(3) Appeasement of the agreement to integrate the army
Another mission of Marshall’s visit to China was to assist the government in integrating the army, abolishing the communist armies and nationalizing the army.
However, the negotiations on the integration of the army, like the previous political consultation meetings, the government was forced into the drama by the U.S., as the subject was shelved during the Chongqing negotiations due to the lack of sincerity of the communists. At that Time, the hard-line Anti-Communist Ambassador Hurley strongly supported the National Government, and the Communists still refused to budge. Now that the pro-Communist Marshall is conducting the negotiations, the government has no chance of winning. Although the Communists did pretend to sign the CPPCC resolution on the nationalization of the army, they were merely putting on a show.
Marshall also did not understand that for the United States, the end of World War II meant the coming of peace. China, on the other hand, was not. Immediately after the war, there was an overwhelming danger that the Communists would overthrow the government and rehabilitate China. With a strong enemy at hand, the national army should have actively repaired and improved its combat strength to attack and suppress the bandit scourge. However, the agreement adopted by the CPPCC called for the army to be drastically downsized, which was obviously not in line with the Nationalist government’s strategy of fighting the Communists. In order to cooperate with the U.S., the government knew that it could not do it but did it. However, the military restructuring plan formulated under Marshall’s auspices resulted in a large number of officers and soldiers of the government army being reduced and demobilized, while the illegal armed forces of the communists were retained, thus nullifying the goal of eliminating the communist army.
The Nationalist government proposed a mixed integration program, in which the Communist army would be abolished after both sides had downsized and demobilized their respective armies proportionally, and the officers and men would be dismantled and broken up and incorporated into the Nationalist army, so that the Communists would not be allowed to have their own army.
However, the communists steadfastly rejected the state government’s mixed integration proposal because Mao Zedong had long said that not a single gun or bullet could be surrendered from the communist army. But on the surface they came up with a set of grand reasons: the army belonged to the people, it had to be democratized politically first, then nationalized, and could not be handed over to the KMT one-party government. Marshall was speechless when he heard that, after all, the CCP’s rhetoric also fit his thinking about making China.
Anyone with a little knowledge of the nature and history of the Communist Party would know that the Communists believed in violent revolution, not nationalization of the army. Without disarming the Communist Party, there was no way to democratize China’s politics. But instead of siding with the anti-communist allies, Marshall supported the Communist Party’s so-called unification in order to complete its mission as soon as possible.
Marshall proposed that the Nationalists and Communists be unified into an army in divisions, with two Nationalist divisions plus one Communist division, with the Nationalists as the commander, and two Communist divisions plus one Nationalist division, with the Communists as the commander. The bizarre thing about this program was that allowing the communist rebels to retain their divisional formations was tantamount to legitimizing the communist army and departing from the goal of nationalizing the army. Furthermore, the communists were already extremely good at possession infiltration, which is why they were expelled by Chiang C.C. to clear the party. Marshall was tantamount to reintroducing the ghosts into the army, and the commie army commander could still command the national army in name only. In the words of Zhou Enlai: with a military commander and two division commanders, still afraid that they can not influence the rest of a division? The Communist divisions under the State Government’s army, on the other hand, could never take orders from the commander of the National Army.
In the view of the State Government, such an integration of the army was like a child’s play, and instead of being abolished, the Communist Army had a reason to exist. The essence of this integration program was the approval and protection of the communist rebels, which was totally against the will of the national government. The historical evils of the post-Xian Incident alliance with the Communists against Japan were still in sight. The Communists pretended to accept the National Government’s jurisdiction, but in reality they only received their pay and refused to listen to military orders, and regarded all those who obstructed their expansion as intransigents, which led to the heart of the National Government’s problem today.
However, although the agreement on army restructuring allowed the communists to retain divisional formations, it also stipulated that they had to be reduced to 18 divisions first, followed by 10 divisions. Mao Zedong wanted to weaken the national army and preserve himself through the integration of the army, so as to completely destroy the national army and subvert the national government. Therefore, it ordered Zhou Enlai and Marshall to make a false deal and delay. Zhou excused that the Chinese Communist army lacked formal training and needed time to train before it could reach the standard of regularization. Unaware of the scheme, Marshall said he could open a military school in the communist zone where American officers would train the communist army and also promised to provide equipment for ten divisions of the communist army. He had also proposed that the Communist Army, which had only an army, should have one-third of each in the navy and air force. Marshall was really anxious about the needs of the Communist army and thought about what the Communist army did not think.
In keeping with civilized custom, Marshall attached particular importance to the role of formal agreements. He thought that if the Communists agreed to sign the integration agreement, he had really accomplished Truman’s mission of nationalizing the army. At the signing ceremony for the integration agreement in February 1946, a complacent Marshall went so far as to accuse the righteous people in the national government who had given him advice: “This agreement is the hope of China. I trust that it will not be tarnished by a few stubborn elements. But this stubborn minority, selfish and self-serving, is destroying the peace and prosperity and the right to live to which the majority of the Chinese people aspire.” But the ink was not yet dry on the agreement, and it soon became clear who was a gentleman, who was a rogue, and who was empty of joy.
According to the agreement on army integration, the demobilization of the army should be implemented immediately. The national government began to downsize the national army from March 46, the army to divisions, divisions to brigades (cut a group), a large number of officers and soldiers demobilized, including the so-called miscellaneous troops, but also the Whampoa Department, and later there was a sensation “crying tomb incident”. The Communist army in North China to reduce the old, weak and residual soldiers to cope with the verification of the three-member team of the United States and China, the troops should be abolished in the name of the local armed forces of the liberation areas to retain. The Communist forces in the northeast were expanding unchecked, as if they were outside the law.
The agreement on military restructuring required the submission of troop and disarmament rosters within one month. The national government submitted to the three-member panel on time a list of the 90 divisions of the national army and a list of the order of demobilization of troops for the previous two months, while the Communist army refused to comply. The result of Marshall’s nationalization of the army was that the Nationalist Army was undermining itself by unilateral disarmament, while the Communist Army treated the agreement like scrap paper and expanded its forces without fear. Marshall finally learned that the Chinese Communist Party had gone back on its word, but he could only swallow the bitter consequences he had created, because he had no binding power over the Communist Party. Ma’s efforts to nationalize the army were like a flower in a mirror, a moon in water, a laughing stock. The next issue of the armistice made him even more anxious.
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