China 1945

by Richard Bernstein

  “I had myself seen”: Ibid.

  “what I have said about Chiang”: Ibid., p. 61.

  Well, it’s a foot in the door: Mao-Hurley dialogue is from Barrett, pp. 60–62.

  “to promote progress and democracy”: Ibid., p. 63.

  “a love feast”: Barrett, p. 63.

  “I cannot guarantee”: Ibid., p. 64.

  “bill of goods”: Davies, China Hand, pp. 228–29.

  “We consider the Soviet Union”: Barrett, p. 65.

  American simplicity versus Chinese complexity: Tang Tsou, America’s Failure in China, 1941–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 91.

  network of personal relations: Ibid., p. 112.

  AGFRTS: Yu, p. 156. Davies, China Hands, p. 287.

  “Your honor, General Donovan”: Yu, p. 144.

  “face was not only handsome”: Fairbank, Chinabound, p. 215.

  “freed of all official relationship”: Yu, p. 138.

  “special measures”: Ibid., p. 99.

  “a tight little kingdom”: National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NARA), RG 38, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Records of the U.S. Naval Group, Box 39b.

  “This Special Party Branch”: Yu, p. 44.

  “unsavory”: Davies, China Hand, p. 288.

  “assassination by poison”: Yu, p. 102.

  “is mainly preoccupied”: NARA, RG 38, Box 39.

  “If the American public”: Quoted in Davies, p. 289.

  “Hundreds of Tai Li’s victims”: NARA, RG 38, Box 39b.

  Blue Shirts carried out: Taylor, pp. 104–105.

  Zhang Deneng, shot: Ibid., p. 273.

  large numbers of executions: Ibid., p. 105.

  “numerous adverse reports”: NARA, RG 38, Box 39.

  “As head of the National Police”: Ibid.

  “One outstanding weakness”: Yu, p. 199.

  “crook”: Davies, p. 229.

  “ultimatum basis”: Tsou, p. 93.

  “The Generalissimo finds it necessary”: Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell’s Mission, p. 270.

  “the concept of a loyal opposition”: Davies, p. 228.

  “By December”: Kahn, pp. 145–46.

  “We are having some success”: FRUS, 1944, vol. 6, p. 748.

  a remarkable confrontation: Mao’s conversation with Barrett is from Barrett, pp. 70–75.

  four new conditions: Feis, p. 219.

  “It was a routine trip”: Davies, p. 235.

  “The Chinese Communists were going to win”: Ringwalt, oral history.

  “the age-old ploy”: Davies, China Hand, p. 235.

  “an old fool”: Ibid., p. 236.

  “Hello” and “Good-bye”: Kahn, pp. 122–23.

  “at routine staff meetings”: Ibid.

  “principal occupation”: Melby, p. 23.

  “a vacillating compromise”: Davies, China Hand, p. 238.

  “And you do the same”: Ibid.

  “Hurley flushed”: Davies, p. 239.

  an extraordinary ensuing scene: Wedemeyer, p. 319.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: The Rage of an Envoy

  “wants to dispatch to America”: Barbara Tuchman, “If Mao Had Come to Washington,” Foreign Affairs 51 (Oct. 1972).

  “to create a large new strip”: FRUS, 1945, vol. 7, p. 168.

  “certain officers”: Ibid., p. 176.

  “I did not know”: Ibid.

  “a little confused”: John Paton Davies, Dragon by the Tail: American, British, Japanese, and Russian Encounters with China and One Another (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), p. 385.

  The Communists had guerrillas: Yu, p. 166.

  to be assigned: Ibid., p. 167.

  Ye suggested that the Communists: Davies, Dragon by the Tail, p. 361.

  “offered all the cooperation”: Ibid, p. 362.

  “underestimated the influence”: Ibid.

  “deviated so far to the right”: Ibid.

  “I did not inquire”: Ibid., p. 363.

  they drew up an ambitious plan: Memo from Willis Bird to chief of staff, subject: Yenan trip, 24 Jan. 1945, RG 38, Entry 148, Box 7, Folder 103, “Dixie.” Cited in Yu, p. 187.

  “It was most embarrassing”: Wedemeyer, p. 313.

  “unauthorized loose discussions”: Yu, p. 93.

  Wedemeyer held a press conference: New York Times, Feb. 15, 1945.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: A Moral Compromise

  no way for Mao to have known: Sheng, pp. 93, 211.

  “in order to get take full advantage”: Ibid., p. 93.

  “Do not be afraid”: Zhou Enlai, Zhou Enlai nianpu [Chronological Record of Zhou Enlai] (Beijing: Peoples’ Publishing Co., 1991), pp. 600–603.

  mass rally of twenty thousand: New York Times, Nov. 17, 1944.

