The China Mission

by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

  It would also be hard to avoid fighting. Since the killing of the brash OSS agent John Birch, there had been numerous worrying encounters with Communists. “Never fire the first shot,” Mao ordered. But that did not mean ceding ground. The idea, as Zhou put it, was to force “retreat in the face of difficulty.” After several confrontations in which Americans stood down to avoid breaking the fratricidal-warfare injunction, Wedemeyer complained that the Communists were “doing their utmost to intimidate me and to cause precipitous offensive action on my part.” He was trying to keep his troops from being provoked.

  But to Marshall’s mind, the key factor was the Soviets. The Red Army still had hundreds of thousands of troops in Manchuria; no one was certain when, or if, they would leave. While Marshall admitted to uncertainty about just how much help the Kremlin was giving the CCP, he knew it was far from all-out support. A sharp increase would mortally threaten Chiang, even with additional help from Washington. It was a matter of geography: the long Siberian border made it easy for the Soviets to arm, guide, and give refuge to their Chinese comrades.

  “We must clear our hands out here as quickly as possible in order to avoid the inevitable Russian recriminations,” Marshall wrote Truman. In part, he hoped to reassure Stalin, who was seized with fear of a major American presence in Manchuria or north China. But more than reassure, Marshall hoped to shame. Wedemeyer laid out the logic to Eisenhower: “General Marshall feels that the inactivation of the China Theater at an early date will greatly strengthen the Generalissimo’s pressure for the removal of Russian Forces from Manchuria. I concur in this idea.” With Americans leaving and the Soviet Union still occupying, “the more clearly she becomes a deliberate treaty violator in the eyes of the world,” Marshall reasoned.

  He wanted quick action on a sustainable long-term presence. But sustainable did not mean trivial. He had, soon after arriving, pushed to continue sending ammunition for the Nationalists’ US-supplied weapons. A US-backed air force would have hundreds of fighters, bombers, and transport planes. American officers would serve as “middle men” in the military unification process. And the new Military Advisory Group would give training and advice.

  Some American officials found the advisory group a bridge too far. Others wanted the mission to continue creeping, stretching the definition of “advisory.” There were proposals for a 4,000-man operation, with officers accompanying Chiang’s troops into the field, and for additional navy forces (raising suspicions among army men, who worried about an inter-service takeover almost as much as a Communist one).

  Chiang pushed for an expansive American mission. He offered commercial advantages as a sweetener and mentioned pointedly that, if Washington was not interested in a serious military relationship, he had other offers. Wedemeyer worried that Chiang “aimed to create conditions that render our military assistance against the Chinese Communists, and possibly the Soviet Communists, mandatory or inevitable.” Such suspicions were exacerbated by Chiang’s meddling in personnel decisions, in an attempt, Wedemeyer groused to Marshall, to secure “the services of an American who will practically sell out his heritage.” There was also a dispute about African American troops; Chiang had allowed them into China only on the condition that they stay far west, out of sight.

  With Marshall’s prodding, Truman authorized the Military Advisory Group’s creation at the end of February. He capped its size at 1,000. As important as what it would do was what it would not do. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were explicit: “This participation in training would not under any circumstances extend to U.S. personnel accompanying Chinese troops in any combat operations.”

  After seven days and 3,600 miles, Marshall landed back in Chongqing on a sodden afternoon and soon came down with a heavy cold. Still, he was feeling good about the Committee of Three’s journey. He also received a radio message from Washington. His aide Jim Shepley had recently gone home and sent back some words from Truman: “His praise of your achievements was glowing. He indicates a strong desire to leave China to you and is interested largely in determining what if any further support he can give you.”

  Congress, however, was not feeling quite as giving. Marshall had promised Chiang “liberal American assistance” to secure unity and help rebuild. “I get the impression many of the things you have in mind may be a little harder to get than we supposed,” Shepley cautioned. “Your scheduled return is extremely well advised.”

