Why Col. L. Fletcher Prouty's Critics Are Wrong

[Jeff Carter]

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

I've been researching Chiang, the Sino-Japanese War, WW II (especially the Asian and Pacific theaters), and FDR's handling of the war for many, many years. Thus, when I watched Prouty's interview and came across his bogus claims about Chiang and about Chiang and Tehran, I knew right away they were nonsense.

I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference. Prouty said that all the books except one said that Chiang was not at the conference. He said he had one book that said Chiang was there.  I'd like to see it. I don't think such a book exists. I think he was fabricating again.

NSAM 263??? Ah, you're talking about the fringe interpretation that NSAM 263 was drastically revised after JFK's death. Anyone who reads NSAM 273 and NSAM 263 will readily see that the revision was minor. You realize that the vast majority of historians who have looked at this issue reject your interpretation, right? And when I say "vast majority," I mean something like 99%. 

There is no reasoning with you people. Even when confronted with clear, undeniable evidence of Prouty's fraudulent claims and of his prolonged sleazy associations and actions, you guys offer nothing but lame excuses that you would never dream of making if Prouty had been a WC apologist.

The book you believe doesn’t exist is identified in a footnote found in the book W. Niederhut referred

[Michael Griffith]

Starting at 48:45 in his 1994 interview, Prouty entertained the nutty theory that "the Churchill gang" poisoned FDR. Although Prouty, as he often did, hedged his bet and said he had no way of "knowing" if the story was true, he also said that he knew people in England ("English people") who believed that it was true, and that in his conversations with them, they had asked him, "Have you heard the story that Roosevelt was killed by some people from here?" 

Starting at 47:10 in the video, Prouty claimed that he encountered FDR's son Elliott at Habanaya Airport in Iraq when he, Prouty, landed there with the Chinese delegation to refuel en route to Tehran, and that Elliott "knew" the Chinese delegation attended the Tehran Conference. 

Humm, well, then it is very odd that in the three memoirs/biographies that Elliott wrote, he said nothing about any of this stuff, even though it would have been quite historically significant--he said nothing about encountering the Chinese delegation at Habanaya Airport, and nothing about the Chinese delegation being present at the Tehran Conference. Using the Internet Archive (aka the Wayback Machine), I searched through Elliott's three non-fiction books (As He Saw It, An Untold Story, and A Rendezvous with Destiny) and found no mention of seeing the Chinese delegation in Iraq or in Tehran. As He Saw It is Elliott's firsthand account of FDR's conference meetings during World War II, and, naturally, he spends many pages talking about the Tehran Conference (pp. 165-197). But, again, he says nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation in Iraq or in Tehran. 

Starting at 52:20, Prouty told a curious tale about Churchill supposedly being denied entrance into Tehran by Soviet guards when the British delegation attempted to drive into the city after arriving at the airport. Prouty said that he was riding in cars with the Chinese delegation after they arrived at the Tehran airport, and that they were riding behind the British delegation. He stated that when the British delegation reached the Soviet checkpoint into the city, Soviet guards would not allow Churchill to enter because he allegedly had no ID on him since he was supposedly wearing a jumpsuit that had no pockets. 

The story gets even odder. Prouty said that when the Soviet guards refused to let Churchill enter, the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and started pointing and laughing at the British delegation. Uh, gee, I thought the Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran was supposed to be a big secret. Plus, such a major diplomatic snafu as delaying the prime minister of England and his delegation because the prime minister supposedly had no ID surely would have been mentioned by Churchill and/or others in the delegation in later books, but Churchill's several books say nothing about such an incident, and the three Churchill biographies that I scanned likewise said nothing about it. (Also, why exactly would delegates from one country stand up and laugh and point at another delegation because their entrance was being delayed? That doesn't sound credible.)

