Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Yet he ached to have “real authority” to carry out the consolidation and training of 60 divisions for a combat-worthy Chinese Army; otherwise Lend-Lease would never be used for its intended purpose—to arm Chinese to fight Japanese. He came to the conclusion about this time that he could never accomplish his aim and the original purpose of his mission without a more definite form of command within the Chinese Army than his purely advisory post as Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai-shek. He conceived of a position as “Field Chief of Staff” which he believed the United States could obtain for him if they were willing to tell China that loss of Lend-Lease was the alternative. This plan, which took shape in his notes of June 1943, was the genesis of the proposal that a year later was to enclose his fate. As Stilwell conceived it, the United States would require the Generalissimo to appoint him to the post with accompanying orders to the War Ministry to implement his decisions. If Chiang refused, the United States should “stop all supply to China….He can’t refuse. It’s his neck if we turn him loose. $500,000,000 talks here.”

  He drafted messages to Marshall at this time proposing that his plan be implemented. The drafts testify almost to agony at the failure of his Government to use the bargaining power of Lend-Lease. “Our policy is wrong. Our conception of Oriental policy is wrong.” Because of the President’s refusal to demand a quid pro quo for American aid, Stilwell held him responsible for the failure to reform the Chinese Army. He exaggerated the power of the quid pro quo because he did not have it, although it was plain that in face of an ultimatum Chiang would always have found a way to avoid introducing reforms he dared not make. Underneath Stilwell knew the bargaining power of Lend-Lease was no magic wand to transform the nature of the Chinese system: in one of his random essays on the general derelictions of the regime he wrote, “To reform such a system, it must be torn to pieces.”

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  Radios from Marshall prodded him on the Legion of Merit. “Cooperate, damn you,” as Stilwell recorded them, “FDR wants a date!” Stilwell had raised the rather naive objection that Chiang had not earned the Legion of Merit. Chiang in his turn, presumably none too pleased to receive the medal from Stilwell, had proposed that it be delivered to him by messenger, which Stilwell took as an insult to the highest award America could give a foreigner. In this mood the ceremony duly took place on July 7, immortalized by film. With both principals dead-pan, Stilwell read the citation in Chinese to the “champion of liberty and freedom” for his “noble and inspiring achievements,” and pinned on the medal at arm’s length while Chiang gazed into the distance and Madame, looking chic in a sleeveless print but for her inevitable butterfly-bowed open-toed shoes, watched benevolently. “Peanut was half an hour late….Everyone anywhere near him turned to stone….When I grabbed his coat and pinned it on, he jumped as if he was afraid I was going to stab him.”

  Five days later on July 12 Chiang agreed to take part in the Burma campaign, this time in writing and signed. Stilwell’s pen, as had now become habitual, ran down the long list of obstructions, skullduggery and “general cussedness” it had taken to reach this point. “Holy Christ, I was just about at the end of my rope.” He was in no mood to remember how much of the backing and filling on Burma had been Anglo-American. He went off at once to India for a stay of six weeks to prepare for the campaign. After a surfeit of Chungking, he looked forward to commanding the Ramgarh force in action himself. Ch’en Ch’eng, who was said to be suffering from ulcers, had not returned but whether from illness or reluctance or the inner workings of Chinese politics, was uncertain. While the Y-force was in far from satisfactory condition, Stilwell believed there was little more he could do. The training program would continue under Dorn’s command, but as to obtaining divisions and replacements he felt he had used up his resources.

