The China Mission

by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

  The final text opened with a litany of denunciations. “Sincere efforts to achieve settlement have been frustrated time and again by extremist elements of both sides,” Marshall wrote. He denounced the Nationalists’ “dominant group of reactionaries who have been opposed, in my opinion, to almost every effort I have made to influence the formation of a genuine coalition government” yet were banking “on substantial American support regardless of their actions.” He denounced the Communists’ “unwillingness to make a fair compromise,” “wholesale disregard of facts,” and readiness to inflict great hardship on the Chinese people in pursuit of “an economic collapse to bring about the fall of the Government, accelerated by guerrilla action.” (He also, at last, openly derided Yenan’s excuses for the Anping ambush that killed four Marines in July as “almost pure fabrication.”) He denounced both sides’ “overwhelming suspicion”—“they each seemed only to take counsel of their own fears”—even while acknowledging the fundamental conflict between their visions. The Communists, he specified, “frankly state that they are Marxists and intend to work toward establishing a communistic form of government.”

  Caught in the crossfire, Marshall lamented, was “the long suffering and presently inarticulate mass of the people of China.” Yet after the litany of denunciation, his solution sounded almost plaintive: “The salvation of the situation—as I see it—would be the assumption of leadership by the liberals in the Government and in the minority parties, a splendid group of men, who as yet lack the political power to exercise a controlling influence. Successful action on their part under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would, I believe, lead to unity through good government.”

  Among Marshall’s 1,800 words, any interested party could find something to fix on for its own purposes.

  Chiang would insist that the statement was “friendly and constructive” and appeal to his party to “accept good-naturedly any well-intentioned criticisms.”

  Chen Li-fu would thank Marshall for “calling our attention to the fact that the Chinese Communists are Marxists of the pure breed,” yet protest that the Nationalists accused of being “reactionaries” were simply more sophisticated in their understanding of Communist tactics.

  Some Nationalist officials would bite their tongues and merely acknowledge that the statement was “unusually frank.” One would score it “55 percent for the government, 45 percent for the Communists.”

  Zhou would condemn Marshall’s entire mission as treachery and mock Marshall’s belief that “this rotten government, still headed by the same Chiang Kai-shek, can suddenly be transformed into a good one.” Mao would proclaim: “We are now on the eve of revolution.”

  Both Nationalist and Communist newspapers would censor key portions of the statement. One military-backed Nationalist outlet would quote just the parts about the Communists and claim that Marshall was calling for their complete extermination. Others would delete the word “reactionary.”

  The third parties, their unity Marshall’s only remaining hope, would be divided in their response. “That General Marshall has not accomplished his mission in China,” the Democratic League would conclude, “is not a personal failure but is a failure of American policy.”

  Henry Luce, though privately judging the statement fair, would wonder whether it was time to “blow the whistle” on Marshall.

  The Soviets would turn openly hostile, the once genial ambassador to China accusing Marshall of playing the “ugly role of Chiang Kai-shek’s herald” and doing the bidding of “reactionary Republicans.”

  “Marshall’s farewell ‘a plague on both your houses’ statement has the Chinese vacillating between stunned silence and anguished screams,” Melby would sum up. “American interest in China,” he figured, “is now gone for a while. Later it will be different.”

  Yet for all the furor, the reaction amounted to less than Marshall had intended. Events far away would upend his choreography.

  On January 8, just before 8 o’clock in the morning, Marshall stepped out of a black Cadillac and onto the gravel at Nanjing’s airfield. It was here that, thirteen months earlier, the Chiangs had first welcomed him to China. It was here that, in the spring, Eisenhower had landed with a secret request from the president. It was from here that Marshall had set out on eight summertime trips to Kuling, going up and down the mountain as things fell apart below.

  On this morning the airfield was slick with snowmelt. Marshall, in trench coat and peaked cap, shook hands with those who had come to see him off. There were assorted American diplomats and officers, Ambassador Stuart smiling in a fedora, and a stone-faced Communist. The Generalissimo’s bulletproof limousine pulled up a few minutes late, and the Chiangs accompanied Marshall up the stairway and onto his plane to say good-bye. “Come back,” Madame Chiang told him, “come back soon.” Chiang looked into Marshall’s eyes as they shook hands.

  The plane took off shortly after 8:00. It would make its way, island by island, to Honolulu, where Marshall was due a week of rest. He was leaving China with little, just as he had arrived. Most of the gifts he had received—watercolors, tea sets, ivory carvings—had either been quietly shipped back already or left behind in the frenzied departure. As when coming, he was returning with just three aides: a clerk; his cook and orderly, Richard Wing; and Hart Caughey, who was glad to be both going home and extending his time with Marshall. “Adequate words are not within me to give you a true idea of how great a man I think he is,” Caughey, sitting on the plane as they began the trip, wrote in a letter to his wife. “If General Marshall can’t, no one can.”

