Frog in a Well

This posting is part of a series which comprise a draft dissertation chapter. Read more about it here. The first posting is found here. The post preceding this one is here.

There was a girl whose father was executed by shooting. She cried continuously as she faced the war criminal and accused him of the crime. Then she climbed up onto the stage and beat him to death with a stone.
Reaction: The masses were moved and began to cry.

-Example case from the “Oppose Treason and Voice Grievances” campaign in Rizhao county, Public Security Bureau Report, 1946.

The Communist Party in Shandong province understood just as well as the Nationalist regime that the tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers who helped maintain the Japanese occupation in the peninsula were as valuable for their manpower and their rifles as they were reviled for their treason and their violence. This value did not diminish with Japanese surrender and the approach of a devastating civil war. The Party’s wartime efforts to win over military collaborators, shield them from retribution, and redeploy them were renewed in the postwar period, but as we saw, this was punctuated by a short period in which tens of thousands of Chinese treated as prisoners of war found themselves caught up in twin processes of reform and retribution in the fall of 1945 and spring of 1946. Here too the Party pressed hard to limit the scope and severity of retribution through its policy of magnanimity, but found this impossible to achieve.

If puppet soldiers feared retribution in the mass trials carried out throughout Shandong in 1945 and 1946, their alternative was to be a part of Chiang Kai-shek’s “conspiracy” to merge his troops with the puppets. Just as the major puppet army commanders who were won over to Communist control in Shandong, including Mo Zhengmin, Zhang Xixian, Han Shouchen and later Wu Huawen, retained command of their forces and went on to successful postwar careers in the People’s Republic, many puppet commanders in the province were able to rejoin the Nationalist army, and some estimated 100,000 puppet soldiers joined them. These include Zhang Tianzuo, Ning Chunling, Wang Jimei, and Wang Jinyang. Some, such as Cao Keming survived the civil war in Shandong and joined the Nationalist retreat to Taiwan.

The fate of puppet commanders who stayed in the few Nationalist controlled areas was not guaranteed, however. Two of the most important wartime puppet army generals, Zhang Buyun and the former Japanese citizen Zhang Zongyuan were both executed after being tried by the courts of the Nationalist administration. Zhang, tried for “pillage, murder, and treason,” was executed in Qingdao, January 1948.

Zhang Zongyuan’s origins made his case more complicated. Even though the Nationalist government’s law for the punishment of treason did not stipulate that those charged have Chinese citizenship and, in fact, tried number of foreigners for the crime, Japanese prisoners of war were to come under the laws for prosecution as war criminals. Though born in Japan, Zhang Zongyuan claimed ties to a Chinese ancestor that had joined the crew of a Japanese pirate ship during the Ming dynasty. Zhang’s convoluted case resembled the challenge faced by the Nationalist government in prosecuting the last Chinese and later Manchurian emperor Puyi’s cousin Kawashima Yoshiko, as well as a small number of accused Taiwanese traitors who could claim they were Japanese citizens during the time they committed their alleged treason. Like Kawashima Yoshiko, who at various times described herself as Chinese, Manchurian or Japanese, after his arrest Zhang Zongyuan could not seem to make up his mind whether he wanted to be treated as Chinese or as Japanese. A military investigation looking into the problem was equally confused and ruled he had two native places. It claimed this merely made the severity of his crime, which was to include “war crimes and treason” (戰犯漢奸) among others, all the more serious. He was executed in Shanghai, in June, 1948.

On the Communist side, those puppet soldiers who were subjected to mass trials in the Oppose Treason campaign of 1945 and 1946 were sentenced in a legal process which was not terribly concerned with particular crime its convictions were filed under, even if its campaign was ostensibly organized to target those guilty of collaboration. On the contrary, from the Party’s perspective, the key was to tie this process to its preparations for full scale land reform by linking it with the Rent and Interest Reduction campaign. As a report from northern Binhai put it, “The Oppose Treason campaign is a movement with two sides. One is the national struggle (民族鬥爭). It is a struggle of all the classes against the small time traitors. Secondly it is a class struggle, a way to attack landlords who maintained their wealth through their treasonous acts.” Of these, the second was by far the most important. Puppet soldiers were thus largely peripheral to this process, all the more so because they often came from relatively humble origins and were needed in the fight against the Nationalists.

