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Dixie Mission

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: World War II

    U.S. Army Observation Group to Yan'an
   Colonel David Barrett with Mao Zedong
     Active   22 July, 1944 - 11 March, 1947
    Country   United States of America
     Branch   Army and Navy
    Part of   China Burma India Theatre
    Nickname  Dixie Mission
                  Commanders
    Notable
   commanders Colonel David D. Barrett

   The United States Army Observation Group, commonly known as the Dixie
   Mission, was sent during World War II to Yan'an, China, to establish
   the first official relations between the Communist Party of China and
   the United States of America. It lasted from 22 July 1944 to 11 March
   1947.

   The goal of the mission, beyond the establishment of relations with the
   Communists, was to investigate the communists from a political and
   military perspective. This task was spearheaded by John S. Service of
   the United States Department of State, covering the political
   perspective, and Colonel David D. Barrett of the United States Army who
   was responsible for the military aspects. Their initial reports
   presented a positive outlook on the Chinese Communists as a potential
   and useful wartime ally. Controversy later surrounded their reports as
   opinions in Washington adopted a more negative stance towards the
   communists. Eventually, many of the men associated with the reports
   were condemned by pro- Chinese Nationalist factions in the American
   government and fell victim to McCarthyism. Service was arrested and
   fired from his position at the State Department, and Barrett was denied
   a promotion to brigadier general.

   The Dixie Mission also played host to both the Patrick Hurley and
   George Marshall diplomatic missions, which were serious attempts by the
   United States government to negotiate a unification of the Chinese
   Communists and Nationalists. Both failed, but the brief existence of
   the mission later became a positive shared experience between the
   People's Republic of China and the United States during the
   administration of President Richard M. Nixon.

Origin

   Plans for a military mission in Chinese Communist territory preceded
   the development of the Dixie Mission, such as an unimplemented idea by
   the Office of Strategic Services to send agents into north China. The
   first major impetus for the Dixie Mission began with a memo written on
   January 15, 1944, by John Paton Davies, Jr., a Foreign Service Officer
   serving in the China Burma India Theatre (CBI). The memorandum called
   for the establishment of an observers' mission in Chinese Communist
   territory. Davies listed several reasons. First, the communists offered
   attractive strategic benefits in the fight against Japan. Second, the
   more the United States ignored the communists, the closer Yan'an would
   move to Moscow. With the support of Davies' superior, General Joseph
   Stilwell, this memorandum successfully convinced the administration of
   Franklin D. Roosevelt to put the plan into motion.
   Davies' January 15th Memo
   Enlarge
   Davies' January 15th Memo

   While the first team members were being assembled, such as John S.
   Service and Colonel David D. Barrett, the Roosevelt Administration
   sought the permission of Chinese Nationalist president Chiang Kai-shek
   to send an American observer group to visit the communists. Initially,
   Chiang was less than forthcoming and the matter was batted back and
   forth between Chungking (the Nationalists' wartime capital) and
   Washington. Further pressure was added on the Generalissimo after a
   party of foreign correspondents whom Chiang had permitted to visit
   Yan'an reported favorably of the communists to their news sources back
   in the United States. The matter was finally and successfully resolved
   after a state visit to Chungking by American Vice-President Henry
   Wallace in late June of 1944. Assisted by John Carter Vincent, an
   experienced China expert from the State Department, the mission in what
   emerged as its final form was negotiated between Wallace and Chiang.
   The Americans were allowed to go to Yan'an, without Nationalist
   supervision, and the United States promised to send a new
   representative for Roosevelt to work with Chiang, as the Generalissimo
   could no longer abide the presence of the current American commander,
   General Stilwell . In effect, Stilwell's position in charge of the
   China Burma India Theatre had also been decided at the conference as
   the price for permission to visit the communists. He was removed from
   command in October 1944.

The Mission arrives in Yan'an

The first arrivals

   The first part of the Dixie Mission arrived in Yan'an on July 22, 1944,
   on an Army C-47. This team consisted of: Colonel David D. Barrett, John
   S. Service, Major Melvin A. Casberg, Major Ray Cromley, Captain John C.
   Colling, Captain Charles G. Stelle, Captain Paul C. Domke, 1st
   Lieutenant Henry S. Whittlesey, and Staff Sergeant Anton H. Remeneh.
   The Dixie Mission in traditional Chinese clothing, a gift from their
   communist hosts.
   Enlarge
   The Dixie Mission in traditional Chinese clothing, a gift from their
   communist hosts.

   The second half of the team arrived the next month on August 7th and
   consisted of: Raymond P. Ludden, Lieutenant Colonel Reginald E. Foss,
   Major Wilbur J. Peterkin, Major Charles E. Dole, Captain Brooke Dolan,
   Lieutenant Simon H. Hitch, 1st Lieutenant Louis M. Jones, Sergeant
   Walter Gress, and Technician 4th Class George I. Nakamura. As time
   progressed, other members joined the mission.

