Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 (61 page)

Roosevelt had calculated correctly that the story would reflect badly on Chiang, rather than on the president’s American advisers. On November 7 the president was reelected by 432 electoral college votes to Dewey’s 99. Although Roosevelt won the popular vote by only 2 million votes, it was still a comfortable mandate, and he had a new vice president, Harry S. Truman, at his side. (Henry Wallace had been dumped after Democratic Party power brokers made it clear that they regarded him as a leftist eccentric who was unfit for the presidency.) China was clearly not the decisive issue; the world war in Europe and the Pacific was occupying the minds of the public much more. The Stilwell crisis had not turned the tide further against Roosevelt. Nonetheless, the relationship of the United States with Chiang Kai-shek’s government had now reached a new low.

Then, unexpectedly, relations between Chongqing and Washington got a boost. As it turned out, the new warmth would have its own dangers. But for a short period, it looked as if the recall of Stilwell and the reelection of Roosevelt might just have lanced the boil that had aggravated the US-China partnership.

Most important of all in changing the temperature was the sudden halt in December of the Ichigô advance (although it did not end formally until February 1945). Ichigô marked the furthest penetration of Japanese troops into Chinese territory during the entire war, putting the enemy in control of even more territory than they had held in summer 1938, when Japan had thrust so deep into central China. Nonetheless, the campaign failed to achieve most of its long-term aims. Although it did place the US air bases near Guilin out of use, these were simply relocated further inland. More importantly, the American capture of Saipan in the Pacific meant that there was another site outside China from which the US could bomb the Japanese home islands, a campaign which included the fierce firebombing of Tokyo in 1944–1945. And while Ichigô did open up the link between French Indochina (under Vichy control) and central and north China, the ragged state of the Japanese army on the Chinese mainland by early 1945 made the connection of little use.
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Some 23,000 Japanese troops were lost during the campaign.
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Yet while Ichigô failed to help the Japanese gain outright victory, it also crippled the Nationalists. The great breadbasket and recruitment provinces of Henan and Hunan were lost, and the campaign cost the Nationalists a further 750,000 casualties.
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The halting of Japanese forces was something Chiang Kai-shek could cling to at the start of 1945, and he also found other grounds for cautious optimism. Chiang took Stilwell’s recall as a sign that America was “sincere” about helping China: “This is the greatest comfort for me in the new year.” He was still concerned about American attempts to arm militarist rivals such as Xue Yue and Long Yun, but told himself that the American attitude was “completely different” from the type of imperialism advocated by the British.
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Chiang was still persuaded that the US wanted to raise China’s status in the world, whereas the British had no intention of taking the country seriously in any postwar settlement.

Stilwell had left without waiting to brief his successor, General Albert Wedemeyer, nor had he left behind much in the way of paperwork (“Stilwell kept it all in his hip pocket,” observed one cynical veteran.)
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Wedemeyer was impressed by Chiang Kai-shek, but shocked by the state of the overall military command in China. Chiang also balked at the discovery that Wedemeyer intended to continue Stilwell’s policy of controlling Lend-Lease supplies. “It’s clear US policy hasn’t changed at all,” he wrote. “This makes my heart bitter.”
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Chiang remained convinced that the US was attempting to arm rival militarists, “distributing weapons as a bait, so the military will worship foreigners and disobey orders.”
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After his humiliation at Stilwell’s hands, Chiang was now ready to be suspicious at the slightest sign of disrespect from his allies.

