Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Chiang Kai-shek' is associated with 14 posts.

FTR#1208 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 15

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we begin by draw­ing still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave.

Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it. Sev­er­al lis­ten­ers have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print!

I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell oth­ers about it, either through con­ven­tion­al means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.) It is appar­ent­ly avail­able from Ama­zon on Kin­dle.

We also draw on anoth­er, alto­geth­er remark­able work by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Seagrave–Gold War­riors.

As we approach the close of this series, we “dol­ly out” and present aspects of how U.S. pol­i­cy in Asia dur­ing the Cold War grew direct­ly out of the “mis­sion­ary posi­tion” that Amer­i­ca took toward China–a posi­tion that led direct­ly to war in Korea and Viet­nam.

Intro­duc­ing the expan­sion of Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with Chi­ang and his Kuom­intang fas­cists into U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, we present Ster­ling Seagrave’s rumi­na­tion about Stan­ley Horn­beck, a State Depart­ment flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . .”

Horn­beck “ . . . . had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

The pro­gram con­tin­ues with review of the obit­u­ary of gen­er­al Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose ser­vice in the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army dur­ing World War II has been a focal point of con­tro­ver­sy in South Korea. Gen­er­al Sun-yup embod­ied the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy in Korea over Japan’s occu­pa­tion and the sub­se­quent unfold­ing of events lead­ing up to, and includ­ing the Kore­an War. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a pup­pet state that impe­r­i­al Japan had estab­lished in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunt­ing down Kore­an guer­ril­las fight­ing for inde­pen­dence . . .”

A post by Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy sets forth Cold War his­to­ry involv­ing the BND/Gehlen “Org” and Chi­na.

Doc­u­ment­ing plans to launch a nuclear strike against Peking and Moscow dur­ing the Kore­an War, fol­low­ing up with Nazi-aid­ed Kuom­intang tank war­fare to fin­ish the con­flict and spawn­ing a long Gehlen-Nazi advi­so­ry role with Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s mil­i­tary, the post pro­vides his­tor­i­cal con­text in which the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and the full-court press against Chi­na.

“When, dur­ing the war on Korea, a nuclear strike against Peking (and Moscow) had been relo­cat­ed (site of deploy­ment Guam, max. 34 Mark 4 atom­ic bombs), the suc­ces­sor of the Nazi espi­onage (Orga­ni­za­tion Gehlen) in Munich, ensured direct con­tacts with the Kuom­intang. Fol­low­ing the drop­ping of the atom­ic bombs, Kuom­intang troops were sup­posed to march, as occu­py­ing forces, through con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed ter­rain towards Peking. To sup­port the offen­sive of Kuom­intang tanks, con­sid­ered nec­es­sary by Chi­ang Kai-shek, Gehlen could offer spe­cial­ists from Munich: from the Reich­swehr and Nazi mil­i­tary. . . .”

” . . . . Leo Geyr von Schwep­pen­burg was work­ing with the Orga­ni­za­tion Gehlen . . . . The Nazi Gen­er­al, who, as hero of the Nazi tank divi­sions’ advance towards Moscow, had been award­ed the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, was now in action for Tai­wan and the Kuom­intang in the bat­tle against Peking. He per­son­al­ly instruct­ed the staffs of the nation­al­ist forces with orig­i­nal doc­u­ments of the Naz­i’s ‘Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa.’ He was per­son­al­ly answer­able to Chi­ang Kai-shek. . . .”

” . . . . In Tai­wan, Mun­zel’s BND group, dis­guised as a del­e­ga­tion of DAAD (Ger­man Aca­d­e­m­ic Exchange Ser­vice, Bonn) received Chi­ang Kai-shek’s son Wego, for­mer­ly a cadet in the Nazi mil­i­tary, now an arma­ments expert with con­nec­tions to the West Ger­man war indus­try. Chi­ang Wego’s assign­ment was com­pre­hen­sive and clear: to train new recruits for the offen­sive against Peking by draw­ing on the Ger­man expe­ri­ence gained dur­ing ‘Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa’ (fol­lowed by Mun­zel’s test­ing in Cairo) — and to pro­vide the appro­pri­ate weapons. . . .”

” . . . . While Mun­zel, under BND com­mand, set up a secret ‘exper­i­men­tal bat­tal­ion’ against Chi­na (1968), staff offi­cers of the Tai­wan dic­ta­tor­ship stud­ied at the Ger­man Armed Forces Staff Col­lege in Ham­burg, quite offi­cial­ly. . . .”

Note­wor­thy for our pur­pos­es, is the exter­mi­na­tion­ist tac­ti­cal approach under­tak­en by the West and draw­ing on Nazi exper­tise in draw­ing up oper­a­tional plans.