At work in Yan'an

   The Americans immediately set themselves to their tasks of discovering
   as much as they might about the Chinese Communists. John Service, while
   technically under Stilwell's command, served as a diplomatic observer
   for both Stilwell and the American Embassy in Chungking. Over the next
   three months, he sent a flurry of reports back to Chungking.
   Controversial from the start, many of Service's reports praised the
   communists as Agrarian Reformers more akin to European socialists than
   the feared Russian Bolsheviks. Service also praised the communists for
   what appeared to be a clean and superior society compared to that of
   the Chinese Nationalists. Indeed, what Service witnessed in 1944 in the
   communist areas stood in stark contrast to the corruption and chaos he
   had seen in the Nationalist areas controlled by Chiang Kai-shek.
   Whether this constituted a "bias" rather than reasonable, highly
   defensible observations is debatable In the atmosphere of Yan'an,
   Service adopted a stronger position and supported the stance that the
   United States should forsake the Nationalists for the Communists. This
   opinion was shared with John Paton Davies, and the future careers of
   both men were ruined for it.
   Colonel Barrett sitting down with communist General Zhu De.
   Enlarge
   Colonel Barrett sitting down with communist General Zhu De.

   On the military side of the mission, Colonel David Barrett set about
   evaluating the communists' military potential. This involved observing
   war games between communist troops and visiting war schools setup to
   train the communist officer corp. Barrett's reactions were mixed, as he
   felt the communists put more emphasis on doctrination of their soldiers
   than actual military training. He believed, however, that American
   advisors could turn the communist soldier into an excellent fighter.

   The Chinese Communists had created a reputation for engaging and
   attacking the Japanese regularly, most often in guerrilla raids, that
   dutifully impressed the Americans. In reality, the last significant
   military campaign by the communists against the Japanese had occurred
   four years earlier in the Hundred Regiments Campaign by the Chinese
   Communist 8th Route Army. Ultimately a disaster, the communists decided
   to hold back on any further large campaigns against the Japanese, but
   still successfully sold the image of themselves as active fighters.

Diplomacy at Dixie

The Hurley Mission

   Hurley conversing with Chinese Communist leadership after promotion to
   Ambassador to China
   Enlarge
   Hurley conversing with Chinese Communist leadership after promotion to
   Ambassador to China

   On 7 November 1944, General Patrick Hurley arrived in Yan'an. Hurley
   had been in the CBI theater since August, sent as part of an agreement
   between Wallace and Chiang to provide a liasion for Chiang to directly
   communicate with Roosevelt without going through Stilwell. Famous as a
   negotiator in the private sector, Hurley had arrived in China with the
   mission to help smooth the flow of operations in the China theatre,
   which he immediately extended to uniting the Nationalists and
   communists into a unified government. An ill-fated mission from the
   start, Hurley approached it with little to no knowledge of either
   political group under the belief that their differences were no greater
   than those between the Republican and Democratic parties back home in
   the United States. Hurley failed at reconciliating the Nationalists and
   Chinese Communists and proceeded to blame this failure on several of
   the Dixie Mission members, such as John Service and John Paton Davies.

The Marshall and Wedemeyer Missions

   In the post-war period immediately following the Japanese surrender,
   hostilities between the Nationalists and the communists had
   proliferated between the two. Prior to the Japanese invasion in 1937,
   the two parties had been at all out war for control of China and had
   only adopted a tenuous cease-fire under the threat of the Japanese
   dominance. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman sent General George C.
   Marshall to China to attempt to negotiate a ceasefire and to form a
   unified government between the communists and the Nationalists. While
   most of his time was spent in Chungking, the Dixie Mission played host
   to Marshall when he arrived in Yan'an to speak with the communist
   leadership. Like the Hurley Mission, Marshall failed to find a lasting
   compromise for both parties and the Chinese Civil War resumed.

   Shortly after the failure of the Marshall Mission, Truman once again
   sent a representative to the fractured country. This time he selected
   the former commander of American troops in China during the war,
   General Albert Wedemeyer. Again, the American mission in Yan'an played
   host to a presidential mission. Wedemeyer's trip, rather than repeat
   the fruitless gesture of attempting to unify the communists and
   Nationalists, was purely a fact finding mission to establish the state
   of both groups. Wedemeyer's report stated that it was in America's best
   interest to continue supporting the Kuomintang, the sole party of the
   Chinese Nationalist government. However, the report was suppressed as
   Truman had already adopted the "wait and see" policy in dealing with
   the Nationalists. In essence he refused to give the Nationalists any
   aid for fear of direct American involvement in the Chinese Civil War.
   Wedemeyer's presence served as a sign of the coming end, as shortly
   thereafter, the Americans packed up their base of operations and
   liquidated everything that could not easily be transported aboard a
   C-47. On 11 March 1947, the last Americans departed Yan'an.

