All three understood the importance of their task. “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun,” Mao had observed after the bloody end of the first Communist-Nationalist united front. This time, the Communists would give up their guns only once political power was secure. “Our armies are the only guarantee of our continued existence in our liberated areas until the Government is reorganized,” said a CCP spokesman. Chiang also knew where power came from. “If I control the army, I will have the power to control the country,” he had realized years before. Persuading the Communists to give up their armies was like trying “to negotiate with the tiger for his skin,” he told Marshall. But in Marshall’s view, as Melby recorded it, “unless this one works the rest is pure illusion.”
As usual, Marshall had the wheels already turning. A general named Alvan Gillem was on his way from the United States to help design a national army. Other officers came from Shanghai for support. Wedemeyer plotted out a reduction in troop numbers, for a smaller, higher-quality force that would be superior to the “cancerous sore” of Chiang’s current military. Both sides, the idea went, would demobilize large portions of their armies, then Mao’s units would be folded into Chiang’s—made, in Byroade’s words, “digestible.” American intelligence estimated that Chiang had about three million troops, Mao almost one million.
Distrust was hardly the only obstacle. What Marshall envisioned was fundamentally new for both sides: the military as an institution of democracy rather than an instrument of party control. “You are accepting the proposition of westernizing your armies according to our democratic system,” he told Zhou and Chang. He hoped to do this, he said, “with as little variance to Chinese methods and traditions as possible.” But however it was handled, the change was a revolution in its own right.
Even with existential stakes, the atmosphere was warm. Over lunch that first day, there was frivolous chatter about how Americans eat rice and the prevalence of syphilis among dissolute Tibetan monks. Chang took to calling Marshall the Professor—“the Professor has full control of his students”—and threw a party after the Committee had wrapped up one evening. Zhou brought Madame Mao, said to be in town for dental work; a band played American songs.
Still, sessions were slow going. The table would be covered in thick reports and planning documents, stacks of Chiang’s British-import letterhead for notes, Dixon pencils and sharpeners—it was a “war of papers,” Marshall said approvingly. Despite his efforts at efficiency, they would start with an extended “exchange of compliments” and end with an “exchange of platitudes.” Discussion of a sentence could take an hour. Translation was often contested; when it dragged, Marshall would write letters. Amid the “long and extremely delicate negotiations regarding the unification of the army,” he told a friend, “I would like to boil this business all down to the simple proposition of negotiations with Katherine over where we plant the shrubs and flowers, shall it be cabbages or cauliflower, who gets the car this morning, and what are we doing this evening.” A couple hours in, they would break for hot towels, sweet cakes, and tea. Chang would emit a “raucous belch,” and talks would continue.
Only weeks earlier, Marshall had intended to stay out of these talks. Now he was moving them along with a sometimes heavy hand. He pushed for concrete proposals, since “a discussion without a definite paper is endless and usually arrives nowhere.” He had his staff develop plans, figuring that “the quickest way was to let the Americans try to take a crack at it by themselves.” (Some recommendations he ran by Chang privately first, both to check on Nationalist interests and to urge flexibility.) The Professor could be didactic: “That is the way every democracy works.” He held forth on American military thought and reflected on his past success bringing leery Allied militaries under one command, his “education in this sort of business.”
Day by laborious day, a plan came together. A week in, on a pleasant afternoon, they seemed to be nearing their goal. “You as umpire would be temporarily out of a job,” Chang joked. “I will welcome it,” Marshall replied. There was remaining disagreement on two questions: how quickly the process would move, and how thoroughly the armies would combine. Marshall had strong views on both. Integration must be fast and “fusion” total. There could not be intact Communist units that were part of a national military by insignia alone; it would be too easy to split off again. Zhou was resistant. “We must fully realize that the armies in China have been hostile to each other for 18 whole years,” he protested. That evening, Marshall asked to see him alone.
Over two months, Marshall and Zhou had come to respect one another. In manner they were different: Marshall impassive, his lined face stoic, Zhou with “quick, deft gestures,” in a diplomat’s words, and a “personality full of mobility.” But both had presence, precise minds, and powerful recall. Like Marshall, Zhou had his staff working sixteen-hour days, reviewing translations, writing memos, reading American newspapers—“if there is anything new, tell,” he instructed. “He could run General Motors,” Marshall’s aides said.
Marshall told Zhou he had an idea. He knew any delay was dangerous. Military integration could not wait or go halfway. It needed to move quickly and be complete, or the choreography of his mission would falter, democratic reform stall, and peace come apart. To avert that outcome, Marshall wanted to set up an American-run “elementary school” for Communist troops.
The premise behind it was that a major obstacle to integration was the “serious loss of face” that might result from throwing “unorganized swarms of Communist soldiers” into Nationalist units that had modern training and weapons. Marshall had in mind a three-month basic training where the Communists would learn how to be part of a twentieth-century army—how regiments and divisions work, how to care for weapons, how to parade in “a presentable manner.” As one American officer put it, “There will be no National Government units in the area to sneer at the Communists’ first efforts to organize a modernized force.” Marshall hoped the training would quash excuses for delay, speeding the end of autonomous Communist armies by months. And as he emphasized privately, it was essential “to expedite the integration to enable China to present a solid front to the Russian infiltration.”