Note­wor­thy, also, is the con­ti­nu­ity of SS activ­i­ty in, or in con­nec­tion with, Asia:

1.–In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Ger­man tele­vi­sion went “retro” with Goebbels’ Pro­pa­gan­da Min­istry, broad­cast­ing SS footage of an anthro­po­log­i­cal expe­di­tion to Tibet. ” . . . . The Nazi pro­pa­gan­da’s imag­i­nary pro­jec­tion of a peo­ple, weak­er than ‘inner Asians,’ who still had main­tained their puri­ty and must be pro­tect­ed was seam­less­ly trans­mit­ted. The noto­ri­ous SS-pro­duced film (‘Geheim­nis Tibet,’– ‘Secret Tibet,’ 1943) about Aryan genes in the Himalayan High­lands returned to the big screen of the movies. . . .”
2.–The broad­cast mate­r­i­al fea­tured SS war crim­i­nal and mem­ber of the Tibetan Gov­ern­ment-in-Exile Bruno Beger.  ” . . . . The West Ger­man state was bare­ly a year old, and a nuclear strike against Peking was in the plan­ning stages (1950), when graph­i­cal­ly iden­ti­cal cin­e­ma posters pro­mot­ed the relaunch: ‘The orig­i­nal film about the Ger­man Tibet expe­di­tion.’ The film con­tains scenes with the Auschwitz crim­i­nal Bruno Beger (see Part II). The scenes with Beger, who mea­sures the heads and bod­ies of the indige­nous peo­ple com­par­ing them to those of Aryans, con­veys racism as a stim­u­lus for mur­der, seem­ing­ly harm­less and inter­change­able . . . . as the Aryan her­itage in Tibetan Asia, threat­ened with dilu­tion by the yel­low per­il (from the Chi­nese state and Han Chi­nese) . . . .”
3.–In addi­tion, the film fea­tured voice-over nar­ra­tion by the Dalai Lama’s SS tutor Hein­rich Har­rer: ” . . . . In the evening pro­gram, mil­lions learned how, sev­er­al years ear­li­er, the omnipresent TV mod­er­a­tor and alpin­ist hero had met the Dalai Lama — as the god­ly king in Lhasa, Tibet, who had offered his friend­ship to the white man from dis­tant Europe and who now finds him­self on the run from ‘Red Chi­na’ — with­out his indige­nous peo­ple. The white vis­i­tor, the omnipresent TV mod­er­a­tor was Hein­rich Har­rer, for­mer SS Ober­schar­für­er. . . .”
3.–The Uighurs (also translit­er­at­ed as “Uyghurs”) also draw on Waf­fen SS her­itage and insti­tu­tion­al momen­tum: ” . . . . The new Uighur gen­er­a­tion trav­eled via Turkey and filled the Mus­lim ranks of Gehlen’s agents in Munich, who had made their liv­ing for decades at Radio Free Europe (RFE), the intel­li­gence oper­a­tion in the Oet­tinger Strasse. . . . The elders of the Uighur com­mu­ni­ty in Munich (today the World Uyghur Con­gress, WUC) are very famil­iar with the blood pro­pa­gan­da, through their ser­vice in the ‘East­land-Legions’ of the Waf­fen SS (Turkestan 162nd Infantry Divi­sion). Berlin had promised them their own nation with the inclu­sion of Xin­jiang (‘Great Turkestan’), ‘iden­ti­ty,’ and Mus­lim law, to be able to posi­tion the great Ger­man ‘Reich’ at Chi­na’s bor­ders with Turk­men help. With the defeat­ed rest of the SS divi­sion strand­ed in Bavaria, they still had their hopes and are once again used against Chi­na . . . .”

Net­work­ing with Isa Yusuf Alptekin at the Ban­dung (Indone­sia) con­fer­ence was Ruzi (or “Ruzy”) Nazar, an Uzbek nation­al who fought in var­i­ous Third Reich mil­i­tary for­ma­tions, includ­ing the SS Dirlewanger Brigade. (Alptekin was a key Kuom­i­nang asso­ciate and the patri­arch of the Uighur sep­a­ratist move­mentAfter the war.) Nazar was a CIA oper­a­tive net­work­ing with the Nation­al Action Par­ty (or Nation­al Move­ment Par­ty) of Alparslan Turkes.


FTR#1207 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 14

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we draw still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave.

Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it. Sev­er­al lis­ten­ers have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print!

I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell oth­ers about it, either through con­ven­tion­al means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.) It is appar­ent­ly avail­able from Ama­zon on Kin­dle.

We also draw on anoth­er, alto­geth­er remark­able work by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Seagrave–Gold War­riors.

