Practicing History

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Before he ever reached China, Hurley’s estimate of the situation was shaped by the premise, which he accepted without question because it was told to him personally by Molotov, that the Soviet Union was not interested in the Chinese Communists, who were not really Communists at all. He thereafter underestimated them, said their strength and popular support were greatly exaggerated, and insisted that as soon as they were convinced that the Soviet Union would not support them, they would settle with the National Government and be content with minority status. Coalition would be easy. “There is very little difference, if any,” he reported, between the “avowed principles” of the Kuomintang and the Communists; both “are striving for democratic principles.” This may well be the least sophisticated statement ever made by an American ambassador. It reflects the characteristic American refusal to recognize the existence of fundamental divergence; hence the American assumption that there is nothing that cannot be negotiated.

  Hurley accepted no guidance from his staff. Because he was over his head in the ancient and entangled circumstances which he proposed to settle, he fiercely resented and rejected the counsel of anyone more knowledgeable about China than himself. When the coalition blew up in his face and he found Chinese affairs resisting his finesse, depriving him of the diplomatic success he had counted on, he could find an explanation only in a paranoid belief that he was the victim of a plot by disloyal subordinates. He did not consider there might be a Chinese reason.

  On the premise that his mission was to sustain Chiang Kai-shek, Hurley of course blocked the bid of Mao and Chou to go to Washington, the more so as it was intended to bypass himself. Although their message had been addressed to Wedemeyer for just that reason, it reached Hurley because Wedemeyer was absent in Burma at the time and he and Hurley had an agreement to share all incoming information. A second message from Yenan the next day, addressed to Wedemeyer on an “eyes alone” basis, quoted Chou En-lai as specifically stating that “General Hurley must not get this information as I don’t trust his discretion.” This, too, reached Hurley with effect that can be imagined. At the same time he learned through information passed by Nationalist agents in Yenan of Bird’s and Barrett’s military proposals to the Communists. A terrible bell rang in his mind: Here was the reason why the Communists had walked out on coalition. They had received a direct offer and were already secretly proposing to go to Washington over his head!

  Barrett’s proposals had, of course, emanated from Theater Command, but Hurley ignored that out of his need to find some conspiratorial reason for the breakdown of coalition. Wrathfully claiming that Bird and Barrett had acted without authority, he informed the President on January 14 that their action had become known to him only when it “was made apparent by the Communists applying to Wedemeyer to secure secret passage for Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai to Washington for a conference with you.”

  Only in this context (repeated in a second telegram of February 7) was Roosevelt informed of the Communist request. It appeared as no more than a by-product of unwarranted action by American officers undermining Hurley’s efforts for coalition.*1 The plan for military cooperation with Yenan, Hurley said, would constitute “recognition of the Communist Party as an armed belligerent” and lead to “destruction of the National Government … chaos and civil war, and a defeat of America’s policy in China.” In the meantime, he assured Roosevelt, by discovering and frustrating the Communists’ maneuver, he had now prevailed upon Chou En-lai to return to Chungking to resume negotiations.

  What of the receiving end? The Communist request reached Roosevelt in terms already condemned by his Ambassador. It reached him, moreover, when he was plunged into preparations for the Yalta conference and overwhelmed by the dismaying problems of approaching victory. (Hurley’s second, fuller telegram arrived after the President had already left Washington for Yalta.) War crimes, the post-war treatment of Germany, the Soviet claim to sixteen seats in the United Nations, the Polish border, the arrest of Badoglio, trouble in Yugoslavia and Greece, the fall of the Iranian government, not to mention the necessity, according to Secretary Stettinius, of a “private talk with Mr. Churchill on British meat purchases in Argentina”—all these in the thirteenth year of a crisis-filled Presidency did not leave Roosevelt eager to precipitate a new crisis with the unmanageable Chiang Kai-shek.