  John Melby watched from the ground, noting that he was the only official who had been in China for Marshall’s arrival and was still there now. “It was a gallant cause, perhaps doomed to failure from the start, but worth the try,” he reflected in a letter to his mistress, Lillian Hellman. Doomed or not, failure had bleak implications: “Lacking any external restraint the boys are now quite naturally getting down to the really grim business of fighting a civil war as she is fought in China. . . . The really ugly part of this business is just getting under way.”

  Chiang also took the opportunity to reflect. When saying good-bye on the plane, he thought there had been tears in Marshall’s eyes and concluded, “I can see that he is a man of sentiments.” Going forward, Chiang believed Marshall would be on his side, through the next and final phase of operations against the Communists. “He and I ending like this is the biggest achievement of the past year,” Chiang wrote in his diary, with both triumph and relief. “It occurred to me,” he added, “that Marshall’s wife had once told him that Chairman Chiang would do whatever needs to be done if he thinks what he does is right or necessary. I think his wife is more astute than him.”

  Three hours after taking off, Marshall’s plane was over Okinawa. The island—where more than 100,000 American and Japanese troops had been killed in battle two years earlier, and which was now fast becoming a citadel of American military power—was visible below. All of a sudden, the pilot stepped into the cabin and addressed Marshall: “Congratulations, Mr. Secretary.”

  News of the appointment had come in over the cockpit radio. A leak had forced Truman to make the announcement early. Far from going home to ride and garden and read, Marshall was in fact about to, as he put it, “step from the frying pan and into the fire.”

  Caughey opened a bottle of scotch, a parting gift from another officer, and gushed about Marshall’s singular value to the country. Marshall shook his head and sighed, “Poor Mrs. Marshall.”

  EPILOGUE

  Losing China

  On June 5, 1947, five months after leaving Nanjing, Secretary of State Marshall traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to receive a twice-postponed honorary degree from Harvard. Two years before, war had forced him to forgo it; one year before, the China mission had. Finally at Harvard, he took the opportunity to share a few words. They would become the most famous of his life.

  In his matter-of-fact way, Marsh
all described Europe’s devastation and what it meant for America. He highlighted the menace of “hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.” He outlined the imperative of “breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people.” He called on his country to “do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.” Yet there was a catch: America could achieve little on its own. It should be willing to offer assistance on a previously unthinkable scale, but only if the recipients themselves took certain steps. “The initiative,” Marshall said, “must come from Europe.”

  Truman decided to call the aid effort the Marshall Plan, since only naming it after Marshall gave it any hope of clearing Congress. It would be the largest foreign-assistance package in history, nearly $13 billion in total* — a spur to European recovery, a check on Soviet expansion, a shining example of American leadership. As in China, Marshall saw the dangers of chaos and desperation. As in China, he saw overcoming those dangers as the precondition to overcoming a Communist threat. Unlike in China, he saw partners willing to do what only they could to make assistance work.

  Marshall had arrived back in Washington in January. Ahead of his return, the Senate had unanimously confirmed him as secretary of state, and messages of congratulations and offers of help had poured in (including from, of all people, Patrick Hurley). When he reached Washington, Katherine and Caughey along, Marshall took care of one persistent rumor before taking up his new task. He reiterated to reporters that he would not run for president in 1948, or ever. A tense, unsettled world gave him enough to catch up on without political distractions.

  There were challenges everywhere, and for thirteen months Marshall had thought of little besides China. It did not take long for him to start repeating the warnings and exhortations of his final days as army chief of staff, now with new urgency and perspective. “Peace has yet to be secured,” he told students weeks into the job, “and how this is accomplished will depend very much upon the American people”—a “heavy responsibility,” but shirked at great peril. “We can act for our own good,” he would declare, “by acting for the world’s good.”

  When Marshall first went before Congress as secretary of state, however, his previous mission dominated discussion. Behind closed doors, he was as blunt as he had been with Chiang. He laid out the dilemmas and what it would take for American help to make a real difference in China. “Certain things have to happen over there,” he said. “The great problem is how much deterioration sets in before those things do happen.”

  Since Marshall’s departure, every last agreement had collapsed. The Executive Headquarters and Committee of Three had officially dissolved. As promised, the Americans were flying Communist personnel to Yenan, and the remaining members of the Dixie Mission were boarding return flights out. The equipment for Marshall’s aborted “elementary school” for Communists had been repurposed to train Nationalists. Chiang had taken Marshall’s exit as his opportunity to fight without restraint, more confident than ever in his prospects. (He took Marshall’s apology for not mentioning the secretary of state appointment beforehand as a sign that there was no lingering ill will.) Melby, staying on in Nanjing, was more pessimistic than ever: “All over and in all directions the signs of deterioration are deepening and accelerating.”

  “One of the saddest, or rather the most inexcusable, things is to say ‘I told you so,’ ” Marshall testified before Congress. “But this was all foreseen and all stated again and again and again.”