From the perspective of the population, however, the military collaborators who were briefly subjected to mass justice were as reviled as the Japanese occupier. Indeed, for those who lived in areas without regular Japanese patrols, these Chinese military collaborators were the only face of the long occupation. Having stood by during the war while dozens of small groups of military collaborators transformed overnight by the Enemy and Puppet Work teams into units of the army of resistance, it is not terribly surprising that many had little patience for the Party’s “policy of magnanimity” when their opportunity finally came for retribution.

Note:  If you have any interesting information about 伊達麟之介 / 伊達順之介 / 伊達順之助 / 張宗援 / 张宗援 I’d love to hear from you. I’ve been collecting information about him and his fate for a separate article.

This posting is part of a series which comprise a draft dissertation chapter. Read more about it here. The first posting is found here. The post preceding this one is here.

“What have the violations of our policies been like over the past year? Those of disorder…the eight great disorders of luan (wanton, chaotic and indiscriminate) beatings, luan arrests, luan killing, luan punishment, luan imprisonment, luan torture, luan confiscations, and luan sealing off of buildings. One can say this explains the luan state of our policies.” Public Security Bureau Report, Bohai District, 1946

The formal and almost bureaucratic process of purging guilt through repentance and re-education overlapped with a simultaneous process of mass trials for traitors. As Communist control was consolidated over dozens of towns, counties, and even a few cities that had been under some form of occupation by Japanese or puppet military troops, its new administrators subjected their inhabitants almost immediately to two increasingly linked campaigns, the “Rent and Interest Reduction” (減租減息) campaign and the “Oppose Treason and Voice Grievances” (反奸訴苦) campaign. This second campaign was also called the movement to “Settle Accounts with Traitors” (漢奸清算). In the vast territories of Shandong liberated during the aggressive push of Communist forces in the last months of the war, the Oppose Treason campaign was both the main vehicle for retribution against both wartime collaborators and a preliminary blow against local elites that would soon become the main target of the massive land reform efforts that would follow.

Though it was carried out on a rolling basis as areas were liberated, the peak of the campaign in the Shandong base area was in the first half of 1946. It combined the public airing of grievances against collaborators with mass trials of selected suspects. Each town and village was to collectively request the purging of their community. The Shandong provincial archives holds a number of petitions of this kind, all dated February or March of 1946, calling for the new democratic government to punish collaborators. They are often signed by a list of family or clan representatives with an indication of the number of its members. While each of them have some variation in the list of their demands, most include the request that the new Shandong government under the Communist party carry out the, “disbandment of the puppet armies and strict punishment of traitors” Each petition then usually lists some of the local collaborators and their crimes, and sometimes includes and account of the deaths and possessions pillaged in attacks by a particular puppet army unit.

For many communities in Shandong, the Oppose Treason movement and the Rent and Interest reduction movements were the first taste of the large scale mass political campaigns to be felt throughout China in the decades to come. The Oppose Treason campaign does not appear to have focused on puppet army officers and soldiers but for the first time puppet soldiers begin to appear consistently as a category in lists of cases and sentencing reports of treason elimination cadres summarizing their progress. At least some of these puppet soldiers subjected to mass trial were prisoners that had completed the process of registration and repentance but were found to have been guilty of particularly heinous crimes. In the eyes of the local population as well as the local cadres who lived and worked among them, the transfer of puppet soldiers and other collaborationist employees from the repentance and training process to public trials did not happen enough. Acknowledging a growing criticism of its policy of leniency, in the case of puppet soldiers in particular the Public Security Bureau blamed its failures on the difficulty in sharing information about alleged crimes from one county to the next.