  Bewildered by the intractability of China, disenchanted with the Generalissimo but fearful of the troubles that would rush in if the United States relaxed support, Roosevelt was inclined to look for a solution in the coming conference with Russia. His hope was to secure Stalin’s agreement to support the Nationalist government, thus giving the Chinese Communists no choice but unity. He succeeded in obtaining the desired agreement at Yalta, and returned to be confronted by a choice in our China policy. Tired, ill, and in the last month of life, he made a decision that closed this episode.

  Coalition having reached another deadlock, Hurley and Wedemeyer arrived in Washington in March 1945 for consultation. Choosing their presence there as the opportunity to bring to a head the issue in American policy, all the political officers of the Embassy in Chungking, led by the chargé d’affaires, George Atcheson, joined in an unprecedented action. With the concurrence and “strong approval” of Wedemeyer’s chief of staff, they addressed a long telegram to the Department, in effect condemning the Ambassador’s policy. It pointed out that the Communists represented a force in China that was on the rise, that it was “dangerous to American interests from the long-range point of view” to be precluded from dealing with them, that with the approach of a landing in China the time was short before we would have to decide whether to cooperate with them or not. They recommended therefore “that the President inform the Generalissimo in definite terms that military necessity requires that we supply and cooperate with the Communists,” and that such decision “will not be delayed or contingent upon” coalition.

  After precipitating the explosive reaction of Hurley, who could see only an “act of disloyalty” to himself, the telegram was submitted to the President with the Department’s recommendation that it provided an opportunity to re-examine the whole situation and “in particular” the possibility of “giving war supplies to the Chinese Communists as well as to Chiang Kai-shek.” The President discussed it in two conversations with Hurley on March 8 and 24, with no officer of the State Department recorded as present on either occasion. Hurley evidently argued convincingly that the Russian agreement secured by the President at Yalta would sufficiently weaken the Communists so that he could promise unity in China by “the end of April,” as he had already told the Department. Roosevelt, clinging to the goal he had started with and ever the optimist, decided in favor of Hurley’s policy of dealing exclusively with the Generalissimo and of making no connection with the Communists without his consent. In effect, this rejected the recommendation of the Embassy staff and left the conduct of American policy to the tyro Ambassador. Thus confirmed, Hurley was able to insist on his requirement that Atcheson and his colleagues involved in the Embassy telegram, five out of six of them Chinese-speaking and representing nine decades of Chinese experience, should be transferred out of China. This was duly accomplished on Hurley’s return.*2

  In making his choice the President undoubtedly believed or was persuaded by Hurley that it would compel the Communists to accept Chiang’s terms for coalition. But it was only possible to believe this by rejecting the Embassy’s appraisal of the seriousness and the dynamism of the Communist challenge. The choice was the last important decision of Roosevelt’s life. A few days later he left for Warm Springs, where he died.

  In March when the President made this decision, Mao and Chou in conversations with Service were still emphasizing and amplifying their desire for cooperation and friendship with the United States. The rebuff suffered by the lack of any reply to their offer to go to Washington was never mentioned (doubtless because they wished to keep it secret) and in fact none of the political officers attached to the Dixie Miss
ion knew anything about it. Supported by Chu Teh, Liu Shao-ch’i, and other leaders of the Party, Mao and Chou returned repeatedly to the theme that China and the United States complemented each other economically—in China’s need for post-war economic development and America’s ability to assist and participate in it. Trying to assess how far this represented genuine conviction, Service concluded that Mao was certainly sincere in hoping to avoid an exclusive dependence on the Soviet Union.

  The banishment shortly afterward of Service and the others concerned in the Atcheson telegram was a signal to the Communists of the American choice. In reaction their first overt signs of hostility appeared in the form of articles by Mao in the Communist press. Confined so far to attacks on the “Hurley policy,” these seemed still to retain hope of a change by Roosevelt’s successor. In his speech to the Seventh Party Congress in June, Mao seemed to be half warning, half pleading. If the pro-Chiang choice by “a group of people in the U.S. government” were to prevail, he said, it would drag the American government “into the deep stinking cesspool of Chinese reaction” and “place a crushing burden on the government and people of the United States and plunge them into endless woes and troubles.”