  “their own selfish interests”: FRUS, 1945, vol. 5, pp. 817–20.

  “We must clearly realize”: Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 249.

  “cause further trouble”: FRUS, 1945, vol. 5, p. 843.

  “sphere of influence”: S. M. Plokhy, Yalta: The Price of Peace (New York: Viking, 2010), p. 131.

  This required that Roosevelt travel: Rudy Abrahamson, Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averill Harriman, 1891–1986 (New York: William Morrow, 1992), p. 370.

  “free, independent, and powerful Poland”: Plokhy, pp. 166–67.

  “to restore their sovereignty”: James Reardon-Anderson, Yenan and the Great Power: The Origins of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 74.

  “the shabbiest sort”: Isaacson and Thomas, p. 246.

  “dictating terms to the Japanese”: Davies, China Hand, p. 248.

  urged Roosevelt to get the Russians: Ibid., p. 250.

  “By the time of the Yalta Conference”: Tsou, p. 71.

  First, he wanted to restore: Plokhy, pp. 223–24.

  Roosevelt in a difficult position: Ibid., pp. 224–25.

  Harriman didn’t like it: Abrahamson, p. 390.

  “The prescription for this”: Davies, China Hand, p. 247.

  “happiness, prosperity or stability”: John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), p. 188.

  “leapfrog over my top-hatted head”: Abrahamson, p. 345.

  “Russia promises”: Life, Sept. 10, 1945.

  “masterful and effective”: Gaddis, p. 189.

  Zhou wrote a lengthy inner-party report: Sheng, p. 82.

  CHAPTER NINE: Hiding the Knife

  “Chiang could not whip us”: Lynne Joiner, Honorable Survivor: Mao’s China, McCarthy’s America, and the Persecution of John S. Service (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009), pp. 130–31.

  “strong ties of sympathy”: Joseph W. Esherick, ed., Lost Chance in China: The World War II Dispatches of John S. Service (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 372–73.

  “a single gun or bullet”: Ibid., p. 383.

  “Politically, any orientation”: Ibid., p. 308.

  Davies weighed in with a memo: FRUS, 1945, vol. 7, pp. 337–38.

  “this hypocritical foreign devil”: Pantsov and Levine, p. 346.

  “Marxism apart from Chinese peculiarities”: Ibid., p. 326.

  “correct and circumspect”: Time, June 18, 1945.

  he had found no evidence: Esherick, pp. 350–53.

  “unrealistic”: Davies, China Hand, p. 232.

  “to radically alter the correlation”: Pantsov and Levine, p. 343.

  “ally ourselves with the Soviet Union”: Mao Zedong, “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship,” Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 4 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press), online edition, www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_65.htm.

  “the CCP would be able”: Pantsov and Levine, p. 343.

  “squeezed like a lemon”: Robert Carson North, Moscow and Chinese Communists (Stanford, CA: Standford Univer
sity Press, 1963), p. 96.

  “Communists the world over”: Mao, “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship.”

  sheltered in Shanghai: Pantsov and Levine, p. 250.

  offspring of dedicated Chinese revolutionaries: Sin-Lin, Shattered Families, Broken Dreams: Little-Known Episodes from the History of the Persecution of Chinese Revolutionaries in Stalin’s Gulag, trans. Steven I. Levine (Portland, ME: Merwin Asia, 2012), pp. 86–89.

  “In our hearts protest burns”: Ibid., p. 91.

  “What you are talking about”: Ibid., p. 118.

  “the shores of socialism”: Pantsov and Levine, p. 329.

  “the new international trust”: Sheng, p. 58.

  organized a Harvard Club: White, In Search, p. 73.

  “imperialist procuress”: Pantsov and Levine, p. 310.

  a public self-criticism: Sheng, p. 31.

  a radio contact to communicate: Sheng, pp. 22–23.

  numerous financial contributions: Pantsov and Levine, p. 334.

  “shattered the intrigues”: Mao, “Interview With New China Daily correspondents on the New International Situation,” Sept. 1, 1939, in Collected Works, vol. 2, online at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_17.html.

  “slaughterhouse of imperialist war”: Ibid., p. 70.

  “enlightened bourgeois politician”: Ibid., p. 72.

  “Their capitalists”: Mao, “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship.”

  “rely on the people”: Sheng, p. 49.

  Mao endorsed the new agreement: Ibid., p. 71.

  “if they are antifascist”: Ibid., p. 73.

  “to stand with you”: Taylor, p. 188.

