Stilwell and the American Experience in China

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Chronically short of everything an air force needed, Chennault could have used every ton the ATC could carry. His normal state was exasperation like Stilwell’s or almost anybody’s in CBI. While his men patched planes and scavenged parts and filtered engine oil to use twice, the sight of American staff officers, he wrote, “scuttling pompously about India and China with brief cases infuriated us all.” Crossing the Hump, passengers took up room that could have been filled by fuel, tires, spark plugs, carburetors, tools, overalls, cigarets, soap and everything else the AVG was not receiving. When induction into the American Air Force took effect on July 4, 1942, the unit, now designated China Air Task Force with Chennault as commander, became a component of the Tenth Air Force, which was the overall air unit for CBI. Chennault was promoted to brigadier general, but Bissell, his bête noir, was promoted a day earlier and named air commander for the theater. The bypassing of his candidate was taken by Chiang Kai-shek as “a direct kick in the teeth” (according to McHugh), indicating that China would not be given the air strength he wanted, whereas in fact it reflected General Arnold’s distaste for Chennault. Chinese influence was put to work toward the removal of Bissell and the elevation of Chennault and was ultimately to succeed in the first aim, if not in the second.

  Even Chennault, though a favorite, had his troubles with Chiang Kai-shek, not unlike Stilwell’s. When Madame on one occasion told him he must in future communicate directly with the Generalissimo rather than through her, he replied that without her as intermediary, interested persons were able to persuade the Generalissimo to “issue unacceptable orders.” He expressed such manifest panic at the prospect that he was granted permission to continue as before. Chinese pilots, whose training Chennault supervised, presented the same problems as Stilwell found in the officer corps. The situation, Chennault complained to Madame in May 1942, “has grown from bad to worse and is now almost hopeless.” The worst pilots were transferred to instructorships and were “incapable” of teaching or maintaining discipline. They ignored American recommendations and were “resentful of American influence.” He had found it impossible to rectify these conditions over the past four years and now could not certify the pilots for completion of their training in the United States. He felt obliged to report to the War Department that “flying training methods in China are hopelessly deficient.” If expected to continue he must have “full authority” over schools and personnel. Later when pursuing the thesis that Stilwell’s personal faults caused the clash with the Generalissimo, Chennault left his own difficulties unmentioned.

  Deficiencies in supply were the more maddening to Chennault because he was supremely confident that if given the tools his air force alone could knock out Japan by obstructing the flow of her war materials through the South China seas. The lure of the single solution was powerful. “We should always examine the optimums,” Chennault wrote, “and forget about feasibility; it will compromise us soon enough. Let’s look at what might be and be invigorated by it.” He was himself over-invigorated by this admirable principle. What was needed in Pacific war strategy, he wrote to Stilwell that summer, was to cut Japan’s sea-lanes, inspire Chinese ground forces to action against Japanese-occupied areas, neutralize Japanese air efforts in Burma and Indochina, relieve the Japanese threat to India, safeguard the Hump route in China, and “supply a successful offensive to inspire all Allied powers.” If provided with 500 combat planes and 100 transports plus “complete authority in this theater,” he would attain all of these objectives.

  To Chiang Kai-shek and Madame the thesis was compelling. If 500 combat planes and 100 transports and “full authority” for Chennault could win the war, there was no need to reform the army and disturb the dangerously delicate balance of cliques and persons and war zone commanders which constituted Chiang’s teetering seat of power. Air power required no Chinese effort; besides, it looked so easy. “If we destroy 15 Nippon planes every day,” wrote Madame to Chennault in reply to one of his weekly combat reports, “soon there will be no more left.” It became the Chiangs’ fixed goal to induce the United States to provide the 500-plane air force and to send over the Hump the supplies to operate and maintain it.

