Making sense of the news 70 years after the end of the second world war

The year 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war. The last year of the devastating war was full of drama. Franklin Roosevelt, the longest-serving US president who was credited by historians with having "led and saved the civilised world", did not live long enough to see the end of Adolf Hitler, who committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8. Roosevelt died of a sudden massive stroke on April 12 in the White House.

Winston Churchill, the undisputed leader of the anti-Nazi campaign, lost the 1945 general election unexpectedly and resigned as British prime minister on July 26, before the surrender of Japan on August 15.

Joseph Stalin, then leader of the USSR, suddenly found he had to face a new US president, Harry Truman, and a new British prime minister, Clement Attlee, in the German city of Potsdam, where the so-called Big Three met for the last time to discuss how to manage the aftermath of the war.

Over in Asia, ever since the fall of Hong Kong to the Japanese invaders at the end of 1941, Chiang Kai-shek had harboured the hope of asking for the return of the colony after the war. He thought his charming and US-educated wife, Soong May-ling, had convinced Roosevelt to lend him tacit support on this issue.

That might have been the case, for the US president was known to be openly hostile to Britain's attempts to reclaim its colonies after the allies' victory. But Roosevelt's untimely death destroyed the prospect: Truman proved to be much more accommodating to Britain's insistence that London alone should resume Hong Kong's governance and that it would not accept the return of Hong Kong to China.

Without US support, Chiang had no choice but to accept the fait accompli. The man felt deeply insulted, as indicated in his diary made public decades later. He regarded the failure to take Hong Kong back after the war as a national shame comparable to Japan's invasion of China.