Chiang’s rivals might have been surprised to know of his anger at the United States. Ambassador Clarence Gauss, whose increasingly despairing messages back to Washington showed his lack of confidence about the situation in China, resigned shortly after Stilwell’s recall, and Patrick Hurley was promoted from presidential envoy to full ambassador. Hurley’s arrival in post ended the policy of warmth toward the Communists advocated by John Service and supported at least tacitly by Gauss, and strengthened Chiang’s hand. Chiang had never had a clear understanding of the way that public opinion worked in a democracy. (That was his wife Song Meiling’s specialty, hence her assiduous courting of the American press and public.) Chiang also failed to understand how damaging the recall of Stilwell had been for his cause in the United States. Unfortunately, Hurley lacked the analytical abilities of his predecessors, and their experience of China. Whereas Gauss tended to think the worst of Chiang, Hurley thought the best, and not always to Chiang’s benefit. An Oklahoma oilman with a rambunctious manner, Hurley was known for his careless mangling of Chinese names, at first referring to the generalissimo as “Mr. Shek” and the Communist leader as “Moose Dung.” Hurley had excessive confidence in Chiang’s ability to unite China, and did not understand that the Communists were serious contenders for power. And understanding this immensely complex and delicate political situation was now critical to avoiding a civil war between the Nationalists and Communists.

Chiang was worried about the intentions of the CCP, and with good reason. The waning of his power had been matched by a steady growth in Mao’s. With party membership of over a million people, and some 900,000 regular troops supplemented by a similar number of militia troops, the Communists would clearly be a major force in the postwar order. Yet at this point, all Chinese parties assumed that the war against Japan would continue for at least one or two more years. This created a dilemma for Mao as to how best to orient his party toward the new world. The Communists had to be seen to support the war effort against Japan. To move openly against Chiang would rob them of the moral high ground from which they could accuse him of emphasizing the fight against the Communists over the war against Japan. (This accusation remained powerful even though Nationalist troops were fighting the Japanese in both the Ichigô assault and in Burma, and the CCP had contributed to neither of these campaigns.) On the other hand, Mao was determined that “this time, we must take over China.”
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The party debated how far it could exploit the opportunities afforded by Ichigô. With the Nationalists on the back foot, and the Japanese close to exhaustion, might there be an opportunity for the Communists to place themselves in a better position for the postwar conflict, now surely just a year or so away? Mao advocated caution, noting that “our party is not yet sufficiently strong, not yet sufficiently united or consolidated,” a warning that the party should not try to occupy areas where its power was not completely assured. It still expanded cautiously into areas where the Nationalists had retreated, although implementation of its social policies was patchy.
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The Dixie Mission had been one crucial part of the strategy, an attempt to create a new warmth with the US, and to persuade its American contacts that the CCP could provide behind-the-lines assistance for an American invasion of the Chinese coast. But the fallout from Stilwell’s recall in October 1944 now changed the relationship between Chiang and the Americans. Until autumn 1944 both the then American chief of staff (Stilwell) and the US ambassador (Gauss) had been hostile to Chiang, and although they did not sympathize with the aims of the Communists, they had admired aspects of what they knew about the party. But Stilwell’s replacement, Wedemeyer, was much less abrasive in his dealings with Chiang, and Hurley, who took over from Gauss, strongly favored him, putting him in the position both of holding the ring between the parties as well as advocating Chiang’s viewpoint.

Hurley did start well. On November 7, 1944, against Chiang’s wishes, the new ambassador made his own journey to Dixie. When his flight touched down at Yan’an, he emerged at the top of the aircraft steps and disconcerted the waiting welcome party, including Mao Zedong, by giving a Choctaw war cry (a nod to his Oklahoma heritage). Peter Vladimirov, the Soviet agent sent to Mao’s base area at Yan’an, was impressed by the way that Hurley handled himself in discussions with the CCP’s top leaders: “Well groomed and self confident,” he allowed, although adding (perhaps thinking of the war cry) “slightly eccentric manners.”
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The negotiations were lively and the two sides came up with a five-point plan that would allow the Communists to enter a coalition government under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership, while retaining their own armed forces. However, when Hurley returned to Chongqing, Chiang turned the proposal down flat. Unless the CCP placed its troops directly under Nationalist command, there would be no place for it in a new government.

