Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Many other figures of varying loyalty and connections had to be taken into account. There was Chang Fa-kwei, allied with the southern clique, former commander of the old Ironsides Army, “who has made money and gone soft” but was still a personage of influence. There were at least seven war zone commanders including Ch’en Ch’eng who combined the political and military posts. Among them was the Tiger of Changsha, Hsueh Yueh, of the proverbially bellicose province of Hunan, “the only tough guy in the Army,” who, when Chiang sent him interfering messages, “howls for relief.” Others of the seven off in the wings were semifeudal overlords like Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi and the virtually autonomous Governor of Yunnan, Lung Yun, a tiny man with vast wealth of opium origins, who issued his own currency and maintained his own army. His relations with Chiang Kai-shek were such that on an occasion of political crisis when Lung Yun was needed in Chungking, he did not go until Madame had arrived in Yunnanfu to remain as a hostage during his absence.

  Another of the seven was Ku Chu-tung, the commander in Chekiang who during the action against the Japanese “was fifty or more miles in the rear and never went up.” Colonel Barrett, Stilwell’s former assistant in Peking, now Military Attaché, came back from a personal survey of the front with a report of a “bitched-up action” at Ch’u-Hsien, the big bomber airfield which the Generalissimo had been particularly anxious not to lose when he protested the Doolittle raid. It was now lost as a result of that action. According to Barrett’s findings, Chiang had again directed operations from Chungking “with the usual brilliant result….Peanut ordered two armies to hide in the mountains and attack on the flank when the Japanese passed. The Japs simply blocked the exit roads and went on….The troops had only the poorest equipment. No medical attention. No transport. Many sick. Most recruits were conscripts, delivered tied up. Conscription is a scandal. Only the unfortunates without money or influence are grabbed….Why doesn’t the little dummy realize that his only hope is the 30 Division plan, and the creation of a separate, well-equipped, and well-trained force?”

  The answer to this exasperating question was to unfold only gradually. It was a long time before Stilwell could bring himself to admit that Chiang did not really want a well-trained, well-equipped fighting force; that such a force represented to him less a boon than a threat; that he feared that an effective 30 divisions might come under a new leader or group, undermining or challenging his own control, and that Stilwell’s proposal to remove incompetent commanders would remove those loyal and beholden to him; that he was not interested in an army that could fight the Japanese but only in one that could sustain him internally; that for this he believed it sufficed to have more divisions and more guns, planes and tanks than the Communists.

  Stilwell kept on trying. He was moved by the conviction of a man with a “regenerative idea” and he believed that the enormous bargaining power of American aid could exact army reform and overcome political obstacles. He envisaged a force squeezed down ultimately to about 100 full-strength divisions. The nucleus of the first 30, after being trained and armed in the area of Kunming, would provide the troops for the Y-force, that is, the eastern prong of the double invasion of Burma. (In American planning this operation was known as the X-Y plan, with X representing the force invading from India.) Stilwell planned a system of training by cadres which in turn would train their fellows, rather than the training of whole divisions. The Chinese War Ministry agreed on the “general outline” but evaded a firm date to begin the training.

  In a new memorandum to bestir the Generalissimo, Stilwell strongly argued the philosophy behind his efforts. China must not think, he urged, in terms of military power she did not possess—a large air force and heavy artillery—but make use of what she had, “a large reservoir of manpower armed fairly well with rifles, machine guns and mortars.” With the number of divisions reduced by 50 percent and those remaining brought up to full strength, each unit could have a normal complement of these weapons plus improved artillery support. “I realize and appreciate the objections that are raised when changes in command are advocated,” he concluded, and refrained from making any specific suggestions on that score.

