| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Frederic Wakeman, Jr. Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2003. Pp. xvii, 650. $75.00.
Few names from Republican China conjure up such images of mystery and dread as that of Dai Li. Often referred to as China's Heinrich Himmler, the "mystery man of Asia," Dai worked his way up to becoming head of an enormous spy network for Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang (Kuomintang) government by the late 1930s. During World War II, Dai became enmeshed in the American effort in China, forming a close alliance with United States Navy and Milton Miles, which led to charges that America funded the secret agents and torture camps aimed at Chiang's arch enemies, members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet the secrecy that surrounded his efforts, the image that loomed larger than the man, and Dai's death in a plane crash in March 1946 left the historical figure virtually unknown and seemingly unknowable.	1
Plowing through this morass, one of the most distinguished historians of modern China, Frederic Wakeman, Jr., has produced an enormous volume on Dai and his world. Using a wide range of sources including police archives, diplomatic materials, and most particularly the memoirs of former Dai agents published in both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, Wakeman has produced what is quite likely to stand as the definitive work on the spymaster. And what a story it is. From very unauspicious beginnings as an unsavory youth, addicted to gambling and sex, Dai early formed ties with the underworld Green Gang in Shanghai. A series of unlikely connections led him to the Whampoa Military Academy's Sixth Class, where he made himself useful by spying on his classmates as Chiang prepared for the White Terror purge of communists.	. . .

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