Chiang was also highly vulnerable to pressure from America, which was his only hope of freeing himself from dependence on the Russians for arms. US president Franklin Roosevelt, whose overriding concern was (like Stalin’s) to get China to do as much fighting against Japan as possible and bog Japan down, had no leverage with the Communists, so he put all the pressure on Chiang, linking the issue of aiding his government with an end to civil conflict — in effect, regardless of who was causing it. In the wake of the N4A incident, US media announced that Washington was discussing withholding a US$50 million loan because of the civil strife. This news came just when American aid could have played a big role, as the air route over the Himalayas, known as “the Hump,” opened on 25 January.
Roosevelt leaned heavily for information about China on a private network that included Edgar Snow, largely bypassing the State Department, which he distrusted. His chief private informant on China was a Marine officer called Evans Carlson, who filed starry-eyed reports to the White House lauding the Reds, which Roosevelt recycled uncritically to members of his inner circle, one of whom told him that Carlson’s version of events was corroborated by Snow’s
Britain did not count as far as aid was concerned, but Chiang aspired to be close to the AngloUS bloc, and so was susceptible to British pressure. Britain’s prime minister Winston Churchill disliked Chiang, regarding him as militarily useless, and a potential menace to British interests in China. The British ambassador, Clark Kerr, told Chiang that in the event of civil war Britain would not support him, regardless of who started the fighting. In the period covering the N4A Incident, his advice to London heavily favored the Communists. He openly said that Chou En-lai was worth all the Nationalists rolled into one.
In the aftermath of the N4A Incident, Moscow organized an immense publicity campaign against Chiang in the West. Communist propaganda claimed that up to 10,000 were massacred. In fact, the total casualty figure was around 2,000. Three thousand had managed to escape back to their own side by turning around and taking the North Route across the Yangtze, the one designated by Chiang. They were unmolested along the way.
Chiang had not set a trap, but he presented his case poorly. His government unwisely announced the disbanding of the N4A, leaving the impression that the Nationalists had intentionally wiped it out. Chiang was also hampered by the fact that he had not protested publicly about the many earlier and much larger clashes in which his troops had been the victims, and had even suppressed news of them, on the grounds that civil strife was bad for domestic morale — and for international aid (which all the foreign powers had made conditional on there being no civil conflict). This silence on the Generalissimo’s part had suited the Communists very well. As Red C-in-C Zhu De put it: “They [Nationalists] keep quiet, and we keep quiet, too. They are defeated and keep quiet; we win, so why should we publicise it?” As a result of all these factors, many in the West only knew about the N4A Incident, and saw it as a treacherous large-scale attack by the Nationalists on innocent Reds.
The Communist propaganda machine was effective. In Chongqing, Mao’s disinformation symphony was conducted by Chou En-lai, who alone knew Mao’s murderous role in the killing of their own men and women in the N4A. This accomplice of Mao’s was extremely successful in spreading the lie, thanks to his charm. The American journalist Martha Gellhorn, who met him at this time, told us she would have followed Chou to the ends of the world had he beckoned. But the summing up by her husband, Ernest Hemingway, catches Chou’s main attribute: “he does a fine job of selling the Communist standpoint on anything that comes up.”
In America, on 22 January the
