Alfred Kohlberg

Last updated

Alfred Kohlberg (January 27, 1887, San Francisco, California, April 7, 1960, New York City, New York) was an American textile importer. A staunch anti-Communist, he was a member of the pro-Chiang "China lobby", as well as an ally of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, a friend and advisor of John Birch Society founder Robert W. Welch Jr., and a member of the original national council of the John Birch Society. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Business career

Kohlberg moved to New York and set up a business buying linen in Ireland which was then shipped to China, where local weavers turned the raw linen into fine textiles. The finished products were then sent to the United States where they were sold to consumers as luxury fabrics.[ citation needed ] His company, "Alfred Kohlberg, Inc.: Chinese Textiles" had its office at 1 West 37 Street, New York City. [4]

Political activism

His business interests led him to travel often to China. During one such trip in 1943, after inspecting the progress of the Chinese war effort, he became convinced that the many stories in the American press of Chiang Kai-shek's corruption were false and were being spread by communist sympathizers. [5]

In the early 1940s, Kohlberg was a member of the American Bureau for Medical Aid for China (ABMAC) and the Institute for Pacific Relations (IPR).

ABMAC

In 1941, he served as a director for ABMAC (which received $2M annually from the United States during WWII) and traveled much of the country, after which he presented a report to ABMAC. In Spring 1943, New Deal official Lauchlin Currie advised Kohlberg of his "hopelessness" in the national government of the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek. In February 1943, Dwight Edwards at ABMAC Chungking cabled ABMAC New York attacking as corrupt the local partners whom Kohlberg had praised in his report. Kohlberg criticized Edwards; Edward C. Carter, head of IPR criticized Kohlberg. In July 1943, T.A. Bisson wrote an article called "China's Part in a Coalition War" in the IPR's Far Eastern Survey. Bisson described two Chinas, the first (under Chiang Kai-shek) "feudalist" and corrupt, the second (under Mao Zedong) "democratic". Bisson called those areas under the control of the Chinese Communist Party "bourgeois democracy." In June 1943, Kohlberg flew back to China to make a second report, where he met with US General Claire Chennault of the Flying Tigers and US Brigadier General T.S. Arms, both of whom expressed their continuing supporting for Chiang Kai-shek and expressed doubt about corruption in ABMAC. Returning to the States, Kohlberg filed a second report and proposed that ABMAC drop its support for United China Relief if people like Dwight Edwards were not barred from interfering. ABMAC disregarded his report and proposal, and Kohlberg resigned after a 15-year affiliation. [4]

IPR

Upon resigning from ABMAC, he focused his attentions on IPR. Although a long-time IPR member, previously he had not read their publications closely. He did so now—also reading Communist publications like the New Masses . He noted that both IPR and the Comintern had changed policies in tandem regarding Chiang Kai-shek opposing him after the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939 to lauding him after Operation Barbarosa (1941) to opposing him again by 1943. [4] Kohlberg began a personal campaign to have IPR acknowledge its pro-Communist bias and circulated this criticism among IPR members. Kohlberg began referring to Frederick Vanderbilt Field, a major IPR supporter, as the "millionaire communist." By 1944, Kohlberg resigned from the IPR, after "a dozen years membership," because he found it infiltrated by Communists. [6] By October 1946, Kohlberg's court order to see IPR's reply, which it had not shared with him. In 1945, Kohlberg continued his campaign against the IPR. He consulted anti-Communist experts like journalists Nelson Frank and Max Eastman, staff on the House Un-American Activities Committee, Felix Morley and Frank Hanighen of Human Events , Freda Utley, Father Mark Tsai. Kohlberg then "bombarded" IPR with letters; he also published a biography of Owen Lattimore in China Monthly (where Utley worked). Kohlberg continued to criticize IPR and file lawsuits against it. On July 25, 1951, Kohlberg could relent, when the "McCarran Commission" (SISS) started public hearings to investigate IPR. In 1952, Kohlberg testified against IPR in those hearings. The IPR countered by calling Kohlberg a Mason and member of Fidelity Lodge No. 120 of San Francisco for decades. [4]

Kohlberg's "long-time adversaries" at the Institute for Pacific Relations (IPR) were Owen Lattimore and Philip C. Jessup. [4]

Propaganda war

In 1946, Kohlberg joined the American China Policy Association (ACPA), an anti-communist organization that supported the government of Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek, as chairman. [7] [8] Kohlberg denied that he had set up ACPA to neither counter nor spite IPR. [4]

The same year, he funded the magazine Plain Talk in 1946, intended to rebut the claims made by the China Hands and support the Nationalist Government of Chiang. In 1947, he funded the newsletter Counterattack . He was a co-founder of the American Jewish League Against Communism. [9] Both organizations published pieces that decried IPR and people associated with it, e.g., Owen Lattimore. [4]

Personal life and death

Kohlberg married Jane Myers in 1921 and had two daughters and two sons. The youngest was psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. [10]

Kohlberg was a Bronxville neighbor of his biographer, Joseph C. Keeley, who recorded that "Kohlberg was of course annoyed at the vicious smears that were aimed at him during his lifetime." [4]

