[Type98G]

Chinese Intelligence Agent Contributes to WWII Victory

A week before Germany launched an attack on the former Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee notified Josef Stalin of the intelligence. The CPC also provided the Soviets detailed military deployment of the Japanese Kwantung Army in northeast China before Soviet forces hit a final strike on the crack Japanese troops.

Yan Baohang, a senior advisor to General Chang Hsueh-liang, gathered the two intelligence pieces and transferred them to the Soviet Union via conduits of the CPC.

Yan Mingfu, Yan Baohang's son and the former head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, was interviewed by Xinhua recently about his father.

In Spring 1941, Zhou Enlai, CPC chief representative to Chongqing, the wartime capital of the Republic of China, ordered Yan, who was also a CPC member but was posing as a democracy advocate, to collect intelligence for the CPC and the Communist International.

"My father had extensive high-profile networks, including almost all the important men within the government," Yan Mingfu said, adding that his father knew Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Ke, son of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and Yu Youren, a veteran statesman of the Chinese Kuomintang Party.

In May 1941, Yan was invited to a banquet entertaining the German military attach and learned by accident that Germany planned to invade the Soviet Union around June 20 that year.

During toasts, Yan heard Yu talking about the possible German strike, which was confirmed by Sun. Yan immediately left the banquet and reported to Zhou, who sent a telegram to Yan'an, wartime headquarters of the CPC Central Committee and its military forces. On June 16 the CPC telegrammed the intelligence to Moscow.

The Soviets hastened preparations and avoided even greater losses to the German invasion.

In 1944, Chen Cheng, head of the political department of the government's military committee, directed Yan to research whether Japan would invade the Soviet Union in the closing months of WWII. Yan "borrowed" from one of his countrymen the highly classified files on military deployment of the Japanese Kwantung Army in northeast China, which might have been big obstacles impeding Soviet military maneuvers in the Far East. The intelligence obtained by Yan included the deployment, fortresses, defense plans, weapons, size of units and names of all generals.

The countryman, a ranking official who was working in the Defense Department, was quoted by Yan Mingfu as saying to his father, "Generalissimo Chiang (Kai-shek) has recovered our land north to the Great Wall, but people from the northeast like us are devoted to fight back to our homeland. You could take these files but must return them in three days."

With this much-needed intelligence, the Soviet army overturned the Japanese crack forces in a matter of days in August 1944.

On November 1, 1995, Russian Ambassador to China Igor Rogachev, a representative of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, granted the late Yan and the other two men medals commemorating the 50th anniversary of the national defense war of the Soviet Union.

Ambassador Rogachev said the contribution made by Yan would be memorized by Russians and recorded in the history of the war.

Born in April 1895 in Haicheng, Liaoning Province, Yan was respected by young people in the northeast for his disobedience of Japanese occupation in the 1930s. He for the first time translated the secret memorial to the Japanese throne written by the Prime Minister Tanaka into English, making the outside world know the vicious intention of Japan on invading China.

After the Xi'an Incident, a peaceful mutiny led by General Chang Hsueh-liang to force Generalissimo Chiang to fight the Japanese invaders more vigorously, Yan secretly joined the CPC in September 1937.

"In the 1,600 days and nights when he collected intelligence for the Party and the Communist International, my father cared little about his and our family's safety and was ready to devote his life," Yan Mingfu said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 5, 2005)

http://www.china.org.../May/127793.htm

[Spc4]

I saw an article several years ago about another intel tip: Pearl Harbor.

Chinese (probably KMT) cryptographers cracked the code the Japanese were using at the time and sent the plans on the Pearl Harbor strike to FDR. There is a small controversy about whether or not FDR intentionally let the attack happen. He often complained about the sluggishness of Congress to make decisions, noting that it would debate for months. The attack ended any discussions and led to a declaration of war the very next day. Other evidence cited by the controversy enthusiats include the quiet deployment of the modern ships and carriers away from Pearl Harbor; the wreckage was mostly on obsolete ships and the attack did not cripple the US Navy as was intended.

The stickler in this theory is why FDR didn't simply use the attack as evidence instead of sacrificing 3000 sailors and their ships. Perhaps thought the validity of the tip would become questioned. He also would not have wanted to reveal that the code was cracked. The sacrifice seemed ruthless, but the isolationist American public felt very duped after the instigation of the Spanish War by hawkish newspapers with "yellow journalism" and an involvement in WWI that many deemed unnecessary. Maybe FDR thought only an actual attack would rally the public.