Marshall made the case to Zhou—for demobilization, for integration, for the elementary school—and asked him to convince other Communist leaders. Marshall had pressured Chiang to give ground on political reform; now the CCP had to give ground on military unification. The next morning, Zhou flew to Yenan on an American plane.
“Nobody thought this could be done,” Marshall said when the Committee of Three reconvened two days later. Zhou had returned with assent in hand. Within eighteen months, armies at war for eighteen years would be a unified force, with five Nationalists for every Communist—or, rather, five former Nationalists for every former Communist, for it would be a truly integrated national army, answerable not to a leader or party, but to a democratic government. In Manchuria, the ratio was even more lopsided: there would be fifteen divisions, fourteen of them made up of former Nationalists, a steep reduction in Communist strength. Chiang understood that the package was advantageous for him. “Since agreement on reorganizing the armies has been reached, the harm will not be too bad,” he wrote in his diary. “Even if the Russians favor the Communists, they cannot inflict harm on me.”
They had only to work out final details—how to draw military zones, how to structure commands. Then, to Marshall’s displeasure and disbelief, they got stuck on one: how to title the agreement. Chang rejected the inclusion of “nationalization,” arguing that it implied the illegitimacy of current Nationalist forces; Zhou demanded it, on party orders. Suddenly they were deadlocked again.
The dispute, however petty, reflected deeper unease. Although Zhou had gotten his comrades to sign off on the plan, Mao had been underscoring the dangers. “We want unification, but we do not want to be eliminated,” he said. “How we should go about it should be decided according to the concrete circumstances of
the time. This is the difference between our way and the way of the French Communists,” who had disarmed too carelessly, too soon.
In Nationalist circles, there was pressure from the right. Marshall recognized that “the conservatives political and military are naturally rather bitter against me,” as he wrote Truman, and that Chiang “is in an extremely difficult position struggling with the ultraconservative and determined wing of each group, many if not most of whom will lose position and income all or in part by the changes proposed.” There were signs that hard-liners were striking back: the Manchuria riots, protests against the Executive Headquarters in Beijing, attacks on PCC representatives in Chongqing.
Marshall decided to fire a shot across the hard-liners’ bow, in hopes of deterring outright sabotage. On February 23, he gathered local newspaper editors for a blunt meeting. “Now I have been sent on a diplomatic mission, but I am not at all a diplomat,” he began. He warned of what would happen if Nationalist opponents of unification succeeded in thwarting him. “When you terminate my mission, you terminate a great many other things,” he said. “If you are not already aware, please understand that there is a very large group in the United States who are opposed to practically anything outside of the United States and all they need is a good argument to force the Government’s hands.” He asked the editors to help make those risks understood.
It took two more days, but Marshall ultimately devised an unwieldy but acceptable title for the military agreement: “Basis for Military Reorganization and for the Integration of the Communist Forces Into the Nationalist Army.” On February 25 at 4 p.m., Chang arrived in his dress uniform, Zhou in a blue suit and with a fresh haircut. Marshall had given each a personalized leather briefcase as a token of thanks.
There was one last argument to be had before they proceeded. Marshall did not want to put his name on the agreement—he thought it was not his place. But the others insisted, and he conceded. “So if we are going to be hung,” he sighed, “I will hang with you.” Sixty reporters, Chinese and foreign, watched as the Committee of Three signed, Zhou and Chang with the same calligraphy brush, Marshall with a fountain pen he had taken from his pocket.
“The signatures this afternoon put an end to the long struggle between the Government and the Communists,” said Chang. “We will completely change the picture which has been dominating in China for the last 18 years,” said Zhou. They credited Marshall. Chang reeled off epithets: midwife of unification, leading strategist of the world, ambassador of peace.
Marshall added only a few words. “This agreement, I think, represents the great hope of China,” he said as camera shutters clicked. “I can only trust that its pages will not be soiled by a small group of irreconcilables who for a separate purpose would defeat the Chinese people in their overwhelming desire for peace and prosperity.” Amid the celebration, it was a deliberately discordant message, meant to put “on notice” anyone who might want to upset progress.
CHAPTER 6
First Lord of the Warlords
A few days later, the Committee of Three boarded Marshall’s C-54, took off into a morning sky of rolling dark clouds, and flew north. It was the start of a journey across the ground where high-level accord would have to take root. “At the top they drink toasts to one another,” went a local saying, “but here we plunge the white sword in and drag the red sword out.”
The first stop was the Executive Headquarters in Beijing.* From Hank Byroade in a hotel room, it had grown into a sprawling operation, as Marshall envisioned, officers spread over three floors in the Rockefeller-built Peking Union Medical College: Communists on one, Nationalists on another, Americans in between. Nearby, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, heart of the imperial capital, were starting to recover from years of Japanese occupation; Chiang Kai-shek’s portrait now hung from the Gate of Heavenly Peace.
