A Note from the Editors at Library of Social Science:

Dr. Zhu’s essay and accompanying photos provide a unique perspective: allowing Americans to understand how China conceived of and experienced the Korean War. Below is a condensed version of the entire essay, which appears here.

Below her essay are photos of Dr. Zhu’s visit to a ceremony in South Korea commemorating the 50th anniversary of the War.

China entered into the Korean War at a critical historical moment: the new Communist regime had just celebrated its first anniversary in October 1950. In military strength and industrial capacity, China was no match for its opponent, the well-equipped and supplied United Nations Command (UNC) under the United States military command leadership. What China could rely on was its massive manpower and political propaganda — entrenched in the Marxist doctrine of anti-imperialism and internationalism.

On October 8, 1950, Mao Zedong — in the name of the Chair of the Chinese People’s Military Commission — issued an executive order organizing the army of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) to enter the Korean War on the side of North Korea. Mao elaborated on the nature of China’s decision to enter into the Korean conflict: “To assist [North] Korean people’s liberation war, to resist the aggression of the American imperialists and their running dogs, and to protect the interests of the [North] Korean people, the Chinese people, as well as countries in Asia.”

China entered into the Korean War at a critical historical moment: the new Communist regime had just celebrated its first anniversary in October 1950. In military strength and industrial capacity, China was no match for its opponent, the well-equipped and supplied United Nations Command (UNC) under the United States military command leadership. What China could rely on was its massive manpower and political propaganda — entrenched in the Marxist doctrine of anti-imperialism and internationalism.

On October 8, 1950, Mao Zedong — in the name of the Chair of the Chinese People’s Military Commission — issued an executive order organizing the army of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) to enter the Korean War on the side of North Korea. Mao elaborated on the nature of China’s decision to enter into the Korean conflict: “To assist [North] Korean people’s liberation war, to resist the aggression of the American imperialists and their running dogs, and to protect the interests of the [North] Korean people, the Chinese people, as well as countries in Asia.”

The Chinese government strove to galvanize its population into the belief that they were fighting a just war. Mao had always paid special attention to the role of political motivation for war. “It is of utmost important to let our military and people know the political purpose of the war,” Mao emphasized. “It is highly necessary to explain to every soldier and every citizen why the war is to be fought, and how the fighting is related to them.”

The war waged by China was not simply portrayed as a conflict in Korea: it was dubbed by the Chinese authority as kangmei yuanchao, baojia weiguo, “the War to Resist American Aggression and Aid [North] Korea,” “Defend Homeland and Protect Our Country.”

When the People’s Daily carried articles on U.S. bombing of China’s border cities, they showed bloody bodies and burned houses, making the war in Korea personal to the Chinese people. “American imperialists have brought the war to the Yalu River border,” the editorial from the People’s Daily claimed. “Until the war on the Korean Peninsula ceases, there will not be peace along the Yalu River.” Instantly, the fundamental interest of the Chinese people came to be tied closely to the war in Korea: the only way to resolve this crisis was to send in China’s support to the Korean people.

War demands commitment and sacrifice. The Communist authorities enshrined the ideal of revolutionary heroism into their wartime culture of patriotism and sacrifice. According to Communist theory, revolutionary heroism is the opposite of individual heroism. While the former is focused on individual fame and self-interest, the former emphasized daring to fight and eventually give one’s life for the revolutionary cause one believes in — and to make sacrifices for the public interest and masses.

In 1945, Mao expounded on the features revolutionary heroism: “This army embraces the spirit of moving forward unstoppably and of overwhelming all enemies, but never to be overcome. Under any circumstance, as long as there is one man left, he must fight to the end.” Since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921, the Communists had upheld the tradition of revolutionary martyrs who had laid down their lives for the cause, and for the brighter future of a Communist China.

These martyrs, according to Zhu De, one of Communist China’s most prominent military commanders, “would not only sacrifice part of their own interests, but also their own lives without hesitation, for the sake of revolutionary interest and needs.” This was the essence of revolutionary heroism: one person’s sacrifice for millions of other peoples’ lives, and for the nation’s security. The Korean War provided a great opportunity for every Chinese, soldiers or not, to embrace the spirit of revolutionary heroism.

Wei praised the bravery and virtue of the CPV soldiers — in a fashion similar Pericles in his funeral oration to the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century B.C. Wei’s extolment of the CPV soldiers seemed to prove the unlimited human power sustained by revolutionary heroism, when one CPV company fought to kill some 300 enemies — while suffering heavy casualties by overwhelming enemy fire power from air bombing, tank and artillery, flame thrower, and strong frontal assaults. The CPV Company managed to hold onto the position until the arrival of reinforcement.

