Albert Coady Wedemeyer - Post-WWII Military Service

Post-WWII Military Service

After returning from China, Wedemeyer was promoted to Army Chief of Plans and Operations. In July 1947, President Harry S. Truman sent Lieutenant-General Wedemeyer to China and Korea to examine the "political, economic, psychological and military situations." The result was the "Wedemeyer Report," in which Wedemeyer stressed the need for intensive U.S. training of and assistance to the Nationalist armies.

Fearful the Nationalists may rise to challenge US hegemony in the Far East, President Truman not only rejected the recommendations in the report, but imposed an arms embargo against the Nationalist government, thereby intensifying the bitter political debate over the role of the United States in the Chinese civil war. While Secretary of State George C. Marshall had hoped that Wedemeyer could convince Chiang Kai-shek to institute those military, economic, and political reforms necessary to defeat the Communists, he accepted Truman's views, and suppressed publication of Wedemeyer's report, further provoking resentment by pro-Nationalist and/or anti-communist advocates both inside and outside the U.S. government and the armed forces.

After the fall of China to Communist forces, General Wedemeyer would testify before Congress that while the loss of morale was indeed a cause of the defeat of the Nationalist Chinese forces, the Truman administration's 1947 decision to discontinue further training and modernizing of Nationalist forces, the U.S.-imposed arms embargo, and constant anti-Nationalist sentiment expressed by Western journalists and policymakers were primary causes of that loss of morale. In particular, Wedemeyer stressed that if the U.S. had insisted on experienced American military advisers attached at the lower battalion and regimental levels of Nationalist armies (as it had done with Greek army forces during the Greek Civil War), that aid could have more efficiently been utilized, and that the immediate tactical assistance would have resulted in Nationalist armies performing far better in combat against the Communist Chinese. Vice-Admiral Oscar C. Badger, General Claire Chennault, and Brigadier General Francis Brink also testified that the arms embargo was a significant factor in the loss of China.

In 1948, Wedemeyer supported General Lucius D. Clay's plan to create an airbridge during the Berlin Crisis.

After the Communist victory in 1949, Wedemeyer became intimately associated with the China Lobby and openly voiced his criticism of those responsible for the "loss of China." In 1951, Wedemeyer retired, but was promoted to General (4-stars) on July 19, 1954.

In 1951, after the outbreak of the Korean War, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy said that Wedemeyer had prepared a wise plan that would keep China a valued ally, but that it had been sabotaged; "only in treason can we find why evil genius thwarted and frustrated it." The evil geniuses, McCarthy said, included General George Marshall. Wedemeyer became a hero to the anti-Communist movement in the United States, giving many lectures around the country.

In 1957 he was affiliated with the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena.

On May 23, 1985, Wedemeyer was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.

Friends Advice, in Boyds, Maryland, was his permanent home throughout his military career and after his retirement in 1951, until his death in 1989. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. On December 17, 1989, Wedemeyer died at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.