The author, a former political speech writer for a major Washington persona and political appointee has an undergraduate degree centering on political science and history. He is certainly an able writer, an excellent wordsmith with a smooth easy to follow style. The book comes with a long set of notes and an extensive bibliography. In terms of sheer numbers the notes and sources fill 88 pages. But, too many of these notes and too much of the bibliography is from less than substantial sources, several of which are more notable for revisionist views of history than for serious academic chops. But, perhaps more significant are the omissions. Not found in the works cited are John Gittings landmark study, “The Role of the Chinese Army,” which speaks to the development, leadership, training and discipline of the People’s Liberation Army or James Sheridan’s “China in Disintegration.” Similarly two of the foremost biographers of Mao: Jerome Chen and Frederic Wakeman are missing from the bibliography. That by itself is not necessarily a problem or even a surprise since Kurtz-Phelan has limited experience in East Asia.
More concerning; however, is the way, the author takes bits and pieces from the works he cites without providing full context. Thus when he speaks to the murder of Chinese communist officials and sympathizers in Shanghai by the KMT and thugs recruited for the slaughter he fails to mention that Mao’s wife, Yáng Kāihuì, (probably the only woman Mao ever really loved) was executed by a KMT warlord He Jian. Mao later told an American that he mourned Yáng Kāihuì for the rest of his life. That certainly would have colored Mao’s relationship with Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. It is this sort of detail and its impact that Kurtz-Phelan misses.
There are other opportunities for analysis that the author allows to pass. For example, early on he recounts an incident with Winston Churchill. As Kurtz-Phelan recounts Marshall says to Churchill “Not one American soldier is going to die on that ————- beach.” (A reference to the upcoming invasion of Normandy.) The author does not understand why Marshall said that. Marshall said it because of the needless death he saw in the Meuse Argonne, the deadliest battle in American history which saw 26,277 American doughboys killed and another 95,786 wounded. My dad’s oldest brother was killed in the Meuse Argonne which can probably best be described as a morass. Additionally, the fighting that Marshall took part in in the American War in the Philippines in the early 1900s was brutal with atrocities on both sides.
Finally, some of the research is a bit questionable. Colonel Dave Barrett headed the Dixie Mission from March 1942 to November 1944. Barrett was a skilled Chinese linguist with long experience in China. Barrett was despised by Ambassador Hurley (Hurley was at best, ill suited for diplomacy) and replaced by Col Ivan Yeaton who had nowhere near the background Barrett had, but deferred to Hurley. Had Kurtz-Phelan understood this his remarks about the Dixie mission would have been less tentative.
Another example of Kurtz-Phelan playing a bit circumspectly occurs when he states “... when Yenan requested Soviet Weapons, Moscow instead sent tens of thousands of guns, airplanes, and tanks, along with advisors and pilots ... “ That is well and good, but the Soviets withdrew all those personnel in 1940. What impact that had on Marshall’s mission is questionable. The way the author writes about Soviet support it would be all too easy to assume the Soviets where still supporting Chiang Kai-shek when Marshall arrived in China. Making this assumption abets the revisionist history Kurtz-Phelan puts forward.
On a positive note, the book made me consult several books I have on hand and it lead me to review some of the work I did in Asian Studies. That, for me, was a good exercise.
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![The China Mission: George Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945-1947 by [Daniel Kurtz-Phelan]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41nhw+HsVsL._SY346_.jpg)
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