Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Stilwell found his reception by the Generalissimo and Madame surprisingly cordial, considering the fiasco in Burma. He was invited to the Chiangs’ home at Huang Shan for the weekend, though too ill to accept. Despite the surface cordiality, Chiang was thoroughly disenchanted with his allies, especially Britain; for the sake of Lend-Lease, of which Stilwell held the key, he could not afford to be too disenchanted with the United States. From the Chinese point of view, the campaign under Stilwell’s leadership, despite Chiang’s strenuous efforts to contain it, had ended in the loss not only of Burma but also of the motorized Fifth Army with its artillery. This was what came of the “ill-fated strategy of attack,” as it was called by a Chinese military historian. The result confirmed the Generalissimo in his mistrust of the offensive. “A hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the best of the best,” according to a Chinese proverb; “the best of the best is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” It was equally best, when defeat loomed, to succumb to the enemy without fighting. The crippling of two of his best armies, as Chiang considered them, was not what he had planned when he conferred their command on a foreigner. He had made the gesture to please the United States and to enhance China’s claim to Lend-Lease and in any event had not intended it to be real. Stilwell’s command was a case of yu ming wu shih, “having the name without the reality,” as distinguished from yu shih wu ming, “reality without the name.”

  China’s causes for disenchantment were real enough. After the great hopes of relief by the Allies, she was now worse off than before: the Burma Road lost, Yunnan invaded, and as a result of the Doolittle raid, the Japanese rampaging through Chekiang on a renewed offensive which the Chinese feared might expand into another drive on Changsha, perhaps even on Chungking. In addition to their military failures the Allies failed to treat China as an equal. The Chinese resented their failure to match the Atlantic Charter by a Pacific Charter of anticolonial principles. They resented the emphasis on a Second Front in Europe, implying neglect of their own situation. This was already evident in China’s exclusion from Allied conferences on the occasion of Churchill’s second visit to Washington in June. More damaging was continued exclusion from the Munitions Control Board: China’s direct request for admission to the Combined Chiefs, which would have carried membership on the Munitions Board, was turned down because of the security risk on June 13.

  Cynicism about the war and a lapse into increasing passivity was the result. An attitude of “Let the Allies do it” prevailed in the teahouses of Chungking after the fall of Burma. To use barbarians to fight other barbarians was a traditional principle of Chinese statecraft which now more than ever appeared not only advisable but justified. Chinese opinion, according to a foreign resident, held that not only was China justified in remaining passive after five years of resistance; “it was her right to get as much as possible out of her allies while they fought.” The exercise of this right became the Government’s chief war effort. The long endeavor to shake off the foreigners and emerge from dependence had not succeeded; China’s problems had been too great. With dwindling capacity to cope with its own circumstances, the Kuomintang applied all its energy to making dependence pay.

  Chiang Kai-shek raised the alarm at once. Unless the Chinese saw visible evidence of help from their allies, he warned the United States on May 25, “Chinese confidence in their Allies will be completely shaken” and this could presage “total collapse of Chinese resistance.” The advance of the Japanese in Chekiang lent force to his warning. Morale was “never lower,” Madame wrote to the Lend-Lease Administrator, Lauchlin Currie, on May 23, adding that the Generalissimo was for the “first time” pessimistic. Chiang followed with a letter to Roosevelt asking him to send Harry Hopkins to China in lieu of coming himself because the situation was at a “crucial stage such as I have never experienced before.” Other messages warned of the rise of defeatists prepared to overthrown Chiang Kai-shek and come to terms with the Japanese. Already exceedingly worried, Roosevelt on May 5 has asked General Arnold to “explore every possibility” of flying freight to China for it was “essential that our route be kept open no matter how difficult.” Ambassador Gauss, though not impressed by the threat of a separate peace, believed that prolonged passivity in the form of an “undeclared peace involving virtual cessation of hostilities” was not unlikely.