I notice no one is defending Prouty's erroneous claim that T. V. Soong was "the wealthiest man in the world." Soong wasn't even in the ballpark when it came to the wealthiest men in the world. His wealth paled compared to that of the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, Henry Ford, Osman Ali Khan, and many others. When someone makes such an erroneous claim, that should be a red flag that they are not reliable. 

I also notice that no one is defending Prouty's bogus claim that Soong "controlled" Chiang Kai-shek and that Chiang was "working for" Soong. This is another piece of fiction that Prouty just made up, and apparently the guy who was interviewing him had no clue that this was pure fabrication. But, since I've read a number of books about Chiang and the Sino-Japanese War, I knew this was nonsense. I knew that Soong had split with Chiang and had resigned because he could not get Chiang to be as tough on the Japanese as Soong thought he should be. 

[W. Niederhut]

As usual, Michael Griffith has posted another series of false claims about Col. L. Fletcher Prouty.

Griffith refers to Prouty's "nutty theory" that Churchill had poisoned FDR.

This is inaccurate, like so many of Griffith's defamatory Education Forum posts about Prouty.

On page 17 of the paperback edition of Prouty's book, JFK-- The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, (Sky Horse/2011) Prouty referenced Elliott Roosevelt's own account of his 1946 meeting with Stalin in which Stalin theorized that Churchill had poisoned FDR.   It wasn't Prouty's "nutty theory."

On page 16 of the same book, (op.cit.) Prouty published a detailed account of his role in flying Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran in a VIP Lockheed Lodestar.  While Prouty stopped to re-fuel the Lodestar in Habbaniya, Iraq, Elliott Roosevelt landed at Habbaniya in a U.S. B-25.  Prouty spoke to Elliott Roosevelt and his pilot.

There is no reference in Prouty's book to T.V. Soong "controlling Chiang Kai-shek."

He merely wrote, in passing, that Madame Chiang was Soong's sister, and mentioned her celebrated appearance with Churchill, Chiang, and FDR in Cairo.

I have no explanation for Elliott Roosevelt not mentioning the Nationalist Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran-- unless Roosevelt understood that the delegation's meeting with Stalin was supposed to be off the record.

Edited September 29, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Michael Griffith]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

As usual, Michael Griffith has posted another series of false claims about Col. L. Fletcher Prouty.

Griffith refers to Prouty's "nutty theory" that Churchill had poisoned FDR.

This is inaccurate, like so many of Griffith's defamatory Education Forum posts about Prouty.

On page 17 of the paperback edition of Prouty's book, JFK-- The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, (Sky Horse/2011) Prouty referenced Elliott Roosevelt's own account of his 1946 meeting with Stalin in which Stalin theorized that Churchill had poisoned FDR.   It wasn't Prouty's "nutty theory."

On page 16 of the same book, (op.cit.) Prouty published a detailed account of his role in flying Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran in a VIP Lockheed Lodestar.  While Prouty stopped to re-fuel the Lodestar in Habbaniya, Iraq, Elliott Roosevelt landed at Habbaniya in a U.S. B-25.  Prouty spoke to Elliott Roosevelt and his pilot.

There is no reference in Prouty's book to T.V. Soong "controlling Chiang Kai-shek."

He merely wrote, in passing, that Madame Chiang was Soong's sister, and mentioned her celebrated appearance with Churchill, Chiang, and FDR in Cairo.

I have no explanation for Elliott Roosevelt not mentioning the Nationalist Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran-- unless Roosevelt understood that the delegation's meeting with Stalin was supposed to be off the record.

You need to learn to read a bit more carefully, and you need to watch Prouty's 1994 interview. I did not say that the FDR-was-poisoned theory was Prouty's theory. I said that in the 1994 interview, Prouty took the nutty theory seriously, which he plainly did. Go watch the video. The theory originated with the paranoid madman Joseph Stalin. Prouty also took this craziness seriously in his writings.

