These informants claim that the Chinese Communists retain considerable
strength and, contrary to Central Government reports, are continuing
actively to fight the Japanese: they accuse the Central Government itself of
deliberately avoiding such conflict. They attach
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importance to pro-German tendencies of the present
Chinese regime—which they feel have been strengthened by spectacular German
military successes—and interpret the present clamor in China to “defeat
Japan first” as a hope that such action might reduce pressure on Germany.
Incidentally, they criticize the morale of Chinese military officers,
American propaganda in China (as contributing to Chinese complacence
regarding their part in the war), and American and British propaganda
generally (for lack of imaginative, democratic appeal to the people of
Germany and Japan).
As for the statement that the Central Government is not fighting the
Japanese: the Embassy has repeatedly reported that neither the Communists
nor Central Government are actively so engaged. There is undoubtedly
admiration, especially in military and more reactionary Kuomintang circles,
of German efficiency, organization and military might; but there does not
appear to be justification for the statement that the present Chinese regime
hopes for a German victory over Russia. Corruption among Chinese officers
and large scale engagement in trade in areas adjacent to the unoccupied
areas is unfortunately, by Chinese admission, a common occurrence. The
Embassy has on several occasions called attention to the questionable
advisability of the over-extravagant propaganda regarding China which has
been coming from America.
[Enclosure]
Memorandum by the Second Secretary of Embassy in
China (Davies) to the Commanding
General, American Army Forces, China, Burma, and India
(Stilwell)
Chungking, July 10,
1942.
Conversation with Two Leftists
The information contained in this memorandum is derived from two persons
close to General Chou En-lai and the Communist headquarters here in
Chungking.
My informants stated that the strength of the Eighteenth Group Army
(former Eighth Route) is between 500,000 and 600,000. Quoting a foreign
source, they said that there are an estimated one million rifles in the
Communist areas in the north. They maintained that Communist strength in
North China has spread to a greater extent than is generally realized;
for example, there is only one district in Shantung which remains under
Central Government control. So-called Border Districts have been
established by the Communists in
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several areas north of the Yangtze. One is in southern Shantung and
northern Kiangsu. It is there that the Eighteenth Group Army and New
Fourth Army are in contact. The Communists are organized even on Hainan
Island, my informants stated.
With regard to Central Government charges that the Communist forces have
been avoiding conflict with the Japanese, they maintained that fighting
between the Communists and the Japanese continues and that Tso Chuan,
Vice Chief of Staff of the Eighteenth Group Army, was killed in an
engagement in southeastern Shansi late in May. The Central Government
authorities refused permission, my informants declared, for the holding
of a memorial meeting for Tso Chuan, presumably because of a desire to
prevent publicity of the Eighteenth Group Army’s continued activity
against the Japanese.
General Chou has declared, according to my informants, that in the event
of a Russo-Japanese war he anticipated orders being issued by the
Central Government to the Eighteenth Group Army to launch an offensive
directed at Manchuria. If this develops, he would expect the Communists
to ask for adequate arms to carry out the directive and the Central
Government to refuse the request. He would then look for a request for
at least small arms and ammunition, which he would also expect to be
refused. Finally, the Eighteenth Group Army would appeal to the United
States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain for the equipment necessary
to undertake the offensive.
Commenting upon the Central Government’s reluctance to expend its
strength against the Japanese, my informants stated that the Government
felt that there was no reason for China to exert itself when Great
Britain, which was receiving such vast quantities of American lend-lease
material, was doing so little. Therefore, practically no resistance was
offered to the recent Japanese incursions into Chekiang and Kiangsi. The
Generalissimo was quoted as having stated to General Pai Chung-hsi that
China’s policy must be one of conserving its strength.
My informants were critical of the extravagant praise in the American
press of Chinese resistance, especially the parallels drawn between
Chinese and Russian resistance. They said that American correspondents
who had originally been responsible in a large measure for the
exaggeration, out of motives of friendship for China, admitted that they
had been at fault but could not rectify their error without causing an
even more undesirable reaction in the United States. Even many Chinese
are amused by American eulogies of China’s military exploits, they
stated. They asked if Americans who really mattered in the United States
realized the true state of affairs in China.
There exists a natural ideological affinity between the regime now in
power in China and the Nazis, my informants stated. Within the
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Central Government there is a
pronounced admiration of the Nazis which has been augmented by the
conspicuous success of German arms. The only Chungking Germans confined
to a concentration camp are three German Jews; the Nazi Germans move
about freely. Sons of Chungking Chinese families were said still to be
working as student apprentices in German factories.
