Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  “I have now arrived at the pinnacle of social success,” Stilwell wrote home on August 30, “having been entertained at lunch by the Viceroy himself. I am all in a dither about it.” The Viceroy was Lord Linlithgow, a six-foot-six Scot, austere and grand and perfectly housed in the majestic Viceroy’s Palace that was the architectural apotheosis of the British Empire. A huge complex of reddish sandstone, reminiscent of Egypt with Roman overtones, the Palace and Government Building stood together on a rise of ground above massive foundations approached by ramps. The Rajpath, an immense tree-lined avenue without buildings, like a naked Champs-Elysées, led up to it from the India Gate at the far end. Inside the Palace in the circular domed Durbar Hall two thrones stood under a towering canopy of crimson velvet. Reception rooms were of splendid proportions with 18-foot windows and glowing Oriental carpeting. Ceilings were painted with the pageantry of moghuls and rajahs, the Banquet Hall held a single table seating 108, the terraces overlooked vast formal gardens with topiary and fountains; the whole required 300 softly padding white-robed Indian servants to operate it. Like the monuments of the Pharaohs or the Sun King at Versailles, it belonged among those edifices raised by rulers to portray their permanence and grandeur, and it announced, with no room for doubt, that its builders considered themselves in India to stay.

  Back in Chungking Stilwell brought photographs of Ramgarh to show Chiang Kai-shek, with happy effect. After weeks of stalling, the additional divisions for the airlift were approved all at once. In the photographs Chiang could actually see the training and the artillery and was obviously pleased. “Why shouldn’t he be, the little jackass? We are doing our damnedest to help him and he makes his approval look like a tremendous concession.” The result, Stilwell noted wryly, “after being blocked and double-crossed endlessly,” was such a feeling of relief on being given the go-ahead signal, “that you are almost grateful to the very guy you are trying to help in spite of himself.” He could not help but believe that Chiang, “unless he is terribly dumb, will want to go on with this kind of business.”

  —

  On October 1, 1942, Chungking was girding to impress a very important American visitor in the person of Wendell Willkie, the most memorable defeated candidate for the Presidency since William Jennings Bryan. As advocate of a “one-world” philosophy of international relations, Willkie shared Roosevelt’s view of foreign if not domestic policy and was traveling on a 49-day round-the-world tour as the special envoy of his successful rival. He was regarded by the Chinese, according to a statement by the Generalissimo, as the first American of “highest rank” to visit China since ex-President Ulysses S. Grant came in 1879. A more practical reason for Chinese interest in Willkie was the expectation that he might very well be the next President. A large, exuberant, expansive individual, he was still in the flush of the popularity and influence won by his campaign. The Chinese were prepared to spend a major effort upon him with the general object of strengthening American support for the Kuomintang Government and the immediate object of obtaining a greater investment of American air power. This had come to mean in Chiang’s mind replacing Stilwell with Chennault, a problem in the judicious exercise of influence which was a Chinese specialty.

  In the manipulation of foreigners every Chinese from amah and houseboy to the Generalissimo and Madame considered himself expert. In this matter Chinese confidence in themselves was supreme and their skills unsurpassed. They were adept, unrelenting, smooth and more often than not successful. Unlike the Japanese who had set out to use Western techniques to outdo the West, the Chinese never attempted to outdo the West because they already considered themselves superior. For all their experience in the hundred years since the Opium Wars, they were unshaken in the conviction that they had to do with barbarians who ipso facto could be manipulated. “Let me see the British officials,” said General Hsiung, chief of a Chinese military mission, to a colleague on arriving in London, “and I will turn them around my little finger.”

  Willkie’s visit supremely illustrated the Chinese process of influencing American public opinion. “He’s to be smothered,” Stilwell wrote. There was to be an unbroken schedule of banquets, receptions, reviews, dinners, visits to schools, factories, girl scouts, arsenals. He was to be installed in a Chinese guest house as the guest of the Chinese Government rather than in the American Embassy, much to the annoyance and disapproval of Ambassador Gauss. The arrangement ensured that Willkie would see and hear only what his hosts wanted him to, and would be kept, as Stilwell wrote, “well insulated from pollution by Americans. The idea is to get him so exhausted and keep him so torpid with food and drink that his faculties will be dulled and he’ll be stuffed with the right doctrines.”