  By this midsummer of 1943 he was forced to recognize that what he, the American, had come to bring—fighting effectiveness—was not wanted. What had seemed Chiang’s inexplicable resistance to his own best interests Stilwell now realized was rooted in his fear that “it would be risky to have an efficient trained ground force come under the command of a possible rival.” He acknowledged the reason to Marshall in a letter of July 23 and wrestled with the problem further in his notes. The recurring obstructions that had plagued and puzzled him all along he now saw as stemming from Chiang’s “fear of a challenge to his authority, as well as to his belief that air power is decisive and there is no use putting any time on ground troops. Otherwise he could not complacently take the terrible risk of leaving his army in its deplorable condition.” There was one other possible explanation: that “he really thought the Army was in excellent shape and only in need of weapons to make it formidable. It is hard to imagine a military man as dumb as this….” The truth of the matter was that Chiang was not so much dumb as uninformed because he refused to listen to anything but favorable reports. As Chiang Monlin had said, “He does not know what is going on. He writes orders by the thousand—like snowflakes—and everybody says ‘yes, yes,’ and he never knows what has been done.” He seemed the reincarnation of Yeh Ming-ch’en, Governor-General of Canton in the Second Opium War, who refused either to negotiate or surrender when bombarded by British naval forces, and was celebrated in a Cantonese topical ballad: “He would not fight, he would not make peace and he would not make a defense. He would not die, he would not surrender and he would not run away.”

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  At this point, in an effort to put a new face on the discontents and divisions of the theater, CBI was broken up under a major realignment of command. All through the summer between TRIDENT and the next conference at Quebec the variance between the British and American evaluation of the importance of keeping China in the war stunted the strategic planning for CBI. Although Wavell had been elevated to Viceroy and replaced as Commander-in-Chief India by General Sir Claude Auchinleck, former commander of the British Eighth Army in North Africa, the recommendations of Auchinleck and his staff proved as pessimistic as his predecessor’s. The basic reason was that the British no longer trusted the will of the Indian Army to fight for the Empire. Under the circumstances they did not want to undertake the major effort and risk of a campaign through the wastes of north Burma merely to assist the Chinese whose role in the war they claimed was “generally worthless” and whose future stability they were not concerned to support. When, during staff discussions in London, American planning officers argued that failure to open a supply route through Burma might cause the collapse of China and with it the loss of the Allied assault base, Ambassador John Winant commented to John Davies that “the PM was quite willing to see China collapse.” Churchill had not for a moment changed his belief that Japan would be defeated from the perimeter, leaving China out of the strategic plan.

  Roosevelt was as determined as ever on having China as the fourth cornerstone of the postwar world order, and to promote the cause had suggested in June a meeting between himself and Chiang Kai-shek for later in the year. He was strongly dissatisfied “with the way our whole show is running in China.” The Generalissimo and Chennault complained of unkept promises and the President continued to lay the blame on personalities. At a conference with Hopkins, Marshall, Leahy and Somervell on July 15 he stated that “Stilwell obviously hated the Chinese,” that his telegrams were sarcastic, that this feeling was undoubtedly known to the Chinese and the Generalissimo, and furthermore “that it is quite clear the Generalissimo does not like Stilwell.” Marshall admitted that Stilwell was indiscreet but distinguished between his feeling about Chinese officialdom and “his great regard for the Chinese people” and continued to maintain that he was indispensable.

  Churchill’s proposal that a new Southeast Asia Command (SEAC) be established separate from the existing India command appeared to offer a prospect of settling some of the difficulties. Since there were no American combat troops in the area and none contemplated, it being American principle not to fight to restore imperial territory, the commander of SEAC would have to be B
ritish. At Quebec a Supreme Allied Commander (SAC) was finally agreed upon in the handsome, gallant and pleasing person of forty-three-year-old Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, a cousin of the King with the permanent rank of Captain who as Chief of Combined Operations had led the ill-fated raid on Dieppe.

  Stilwell was to be Deputy SAC while retaining his other positions as commander of Americans in CBI and as Chief of Staff to the Generalissimo. He was thus made responsible simultaneously and severally to three sets of command: through Mountbatten to the Allied Combined Chiefs, through Marshall to the American Joint Chiefs, and to the Generalissimo. In addition he held operational command of the Ramgarh force, now renamed, for proper military suitability and added confusion, Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC). The interlocking and overlapping areas of command, geographically, operationally and nationally under these arrangements, were of such tangled complexity that no one then or since has been able to sort them into a logical pattern. Mountbatten and even Marshall were a bit dazed by them; Churchill confessed they were incomprehensible. Stilwell, the chief victim, not being the kind to take tables of organization more seriously than the tasks they cover, was content to describe his fate rather mildly as “a Chinese puzzle with Wavell, Auk, Mountbatten, Peanut, Alexander [the ATC commander] and me all interwoven and mixed beyond recognition.”