When the fail­ures of Chiang’s regime led to scorn toward, and piv­ot­ing away from the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese cause, the amal­gam of cor­po­rate, crim­i­nal, jour­nal­is­tic and polit­i­cal inter­ests that had empow­ered the Kuom­intang coun­ter­at­tacked: “ . . . . the Chi­ang gov­ern­ment poured mil­lions of dol­lars into a coun­terof­fen­sive. Zeal­ous Amer­i­cans who joined the pro-Tai­wan cru­sade became the fund-rais­ers, the orga­niz­ers, the tele­phon­ers, the leg­men, the gofers, the pub­li­cists, the con­gress­men, the tycoons, the hosts and host­esses of the shad­owy soci­ety called ‘the Chi­na Lob­by.’ Its man­age­ment, its direc­tion, and its pri­ma­ry finances were not Amer­i­can. The Chi­na Lob­by belonged to the Soong clan and the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. The peo­ple involved thought they were work­ing for the greater glo­ry of God, or for ‘the sur­vival of the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem.’ They were real­ly work­ing for a Chi­nese pub­lic-rela­tions cam­paign. . . . the Kungs and Soongs remained the pri­ma­ry pipeline con­nect­ing Amer­i­can spe­cial inter­ests with Tai­wan. Ai-ling and H.H. Kung, T.V. Soong and May-ling Soong Chi­ang devot­ed con­sid­er­able ener­gies to the lob­by and some­times gath­ered for strat­e­gy ses­sions at the Kung estate in Riverdale. . . .”

The domes­tic polit­i­cal result in the U.S. was summed by Ster­ling Sea­grave: “  . . . . Small won­der that a large seg­ment of the Amer­i­can pub­lic believed that Chi­ang was the essence of virtue and his cause was a joint one. Sim­i­lar amounts were spent dur­ing the Kore­an War and the peri­od­ic crises over the defense of the For­mosa Strait. Guess­es at the grand total spent by Tai­wan to stu­pe­fy Amer­i­cans ran as high as $1 bil­lion a year. . . .”

The unique nature of the man­i­fest Chi­na Lob­by was summed up: “ . . . . Mar­quis Childs wrote ‘. . . . Nation­al­ist Chi­na has used the tech­niques of direct inter­ven­tion on a scale rarely, if ever, seen.’ Part of the cam­paign was to pour gaso­line on the McCarthy witch hunts. . . .”

The com­po­nent ele­ments of the Chi­na Lob­by:

