How FDR Was Manipulated and Betrayed by His Own Naval Intelligence Chief in
the Fateful Last Months of WWII - CovertAction Magazine
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Mao Zedong and US ambassador to China
Patrick J. Hurley (back row) in an American army jeep.
Mao Zedong in a U.S. army jeep with U.S. Ambassador to China, Patrick J.
Hurley, behind him in hat. [Source: thinkchina.sg]
Unknown for decades, declassified documents show that FDR's mail was
deliberately diverted and falsified to prevent a historic meeting with Mao
Zedong that might have shortened the war, changed history, and reshaped the
modern world.
Historians cite the 1972 meeting between Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon as the
original spark for U.S.-China Globalization in which the U.S. and China
began cooperating to industrialize China and integrate the two countries'
economies.
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Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong. Mao had pitched U.S.-China friendship to the
State Department 27 years earlier. [Source: shareamerica.gov]
But a much younger Mao Zedong had tried to interest President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt on Globalization 27 years earlier, and history would have
turned out differently if Roosevelt had agreed.
The Korean and Vietnam Wars-which resulted in millions of deaths-could have
been avoided along with the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1958, which nearly
resulted in a nuclear apocalypse, and Taiwan would not have been separated
from Mother China.
Mao Zedong's greatest regret was that he didn't see his mother for the last
time and wrote the memorial essay with tears. | DayDayNews
Mao Zedong [Source: daydaynews.cc]
On January 9, 1945, Mao Zedong reached out from his headquarter in Yan'an to
President Roosevelt. U.S. Army Major Ray Cromley-acting chief of the U.S.
mission in Yan'an- forwarded this message to U.S. Army headquarters in
Chungking:
Mao and Zhou will be immediately available either singly or together for
exploratory conference at Washington should President Roosevelt express
desire to receive them at White House as leaders of a primary Chinese party.
At this time Mao Zedong was a vibrant 51-year-old at the height of his
powers. Washington officials at this moment knew little about the twentieth
century's largest revolution as it developed from embryo to maturity. Mao
had transformed Yan'an, which six years earlier most Chinese had never heard
of, into a base which American tanks and airplanes could not threaten and
also made it into one of China's largest educational centers.
Mao founded the University of Resistance, which graduated more than 10,000
students a year. He built primary schools, middle schools, three colleges,
the largest arts academy in China, and a vocational training school. A
publishing house-hidden deep in the loess hills-printed books, magazines,
and newspapers. A factory produced many types of medicines. Mao created the
Women's University, housed in a series of caves connected by internal
walkways.
yan'an soviet
Zhou Enlai (left) and Mao Zedong (center) in Yan'an in the mid-1930s.
[Source: alphahistory.com]
In contrast, Franklin Roosevelt was a sickly 62-year-old just weeks from
death, struggling to comprehend events in his administration. Two months
after Mao had reached out to him, a grey and worn FDR appeared before a
joint session of Congress on March 1 to report the Yalta agreement.
Observers were taken aback to see the diminished president seated in his
wheelchair, the first time he had done so when addressing Congress.
A picture containing black, chessman, old, posing
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt [Source: npr.org]
Roosevelt explained, "I have just completed a fourteen-thousand-mile trip."
When FDR met with Vice President Harry Truman, Roosevelt's hands shook so
much that he could not drink a cup of coffee without spilling it.
General Albert Wedemeyer recorded his thoughts after a meeting in the White
House: "I had not seen the President for several months and was shocked at
his physical appearance. His color was ashen, his face drawn, and his jaw
drooping. I had difficulty in conveying information to him because he seemed
in a daze. Several times I repeated the same idea because his mind did not
seem to retain or register."
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Chiang Kai-shek, Mayling Soong, and General Joseph Stilwell. Off the record,
General Stilwell said about Chiang: "The trouble in China is simple: We are
allied to an ignorant, illiterate, superstitious, peasant son of a bitch."
[Source: commons.wikimedia.org]
Many American observers-like General Joseph Stilwell and the State
Department China Hands-sensed the political reality in China and understood
that Mao was much more than a "leader of a primary Chinese party."
Time magazine's founder, Henry Luce, was born of missionary parents in China
and pushed Chiang's fake news on America. Chiang employed sharp minds from
America's finest universities in his propaganda unit. [Source:
content.time.com]
The truth was that Mao was about to claim the Mandate of Heaven and become
China's next Emperor. This was not only because of his revolutionary
policies but also because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had played a
central role in the defeat of the Japanese invaders, while Chiang had used
U.S. aid to fight the communists.