Hurley reversed course and insisted on the generalissimo’s preferred option: the CCP must merge its forces with the Nationalist military before entering a coalition.
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Accusations flew back and forth. Chiang “had the audacity to say that the Chinese Communist Party must hand over its troops before he would bestow ‘legal status’ upon it,” Mao scoffed.
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Hurley, for his part, made his view clear in a telegram to acting secretary of state Edward Stettinius (who had taken over from a weary Cordell Hull in December 1944): “In all my negotiations with the Communists, I have insisted that the United States will not supply or otherwise aid the Chinese Communists as a political party or as an insurrection against the National Government.” Other officers disagreed strongly: Service argued that “as we did in the case of Yugoslavia,” the Americans should simply tell Chiang that they would arm any forces that were anti-Japanese.
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Late in the previous year, Service had sent a telegram to Stilwell declaring “The Kuomintang [Nationalist Party] is dependent on American support for survival. But we are in no way dependent on the Kuomintang,” adding that “we need feel no ties of gratitude to Chiang.”
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Even in a private telegram, this was an astounding thing to say of a regime that had been resisting Japan for over seven years. At least one group within the US wartime intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), also advocated the establishment of “a major intelligence organization in North China based at . . . Yenan, and operating through four main forward bases in 8th Route Army or guerrilla areas in Shansi, Hopei, Shantung, and Jehol, with seventeen advanced teams, and a large number of native agents.”
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This level of recognition from the Americans would have raised the status of the Communists to an even higher level.

In March 1945 Service reported on a conversation with Mao in which the Communist leader made it clear that he thought that America was making a foolish move by backing Chiang. The CCP, Mao claimed, was the only party that truly represented the interests of the peasantry, the largest section of the country’s population. Stressing again the goodwill that Hurley had earned with his “five points,” Mao complained, “We don’t understand why America’s policy seemed to waver after a good start.”
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Neither Hurley’s nor Service’s analysis was wholly wrong. It was true, as Hurley had it, that if the CCP did not merge its forces with the Nationalists, then it would use those forces to launch an attack on them. It was also true, as Service had it, that Chiang was desperate for the Communists not to be seen as an independent power base, even if it would aid the anti-Japanese cause. But both American viewpoints, widely differing though they were, understandably assumed that the best policy was the one that helped defeat Japan as fast as possible. This was, of course, by far the best outcome for the war-weary Allies as a whole. The price for China, however, might well be the swift outbreak of civil war. At the heart of the problem was a stubborn fact that the Americans could not or would not see. Neither Chinese side was sincere about a coalition government for its own sake. Both Chiang and Mao saw it as a temporary arrangement while their parties prepared to vie for absolute power.

But Chiang and Mao were not the only ones weighing up the new realities of power in China. In Nanjing, Zhou Fohai was also trying to protect himself. Throughout 1944 Wang Jingwei’s health had been failing. From the very start of the Nanjing government’s life, Wang had been a forlorn and faded figure, with Zhou, Chen Gongbo, and others bearing most of the burden. On realizing how hollow Japan’s promises of autonomy for the regime had been, Wang seems simply to have lost heart, and by the end of his time in office he was little more than a figurehead. Along with psychological despondency, Wang’s physical ailments also came back to haunt him. He had never really recovered from the assassination attempt in 1935, and in March of 1944 he was flown to Japan and was confined in the Imperial University hospital at Nagoya, where he became almost entirely bedridden. Zhou flew to Japan to see him in August. Wang was shockingly gaunt, but able to express his wish that Zhou and Chen Gongbo should take over the government in Nanjing. Chen Bijun, Wang’s loyal wife, made clear her fury at the thought of her rivals achieving ascendancy.
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On November 10 Wang died of complications from pneumonia. Zhou Fohai was told the news the next day through the Japanese Embassy in Nanjing. “When I think about our journey together from Kunming to Hanoi, I can’t help but be sad,” he wrote. “Human affairs are not consistent.”
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Wang’s remains were flown back to Nanjing. In death he finally achieved what he had tried to do in life: he was reunited with Sun Yat-sen. A huge new mausoleum was built on top of the Purple and Gold Mountain just outside Nanjing, and Wang’s body was laid to rest just a short distance away from the last resting place of his old political master. Wang’s political journey had seen him move huge distances both politically—from radical revolutionary to collaborator with the Japanese—and geographically—from Nanjing to Europe, Chongqing to Hanoi to Nanjing again, and then Japan before coming to rest once more in Nanjing. Fourteen months later, he would be subjected to one final journey.