1.–“ . . . . Chiang’s gov­ern­ment used exist­ing Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions head­ed by men who shared its view­point. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . it hired adver­tis­ing agen­cies . . . . Allied Syn­di­cates count­ed among its clients the bank of Chi­na (with H.H. Kung as direc­tor). . . . Hamil­ton Wright, worked for six years as a reg­is­tered agent for Nation­al­ist Chi­na, writ­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing sto­ries, news arti­cles, pho­tographs, and movies to cre­ate a favor­able image of Chi­ang Kai-shek and his regime. . . .”
3.–“. . . . T.V.’s wartime Uni­ver­sal Trad­ing Cor­po­ra­tion was list­ed in 1949 as a for­eign agent work­ing for the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, with assets of near­ly $22 mil­lion. The Chi­nese News Ser­vice based in Tai­wan estab­lished branch­es in Wash­ing­ton, New York, Chica­go, and San Fran­cis­co. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . Tai­wan exer­cised a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong influ­ence on Amer­i­can news­pa­pers. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . ‘Hen­ry Luce now saw the most grandiose project of his life­time in dan­ger of ruin. Wrapped up in the ruin was not only the fate of Chi­na and of Chris­tian­i­ty and the Asian hege­mo­ny of the Unit­ed States, but also his own peace of mind and rep­u­ta­tion. Chi­ang-in-Chi­na was to have been the crown­ing of a decade and a half of plan­ning in the Chrysler build­ing and Rock­e­feller Cen­ter and of count­less thou­sands of words of Luce­press pro­pa­gan­da. The night­mare rise of Mao-in-Chi­ina brought a pow­er­ful Luce counter-strat­e­gy.’. . .”
6.–“ . . . . News­cast­er Robert S. Allen report­ed, . . . . Luce has been pro­pa­gan­diz­ing and agi­tat­ing for anoth­er two-bil­lion dol­lar U.S. hand­out for Chi­ang for a long time. . . . And in Wash­ing­ton, prac­ti­cal­ly the whole Luce bureau has been work­ing full blast as part of the Chi­ang lob­by.’. . .”
7.–“ . . . . Many of the activists in the lob­by were peo­ple whose fam­i­lies had worked in Chi­na as mis­sion­ar­ies, and now thought their her­itage was being thrown away. Among them were the direc­tors of the Amer­i­can Chi­na Pol­i­cy Asso­ci­a­tion and the Com­mit­tee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aid­ing Anti-Com­mu­nist Chi­na . . . . .”
8.–“ . . . . These groups were peri­od­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed by cam­paigns waged on Chiang’s behalf by the exec­u­tive coun­cil of the AFL-CIO, the Amer­i­can Legion, the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union, and Young Amer­i­cans for Free­dom. To many con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, Tai­wan became syn­ony­mous with anti-Com­mu­nism. In the atmos­phere of the 1950s, the fear of Red Chi­na kept nor­mal­ly sen­si­ble peo­ple from won­der­ing where all the mon­ey was com­ing from. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . As prin­ci­pal direc­tor of the Bank of China’s New York City branch, H.H. [Kung] was dri­ven to Wall Street two or three days a week . . . . Colum­nist Drew Pear­son, one of the few jour­nal­ists who main­tained an inter­est in the Soongs after they went into exile, called the Bank of Chi­na the “nerve cen­ter of the Chi­na Lob­by . . . .”
10.–“ . . . . ‘Dr. Kung’s knowl­edge of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is almost as astute as his knowl­edge of Chi­nese finance, and well before he entered the Tru­man cab­i­net, Kung picked Louis John­son as his per­son­al attor­ney. It may or may not be sig­nif­i­cant that, lat­er, when John­son became Sec­re­tary of Defense, he was one of the staunchest advo­cates of Amer­i­can sup­port for For­mosa. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . [From a Drew Pear­son column—D.E.] A move by a Chi­ang broth­er-in-law. . . . to cor­ner the soy­bean mar­ket at the expense of the Amer­i­can pub­lic . . . The broth­er-in-law is T.L. Soong, broth­er of For­eign Min­is­ter T.V. Soong, who for­mer­ly han­dled much of the three and a half bil­lion dol­lars worth of sup­plies which the Unit­ed States sent to Chi­na dur­ing the War. The soy­bean pool net­ted a prof­it of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the Amer­i­can con­sumer $1 as bushel [much more mon­ey in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soy­bean manip­u­la­tion was that its oper­a­tors knew exact­ly the right time to buy up the world’s soy­bean supply—a few weeks before the com­mu­nists invad­ed Korea. . . .”
12.–“ . . . . Louis Kung [son of Ai-ling and H.H. who had become a Dal­las oil man—D.E.] had become one of the busiest mem­bers of the clan. Dur­ing Richard Nixon’s 1950 sen­a­to­r­i­al cam­paign, Dad­dy Kung dis­patched Younger Son to Los Ange­les to give the sen­a­tor dona­tions and encour­age­ment. . . . Louis took an active role in the Soong-Kung petro­le­um hold­ings, with oil prop­er­ties across Texas, Okla­homa, and Louisiana. At the (Nation­al­ist) Chi­nese embassy in Wash­ing­ton in 1956, Louis orga­nized the Cheyenne Oil Com­pa­ny. . . . If one of Louis’s wells (leased for exam­ple, to John Daly, then vice-pres­i­dent for news of the (ABC Net­work), did poor­ly, Louis guar­an­teed that Daly would have his invest­ment back; if the well turned out to be a suc­cess, then the prof­its were divid­ed with Daly. . . .”

Pre­sent­ing an overview updat­ing the oper­a­tions of T.V. Soong, Ster­ling Sea­grave recounts his ascent to the pin­na­cles of pow­er, his cor­po­rate largesse in Amer­i­ca derived from clever invest­ment and his major par­tic­i­pa­tion in the crim­i­nal under­world of Kuom­intang nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and klep­toc­ra­cy and his pur­loin­ing of mas­sive amounts of U.S. aid to Chi­na dur­ing World War II.

Note, T.V.’s role in the Chi­na Lob­by: “ . . . . Although T.V. avoid­ed Tai­wan, and devot­ed most of his atten­tion to his expand­ing finan­cial empire, he did back the Chi­na Lob­by finan­cial­ly because it was in his inter­est to do so. The levers of the Chi­na Lob­by could be worked in many direc­tions. . . .”

Note, also, his grav­i­tas with the lethal, pow­er­ful Chi­nese orga­nized crime milieu in the U.S.: “ . . . . It was not so much implied that T.V. him­self was dan­ger­ous but that the slight­est word from him could bring about ter­ri­ble con­se­quences from the Chi­nese tongs or syn­di­cates, the Chi­nese banks, and name­less oth­er objects of fear. . . .”

The remain­der of the pro­gram recaps infor­ma­tion from FTR#1142 about some of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the out­break of the Kore­an War.

This is pre­sent­ed as con­text for T.L. Soong’s remark­ably pre­scient cor­ner­ing of the soy­bean mar­ket on the eve of the out­break of that con­flict: ” . . . . The soy­bean pool net­ted a prof­it of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the Amer­i­can con­sumer $1 as bushel [much more mon­ey in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soy­bean manip­u­la­tion was that its oper­a­tors knew exact­ly the right time to buy up the world’s soy­bean supply—a few weeks before the com­mu­nists invad­ed Korea. . . .”

In FTR#1142, we detailed the lit­tle-known involve­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek in the 1943 con­fer­ences at Cairo and Teheran. (Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek was the sis­ter of T.V. Soong, one of Chi­ang’s finance min­is­ters and the rich­est man in the world at one time.)