  To this memorandum, as to five others which Stilwell had submitted in the past month, the Generalissimo gave no reply. A request for an interview had gone unanswered for a week. “This is the most dreary type of maneuvering I’ve ever done,” Stilwell wrote home, “trying to guide and influence a stubborn, ignorant, prejudiced, conceited despot who never hears the truth except from me and finds it hard to believe.” He thought, as he explained to Stimson, that by telling him the “unvarnished truth, to establish a gradual growth of confidence on his part,” which was a naive expectation. “In searching this man for his good points,” he continued to Stimson, “his environment and experience must be taken into account….He has no sound education….He has no friends at all, only servants who are without exception ill at ease in his presence.” His wife was his only real friend. “Actually she is very much afraid of him and she subsides at once when his anger flares up. She considers her job to be the fight to make China great,” and if she could be the G–mo, “progress would be five times faster than it is.”

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  Stilwell’s overall objective was to force into existence the campaign that nobody wanted—the recovery of Burma. He would offer the campaign to Chiang as a way out of his ultimatum to Washington. By “showing his willingness to cooperate,” the Generalissimo would get the American supplies, and the Americans would have to supply and support the campaign on an adequate scale once the Chinese were committed. The British would have to be pushed into it by pressure from Washington. Stilwell still hoped for one or more American divisions and believed that if Chinese and American units were ready to move, “the British could hardly fail to act to regain their own territory.”

  On that basis on July 19 he submitted to Chiang Kai-shek a four-point military plan following his original conception of the two-pronged offensive. It called for participation by “20 picked divisions” on the Chinese side. The lure was the reopening of Rangoon to shipping which would permit the War Department, Stilwell estimated, to allot to China a renewed flow of 30,000 tons a month for six months. Simultaneous with the land offensive, the plan called for the British to reestablish naval control of the Bay of Bengal, retake the Andaman Islands and carry out a landing at Rangoon.

  On the arrival of Lauchlin Currie the next day as the President’s emissary in lieu of Harry Hopkins, Stilwell learned that no American divisions would be assigned: “too much tonnage.” Although this was one of the Three Demands, Currie was nevertheless “all pepped up” after initial talks with the Generalissimo, and “thinks he smoothed it all out.” Currie was a man of small stature and compensating self-esteem whom Roosevelt had first sent to Chungking as his personal representative in the spring of 1940 and who had been in charge of Lend-Lease dealings with China at the Washington end since then. He soon appeared in Stilwell’s diary as “Currie Comb” and “Cutie Currie.” He did not believe in requiring performance as a quid pro quo for Lend-Lease. “In view of the dependence by China on us for continued aid, it is not anticipated that any difficulty of noncooperation will be experienced,” he informed Marshall in a classic misjudgment. He underestimated China’s ability to make use of her users for her own ends.

  In conferences with Currie the Generalissimo expressed his dissatisfaction with Stilwell in a renewed effort to have him removed, or at least separated from control of Lend-Lease. At any time in the course of his mission, Stilwell could have made himself agreeable to Chiang Kai-shek if he had been more amenable in the matter of matériel, had recommended the G–mo’s requisitions and not concerned himself too strictly about their use. Nothing would have been easier. Having very soon discovered that Stilwell was not prepared to be cooperative in this sense, Chiang thereafter never gave up for long the effort to replace him. When Currie relayed the substance of Chiang’s complaints, Stilwell wrote in rebuttal that he had
told the G–mo the truth about situations because he believed he wanted the truth. “I cannot continue on any other basis.”

  On August 1 Chiang Kai-shek took the “out” Stilwell had offered and accepted the Burma plan of campaign on two shrewd conditions: full British participation by land and sea, and the effective support of an adequate air force. The campaign depended, he pointed out, on first ascertaining the intentions of the British Government. John Davies, Stilwell’s political adviser, had just assessed these. For the same reasons that the British had not aggressively defended Burma to begin with, he wrote on July 31, they now “have no intention of attempting to retake Burma in the foreseeable future.” Since this was what Chiang suspected, he felt reasonably safe in agreeing to the offensive, even going so far as to designate 15 of the 20 divisions which would take part. A decision on the campaign was now up to the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

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  American aid to China, whatever its military intent, was in effect going to a regime, not to a war effort. “Until we re-take Burma,” wrote Colonel Dorn to the War Department on August 4, “all talk and planning to aid China are utterly meaningless. But all aid to China must have a string which demands action from them.” Otherwise “the present regime will do nothing but hoard the material in order to perpetuate itself after the war.” Almost casually he glanced at the core of the problem: “They expect an upheaval or revolution of some sort. In fact T. V. Soong in Washington expressed the opinion that the present regime would be out of a job six months after the war. He ought to know….”