  In a spasm of face-making for the occasion, the police of Chungking tore down paupers’ shacks, herded the more wretched beggars beyond city limits and ordered the poorest and shabbiest shops to close during the visit. Streets were decked with banners and welcoming wall slogans; schoolchildren, waving and shouting, lined the eleven-mile route from the airport; and the populace was ordered to buy Chinese and American paper flags from the police. Willkie did not fail to recognize that what he saw was an organized demonstration but being an open-hearted generous man he was nevertheless moved by it as “an impressive show of the simple strength in people and emotions which is China’s great resource.” In this kind of large goodwill based on large generalities his progress continued.

  Two Chinese escorts were closely attached to him throughout his visit—the glib American-educated Hollington Tong and General Chu Shao-liang, a trusted associate of the Generalissimo who was Commander-in-Chief of the Eighth War Zone in the northwest. Though General Chu spoke no English he made up for it, according to Willkie, by “one of the most endearing personalities I have ever known”—which was doubtless why he was chosen. Willkie never ended a speech or conference or banquet “without seeing him smiling at me in the friendliest possible way,” a smile that made him feel that China was a “warmhearted hospitable land filled with friends of America.”

  Willkie’s impressions were notable for his capacity to accept what he was told or shown at face value. He was to pass them on to the American public in ten newspaper installments and a book called One World which was an instant bestseller on an unprecedented scale. Booksellers’ orders were 200,000 in the first four days and sales reached one million copies in eight weeks. The Chinese could not have made a better investment.

  In China a military review was staged for him on a wide parade ground bordered by foreign-style buildings. Attending dignitaries were richly dressed, guards and police were white-gloved, and the military units who marched past in perfect formation and modified German goose-step were superbly equipped helmeted squads bristling with weapons and followed by tanks, armored cars and cavalry with pennants. It was an exhibition army. The distinguished visitor also watched “exciting” maneuvers by thousands of officer cadets of the Chengtu Military Academy who swam a swift river holding rifles over their heads, crawled up a hill through the smoke of mortar fire and cut their way through barbed wire. He saw no recruits tied with ropes or soldiers sent to the front after three weeks’ training or the skinny, diseased collection offered to fill the ranks at Ramgarh. He was able to report, “Military China is united; its leaders are trained and able generals; its armies are tough fighting organizations of men who know both what they are fighting for and how to fight for it.” So high was motivation and morale that “Even the sons of high estate enlist as privates in the army,” a statement doubtless owed to the creative imagination of Hollington Tong.

  Stilwell sourly watched Willkie absorbing the propaganda that obscured the need for reform of the army. At a cocktail reception for Willkie given by the War Ministry at a Chinese military club with the Generalissimo present, General Ho Ying-chin proposed a visit to the “front,” in the bend of the Yellow River near Sian, the area of Stilwell’s road-building 20 years before. There were a number of these show fronts marking the edges of
Japanese-occupied China to which visitors were customarily escorted. “Certainly Mr. Willkie must go,” said General Stilwell aloud in a roomful of high-ranking Chinese officers. “He mustn’t miss it. It’s the biggest market in China. It’s where the Japanese and Chinese meet to trade all the goods they need from each other.” Stilwell was rarely impolite except on purpose and the remark was another way of saying his usual phrase when impatient with polite pretenses, “Aw, cut it out.”