As a 1945 report on traitor elimination work in Kunlun county put it, “there is criticism of our paralysis. We think if the [puppet soldiers] confess we should be lenient and after show our magnanimity there is no need to continue to collect material [for their cases].” The problem was also, however, that the reform and repentance process usually included at least one large rally where puppet soldiers and collaborators made their remorse public. In Zhaobei county, this was accomplished over the course of two days in rallies attended by 9,600 men, women, and children. Evaluating their response, the county administration noted that most people felt the government was showing its desire to follow the will of the people, but noted that other criticized it saying, “Today, were they suddenly reborn when they confessed their crime? That is just too easy.” Both administrators and the local populace began to take things into their own hands and the Shandong Party Sub-bureau found it impossible to control the retributive violence it had sought to channel into political mobilization. Reports came in of local militias refusing to hand over their prisoners, or of executing them rather than risk Party “magnanimity.”

Party officials were also eagerly joining in. In Bohai, for example, “the cadres are enthusiastic, but they usually believe that all the world under Heaven is ours. They lack political consciousness in the dealing with puppet police, traitors, and so on and simply view their task as one of revenge.” Throughout the newly liberated districts, Party cadres were engaged in “wanton arrests and killing” (亂捕亂殺), wanton beating, and the torturing of prisoners. “The beatings and arrests have become as regular as one’s daily meal. Where the campaigns are being carried out, every village has its own jail and its own militia.”  The violence also spread to the handling of other crimes as in one village where a few suspected bandits were beaten to death on the spot by a cadre sent to apprehend them without any formal proceedings. Most of the violence, however, seemed to be at the hands of local militias (民兵) and those who attended the rallies organized in the Oppose Treason rallies. In one county carrying out the Oppose Treason campaign, it was reported that 40 treason suspects had been beaten to death by locals, 24 in a second, 8 in the county of Putai, and 20 accused “war criminals” (戰犯) stoned to death in the county of Gaoyuan.

Retributive violence against collaborators, or at least carried out in the name of vengeance against collaboration, is found in formerly occupied territories throughout the world in 1945, and the violent repression of the Japanese and puppet army occupation in Shandong gave its population more than enough reason to demand punishment. Beyond this, at least two factors contributed to the scale of retributive violence in Shandong. The first was the mass character of campaigns themselves. Treason elimination cadres, especially those in Shandong, were on notice for their excesses in earlier years, whether this was mass executions like those carried out at Huxi, a tendency to pursue vendettas and the “subjective” punishments of traitors, or for causing general fear among the peasants when secretly arresting and executing suspects (密捕密決) in the dead of night. The mass trial approach that was developed in the last years of the war tried to combine meticulous stage management of trials with an effort to carry out of the will of the people and thereby win their support. Activists were planted, suspects chosen, evidence carefully prepared, but disappointment expressed at the outcome in some internal reports suggest that the outcome of trials was at lease sometimes genuinely left up to the people, with calls for execution subject to confirmation from the district leadership. It was essential to create the impression that the people were sovereign, while the Party merely carried out its wishes. When it was reported that the people did not feel their will was carried out in treason trials, this was blamed on insufficient preparation by traitor elimination cadres. This process of managed empowerment of the people lay at the heart of the Party’s ability to rapidly gain trust in areas it captured, but was a double-edged sword. The time and manpower required to prepare and direct these trials might have been manageable in wartime years, but in 1945 and 1946, cadres were completely overwhelmed. Their control over the trial process deteriorated as a result.

The second significant factor contributing to the scale of violence in Shandong was the huge growth in people’s militias. These forces, often armed to some degree, played an important role in rapidly expanding a nominal Party presence in areas beyond the wartime base area as the war drew to an end, but they lacked discipline and often ignored directives, especially where Party authority was still weak. The militias of towns began to fight with each other, with militias of one village threatening to arrest the collaborators of neighboring communities. In a reference to the brutal counter-insurgency raids of the Japanese, it was reported in one district that the local militias had been, “carrying out a mopping-up campaign for three months.”

Not surprisingly, word of the uncontrolled violence against puppet soldier prisoners and collaborators alike was beginning to reach the puppet troops that had not yet surrendered. Word of their responses, in turn, made their way back to the Party. “If you are going to surrender, do it directly to the government. If the people’s militia catch you, they will stone you to within an inch of your life,” one was reported saying. Another pointed out the risks of magnanimity being combined with mass rallies where their victims could call for their death, “The government is magnanimous, but if the people in the village aren’t magnanimous, it does you no good.” And again, “There is lenient, and then there is lenient. If they ‘struggle’ the life out of you, what good does it do you?”