  First Marshall needed to settle one lingering issue. There was still disagreement on whether truce teams would enter Manchuria, even as tensions over the region grew. Already dismayed by ongoing Soviet occupation and economic demands, Marshall was also hearing from Washington that “all you have accomplished may be undone by a serious depreciation of Sino-Soviet and U.S.-Soviet relations over Manchuria.” Secretary of State Byrnes had recently taken it up with Moscow, invoking the Open Door and decrying “discrimination” against American economic interests.

  Chiang, meanwhile, was giving up on Soviet support entirely. The Kremlin’s price had been rising, and finally it was too high. His people were incensed. It was time for a tougher line. Marshall had advised him to stall on negotiations with Moscow until he had made progress with Yenan—unity being the best defense against Soviet mischief. But on March 6, as Marshall returned to Chongqing, Chiang’s government made its first formal protest against Soviet troops in Manchuria.

  Ready to depart, sick with a cold, Marshall was exasperated. He pressed Zhou about Manchuria and got only evasions: it was a matter of foreign affairs, no business of the CCP’s. “General M. looked badly this evening. First time I noticed it in him,” Caughey recorded. “He is a very angry man,” Melby thought, “and Chinese time is beginning to run very short in his mind.” Marshall hardly needed the reminder he got from a leader of the Democratic League: “If no peaceful solution is found for the Northeastern situation. . . . even the foundation of peace in China you have laid will be shaken.”

  On March 9, Marshall visited Chiang in the country. A sumptuous dinner was waiting: whole fish, roast beef and mashed potatoes, English custard, and Taiwanese fruit in gold lacquer bowls. The wine, which Madame Chiang poured generously, was the best Caughey had ever tasted, like “liquid black walnuts.”

  After the Generalissimo said his evening prayer, he and Marshall talked. Chiang liked what he had heard of Marshall’s trip north with the Committee of Three. “His impression of Mao Zedong is that he is a deceptive person,” Chiang recorded. “I think he judges people very well.” Chiang took the opportunity—one rarely missed, as Marshall had noticed since their first conversation nearly three months earlier—to highlight Yenan’s ties to Moscow. In a war between China and the Soviet Union, Chiang repeated, Mao would surely fight on Stalin’s side.

  But Marshall was more focused on truce teams, which he thought essential to keeping Manchuria from destroying all progress. Each time he had pressed the point, Chiang balked. The stated rationale was that the Soviets would demand a role; the real fear was that truce teams would impede him from taking control of Manchuria. If the Communists wanted the teams, Chiang figured they could not be good.

  Scrambling to allay Chiang’s unease, Marshall wrote a directive by hand, forbidding the truce teams from hampering the “reestablishment of sovereignty” by the Nationalists. A secret instruction to the American team captains would address the risk of Soviet interference: “acquiesce with casual politeness,” then “carry the ball without discussion.” Marshall asked Chiang to consider it.

  Chiang was also worried about mounting resistance from the “irreconcilables” in his ranks. Since March 1, the Nationalists’ Central Executive Committee had been in session, under heavy secrecy, charged with party ratification of the PCC political resolutions. Many Committee members had good reason to fear the course charted by Marshall’s agreements. Military unification threatened “power, prestige, money, and squeeze,” in Melby’s words, prompting rumors of a “revolt of the generals”; democratic reform meant “on
e of the greatest purges in the history of the country.” Conservative advisers warned Chiang of a “revolution” in the party, and his power depended on these anxious factions. He also had his own misgivings about democracy. “Most of the people are irresolute, uneducated, and inexperienced,” he said, and likely to be fooled.

  Marshall sensed “the heat of a political struggle” within the Nationalists’ central committee—“a Committee which rules China and whose officials and subordinates down the line hold their position of power and personal income by virtue of the Committee’s rule, now due to be abdicated to a coalition government.” He thought Chiang was making an effort to bring irreconcilables into line; Chiang had even asked Marshall to stay for part of the meeting, in case it developed “precariously.”

