[214] U. S. Relations with China, 352–363.
Although the PLA had seized the initiative, the Government still had an army of about 2,700,000 men facing 1,150,000 Reds, according to estimates of American military advisers in China. But Chiang was committed to a positional warfare; his forces were dangerously over-extended, and for reasons of prestige and political considerations he hesitated to withdraw from areas of dubious military value. Mao’s hard and realistic strategy took full advantage of these lapses. As a result the Communists won the upper hand in Manchuria and Shantung and by the end of the year had massed large forces in central China.
Early in 1948, the year of decision, the PLA recaptured Yenan along with thousands of Government troops. But the most crushing Communist victory of all came with the surrender of Tsinan, the capital of Shantung, and its garrison of 85,000 to 100,000 Nationalists.
In his summary of Nationalist reverses, Major General David G. Barr, senior officer of the United States Military Advisory Group in China, reported to the Department of the Army on 16 November 1948:
No battle has been lost since my arrival due to lack of ammunition and equipment. Their [the Chinese Nationalists’] military debacles in my opinion can all be attributed to the world’s worst leadership and many other morale destroying factors that lead to a complete loss of will to fight.[215]
[215] U. S. Relations with China, 358.
By the early spring of 1949 the military collapse of the Nationalists had gone so far that the enemy controlled the major centers of population and the railroads from Manchuria south to the Yangtze Valley. Nanking, Hangkow, and Shanghai were soon to fall into the hands of Communists whose military strength increased every day as they captured Nationalist arms and were joined by Nationalist deserters. Perhaps the best summary of the Chinese Civil War was put in a few words by Dean Acheson, the U. S. Secretary of State:
The Nationalist armies did not have to be defeated; they disintegrated.[216]
[216] Ibid., xiv-xv.
In addition to the aid extended during World War II, Washington had authorized grants and credits to Nationalist China amounting to two billion dollars since V-J Day. Nor was American assistance confined to arms and monetary grants. From 1945–1947 the occupation of certain key cities in North China, e. g., Tientsin, Peiping, Tsingtao[217] etc., by sizeable U. S. Marine forces held those bases secure for the Nationalist government and permitted the release of appreciable numbers of Chiang’s soldiers for offensive operations, who would otherwise have been tied up in garrison type duty.[218]