Also, as I noted earlier, in the 1994 interview, Prouty said that Soong "controlled" Chiang and that Chiang was "working for" Soong, which is nonsense. I've said nothing about what Prouty claimed in his book. I'm talking about what he undeniably said in the 1994 interview. He didn't just say this "in passing." He floated the myth that Soong was the richest man in the world to support his fiction that Soong controlled Chiang.

I have no explanation for Elliott Roosevelt not mentioning the Nationalist Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran-- unless Roosevelt understood that the delegation's meeting with Stalin was supposed to be off the record.

Oh, please. So Elliott didn't mention this historic secret meeting because, gee, it was supposed to be off the record, as if he would have seen that as a reason not to talk about the meeting! I mean, you can't really believe that. 

The obvious explanation is that he didn't mention seeing the Chinese delegation because he never saw them--not at Habanayah Airport in Iraq and not in Tehran. Again, we know that Chiang and his delegation flew back to China right after the Cairo Conference, and that they stopped in Ramgarh, India, on 11/28/43, two days after leaving Cairo, to visit Chinese troops who were being trained there. 

Chiang and his group could not have held a meeting in Tehran and still have made it to Ramgarh by the morning of 11/28/43. The Cairo Conference ended on 11/26. Ramgarh was 3,500 miles from Cairo and 2,000 miles from Tehran, and Cairo was 1,500 miles from Tehran. Chiang's plane made two fuel stops between Cairo and Ramgarh. If they had flown to Tehran from Cairo and then from Tehran to Ramgarh, they would have had to make three fuel stops, and fuel stops were usually not quick affairs. The cruising speed of passenger and transport planes back then was about 200 mph. 

And, when, pray tell, could this alleged meeting have even occurred? Not surprisingly, we have a virtually hour-by-hour accounting of Stalin's whereabouts during the conference. This is on top of the fact that not a single Soviet, Chinese, American, or British source, official or unofficial, says one word about a Chinese delegation being in Tehran. 

[W. Niederhut]

I'm responding to Michael Griffith's latest Prouty defamation post in red (below.)

Michael Griffith wrote:

You need to learn to read a bit more carefully, and you need to watch Prouty's 1994 interview. I did not say that the FDR-was-poisoned theory was Prouty's theory. I said that in the 1994 interview, Prouty took the nutty theory seriously, which he plainly did. Go watch the video. The theory originated with the paranoid madman Joseph Stalin. Prouty also took this craziness seriously in his writings.

Huh, Michael?   I need to "read" a video "more carefully, eh?"  Makes a lot of sense.

The truth is that you need to read Prouty's book, at long last.  He never wrote that he believed Stalin's theory about Churchill poisoning FDR.

His reference to Elliott Roosevelt's own writings about the 1946 meeting with Stalin appears on page 17-- in the context of discussing Churchill and FDR's well known disagreements about the post-WWII destinies of European colonies in Asia.

I have no explanation for Elliott Roosevelt not mentioning the Nationalist Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran-- unless Roosevelt understood that the delegation's meeting with Stalin was supposed to be off the record.

Oh, please. So Elliott didn't mention this historic secret meeting because, gee, it was supposed to be off the record, as if he would have seen that as a reason not to talk about the meeting! I mean, you can't really believe that. 

Oh, please.  Are you claiming that FDR and Stalin couldn't possibly have had an agreement that any secret Nationalist Chinese meeting with Stalin (in Tehran) needed to be off-the-record?  And, if so, that Elliott Roosevelt opted to respect the terms of that agreement?

The obvious explanation is that he didn't mention seeing the Chinese delegation because he never saw them--not at Habanayah Airport in Iraq and not in Tehran. Again, we know that Chiang and his delegation flew back to China right after the Cairo Conference, and that they stopped in Ramgarh, India, on 11/28/43, two days after leaving Cairo, to visit Chinese troops who were being trained there. 

Post your source and reference link about the specific timing of Chiang's flights from Cairo to India -- proving that Chiang and/or his delegates couldn't have flown to Tehran en route to India.  