An interesting sidelight was thrown on the Chinese slogan of “Defeat
Japan First”. It was suggested that concentration by the United Nations
on the defeat of Japan would probably result in lightening the pressure
on Germany and might even contribute to a German victory over the Soviet
Union. Such a development would not be unwelcome to the regime in power
in Chungking.
My informants declared that the influence of the von Falkenhausen group
of German advisers22 (which returned to
Germany in 1938) on the Chinese Army has been great. Many of the Chinese
officers now of the grade of colonel and lieutenant colonel are products
of von Falkenhausen’s training. They are professionally able and are
strongly pro-German. Von Falkenhausen and his officers maintained
excellent relations with the Chinese officers whom they trained. I was
interested in the comment that von Falkenhausen did not teach the most
up-to-date German military technique because he did not himself know
that technique. He was a military man of the old German school, he
ignored and was contemptuous of political indoctrination and guerrilla
warfare and maintained that the only training necessary was professional
military training. This theory well suited the Generalissimo who
arranged for his own political indoctrination, however undynamic it
was.
Captain Stinnes,23 my
informants said, was still alive. He has a close German friend here with
whom he has communicated, they stated, and he has also communicated with
the Generalissimo. They declared that there is no question of Stinnes’s
loyalty to General Chiang and that he has with Germans in Tokyo acted as
a channel for messages from the Japanese to the Generalissimo. Stinnes
was said to be close to Tai Li.
The experience of the Russian advisers was an unhappy one, according to
my informants. They were insulated at their posts from contact with
practically everyone but their Chinese liaison officers. It was remarked
with laughter that the Chinese claimed that the Russians were seeking to
learn the lessons taught by von Falkenhausen.
The suggestion advanced by the American Under Secretary of State that
there be a long period of cooling-off and consultation between
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the termination of the war and
the waiting of peace terms was mentioned with warm approval. My
informants said that the peace conference must not be held in Europe;
the hatreds are too great. Europe, they declared, must be unified
despite the probable intensification of national feeling as a result of
the war. The Netherlands was mentioned as a case in point. The Dutch
have not been an intensely nationalistic people, but at the close of the
war my informants expected to see a fierce, stubborn Dutch nationalism
which would resist the unification of Europe. They then contrasted
Beaverbrook’s24 advocacy of hate of every German
and the ruthless crushing of the German people with Stalin’s25
discrimination between the Nazi regime and the German people. This
revealed, they remarked, the sterile, negative British program of
political warfare and the constructive, positive Russian program.
British propaganda tells the German people that their leaders are lying
to them; this the German people rather suspect anyway; British
propaganda does not offer the German people anything better than a
return to post-Versailles conditions, which were for the German people
intolerable.
The American propaganda line directed at Japan was also criticized. The
propaganda was seen as seeking to persuade the Japanese people that the
present political situation in Japan represents a reestablishment of the
Shogunate and that they should bring about a restoration of the
Emperor’s power. My informants viewed this propaganda as reactionary and
at variance with the American concept of this being a people’s war. A
democratic revolutionary appeal to the Japanese masses they considered
to be a sounder line, pointing to Spain as an example of a country which
was generally regarded as the most religious and reactionary in Europe
responding to a prospect of revolutionary liberation.
Of several Chinese personalities, my informants first commented on Pai
Chung-hsi, saying that he is becoming increasingly identified with the
Central Government; he is a general without an army, therefore in a
dependent position. Shang Chen, they said, has little influence and what
he does enjoy is due to the fact that he knows English. They described
Wang Peng-sheng, chief of the International Problems Investigation
Bureau of the Military Affairs Commission (and a man who appears to
exert considerable influence on foreign policy) as a pseudo-expert.
Although he is supposed to speak with authority regarding Japanese
affairs, he was said to have made several glaringly inaccurate
predictions.
Graft and smuggling by Chinese military officers is practically
un-preventable, according to my informants, because of the low salary
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scale in the Army. By way
of illustrating the low salaries paid officers, they told a current
Chungking story. A Major General wished to take a certain local beauty
as wife. He approached the young lady’s mother, asking her daughter’s
hand in marriage. The mother was said to have replied, “Why I even told
a truck driver that he couldn’t have her; do you think I would marry her
to a Major General!”