US and British troops in the ruins of Hong Kong, May 1951
Having to lead a stalemate war in East Asia, Dewey saw the year 1951 as another terrible year for his administration, both abroad and at home.
Senator McCarthy continued his irresistible rise during the year, backed by Conservative Republicans and anticommunist Democrats. With the help of the hearings made by the
House Committee on Un-American Activities, chaired by Georgia Representative
John Stephens Wood, McCarthy put up an atmosphere of suspicion and informing on US bureaucracy. The Red Scare exploited by McCarthy and his allies is further revived by the current events: on April 5, the death sentence of
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as they were found guilty conspiracy to give informations to the Soviet Union about the Atomic Bomb revived the anticommunist paranoia, despite the outcry throughout the world created by President Dewey's refusal to spare them.
The State Department and the CIA were seeing enemies rising everywhere in the world. The election of
Jacobo Arbenz Guzman as President of Guatemala in March made Dulles afraid after a potential alliance with the country's communists and the expropriation of the powerful United Fruit Company, main bearer of the US control in Central America, and to which he had been linked as a businessman. In the same way, on April, 29,
Mohammed Mossadegh succeeded Hossein Ala' as Iranian Prime Minister: unlike his predecessors, partisans of a compromise with the British about the exploitation of Iranian oil, Mossadegh was in favor of nationalization; the following day, the immediate nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, already made on March, 15, was ratified by the Iranian Parliament, to which the United Kingdom responded by an embargo on Iran: the State Department feared that Iran, a country bordered by the Soviet Union, could be put in trouble. The creation of the
European Coal and Steel Community on April, 18, between France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany and Italy put the foundations of an European free trade area and limited Europe's dependance on the Marshall Plan and US economic aids. France was having trouble in Morocco, quickly curbed by General Alphonse Juin, and also in Indochina, where the stalemate was beginning for French forces, as the
Viet Minh was being helped by Chinese resources: at home, communists came in the lead in the
French June legislative elections, followed by the Gaullists: the rightist ruling coalition proves to be quite weak and unstable. The Chinese, by the way, began to fund the Thai communist resistance that was created after the military coup in Thailand on November. On July, 20,
King Abdullah of Jordan was murdered by an islamist in a mosque, severing the negotiations between Israel and the Arab countries.
However, US allies were having some successes throughout the world, mostly in the ballots. On September, 1, the
Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) was signed, putting in effectiveness a military alliance between the USA, Australia and New Zealand. In spite of the assassination of Prime Minister
Liaquat Ali Khan on October, 16, Pakistan remained on US side. On October, 25, Labour, incapacitated by the economic matters and its snubs in foreign policy, lost the UK general election: the old
Winston Churchill came back to the 10, Downing Street, that he had left in 1945, along with the Conservatives.
In a more neutral tone, the
22nd Amendment, ratified on February, 27, arrived to forbid any future President to get beyond FDR's record, as it limited to two terms the US Presidents. President Dewey, as he grandfathered the law, along with former President Truman, weren't concerned by the Amendment. But before thinking to his reelection next year, Dewey had to think to the situation in Korea and China.
In their newly inaugurated building, the United Nations Assembly identified the PRC as the agressor in the Korean War on February, 1, thus confirming the US bombing of Southern China that had been lasting for a month...And the fall of Seoul to Chinese-North Korean forces on January, 17. This decision gave the United Nations free hands against China, as the USSR was still not moving. The UN counter-attack led by Bradley and
Matthew Ridgeway in Korea allowed its forces to take Seoul back on March, 14, and cross again the 38th Parallel on April, 22. The frontlines in Korea then froze, due to the huge forces on each side.
But things went worse in southern China.