  This was exactly the opposite of what Stilwell had been sent to achieve. The rationale of Lend-Lease was essentially the utilization of Allied manpower to fight the common enemy, and the object of Stilwell’s mission was to see that Lend-Lease was used for its purpose. The obstacle that now rose in his way was the passivity, for understandable reasons, of the client. The Generalissimo would fight only in so far as failure to do so might cut off the flow of supplies. He could not by negative threat alone obtain enough; he had to promise military performance in order to commit America to supply the necessary matériel. Stilwell had the power of decision in this process. As the Generalissimo’s Chief of Staff, his function, as the Generalissimo saw it, was to obtain for him what he wanted.

  Stilwell did not see himself in the role of purveyor, nor even “adviser” in the sense of an instrument to be used for Chinese purposes. He saw himself as a soldier whose function and objective was to defeat the enemy and for this he needed an army. With or without a spearhead of American troops, the bulk of the fighting force would have to be Chinese, and to be effective the existing Chinese Army, or whatever part of it was made available for fighting, would have to be reformed. If he was to be an adviser, he intended, like so many others before him, to bring about fundamental change. Whether in currency or judiciary or customs collection or political structure or agriculture, the long train of China’s advisers had in common a determination to reform. No one assigned to work in China under the conditions of 1942 could want less, unless he were of the Old China Hand variety, convinced the Chinese were “like that” and reform was futile.

  Stilwell was the opposite of a cynic—a believer and a doer. When he saw something wrong, as Maxwell Taylor had observed in Peking, he wanted to correct it. “Every American has his own solution for China,” a Chinese observer has said. Stilwell’s, for China’s sake, the war’s sake, and his own, was reform of the army. He saw the 300 divisions, “sprawled all over China,” on the average 40 percent understrength, with commanders drawing pay for full strength and “officers getting rich, men dying of malnutrition, malaria, dysentery, cholera, the sick simply turned loose. Ammo and weapons being sold. Open traffic with the enemy on all ‘fronts.’…Transport being used for smuggling. None to move troops.” Chiang Kai-shek “never goes to look at his Army” and his constant talk about trucks, planes and guns “only reveals his complete ignorance of the necessity for training, replacements, leadership, medical care, SOS, etc. etc.” Stilwell knew the scope for reform was so great as likely to be self-defeating, but he believed that with Lend-Lease as his quid pro quo he could require reform, at least beginning with the Thirty Divisions.

  While still in Delhi he had drawn up a statement of military failings and needs which he took with him on his first day in Chungking when he went to report to the Generalissimo on the late campaign. Though ill at the time, he was seething with what he had to say and pulled himself out of bed to keep the appointment. He had hopes that telling the Generalissimo the truth about the performance in Burma might “scare him into real reorganization of his army,” as he wrote to Stimson. “Quite a few of the Chinese high command should be shot,” and he was making that recommendation for the Sixth Army commander, Kan Li-chu, as well as for two divisional commanders and one of a regiment.

  Although Chiang had been sending orders to the armies in Burma every day from Chungking he knew little at first hand of current conditions or performance in military or other matters. In the Byzantine atmosphere of his court no one was anxious to inform him of deteriorating realities, and the worse these became, the less he was told. This stemmed not merely from fear or servility but from a basic
philosophic preference of the Chinese for preserving appearances. “Forgetting evil and speaking only good,” according to a Chinese precept, “helps to hold society together and preserve men’s dignity with one another.” The result was to leave the Generalissimo in what Stilwell called “ignorance and fatuous complacency,” making it that much more difficult to convince him of the need for military reform.