  After V-J Day American forces enabled the Nationalists, who had neither the means nor the plans ready for the occasion, to take the Japanese surrender on the mainland and regain the occupied cities. The United States moved its marine forces into the important northern cities and ports (Tientsin, Tsingtao, Peking, Chingwangtao) to deny these centers and the railroads in the area to the Communists until Chiang’s troops, ferried by American ship and planes, could get there. This constituted clear intervention to the Communists since their own forces would otherwise have reoccupied the north. Though justified by us under the pressing necessity of disarming the Japanese, our action was a logical development of the decision to sustain Chiang, and was taken as such by the Communists. Confirmed, as they saw it, by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration’s discrimination against Communist areas and by American toleration of Japanese troops serving with the Nationalists, they took the turn toward antagonism which in the course of the next four years was to become definitive.

  Through 1945 efforts for coalition, mediated by Hurley, continued—largely because neither side wished to appear to have chosen the course of civil war—but they were empty of intent. Failing to move either side any closer to the unity he had so often and so confidently promised, Hurley grew increasingly erratic and disturbed and suddenly resigned in November 1945 with a famous blast, the first salvo of McCarthyism. His mission had been thwarted, he claimed, by a section of the State Department which was “endeavoring to support Communism generally as well as specifically in China.” He could not admit, and perhaps never understood, that his own estimate of the situation had been inadequate and the current of Chinese affairs simply too strong for him.

  Beyond Hurley, responsibility lay with the President. Hindsight makes his rejection of the Embassy’s advice appear short-sighted, but every historical act is entitled to be examined in the light of the circumstances that surrounded it. Without doubt the primary factor influencing him was the Russian agreement obtained at Yalta. Both Roosevelt and Hurley believed that the Soviet Union held the key and that its still secret pledge to enter a treaty of alliance with Chiang Kai-shek (subsequently fulfilled in August) would in its effect on both sides in China serve to block the danger of civil war.

  This belief was made possible only by underestimating the Communists as a Chinese phenomenon with roots reaching down into a hundred years of unmet needs and strength drawn from the native necessity of revolution. Back in 1930 Ambassador Nelson Johnson, a man of no unusual powers but able to observe the obvious, reported that communism was not the cause of chaos in China but rather the effect of “certain fundamental conditions.” One such small voice, however, was overwhelmed as time went on by the conventional wisdom which held, first, that the Chinese would never accept communism because it was incompatible with the structure of Chinese society, and, second, according to the Molotov dictum which much impressed Roosevelt, that the Chinese Communists were not Communists at all. On these premises it was easy to persuade oneself that the Communists were not the coming rulers of China but a party of rebellious “outs” who could eventually be reabsorbed. When Hurley and Wedemeyer during this visit, along with Commodore M. E. Miles (chief of Naval Intelligence in China), conferred with the Joint Chiefs, “they were all of the opinion,” as reported by Admiral Leahy, “that the rebellion in China could be put down by comparatively small assistance to Chiang’s central government.”

  A second factor was that no proponent of another view, no one within the government who could effectively counter Hurley’s version, had regular access to Roosevelt. This left a terrible gap. The President, again according to Leahy, who lived in the White House, “had much confidence in Hurley’s reliability in accurately carrying out the duties assigned to him in the foreign field.” Moreover, if Leahy can be used as a mirror, the White House bought the thesis that Hurley was undermined in his efforts by a group of jealous career diplomats who had “ganged up on the new Ambassador appointed from outside the regular foreign service.”

  Here is a beam of light on the most puzzling aspect of our China policy: why the information and opinions provided by experienced observers maintained in the field for the express purpose of keeping our government informed were so consistently and regularly ignored.

  The answer lies in the deep-seated American distrust that still prevailed of diplomacy and diplomats, the sentiment that disallowed knee-breeches for Americans. Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the inter-war period, appeasement of fascism. Roosevelt reflected the sentiment in his attitude toward the career Foreign Service, which he considered a group of striped-pants snobs drawn from the ranks of entrenched wealth (as many of them were), unrepresentative of America, and probably functioning as tools of the British.