  The visit to the front, which Willkie thought was his own idea, arranged only after overcoming the Generalissimo’s “solicitude for my safety,” duly took place. The party went from Sian to the Yellow River by train and handcar over the same route Stilwell had once walked with Feng Yu-hsiang’s troops. The front was the river itself, 1,200 yards wide at this point, and Willkie was a little disappointed to find “less physical danger than we expected.” However, it was satisfactory to “look down the muzzle of Japanese guns” through telescopes. His escort, Captain Chiang Wei-kuo, the Generalissimo’s younger son, demonstrated to Willkie’s satisfaction that the front was more than a showplace. He came into the dining car of the train on the return with his arms full of Japanese cavalry swords as presents for the visitors, as well as bottles of excellent French wine. Both had been captured, he said, by raiding parties which crossed the river by night and returned with this and other booty, including “prisoners and military plans.” Willkie was not shown any prisoners.

  Resident correspondents were accustomed to such tours of “cold battlefields” where they were regularly shown stacks of Japanese guns, helmets and other equipment. To test the theory that the material was transferred from one place to another for their benefit, one newspaperman claimed he had scratched his initials on a helmet and saw it again a few months later on another tour.

  Except for the galloping inflation and its train of ruin which could not be ignored, Willkie treated any imperfections of Chiang Kai-shek’s rule with the loyal reticence required by the Allied cause and the customary idealization of China. Evidence of totalitarian rule uncomfortably reminiscent of Fascism he delicately referred to as “centralized control” of Chinese life necessary to the “tutelary stage” of development. If teachers or editors or university presidents told him of corruption or oppression or trading with the enemy, he was always assured by the faithful Tong, and in turn assured his American audience, that the forces of good combating these evils had in the Generalissimo “a firm and steadfast friend.” Chiang Kai-shek with his poise and dignity and appearance of a “scholar” in his Chinese gown, appeared to Willkie “even bigger than his legendary reputation,” an impression warmly assisted by Madame who lavished her charms on the potential next President of the United States. Willkie succumbed with ripe ardor and conceived of a happy means of continuing the acquaintance. He suggested that she undertake a goodwill tour of the United States. This would accomplish the double purpose of promoting his quite genuine conviction that it was “vital for my fellow-countrymen to understand the problem of Asia.” With “brains, persuasiveness and moral force…with wit and charm, a generous and understanding heart, a gracious and a beautiful manner and appearance, and a burning conviction…Madame would be the perfect ambassador…we would listen to her as to no one else”—a prediction soon to prove correct. Willkie was so enthused by his idea that he kept telling Madame during his last interview that she must come on the plane with him “tomorrow” and that he would see to it that Roosevelt would give her all the planes she wanted.

  The Generalissimo understood little if any English. To him, according to John Carter Vincent of the Embassy, who was brought up in China and was present at these interviews, the hearty, broad-chested, tousled Willkie was the kind of foreigner who smelled like raw beef to a Chinese and caused Chiang to order the windows opened after the visitor had left “to let the smell of the foreigner out.”

  Though Stilwell hated the business of trying to influence anyone, he felt the necessity because of a discouraging report from Washington brought by Davies who had just returned. “This theater kaput. No help coming…Currie appears to be trying to cut my throat. Not much hope for CBI. ‘Major strategic effort is elsewhere.’ Chief of Staff says no ground troops.” At the same time he was alerted that “CKS is planning skullduggery and double-crossing on command.” He tried to prime Willkie on basic facts before he saw the Generalissimo, but Willkie was tired out and sleepy and did not appear to take in what was being said. Stilwell talked with him again the next day. “Nothin’. He didn’t ask a question. Completely sold on CKS and Mme. Advised me to put it on with a trowel. To hell with that stuff.” Again the day after he recorded that Willkie was “either worn out or very indifferent to me. Practically nothing to say or ask about. Almost pointed.”

  By contrast, responding to the desire of Chiang and Madame, Willkie was very receptive to Chennault who saw an opportunity to put over his program for the defeat of Japan by a China-based air force. Chennault had come to the conclusion, in concert with the Chiangs, that the necessary support for this could only be obtained through himself as commander in the theater in place of Stilwell. So long as Stilwell was in control he would insist that a major share of the supply effort over the Hump be channeled to the Chinese infantry for laborious ground campaigns for which Chiang had no taste and Chennault had contempt. Their interests coincided. The Generalissimo wanted to satisfy the active belligerency which was required of him as an Allied power by air action to which his contribution would be the airfields. Chennault, with the bitter intensity of a man who has fallen out with the establishment, wanted to prove his theories of air fighting and gain immortal vindication by winning the war alone with his Flying Tigers. Each for his own reasons wanted belligerency by American air power. For the future of China, a Chinese air force would have had more validity than an American one but, as Chennault had already discovered, the spirit for this was lacking.