  The British motive behind SEAC, as Davies analyzed it for Stilwell, hinged on the reconquest of their possessions in Southeast Asia which was an essential undertaking if Britain was to be fully restored to the position of a first-class power. The American presence in India and Burma was an embarrassment, but since they had to bear with it, their aim was “to effect the partnership and then dominate it…so as to bring us into line with their policy and action.” This, he suggested, was the role of Mountbatten who might or might not carry confidential orders from Churchill “designed to inhibit his natural vigor.”

  Britain knew, Davies continued, that to whatever degree she joined the United States in actions designed to help China she would be acting contrary to her own interests, while the United States should know that to whatever degree she joined Britain in helping to restore colonial rule and white supremacy would be acting contrary to American policy, sentiment and future relations with the countries of Asia. A State Department official on reading the report wrote in the margin, “I am extremely glad we have in our service a man capable of producing it. But how depressing the future is!”

  China was predicated by the planners at Quebec as the base for future long-range bombing of Japan. But the shadow of an alternative was cast by a significant decision to advance through the central Pacific to the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. These were still 2,500 miles from Japan and the strategic concept of long-range bombing from a Pacific base was barely more than a gleam in the Air Force eye. The long step forward to Saipan in the Marianas, 1,450 miles from Japan, was still far ahead and the capabilities of the B-29, designed to have a radius of 1,500 miles, were not fully known. The Americans at Quebec held to the view of the indispensability of China without persuading the British. All the old disputes were reargued. Apart from the north Burma campaign, no firm overall strategy for SEAC to match the handsome new command structure was reached. The projected defeat of Japan was put four years ahead in 1947 or, at the most optimistic, twelve months after the defeat of Germany which was envisaged for 1944.

  The only step taken beyond TRIDENT for CBI was one Stilwell had long desired, the introduction of American combat troops, but only in the form of a small commando force of 3,000 assigned to north Burma under the code name GALAHAD. The model—so far not very successful—was Wingate’s Raiders whose remarkable leader, a genius of unorthodox warfare, Churchill had brought with him to Quebec. After an innovative military career in Abyssinia and Palestine, Brigadier Orde Wingate had evolved a theory of Long Range Penetration (LRP) tactics based on the establishment of scattered small strong points in occupied territory from which commando parties would fan out behind the enemy to cut his line of communications. His scheme offered the same lure as did Chennault’s of a quick cheap way to destroy the enemy. When the campaign for the previous spring had been canceled, Wingate’s group, trained by him to an extreme of readiness, had been allowed to go into action in Burma anyway, though without a strategic objective, except possibly to exhibit British activity. Dramatic publicity attended the operation, though not its results which were a disastrous 800 killed or missing out of 3,000. Nevertheless the methods were considered valid and a renewed effort was planned in concert with the coming campaign.

  Marshall, impressed by the potential of LRP to shorten the campaign, agreed to add an American unit. He was anxious to limit American action in Asia and to get the war over quickly. Prolongation, he believed, held dangers for the institutions of society. Because of the unpleasant fate of Wingate’s wounded, left to become prisoners of the Japanese, Marshall and Arnold conceived of LRP as entirely dependent on air support for supply, evacuation and reinforcement. Though the GALAHAD contingent was to be under Stilwell’s overall command, Marshall agreed to let it serve under Wingate’s direction.

