Chiang Kai-shek was supposed to be the father of modern China. He unified the country, led it through World War II against Japan, and sat among the great powers at the founding of the United Nations. Yet he lost the Chinese mainland to Mao's communists and spent his final decades ruling Taiwan as a military dictator — remembered on one side of the strait as a tyrant and on the other as a founding father.

This episode examines Chiang's contradictions: the Western-educated Christian who ran a police state, the nationalist hero who relied on warlords and gangsters, and the anti-communist crusader whose own corruption drove millions into Mao's arms.

• Chiang's military training in Japan and early alliance with Sun Yat-sen's nationalists
• The Northern Expedition, the Shanghai massacre, and the war against the communists
• C ...