This low-pro­file involve­ment appar­ent­ly gave them con­sid­er­able grav­i­tas in help­ing to shape the post­war geopo­lit­i­cal agen­da.

In that con­text and in rela­tion to the ongo­ing series on Chi­ang Kai-shek’s nar­co-fas­cist gov­ern­ment, it is worth not­ing the deep polit­i­cal agen­da that was gov­ern­ing U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy by Sep­tem­ber 2, 1945–the day on which the treaty end­ing World War II in the Pacif­ic was signed on board the deck of the U.S. S. Mis­souri. 

While in Oki­nawa dur­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der in World War II, Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty was wit­ness to the ear­ly com­mit­ment of deci­sive mil­i­tary resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Oki­nawa at that time, and dur­ing some busi­ness in the har­bor area I asked the har­bor­mas­ter if all that new mate­r­i­al was being returned to the States. His response was direct and sur­pris­ing: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t nev­er goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and sup­ply at least a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand men, is going to Korea, and the oth­er half is going to Indochi­na.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first bat­tles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. mil­i­tary units in those two regions begin­ning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is pre­cise­ly what had been planned, and it is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened. Who made that deci­sion back in 1943–45? . . . .”

In FTR#1142, we high­light­ed the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agree­ment which false­ly main­tained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occu­pied dur­ing World War II and that the (already) boom­ing nation was bank­rupt and would not be able to pay repa­ra­tions to the slave labor­ers and “com­fort women” it had pressed into ser­vice dur­ing the con­flict.

In the con­text of the fan­tas­tic sums loot­ed by Japan under the aus­pices of Gold­en Lily and the incor­po­ra­tion of that wealth with Nazi Gold to form the Black Eagle Trust, that 1951 treaty and the advent of the Kore­an War raise some inter­est­ing, unre­solved ques­tions.

One of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the loot­ing of occu­pied Asia dur­ing World War II was the remark­able Kodama Yoshio. Net­worked with the pow­er­ful Yakuza Japan­ese orga­nized crime milieu, the Black Drag­on soci­ety (the most pow­er­ful of the patri­ot­ic and ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties), the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese mil­i­tary and the Roy­al fam­i­ly of Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, Kodama loot­ed the Chi­nese under­world and traf­ficked in nar­cotics with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s fas­cist nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship.

We can but won­der about Kodama Yosh­io’s pres­ence along with 1951 “Peace” Treaty author John Fos­ter Dulles at nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War.

As dis­cussed in numer­ous pro­grams in an inter­view with Daniel Junas, the Kore­an War was a huge eco­nom­ic boom for Japan, and gen­er­at­ed con­sid­er­able prof­it for Ger­man firms as well. Thyssen, for exam­ple, won lucra­tive con­tracts for mak­ing steel for the war effort. Is there some con­nec­tion between the Kodama/Dulles pres­ence in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of war linked to the Gold­en Lily/Black Eagle/1951 “Peace” Treaty nexus and/or T.L. Soong’s cor­ner­ing of the soy­bean mar­ket on the out­break of the war?

Inter­est­ing­ly, and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly, John Fos­ter Dulles made a star­tling­ly pre­scient speech in South Korea, augur­ing North Kore­a’s inva­sion short­ly there­after.

It would be inter­est­ing to know if Dulles and Kodama had been involved in delib­er­ate­ly lur­ing the North Kore­ans to invade, in a man­ner not unlike that in which U.S. Ambas­sador to Iraq April Glaspie appears to have bait­ed Sad­dam Hus­sein into invad­ing Kuwait.

Note, also, Dulles’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Syn­g­man Rhee and Chi­ang Kai-shek as Chris­t­ian gen­tle­men. Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Chris­t­ian cre­den­tials are record­ed in detail in the ongo­ing series.

Fos­ter Dulles’s role in the 1951 Peace Treaty with Japan, his curi­ous pres­ence in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War, his pre­scient fore­shad­ow­ing of the con­flict just before the North Kore­an inva­sion and the role of these events in shap­ing the post World War II glob­al eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal land­scapes may well have been designed to help jump­start the Japan­ese and Ger­man economies.

“. . . .  A sub­stan­tial infu­sion of mon­ey into this new Fed­er­al Repub­lic econ­o­my result­ed from the Kore­an War in 1950. The Unit­ed States was not geared to sup­ply­ing all its needs for armies in Korea, so the Pen­ta­gon placed huge orders in West Ger­many and in Japan; from that point on, both nations winged into an era of boom­ing good times. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with the obit­u­ary of gen­er­al Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose ser­vice in the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army dur­ing World War II has been a focal point of con­tro­ver­sy in South Korea. Gen­er­al Sun-yup embod­ied the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy in Korea over Japan’s occu­pa­tion and the sub­se­quent unfold­ing of events lead­ing up to, and includ­ing the Kore­an War. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a pup­pet state that impe­r­i­al Japan had estab­lished in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunt­ing down Kore­an guer­ril­las fight­ing for inde­pen­dence . . .”