But back in Washington, Roosevelt-like most Americans-was oblivious to the
CCP's political strength and believed in the China mirage.
America's China mirage began in the early 1800s. American merchants and
missionaries believed that poor China was collapsing like an old barn. And
what better way for China to heal than to emulate up-and-coming America and
embrace Capitalism and Christianity.
page48image3812512
Lady Columbia nurturing a Chinese child. [Source: google.com]
Nineteenth Century Twentieth Century
In the 1840s, President Roosevelt's grandfather, Warren Delano, Jr., made a
fortune as the American Opium King of China.
page43image1816608
The Delanos, including FDR's mother Sara, lived for years in the Rose Hill
mansion, Hong Kong [Source: hpcbristol.net]
In a Washington press conference with Madame Chiang Kai-shek at his side,
President Roosevelt told this whopper to the American people:
The people of China well over a century have been, in thought and in
objective, closer to us Americans than almost any other peoples in the
world-the same great ideals. China, in the last-less than half a century has
become one of the great democracies of the world.
FDR was mouthing gibberish, but maybe the cause was "hopium." The Soong
family had bankrolled Chiang Kai-shek and had convinced FDR that Chiang
yearned to be a democrat in Roosevelt's image and that the Chinese people
wished to be just like Americans.
page305image3804672
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Postmaster General Frank Walker and T.V.
Soong examining U.S. stamp sheets on February 18, 1943. [Source:
postalmuseum.si.edu]
Text
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Propaganda poster cultivating the illusion that America was helping to
democratize China. A photo of Sun Yat-Sen sits in the background. [Source:
origins.osu.edu]
American officials from the U.S. Army and the State Department stationed in
China-many of them fluent in Chinese like General Stilwell-saw Mao's rise as
inevitable, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt followed Grandpa Warren Delano's
belief that America was destined to Christianize and democratize China.
The president's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, was fond of saying that
Franklin was "a Delano, not a Roosevelt at all." When Secretary of the
Treasury Henry Morgenthau gave a recommendation regarding U.S.-China
relations, FDR sniffed, "Please remember that I have a background of a
little over a century in Chinese affairs."
The Soong family's China Lobby understood America's China mirage, they had
all been schooled in East Coast universities, including FDR's Harvard. They
cooed to FDR about the inevitable Americanization of China and presented
their front man-Chiang Kai-shek-as FDR's vehicle to inject trickle-down
Christianity and Capitalism into China.
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The Chiangs, Time magazine's man and woman of the year in 1938. [Source:
content.time.com]
Roosevelt was convinced that he would make China America's best friend in
Asia. Others outside the glare of America's China mirage were more
realistic. Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred to FDR's China dream as
"the Great American illusion."
In England, the British enjoyed a radio comedy program that featured a
Chiang Kai-shek character named General Cash My Cheque. Yet FDR expended
more taxpayer funds on his Chiang-China mirage than he did on the Atom Bomb.
page298image1827360
Time magazine referred to the dictator and his wife as "Southern Methodist
Chiang" and "Christian Miss Soong." Note the strategically placed Roosevelt
photo; FDR's support was their key to holding on to power. [Source:
news.ifeng.com]
The late David Halberstam described America's China mirage of the 1930s and
1940s:
The China that existed in the minds of millions of Americans was the most
illusory of countries, filled as it was with dutiful, obedient peasants who
liked America and loved Americans, who longed for nothing so much as to be
like them. It was a country where ordinary peasants allegedly hoped to be
more Christian and were eager, despite the considerable obstacles in their
way, to rise out of what Americans considered a heathen past. Millions of
Americans believed not only that they loved (and understood) China and the
Chinese, but also that it was their duty to Americanize the Chinese. "With
God's help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up until it is just like
Kansas City," said Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska. . . .
Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek: Christian Liberators of China:
Miller, Basil: Amazon.com: Books
1943 book depicting the Chiangs as Christian liberators of China. [Source:
amazon.com]
There were two Chinas. There was the China in the American public mind, a
China as Americans wanted it to be, and the other China, the real China..
The illusory China was a heroic ally, ruled by the brave, industrious,
Christian, pro-American Chiang Kai-shek .
By 1945, Mao oversaw an empire of one hundred million, about twice the
population of Britain, but FDR incorrectly judged that Chiang would be the
Chinese people's choice and Mao a disaffected party.
