OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War [Hardcover]

Professor Maochun Yu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 1997

In this book Maochun Yu tells the story of the intelligence activities of the Office of Strategic services (OSS) in China during World War II. Yu draws on recently released classified materials from the US National Archives and on previously unopened Chinese documents to reveal the challenges the agency and its director, General William Donovan, confronted in China. Forerunner of the CIA, OSS lacked a central command to oversee policy and had to compete fiercely with either US agencies for intelligence turf. This situation confused the lines of command and reduced the effectiveness of American foreign policy throughout the war. OSS's embryonic and symbiotic ties with the British also proved to be a major obstacle to conducting clandestine operations in China, as the newly formed organization struggled to establish its own independence and command integrity. Complicated espionage warfare among the Americans, the British, the Chinese nationalist, and the Chinese and Soviet communists contributed further to the intense and confusing environment. Yu concludes that the experiences of OSS in China had long-lasting and important effects, leading toward the eventual globalization and totalitarianisation of US intelligence in the subsequent era of the CIA.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Yu (history, U.S. Naval Academy) has based his work on recently declassified materials at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. He presents a fascinating story of the intelligence activities of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in China during World War II. (The OSS was the precursor of the CIA.) First, Yu examines President Roosevelt's decision to dispatch emissaries to England, China, and the war-torn Mediterranean area in 1941. Then he depicts how OSS/China director General William Donovan used Koreans as surrogates in China to build an intelligence empire. He explores the intricate espionage among the Americans, the British, the Chinese Nationalists, and the Chinese and Soviet Communists. Finally, Yu probes deeply into the demise of the OSS and the creation of the CIA. This is an expertly structured, exhaustively researched book. Highly recommended for larger public libraries.?Steven Lin, Dallas P.L., Tex.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A significant account of the wartime exploits in China of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the intelligence agency that was later to become the CIA. Yu's (History/US Naval Academy) is the first history based on original US archives and on recently published articles and memoirs in China. The fighting among the 20 US bureaucratic agencies and dozen independent intelligence organizations in Chungking seems to have exceeded in intensity anything they were able to mobilize against the Japanese, at least until the last months of the war. The main contenders were the US army commanders Stilwell and later Wedemeyer; Tai Li, the head of Chinese intelligence; Milton Miles, the head of naval intelligence; William Donovan, chosen by Roosevelt to set up the OSS; the crusty American ambassador Gauss; and a swirling, ever-changing group of contending individuals and agencies seeking to push themselves and sabotage everyone else. These included--though for a long time the US participants seemed oblivious to it--both the British, who didn't want China to be too strong after the war, and the Communists, who wanted to undermine the Nationalist government, get weapons and money from the US, and build up a reputation as the main enemy of the Japanese at the very time that they were engaged in making deals with them. The main winners were the OSS, which seems to have emerged largely unscathed almost in spite of itself; and the Communists, whose shrewd infiltration of the British, the French, and above all the Nationalists was truly remarkable. On the critical question of the extent to which the Communists infiltrated the Americans, Yu is circumspect. He describes, for example, the extraordinary assistance given them by a second-ranking State Department employee like John Paton Davies without analyzing his motives. It is one of the few deficiencies in an important if profoundly depressing story of bureaucratic infighting, jealousies, incomprehension, and ultimate failure. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (February 27, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300066988
• ISBN-13: 978-0300066982
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,204,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh What a Tangled Web of Intrigue Was Woven Then!, March 13, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War (Hardcover)

I have had a deep interest for some time in how the US government got sucked into the quagmire of intervention in SE Asia in the fifties. If you read the French sources, they blame the triumph of Ho Chi Minh on the materiel support given him by the OSS missions at the end of the war. If you read the massive work by Archimedes Patti, the support did not make any difference. But that aside, when one starts pulling on the strings of why the OSS mercy missions of 1945 to Vietnam were sent, it descends from the various US intelligence and special operations agencies working in the area, and a very tangled web leads back to China--with its US Army-Navy rivalries, US- British rivalries, plus the US State Dept vs. many of the others. Then throw in the Free French and the Vichy governments. And some of these folks lost sight of the fact they were guests and not in a conquered country. Until the release of the OSS records to the National Archives a few years ago, much of this was hidden except glimpsed in a few memoirs. But the OSS side and the State Department side and the other US departments ' sides are unavoidably biased views for and against each other and the Chinese sides-the Reds and the Nationalists. Without seeing from the Chinese side one cannot balance the view point. The author has done this. He has been able to use the memoirs and histories now available from mainland China to develop this history as well as can be expected this close on. Sometimes it takes a hundred years for everyone to finally agree and sometimes there never is a consensus. We have not sorted out our Civil War yet. How can we expect the Chinese to have done so when even the territorial and economic consequences are still being worked out. This book is an essential tool for beginning that task. It makes clear what all the turf quarrels were between the War Department, the Navy Department, the OSS, the 14th Air Force (Claire Chennault, a profit without honor in his own country, who had to go to China to prove his theories of air combat.), the British and French governments, and the Chinese Nationalists, whose guests they all were. If you like organizational histories of the sort of who said what when then this is for you. If you want daring tales of dauntless deeds then look elsewhere. This is an extremely well written and thoroughly researched book but it is not a shoot 'em up operational history. There are many good histories and memoirs of those. Stratton's SACO history is still quite useful but hard to find. (By the way, I'm still looking for that Vietnam history.) Carter Rila

