Mao: The Unknown Story

Mao hand-drafted a cable to Stalin on 2 October, committing to “sending Chinese army to Korea.” Then it seems he had second thoughts. In his eagerness to go in, he had not informed Stalin of any of his problems. Playing them up could raise his price. So he held back the cable committing Chinese forces, and sent a quite different one, saying that Chinese entry “may entail extremely serious consequences … Many comrades … judge that it is necessary to show caution … Therefore it is better to … refrain from advancing troops …” However, he left open the option of going in: “A final decision has not been taken,” he ended; “we wish to consult with you.”

AT THE SAME TIME, Mao prepared the ground for going into Korea by pretending to give America “fair warning.” For this purpose, Chou En-lai staged an elaborate charade, waking the Indian ambassador in the small hours of 3 October to tell him “we will intervene” if American troops crossed the 38th Parallel. Choosing this roundabout channel, using an ambassador whose credit in the West was minimal, when it would have been perfectly simple to make an official statement, suggests compellingly that Mao wanted his “warning” to be ignored: thus he could go into Korea claiming he was acting out of self-defense.

By the 5th of October, with UN forces already pushing into the North, Stalin was showing impatience. That day he replied to Mao’s cable of the 2nd which had suggested that Mao might hold back. He reminded Mao that he, Mao, had made a commitment:

I considered it possible to turn to You with the question of five — six Chinese volunteer divisions because I was well aware of a number of statements made by the leading Chinese comrades [i.e., you] regarding their readiness to move several armies in support of the Korean comrades …

Stalin referred ominously to what he called “a passive wait-and-see policy,” which, he said, would cost Mao Taiwan. Mao had been using Taiwan as an argument to persuade Stalin to help him build an air force and a navy. Stalin was now telling Mao he would get neither if he stalled about his mission in Korea.

But Mao was not really trying to opt out. He was raising his price. By the time he received Stalin’s reply, he had already appointed a commander-in-chief for the Chinese forces slated for Korea: Peng De-huai. Mao moved at his own pace. On 8 October, having ordered his troops to be redesignated as “Chinese People’s Volunteers,” he wired Kim that “we have decided to dispatch the Volunteers into Korea to help you.” He also sent Chou En-lai and Lin Biao to see Stalin about arms supplies. En route, Lin sent Mao a long cable urging him to abandon the idea of going in. The reason Mao sent Lin Biao to see Stalin when Lin was such a strong opponent of intervention, was to impress on Stalin the military difficulties facing the Chinese and thus extract the maximum out of the Master.

Chou and Lin got to Stalin’s villa on the Black Sea on the 10th, and talked through the night until 5 in the morning. Stalin promised them “planes, artillery, tanks and other equipment.” Chou did not even negotiate a price. But out of the blue Stalin reneged about the key requirement: air cover for Chinese troops. Stalin had promised this (“a division of jet fighter planes—124 pieces for covering [Chinese] troops”) on 13 July. Now he claimed that the planes would not be ready for another two months. Without air cover, Chinese troops would be sitting ducks. Chou and Lin Biao argued that Russian air cover was essential. An impasse was reached. Stalin then wired Mao to tell him that China did not have to join the war.

Stalin was calling Mao’s bluff by saying, as Mao put it later, “Forget it!” Mao climbed down at once. “With or without air cover from the Soviet Union,” he told Stalin, “we go in.” Mao needed the war. He wired Chou on 13 October: “We should enter the war. We must enter the war …” When Chou received the cable he buried his head in his hands. That same day Mao told the Russian ambassador that China was going in, only expressing the “hope” that Russian air cover would arrive “as soon as possible, but not later than in two months,” which was, in fact, Stalin’s own timetable.

So it was that out of the global ambitions of the two Communist tyrants, Stalin and Mao, as well as the more local ambition of Kim, China was hurled into the inferno of the Korean War on 19 October 1950.

Kim Il Sung later told the head of the Spanish Communist Party, Santiago Carrillo (who told us), that he had started the war — and that Mao had been far more strongly for launching it than Stalin.