Mao Zedong had reached out to the American president through FDR's
representatives at Mao's base, the U.S. Army. Unknown for decades was that
confidential U.S. Navy operators commanded by Captain Milton "Mary" Miles of
U.S. Navy Intelligence diverted the U.S. Army-generated cable and handed it
over to the head of Chiang's secret police, Mr. Dai Li. Captain Miles and
Dai Li rewrote the memo to make it appear that Mao was attempting to
discredit U.S. Ambassador Patrick Hurley in FDR's eyes.
page327image1814816
Mao Zedong, Ambassador Patrick Hurley, and Chiang Kai-shek. Hurley called
Mao "Moose Dung. " Mao called Hurley "The Clown." [Source: wiki.china.org]
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Dai Li and Milton "Mary" Miles, Chongqing, China. Li ran Chiang's torture
chambers. [Source: ww2db.com]
Neither Mao Zedong, Ambassador Hurley nor FDR ever realized that their
relations had been manipulated by U.S. Naval Intelligence and Chiang's
Gestapo. FDR was soon dead, and millions would die in preventable
conflicts-the Chinese Civil War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War-before
the U.S. would embrace Mao's vision.
We know the vision Mao would have presented to FDR because Mao had sketched
his dream to a brilliant U.S. State Department representative just months
earlier who spent hours with China's presumptive leader and took copious
notes.
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Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, John Service, Mao Zedong, unknown. Later the U.S. State
Department would fire all Americans who had spoken to Mao Zedong. [Source:
twitter.com]
In August 1944, Mao Zedong and John Service met in Mao's Yan'an cave home.
For eight intense hours-with a break for dinner cooked by Mao's wife, Jiang
Qing-John Service had more substantive conversations with Mao than any other
American government official would have for the next quarter century.
John Service was an excellent choice to be America's interlocutor with Mao
Zedong. Born in China, the 35-year-old Service was fluent in a handful of
Chinese dialects. Service had dealt often with Chiang and Mao. He had also
traveled the country by public transport to plumb the attitudes of the
ordinary Chinese.
Service and General Stilwell-along with many other Americans in
China-understood that continued support of Chiang would put the U.S. on the
wrong side of history, that whatever the U.S did in China, Mao was destined
to claim the Mandate of Heaven.
In his cave home Mao told Service what was obvious to many American
officials in China:
"Chiang Kai-shek was elected President by only ninety members of a single
party . even Hitler has a better claim to democratic power . fundamentally
he is a gangster.. Chiang holds the bayonets and the secret police . The
fact is clear . that China's political tendency is towards us.."
Mao told Service why he preferred Wall Street over Russian borscht:
The Russians have suffered greatly in the war and will have their hands full
with their own job of rebuilding. We do not expect Russian help.
Mao then sketched a win-win relationship between the U.S. and China:
China must industrialize. This can be done-in China-only by free enterprise
and with the aid of foreign capital.. Chinese and American interests are
correlated and similar. They fit together, economically and politically. We
can and must work together . we will be interested in the most rapid
possible development of the country on constructive and productive lines.
America does not need to fear that we will not be cooperative. We must
cooperate and we must have American help . we cannot risk crossing
you-cannot risk any conflict with you.
Two months after his cable to FDR had been spiked, Mao Zedong met with John
Service once more, again pleading for U.S.-China friendship:
Between the people of China and the people of the United States there are
strong ties of sympathy, understanding and mutual interest.. China's
greatest postwar need is economic development. She lacks the capitalistic
foundation necessary to carry this out alone.. America and China complement
each other economically; they will not compete . America is not only the
most suitable country to assist this economic development of China, she is
also the only country fully able to participate. For all these reasons there
must not and cannot be any conflict, estrangement or misunderstanding
between the Chinese people and America .
Mao Zedong extended the hand of friendship to Roosevelt through the
highest-ranking U.S. Army and State Department officials to whom he had
access. The vision he described was what we now call Globalization: the U.S.
and China cooperating to industrialize China, with Russia a far distant
partner.
Historians can argue that Mao was insincere, that he was sweet-talking
Moscow at this same time. But Mao was much more a realist in search of power
than a political ideologue. Support from the richest country on earth, the
most industrialized World War II power with the world's deepest pools of
capital-doesn't it make sense that a practical and ambitious Mao would have
deserted Joe Stalin for FDR any day?
