Today's happy hour book, with a taste of Woodford bourbon...
"George Marshall’s mission to China starting December 1945 was doomed from the start.
He was supposed to forge a democracy, but not one that would ultimately threaten Chiang Kai-shek’s rule.
As Chiang observed of American diplomats and their schemes, “They talk a great deal but really do very little, even to the extent of making a bold beginning but then settling for a weak conclusion.”
When they heard Marshall would mediate, the Nationalists were worried.
Yan Xishan, a liberal-minded warlord in central China, predicted Marshall’s intervention would simply give the Communists time to gain strength.
For their part, Mao and Zhou Enlai were elated and, true to Yan’s analysis, welcomed the effort as a chance to prepare for war.
The Communists did their best to impress Marshall with their eagerness to cooperate.
Their spies planted bogus intelligence to convince the Americans they were serious about peace."
"In 1946, Communist agents infiltrated the office of an OSS officer in the US Consulate in Shanghai.
The operatives plied the officer with phony reports attesting to the party’s commitment to peace, according to a 1981 memoir by Zhang Zhiyi, the former head of Communist intelligence in Shanghai.
US analysts took these reports seriously.
“Our successful disinformation strategy,” Zhang wrote, “gained us half a year more time for our armed forces to train and prepare.”
Like Stilwell, Marshall had served in China, commanding the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment in Tianjin in the 1920s.
Marshall had inherited a dislike of Chiang Kai-shek from Stillwell.
On the day Marshall arrived in Shanghai, General Wedemeyer [who had replaced Stillwell as the leader of American troops in China] escorted him to his room at the Cathay Hotel and told his old comrade nothing could stop a civil war.
Marshall responded angrily: “I am going to accomplish my mission and you are going to help me.”
If Marshall’s goals—a peaceful, united, democratic China—were pie-in-the-sky, the Nationalists and Communists were more practical.
Chiang Kai-shek looked at the mission as yet another American fantasy to be tolerated as long as the US continued to stake him enough money and weaponry to crush the Communist bandits.
The Communists viewed the endeavor as providing an array of opportunities.
They could use it to enter a coalition government on an equal footing with the Nationalists and wait to seize total power at a later date.
Or they could employ it to prepare to fight.
Marshall’s mission to China did not lay the foundations for peace, it set the parameters for war."
ChatGPT:
The Marshall Mission refers to a diplomatic mission that was sent to China in 1945 by US Secretary of State George Marshall.
The mission aimed to negotiate a ceasefire between the Nationalist government of China under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Party of China under Mao Zedong, and to promote a coalition government between the two parties.
The mission arrived in China in December 1945 and stayed until January 1947.
The negotiations were complicated by the ongoing civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, as well as by the mistrust and hostility between the two sides.
The Nationalists were suspicious of the Communists' intentions and believed that they were trying to take over the government, while the Communists saw the Nationalists as corrupt and ineffective.
Despite these difficulties, the Marshall Mission did achieve some limited success. It helped to establish a truce between the Nationalists and the Communists in some parts of China, and it paved the way for the resumption of diplomatic relations between the US and China.
However, the mission ultimately failed to achieve its main goal of creating a coalition government, and the civil war continued until the Communists emerged victorious in 1949.
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