And, when, pray tell, could this alleged meeting have even occurred? Not surprisingly, we have a virtually hour-by-hour accounting of Stalin's whereabouts during the conference. This is on top of the fact that not a single Soviet, Chinese, American, or British source, official or unofficial, says one word about a Chinese delegation being in Tehran. 

Prouty specifically wrote that historians were not aware of the Nationalist Chinese delegation's meeting with Stalin  in Tehran, and that it was "one of the best kept secrets of WWII."

Conversely, to believe your hypothesis, we would have to posit that Prouty was not telling the truth about flying Chiang's delegates from Cairo to Tehran on a VIP Lockheed Lodestar.

Under the circumstances, I believe Prouty, not your hypothesis.

[Michael Griffith]

16 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

I'm responding to Michael Griffith's latest Prouty defamation post in red (below.)

Michael Griffith wrote:

You need to learn to read a bit more carefully, and you need to watch Prouty's 1994 interview. I did not say that the FDR-was-poisoned theory was Prouty's theory. I said that in the 1994 interview, Prouty took the nutty theory seriously, which he plainly did. Go watch the video. The theory originated with the paranoid madman Joseph Stalin. Prouty also took this craziness seriously in his writings.

Huh, Michael?   I need to "read" a video "more carefully, eh?"  Makes a lot of sense.

The truth is that you need to read Prouty's book, at long last.  He never wrote that he believed Stalin's theory about Churchill poisoning FDR.

His reference to Elliott Roosevelt's own writings about the 1946 meeting with Stalin appears on page 17-- in the context of discussing Churchill and FDR's well known disagreements about the post-WWII destinies of European colonies in Asia.

I have no explanation for Elliott Roosevelt not mentioning the Nationalist Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran-- unless Roosevelt understood that the delegation's meeting with Stalin was supposed to be off the record.

Oh, please. So Elliott didn't mention this historic secret meeting because, gee, it was supposed to be off the record, as if he would have seen that as a reason not to talk about the meeting! I mean, you can't really believe that. 

Oh, please.  Are you claiming that FDR and Stalin couldn't possibly have had an agreement that any secret Nationalist Chinese meeting with Stalin (in Tehran) needed to be off-the-record?  And, if so, that Elliott Roosevelt opted to respect the terms of that agreement?

The obvious explanation is that he didn't mention seeing the Chinese delegation because he never saw them--not at Habanayah Airport in Iraq and not in Tehran. Again, we know that Chiang and his delegation flew back to China right after the Cairo Conference, and that they stopped in Ramgarh, India, on 11/28/43, two days after leaving Cairo, to visit Chinese troops who were being trained there. 

Post your source and reference link about the specific timing of Chiang's flights from Cairo to India -- proving that Chiang and/or his delegates couldn't have flown to Tehran en route to India.  

And, when, pray tell, could this alleged meeting have even occurred? Not surprisingly, we have a virtually hour-by-hour accounting of Stalin's whereabouts during the conference. This is on top of the fact that not a single Soviet, Chinese, American, or British source, official or unofficial, says one word about a Chinese delegation being in Tehran. 

Prouty specifically wrote that historians were not aware of the Nationalist Chinese delegation's meeting with Stalin  in Tehran, and that it was "one of the best kept secrets of WWII."

Conversely, to believe your hypothesis, we would have to posit that Prouty was not telling the truth about flying Chiang's delegates from Cairo to Tehran on a VIP Lockheed Lodestar.

Under the circumstances, I believe Prouty, not your hypothesis.

Oh, you believe Prouty? Well, then you must believe that Soong was the richest man in the world and that he controlled Chiang, among many other blabberings of nonsense.

My "hypothesis"??? I've already documented that we know for a fact that Chiang was in Ramgarh by the morning of 11/28 and that he and his delegation visited the Chinese troops who were being trained there. We have a copy of the speech that Chiang gave to the troops, for crying out loud. 