Imagine if Mao Zedong had been able to break through FDR's China mirage and
convince him that American Army and State officials were trying to show him
the reality in China? Roosevelt cooperated with Soviet Communists, why not
Chinese? Imagine no Chinese Civil War, no Korean War, no Vietnam War, no
vexing Taiwan problem still dogging the world today?
One Washington official warned John Service that writing the truth about
China was dangerous: "Jesus, Service! I read that thing of yours, and I
certainly agree with you, but it is going to get you in a lot of trouble."
In 1949 Mao Zedong shattered America's China mirage when he claimed the
Mandate of Heaven.
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Mao Zedong's rise was a shock to Americans who, for 20 years, had been fed
the mirage that China wanted Chiang Kai-shek. [Source: akg-images.co.uk]
Rather than admit they had been self-deluded by the idea that the Chinese
wanted to be just like them, Americans asked in shock, "Who lost China?"
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Senator Joe McCarthy: McCarthyism was ignited by the "Who lost China?"
debate. [Source: wikipedia.org]
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy nailed John Service's hide to the
wall:
Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism
and Christianity.. As one of our outstanding historical figures once said,
'When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be because of enemies from
without, but rather because of enemies from within . This is glaringly true
in the State Department . When Chiang Kai-shek was fighting our war, the
State Department had in China a young man named John S. Service . [H]e sent
official reports back to the State Department urging that we torpedo our
ally Chiang Kai- shek-and stating, in effect, that communism was the best
hope of China.
I have here in my hand 57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either
card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who
nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.
John Service and others had accurately reported reality from WWII China, but
they then ran head-on into the China mirage, an American belief system about
China as old as the Republic. Soon the State Department fired all employees
who spoke Chinese. Many years later, former Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara-the chief whiz-kid architect of the Vietnam War-observed:
Our government lacked experts for us to consult to compensate for our
ignorance. When the Berlin crisis occurred in 1961 and during the Cuban
Missile Crisis in 1962, President Kennedy was able to turn to senior people
. who knew the Soviets intimately. There were no senior officials in the
Pentagon or State Department with comparable knowledge of Southeast Asia..
The irony of this gap was that it existed largely because the top East Asian
and China experts in the State Department (such as John Service)-had been
purged during the McCarthy hysteria of the 1950s.
Robert S. McNamara > Historical Office > Article View
Robert S. McNamara [Source: history.defense.gov]
Popular history credits the birth of U.S.-China cooperation and
Globalization to President Richard Nixon. Lost in the mist of time was that
the winning combination of American capital and technology and Chinese labor
was an idea that Mao Zedong first suggested in 1944. A generation would pass
before Nixon-motivated by the American quagmire in Vietnam and competition
with Russia - came to a similar conclusion.
In 1971 Nixon announced his upcoming journey to the Middle Kingdom. Chinese
leaders graciously remembered their American friends from the cave meetings
in Yan'an. Premier Zhou Enlai welcomed John Service back to China.
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Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai. [Source: newsfeed.time.com]
After he returned from China, John Service testified to the Senate:
My recent visit to China convinces me that the root of the current Chinese
reality may be found in what we reported from Yan'an in 1944.. I think that
our involvement in Vietnam, our insistence on the need to contain China and
to prevent what we thought was the spread of Communist influence in
Southeast Asia, was based very largely on our misunderstanding and our lack
of knowledge of the Chinese, the nature of the Chinese Communist movement,
and the intention of their leaders. We assumed that they were an aggressive
country, and I don't believe that they really have been, and, therefore, I
think that we got into Vietnam largely, as I say, through the
misinterpretation and misfounded fear of China.
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[Source: pinterest.com]
If the United States in 1945 had been able to . shed some of its illusions
about China, to understand what was happening in that country, and to adopt
a realistic policy in America's own interests, Korea and Vietnam would
probably never have happened . We would not still be confronted with an
unsolvable Taiwan problem .
No Korean and Vietnam Wars. No conflict now over Taiwan. As I write this, I
am 67 years old. Raised in America during the 1950s and 1960s, I was taught
that Mao Zedong had an irrational hatred for America.
It was only many years later that I learned that Mao Zedong had actually
pitched U.S.-China cooperation and that it was America that harbored an
irrational hatred. None of my teachers ever told me that Mao Zedong had once
pleaded with the State Department's John Service:
There must not and cannot be any conflict, estrangement or misunderstanding
between the Chinese people and America.