Stilwell and the American Experience in China

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Casually Stalin contributed his bit to the decline. When Roosevelt told him about the Burma offensive and the role of the Yunnan force he remarked that the fighting capacity of the Chinese troops was low owing to “poor leadership.” He made no objections to the proposed Declaration on the return of China’s territories and future independence for Korea, merely commenting that “the Chinese must be made to fight which thus far they had not done.”

  On December 1 the Cairo Declaration, signed by Britain, China and the United States, was made public, stamping the seal of international recognition on China’s status as a great power, and accomplishing the aim of Roosevelt’s policy just at the time he began to have doubts. The Declaration promised the return “of all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese” and committed the signatories to fight until the unconditional surrender of Japan. China was now precluded officially as well as by self-interest from a separate peace and her threats to withdraw consequently reduced in value. But there is often a time lag before the actors in events appreciate a change they themselves have wrought, and the toothlessness of China’s only means of blackmail was not immediately apparent, except to those who already appreciated it.

  Upon the return to Cairo BUCCANEER became the crux of an intense struggle. The American Joint Chiefs vigorously opposed its abandonment. They denied that it was a diversion from OVERLORD or that ANVIL needed its landing craft, and insisted that nonfulfillment would allow the Generalissimo to withhold the Y-force, thus causing the failure of the Burma campaign. Without that campaign Marshall and King feared the Japanese would be able to resist the Pacific advance more forcefully. Admiral Leahy was still in the grip of the fear that “Chiang might drop out of the war.” Roosevelt argued that he had a moral obligation to Chiang Kai-shek who had left Cairo with the definite understanding that there would be an amphibious operation, even though uncommitted himself. Churchill remained adamant in refusal. His argument that BUCCANEER’s resources could be put to better use was aided by Mountbatten’s inflated requirement of 50,000 men for the action. Queried on alternatives, the SEAC staff asserted that without the Yunnan force the land route to China could not be reopened. The dispute raged for three days. At no conference before or after, according to Admiral Leahy, was there such “determined opposition” to an American proposal.

  An unkind accident aided the British when a radiogram from General Boatner reported that the forward elements of the Chinese 38th Division in the Hukawng valley, on meeting unexpected Japanese reaction, had dug in and despite all orders to advance refused to budge. The message addressed to Stilwell was delivered by mischance to Wedemeyer on the SEAC staff, thus becoming known to his British colleagues who seized with glee on this evidence from Stilwell’s own command that the Chinese would not fight. Within hours it had circulated throughout the Conference as proof of the fantasy of his proposed juncture with the Y-force. What had in fact happened in the Hukawng was that Boatner, who from old experience automatically discounted Chinese intelligence by 20 percent, had refused to send in the artillery the Chinese officers demanded and failed to visit the front himself to ascertain the facts.

  On December 5 Roosevelt yielded in a laconic three-word message to Churchill, “BUCCANEER is off.” Thus ended the two weeks of Cairo-Tehran. In those two weeks China moved into the shadow. At the beginning Roosevelt was determined to make the occasion a Chinese success; at the end he sacrificed Chiang Kai-shek to Stalin. He had found a new partner at the dance. His three words marked a turning point, though not then recognized, in relations with China. The President was not conscious of doing anything definitive; the definitive was not his habit. He knew in general the direction he wanted to follow but his decisions en route were empiric. His way of fighting the enemy on a given day, said his friend Averell Harriman, was “to weigh the evidence on his desk that morning.” A choice had to be made and Roosevelt made it in conformity with the choice from the beginning in favor of Europe first. Strategically it was the right decision because BUCCANEER was essentially a gesture.

  The upshot of Cairo was not what had been intended. No sooner was China recognized as a great power than the promise to Chiang Kai-shek was broken just as if he had been the Sultan of Morocco after all. China’s mistrust of the West deepened and Western confidence in Chiang plummeted as a result of their mutual contact.

  Chiang was informed of the reversal by a telegram from Roosevelt asking whether he would go ahead with the north Burma campaign without the amphibious action or wait for a year until after the next monsoon when the Allies could mount a major seaborne operation, meanwhile maintaining Hump deliveries to the utmost. Though Stilwell was not obliged to be bearer of the news, Roosevelt and Marshall recognized that the situation left him once again the victim. To return to Chungking empty-handed was likely to make his position difficult. Marshall offered to transfer him to another theater where he would have American troops to command and scope for his talents. Stilwell declined to be rescued. He had never thought much of BUCCANEER and its cancellation did not disturb him except as it might affect the Y-force. Chiang’s reluctance was so basic that a further excuse did not change the situation radically. Besides, Stilwell believed that when it came to the point, the Chinese would have to enter the fight to open their own communications. And though he never put it on record it is probable that from the day he walked out of Burma nothing could have altered his determination to lead the way back.

  Before he left Cairo he required to know from the President whether the BUCCANEER decision reflected a change in policy and how he was expected to deal with the Generalissimo in the new situation. Accompanied by Davies he went to the residence for another interview with Roosevelt and Hopkins, of which his record—in dialogue without comment—is as vivid a reproduction of Roosevelt talking as anything extant.