His plane arrived in Ramgarh in the morning, and the visit and inspection occurred in the early afternoon. That means he arrived barely 36 hours after leaving the Cairo Conference on the afternoon of 11/26. How about you produce a timeline that could have gotten Chiang and his group from Cairo to Tehran and then from Tehran to Ramgarh, with the required fuel stops, in 36 hours? Let's see it. 

Have you heard of "Occam's Razor"? Google it. Occam's Razor screams that Prouty's claims about the Chinese delegation and the Tehran Conference are false. 

Edited September 30, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Oh, you believe Prouty? Well, then you must believe that Soong was the richest man in the world and that he controlled Chiang, among many other blabberings of nonsense.

My "hypothesis"??? I've already documented that we know for a fact that Chiang was in Ramgarh by the morning of 11/28 and that he and his delegation visited the Chinese troops who were being trained there. We have a copy of the speech that Chiang gave to the troops, for crying out loud. 

His plane arrived in Ramgarh in the morning, and the visit and inspection occurred in the early afternoon. That means he arrived barely 36 hours after leaving the Cairo Conference on the afternoon of 11/26. How about you produce a timeline that could have gotten Chiang and his group from Cairo to Tehran and then from Tehran to Ramgarh, with the required fuel stops, in 36 hours? Let's see it. 

Have you heard of "Occam's Razor"? Google it. Occam's Razor screams that Prouty's claims about the Chinese delegation and the Tehran Conference are false. 

So, Griffith, enough of your defamatory blather.

Post the source for your claims about Chiang's travel itinerary, as I requested (above.)

We all know that there has been a lot of McAdams-type disinformation published about Prouty since 1992. 

Show us the source of your "information" smearing Prouty's account of the Tehran Conference.

Then tell us why Prouty flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran in a VIP Lockheed Lodestar.

Your explanation goes here:

 

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 9/29/2023 at 10:33 AM, Michael Griffith said:

Starting at 52:20, Prouty told a curious tale about Churchill supposedly being denied entrance into Tehran by Soviet guards when the British delegation attempted to drive into the city after arriving at the airport. Prouty said that he was riding in cars with the Chinese delegation after they arrived at the Tehran airport, and that they were riding behind the British delegation. He stated that when the British delegation reached the Soviet checkpoint into the city, Soviet guards would not allow Churchill to enter because he allegedly had no ID on him since he was supposedly wearing a jumpsuit that had no pockets. 

The story gets even odder. Prouty said that when the Soviet guards refused to let Churchill enter, the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and started pointing and laughing at the British delegation. Uh, gee, I thought the Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran was supposed to be a big secret. Plus, such a major diplomatic snafu as delaying the prime minister of England and his delegation because the prime minister supposedly had no ID surely would have been mentioned by Churchill and/or others in the delegation in later books, but Churchill's several books say nothing about such an incident, and the three Churchill biographies that I scanned likewise said nothing about it. (Also, why exactly would delegates from one country stand up and laugh and point at another delegation because their entrance was being delayed? That doesn't sound credible.)

Prouty's tale about the Chinese delegation laughing and pointing at the British delegation deserves further comment. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese cultural and behavioral norms in the 1940s and about race relations in the 1940s will recognize that Prouty's tale smacks of ignorant fabrication.

In the 1940s, it would have been unthinkable for a group of Chinese, especially Chinese diplomatic staffers, to publicly mock a group of British, especially a British delegation that included Winston Churchill, particularly if they were in a foreign country. 

Leaving aside the racial and cultural components, such conduct would have been considered extremely inappropriate for members of a diplomatic delegation. 

Such an incident--the alleged behavior of the Chinese delegation and Churchill's being delayed for lack of an ID--most assuredly would have been mentioned in diaries, reports, and memoirs.

No such incident is mentioned in Churchill's writings about World War II (I've read them). Nor is any such incident mentioned in the three biographies of Churchill that I've read.