  Chiang Kai-shek’s resentment at unfulfilled promises was growing. HALPRO, a plan to bomb Japan with China-based B-24s, in which he was much interested, was canceled and the B-24s held up in Egypt, at Stilwell’s recommendation, because the loss of the Chekiang bases and the inadequate ATC supply made the project impossible. The 100 transports promised for the ATC were cut to 75 and then to 57 because of requirements elsewhere. Stilwell was obliged to inform the Generalissimo that under present conditions the ATC could not deliver a tenth of the 5,000 tons a month originally estimated. In the manner of ancient kings, Chiang blamed bad tidings on the bearer, the more so as he had been told by T. V. Soong that Stilwell was not pressing China’s demands with sufficient vigor.

  To the Generalissimo this represented a dereliction of Stilwell’s duty as his Chief of Staff. As he saw it, failure by a foreigner to obtain what was needed from his own country was simply a failure of influence. That supplies had to travel an immense journey by ship and rail and plane to reach China did not concern him. He was not impressed by the physical facts of logistics, of which his knowledge was vague. If Stilwell could not produce, it meant only that he was either not sufficiently influential or not acting wholeheartedly in China’s behalf. Madame had a remedy for the former and an inducement to the latter. “We’re going to see that you are made a full general,” she told Stilwell. “The hell they are,” he muttered in his diary, outraged. He considered it, as he told his staff, an attempted bribe to gain his compliance in recommending all Chinese requisitions, which indeed it was.

  The issue of supply came to a head in the crisis of the Three Demands at the end of June. The trigger was Rommel’s capture of Tobruk on June 21, sweeping the British back into Egypt and raising once more the threat of a German breakthrough into the Middle East. In the emergency Brereton’s heavy bombers of the Tenth Air Force, together with transports and crews of the ATC, were ordered to Egypt and a force of B-24 heavy bombers on its way to China was halted at Khartoum for diversion to the British. It was left to Stilwell to convey these tidings to the Generalissimo whose predictable reaction he shared. “We fail in all our commitments and blithely tell him just to carry on, old top.”

  Chiang Kai-shek and Madame used the occasion for a spectacular explosion. Every time the British suffered a defeat, China’s equipment was taken away, raged Madame, “and such being the case there is no need for China to continue the war.” The Generalissimo claimed that China was “lightly regarded” and demanded a “clear cut answer” as to whether America and Britain “considered it as one of the Allied theaters.” He came at once to the point that really interested him: Lend-Lease. Less than 10 percent of the war material promised by Roosevelt was being delivered, he said, which amounted to “disobedience” of the President’s orders. “As Chief of Staff to me, you are responsible for seeing to it that the promised material is forthcoming.” Madame concluded in a tone of ultimatum, “The Generalissimo wants a yes or no answer whether the Allies consider this theater necessary and will support it.”

  Stilwell was inclined to sympathize since he wanted more support for the theater no less than they. But he was angered by the charge of failure on his part and “threw it right back at them, telling them what I had asked for.” He thought their outburst had been calculated by the Chiangs on the theory that “violent protests” gave them the upper hand. This was very likely. Beneath all courtesies, conferences, services, friendships or other relationships, the Chinese regarded Westerners fundamentally as adversaries to be got the better of in any exchange. Underlying that level, the deep cause of Chiang’s resentment was not being able to control allotments of Lend-Lease within his country as the British controlled theirs. The reason for the difference was the common knowledge that if supplies were turned over freely to China, a large part would never see
use against Japan, but it appeared clearly discriminatory to the Chinese. To Chiang it was an unforgivable face-losing and the foundation of his dislike for Stilwell who as controller of Lend-Lease was its visible representative.

  The verbal ultimatum was followed three days later by formal presentation of the Three Demands with a time deadline. The demands were:

  1. Three American divisions to arrive in India between August and September to restore communication to China through Burma.

  2. 500 combat airplanes to operate from China beginning in August and to be maintained continuously at that strength.

  3. Delivery of 5,000 tons a month to be maintained by the ATC beginning in August.

  If these “minimum requirements” were not met, the Chiangs stated, the alternative would be “liquidation” of the China theater and a “readjustment” of their position requiring “other arrangements.”