Kolberg died on April 7, 1960, in New York City. [11] Myers died in 1968. [12]

In 1960, Chih-Teh Loo, the superintendent of Taipei Veterans General Hospital, proposed funding from ROC government to build the Alfred Kohlberg Memorial Medical Research Laboratory and to go along with $75,000 donation from Jane Myers. The building was set to built on the east side of the hospital. The inauguration ceremony was held on November 11, 1963. Both vice president Chen Cheng and Jane Myers attended the ceremony. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chiang Kai-shek</span> Chinese politician and military leader (1887–1975)

Chiang Kai-shek was a Chinese statesman, revolutionary, and military commander. He was the head of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party, commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, and the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) in mainland China from 1928 until 1949. After being defeated in the Chinese Civil War by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, he led the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan until his death in 1975. He was considered the legitimate head of China by the United Nations until 1971.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soong Mei-ling</span> First Lady of the Republic of China (1898–2003)

Soong Mei-ling, also known as Madame Chiang, was a Chinese political figure. The youngest of the Soong sisters, she married Chiang Kai-shek and played a prominent role in Chinese politics and foreign relations in the first half of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wang Jingwei</span> Chinese politician (1883–1944)

Wang Zhaoming, widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei, was a Chinese politician who was president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang (KMT), leading a government in Wuhan in opposition to the right-wing Nationalist government in Nanjing, but later became increasingly anti-communist after his efforts to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party ended in political failure.

The United States Senate's Special Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, 1951–77, known more commonly as the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) and sometimes the McCarran Committee, was authorized by S. 366, approved December 21, 1950, to study and investigate (1) the administration, operation, and enforcement of the Internal Security Act of 1950 and other laws relating to espionage, sabotage, and the protection of the internal security of the United States and (2) the extent, nature, and effects of subversive activities in the United States "including, but not limited to, espionage, sabotage, and infiltration of persons who are or may be under the domination of the foreign government or organization controlling the world Communist movement or any movement seeking to overthrow the Government of the United States by force and violence". The resolution also authorized the subcommittee to subpoena witnesses and require the production of documents. Because of the nature of its investigations, the subcommittee is considered by some to be the Senate equivalent to the older House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chen Cheng</span> Chinese politician and soldier (1898–1965)

Chen Cheng, courtesy name Tsi-siou, was a Chinese political and military leader, and one of the main commanders of the National Revolutionary Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owen Lattimore</span> American Orientalist and writer (1900–1989)

Owen Lattimore was an American Orientalist and writer. He was an influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963. He was director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations from 1939 to 1953. During World War II, he was an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and the American government and contributed extensively to the public debate on U.S. policy toward Asia. From 1963 to 1970, Lattimore was the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds in England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick J. Hurley</span> American diplomat and politician

Patrick Jay Hurley was an American politician and diplomat. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1929 to 1933, but is best remembered for being Ambassador to China in 1945, during which he was instrumental in getting Joseph Stilwell recalled from China and replaced with the more diplomatic General Albert Coady Wedemeyer. A man of humble origins, Hurley's lack of what was considered to be a proper ambassadorial demeanor and mode of social interaction made professional diplomats scornful of him. He came to share pre-eminent army strategist Wedemeyer's view that the Chinese Communists could be defeated and America ought to commit to doing so even if it meant backing the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek to the hilt. Frustrated, Hurley resigned as Ambassador to the Republic of China in 1945, publicised his concerns about high-ranking members of the State Department, and alleged they believed that the Chinese Communists were not totalitarians and that America's priority was to avoid allying with a losing side in the civil war.

The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was an international NGO established in 1925 to provide a forum for discussion of problems and relations between nations of the Pacific Rim. The International Secretariat, the center of most IPR activity over the years, consisted of professional staff members who recommended policy to the Pacific Council and administered the international program. The various national councils were responsible for national, regional and local programming. Most participants were members of the business and academic communities in their respective countries. Funding came largely from businesses and philanthropies, especially the Rockefeller Foundation. IPR international headquarters were in Honolulu until the early 1930s when they were moved to New York and the American Council emerged as the dominant national council.

John Paton Davies Jr. was an American diplomat and Medal of Freedom recipient. He was one of the China Hands, whose careers in the Foreign Service were ended by McCarthyism and the reaction to the loss of China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact</span> Treaty between the ROC and USSR

The Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was signed in Nanjing on August 21, 1937, between the Republic of China and the Soviet Union during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The pact went into effect on the day that it was signed and was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on September 8, 1937.

Edward Clark Carter worked with the International Y.M.C.A. in India and in France, during World War I, from 1902 to 1918, but was best known for his work with the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), of which he was secretary from 1926 to 1933, secretary general from 1933 to 1946 and executive vice-chairman from 1946 to 1948.