  Stilwell’s reaction was predictable. “After a long struggle we get a handful of U.S. troops and by God they tell us they are going to operate under WINGATE! We don’t know how to handle them but that exhibitionist does! He has done nothing but make an abortive jaunt to Katha, cutting some railroad that our people had already cut, get caught east of the Irrawaddy and come out with a loss of 40 percent. Now he’s the expert. That is enough to discourage Christ.” Marshall calmed him with a reminder that “We must all eat some crow if we are to fight the same war together. The impact on the Jap is the pay-off.” Earlier he had sent Stilwell a message urging an effort at genuine cooperation with the British; General Handy, chief of OPD, suggested as an addendum that when the British played “God Save the King,” Stilwell did not have to join in the singing but he might at least stand up.

  Other discontents flourished besides his own: Chennault’s were louder than ever and found sardonic echo in Stilwell’s diary. “He has been screaming for help. ‘The Japs are going to run us out of China!’ It is to laugh. Six months ago he was going to run them out.” Chennault was asking for reinforcements from the Tenth Air Force because his attacks on merchant shipping had provoked sharp Japanese reaction against his air bases. Since this is what he had always claimed would give his fighters the opportunity to knock the Japanese out of the sky, Stilwell was disinclined to divert planes from their primary duty of protecting the Hump route to help him.

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  In the anterooms of Quebec the ubiquitous T. V. Soong in his black hat, black-rimmed spectacles and cane exerted himself to find out what decisions had been made affecting China. By this time the Americans had learned through their access to the Japanese code that the Japanese in their turn had broken the Chinese code. Chinese security, already a sieve, now had large holes in it, making admission of China to the Combined Chiefs foolhardy. The British were adamant against informing Soong of decisions but it was impossible to tell him why, because if the information became known to the Japanese, they would know that their own code had been broken. Marshall, who never lost his iron tact or steel finesse, undertook to handle the situation. He called Soong in, swore him to secrecy with upraised hand, informed him of the Quebec decisions and of the fact that the Chinese code had been broken, and said that if he violated his oath and relayed the information by radio, the War Department would know of it and that would be the end of him. He would have to return to Chungking and convey the information orally.

  Simultaneously with Quebec the first honest statement appeared in the American press of China’s military incapacity and its corollary: that it would be “calamitous” if the American people expected the Chinese to play the main or a decisive part in the ultimate defeat of Japan. Hanson Baldwin, military correspondent of The New York Times, had to go outside his own journal to tell the public (through the Reader’s Digest of August) that th
ere had been “Too Much Wishful Thinking About China”—the title of his article. “Missionaries, war relief drives, able ambassadors and the movies have oversold us,” he wrote. China “is not—in our sense—winning battles, but losing them.” Her great contribution lay in holding down 15–22 Japanese divisions but “She has no real army as we understand the term” and her communiqués were “almost worthless.” Drawing on his connections in the War Department, he described all the inadequacies of health, training, equipment and defensive spirit in words Stilwell might have used himself, but Baldwin came to different conclusions. Neither the Hump nor the Road, he wrote, could supply enough for a major campaign in China nor could ports be recaptured without a tremendous amphibious campaign. Baldwin’s conclusion, significant because it reflected the new thinking in the War Department, was that Japan would have to be beaten at sea, and on the mainland only in Manchuria where Russian power could be applied.

  Stilwell, who had to believe in his own mission, continued to see China as indispensable. He drew up his own long-range plan for the defeat of Japan involving a land offensive toward the coast at Canton of which the spearhead would be three American divisions moved into China from India after the reopening of Burma. This would be coordinated with MacArthur’s drive toward the same point through the Philippines and Formosa, and with China-based air attack on the enemy’s sea-lanes. The final phase was to be a land offensive toward Shanghai along with long-range bombing of the Japanese home islands. He believed this design would cut down on the Quebec time table by one or two years. It depended on a vanguard of American troops and, in Stilwell’s mind, on an American being in command of the joint Chinese-American forces. Often urged by his staff to lobby for his needs like other theater commanders, or to use the press like MacArthur or Chennault, he refused. “I will not bring any pressure on George Marshall. He’s running a war all over the world. It’s up to him to determine who should get what.”