The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  As soon as Roosevelt heard of Marshall’s explosion, he reverted to his old, irrational anxiety about keeping China in the war and turned to Mountbatten for help. For the next two days the Supremo spent most of his time closeted with the recalcitrant generalissimo, using Madame as his interpreter. Trying a mixture of charm and sweet reason, Mountbatten impressed on Chiang that he could not have the 535 transport planes he was insisting on, and that the Allies could not supply China over the Hump at the level Chiang demanded and attack Mandalay before the monsoon. At this point, whether deliberately putting on a ‘dumb show’ or simply woefully ignorant, Chiang claimed not to know what the monsoon was. When Mountbatten looked over to Madame, genuinely puzzled, she said: ‘Believe it or not, he does not know about the monsoon.’47 When Chiang repeated his usual mantra about the necessity for an amphibious operation in the Indian Ocean before he could commit his forces, Mountbatten patiently explained that this operation was not favoured by the Allied chiefs of staff. He then produced a highly detailed map and began to explain the problems. At this point Chiang’s eyes glistened and he put his finger on the map. ‘I like this plan, we will carry it out,’ he said.48 Patiently Mountbatten explained that the idea had been rejected by the Allied chiefs and repeated the reasons why, principally the lack of landing-craft. ‘Never mind,’ said Chiang, who had not a single boat in his army, ‘we will carry it out all the same.’ Not surprisingly, Mountbatten concluded that he was talking to a madman. ‘I may say that he made several more illogical suggestions and I cannot help wondering how much he knows about soldiering.’49 Nevertheless, as supreme commander he could not simply storm out and had to try to fulfil Roosevelt’s wishes. Next day there was another meeting. ‘I found the Generalissimo very difficult, although he kept on assuring me of his personal regard and told me he was protecting my interests as much as his own.’ When they parted, Chiang promised to think over all that had been said to him. Mountbatten went off to an enjoyable lunch with Churchill, Pug Ismay, Jumbo Wilson and Churchill’s daughter Sarah, who had caused something of a sensation by marrying the bandleader Vic Oliver. That afternoon, at 4. 15, Chiang and Madame gave a tea party. Alanbrooke decided he now disliked Madame more the more he saw of her. But when FDR and Churchill arrived, a triumphant Chiang announced that after talking to Mountbatten he agreed to all the points he had rejected the day before.50

  Stilwell meanwhile had spent the day talking to FDR about the necessity for a proper US command structure for the American and Chinese armies, such that Chiang could not negate or subvert it. Most important of all was for the USA to take over the first 30 Chinese divisions entirely. Roosevelt responded by putting on one of his ‘dumb shows’, feigning ignorance and stupidity. Stilwell reported that he acted as if gaga, asking irrelevant questions such as ‘Where are the Andaman islands?’ then breaking in on Stilwell’s explanations to say that it would be better if the US Marines rather than the US army were sent to Chungking, since the Marines were famous all over Asia. The only concrete thing Stilwell extracted was a presidential promise to equip all 90 divisions properly, though he knew in his heart Chiang would not allow them to be raised.51 Roosevelt was displaying an almost fanatical refusal to alter course on China even though Chiang had over three days provided the most palpable and blatant evidence of his unreliability, and had confirmed in detail all the critical things Stilwell had ever said about him. It must be emphasised that over the five days of the Cairo conference Chiang on three occasions consented to support an Allied advance into central Burma and then on three other occasions recanted and withdrew his consent. On 25 November, after FDR had been given the generalissimo’s agreement to operations, Chiang changed his mind. At 9 p.m. Stilwell was summoned to the presidential residence and given the bad news by Harry Hopkins. ‘My God, he’s off again,’ Stilwell noted. On the 26th, Mountbatten reported his failure to shift him. ‘Louis in at eleven to spill the dope. He’s fed up on Peanut. As who is not?’52 Then came Chiang’s further change of mind at the tea party. On the 27th, Churchill, Roosevelt and all the senior commanders departed for the Tehran conference with Stalin. Now that he did not have to face the Allied leaders again and was himself on the point of leaving for China, the generalissimo finally revealed his hand definitively. He instructed Stilwell to hold out for 10,000 tons of supplies over the Hump and an Anglo-American airborne assault on Mandalay but in return refused to make any commitment whatsoever.

  Mountbatten was meanwhile holding a conference of senior SEAC officers and described the upshot.