This was precisely the kind of distrust that jeopardized the continuing work of the enemy and puppet cadres after Japanese surrender. It could even threaten the base area’s control over whole communities as another report from Jiaodong pointed out. “You must be careful in carrying out the Oppose Traitors campaign. In some villages there were a relatively large number of surrendered puppet soldiers and their families. If they come under attack [by the movement], they will resist us and come under the influence of bad elements.” Most of all, however, it meant more men under arms serving the armies of the Nationalist government. An intelligence report on the state of puppet troops in Luzhong from the summer of 1946 saw this as translating directly into a military threat. There an estimated 50,000 puppet soldiers had joined 38,700 Nationalist forces entering into Shandong after Japanese surrender. The report lamented that these Luzhong puppet soldiers had not been won over and that they had failed to appreciate the Party’s policy of leniency. The reason for this was not hard to grasp, as the report admitted. The soldiers were terrified of the Party’s mass movements, saying, “Even if the Eighth Route Army forgives me, the people cannot.”

Next: Conclusion

This posting is part of a series which comprise a draft dissertation chapter. Read more about it here. The first posting is found here. The post preceding this one is here.

By the time of Japanese surrender, the work of traitor elimination cadres had gradually moved away from its roots in the liquidation business. During the period of Communist control in the Jiangxi Soviet period, and in Shandong during the early years of the resistance, the traitor elimination work lived up to its name most fully, as its work often consisted of the arrest, trial, and execution of those deemed traitors. Though these were often referred to with the common word for traitor hanjian (漢奸) or, one who has betrayed the Han people, the term most directly referred to the betrayal of the Party and only indirectly the Chinese nation as a whole. Those accused were most often Party cadres accused of Trotskyist or other heterodoxy. They were overwhelmingly “internal traitors” (內奸) who were accused of secretly plotting the destruction of the Party and working in league with international fascism. Following the mass witch-hunt of Trotskyists in the Huxi Incident of 1939, along with several similar incidents, the Shandong Sub-bureau began to slowly deemphasize the threat of Trotskyists in its internal directives to traitor elimination cadres, call for greater attention to the threat of Japanese and Nationalist spies and, most importantly, reform the procedures for the punishment of accused traitors. Increasingly, treason elimination work was to be carried out through the masses in the form of struggle sessions and mass trials.

While treason elimination cadres had to take responsibility for ensuring that liberated zones remained free of enemy spies, the Party purged of its crticis, and uncooperative collaborators in nearby communities kept continuously under threat of liquidation, there was ever greater emphasis on using their work as another way to mobilize or awaken the masses. While enemy and puppet work teams stayed focused on winning over their enemy, treason elimination committees paid closer attention to the number of passive peasants who were transformed into political subjects by a process of mobilization (發動 or 震動起來) than to the number and fate of traitors they apprehended. The reaction of the masses to any given sentencing and their numbers of attendance at mass assemblies were the subjects of extensive comment in treason elimination reports, while the facts of a case or the justice of any ruling were only important when some grave injustice had caused widespread discontent with the Party.

It was this world that puppet soldiers in detention in 1945 found themselves thrust into. Prisoners were were subject to a new set of regulations which merged the crimes of treason with those of war crimes, the “Provisional Regulations for the Punishment of War Criminals and Traitors in Shandong Province.” It called for a sentence of death or 10 or more years of imprisonment for a wide range of crimes including:

1) Those who from start to finish showed loyalty to Japanese imperialism, were guilty of great crimes and had caused suffering for the people.
2) Those who were leading officers or conspirators who served in the Japanese military, intelligence organs, liaisons, or military police.
3) Those who, after Japan declared surrender, refused to surrender, and continued to resist, or killed the people.
4) In the confusion of war caused disorder.
5) Those who were leading officers and conspirators among the puppet military and police, were puppet officials, or who actively destroyed the efforts towards national liberation.
6) Those who killed or abused prisoners
7) Those leading conspirators who, through feudal societies and superstitious organizations served the enemy and actively destroyed the efforts towards national liberation
8) Those who massacred the people.
9) Those who arranged for betrayal and surrender to the enemy or who themselves treasonously surrendered to the enemy and actively destroyed efforts towards national liberation.