  The reputation of his air fighters by now was great. He himself was led to overestimate what they could do because he believed their performance had prevented the Japanese from crossing the Salween when they broke into Yunnan from Burma in May. Trained in swift and supple tactics, his fighter pilots had established superiority over the Japanese in repeated aerial combat which their leader equated with stopping troops on the ground. Elsewhere they had deterred the Japanese terror-bombing of cities in east China, and by reputation, plus convincing rows of dummy planes on the ground, saved Chungking from a fourth season of merciless raids. Their prowess spread over the grapevines of China with the result that Chennault was the American most widely known and admired and a hero to the Chinese.

  It was natural that air power should appear as the winning weapon. Few stopped to consider that an airplane was as dependent on a landing field as a fish on water. Once on an inspection tour Stilwell growled to Colonel Henry Byroade, an Engineer officer, “What the hell are you building this airfield for?”

  “Well, Chennault says he needs it.”

  “How’s he going to defend it?”

  This was the essence of the problem. Chennault and his disciples, with their eyes fixed on the “optimums,” assumed that defense would be taken care of by the Chinese armies, of which they knew little. The “fly boys” tended by the nature of their calling to forget the ground and rely on the assumption of Colonel Scott, the pilot who had come to rescue Stilwell in Burma, that “God Is My Co-Pilot.” The aviator’s view of China was expressed by Scott when he wrote that “Sian is to the north of Kunming,” which was information about as helpful as saying that Boston is to the north of Mexico City.

  With his stubborn drudgery on the ground, Stilwell appeared to Chennault and the passionate devotees he inspired as an antediluvian, foot-slogging diehard who was obstructing victory by air power. Whatever means could be used to remove him, including political influence, wire-pulling and the arts of publicity, were justified. Willkie offered a means of direct access to the President.

  Chennault could not officially appr
oach Willkie without Stilwell’s permission which, rather to his surprise since he was conscious of no friendly intention, he received. Stilwell told him he was free to tell Willkie anything he chose and even escorted Willkie to Pai Shih Yi, the airfield outside Chungking where Chennault was found standing picturesquely against a line of his P-40 fighters with their snouts painted to resemble sharks. Stilwell left the two men to talk in privacy in Chennault’s office for two hours. Willkie came away with a letter dated October 8, 1942, for transmittal to the President, which is one of the extraordinary documents of the war.

  In this letter Chennault claimed that with only 105 modern fighters and 30 medium and 12 heavy bombers, maintained at that level by replacements, he could “accomplish the downfall of Japan…probably within six months, within one year at the outside.”*1 This, he informed the President, was his “professional opinion” as a professional air fighter. The military task was “a simple one” with only one catch. Chennault did not sidle up to his point but presented it boldly: he would require “full authority as the American military commander in China.” Given that, he was prepared to offer Roosevelt more than mere military victory. Operating on the statesman’s level, he was “confident…that I can not only bring about the downfall of Japan but I can make the Chinese lasting friends of the United States” and “I can create such goodwill that China will be a great and friendly trade market for generations.” Refraining, perhaps wisely, from explaining the mechanics of this promise, Chennault returned to the subject of his military strategy. It was based on the premise that “Japan can be defeated in China” and that he could destroy the Japanese Air Force which had only a limited production of aircraft by forcing it to “fight me in a position of my own selection.” While the Japanese Air Force was thus occupied, the American offensive in the Southwest Pacific could be pushed forward “at will,” and meanwhile “I will guarantee to destroy the principal industrial centers of Japan.”