  Stilwell was more than willing to forward the demands since, apart from the number of planes and the time limit, they were close to what he had asked Marshall for himself, but he refused Madame’s subsequent demand that he forward them with his recommendation. He would not, he told her, support an ultimatum to his own Government. Madame “got hot…and started to bawl me out,” brought in her secretary and “took down everything I said. Obviously mad as hell. She had snapped the whip and the stooge had not come across.” Stilwell took the occasion to point out his dual status. Though Chief of Staff to the Generalissimo, he could not be called in and given orders with regard to his own Government. He spelled out his other capacities as Commanding General of American forces in CBI, representative of his Government on Allied war councils, and on Lend-Lease matters, and “a U.S. Army officer sworn to uphold the interest of the U.S….If she doesn’t get the point she’s dumber than I think she is.”

  He also explained to Madame the logistics of what it took to deliver 5,000 tons a month over the Hump: 304 planes, 275 men in flight crews, 3,400 men on the ground, and five airfields at each end, each field capable of handling 50 transports. “She began to get some light.” He told her finally that he thought the Generalissimo “wanted a soldier and not a rubber stamp or a transmitting agency,” which was disingenuous, considering that the reverse was the case.

  To give credence to the threat of a separate peace, which was all that the Chinese had to make the Three Demands an ultimatum, rumors were set afloat in Chungking that a Japanese envoy and representatives of Nanking had arrived to bargain on peace terms. Stilwell was not impressed because he felt sure that China had too much to gain from the United States and “nothing to gain and everything to lose by making peace with Japan.” Ambassador Gauss, with whom he discussed the matter, agreed with him and informed Washington the threat was a “bluff” although the need was real. According to Chou En-lai, interviewed by an OSS agent, there was no danger at all of a separate peace; on the contrary, “resistance has become a good business since help is easy to get.” Kuomintang officials, he said, were proud of their diplomatic skill in playing on American nerves; they maintained contact with Japanese in Shanghai “in order to excite fears in Washington.”

  The United States could not afford to take chances on losing China as a base of operations. The answer to the Three Demands depended on disposable resources, which in turn depended on conflicts and bargains with the British about the Second Front in Europe. Pending a decision, the President wrote Chiang a soothing letter promising a settlement in the near future.

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  Angered by a dispute with Stilwell over the disposition of two transport planes, the Generalissimo launched an attempt to divest him of control of Lend-Lease that was to have accidental but important consequence. As he put it to Roosevelt, Stilwell’s dual responsibility to the American and Chinese Governments appeared to conflict in the matter of Lend-Lease and had to be resolved. In a reply, drafted by Marshall who was aware that Lend-Lease was Stilwell’s only lever, the President emphatically refused to divide Stilwell’s functions and explicitly affirmed his primary responsibility to the United States. It was “not practical for all of General Stilwell’s duties to be subject to orders from you.” Any successor, Roosevelt added, would carry the same powers.

  The letter violated the main principle of Chinese intercourse which is to preserve a man’s dignity by not confronting him with direct denials. Since the White House and War Department appeared to lack an amanuensis learned in Chinese custom, T. V. Soong undertook to fill the vacuum. In the interest of a quiet life he altered the letter both as to sense and language before forwarding it to the Generalissimo. Meanwhile Marshall had sent an information copy of the original to Stilwell, who thus saw his position confirmed while Chiang Kai-shek thought otherwise. Several weeks’ tangle ensued, during which their mutual dissatisfaction mounted, before the truth came out. Chiang was predictably insulted when he read the genuine text and staged another protest about liquidating the China theater. Soong was summoned to the White House and told in person that Stilwell’s status remained unaltered. Not wishing any more than Chiang’s other ministers and officials to be a messenger of unpleasantness, he continued to expurgate messages as he saw fit. Two years later, after further experience of altered messages, the President ordered that all communications from himself to the Generalissimo should be delivered in person by the senior American officer in Chungking.