  But reaction was surfacing not just in Nationalist ranks, as those paying close attention saw. A well-sourced embassy staffer flagged “considerable change in the attitude of the Chinese Communists,” including frequent use of “fascist,” a staple of Kremlin invective. Melby, the resident Communist watcher, found them “an increasingly worried gang” and “quite prepared to take to the caves and ditches again if necessary.” When Zhou complained of “provocations” by Nationalist hard-liners, Marshall—not entirely disagreeing—asked for forbearance, urging him to refrain from matching every taunt. But Melby wondered if both sides were simply saving “the dirty work” for Marshall’s absence: “He says he is coming back, but they may be gambling that something will happen and he won’t.”

  “If your subordinates can’t do it for you, you haven’t organized them properly,” Marshall had told Eisenhower in the thick of world war, ordering him to take a vacation. Now, in Chongqing, Marshall knew there were unsettled problems. But on March 10, the day after dinner at the Chiangs’, he instructed General Gillem to take over while he reported to Washington.

  Gillem had both impressive military acumen and an agreeable temperament. In the war, he had commanded an army corps that made it closer to Berlin than any other American force. On the Committee of Three’s tour, he had been earnest and attentive at Marshall’s side. “I could have been here for months without getting the knowledge gained in this week’s trip,” he wrote in his diary.

  Marshall hoped to fly the next day. First, he was intent on finalizing agreement on truce teams in Manchuria. Chiang had accepted Marshall’s proposal, with conditions, but then Zhou had raised his own issues with it. Still, Marshall’s fellow Committee of Three members wanted to send him off “with an easy mind.” Finally, as evening approached, there was a breakthrough. The terms were clear. Marshall could leave. His machinery of peace could be put in place in Manchuria, keeping it from becoming the flashpoint of the next war.

  As Marshall drove to the airfield, correspondents rushed off their dispatches: Marshall’s truce teams would go to Manchuria after all. It was fitting punctuation to the glowing coverage of the Committee of Three negotiations and North China tour. “He gave me far more hope for the future than anyone else I have seen here,” wrote a young journalist named John Hersey, born to missionary parents in Tianjin and bound soon for Japan to report on Hiroshima for the New Yorker. “Even when he was making random small talk, he revealed such a lively, pellucid memory and such scrupulous editing of all but the significant details that, had he said nothing about China, I would still be hopeful about the results of his mission.”

  On the flight home, Marshall noted in a memo that one of the last barriers had fallen: “I succeeded in getting an agreement for the entry of field teams from Executive Headquarters into Manchuria.” And more good news from Manchuria had come as he was preparing to leave: the Soviets were withdrawing. A Red Army commander in Mukden, Manchuria’s largest city, informed the Nationalists that his troops would be gone before the week was out.

  The C-54 was loaded with gifts—rugs, vases, trinkets—and warm clothes, since Marshall presumed he would not be in China another winter. He also carried a letter from the Generalissimo, for delivery to the Oval Office. Marshall and Chiang had talked at length before Marshall left, plotting future cooperation between their countries. Chiang had one request: that the United States not put conditions on its assistance, at least not explicitly, since conditions would only help the Communists. Otherwise, said Chiang, American policy was correct. “What General Marshall has been able to accomplish during the short period that he has been here, I feel certain, fulfills your expectations,” the letter to Truman read. Chiang asked that Marshall return soon and stay three more years, “for the seed that he has sown needs his presence to bring it to germination.”

  Marshall and Madame Chiang had bantered in front of a reporter. “They want to keep me in China and maybe bury me in China,” he said. “And what better place to be buried than in China?” she replied.

  A few days before his flight, Marshall sent a note to Shepley in Washington: “I received your message regarding the Secretary of State business. I am beginning to think that would be my only way to escape from this burden.”

  * At the time, the city was called Beiping (“northern peace”) rather than Beijing (“northern capital”), since Chiang had chosen Nanjing (“southern capital”) as the seat of his government.