  “There is no such thing”: Lyman P. Van Slyke, ed. The Chinese Communist Movement: A Report of the United States War Department, July 1945 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), p. 220.

  “We shall never agree to that”: Sheng, p. 90.

  CHAPTER TEN: The War over China Policy

  One of Hurley’s biographers: Buhite, p. 191.

  Little Whiskers: FRUS, 1945, vol. 7, p. 115.

  “We would write dispatches”: Ringwalt, oral history.

  The dispatch was never sent: Ibid.

  “I pause to observe”: Feis, p. 222.

  what Hurley seemed most interested in: Kahn, p. 149.

  “There is no valid reason”: FRUS, 1945, vol. 7, p. 201.

  “liberal democratic”: Ibid., p. 158.

  “this inability to engage”: Ibid., p. 157.

  “one means to an end”: Ibid., p. 218.

  “They overdid it”: Gary May, China Scapegoat: The Diplomatic Ordeal of John Carter Vincent (Washington, DC: New Republic Books, 1979), p. 120.

  “ascribe all virtue”: Ibid.

  The best option for the United States: Ibid., p. 124.

  “a degree of flexibility”: Romanus and Sutherland, Time Runs Out, p. 337.

  “fear and suspicion”: Taylor, p. 302.

  “sold out”: Ibid.

  “a stinging reprimand to Tsou”: FRUS, 1945, vol. 7, pp. 239–40.

  “if they didn’t do something”: Kahn, p. 152.

  “They’ll say we’re all traitors”: Ibid.

  all of the political officers: Feis, p. 268.

  “inform Chiang Kai-shek”: FRUS, 1945, vol. 7, pp. 87–92.

  “secure the cooperation of all Chinese”: Feis, p. 271.

  “a full array”: Lohbeck, p. 381.

  “the President upheld Hurley”: Feis, p. 272.

  “seize control of China”: May, p. 126.

  a widely covered press conference: New York Times, Apr. 3, 1945.

  “American diplomats”: Buhite, p. 203.

  a deal between Moscow and Chungking: Ibid., pp. 203–205.

  “There was ample advice”: Kahn, p. 158.

  Okamura had 820,000 men: Romanus and Sutherland, Time Runs Out, p. 49.

  “the feeling of victory”: Bix, p. 362.

  2.7 million noncombatants: Ibid., p. 366.

  “For many years”: New York Times, Feb. 9, 1945.

  At night, the pilots and maintenance crews: Severeid, pp. 337–38.

  “apathetic and unintelligent”: Romanus and Sutherland, Time Runs Out, pp. 53–54.

  “We can throw in”: Ibid., p. 62.

  Okamura’s supply lines were overextended: Ibid., pp. 174–75.

  “a dry cackle”: Ibid., p. 176.

  “empty runways”: Ibid., p. 179.

  “held stoutly”: Ibid., p. 282.

  “holding well”: Ibid.

  “Whenever the situation changed”: Ibid., p. 285.

  “complete success”: Ibid., pp. 285–86.

  Chiang backed down: Ibid., p. 287.

  “real progress”: Ibid., p. 290.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Mao the God, Service the Spy

  Mao’s apotheosis was a gradual thing: Pantsov and Levine, p. 342.

  to plant the first grain of millet: Short, p. 393.

  About half of the party members: Chang and Halliday, p. 269.

  Stalin’s short course was translated: Short, p. 393.

  admitted that his past opposition: Ibid., p. 395.

  “various anti-party activities”: Panstov and Levine, p. 338.

  a Solomonic judgment: Ibid.

  “Mao Zedong’s contribution”: Ibid., p. 339.

  gave credit to Mao for the battle of Pinxingguan: Sheng, p. 44. Chang and Halliday, p. 269.

  “Beyond all doubt”: Mao, “On Coalition Government,” Selected Works, vol. 3.

  “the deep, stinking pit”: Liberation Daily, July 11, 1945.

  “Can we Chinese succeed?”: Yang Kuisong, Mao Zedong yu Mosike di Ennen-yuanyuan [The Love-Hate Relationship Between Mao Zedong and Moscow] (Nanchang: Jiangxi Renmin Chuban [Jiangxi People’s Publishing Co.], 1999), pp. 519–20.

  “Who is our leader?”: Chang and Halliday, p. 282.

  “the faraway water”: Yang Kuisong, Zhonggong yu Mosike di Guanxi [Relations Between the Chinese Communists and Moscow] (Nanchang: Jiangxi Renmin Chuban She [Jiangxi People’s Publishing Co.], 1997), pp. 519–20.