  There was enough truth in this picture to make it persist despite passage of the Rogers Act in 1924 formalizing the Foreign Service as a career based on entry by examination and promotion by merit. The Act itself had been the result of wide criticism of cliques in the State Department, leading to a congressional investigation.

  Ironically, the snob reputation had not on the whole been valid for China, which, not being considered a particularly desirable post by socialites who preferred the Quai d’Orsay and the Court of St. James’s, had been filled by academics, missionaries’ sons, and hardworking men promoted from the consular service, like Johnson and Gauss, the two ambassadors preceding Hurley. By a double irony, just such men would not have found themselves on easy terms with the White House.

  Hurley started his mission with his mind equally set against the Foreign Service. When he came to blame it for his troubles, he accused it alternately of conspiring to support communism and of sucking the United States into a power bloc “on the side of colonial imperialism.” In this odd coupling he was not unique. Robert Sherwood, when conferring with General MacArthur’s staff in Manila, found a persecution complex at work which seemed to conceive of the War Department, the Joint Chiefs, and even the White House as under the domination of “Communists and British Imperialists.”

  Finally, the weight of domestic opinion on Roosevelt must be taken into account. If the hold of Chiang Kai-shek as the archetype anti-Communist on American public opinion was such that his cause perverted American politics for a decade after the war, and if it has taken us twenty-seven years to untie the silver cord and even yet have not cut it loose, it can hardly have been easy for Roosevelt to untie it in 1945. Fear of communism lay very close beneath the skin, so close that in his final speech of the campaign of 1944 Governor Dewey, the Republican candidate, charged that Communists as a small disciplined minority, acting through Sidney Hillman, had seized control of the American Labor movement and �
�now … are seizing control of the New Deal through which they aim to control the Government of the United States.” Roosevelt, said this disciplined and respectable lawyer, had auctioned control of the Democratic Party to the “highest bidder”—i.e., Hillman and Earl Browder—in order to perpetuate himself in office. Through him communism would destroy liberties, religion, and private property.

  If a man like Dewey could resort to the tactics of the enormous lie and to a charge as reckless as any in the history of political campaigning, Roosevelt was politician enough to know how little would be needed to revive it. The autocrat of the Time-Life empire, Henry R. Luce, was rabid on this subject, especially with reference to China; his publications were the trumpet of Chiang’s cause. Summoned to battle by Chiang’s partisans, some of them sincere and passionate advocates like the former medical missionary Congressman Walter Judd, any of the myriad enemies of the administration could create serious trouble. Roosevelt was concentrating now on the coming conference in San Francisco to organize the United Nations and on his hopes of a four-power alliance after the war to keep world peace. It was a time at all costs to avoid friction. Since China was in any case secondary to Europe—a disability it suffered from all through the war—it did not seem worth the risk that the Atcheson telegram asked him to take.

  Thus passed the opportunity Mao and Chou had asked for. The factors operating against it suggest there never was an “if.” And yet there remains one strange contradictory sliver of evidence. Edgar Snow, the kind of outsider from whom Roosevelt liked to get his facts, reported a conversation with the President in March 1945 at the very time of the Hurley-Wedemeyer visit. Roosevelt was “baffled yet acutely fascinated,” Snow said, by the complexity of what was happening in China and complained that nobody explained it satisfactorily, Snow included. “He understood that our wartime aid was actually a form of intervention in China”; he “recognized the growing strength of the Chinese Communists as the effective government of the guerrilla area”; he asked “whether they were real Communists and whether the Russians were bossing them,” and asked further, “what, concretely, the Eighth Route Army could do with our aid in North China. He then said that we were going to land supplies and liaison officers on the North China coast as we drew closer to Japan.” Snow questioned whether, so long as we recognized Chiang Kai-shek as the sole government, all supplies would have to go through him. “ ‘We can’t support two governments in China, can we?’ ” he asked.