  II

  SEEK TRUTH FROM FACTS

  CHAPTER 7

  If the World Wants Peace

  “A tall man with a weathered homely face, in which there was the visible touch of greatness, stepped briskly down the ramp of the plane,” opened Time’s account of the hero’s return. Katherine was waiting on the tarmac with Eisenhower and Acheson. Marshall kissed her, and they drove off. His mission so far, Time rhapsodized, had been an exercise in “the power, prestige, and principles of U.S. democracy.” He made his third appearance on the magazine’s cover. “Democracy,” said a caption, “is an exportable commodity.”

  Marshall had kept his return quiet as long as possible, to stave off a deluge of demands and give himself some time with Katherine. Fifty-eight hours of flight had worsened his cold; talking over the engine’s din had left him hoarse. Yet appeals flooded in—dinner invitations, speaking requests, a summons from the Pearl Harbor Committee for a last round of interrogation. A “Draft Marshall” movement entreated him to run for president: “We now need him more than ever.”

  Acclaim had come from all quarters. The cease-fire, the democratic reform, the military unification—they said he had done the impossible. “Really a stupendous accomplishment, and I doubt seriously whether any other person in the world could have done as much in so short a time,” Wedemeyer reported to Eisenhower. Henry Luce conveyed “how grateful we all are for what you have been able to do in China.” Carsun Chang, of the Democratic League, wrote, “It is miraculous how much you have accomplished in so short a time.” Chiang told the restive Nationalist ranks, “Ever since his arrival in China three months ago, he has worked indefatigably and sincerely as a friend to help us attain peaceful national unification.” A journalist made much of a supposed rethinking of the unsuitable Chinese name Marshall had been given: Ma-shieh-erh, “resting horse.”

  On the way home, Marshall had made two brief stops. In Tokyo, it was for lunch with General Douglas MacArthur, Pacific commander in the war and now proconsul of the Japanese occupation. While MacArthur’s fighting abilities were renowned, Marshall had long been wary of the bluster, narcissism, and politicking that came with them. (Roosevelt thought that MacArthur was one of the two most dangerous men in America.) But he hoped to borrow some officers from MacArthur’s occupation, and to send Chinese troops to Japan in return, as a boon to national pride.

  In Hollywood, it was dinner with the director Frank Capra, who was getting ready to shoot a movie called It’s a Wonderful Life. A few years earlier, Marshall had enlisted Capra to produce Why We Fight, an Oscar-winning documentary series on the war. Now he wanted Capra’s help on a series for release in China: short films that, “using the highest Hollywood professional standards,” would teach the masses how democracy worked.

>   On March 15, the day after landing in Washington, Marshall saw Secretary Byrnes at the State Department, and they then crossed the alleyway to the White House. From Chongqing, Marshall had made it a personal priority to keep Truman informed, even if the response was often nothing more than: “I know very little about Chinese politics. The one thing I am interested in is to see a strong China with a Democratic Form of Government friendly to us.” Marshall had seen how quickly officials fell into disfavor when Truman felt disregarded. Byrnes, for example, had announced the outcome of the Moscow summit without any notice and been on shaky ground with the president since.

  So when Marshall spoke to Truman, the substance was familiar. What Marshall had seen over the past three months had reinforced his mission’s logic. To have even a chance of militarily defeating the Communists outright, he assessed, the Nationalists would need “full-scale American intervention,” likely including combat troops. Even then, the probability of increased Soviet support for the CCP would make success, against a force with outside assistance and easy crossborder refuge, far from certain. If Moscow reacted more aggressively, the Generalissimo would be in serious trouble. Either way, continued chaos would make a divided China “easy prey” for Stalin. So unity remained the best hope—for aiding Chiang, for averting war, and for countering Soviet expansionism, in Manchuria and beyond.

  The next day, Marshall spoke to the public. He needed the American people to understand how much peace in China was worth to them, so the Chinese would see how much they stood to benefit from keeping it.

  “If we are to have peace, if the world wants peace,” Marshall, brow furrowed, told a room of journalists, “China’s present effort must succeed, and its success will depend in a large measure on action of other nations.” He hailed the past months’ “political and economic advances which were centuries coming to western democracies.” And he stressed that the United States had a “vital interest in a stable government in China, and I am using the word ‘vital’ in its accurate sense.”