…

And so the list went on. Unlike the Nationalist regime’s own law for the punishment of traitors published in draft form later that winter, these regulations contained no mitigating clauses. They were flexible enough in their definition that they could ensnare almost any military collaborator and sentence them to the ultimate punishment. After all, what puppet soldiers had not “treasonously surrendered to the enemy,” or at least “caused disorder” doing the war? Instead of mitigating clauses for those who had somehow helped the resistance or helped the people, only the magnanimity of the Party allowed traitors a chance to reform themselves, be forgiven, and welcomed back into the community. This “magnanimous policy” (寬大政策) was to serve as a general guide in all treatment of collaborators but, on the ground, puppet soldier prisoners would face  two potential processes of retribution and reform: one administered directly by treason elimination cadres of the Public Security bureau, and the other incorporated directly into the mass campaigns in the local community, in which treason elimination cadres played a more indirect role more akin to theatrical directors.

In the early months after surrender, puppet soldiers found themselves for the first time subject to a joint process of retribution together with other accused traitors. They were required to complete a program of re-education in a special “training unit” (偽組織人員訓練班) which included a process of supplying written confessions and open expressions of repentance (悔過). In Weihaiwei, on the northeastern coast of the Jiaodong peninsula, these training units were assembled October 2nd, 1945. The course they were offered was carried out in two cycles to accommodate the large numbers of puppet employees, and were divided into two stages. The first stage consisted of a period of educational lectures on the nature of the new democratic government, lectures on the Party policy towards land reform, on the resilience of the Eight Route Army, on their accomplishments during the war of resistance, on the Party’s policy of leniency, and then a selection of public confessional speeches by former leading collaborationist officials. Two hours of classes were offered in the morning, followed by one hour of discussion and each day concluded with two hours of informal discussion (座談) in the evenings. The second stage of the course was conducted in small groups, during which time course participants were expected to produce detailed self-criticisms of their past behavior. In order to promote sufficiently repentant behavior, in each group activists (積極份子) were cultivated who would urge the others on. Those who showed remorse passed the course, and would be conditionally released. Particularly stubborn or uncooperative course participants were forced to enroll in an additional short training course.

The first two cycles yielded 178 “graduates,” including 60 “puppet” village mayors, 71 officers of various ranks in neighborhood associations, 13 “puppet” secretaries, as well as a number of commerce chamber members, and city district chiefs. Most of the trainees were from poor backgrounds: 103 were poor farmers, 14 were registered as merchants, and only one a landlord. By the end of the total four months of training courses provided, two hundred more collaborators had completed the training course, and its targets had significantly expanded, including police chiefs, security guards, bandits, spies, “puppet” laborers, “puppet” teachers and students, puppet village level officials, and puppet soldiers.

In Bohai district, a more scaled-down and decentralized process was adopted for an estimated 40,000 puppet soldier prisoners and other collaborators. Those in towns were processed directly by Public Security bureau cadres who manned special “Offices for Repentance” (悔過處), while in the country county government officials handled their cases. Accused puppet soldiers were collectively registered and organized into training units with 70-80 puppet troops each. These units were given a mere two days of intense re-education that was to emphasize the forgiving nature of the Party’s magnanimous policy, the severity of their past crimes, and carry out group exercise of self-reflection and confession.

Not all areas of Shandong had such organized re-education programs for puppet soldiers and other collaborators. In some, areas the processing of puppet soldier prisoners consisted of a more simple process of organizing a single mass rally, and have the assembled puppet prisoners collectively express remorse for their crimes. The sheer numbers involved sometimes made it impossible to do more. For example, in Yongzhi county which had a total population of 180,000 in 1946, there were no less than 10,000 puppet soldiers, most of whom were poor farmers from the area. After asking them to confess their crimes and write letters of self-examination (反省), they were allowed to regain their political rights.

Next: A Settling of Accounts with Treason

This posting is part of a series which comprise a draft dissertation chapter. Read more about it here. The first posting is found here. The post preceding this one is here.

This posting is part of a series which comprise a draft dissertation chapter. Read more about it here. The first posting is found here. The post preceding this one is here.