  “Well, Joe, what do you think of the bad news?” the President began, and proceeded through America’s friendship with China, the missionaries, the Delanos in Canton, a plan for curtailing Chinese inflation, a plan to make Hong Kong a free port (“But let’s raise the Chinese flag there first, and then Chiang can next day make a grand gesture and make it a free port. That’s the way to handle that! Same way in Dairen!”), a plan for trusteeship for Indochina and Korea for 25 years or so (“…till we get them on their feet. Just like the Philippines. I asked Chiang point-blank if he wanted Indochina and he said, ‘Under no circumstances!’ Just like that—‘Under no circumstances!’ ”) and a variety of other subjects ending with an account of a long conversation with H. H. Kung about a $50-million loan for developing transportation. Despite several attempts by Stilwell and Davies to turn the flow toward current policy they could obtain no practical guidance.

  The President dropped a hint of his new doubts. “How long,” he asked, “do you think Chiang can last?” Stilwell replied that the situation was serious and a repetition of last summer’s Japanese offensive might overturn him. “Well then,” Roosevelt said, “we should look for some other man or group of men to carry on.” Stilwell suggested that any such candidates “would probably be looking for us,” and the matter was left at that. He came away unrelenting in his opinion: “The man is a flighty fool….Hopeless outlook.” It was one of history’s cruel tricks that between these two who cared so much to make the relationship with China work, there should be dislike and a total mutual absence of understanding. Hopkins, however, throwing a strand across the information gap, asked in future to see copies of Davies’ reports and from time to time thereafter passed them on to the President.

  Chiang Kai-shek was hardly home from Cairo bearing the proud certificate of great-power status and telling everyone that he had an assurance of action in the Bay of Bengal when the telegram announcing its cancellation was delivered. He instantly put a high price on his humiliation. He asked for a loan of $1 billion on the ground that his task in rallying his nation to continued resistance had now been made “infinitely more difficult,” and that China’s military and economic w
eakness made it “impossible” to hold on for six months, much less another year, and that collapse of the China theater would have “grave consequences on the global war.” He also asked for an increase of at least double the number of aircraft for the Fourteenth Air Force and the Chinese Air Force and, in order to make their operations effective, an increase in the Hump airlift to 20,000 tons a month.

  Stilwell’s first thought on his return to Chungking had been to advise Madame against blackmail, warning that “our people are fed up.” But of this the Generalissimo was not to be persuaded. He summoned Gauss to impress upon him how crucial was the need to support the currency while Madame spoke bitterly of how much it was costing China to maintain the American air effort. Gauss was hard to impress, which was why the Generalissimo had long been as desirous of his recall as of Stilwell’s. A loan could not help, Gauss advised Washington, because China’s military and economic conditions “are deteriorating so fast” that in order to prevent collapse, “military measures to restore the Burma Road and reopen land transportation to China are imperative at an early date.”

  Chiang Kai-shek’s action in virtually putting a monetary price on his continuing in the war aided the increasing disenchantment with China in Washington. Morgenthau opposed the loan for the same reason as Gauss, because, as he told the President, China had no way of using it and it would be ineffective to control inflation. The Chinese had made a fiasco of the loan of 1942; moreover they still had $460 million of unpledged funds in the United States. Their refusal to fix a realistic rate of exchange and insistence on maintaining an artificial rate of 20 to 1, six times the actual value (which by November 1943 had reached 120 to 1), was causing increasing resentment among all Government and private agencies dealing with China. Chinese officials exploited the situation, according to Gauss, to accumulate “large reserves of U.S. dollars out of our expenditure for the war effort.” The Treasury knew that $867,000 of Chinese Government funds had been turned over to the young Kung, Madame’s nephew, and to Dr. S. C. Wu, another member of her party.

  In a memorandum of “unvarnished truth” Morgenthau advised rejection of the loan with a detailed explanation showing that what China needed was food, goods, machines and arms in amounts which could only be brought in by land or sea. For the reopening of these doors, he suggested, China herself should share the fight. To his astonishment, and the distress of Secretary Hull, the President proposed to send the whole memorandum verbatim to Chiang Kai-shek and, with the insertion of some placating assurances of goodwill, actually did so.

  In Chungking Stilwell was endeavoring to nudge the Generalissimo into Burma regardless of the Allies’ broken commitment. Through two long sessions Chiang kept insisting that there were eight Japanese divisions in Burma, not five, that SEAC’s plans were inadequate, that despite the buildup of Allied forces and air cover there was even less chance of winning now than there had been in 1942, that it was better to stay on the defensive and let the Japanese attack, that he must not risk defeat because the effect on the Chinese people would be too serious. Stilwell rebutted every argument with little effect. “He’s just plain crazy….Even at the expense of being cut off—still he won’t risk defeat.” May and Ella were frantic and could not sleep from worry. “May prayed with Peanut. Told me she’d done everything except murder him.” Chiang agreed, however, to let the Ledo force fight as planned and to give Stilwell in writing full command without interference and with “full power to fire any and all officers.” He said it was Stilwell’s army and, except for a caution against sacrificing it in British interests, that Stilwell could use it as he saw fit. In reply to further urging from Roosevelt, instigated by Stilwell at Madame’s suggestion, he refused to use the Y-force in Burma unless the Allies took the Andaman Islands or Rangoon or Moulmein to cut off the Japanese rear.