The Committee was greeted by Walter Robertson, the American Executive Headquarters commissioner. A well-mannered Virginian, conservative in politics and scrupulously professional in conduct, Robertson led a briefing on the work of truce teams in the field. Then, in a wood-paneled auditorium, Marshall addressed the American, Nationalist, and Communist officers carrying out his experiment. “It is not so very difficult to reach a general agreement on a policy gathered around a table at Chongqing,” he told them. “The real test is in carrying that policy into successful execution, which the little teams of three men from this headquarters have succeeded in doing.” Their effort was “unique in the world’s history.”
Marshall knew any success so far had not come easily. To work, the Executive Headquarters had to “swing a heavy stick,” as an aide said, and Marshall himself was the heaviest stick available. “My time was largely consumed last week in furthering special actions to suppress fighting in isolated regions,” he had written Truman as the effort got up and running.
He received a daily “trusum,” a truce summary that registered infractions, charges, and countercharges by both sides. He pressed his counterparts in Chongqing to keep commanders in line. He brokered a propaganda truce to end sniping in the newspapers. He weighed in on how much cash and radio gear each truce team should carry. He directed the Americans to provide their Chinese partners with jackets, socks, and mittens when setting out for wintry battlefields—they will “be your friends for life.”
Everything from basic facts to destinations of truce teams was a matter for dispute. “Both sides,” Byroade recorded, “are especially eager to get teams to the areas where they are outnumbered and have reason to fear the other side.” Each promoted its own tales of grievance, sometimes much embellished, while denying more incriminating anecdotes. Early on, the contested provinces of Rehe and Chahar—the sticking point in the first Committee of Three—had proved especially problematic. A Communist team member had turned recalcitrant, being generally evasive and occasionally vanishing. Then there had been a Nationalist troop movement that prompted Marshall to warn Chiang against “establishing unfortunate precedents and disrupting the armistice.” It took days of attention, from both Beijing and Chongqing, before an uneasy stasis set in.
Most Americans found the Communists to be the more troublesome partners. In Beijing, they frequently stalled, pleading a lack of personnel or the need to “study a matter further.” Some chalked this up to malice, some to incompetence. “This can probably be attributed to the guerrilla nature of their past operations,” Byroade surmised. In the field, there was, an American officer reported, “a degree of cooperation and cold consideration of facts and evidence presented, from the National member, but only one-sided consideration from the Communist.”
The Nationalists, however, proved difficult on one important question: whether the Executive Headquarters had authority over Manchuria. The Committee of Three agreement had not made it clear, but Marshall was surprised when he learned that Chiang wanted to keep truce teams away for the time being. It meant that, when the Red Army withdrew from Manchuria, truce teams might be absent where they were needed most.
Still, Marshall considered the Executive Headquarters “the most important instrument we have in China,” and he had been adding to its functions. The number of truce teams quickly jumped from six to seventeen, then doubled again, so that one was always on hand to rush out and thwart a bellicose commander’s “pleasant dreams of conquest.” A special unit was charged with overseeing restoration of railways. There were still nearly half a million Japanese in north and central China, and the Executive Headquarters was supposed to get them home. And now it had another responsibility, implementation of the military agreement. The task was immense: reducing total divisions by 80 percent, stripping generals of control over civilian affairs, instituting democratic checks. “The prosperity of China is directly dependent upon your execution of this new mission,” Marshall told the officers in Beijing.
So was the success of his own mission. This infrastructure of peace was key to the endgame. With agreements on a cease-fire, democratic unity, and mil
itary integration now signed, Marshall had started putting that endgame into motion. He radioed the State Department to say it was time for an assistance package and notified Chiang and Zhou that he would soon go to Washington to ensure that the new China got its due. He would return, but then leave China for good by late summer. Even that, he pointed out, would be “a great deal longer than I anticipated.”
Everywhere the Committee of Three went, Marshall was received as a conquering hero. Smiling families thronged his car. Bands struggled spiritedly through the “Star-Spangled Banner.” School groups clapped in unison. A governor presented a painting of the Taoist god of war and pronounced Marshall “god of war of the world.” Crowds waved homemade signs: “Most Fairly Friend of China,” “Terror of the Evildoers,” “First Lord of the Warlords.”
With Marshall, Zhou, and Chang conversing in its leather armchairs, the three Executive Headquarters commissioners along for the ride, the C-54 crisscrossed the North China Plain, a heartland stretching from the Yangtze in the south to the Great Wall in the north, bleak in winter and sun-scorched in summer. General Gillem, also accompanying Marshall, had a stateside analogy for most locales: west Texas, the Dust Bowl, the Chicago of China. They went from commander to commander, trouble spot to trouble spot, the spirit of the Committee of Three meant to stir a generalized spirit of cooperation. “The situation,” Marshall was saying by their tenth stop, “is most encouraging.” They did so much toasting, ganbei, that the trip was referred to as “the ganbei circuit.”
Marshall gave each truce team a pep talk. He lauded their “great personal sacrifices” and “high spirit for the good of the Chinese people.” He appealed to them to let go of historic antagonisms: “The rights and wrongs of the past 18 years will be debated for 18 years to come. We have something now that demands that we look entirely in the future.” He talked about baseball. “Everybody disagrees with the umpire,” he said. “But the game can’t go on without him.”
The China Mission Page 14