How a Marine Embedded with Mao Zedong’s Guerrillas in the 30s Became WW2’s Most Celebrated Special Forces Leader

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

He was a gutsy old man.” “A corker,” said another. “You couldn’t find anyone better.” They talked about him in hushed tones. “This Major Carlson,” wrote one of the officers in a letter home, “is one of the finest men I have ever known.”

These were the words of the young Marines training to be among the first U.S. troops to enter the Second World War—and the Major Carlson they spoke of was Evans Carlson, a man of mythical status even before the war that would make him a military legend.

By December of 1941, at the age of forty-five, Carlson had already faced off against Sandinistas in the jungles of Nicaragua and served multiple tours in China, where he embedded with Mao’s Communist forces during the Sino-Japanese War. Inspired by their guerilla tactics and their collaborative spirit—which he’d call “gung ho,” introducing the term to the English language—and driven by his own Emersonian ideals of self-reliance, Carlson would go on to form his renowned Marine Raiders, the progenitors of today’s special operations forces, who fought behind Japanese lines on Makin Island and Guadalcanal, showing Americans a new way to do battle.

Today’s guest is Stephen R. Platt, author of “ “The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II.” Tracing the rise and fall of an unlikely American war hero, The Raider is a story of exploration, of cultural (mis)understanding, and of one man’s awakening to the sheer breadth of the world.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Scott here with another episode of the History Unplug podcast.
0:07.2	The U.S. Marines have been fighting battles since the beginning of American history, going back
0:11.9	to the Barbary Wars of the early 19th century, but their special forces units were created
0:16.6	much more recently. Finding their origin in World War II in the Pacific Theater and their
0:20.9	combat doctrine has the most unlikely source of all from Mao Zedong's communist forces
0:25.6	during the Sino-Japanese War of the 1930s. The strange bridging of cultures is all owed to
0:31.3	Evans Carlson, Commander of America's First Special Forces, a secret confidon at FDR, and one of the
0:37.0	most controversial officers
0:38.2	in the history of the Marine Corps. By December of 1941, Carlson was a 45-year-old Marine Corps officer,
0:44.2	and in his career he'd already faced off against Sandinistas in the jungles of Nicaragua,
0:48.3	and served multiple tours in China, where he embedded with Mao's communist forces during the
0:52.5	Sino-Japanese War as a Marine intelligence officer.
0:55.4	He was inspired by their guerrilla tactics and their collaborative spirit,
0:58.4	which he called gung-ho and introduced the term to the English language,
1:02.0	and he'd go on to form his renowned Marine Raiders,
1:04.2	the progenitors of today's special operations forces,
1:07.1	who fought behind Japan's lines on Mackin Island and Guadal,
1:10.2	showing Americans a new way to do battle with a highly decentralized force.
1:15.1	The look at the story were joined by Stephen Platt, author of The Raider,
1:18.2	The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II.
1:22.8	Hope you enjoy this discussion.
1:26.6	And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for a word from our
	...

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