  The domestic issue was central and pervaded the air. Except for friendly recollections of conversations with Chou En-lai and Yeh Chien-ying in 1938, Stilwell had little direct knowledge of the Communists. He knew the 8th Route Army was said to number 500,000 and that Communist strength was spreading in the north. According to some reports, only one district in Shantung remained under Central Government control. His only encounter with the Communists since his return was second hand in a remark by Chou En-lai, who was still in Chungking, to John Davies in June. Half laughing, half seriously, he had said that if the Generalissimo would permit, he would lead the Communist troops in a campaign to retake Burma and “I would obey General Stilwell’s orders!” Though he stored up the remark, Stilwell spared little attention to the Communists; he was absorbed by the problem of Chiang Kai-shek who was in the foreground.

  Though a conservative Republican at home, Stilwell was bothered, like many other Americans in Chungking, by the incompatibility of the ally he was charged with supporting. The problem occupied his pen on the hot summer nights. He wrote of the United States “forced into partnership with a gang of fascists under a one-party government similar in many respects to our German enemy.” This was partly the result of the “silly, gullible and false propaganda” about the gallant six-year fight of the Chinese under the dauntless leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. There was “sympathy here for the Nazis. Same type of government, same outlook, same gangsterism,” except that it was neither forceful nor efficient. Chiang “is not taking a single step forward or doing anything concrete to improve the position of China.” Like Hitler he believed himself “infallible” and worked by “intuition.” “How do you move a guy like that? How do you get his point of view?”

  Foreseeing a civil war with the “Reds” after the war, Stilwell asked himself, “What can we do to help the Chinese people? Stop the silly propaganda….Where is the gallant resistance? Where is the great guerilla warfare? Where is reform or even elementary understanding of the problem?”

  Stilwell thought Chiang was “as intensely pro-Chinese, i.e. contemptuous of everyone else, as the Ch’ings*3 were,” and haunted by the fear of being thought pro-American and of acknowledging his dependence on the United States. He might have carried the thought further for it was relevant to his own situation. Though Chiang had used many foreigners including his longtime political adviser, W. H. Donald; his chief of bodyguard, the German Walther Stennes; his financial adviser, Arthur Young; his pilot, Royal Leonard—nevertheless his attitude underneath was xenophobic. Hating the British and Americans as imperialists, he felt humiliated by his relationship with Stilwell.

  As his troubles waxed, he had become increasingly authoritarian and unapproachable, content to be set apart. Stilwell was not the only one who had difficulty obtaining an appointment. Officials waited weeks to see him and often could make their problems known only through Madame, which they resented. By keeping rivals off balance through a technique of “fear and favor,” in Stilwell’s phrase, he appeared strong and indispensable but he did not know how to make a government. Though long on experience, his mind was narrow and his education limited. His most serious handicap was the lack of competent government servants. He never allowed a really able man to reach an important post lest he become too strong. Because he made loyalty rather than ability the criterion of service he was surrounded by mediocrities. His brother-in-law H. H. Kung, who as vice-president of the Executive Yuan headed the civil government and usually served as Finance Minister, was described by Cyril Rogers, representative of the Bank of England in China, as having “the mentality of a child of 12. If I were to record his conversations with me about banking and play it back, nobody would ever take Chiang’s government seriously again.” Kung nevertheless excelled at private finance and his family was the favorite subject of Chungking gossip of which it was said that “90 percent is untrue but ten percent is even worse than the gossip.” The Kungs and Soongs and various brothers and nephews and nieces made up the palace clique under the matriarchal control of Mme. Kung who dominated her sister, Mme. Chiang, and reached through her to the Generalissimo. Mme. Chiang’s influence on the Generalissimo had limitations, which she ascribed to her failure to bear him children.