  “overly friendly with the Reds”: May, p. 169. Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), p. 54.

  “the FBI’s quiet supersleuths”: Time, June 18, 1945.

  President Truman told Congress: New York Times, June 2, 1945.

  “I’ll get that son of a bitch”: Klehr and Radosh, p. 26.

  “something real big”: Kahn, p. 169.

  Alsop had told him: Klehr and Radosh, p. 20.

  “designated leaker”: Ibid., p. 62.

  found what appeared to be: Ibid., p. 31.

  “very secret”: Kahn, p. 168.

  columns early on denouncing the FBI arrests: Klehr and Radosh, p. 100.

  “sensational proof”: Ibid., p. 98.

  The Scripps-Howard chain: Kahn, p. 170.

  “The arrest of the six people”: Liberation Daily, June 25, 1945.

  “a hundred times more democratic”: Ibid., July 11 and July 20, 1945.

  “many unburied bodies”: NARA, RG 226, Box 148, Folder 9.

  “For eight years”: Ibid.

  had come from bribes: Yu, pp. 220–21.

  the Spaniel Mission was being dispatched: Ibid.

  “no prior notice”: Ibid.

  “treating them kindly”: Ibid., p. 223. NARA, minutes of Wedemeyer meeting with Mao, Aug. 30, 1945.

  “grossly exaggerated”: Yu, p. 222.

  “I consider the Fuping incident”: NARA, Minutes.

  “All communist headquarters”: Yu, pp. 222–23.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Hearts and Minds

  Friday Dinner Gathering: Yang Jianye, Ma Yingchu (Shijiazhuang: Huashan Wenyi Shuban She [Huashan Arts and Literature Publishing House], 1997), p. 87; Deng Jiarong, Ma Yinchu Zhuang [The Biography of Ma Yinchu] (Shanghai: Wenyi Chuban She [Arts and Literature Publishing House], 19
86), p. 98.

  “cruel and rapacious”: Peng Hua, A Biography of Ma Yinchu (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo Chuban She [Contemporary China Publishing House], 2008), p. 52.

  “The world has already become”: Ma Yinchu, Complete Works, vol. 12 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Renmin Chuban She [Zhejiang People’s Publishing House], 1999), p. 263.

  “The ‘Vacuum Tube’ ”: Peng, pp. 52–53.

  “trembling with fear”: Supplement to the Collected Works of Ma Yinchu (Shanghai: Sanlian Shudian Press, 2007), p. 328.

  there were ferocious quarrels: Jonathan Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1859–1980 (New York: Viking Press, 1981), pp. 256–60.

  like Qu Qiubai and Hu Yepin: Ibid., pp. 207–36.

  “China is now divided”: FRUS, 1944, p. 472.

  “Yenan boiled over”: Shi Zhe, Feng yu Gu: Shi Zhe hui-yi-lu [Peaks and Valleys: The Memoirs of Shi Zhe] (Beijing: Hungxi Publishing Co, 1992), p. 17.

  “In mid to late August”: Chu Anping, Keguan [Objectivity], Nov. 11, 1945 in Chu Anping Wenyi [Collected Essays of Chu Anping] (Shanghai: Dongfang Chuban Zhungxin [Eastern Publishing Center], 1998), pp. 3–8.

  “Most of the people”: Lu Ling, Qiu Ai [Night of the Chinese Victory] (Haiyan Bookstore, 1946), pp. 194–202.

  At the waterfront: White, In Search, pp. 235–36.

  “all of China went crazy”: Xia Yan, Xia Yan Zejuan [Autobiography of Xia Yan] (Nanjing: Jiangsu Wenyi Chuban She [Jiangsu Literature and Arts Publishing House], 1996), p. 172.

  “I am very optimistic”: Time, Sept. 3, 1945.

  a rickshaw race: John Hart Caughey, The Marshall Mission to China, 1945–1947 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), p. 53.

  “I alone feel great shame”: Taylor, p. 320.

  “plunge China into chaos”: Ibid.

  “I was excited for a while”: Hu Feng, Hu Feng Zizhuan [Autobiography of Hu Feng] (Nanjing: Jiangsu Wenyi Shuban She [Jiangsu Literature and Arts Publishing House], 1993), pp. 343–44.

  “occupied for a second time”: Keguan, Nov. 11, 1945.

  The KMT was corrupt: Ibid.

  “The waiting area”: Da Gong Bao, Dec. 22–25, 1945.

  “barely a human trace”: Ibid.

  “Shanghai was bulging”: Lattimore, p. 206.

  “a raw, unheated city”: Rand, p. 275.

  “This place called Shanghai”: Caughey, p. 53.