FTR#1206 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 13

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we draw still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave. Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it.

Sev­er­al lis­ten­ers have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print! I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell oth­ers about it, either through con­ven­tion­al means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

It is appar­ent­ly avail­able from Ama­zon on Kin­dle.

First, we high­light Fred J. Cook’s ana­lyt­i­cal account of the McCarthy peri­od, The Night­mare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Depart­ment [Com­mu­nist] treach­ery had “lost” Chi­na to Mao and his forces.

Exploit­ing the meme that “pinko” State Depart­ment offi­cials were respon­si­ble for Mao’s ascen­dance, McCarthy and his team suc­cess­ful­ly purged the State Depart­ment of offi­cials whose out­look on Chi­ang Kai-shek was real­is­tic.

The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Orga­nized Crime as well as in ear­li­er pro­grams in this series, illus­trates this kind of activ­i­ty.

In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among oth­er pro­grams), we not­ed the piv­otal influ­ence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment of Don­ald Trump. We won­der what influ­ence Cohn and the McCarthy lega­cy may have had on Trump’s pol­i­cy toward Chi­na.

Aside from the airy pre­sump­tion that Chi­na was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s the­sis ignored the effects of U.S. pol­i­cy in that coun­try before, dur­ing and after, World War II. (This trans­gres­sion is, of course, sup­ple­men­tal to Tail­gun­ner Joe’s fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence against those he tar­get­ed.)

In addi­tion to sup­port for Chi­ang Kai-Shek, whom Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well com­pared to Mus­soli­ni, U.S. pol­i­cy of using scores of thou­sands of Japan­ese sol­diers as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants was loath­some to the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion, who had felt the full mea­sure of Japan­ese atroc­i­ty dur­ing years of war­fare.

Leaf­ing through Night­mare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a pas­sage read into the record in AFA #11.

More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the offi­cial con­clu­sion of the hos­til­i­ties of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was coun­te­nanc­ing the use of 80,000 Japan­ese troops (rough­ly eight divi­sions) as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants in east­ern and north­west­ern Manchuria alone!

The tran­si­tion to the Cold War from the Sec­ond World War also saw the inci­dent that became the sig­na­ture ele­ment of the John Birch Soci­ety.

In AFA#11, we set forth the event: ” . . . . Soci­ety fig­ure­head John Birch was the intel­li­gence offi­cer for Gen­er­al Claire Chenault’s Fly­ing Tigers in World War II, sub­se­quent­ly serv­ing with the OSS Chi­na con­tin­gent. Birch was killed recruit­ing Chi­nese col­lab­o­ra­tionst troops to fight the Chi­nese com­mu­nists. (These col­lab­o­ra­tionist forces had served the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II.) Com­ing lit­tle more than a week after the end of the war in the Pacif­ic, his death was her­ald­ed by the Amer­i­can right as ‘the begin­ning of World War III.’ . . . .”

One of the sig­na­ture pro­pa­gan­da gam­bits in the New Cold War against Chi­na is the Uighur Geno­cide myth. A polit­i­cal fan­ta­sy, root­ed in decades of manip­u­la­tion of the Chi­nese Uighur minor­i­ty, the desta­bi­liza­tion effort in Xin­jiang province, the desta­bi­liza­tion effort derives from dynam­ics dat­ing to the Chi­nese civ­il war over­lap­ping and fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War.

(We have cov­ered the Uighur desta­bi­liza­tion cam­paigns in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing [most recent­ly] FTR#’s 1143, 1144, 1145, 1178, 1179 and 1180.)

Isa Yusuf Alptekin is the patri­arch of the Uighur sep­a­ratist move­ment. He was aligned with Chi­ang Kai-shek dur­ing the Chi­nese civ­il war, espous­ing the doc­tri­naire Anti-Com­mu­nism char­ac­ter­iz­ing the Kuom­intang milieu and endear­ing Alptekin’s move­ment and suc­ces­sors to Amer­i­can and West­ern Cold War­riors.

“ . . . . The found­ing father of this sep­a­ratist move­ment was Isa Yusuf Alptekin. His son, Erkin Alptekin, found­ed the WUC and served as the organization’s inau­gur­al pres­i­dent. The senior Alptekin is referred to as “our late leader” by the WUC and cur­rent Pres­i­dent Dolkun Isa. . . . Dur­ing the Chi­nese Civ­il War that raged between the nation­al­ists and com­mu­nists from 1945 to ’49, Alptekin served under the nation­al­ist Kuom­intang (KMT) admin­is­tra­tion in Xin­jiang. Through­out this peri­od, the KMT received mas­sive mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic back­ing from the Unit­ed States — includ­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in cash and mil­i­tary hard­ware, along with the deploy­ment of tens of thou­sands of US marines — in an effort to quash the Chi­nese rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”

As not­ed in past pro­grams, the Uighur sep­a­ratist milieu incor­po­rates Islamists allied with both Al-Qae­da and ele­ments of ISIS, as well as Pan-Turk­ists allied with the Nation­al Action (also Nation­al Move­ment) Party—a doc­tri­naire fas­cist, revan­chist body whose youth wing—the Grey Wolves—constitute the “Stay Behind” NATO cadre in Turkey.