  Chiang’s response to the rejection of the billion-dollar loan was a new demand of drastic proportions: that the United States should pay at the official rate the cost of constructing the airfields in the Chengtu area for the B-29 bombing program decided upon at Cairo. If the United States felt itself unable to do this, the Chinese Government regretted that it “would have no means at its disposal to meet the requirements of United States forces in China…and could not make any further material or financial contribution, including the construction of works for military use.” Work on the fields, scheduled to begin January 15, was held up.

  “My God,” wrote Stilwell, “50 million gold to build the fields and 50 million gold squeeze!” In Washington Morgenthau was outraged. “They are just a bunch of damn crooks,” he stormed. “I am not going up on the Hill…and ask for one nickel.” He proposed “we tell them to go jump in the Yangtze” and build and pay for the fields ourselves by operating through the black market; he would send “a million dollars worth of gold in jewelers’ bars every day to General Somervell.” Calming down, he discussed alternatives with his staff and was advised that to pay for the fields at the official rate of 20 to 1 would be prohibitive; the cost was estimated at $800 million. It was becoming apparent that even the United States was not rich enough to fight in China.

  To Americans there was a kind of insanity, an infuriating absence of conscience, in the demand that the United States pay the costs, at six times real value, of defeating the occupier of China’s territory. But the conscience stemming from the Judaeo-Christian tradition takes different forms from the Confucian. It may be that all the slights and disillusions that China had stored up against the West were being balanced for payment in Chiang’s demand. His basic xenophobia had every reason to be exacerbated by the results of Cairo and he deeply resented the greater portion of Lend-Lease being given to Britain and Russia.

  Like all money quarrels, this one left a rancid taste. “Maybe we don’t need them, by God—” said Morgenthau. He would find some military way to do it. He called Somervell to ask how it might be accomplished. “I am mad as hell. Is this something I have got to stomach and vomit and take it, or have you got some way to wiggle out and do something else?” After conferring with Marshall and Stimson, Somervell reported that the Army was “very dissatisfied” and prepared to “get tough” even up to and including the Secretary of War, once China’s most ardent partisan. “I do not fear that the Chinese are going to drop out of the war now that we are so close,” Stimson wrote sensibly in his diary that day.

  Meeting with Morgenthau on January 20, Somervell said the Army was prepared to stop building the airfields and “approach Japan from another direction.” He offered another and more startling idea: the United States “could break Chiang Kai-shek by withdrawing American support” or, if they wanted to, by “buying one of his competitors with an expenditure of $100 million”; there were lots of candidates. General Lucius Clay suggested sending no more Lend-Lease or diverting some of it to provincial generals, “or, if necessary even pull out of China, or just do nothing and continue at a slow pace.”

  From this meeting on, it could be said, American support of the Generalissimo’s Government was invested with little conviction or faith. Nevertheless it was continued, with no effort by the United States to broaden its options. To deal with the incumbent in power is the easiest course and the inertia of policy in foreign affairs resists the effort to change or take chances. All in Washington were agreed that the United States could not and would not accept the official rate, but the State Department was anxious not to weaken, and Roosevelt not prepared to drop, Chiang Kai-shek. Compromise proposals for a rate of 40 to 1 were made, and H. H. Kung was invited to Washington to carry on further discussions. The Chinese continued to demand either the billion-dollar loan or the rate of 20 to 1. In an interview with Ambassador Gauss before leaving, Kung, referring to the possibility of China’s collapse, remarked that Japan had been making “some very good offers.”

  By February American advances in the Pacific raised the possibility of speeding up by several months the approach to a port in China, a prospect which made the airfields more necessary
to assist the attack. The military vision of doing without China passed; the money-grubbing battle went on. Nearly a year later at Bretton Woods Dr. Kung was still smilingly insisting on 20 to 1.

  Meanwhile under various interim financial compromises the Chinese people built the fields and the B-29s flew. In Szechwan 450,000 workmen were assembled from local hsien, or districts. Each hsien provided its quota of men, women and children with tools and food for 90 days’ work. They came on foot, bringing their materials in wheelbarrows. Nine fields, four of them with 9,000-foot runways, were constructed without trucks, steam shovels or concrete. Topsoil, laboriously preserved for thousands of years for growing rice, was cleared off in wicker baskets carried on shoulder poles, and the subsoil flattened by men pulling huge rollers back and forth. A cobblestone base was laid from stones hauled from stream beds in an endless train of wheelbarrows. This was covered by layers of soil mixed with mud slurry alternating with layers of crushed rock made by women and girls sitting all day and hammering. The topsoil was then hauled back and rerolled. Foremen with pennants representing each village directed the work of their own townspeople, under orders of the engineers, of whom all but 14 Americans were Chinese. The first B-29 landed after 60 days; in 90 days all the fields were completed.