LeMay's carpet bombing, modeled on the strategy that had been applicated against Germany during WWII, proved quite uneffective against the PRC: Chinese cities were already in ruins and the peasants were left unconcerned by the bombs. Worse: the damages made by the bombs were used for Chinese propaganda, that was reused by Soviets and communist sympathizers to depict American cruelty. As the Chinese were completing the invasion of Tibet, the risk of an attack on India arrived, but Nehru vehemently refused to formally join US side in the Cold War. And by May, Mao Zedong issued a statement where he called to "the reconquest of the whole China by its rightful inhabitants against the imperalist Western settlers".
On May, 24, People's Liberation Army elements made a surprise attack on the garrisons of Macau and Hong-Kong.
It was of course impossible to the few Portugueuse troops stationed in Macau to resist against the Chinese armies: disobeying to
Salazar's orders to "never surrender", Governor
Albano Rodrigues de Oliveira signed his capitulation on May, 25 and was captured by Chinese forces along with other members of his staff, after a few losses. The attack on Macau was seen as an evidence of Chinese deliberate agressivity, as Portugal wasn't even a member of the United Nations, kept on a distance for its links with Nazi Germany. Secretary of State Dulles decided to implement negotiations for admission of Portugal and Spain in the United Nations as a result. On the other side, in Hong Kong, Governor
Alexander Grantham managed to put in place a fierce resistance to the Chinese invaders along with the Hong Kong Military Service Corps, long enough so reinforcements from Taiwan and Singapore could arrive in Hong Kong, transported by elements from the US 8th Fleet stationed in Taiwan straits. After two weeks of fierce fighting, the People's Liberation Army withdrew from Hong Kong outskirts. The city, which had not yet recovered from the Japanese occupation, was left destroyed but still independant. Due to the weakness of Chinese Navy (if there was one), no attacks on Taiwan were expected: but due to the uneffectiveness of Kuomintang's commandment and the risks coming from a landing in continental China, no plans were drawn for a direct participation of Chiang Kai-Shek in the war.
President Dewey had believed that the strategy of carpet bombing against China to distract and weaken them in order to regain control of the Korean peninsula was a good deal to counter Secretary MacArthur's demands of a nuclear bombing of Mandchuria and a Taiwanese landing in continental China. The stalemate near the 38th Parallel, the uneffectiveness of the carpet bombing and the attacks on Hong Kong and Macau proved the dullness of this strategy. In June, MacArthur came back to his attacks towards the Dewey administration, accusing them of softness and incompetence and threatening them with his own resignation: rumours began to spread of a deal between him and Taft about a challenging run against Dewey for the 1952 Republican Convention as the Conservative candidate.
Dewey was left totally paralyzed by the situation. As a result, he kept the carpet bombings and the stalemate in Korea continuing for five months, spinning out his final decision about the war, along with tense meetings with MacArthur and his other generals. Leaving China as the agressor in Asia would leave a powerful ally to the Soviet Union, and nothing would, in the future, prevent China for intervening in Indochina, Thailand, and even Philippines, India, Japan...In short, as Asia's communist policeman. He couldn't even think to reelection with an ongoing failure in Korea and a dissenting popular general on his own camp. But the nuclear option was the worse: even if the Soviet Union hadn't much reacted since the beginning of the crisis, Dewey knew that Stalin was impatiently for this Rubicon crossing to break all hell loose on its borders, beginning with an intervention along with the Chinese forces and, why not, an invasion of western Europe? But the Soviet nuclear arsenal was certainly quite reduced by now, and unlike China, North Korea had no direct treaty of mutual assistance with the USSR.
On December, 22, President Dewey announced that he would run for reelection next year. In the same time,
Operation Nicholas was officially given green fire by the Defence Department.
On December 29, Operation Nicholas was put in application. A B29 dropped an atomic bomb below the city of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
The city was totally wiped out. Prime Minister Kim Il-Sung, along with other officials, were missed in action. Chinese and Soviet delegations in Washington and in the United Nations didn't made any statement yet, until January.
Awesome. Yay WW3! There needs to be more Korean war things on this board.