  On this occasion he told Chiang and Madame the “whole truth” of the campaign, “Naming names…and it was like kicking an old lady in the stomach.” But “NO ONE dares to tell him, so it’s up to me all the more.” Facing a man, especially a Chinese, with the failings under his leadership was not the best way to make him amenable to improvement, but Stilwell was bent on obtaining action against the enemy and felt he had no other choice. He then presented his program for military reorganization, for which the primary need was to reduce the total number of divisions and concentrate the available arms and equipment. It was the old problem of disbandment which had defeated Chiang’s efforts in 1928–30. Since then he had been doing his best by a tactic of nonsupply and nonreplacement to eliminate the unattached provincial units, with little success. Stilwell now recommended “the merging of divisions to bring all units up to full strength and the assignment of all available weapons to these divisions as far as they will go….A few dependable, well-equipped, well-supported divisions would be worth far more than double the number of the present average…as well as more efficient and easier to supply and handle.” Even with present meager resources China could produce an effective striking force that would be “usable, as it is not now” to hold the Japanese off until Allied offensive power turned the scales toward victory.

  He also recommended a thorough sifting of the officer corps on the basis of merit with promotion for the able and a “rigid purge of inefficient high commanders,” failing which “the Army will continue to go downhill no matter how much material is supplied for it.” He concluded on a sensitive point, urging that for Commander-in-Chief in the field, the Generalissimo must pick a man in whom he has confidence, “give him a general directive and then let him handle the troops without interference from anyone whomsoever.” He left the paper with Madame who took a quick look and said, “Why, that’s what the German advisers told him!”*1

  The Generalissimo did not answer the memorandum. At a second meeting ten days later to discuss the promised assignment of troops for training in India he reverted to matériel. “The same old complex—planes, tanks, guns, etc. will win the war. I got a bit hot and told him that the only way to do it was to thoroughly reorganize the ground forces.” At this point Madame interjected that the Generalissimo had to consider “certain influences.”

  Stilwell knew well enough from the time of his own comments on disbandment in 1929 that Chiang was a prisoner of the complex of private interests in the military structure of his country. He could not be too free with the armies under the war zone commanders and he exercised undisputed control only over the ten armies belonging to the Central Government. Under the heading “Troubles of a Peanut dictator,” Stilwell analyzed the factors that limited Chiang’s freedom of action. He had allowed too many of his lieutenants to combine the political functions of governor and the military authority of commander in one person. “Now he finds it makes the boys too powerful and he’s been trying for a year to shake them loose, without success….The way it works is by threat. The Peanut wants to shake Hsueh Yueh loose. If he pulls out troops, Hsueh squawks, ‘I cannot be responsible for the security of my area,’ and he might even arrange for a Jap reaction. The understrappers are told to pressurize and a flood of protest reaches various officials of the Central Government. Then they tell the Peanut the opposition is very strong, and that forcing the issue might cause dirty work. So the Peanut lays off and waits. The plain fact is he doesn’t dare to take vigorous action.”

  Yet a compact, effective, “usable” army seemed so obviously in the regime’s interests that Stilwell could not believe that “with the U.S. on his side and backing him,” Chiang should fail to grasp “the big opportunity of his life.” Even apart from military performance, it was essential to the welfare of China to reduce the terrible drain of the press gang on the peasantry. But Chiang was exhibiting a client’s most exasperating quality—nonrecognition of enlightened self-interest; or what seemed to an American his self-interest. In his frustration Stilwell thought that only some influence outside the Government could help China. “Either enemy action will smash her” or, he wrote in one of his peculiarly clarifying phrases, “some regenerative idea must be formed and put into effect at once.”

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  Chiang’s resistance to Stilwell’s proposals was never fixed or solid but changeable and vacillating in proportion to what he thought Stilwell could obtain for him from America. He had to give in enough to keep American aid coming. The War Department at this time drew plans for a campaign to reopen the Burma Road using 45,000 tons of Chinese Lend-Lease material which had piled up in India, unable to be delivered. (Another 149,000 tons choking the wharves at Newport News was repossessed by the United States.) A renewed land campaign did not appeal to Chiang. He wanted the United States to concentrate on increasing the capacity of air transport over the Hump for two main purposes: to keep war material coming in for his own uses and to fuel and maintain Chennault’s air force which, on Chennault’s assurance, would take care of fighting the Japanese.