This ancient idea that warriors, “because of their godliness and virtue, can vanquish strong opponents,” was shared by many. One historian noted that “the Christian crusaders counted on it. Jihad, Islam’s conception of a holy war, is based on it. The [Japanese] Samurai believed it. So did the Nazis.” In the case of the CPV forces in Korea, the sentiment of the kangmei yuanchao movement empowered the CPV soldiers to believe they were fighting a just war for a just cause, which was invincible.

Mao’s strategy in proving “man can beat weapon” lay in his using at least four times larger, if not more, in number of troops, and 1.5 to two times bigger the fire power than that of the enemy’s — in order to eliminate them. The concept of “human wave” was born. As a result, more martyrs were in the making, and more sacrifices would be added to the national glory and international stardom.

In war, death can transcend to a higher realm of nobility. When death casualties of the CPV soldiers were reported back home, the nation and the people seemed to have little time to grieve. The authorities wanted everyone at home to “turn grief into strength, sorrow for the loss of loved ones into hatred toward the American imperialism.” Sacrifice for the Chinese nation and world peace was a glorious deed. “As a prideful CCP member,” one anonymous CPV soldier wrote the night before he was to die defending the hill top, “[I] must give my life…for the victory…for my motherland…”

One historian whose research focused on heroes in Nazi Germany commented, “Death in battle not only guaranteed eternal life for the martyrs, but also acted as a resurgent life force for the Fatherland. Death in combat took on the ennobling force of a sacrament.” Communist revolutionary heroism ensured eternal life in propaganda for those who died for the revolutionary cause. Both Huang Jiguang and Qiu Shaoyun pledged before going into battle that they were willing to “give their lives for the victory.”

Now they had achieved just that, dying a heroic death fighting the most powerful country in the world, the United States. The state apparatus rigorously created an account of the heroism of the CPV soldiers — who lived for the life of their motherland, and died for the peace of the Korean people. In life they were part of the “most beloved,” and in death they joined the immortals.

A very special martyr was among some 180,000 souls buried in North Korea. He was Mao Anying, the eldest son of Mao Zedong, who died in an American air raid in November 25, 1950 while working in the CPV headquarters in North Korea. Upon hearing the news, Mao’s response was calm but solemn:

In war there must be sacrifice. So many CPV soldiers have given their lives already. As a proletarian fighter and a CCP member, Anying has done his duty. He is an ordinary soldier of the CPV. His death should not be made a big issue just because he is my son. Why can’t a son of the CCP chair be making sacrifice for the common cause of the Chinese and Korean peoples?

The ending of the Korean War — with an armistice and return of the CPV POWs — seemed to have cast a spell on the sacrifice and devotion China made in the Korean War. Throughout the war, Mao and the Chinese authorities made good use of the propaganda apparatus to promote revolutionary heroism, and placed individual CPV soldiers’ deaths within the context of homeland security and world peace, which demanded sacrifice to safeguard a nation’s survival. China’s heroes were given an active role — as they walked toward death with courage and vigor.

There was no doubt that the CPV soldiers truly believed in why they were fighting and what they were fighting for in Korea. Death seemed more justifiable than life — to achieve the title of revolutionary hero. Retrospectively, the Korean War occupies a special place in Communist China’s history. Sending millions of China’s best to fight in Korea was no easy decision for Mao and the new leadership to make.

In 2000, Dr. Zhu traveled to Seoul to observe the South Korean government’s ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Korean War.

The photos on the first row are of the ceremony — held on June 25, 2000, in front of the Korean War Museum. The photos on the second row show Dr. Zhu with veterans of the Korean War.

 

Abstract

What role did music play in the death-throes of the Reich? What did the orchestras of the Reich perform in the latter stages of the war? Examining dialogues from the bunker in the expiring days of the Reich, one finds oneself in the rhetoric of Wagner, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The leitmotif of this prolonged “heroic” exit is a wild case of “noblesse;” and some thousands obliged indeed. This essay will illuminate the use of music as means to support the darker and more sinister ideogram of self-punishment and purification.

Read Panayiotis Demopoulos’s complete essay on our website.

Excerpts from the Essay:

On April 11th 1945, as the Red Army fast-approached Berlin, the Berlin Philharmonic gave what might have been its last concert before the end of the war. Albert Speer, who had intervened to save members of the Orchestra from their senseless drafting into the Volksturm, organized a final concert, entitled  Konzert für Minister Speer in the Berlin Beethoven Haal, still curiously standing amidst the city’s rubble.