The cumulative efforts of the enemy and puppet work of the Communist party in Shandong were considerable, but fell far short of the ambitions of the party. An early 1945 estimate of the total number of puppet soldiers that had been won over in Shandong, based on incomplete statistics, was around 12,000. This was despite the fact that in only the year preceding the report, some 45,000 captured puppet soldiers had been offered the opportunity while under detention. Some of these, it was claimed, had already been captured and released six or seven times, by which time even the rebellious Meng Huo of ancient times had mended his ways. About half of those who were won over came from relatively small groups. Some 140 puppet army units with under 1,000 soldiers each had been won over with a total of around 6,000 rifles.

Three units with more than 1,500 soldiers each, including some 6,500 rifles came over. These were the forces of the three major commanders to defect to Communist control in Shandong during the Japanese occupation: Wang Dao, Ying Zhengmin, and Zhang Xixian. The significant numbers these three defections alone brought over amply explains why, during the war, reports on the work of the Enemy and Puppet Bureau repeatedly lamented its failures to win over larger units. By July, 1945, the number won over had increased to 150 of the smaller units, but only one additional large unit had come over to the Communist side.

If the total number of those won over was indeed around 12,000, this is below the number of puppet soldiers who were claimed as kills up to 1941, let alone the likely far increased kills of later years, when the 115th division and local resistance forces grew more confident and moved to the offensive. Though they are even more likely to be susceptible to wild exaggeration, the cumulative reports of claimed puppet army kills in a selection of wartime chronologies of Shandong regional gazetteers are vastly higher, especially from local skirmishes listed for the summer of 1945 when Communist forces throughout Shandong aggressively attacked strongholds and towns occupied by puppet armies.

It is likely that most of the remaining puppet soldiers, including the 57 units listed in Appendix C1, were in part or whole integrated or reorganized as units in the Nationalist army. Some of these, as we saw in the case of Wu Huawen, would later turn to the Communists when the nationalist cause in Shandong was truly deemed lost by mid-1948.

For the most part, however, when Nationalist forces returned to the province in 1945, beginning with the entry into the province of its new governor He Siyuan, they resumed control of only the small number of towns and strongholds that were still under Japanese and puppet army control. Puppet soldiers as well as Japanese soldiers were instructed to “maintain public order” until the central government could re-established control.

The American marines are welcomed to Qingdao in October, 1945. Above the cannons the text reads, “The merging of Japanese, puppets, and Chiang [Kai-shek’s] forces.” From a selection of Communist propaganda posters from early postwar Shandong. US State Department Central Files China Internal Affairs 1945-1949 893.00B-11-2646

Most Japanese soldiers were eventually disarmed and returned home, though some retained their arms to patrol the streets for months in major Chinese cities and in places such as Shanxi, continued to actively fight in the civil war. Communist propaganda of a “conspiracy” by Chiang Kai-shek to “merge” with the enemy and the puppets was not that far from the truth. The majority of former puppet soldiers in Shandong who were still operating as of August, 1945 would soon have the option of continuing to serve in the Nationalist army. If this was a conspiracy, however, it was one that the Communists shared. If most puppet armies served the Nationalists after the war, it was because of the failures of the Enemy and Puppet Work Bureau to win and retain their loyalty, not because they refused to try.

Next: Traitors, Puppets, and Divided Responsibilities

This posting is part of a series which comprise a draft dissertation chapter. Read more about it here. The first posting is found here. The post preceding this one is here.

Attempts to secure the defection of Chinese soldiers fighting alongside the Japanese by means of propaganda and by approaching family members in the villages required considerable time, manpower, and a patient process of wearing down the enemy. Establishing contacts directly with soldiers or junior officers and either appealing to their patriotic virtues or offering promises of protection against any future punishment was direct but dangerous. Perhaps the simplest method to turn the puppet soldiers away from their treasonous ways was to appeal to the same motivation which led many of them to fight for the Japanese in the first place: cold hard cash.