  Air Transport Command (ATC) was operating with barely 25 planes, far from the 100 Roosevelt had promised. China’s insistent demands for more transports were not being satisfied by the Munitions Control Board because of a general shortage of planes and crews. Nor was full satisfaction given to China’s requests for war material, which continued as gargantuan as ever regardless of the blockade. The fault lay in the competing priorities of BOLERO*2 and the Russians, but T. V. Soong ascribed it to Stilwell. “In the absence of supporting telegram from you,” he wired, the War Department was acting on China’s requests “rather slowly.” He urged Stilwell to realize the “miraculous hold” he had in the United States, from President, Secretary and Chief of Staff downward and “that any request from you will be supported.” Stripped of the flattery, the last phrase in Soong’s statement was something the Chinese believed. Because of their total disinterest in the war in Europe they were convinced there was unlimited matériel and that the short supply to them was simply owed to Stilwell’s failure to ask for it.

  Prodded by Soong, the Generalissimo became more responsive to Stilwell and the shift was reflected in gradual assent to the program for training troops in India. At a conference on June 24, with Madame urging each of his points on the Generalissimo, Stilwell obtained most of his terms. After he refused to accept Tu Li-ming as commander, it was finally agreed that Stilwell himself should have command and control of training if he would accept Lo Cho-ying as vice-commander in charge of administration and discipline. Chiang even agreed to send 50,000 troops by air. “It was one of those sudden turn-arounds” that marked negotiations. The bait was the “Big Picture”—the plan to arm China for counteroffensive operations on the basis of 5,000 tons a month over the Hump and 500 combat planes.

  The endless torturing problem of tonnage over the Hump had become the fulcrum of the theater. Since April, owing to interruptions by the monsoon and by airdrops to the refugees, the transports had managed to make an average of only two round trips each a month, resulting in delivery to China of a monthly average of less than 100 tons. Despite all the promises, crews and equipment were short, maintenance poor, airfields in Assam shoddy and inadequate, and the weather treacherous. The United States was now operating seven Air Force commands overseas and four at home and their requirements were summed up by a commander in Alaska who wrote, “I need everything!” The Hump needed the most and the equipment it received had to travel 12,000 miles from the United States to west coast Indian ports, another 1,500 miles over Indian railways to Calcutta, and from there over the narrow-gauge Assam-B
engal Railway to the airfields.

  Originally built to haul the Assam tea crop, this railway was a bottleneck that drove men to despair. It switched to different railbeds three times between Calcutta and Ledo and included a crossing of the unbridged Brahmaputra by barge. British management operated with the habits and tempo of a less exigent time. Labor conditions in India were disrupted by the strikes and national movement of “noncooperation” called by the Congress Party in the summer of 1942. Tonnage delivered over the Assam-Bengal line was persistently short of agreed estimates and the rigidity of its managers defied even the competence and courtesy of General “Speck” Wheeler, chief of SOS for the theater. The problem choked the supply effort and was to continue for nearly two years until agreement was finally reached in February 1944 to militarize the line and operate it with American railway battalions.

  On the other side of the Hump in China, fuel and parts for Chennault’s air force had to be carted by road and river several hundred miles beyond Kunming to the several air bases, the journey often taking as much as eight weeks. The ATC burned one gallon of fuel for every gallon it delivered to China, and had to deliver 18 tons of supplies to enable Chennault’s air force to drop one ton of bombs on the Japanese. A single cargo plane could carry approximately four to five tons, and under optimum conditions could make one round trip per day. But rarely more than 60–70 percent of assigned planes were in operation at any one time, and weather and other failures reduced the flights. Losses over the route were heavy. In three years of operation the ATC was to lose 468 planes, an average of 13 a month. Sometimes the crew were able to parachute to safety and be guided out by Kachin rescue teams organized by OSS agents in Burma. Others died in the jungle or were captured by the Japanese or in some cases were caught in the tree tops and their corpses found hanging long afterwards, eaten by ants.