TheMarshall Mission (Chinese:馬歇爾使華;pinyin:Mǎxiē'ěr Shǐhuá; 20 December 1945 – January 1947) was a failed diplomatic mission undertaken byUS Army GeneralGeorge C. Marshall toChina in an attempt to negotiate between theChinese Communist Party and the Nationalists (Kuomintang) to create a unified Chinese government.
Throughout theSecond Sino-Japanese War, an uneasy stalemate had existed between the Chinese Communists (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalists (KMT), but prior to the war, both parties had been in open conflict with each other. Numerous US military personnel and private writers visited and reported on the Chinese Communist Party. In 1936, the international journalistEdgar Snow traveled and interviewed leading members of the Chinese Communist Party. Snow reported that Mao was a reformer, rather than a radical revolutionary,[1] and many readers got the impression that the Chinese communists were "agrarian reformers."[2] In the 1944Dixie Mission, US ColonelJohn Service visited the Communists and praised them. He claimed that they were democratic reformers, likened them to European socialists, rather than Soviet Communists; and claimed that they were less corrupt and chaotic than the Nationalists.[3][4][5][6]
US Ambassador to ChinaClarence Gauss recommended for the United States to "pull up the plug and let the whole Chinese Government go down the drain." GeneralPatrick Hurley claimed that the Chinese Communists were not real communists.China Burma India Theater CommanderJoseph Stilwell repeatedly claimed (in contradiction toComintern statistics) that Communists were doing more than the Nationalists, and he sought to cut off all US aid to China.[7][8]
American attempts during theSecond World War to end the intermittentChinese Civil War between the two factions had failed, notably the Hurley Mission. In 1944 GeneralPatrick Hurley approached both groups and believed that their differences were comparable to the Republicans and Democrats in the United States.[9]
Throughout the war, both the Communists and the Nationalists had accused the other of withholding men and arms against the Japanese in preparation for offensive actions against the other. Thus, in a desperate attempt to keep the country whole, US PresidentHarry S Truman in late 1945 sent GeneralGeorge C. Marshall as his special presidential envoy to China to negotiate a unity government.
Marshall arrived in China on 20 December 1945. His goal was to unify the Nationalists and the Communists with the hope that a strong non-Communist China would act as a bulwark against the encroachment of theSoviet Union.
Immediately, Marshall drew both sides into negotiations, which occurred for more than a year. No significant agreements were reached, as both sides used the time to further prepare themselves for the ensuing conflict.
TheGexin movement was among the KMT factions which strongly opposed the Marshall mission.[10]: 138–139
To assist in brokering a ceasefire between the Nationalists and the Communists, US sales of weapons and ammunition to the Nationalists were suspended between 29 July 1946 to May 1947.[11]
Finally, in January 1947, exasperated with the failure of the negotiations, the Marshall mission left China. Marshall had already left in 1946, due to deteriorating health, domestic criticism of Truman's handling of the China situation, and other pressing foreign policy objectives. Soon, Marshall was appointedUS Secretary of State.
The failure of the Marshall Mission signaled the renewal of theChinese Civil War.
On 9 June 1951,Douglas MacArthur charged that the post-war Marshall Mission to China had been "one of the greatest blunders in American diplomatic history, for which the free world is now paying in blood and disaster"[12] in a telegram to SenatorWilliam F. Knowland. On 14 June 1951, as theKorean War stalemated in heavy fighting between American and Chinese forces, Republican SenatorJoseph McCarthy attacked the Marshall Mission and stated that Marshall was directly responsible for the "loss of China," which turned from friend to enemy.[13] McCarthy said the only way to explain why the US "fell from our position as the most powerful Nation on earth at the end of World War II to a position of declared weakness by our leadership" was because of "a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man."[14] McCarthy argued that GeneralAlbert Coady Wedemeyer had prepared a wise plan that would keep China a valued ally but that it had been sabotaged; "only in treason can we find why evil genius thwarted and frustrated it."[15] Specifically, McCarthy alleged:
When Marshall was sent to China with secret State Department orders, the Communists at that time were bottled up in two areas and were fighting a losing battle, but that because of those orders the situation was radically changed in favor of the Communists. Under those orders, as we know, Marshall embargoed all arms and ammunition to our allies in China. He forced the opening of the Nationalist-held Kalgan Mountain pass into Manchuria, to the end that the Chinese Communists gained access to the mountains of captured Japanese equipment. No need to tell the country about how Marshall tried to force Chiang Kai-shek to form a partnership government with the Communists.[16]
Public opinion on Marshall's record became bitterly divided along party lines. In 1952,Dwight Eisenhower, who was running for and becameUS President, denounced theTruman administration's failures in Korea, campaigned alongside McCarthy, and refused to defend Marshall's policies.[17]
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