An example of the scale contemplated by Communist plans to supplement its political efforts with the outright purchase of puppet loyalty is found in a January 23, 1945 letter from Commander Zhu De to the U.S. head of the China Theater, General Albert Wedemeyer. “I have a favor that I wish to ask you,” he began, and then requested a loan of $20 million from the U.S. to use for the purpose of bribes.  The amount would be repaid, “following the victorious conclusion of the war against Japan.” Given his earlier career, this pragmatic approach was entirely in keeping with the character of the pragmatic Communist leader of the wartime 8th Route Army, though none of Zhu De’s main works on winning over enemies openly proposed  bribes for puppets to switch their loyalty. On the contrary, he argued that the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Armies had an “inexhaustible supply of manpower” thanks to its ability to attract voluntary recruits inspired by a desire to resist Japanese aggression. Instead it was the Nationalists who used “buying,” coercion, and deceit in its efforts to recruit soldiers.  In the January, 1945 letter to General Wedemeyer, however, Zhu suggested that bribery could easily double the number of defections among Japanese collaborator troops achieved by political means.

Table: Zhu De’s Statistics on Puppets Won-Over, January, 1945

The approximately 34,167 puppets won-over up to this point, according to the letter, comprised around 3.8% of a total estimate of around 900,000 Chinese fighting on behalf of the Japanese. Zhu argued that political measures alone could probably bring this number up to about 5%. This percentage could be doubled, he argued optimistically, to 10%, or around 90,000, by using “financial” measures. In what can only be described as a proposed investment plan, Zhu outlined the accounting for his estimates. The requested $20 million was to be divided into five parts. $7.6 million was to go towards administrative costs and operations, including the cost of intelligence and liaison work. $1.4 million was to be paid directly to puppet officers ranging from squad commanders and up through platoon, company, battalion, regiment, and even the proposed bribery of ten puppet division commanders. Some 3,000 squad commanders were to be offered $30 each, while division commanders were to be offered $10,000. In addition to these one-time defection bonuses, this fund was to include post-defection awards to officers who were brought over by political measures and “comfort fees.” Third, almost a million dollars was to be set aside for bounties to puppets for bringing over various weapons ranging in value from rifles ($20 each) to artillery ($1,000), as well as valuable communications equipment. Radio sets, for example, were to be purchased at $200 a piece.  Fourth, almost five million dollars was put aside to pay puppets their original salaries for three months, for a supply of clothing and equipment, a fund for gifts, and subsidies for the families of the defected puppets. Finally, a reserve fund of five million was to be put towards using military collaborators for sabotage and demolition operations as well as special missions to assassinate Japanese officers.

It is possible that the letter merely represents one very elaborate attempt by Communists to secure large scale funding from the U.S. in a slightly more indirect manner, and that the funds were never intended to go fully towards bribing military collaborators. However, given Zhu De’s own deep appreciation for the importance of dismantling one’s enemy as well as destroying them in battle, this may well be only the most ambitious proposal for employing “financial measures” in Communist puppet policy. There is little chance Zhu De’s request could have been met but the proposal for a loan to bribe military collaborators did come at a time when the newly arrived commander of U.S. forces in China was actively considering the possibility of arming and otherwise supporting Communist efforts in the war of resistance against Japan. In the aftermath of the replacement of the controversial general Joseph Stilwell in late October, 1944, Zhu was merely taking advantage of a brief opportunity to establish an entirely new relationship with American forces. In the months that followed there were a number of proposals and counter-proposals exchanged on cooperation between Nationalists and Communists, with General Patrick Hurley serving as intermediary. The process was complicated by other negotiations, unknown to Wedemeyer and Hurley at the time, between another U.S. General Robert McClure and the Communists that culminated in an offer to send thousands of American airborne troops to be stationed in Communist controlled territory. The final result of the complicated process was a warning by General Hurley to President Roosevelt that the offer of close military cooperation with the Communists was a dangerous development that threatened the preservation of the Nationalist regime. On 27 January, Chief of Staff George Marshall ordered that no negotiations were to continue that did not also involve Chiang Kai-shek’s government. Three days later General Wedemeyer issued an order to all officers in the China theater directing them refrain from “discussing hypothetical aid or employment of U.S. Resources to assist any effort of an unapproved political party, activity, or persons.”

Note: Long time readers of Frog in a Well will recognize the material used in this section which I wrote about back in 2007, here.

Next: The Wartime Gains of the Bureau