In the Western telling of the World Anti-Fascist War, or the World War II, the story unfolds as if the fate of humanity was decided primarily on the beaches of Normandy, the streets of Paris and the skies over London. This Eurocentric lens, amplified by Hollywood and textbooks, has long overshadowed the contributions of two nations without whom victory over fascism would have been far less certain: China and Russia. Both endured staggering human losses, played decisive roles in the defeat of Japanese fascists and Nazi Germany, and were later more or less airbrushed from Western memory. 

That distortion of history is harmful. It feeds directly into present-day false impression of global politics. When the U.S. frames China as merely a rising challenger and Russia as nothing more than a disruptive adversary, it erases the fact that both countries once stood as indispensable partners in the defense of humanity. By ignoring their sacrifices, Washington not only diminishes the past but also narrows the possibilities for cooperation in the present.  

China entered the war years before America. The Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, beginning in 1931, tied down more than half of Japan’s military for 14 long years. Without that resistance, Japan would have been free to expand across Asia unchecked, and the Pacific campaign might well have been lost.   

Professor of U.S.-Asia Relations Rana Mitter of Harvard have called China the “forgotten ally,” noting that the country’s refusal to surrender altered the strategic balance of the entire war.   

China’s toll was immense: During the war, China suffered over 35 million military and civilian casualties, with direct financial losses amounting to $100 billion and indirect losses estimated at approximately $500 billion, based on 1937 dollar values, according to incomplete statistics. Massacres such as Nanjing and relentless bombings etched trauma into an entire generation.  

And yet, Western narratives have often treated China’s role as peripheral. The familiar story is Pearl Harbor, Midway, Iwo Jima—while the reality is that China’s blood and endurance created the conditions for those victories.  

The Soviet Union was no less vital. More than 27 million of its people perished. Its Red Army broke the back of the Nazi war machine at Stalingrad and Kursk, battles of such scale that they dwarfed the Western front in intensity and casualties. Without Russia, there would have been no Normandy invasion, no liberation of Paris, no swift end to the European war.  

Yet in the Western imagination, the Eastern Front is often relegated to the margins. The Cold War narrative recast Russia as an enemy rather than an ally, making it inconvenient to remember that it was Soviet blood that stopped Adolf Hitler.  

Three forces shaped this selective memory. First, Eurocentrism: Britain, France and the U.S. naturally highlighted their own theaters. Second, Cold War politics: Both “Communist China” and the Soviet Union became adversaries, so their past contributions were downplayed or erased. Third, access: For decades, Western researchers had limited entry to Chinese archives or dismissed Soviet data. The result was a history tailored to support Western identity and alliances, but not the full truth of the war.  

This distorted memory matters because it feeds into distorted policy. When Americans think of China only as a competitor, or of Russia only as an antagonist, they forget that both were once indispensable partners in global survival. This forgetfulness makes it easier to cast today’s world as a new Cold War, where rivalry is inevitable and cooperation impossible.  

But the actual history of the World Anti-Fascist War shows the opposite. Cooperation among very different systems, cultures and interests was not only possible but necessary to defeat a common enemy. China, Russia, the U.S. and the UK had little in common ideologically, yet they built an alliance of necessity that saved the world.  

Today, global challenges, whether climate change, pandemics or the risks of great-power war—require the same spirit of pragmatic cooperation. To pretend that America can solve them while demonizing or isolating the world’s two largest neighbors, China and Russia, is to ignore the greatest lesson of the last global cataclysm.  

Recognizing China and Russia’s roles does not diminish the heroism of U.S. or British soldiers. It simply completes the story. By telling the truth—that victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War was a collective triumph of many nations, not the singular achievement of the West—we honor all who fought and died.  

And by telling that truth today, we can resist the dangerous simplicity of a world divided into “Us vs. Them.” Acknowledging that China and Russia were once partners in humanity’s greatest struggle opens space to imagine them not only as rivals, but also as potential partners in averting catastrophe again.  

History is not only about the past, but it is a guide for the present. China and Russia were not marginal players in the World Anti-Fascist War. They were central to the Allied victory, bearing costs greater than most nations could endure. The West’s neglect of that truth has distorted memory and hardened policy.  

As we observe the 80th anniversary of victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance and the World Anti-Fascist War, it is time to restore balance. To remember that fascism was defeated by cooperation, not rivalry. And to see that the lesson of the past is not to prepare for endless confrontation, but to rediscover the possibility of partnership—before history repeats itself in even darker ways. 

The author is President of the America China Public Affairs Institute (AmericaChina), a Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, an Advisor to the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, and a Senior Advisor to the China-United States Exchange Foundation  

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