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb study of American intelligence in China during WWII, April 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War (Hardcover)

Maochun Yu's OSS IN CHINA is both a fascinating and groundbreaking study of intrigue, chaos, and bureaucratic wrangling in the wartime establishment and operation of the United States' first global intelligence organization-The Office of Strategic Services (OSS). During World War II in China, OSS had to creatively deal with a myriad of factors in order to survive and thrive. Using newly opened operational files on OSS, along with recently released documents/memoirs from Communist China, Maochun Yu explores in depth various themes shaping this fledgling intelligence agency. Prominent are the themes of inter-service rivalry and the question of a central command. In Chungking, China's wartime capital, OSS had to compete with over twenty U.S. bureaucratic agencies, among them the army, navy, Chennault's 14th Air Force, the U.S. embassy, Stilwell's theater command, the Joint Intelligence Collection Agency, the Board of Economic Warfare, Naval Group China, and so forth. William J. Donovan, OSS's colorful and flamboyant director, continually battled with the Joint Chief's of Staff over who would control OSS's intelligence gathering and special operations in China. In addition to these themes, Maochun Yu also examines little known factors that directly affected OSS' China operations. For one, British influence and manipulation of OSS sought not to help the U.S. and China defeat the Japanese invaders, but rather tried to merely preserve Britain's colonial empire in Asia. Another consideration was the Communists in Yenan and their democratic facade. The CCP's infiltration into Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist intelligence operations and then into OSS, along with the Communist's secret collaboration with puppet controlled areas, hindered KMT-U.S. cooperation and allied war efforts on the mainland. One highlight of OSS IN CHINA is Yu's step by step narrative of the Chinese Communist murder of OSS agent John Birch, an incident some say was the first shot fired in the cold war. OSS managed to keep afloat and thrive amidst all these difficulties in its China operations. Maochun Yu points out that its trying experiences there were instrumental in the decision to later establish the Central Intelligence Agency. OSS IN CHINA is a major contribution to the ongoing discussion of America's intelligence operations.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why the OSS failed in China, November 23, 2002

By 

Barry Dwyer (Dayton, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War (Hardcover)

To begin this review, here are 3 brief instances that exemplify why the OSS failed in China. General Donovan's chief of Far East projects, Carl Hoffman, had little or no knowledge of that part of the world, nor any military experience. In his book A DIFFERENT KIND OF WAR, former SACO / U.S. Naval Group China commander, VADM Milton Miles relates his first encounter with Hoffman, who was on the phone, cancelling a requisition Miles had authorized. Not only was he violating the chain of command, Miles noticed that his military insignia was on upside down. A visit with Donovan settled the matter, but, as Miles realized later "I won that battle, but the victory was a costly one for I thereby made an enemy."
One of SACO's young naval officers was in the field with his Chinese guerrillas on a mission when they spotted some coolies carrying what they assumed to be a local warlord inside a shoulder-borne sedan chair. They walked over to investigate. The coolies put down their burden, the curtains parted and out stepped a perfectly uniformed man who informed them that he was the OSS officer in charge of the area.
Richard Heppner was Donovan's man in the CBI so Miles invited him to his HQs near Chungking for a meal. As Miles says in his book: "He refused my invitation because he was 'not going to eat with chopsticks like a god-damned Chinese.'"
These examples of what author Maochun Yu calls the "OSS culture" encapsulate the arrogant, ethnocemtric attitude of Donovan's organization. It ought to be the mission of intelligence services to provide military commanders with timely information on enemy intentions, movements, etc. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was supreme and theater commander in China. General Tai Li was his intelligence chief and Director of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO). Captain Milton Miles was SACO's Deputy Director. Besides coastwatchers, weather stations, intelligence networks and mine warfare units, SACO operated far-flung camps where US Navy and Marine personnel helped train Chinese guerrillas for missions against Japanese forces. Tai Li and Miles worked together on a cooperative basis. Miles had served in China before the war; had traveled the land and learned the language. He and Tai Li were an effective team and their men were effective against the enemy.
Donovan had the bizarre notion that he could operate in a foreign, allied country with complete autonomy and he only countenanced Miles as his OSS chief in China until he could manipulate conditions for his ouster, which he did. This was more important to him, seemingly, than defeating the Japanese. Then you had OSS men working directly with Mao's communists in Yenan as part of the Dixie Mission. And of course Donovan didn't know it at the time, but Duncan Lee, his Secret Intelligence chief for Japan & China, was in fact, a Soviet agent as VENONA documents have revealed.
And what happened when OSS finally was able to operate in China per Donovan's desires? They duplicated successful, ongoing SACO operations without the support of the Chinese. Translation: they failed.
This book is a cautionary tale of how not to run intelligence operations in an allied country during wartime.