Nor is any such incident mentioned in the State Department's available records on the Tehran Conference and on diplomatic activity during World War II. The State Department's enormous online archives contain dozens of relevant records (LINK). I searched through them and did not find a single reference to such an incident; nor did I find a single reference to the presence of a Chinese delegation in Tehran at the time.

Finally, in a future reply, we really should look at Prouty's bogus claims about the Sino-Japanese conflict. He makes claims that are akin to saying that the Third Reich and Poland enjoyed great relations during World War II. Those who've read my book The Real Infamy of Pearl Harbor know that the Sino-Japanese War has been one of my primary areas of research for many years.

[Sandy Larsen]

22 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

So, Griffith, enough of your defamatory blather.

 

22 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Post the source for your claims about Chiang's travel itinerary, as I requested (above.)

We all know that there has been a lot of McAdams-type disinformation published about Prouty since 1992. 

 

22 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Show us the source of your "information" smearing Prouty's account of the Tehran Conference.

Then tell us why Prouty flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran in a VIP Lockheed Lodestar.

Your explanation goes here:

bump

 

[W. Niederhut]

The Tehran Conference was scheduled to begin on November 28, 1943.

FWIW, here's a New York Times article dated November 26, 1943.

Chiang Kai-shek Is Invited to Join Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin Talk; CHIANG IS INVITED TO STALIN PARLEY

 

By James B. Reston

• Nov. 26, 1943

 

LONDON, Nov. 25 -- Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek has been invited to any meeting that President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin may hold in the near future, it was learned today. 

[Michael Griffith]

Now let's address Prouty's abject nonsense about Chiang Kai-shek, the Sino-Japanese War, FDR and Stalin at the Tehran Conference, and the Soviet role in China.

From 45:35 to 46:44 in the video of his 1994 interview, he said the following:

          Chiang's worst enemy was not the Japanese. He was a dictator. He ordinarily would have sided with the Japanese. He was dictator, but he was controlled by T. V. Soong. First of all, T. V. Soong's sister was his wife. And, secondly, T. V. Soong was the wealthiest man in the world. So Chiang Kai-shek knew who he was working for. This gave Stalin a problem. Because if Stalin was gonna try and agree with Roosevelt to help Chiang fight the Japanese, so we can move B-29 bombers closer to Japan to bomb and end the war, Chiang's enemy wasn't the Japanese. Chiang's enemy was Mao Tse-Tung. Well, Mao's a Communist. And how is Stalin going to tell them to forget the communism and side with this guy Chiang, who was a dictator? 

          Roosevelt did it. He argued with Stalin. Churchill kept quiet. And they finally worked out an agreement. It probably cost a helluva lot of money, where Stalin told Mao, "Look, Chiang is fighting to get rid of the Japanese, which is good for China, so be quiet for a while." 

Is there any pejorative stronger than LOL or ROTFL combined to describe this fiction? I've already debunked Prouty's bogus claims that Soong controlled Chiang and that Soong was the richest man in the world. The rest of Prouty's gibberish is akin to saying that George McGovern won the 1972 election, that the Polish people sided with the Third Reich during World War II, or that Finland wanted to join the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. 

Some facts:

-- At the Tehran Conference, FDR and Stalin never even discussed the idea of having Stalin order Mao to stand down. You will not find a single word about such a discussion, much less an FDR-Stalin agreement on the matter, in any of the minutes of the Tehran Conference.

-- There would have been no need whatsoever to discuss such an agreement at the Tehran Conference because the Chinese Nationalists had long since formed an alliance with Mao's Communists in the 1920s, and because Chiang had reached an agreement with the Soviets in 1937, in order to focus on fighting the Japanese. The alliance with Mao broke down for a while, but it was renewed in 1937 after Chiang provoked full-scale war with Japan by attacking the Japanese portion of Shanghai--Chiang did not want to risk having to fight the Japanese and the Communists at the same time.

