China-Burma-India WWII

In 1944, Guomindang recruitment of forces for the Nationalist Army was so poorly managed, and troops were so badly malnourished that the United States attempted a rapprochement with the Communist forces at Yan'an. After General Stilwell's recall and replacement by General Wedemeyer in October 1944, Wedemeyer proposed to Chiang Kai-shek that, in view of the serious Nationalist losses at the hands of the Japanese during Operation Ichigo, greater effort be made to incorporate Communist forces into the war. Wedemeyer suggested that a column of Communist troops, about 5,000 soldiers organized in three regiments, be equipped with American weapons and provided American training. Operating under U.S. command and supervised by 10 U.S. liaison officers, these regiments were to carry out combat operations against the Japanese in areas normally reserved for Nationalist operations. As it was conceived, one aspect of the plan that was designed to make it more palatable to Generalissimo Chiang was that the American presence throughout the force would serve to reassure Chiang that the Communist troops would not operate against the Nationalists. Chiang rejected this concept.

A short time later, in December 1944, while General Wedemeyer was in Burma supervising operations during the Salween Campaign, a second plan was prepared by his chief of staff, Major General Robert B. McClure, and by the head of the Dixie Mission (the U.S. Army Military Advisory Group at Yan'an), Colonel David Barrett. The second plan, which was prepared by McClure at Wedemeyer's direction and with his knowledge, called for sending U.S. airborne regiments into Communist-held areas to operate behind Japanese lines, destroying Japanese installations and supply lines. Jiang's principal representative to the Americans, T. V. Soong, ignored this plan.

A third plan, far more controversial, was then put forth in January 1945 by McClure, Barrett, and officers of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the wartime forerunner of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency). As conceived by OSS officers and Wedemeyer's staff, Americans would work together with Communist guerrillas, in a manner similar to the way OSS officers worked with the French and Yugoslav guerrillas in Europe, to destroy Japanese installations, communications, airfields, and troop concentrations. This plan called for arming and equipping as many as 25,000 Communists and assisting in providing small arms for as many as 100,000 Communist people's militia personnel. The OSS also envisioned forming an intelligence network to operate behind Japanese lines using Communists guerrillas. As the concept for the plan was "floated" in Yan'an to test the reaction of the Communists, it also came to the attention of Ambassador Hurley. Hurley was furious that such a plan would be advanced without his consent and embarrassed that it had leaked to Chiang Kai-shek. Hurley sent a cable back to President Roosevelt and the State Department accusing some of the officers under Wedemeyer's command, including McClure, Barrett, and Foreign Service officer advisers John Davies and John Service, of being Communist sympathizers and of operating without authority. The result was that Barrett was withdrawn and replaced on the observer mission in Yan'an and that American forces were ordered not to "assist, negotiate with, or collaborate with" Chinese political parties unless they were specifically authorized to do so by Wedemeyer. Since both Wedemeyer and Hurley were solid anti- Communists, this firmly committed the United States to support only the Nationalist government.

REFERENCES David Barrett, Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970); Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt, 1958); U.S. Department of State (Far Eastern Series 30), United States Relations with China: With Special References to the Period 1944-49 (The China White Paper) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949).