  Government resided in the Legislative, Judicial and Executive Yuans as a matter of form. The real power was exercised by the Kuomintang Party under the chairmanship of Chiang Kai-shek. Among its factions the strongest was the right-wing CC clique of the brothers Chen, two fossils of the Revolution who were nephews of Chiang Kai-shek’s first patron, Chen Chi-mai and leaders of the group which founded the Blue Shirts, the Kuomintang’s stormtroopers, in 1932. The younger brother, Chen Li-fu, who had been Chiang’s personal secretary during the Northern Expedition of 1927, was now the Kuomintang Party boss. Party cells existed in every village district and army unit, with representatives appointed to a one-party National Congress which met at long intervals of three or four years. No elections to the Congress had been held since 1935 and none of the progressive groups had any vote or voice. Between sessions the Central Executive Committee (CEC) was the governing body of the country; its Standing Committee, which met every two weeks, made the decisions. Though sensitive to Party pressures, Chiang in practice gave orders to the Standing Committee.

  His outlook was basically Confucian. The easy victory of 1927, confirmed by his success in maintaining himself at the top for 15 years, suggested that the mandate of heaven had passed to him. In recognition thereof, his manner, apart from periodic temper tantrums, was composed and enameled. He took for granted that the first requirement of all subordinates—including Stilwell as his Chief of Staff—was obedience. The disobedience of the Communists, their defiance of his authority, was what made them in his eyes more criminal than the Japanese. His other opponents, among the disgruntled intellectuals and provincial leaders, could not coalesce. Sun Fo, the son of Sun Yat-sen, enjoyed wide support and was one of the few who could speak bluntly to the Generalissimo, but like his father he had no power base. Li Tsung-jen, as potential leader of the southern coalition, remained a threat. The Kuomintang had never succeeded in really uniting the country. Aware that the past had left too many pockets of doubtful loyalty, Chiang could not trust all his armies. The opportunity for social change had passed him by. Dependent more than ever on the right wing since the loss of the modernist and business community of the coastal cities, he could not afford to antagonize
them by reform measures. He governed for survival and ignored what he wanted to ignore. As chief of a system without an exit, he was, as Stilwell wrote, “in a hell of a fix.”

  The American public, blanketed under the active propaganda of China’s friends, partisans and church groups, knew nothing of actual conditions. State Department officials like Maxwell Hamilton, chief of the Far East Division, and his predecessor Stanley Hornbeck, now shunted to the post of Political Adviser, remained fixed in the positions they had staked out. Modern China, wrote Hamilton in a policy statement of February 1942, represents “a mass movement of people led by a great leader. It is on this that the United States should build.” Chiang Kai-shek’s “determination, persistence and on the whole broad gauge outlook constitute perhaps the most important element in China as a fighting ally.” At approximately the same time Ambassador Gauss reported, in reference to the concept of Chiang as a great leader directing the “energetic resistance” of China to Japan, that “looking the cold facts in the face one could only dismiss this as rot.”

  The President could see no alternative to support for the Generalissimo. Fearing a vacuum after the defeat of Japan and repeatedly advised that only Chiang could hold China together, he gave him support in the form of a blank check. He was continually warned by China’s friends, who from sincere or self-interested motives wanted to get aid to China, that any slackening of support would lead to collapse of the Chungking Government. In a typical alarm of this kind, Dr. Donald Van Slyke of the Rockefeller Institute, president of the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China, informed the President that China’s morale was “deteriorating rapidly,” the “defeatist element was gaining face,” and the “danger grows of [Chiang Kai-shek’s] losing power and of a compromise between China and Japan.” He enclosed a cable from “eight responsible Americans in West China” as the source of his information. Gauss in his reports did not exclude the possibility that some provincial generals like Lung Yun in Yunnan might come to terms with the Japanese, giving them a chance to move in, in which case Chiang’s Government “might readily fall” or be forced to evacuate beyond reach of help to Shansi or Kansu. “Of course,” Gauss added in a predication which the future was to validate, “if anything happens he will gladly blame everything on the failure to receive American aid.”