European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 28, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes Tom Wicker setting the record straight on the loss of China in the South during world War ii a Wistful joke went like this if Long strict had come up in time at Gettysburg there would t have been no  in a letter to the new York times published aug. 13, Nicholas c. Cummins of West Chester pa., similarly invoked the Distant past to Damn the inconvenient present. Leftists of the 1940s, he wrote in contributing to a state department White paper on China after world War ii. Swayed the United slates against Chiang Kai suck and toward the false belief instead that the red chinese agrarian reformers were idealists. We there upon stopped Aid to nationalist China the reds won and Chiang embarked for  Cummins asserted that had the United states continued to support Chiang there would have been i no korean War 2 no Vietnam War and 3 a countervailing commercial Force these last decades to  a Host of other developments including the divided  also would have been  this would be Worth Only a chuckle except hat Cummins version of events May be shared by All too Many americans in their innocence of history. So let s look at the record that White paper was published aug. 5. 1949, just two months before Mao tsp Tung proclaimed the peo ple s Republic of China on oct. 1. The publication was an attempt by the Truman administration to explain its China policy to people who refused to believe the truth that Chiang and the nationalists had lost the chinese civil War because their regime As Robert do Novan observed in his biography of president Truman was cruel corrupt reactionary inept undemocratic and  the administration was not under the illusion that Mao s forces were Mere agrarian  Secre tary of state Dean Acheson considered the communists to be subservient at the time to Moscow he was looking for some political possibility of recognizing them not because he liked them but because he hoped to help Divide China and the soviet Union a desire finally realized by president Nixon More than 20 years later. Cummins Basic Point was that because the United states stopped Aid to Chiang the reds  innumerable republicans and not a few democrats sublimely indifferent to the facts tried to make that Case at the time. But Truman inherited from president Roosevelt the policy of backing the nationalists. After world War ii . Marines seized key ports and Posi Lions and turned them Over to the nationalists . James j. Kilpatrick shipping carried Chiang s troops to areas that had been japanese controlled the United slates insisted that japanese units surrender to the nationalists not the  nine nationalist armies were ferried by the United slates into North China to fight Mao s forces which were dominant Iacre. From the end of world War ii to August 1949, the United states sent $2 billion Down the Drain to Chiang. Many weapons thus provided ended up in communist hands owing to nationalist inept Irude and defeatism substantial amounts ended up in nationalist pockets most of the rest was simply wasted. When Chiang fled to Taiwan in 1949, he had thought fully sent ahead an ample Gold Supply As Well As 300,000 troops. Truman in his own words had bet on a bad  Chiang and the nationalists were too inept corrupt and defeatist to win. Even with so much help. By the end of 1947, they had All but lost their own War. The Truman administration even sought vainly to work out some sort of coalition government an inherently unworkable policy neither Chiang nor Mao supported. It s nonsense moreover that any of this caused the division of Korea or the korean War. Korea was divided at the 38th parallel by the United states and the soviet Union at the suggestion of Washington at the end of world War ii and the korean War began in the brain of Kim la Sung inc North korean communist dictator who sought to reunify the Peninsula with the tacit consent but not at the instigation of Stalin. The War in Vietnam has numerous fathers tru Man among them but not for losing China. At the end of world War ii for european policy reasons he allowed the return of the French to Indochina. That fatal decision later was matched by president Eisen Hower when he backed South Vietnam s refusal to enter into elections for reunification of Indochina and by Lyndon Johnson when he accepted the idea of a . Commitment to South vietnamese Independence at whatever Cost. If Chiang Kai Shek had remained in Power could he have prevented the resulting War if you believe that you la believe a Confederate general could have headed off Hitler. The new y