  As China continued on its course, global tensions sharpened. In March, Marshall attended another Moscow great-power summit, where any lingering hope for concord definitively ended. While Marshall was there, Truman called for assistance to Greece and Turkey in their fights against Communist insurgency and Soviet infiltration. “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures,” he pronounced—what soon became known as the Truman Doctrine.

  Two days later, the Nationalist assault on Yenan began. Chiang’s chief of staff said the Communists would be finished in three months.

  Marshall supported Truman’s call to assist Greece and Turkey, but found its language too sweeping, too resistant to prioritization, too uniform in approach. For aid to work, there would have to be a shared commitment. “No amount of assistance can prove effective or of lasting benefit unless the Greek people themselves are prepared to work together resolutely for their own salvation,” he said. That meant freeing political prisoners. It meant rejecting “armed extremists of whatever political complexion.” Perceptive observers pointed out that Marshall’s message was “strikingly similar in spirit to his now famous statement on the Chinese situation.”

  Marshall also knew that Greece and Turkey were just the beginning. As he registered desperation throughout Europe, he returned to dilemmas that had occupied him before—how to reverse the chaos and collapse that invited Communist success; how to engender faith in democratic societies; how to help to the greatest extent possible without obscuring the fact that “basic responsibility for European recovery rests on the European countries themselves.” If the effort in Europe was to work, it had to overcome those dilemmas in ways that Marshall could not in China.

  To come up with a plan, he summoned George Kennan, the diplomat whose telegrams from Moscow he had read over the prior year. Marshall wanted Kennan to head up a new State Department strategy outfit, the Policy Planning Staff, and make European assistance its first task. When Kennan received the charge and requested instructions, Marshall offered just one: “avoid trivia.”

  Almost as soon as the Marshall Plan was announced, the appeals began. There should be a Marshall Plan for China, said Chiang’s ambassador in Washington. There should be a Marshall Plan for Latin America, said South American governments. There should be a Marshall Plan for the entire Far East, said intelligence reports. So began a venerable tradition in American statecraft: for every problem, a Marshall Plan was the solution.

  Marshall himself disagreed. Even if one great challenge consumed strategists, he resisted pressure for one great solution. The best approach, he would say, comprised “not big things but many little things.”

  During World War II, Marshall had struggled to manage “the hungry table”—the continual clamor of needy allies and “localitis”-afflicted commanders for more support. As secretary of state, he presided over another hungry table. American power was vast, vaster than any other nation’s and at any other time, but not limitless. He had to weigh proliferating needs, to distinguish the vital from the secondary, vital and achievable from vital but futile. Otherwise, the Communists’ aptitude for chaos could disperse American effort across so many fronts that all might be lost. “There is a tendency to feel that wherever the Communist influence is brought to bear . . . we should immediately meet it, head on as it were,” Marshall cautioned. “I think this would be a most unwise procedure for the reason that we would be, in effect, handing over the initiative to the Communists.”

  A few months after Marshall’s return, the Nationalists took Yenan. As CCP forces retreated, Mao decreed: “fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle you are not sure of winning.”

  To Marshall, in the new global struggle, the battle for Europe was not just most vital but also the one he could be most confident of winning. Soviet domination of the continent, given its resources and relative proximity, was America’s “strategic nightmare.” A Kremlin-controlled Europe would, Marshall assessed, “impose incalculable burdens upon this country and force serious readjustments in our traditional way of life.” Fortunately, prospects for holding the line in Western Europe were decent, as long as Europeans proved willing to do their part. On this score, Marshall was quickly heartened. While he had pledged never to campaign for the presidency, he was soon flying around the United States campaigning for his aid plan with all the fervor of
a candidate. It was “the greatest decision in our history,” he proclaimed, crucial to “the survival of the kind of world in which democracy, individual liberty, economic stability, and peace can be maintained.”

  Marshall repeated at every turn: “Only the Europeans themselves can finally solve their problems.” Of China he said the same: “the main part of the solution of China’s problems is largely one for the Chinese themselves.”

  For American security, the stakes in China were high, but not as high as in Europe. “China does not itself possess the raw material and industrial resources which would enable it to become a first-class military power within the foreseeable future,” Marshall argued, especially in its present state of “social and political revolution.” Western Europe had industrial capacity that, if harnessed by a Soviet military machine, would constitute a mortal threat; China did not. Turkey would offer a crucial base in a war against Moscow; China would not. When the Joint Chiefs of Staff ranked countries by the importance of their defense to national security, China was thirteenth—behind even Korea and Japan, to the chagrin of Nationalist officials.

  Yet for Marshall, as ever, preliminary to the question of should was the question of could. If the answer to the latter was no, the former was academic. His thirteen months in China gave him ample cause for skepticism, at a time when every dollar, officer, or weapon sent to Chiang was a dollar, officer, or weapon not available elsewhere.