshall, the US army chief of staff, regarded as â??a ghastly waste of timeâ??, Roosevelt made the Chinese an airy promise of an offensive across the Andaman Sea to try to end the Japanese occupation of Burma. The promise was soon withdrawn: in Tehran, Stalin pressured Churchill and Roosevelt into committing themselves to opening a second front in France, to which all available landing craft had to be diverted.
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