Frederick Vanderbilt Field was an American leftist political activist, political writer and a great-great-grandson of railroad tycoon Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt, disinherited by his wealthy relatives for his radical political views. Field became a specialist on Asia and was a prime staff member and supporter of the Institute of Pacific Relations. He also supported Henry Wallace's Progressive Party and so many openly Communist organizations that he was accused of being a member of the Communist Party. He was a top target of the American government during the peak of 1950s McCarthyism. Field denied ever having been a party member but admitted in his memoirs, "I suppose I was what the Party called a 'member at large.'"

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist ideology of the Kuomintang</span>

The historical Kuomintang socialist ideology is a form of socialist thought developed in mainland China during the early Republic of China. The Tongmenghui revolutionary organization led by Sun Yat-sen was the first to promote socialism in China.

The Zhucheng Campaign (诸城战役) was a campaign fought in Shandong, and it was a clash between the communists and the former nationalists turned Japanese puppet regime force who rejoined the nationalists after World War II. The battle was one of the Chinese Civil War in the immediate post World War II era, and resulted in communist victory.

In American political discourse, the "loss of China" is the unexpected Chinese Communist Party coming to power in mainland China from the U.S.-backed Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang government in 1949 and therefore the "loss of China to communism."

Lawrence Kaelter Rosinger was an American specialist on modern East Asia, focusing on China and India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Jaffe</span> American businessman, editor and author

Philip Jacob Jaffe was a communist American businessman, editor and author. He was born in Ukraine and moved to New York City as a child. He became the owner of a profitable greeting card company. In the 1930s Jaffe became interested in Communism and edited two journals associated with the Communist Party USA. He is known for the 1945 Amerasia affair, in which the FBI found classified documents in the offices of his Amerasia magazine that had been given to him by State Department employee John S. Service. He received a minimal sentence due to OSS/FBI bungling of the investigation, but there were continued reviews of the affair by Congress into the 1950s. He later wrote about the rise and decline of the Communist Party in the USA.

Thomas Arthur Bisson, who wrote as T. A. Bisson was an American political writer, journalist, and government official who specialized in East Asian politics and economics.

The American China Policy Association (ACPA) was an anti-communist organization that supported the government of Republic of China, now commonly referred to as Taiwan, under Chiang Kai-shek.

Joseph C. Keeley (1907–1994) was an American public relations expert who became editor of American Legion magazine (1949-1963) and wrote a biography of Alfred Kohlberg called The China Lobby Man in 1969.

References

  1. ↑ Herzstein, Robert E. (2006-06-01). "Alfred Kohlberg: Counter-Subversion in the Global Struggle against Communism, 1944-1960" (PDF). Globalization, Empire, and Imperialism in Historical Perspective. University of North Carolina. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 25, 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-02.
  2. ↑ Diamond, Sigmund (1992). Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945-1955. Oxford University Press. pp. 170, 328 (fn17). ISBN   9780195053821 . Retrieved 21 October 2018.
  3. ↑ Leahy, Stephen M. (3 September 2018). "Alfred J. Kohlberg and the Chaoshan embroidered handkerchief industry, 1922-1957". Social Transformations in Chinese Societies. 14 (2): 45–59. doi:10.1108/STICS-04-2018-0006. S2CID   158677023 . Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Keeley, Joseph C. (1969). "The China lobby Man: The Story of Alfred Kohlberg". Arlington House Publishers. pp. ix (neighbors), xxv (ACPA 1946.07.17, Plain Talk 1946.10), xvi (1951.06.25), 1 (Mandel), 3 (Lattimore, Jessup), 54-71 (ABMAC), 77-93 (IPR), 166-208 (IPR), 233-234 (ACPA vs. IPR), 235 (Clare Booth Luce), 253-253 (SISS testimony), 257 (Mason), 313 (offices), 314 (dozen years). Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  5. ↑ Reynolds, Colin E. (2016). The Not-So-Far Right: Radical Right-Wing Politics in the United States, 1941-1977. Atlanta, GA: Emory University (Ph.D. dissertation).
  6. ↑ McCarran Committee testimony, April 16, 1952
  7. ↑ Waskey, Jack (2010). "American China Policy Association". In Song, Yuwu (ed.). Encyclopedia of Chinese-American Relations. McFarland. p. 21. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
  8. ↑ "Register of the Alfred Kohlberg papers". OAC CDLIB. 1998. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
  9. ↑ Krause, Allen (2010). "Rabbi Benjamin Schultz and the American Jewish League Against Communism: From McCarthy to Mississippi". Southern Jewish History. Southern Jewish Historical Society: 167 (quote), 208 (fn25 on founding). Retrieved 21 March 2020.
  10. ↑ Doorey, Marie. "Lawrence Kohlberg: American Psychologist". Britannica. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  11. ↑ "A Ifred Kohlberg, Importer, Dies; Fighter Against Communism, 73; Called 'Head of China Lobby'; Led the American Jewish League Against Reds". April 8, 1960. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
  12. ↑ "Mrs. Alfred Kohlberg Dies at 71; Widow of 'China Lobby's' Head". The New York Times. February 12, 1968. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
  13. ↑ 臺北榮民總醫院院史廳 (2019-05-13). "1963成立柯柏醫學科學研究紀念館". 臺北榮民總醫院院史廳. Retrieved 2024-08-10.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.