[Shaithan]

Not to be a wet blanket, but Stalin shot several of his generals for suggesting that Nazi Germany was going to invade. Soviet Union certainly didn't mobilize to counter the Nazis, the attack was entirely by surprise and the Soviets lost most of their war material in the first strike. The Japanese army during 1944 didn't really stand a chance against the Soviet army at that point..

[ahxiang]

per YMC's writing, Yan Baohang, both a CCP spy and a Comintern spy, had penetrated into the inner circle of Chiang Kai-shek. (Yan Baohang, separately, obtained advance information about both the planned Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor and the German attack at USSR per YMC; however, Zhang Lingao, i.e., Chiang Kai-shek's attache, denied that China had ever decoded Japan's navy telegraph in regards to Pearl Harbor. Zhang Lingao, in "Memoirs of Attache Office" [i.e., "Records From Repeated Recollections Of Dreams At Attache Office"], did point out that China's "technical research institute" had decoded Japanese foreign ministry's notice to various embassies in regards to "withdrawing Japanese citizens" in early Dec 1941. Also see Zhang Ling'ao writing on Wang Pengsheng's "International Issue Research Institute" for China's obtaining a copy of Japan's Pacific War plan three weeks ahead of the Pearl Harbor Attack.Note similar information was already relayed to US by Chinese ambassador Guo Dehua.)

Secretary Wang Pengsheng, who assumed Section 5 Chief for a short time period, was authroized to establish "International Issue Research Institute", i.e., an espionage collection agency against Japan. Wang Pengsheng had once attended the nine country Washington Conference in 1922 as well as took charge of investigation into the Japanese massacre at Jinnan. After Sept 18th 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Wang followed Jiang Zuobin to Japan as diplomatic staff, and on basis of two time overseas studies in Japan in early life, Wang Pengsheng had accumulated extraordinary knowledge about Japan. Using intuition, Wang Pengsheng, on May 20th 1941, presented a document to Chiang Kai-shek with a prediction that Germany would launch a war against USSR within 1.5 months. Chiang Kai-shek promptly relayed the information to Curie who was visiting Chongqing at the time. Washington was impressed by China's prediction after Germany attacked the Russians on June 22nd. The story behind the prediction was like this: one Chinese agent under Wang Pengsheng often frequented two German media representatives in China, i.e., Schenke & Truendel. In mid-May, this agent encountered a household of Germans who were gathering with few German emissaries who complained about their delays in USSR and Chinese Turkistan. When asked to spend more time visiting Chongqing and China, those German emissaries claimed that they had to return to Berlin no later than June 20th. Other than the prediction as to German attack on Russians, Wang Pengsheng's research institute had obtained a copy of Japan's war plan against US Pacific interests and Southeast Asia about 3 weeks ahead of the Pearl Harbour Attack. Chiang Kai-shek promptly relayed the information to US. Americans had no basic caution against Japan. At the time American consul Zhuang-lai-de [i.e., later US ambassador to Taiwan] relocated to Shanghai from Chongqing, Shao Yulin joked about the possibility of the American to become a prisoner of the Japanese.

http://www.uglychinese.org/war.htm

[ahxiang]

On Aug 5th 1941, British reinforcements arrived in Manila. On Aug 5th & 7th, Japan tried to negotiate with US, and on Aug 16th, Japan tried to negotiate with Britain. Meanwhile, Japan prepared for military solutions no later than late Oct. On Sept 18th, Japan planned for 20% of its ground forces for actions against US & Britain in Southeast Asia. On Oct 18th 1941, Toyo Hideki took on the new cabinet as a result of previous prime minister's failure in diplomatic breakthrough with USA. On Nov 1st, Japan set Dec 1st as a deadline for diplomacy while secretly preparing attacks against Pearl Harbour, Guam, and HK. In the month, Xu Mingcheng of HK's "Da Gong Bao" ["Wen Hui Bao Newspaper"], per XZC, wired to both Chongqing and Yenan about impending Japanese campaigns which were tips from Korean-ethnic and Taiwan-ethnic comrades. ROC's military attache to USA, i.e., Guo Dehua, promptly relayed the information to US government, but the US government accused China of sowing dissension between US and Japan.

Curie was a Soviet spy, by the way. US government was filled with Reds.