Chapter 117 Chapter 18 Training Camp

After the fall of the Shanghai municipal government in November 1937, Dai Li was called to Nanjing.Of course, he knew that the capital would soon fall to Japanese forces from the southeast.So he immediately began to prepare the city's underground work.Thinking of all the difficulties encountered in setting up a military intelligence network in Shanghai after the outbreak of war, Dai Li designated Nanjing as a special zone, and one of his most trusted subordinates, Qian Xinmin, was appointed as the district chief.He told Chiang Kai-shek that Qian was completely reliable in this key position.He also set up two secret radio stations, hosted by female radio operators, and prepared to hide after Nanjing was occupied by the enemy.

After the fall of Nanjing, Dai Li, as the head of the Second Bureau, became increasingly important in the collection of military intelligence across the country.Before that, the mission of Dai Li's office was the so-called "military static investigation".In actual work, it is divided into two parts: a group of field agents conducts "collection" activities; and another group of personnel from the Second Bureau conducts "verification" of the former's intelligence. Intelligence gathering is usually the responsibility of agents with military ranks.Their responsibilities were twofold: gathering intelligence on the ground about the Communist Party and reporting on the situation in their own military units.Reports about the Communist Party were sent to Dai Li's offices (first in Wuhan and later in Chongqing), where they were sorted and sent to agents in the Fuxingshe's local network or other military agencies for verification and action.Reports on each military force include the local "security regiment", the combat effectiveness of the military entity (number of horses, weapons, physical condition of the personnel), the political background and moral quality of the soldiers (whether they eat, drink, whoring, gambling, etc.), and the officials their "state of mind".These reports are sent to the Home Service, who regularly follow up on the wartime and peacetime capabilities of these specific units.Although the former report is considered more urgent than the latter, both are designated to be sent at the same speed.Thus, Dai Li's system of agents maintained a well-earned reputation for clear and effective communications.Bureau II officials boasted that no military unit could match them in the speed at which field agents received and forwarded information between Dai Li's headquarters.

After the war broke out, Dai Li added another focus on this basis: providing Chiang Kai-shek with military trends and the activities of the Kuomintang generals.To this end, he established some "field investigation teams" and sent them to Jiangwan, Luodian, Liuhe, Yangxing and other places.Each group consisted of at least a leader under the cover of a political officer from the Brigade, a telegraph operator with a small radio, a code clerk, and an internal officer, all regular agents from Secret Service headquarters.If necessary, additional personnel will also be recruited from unemployed officers trained at the Central Military Academy through the "Graduate Investigation Service".Whenever there is a battle to investigate and report on, they are called upon to go there.Because of their military background, these individuals were able to effectively liaise with military personnel on the front lines.The field investigation team is also responsible for the surveillance tasks of the soldiers.

Chiang Kai-shek regarded Dai Li's daily field reports as the most reliable information he had on the front line.But he may have believed in Dai Li wrongly.Although Dai Li sent messengers to Nanjing by train every night to deliver reports for Chiang Kai-shek to review every morning, the intelligence itself did not necessarily come from first-hand observation.The personnel of the field investigation team, and even the team leaders, are only welcome at the "battalion headquarters" level, but they are not allowed to go to the positions of the front-line companies.Shen Zui, who was the leader of the Luodian and Liuhe field investigation teams, went to the front line several times to observe, but was stopped by a brigade commander because the brigade commander wanted to hide from Nanjing the fact that he could not recover a position captured by the Japanese army.

It was only after the entire frontline collapsed that Shen Zui accurately outlined the reasons for the failure one by one from the interview reports with other officials. As the enemy gradually approached Nanjing, Dai Li moved to Hankou.His intelligence agency was set up in a small school on Nanxiaolu in the former Japanese Concession.He would occasionally go to Hunan, Guizhou, or Chongqing, but always came back as soon as possible to review the reports sent by the agents and try to ensure his control of the ever-growing wartime spy network.It was at his residence in the French Concession in Hankou that he learned the details of the Nanjing Massacre.He also learned that Qian Xinmin, the mayor of the Nanjing Special Economic Zone, had defected to the Japanese. When he heard the news, Dai Li was shocked and angry.

Long before the Japanese surrounded Nanjing, Qian Xinmin moved the headquarters of the special zone to Liuhe on the other side of the river.As soon as Nanjing fell, Qian Xinmin took the list of secret agents of the "capital" special zone and defected to the Japanese secret service agency (tokumu kikan), and helped the Japanese arrest military agents everywhere.In just a few days, the results of Dai Li's underground intelligence activities in the occupied city were completely destroyed.The Internet in Nanjing was completely exposed by Qian Xinmin, so Dai Li accused himself of being "blind and unable to see the truth about this person."Frustrated once again for disappointing the commander-in-chief, the secret service chief said of the drunk who first reported Qian Xinmin's defection to him that he had lost face with Chiang Kai-shek by sponsoring a "completely heartless man" .

After the fall of Nanjing, a major reorganization took place within the Kuomintang. On February 4, 1938, Chiang Kai-shek set up a "Party Party Supervision Network" to "check whether Party members are really doing the work assigned to them."According to Chen Lifu's recollection, "Mr. Jiang felt that the party members were useless. The Communist Party members played a decisive role, but our party members did not. They were careless and lax in carrying out orders. Mr. Jiang felt that it was necessary to check them and urge them." At the same time, with more and more soldiers joining the party, and provincial government chairmen as members of the Central Executive Committee, the KMT was put on a state of war. From March to April 1938, Chiang Kai-shek was unanimously elected as the party's "president" at the National Congress of the Kuomintang held in Luojia Mountain, Wuchang, and the importance of security work was also strengthened.