When the fail­ures of Chiang’s regime led to scorn toward, and piv­ot­ing away from the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese cause, the amal­gam of cor­po­rate, crim­i­nal, jour­nal­is­tic and polit­i­cal inter­ests that had empow­ered the Kuom­intang coun­ter­at­tacked: “ . . . . the Chi­ang gov­ern­ment poured mil­lions of dol­lars into a coun­terof­fen­sive. Zeal­ous Amer­i­cans who joined the pro-Tai­wan cru­sade became the fund-rais­ers, the orga­niz­ers, the tele­phon­ers, the leg­men, the gofers, the pub­li­cists, the con­gress­men, the tycoons, the hosts and host­esses of the shad­owy soci­ety called ‘the Chi­na Lob­by.’ Its man­age­ment, its direc­tion, and its pri­ma­ry finances were not Amer­i­can. The Chi­na Lob­by belonged to the Soong clan and the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. The peo­ple involved thought they were work­ing for the greater glo­ry of God, or for ‘the sur­vival of the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem.’ They were real­ly work­ing for a Chi­nese pub­lic-rela­tions cam­paign. . . . the Kungs and Soongs remained the pri­ma­ry pipeline con­nect­ing Amer­i­can spe­cial inter­ests with Tai­wan. Ai-ling and H.H. Kung, T.V. Soong and May-ling Soong Chi­ang devot­ed con­sid­er­able ener­gies to the lob­by and some­times gath­ered for strat­e­gy ses­sions at the Kung estate in Riverdale. . . .”

The domes­tic polit­i­cal result in the U.S. was summed by Ster­ling Sea­grave: “  . . . . Small won­der that a large seg­ment of the Amer­i­can pub­lic believed that Chi­ang was the essence of virtue and his cause was a joint one. Sim­i­lar amounts were spent dur­ing the Kore­an War and the peri­od­ic crises over the defense of the For­mosa Strait. Guess­es at the grand total spent by Tai­wan to stu­pe­fy Amer­i­cans ran as high as $1 bil­lion a year. . . .”

The unique nature of the man­i­fest Chi­na Lob­by was summed up: “ . . . . Mar­quis Childs wrote ‘. . . . Nation­al­ist Chi­na has used the tech­niques of direct inter­ven­tion on a scale rarely, if ever, seen.’ Part of the cam­paign was to pour gaso­line on the McCarthy witch hunts. . . .”

The com­po­nent ele­ments of the Chi­na Lob­by:

1.–“ . . . . Chiang’s gov­ern­ment used exist­ing Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions head­ed by men who shared its view­point. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . it hired adver­tis­ing agen­cies . . . . Allied Syn­di­cates count­ed among its clients the bank of Chi­na (with H.H. Kung as direc­tor). . . . Hamil­ton Wright, worked for six years as a reg­is­tered agent for Nation­al­ist Chi­na, writ­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing sto­ries, news arti­cles, pho­tographs, and movies to cre­ate a favor­able image of Chi­ang Kai-shek and his regime. . . .”
3.–“. . . . T.V.’s wartime Uni­ver­sal Trad­ing Cor­po­ra­tion was list­ed in 1949 as a for­eign agent work­ing for the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, with assets of near­ly $22 mil­lion. The Chi­nese News Ser­vice based in Tai­wan estab­lished branch­es in Wash­ing­ton, New York, Chica­go, and San Fran­cis­co. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . Tai­wan exer­cised a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong influ­ence on Amer­i­can news­pa­pers. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . ‘Hen­ry Luce now saw the most grandiose project of his life­time in dan­ger of ruin. Wrapped up in the ruin was not only the fate of Chi­na and of Chris­tian­i­ty and the Asian hege­mo­ny of the Unit­ed States, but also his own peace of mind and rep­u­ta­tion. Chi­ang-in-Chi­na was to have been the crown­ing of a decade and a half of plan­ning in the Chrysler build­ing and Rock­e­feller Cen­ter and of count­less thou­sands of words of Luce­press pro­pa­gan­da. The night­mare rise of Mao-in-Chi­ina brought a pow­er­ful Luce counter-strat­e­gy.’. . .”
6.–“ . . . . News­cast­er Robert S. Allen report­ed, . . . . Luce has been pro­pa­gan­diz­ing and agi­tat­ing for anoth­er two-bil­lion dol­lar U.S. hand­out for Chi­ang for a long time. . . . And in Wash­ing­ton, prac­ti­cal­ly the whole Luce bureau has been work­ing full blast as part of the Chi­ang lob­by.’. . .”
7.–“ . . . . Many of the activists in the lob­by were peo­ple whose fam­i­lies had worked in Chi­na as mis­sion­ar­ies, and now thought their her­itage was being thrown away. Among them were the direc­tors of the Amer­i­can Chi­na Pol­i­cy Asso­ci­a­tion and the Com­mit­tee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aid­ing Anti-Com­mu­nist Chi­na . . . . .”
8.–“ . . . . These groups were peri­od­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed by cam­paigns waged on Chiang’s behalf by the exec­u­tive coun­cil of the AFL-CIO, the Amer­i­can Legion, the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union, and Young Amer­i­cans for Free­dom. To many con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, Tai­wan became syn­ony­mous with anti-Com­mu­nism. In the atmos­phere of the 1950s, the fear of Red Chi­na kept nor­mal­ly sen­si­ble peo­ple from won­der­ing where all the mon­ey was com­ing from. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . As prin­ci­pal direc­tor of the Bank of China’s New York City branch, H.H. [Kung] was dri­ven to Wall Street two or three days a week . . . . Colum­nist Drew Pear­son, one of the few jour­nal­ists who main­tained an inter­est in the Soongs after they went into exile, called the Bank of Chi­na the “nerve cen­ter of the Chi­na Lob­by . . . .”
10.–“ . . . . ‘Dr. Kung’s knowl­edge of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is almost as astute as his knowl­edge of Chi­nese finance, and well before he entered the Tru­man cab­i­net, Kung picked Louis John­son as his per­son­al attor­ney. It may or may not be sig­nif­i­cant that, lat­er, when John­son became Sec­re­tary of Defense, he was one of the staunchest advo­cates of Amer­i­can sup­port for For­mosa. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . [From a Drew Pear­son column—D.E.] A move by a Chi­ang broth­er-in-law. . . . to cor­ner the soy­bean mar­ket at the expense of the Amer­i­can pub­lic . . . The broth­er-in-law is T.L. Soong, broth­er of For­eign Min­is­ter T.V. Soong, who for­mer­ly han­dled much of the three and a half bil­lion dol­lars worth of sup­plies which the Unit­ed States sent to Chi­na dur­ing the War. The soy­bean pool net­ted a prof­it of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the Amer­i­can con­sumer $1 as bushel [much more mon­ey in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soy­bean manip­u­la­tion was that its oper­a­tors knew exact­ly the right time to buy up the world’s soy­bean supply—a few weeks before the com­mu­nists invad­ed Korea. . . .”
12.–“ . . . . Louis Kung [son of Ai-ling and H.H. who had become a Dal­las oil man—D.E.] had become one of the busiest mem­bers of the clan. Dur­ing Richard Nixon’s 1950 sen­a­to­r­i­al cam­paign, Dad­dy Kung dis­patched Younger Son to Los Ange­les to give the sen­a­tor dona­tions and encour­age­ment. . . . Louis took an active role in the Soong-Kung petro­le­um hold­ings, with oil prop­er­ties across Texas, Okla­homa, and Louisiana. At the (Nation­al­ist) Chi­nese embassy in Wash­ing­ton in 1956, Louis orga­nized the Cheyenne Oil Com­pa­ny. . . . If one of Louis’s wells (leased for exam­ple, to John Daly, then vice-pres­i­dent for news of the (ABC Net­work), did poor­ly, Louis guar­an­teed that Daly would have his invest­ment back; if the well turned out to be a suc­cess, then the prof­its were divid­ed with Daly. . . .”


September 2, 1945: The American Deep State Rolls the Dice

In FTR#1142, we detailed the lit­tle-known involve­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek in the 1943 con­fer­ences at Cairo and Teheran. (Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek was the sis­ter of T.V. Soong, one of Chi­ang’s finance min­is­ters and the rich­est man in the world at one time.) This low-pro­file involve­ment appar­ent­ly gave them con­sid­er­able grav­i­tas in help­ing to shape the post­war geopo­lit­i­cal agen­da. While in Oki­nawa dur­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der in World War II, Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty was wit­ness to the ear­ly com­mit­ment of deci­sive mil­i­tary resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Oki­nawa at that time, and dur­ing some busi­ness in the har­bor area I asked the har­bor­mas­ter if all that new mate­r­i­al was being returned to the States. His response was direct and sur­pris­ing: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t nev­er goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and sup­ply at least a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand men, is going to Korea, and the oth­er half is going to Indochi­na.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first bat­tles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. mil­i­tary units in those two regions begin­ning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is pre­cise­ly what had been planned, and it is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened. Who made that deci­sion back in 1943–45? . . . .” WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.