The programme for the concert commenced with the final scene from Wagner’s  Götterdämmerung:

…Grane my steed. I greet you.  
Do you know my friend where I shall lead you?  
In that radiant fire lies your master, Siegfried, my blessed hero.
Are you neighing happily because you are following your friend?  
Are you drawn to him in the laughing flames?

Hence, Valhalla, home of the Gods was consumed in fire. The metaphorical question is obvious: were the German people ‘neighing happily’ in those ‘radiant fires’? This author uses his very limited life experience to conclude that they were not. Still, as Michael Geyer describes very astutely “…sacrifice in order to maintain community was a self-evident virtue in catastrophe…”  And ‘the war’, or to be more accurate the destruction of Berlin and its people, went on.

According to most sources as well as popular myth, Speer engineered a move for the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic to the relative peace of Bayreuth, but they chose to remain with their Berliner audiences until the end of the war. The Orchestra’s final concerts were given in candlelight, under bombing and with Hitler Jugend children offering the exiting members of the audience cyanide capsules for private use, adding to the tragic and conclusive atmosphere of the whole affair.

One cannot help but feel that if present in those concerts, any German Romanticism aficionado might find the confusing air of cynicism and resignation contagious if not seductive—a prescribed death is often both the bringer of despair and of irresistible primordial and sensual tensions.

It is, nonetheless difficult to ascertain the audience’s experience, especially the military officers’ emotional response to the music. After all, the people of Berlin, suffering greatly as they were in those last months of the war, might have found the lush Wagnerian orchestral landscape extremely poignant in the face of defeat and the accompanying humiliation, pillaging and rape which they feared it would bring.

The Orchestra went on to give two more concerts, in which the main works were—fittingly—the Deutsches Requiem by J. Brahms and  Tod und Verklarung by J. Strauss. It becomes quite clear from the choice of repertoire that the Orchestra was now playing a funeral march for the entire nation. This neurosis of being unable to see an alternative future in which the German nation might exist outside of final victory, is best reflected at the infanticide that took place in the bunker by Magda Goebbels.

And there was music there too, perhaps the only music that might stop the senseless killing. According to Traudl Junge the Goebbels’ children sang for Hitler, who was very pleased to hear their song. This innocent choir of young voices was soon murdered by its very mother, in the bunker, just before the mother herself committed suicide. There is no academic phrasing suitable enough to describe the incomprehensibility of how mankind can achieve this nonsense, especially at this high level of leadership.

Read Panayiotis Demopoulos’s complete essay on our website.

In the last 4 months of the war, more than 1,500,000 Germans, including hundreds of thousands of civilians, lost their lives in an increasingly vain war effort. Music was a tool in encouraging the German people to continue fighting. Charles Whiting is also convinced that musical fantasies had taken over Hitler’s psyche when he describes why this national suicide occurred:

When the end came for Hitler, he staged his own  Götterdämmerung in his Berlin bunker. He refused to surrender, preferring to take of his own life over an unheroic end. By his absolute refusal to even consider capitulation, he ensured vast, horrible destruction of lives and property long after these losses could have had any possible affect upon the outcome of the war. Hitler lived out his fantasy to the end; to the fullest; precipitating the realization of his favorite operatic scene, the final destruction of the gods and Valhalla.

One would have to add the pleasure of punishment to this emotional struggle. Hitler first spoke of ‘traitors’ and ‘weaklings’ in  Mein Kampf. His Generals adopted this leitmotif and preached it to the end: “For us there is no higher law and no more sacred duty than to fight to the last breath for the freedom of our people, that we want to rid ourselves of everything soft and disloyal.” said Alfred Jodl on November 7th, 1942 to the Volksturm.

In this light, the last few days of the Russian advance were a sort of execution of the weaker, more treacherous elements of German society. By that point, this might not be merely acceptable, but desirable. Otherwise put, Hitler himself dreamed and wished for his people that what they had failed to become—an army of suicidal faithful—would one day come to be. He explained in his  Political Testament:

May it become, at some future time, part of the code of honor of the German officer, as it is already in our Navy, that the surrender of a district or of a town is impossible, and that the leaders here above all must march ahead as shining examples, faithfully fulfilling their duty unto death.

Duty, being the operative word. There were two oaths for the military and the civil service of which the former read: “I swear by God this sacred oath that to the Leader of the German empire and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, I shall render unconditional obedience and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath.”.

Therefore, it is not conjecture, but a blatant reality that for Hitler duty and death were the same thing by this stage of the war, which applied for all men between the ages of 16 and 60  (Volksturm). In this final act, not even the Tristan chord might confer some magical turn of events. The role of music was plainly that of a muffled, funeral drum that led to the guillotine.

Read Panayiotis Demopoulos’s complete essay on our website.