Mao's Christmas greetings to the "Dixie Mission" in Yan'an

Mao Zedong, Chinese statesman (1893-1976). Typed letter signed.

€ 160,000.00

A Christmas Eve message to Major Wilbur A. Dexheimer of the U.S. Army Observer Section, Yan'an, sending season's greetings to American army generals Patrick J. Hurley, then U.S. ambassador to China, and Albert Coady Wedemeyer, Chiang Kai-shek's Chief of Staff:

"Thank you for your kind greetings and I assure you that I, as well as all your friends wish you personally and your Section the same. I would like to ask you to send, if possible, the following messages to General Hurley and General Wedemeyer:

Dear General Hurley. On behalf of General Chu Teh General Chow En Lai Ten Pi Wu and myself I wish you on this occasion a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year with the same wishes to all our American friends. Mao Tse Tung.

Dear General Wedemeyer. We wish to express to you and General McClure our heartiest greetings on this merry Christmas and also a very happy New Year with the same wishes to Colonel Barrett and all our American friends that we have had the pleasure of meeting. Chu Teh. Chow En Lai.

With my best regards, I remain, Yours sincerely [...]".

A remarkable document of the tenuous relationship between Chinese Communists, American military and diplomatic staff, and Chinese Nationalists during the period when the ongoing Sino-Japanese War forged an uneasy - and increasingly fractured - truce between the opponents in the Chinese Civil War.