Didn’t mean to imply you did. Sorry if it sounded that way. I was sort of going through the thought process I followed as I reread the passage since you alerted me to Tuchman’s lefty bent. Personally, I have a hard time picturing Stilwell waxing wistfully about getting the People’s Army to join the heroic struggle to rid greater China of the imperialist Japanese pestilence. Maybe more like, “I’d take the goddamn commies if we could get them to stand and fight!”
During the war Whittaker Chambers was an editor at Time magazine. He was fighting a constant battle with the pro-Communist writers. Theodore White, later famous for “The Making of the President” books, was Time’s China correspondent. White was totally under the control of Chou Enlai, as he later admitted.
Whittaker Chambers’ 1952 Autobiography ‘Witness’, Allen Weinstein’s ‘Perjury’, and Sam Tanenhaus’ ‘Whittaker Chambers: a biography’ are all essential reading for those interested in 20th century history.