The question of Communist subterfuge

   One criticism of the early Dixie Mission participants, such as John
   Service, was that they were deceived by the communist leadership into
   viewing the communists as socialist agrarian reformers, who claimed
   that China under their rule would not follow the violent path of Russia
   under the Bolsheviks. Instead, socialism would come to China only after
   economic reforms that preserved capitalism, so as to mature the society
   to a point where it would be prepared for a peaceful transition to a
   communist society. This belief was disseminated to the American people
   prior to and during the war by the popular authors Edgar Snow and Agnes
   Smedley. In his August 3rd, 1944, report, "The Communist Policy Towards
   the Kuomintang," Service underlined his opinion of the Communists as
   such and stated:

     "And the impressive personal qualities of the Communist leaders,
     their seeming sincerity, and the coherence and logical nature of
     their program leads me, at least, toward general acceptance of the
     first explanation -- that the Communists base their policy toward
     the Kuomingtang on a real desire for democracy in China under which
     there can be orderly economic growth through a stage of private
     enterprise to eventual socialism without the need of violent social
     upheaval and revolution."

   In the years after the Dixie Mission, Colonel Barrett reflected upon
   this position and wrote in his memoir:

     "In addition, I had fallen to some extent, not as much perhaps as
     did some other foreigners, for the "agrarian reformer" guff. I
     should have known better than this, particularly since the Chinese
     Communists themselves never at any time made claim to being anything
     but revolutionaries - period."

   The history of the Chinese Communists after takeover offers evidence
   that they did not follow the slow gradual path of reformers as believed
   they would by some in 1944. Regardless, Service continued to believe 25
   years later that American cooperation with the communists might have
   prevented the excesses that occurred under Mao Zedong's leadership
   after the war. John Davies, after the same number of years, in his
   memoir, Dragon by the Tail, also defended his belief that communists
   should have been the Chinese ally for the United States, not the
   Kuomingtang. For Davies, however, it was not a matter if the Chinese
   Communists were communists, but that such a move was a practical one
   based on the idea of Realpolitik. Alliance with the Chinese Communists
   would have kept an alliance from occurring with the Soviet Union, and
   thus, been beneficial in the Cold War that followed the end of the war.
   Such beliefs popularly became known as the "Lost Chance" theory, in
   which the United States missed the opportunity to build a friendly
   relationship with the Chinese Communists to prevent their later
   alignment with the Soviet Union. In any case, such men as Service and
   Davies were reporting in good faith what they saw at the time.

Lasting Impact

   President Nixon's trip to China symbolized the thawing in relations
   between the two nations.
   Enlarge
   President Nixon's trip to China symbolized the thawing in relations
   between the two nations.

   The impact of the Dixie Mission unfolded on a personal and national
   level. On the personal level, many of its participants were later
   accused of being communists, such as John Davies and John Service. Both
   men underwent numerous Congressional investigations, which consistently
   found the men innocent of charges of being communists or disloyal to
   the United States. This did not prevent institutional bias from being
   applied, and Service was fired from the State Department, a decision he
   appealed and ultimately won in a case before the Supreme Court of the
   United States. Davies was exiled from China, his field of expertise, by
   Hurley, then hounded from a position in Russia to an inconsequential
   post in South America, where he resigned and turned to furniture
   manufacturing. Colonel David Barrett was yet another victim of Hurley's
   wrath. Hurley accused the colonel of sabotaging his diplomacy between
   the Nationalists and communists and halted a promotion for Barrett to
   brigadier general which had been endorsed by the theatre commander,
   General Albert C. Wedemeyer. Barrett was retained in the China Theatre,
   but placed in a position of little influence or involvement.

   The mission's impact on the national level was through the 1950's and
   1960's one of suspicion and the scene of American-Communist conspiracy.
   The thawing of relations between the Peoples Republic of China and the
   United States in the 1970's opened up a new chapter for the mission.
   For the first time, the mission and its participants became the subject
   of positive scholarship and many of the original participants were
   among the first Americans invited to visit China in twenty years. In
   China, the Dixie Mission remains remembered as a positive time between
   the two nations involved and a symbol of Sino-American cooperation.

The Nickname

   While fondly referred to as "Dixie" or the Dixie Mission, the true name
   of the mission was the United States Army Observation Group to Yan'an.
   One war scholar attributes the name to the fact that there were a
   predominant number of Southerners amongst the mission's personnel. John
   Davies, however, declared in his memoir Dragon by the Tail that the
   mission earned its nickname due to the reference of communist territory
   as "rebel" territory by himself and his peers, a glib comparison to the
   territory of the Confederate States of America.

Notable Members

     * Colonel David D. Barrett (1892 - 1977), first commanding officer of
       the Dixie Mission.
     * John S. Service (1909 - 1999), first State Department
       representative to arrive and operate as part of the Dixie Mission.
     * John P. Davies (1908 - 1999), State Department official
       instrumental in the creation of the mission.
     * Raymond P. Ludden (1909 - 1970), State Department officer who
       undertook dangerous mission into Japanese occupied China.

Dixie Mission Commanding Officers

     * Colonel David D. Barrett
     * Colonel Morris DePass
     * Colonel Wilbur J. Peterkin
     * Major Clifford F. Young
     * Colonel John Sells

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