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  While an answer to the Three Demands was awaited Stilwell continued to press for the training program in India, the Thirty Division program and the reconquest of Burma. Relations with the Generalissimo were maintained at surface propriety, alternating with neglect, and conferences with the War Ministry always produced promises of cooperation. “No” was not a word used by the Chinese. It was always possible for Stilwell to believe that he was about to accomplish something. He was aware of a whispering campaign, which he believed planted by Soong, to the effect that he had sabotaged an offensive by the Fifth and Sixth Armies in Burma and had then “run away.” But there were always Chinese friends who wanted him to succeed in his plans for reform and who encouraged his hopes. Tseng Shih-kwei, chief interpreter in the Burma campaign who continued as liaison officer, came in for a talk and “really seems to believe I can work up enough influence to have a vital effect on the situation.”

  Life was not enjoyable during these months. When jaundice was succeeded by “gut ache,” finally diagnosed as worms in his system, he found himself taking eight different medicines in 36 hours and recording afterwards, to his astonishment, “feeling better!” He was saddened by news of the death of his mother in June and worried by trouble with his eyesight which had been poor for years, depending almost entirely on the use of one eye. The discomfort of air raids and the heat of Chungking were unpleasant and he thought longingly of Carmel and his family. He was reassured by a message from Marshall and Stimson promising that if efforts to secure more active cooperation from the Generalissimo proved unsuccessful, they would transfer him to another theater where he could be more useful.

  There were some encouragements. After prolonged negotiations, and over the extreme reluctance of the Government of India, he had secured Wavell’s assignment of Ramgarh, a former camp for 20,000 Italian prisoners of war, about 200 miles west of Calcutta, as a base for the Chinese troop training program. The British were afraid of the effect of a body of armed Chinese on the Indian rebellion and had no wish to employ them for the recapture of Burma. Eight thousand Chinese of the 38th and 22nd Divisions were in India, however, and the United States, which was not planning to send its own infantry to CBI, pressed strongly for Stilwell’s program, and prevailed. An agreement was reached by which the British housed, fed and paid the troops as reverse Lend-Lease and America equipped and trained them. The program began with an initial 8,000. After three months’ delay, the additional troops, which Chiang had promised on June 24, were despatched by airlift beginning in October.

  Obstacles in the way of army reform were greater. The military establishment was split
between the party of military bureaucrats led by the War Minister, Ho Ying-chin, and the Whampoa clique which held most of the active commands. Ho’s party was tied to the existing system of organization, which was why a general like Tu Li-ming, as Stilwell noted, could be “so independent.” Ho Ying-chin firmly opposed any spending of the Central Government’s military power and could be expected to discover objections and deterrents to any program requiring either change or action.

  The Whampoa group, led by two veterans of Whampoa’s first class, Generals Ch’en Ch’eng and Hu Tsung-nan, was more open to improvement. General Ch’en, the Governor and commander of Hupeh, was the man Stilwell had considered “the most powerful and most interesting” of the generals in 1938 and whom he now had in mind as a possible Commander-in-Chief or, hopefully, a replacement for Ho. As a close associate of the Generalissimo, regarded as his interim heir until Chiang’s son was ready, Ch’en enjoyed the necessary favor; there was no use in considering anyone who did not. He was believed to aspire to the succession in his own right. He resembled the Generalissimo physically, cultivated the same shaved head and small mustache, and spoke in the same shrill voice, giving rise to stories that they were halfbrothers. Despite this association, he had worked with Chou En-lai and the Communists during the period of the united front to establish a political bureau in each division of the army and to apply their methods of organizing popular resistance to the Japanese.

  Hu Tsung-nan, the other Whampoa leader, also a trusted intimate of the Generalissimo, held the quarantine line against the Communists from headquarters in Sian. He commanded a force of 400,000, the largest and best-equipped body of soldiers in China. He was a close associate of Tai Li, another Whampoa man.