-- When Chiang assumed the leadership of the Nationalists, he resumed the alliance with the Communists, after having failed to eradicate them, and also accepted support from the Soviet Union in the hope of defeating the Japanese. Notes Asia scholar Peter Harmsen,

          Chiang, however, did not forget his pledge [to the Chinese Communists] to channel all his resources into the battle against Japan. With the backing of the Communists, and perhaps more importantly their Soviet masters, he now felt confident about facing up to the Japanese enemy. (Storm Clouds Over the Pacific, 1931-1941, Casemate Publishers, 2018, Kindle Edition, loc. 1205)

-- In the fall of 1937, the Soviets began providing the Nationalists with military equipment, including military aircraft and pilots (locs. 1586-1602). Observes Harmsen,

          At the same time, Soviet military aircraft arrived, flown by Soviet pilots. By the time Shanghai was captured by the Japanese in November, the aviators had taken to the skies over the lower Yangtze and the Soviets had become an . . . important part of the war. (Harmsen, locs. 1586-1602)

-- Taking off from Nationalist airfields, Soviet bombers carried out bombing raids on Japanese bases in China and Saipan (Taiwan) (Harmsen, locs. 1743-1769).

-- After a Soviet air raid on a Japanese base on Saipan, Chiang Kai-shek and his wife hosted a banquet to honor the Soviet pilots (Harmsen, locs. 1755-1769).  

Some info about how Chiang provoked an all-out war with the Japanese in Shanghai:

-- When the Japanese took China’s largest city, Shanghai, the Soviets, the British, the French, FDR, and FDR’s allies in the American press condemned Japan for its supposed “aggression.” 

However, the Japanese were not the aggressors in that battle. The Japanese did not want to attack Shanghai. The Japanese had been trying to defuse the tense situation in Shanghai when the Nationalists attacked a small Japanese garrison because they thought they could easily overrun the garrison before the Japanese could get reinforcements to the area. But, the 2,000-man garrison fought with unbelievable courage and held off the 30,000-man Chinese army that attacked it just long enough for reinforcements to arrive. However, this incident did not lead to an all-out battle for Shanghai. A compromise was reached, and Shanghai returned to some sense of normalcy (Harmsen, locs. 732-762). 

But, this situation changed when Chiang Kai-shek decided to attack the Japanese section of Shanghai with two elite divisions. The Japanese brought in more reinforcements and an enormous battle ensued, ending with the Nationalist forces being expelled from Shanghai and the Japanese taking control of the city (Harmsen, locs. 1413-1453).

Chiang's reasons for picking a fight with the Japanese at Shanghai remain a subject of debate. Harmsen:

          Chiang may have genuinely thought that by concentrating his best troops in a shock attack on the meager Japanese garrison in Shanghai, he would be able to score a quick, dramatic victory that could rally the nation.

          Japan, on the other hand, only entered the battle reluctantly. The army already felt overstretched in the north of China, and for the wrong reasons. Many Japanese generals considered the Soviet Union to be the main threat and the one that most resources had to be directed towards. The Chinese themselves understood this was the case, and on occasion admitted so in public. “Japan had no wish to fight at Shanghai,” Chinese General Zhang Fakui, one of the top field commanders during the struggle for the city, said in a post-war interview. “It should be simple to see that we took the initiative.” (Harmsen, loc. 1453)

Chiang was so fanatically anti-Japanese that he was willing to cut a deal with Mao and accept aid from the Soviets in the hope of more effectively fighting the Japanese. Soong was even more fanatically anti-Japanese, so much so that he actually accused Chiang of being too soft against the Japanese and resigned from Chiang's government over the matter. 

Prouty's hogwash that Chiang did not view the Japanese as his main enemy is just that: hogwash. The same can be said about Prouty's account of an FDR-Stalin discussion and agreement at the Tehran Conference regarding a Communist stand-down in China. 

Chiang would have welcomed aid from the Devil in order to fight the Japanese. Heck, until mid-1938, Chiang even accepted weapons from Nazi Germany and had been using active-duty German officers to train his troops. (Keep in mind that relations between Germany and Japan were very strained when Chiang was accepting German assistance.)

Edited October 2, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Paul Brancato]

Michael - the Prouty interview is available. What is your source for your rebuttal? 

[Michael Griffith]

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

The Tehran Conference was scheduled to begin on November 28, 1943.

FWIW, here's a New York Times article dated November 26, 1943.

Chiang Kai-shek Is Invited to Join Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin Talk; CHIANG IS INVITED TO STALIN PARLEY by James Reston

LONDON, Nov. 25 -- Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek has been invited to any meeting that President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin may hold in the near future, it was learned today.

Wait a minute! You said that the reason Elliott Roosevelt said nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation in Tehran was that it was supposed to be a secret meeting! Since the NYT had made it known that Chiang would be invited to some future meeting with FDR, Churchill, and Stalin, why wouldn't Elliott have mentioned the alleged historic presence of the Chinese delegation at the Tehran Conference?

Anyway, the Reston NYT article cannot refer to the Tehran Conference, as I've already proved. There is not one shred of evidence, not one little scrap, that Chiang and his delegation attended the Tehran Conference. Chiang and his party could not have arrived in Ramgarh on the morning of 11/28/43 after leaving Cairo on the evening of 11/26/43, flying to Tehran, meeting with Stalin, and then flying from Tehran.

Moreover, in my previous reply, I proved that Prouty was fabricating again when he said that Chiang's real enemy was not the Japanese and that FDR and Stalin discussed and agreed on a Communist stand-down in China at the Tehran Conference (LINK). These two claims are pure bunk.

Prouty's entire account of Chiang and his delegation in Tehran smacks of implausible fabrication.

Edited October 2, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Paul Brancato]

The 1994 interview is so prescient - incredible. 
He mentions Report From Iron Mountain, widely considered to be a farce. Might I ask what any of you think of this? 

[Michael Griffith]

8 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

The 1994 interview is so prescient - incredible. 
He mentions Report From Iron Mountain, widely considered to be a farce. Might I ask what any of you think of this? 

The 1994 interview is ridiculous. It's filled with bogus claims and obvious fabrications. 

If we had a video of Prouty admitting that he lied and fabricated all over the place, I suspect that someone would get some pseudo-expert to declare the video a fake, and that we'd see replies denouncing the video. 

Let's just recap some of the bogus, nutty claims that Prouty made:

-- Princess Diana may have been killed by the Secret Team.

-- Prouty met "English people" who told him that Churchill had FDR poisoned.

-- The Spotlight was a great news source.

-- The primary goal of the IHR's Holocaust-denying journal was a worthy goal.

-- Prouty was sent to the South Pole to prevent him from intervening in the security arrangements in Dallas. (After making this claim for years, he repudiated it when questioned by the ARRB.)

-- Ed Lansdale was a key player in the assassination plot and was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting.

-- The 112th MI Group was ordered to stand down for the Dallas motorcade.

-- Prouty took notes of his alleged phone call with the 112th MI Group. (Yet, when interviewed by the ARRB, he said the notes were "long gone" and offered no explanation for why he would have failed to preserve such potentially historic notes. The ARRB could have had a document expert examine the notes to determine the age of the paper and the ink and how long the ink had been on the paper, etc.)

-- The Jonestown Massacre was not a mass suicide but a mass murder carried out by intelligence agents.

-- The Israelis were to blame for high oil prices.

-- T. V. Soong was the wealthiest man in the world in the 1940s.

-- Soong controlled Chiang Kai-shek.

-- L. Ron Hubbard served in Navy intelligence. 

-- Chiang Kai-shek did not consider the Japanese his main enemy.

-- Chiang and his group attended the Tehran Conference. 

-- Carto and Marcellus had "courage" and "vision" for having the Holocaust-denying IHR republish one of Prouty's books.

And on and on we could go.