  Joe Stilwell absolutely staggered me by coming in and saying that the G-Mo had that morning rejected all the points which he had agreed to at the last plenary meeting, and had instructed Stilwell to try to obtain a complete reversal of every point. I told Joe, ‘I am rather hard of hearing. I am afraid I was unable to catch what you said. Please be good enough to send me a telegram at Delhi and also one to the Chiefs of Staff.’ I really could not face staying another week and in any case my best hope will be in getting the G-Mo to myself as he passes through India. I am delighted that the Prime Minister and President and the Combined Chiefs of Staff are at last being given first hand experience of how impossible the Chinese are to deal with. They have been driven absolutely mad and I shall certainly get more sympathy from the former in the future.53

  The crafty Chiang thought he had outwitted the Westerners, but he reckoned without the energy and determination of Mountbatten. Taking the first plane out, he tracked the generalissimo down at Ramgarh, where he was inspecting his New Model Army. Predictably Chiang then did another volte-face (purely to get rid of his pursuer) and again conceded everything he had refused to Stilwell, assuring Mountbatten that he was his greatest friend and that this time he had been given a sacred pledge. Madame weighed in with the old dodge to the effect that the Supreme Commander was ‘special’ and unlike other Westerners. Mountbatten had been bitten once too often to take this entirely seriously, but there was nothing more he could do.54 He gave himself a week’s relaxation in Delhi but there was bad news at every level. His American director of public relations told him that SEAC was deeply unpopular with most Americans, who felt the British should be taking orders from a US supremo, not the other way around. Even his reliable ally Wavell disappointed him. Mountbatten the movie-lover could always be buoyed up by a good film, but when the two of them went to see Casablanca, which he adored, Wavell was dismissive and censorious.55 His more acceptable partner at the pictures, Stilwell, was meanwhile sightseeing in Jerusalem and Luxor.56

  The focus of international diplomacy had now shifted to Tehran. Although Churchill and Roosevelt have often been portrayed as close comrades in the defeat of the Axis powers, the truth is that they did not really see eye to eye either as private individuals or on grand strategy. Bruised by his experience at Cairo, where he felt FDR had neglected him and taken him for granted while he courted the pointless Chiang, Churchill was further enraged by Roosevelt’s espousal of BUCCANEER over his strenuous objections. He made a note that he therefore did not consider himself bound by this decision.57 At Tehran Churchill used Stalin’s pledge to enter the war against Japan as soon as Germany was defeated as an excuse to pull out of BUCCANEER, which he said was therefore not needed. He favoured his own operation in Rhodes and the Dodecanese, but Stalin was adamant that nothing at all must detract from the earliest possible opening of the Second Front. Meanwhile the US Joint Chiefs denied that BUCCANEER would in any way impair or detract from the OVERLORD operation and insisted it must go on; if it was cancelled, Chiang would have just the excuse he wanted to do nothing. Both Marshall and King argued vociferously that cancellation of BUCCANEER would strengthen the Japanese hand in the Pacific, but the combination of Churchill and Stalin, both opposing the operation for their own different reasons, was hard to beat. FDR tried to make a decisive intervention by pointing out that BUCCANEER must go ahead, or else it would provide Chiang with spurious reasons to pull out also from the main assault on Burma planned for 1945
and at present codenamed TARZAN. Alanbrooke replied scathingly that whatever the generalissimo pulled out from was immaterial, as he was, in the idiom of the day, ‘a dead loss’.58 Mountbatten meanwhile unwittingly got across Roosevelt by using this precise moment to raise his own troop requirements to 50,000. Ismay told him that 18,000 was the maximum he would get, which was anyway a numerical ratio of three and a half to one over the inferior Japanese armies. Churchill grumbled that a request for 50,000 was an insult to the British army and minuted against Mountbatten’s request: ‘Noted. There is no doubt that a steam hammer will crack a nut.’59 For all kinds of reasons FDR’s hopes for BUCCANEER looked increasingly forlorn. Faced with Churchill’s intransigence, he blinked first. On 5 December he sent the Prime Minister a laconic three-word message: ‘BUCCANEER is off.’ Wavell noted in his diary that he had never seen Mountbatten so depressed as on receipt of this intelligence.60

  The Cairo conference marked something of a watershed in the purely military relations between Chiang’s KMT and the United States. Although Roosevelt never abandoned his dream of China as one of the post-war Big Four and thought it important to keep Chiang in the war simply to tie up Japanese divisions on the Asian mainland, he increasingly discounted the generalissimo in his war planning, concentrating instead on the island-hopping strategy in the Pacific and on getting the Soviet Union into the war. He was far less starry-eyed personally about Chiang after the meetings and his disastrous performance at Cairo, viewing him as ‘highly temperamental’. He was also prepared to pay more attention to the sophisticated reports of the State Department, which portrayed the Kuomintang as a regime riven with corruption. FDR’s fading interest in Chiang was highlighted by his increasing concentration on the relationship with Stalin and is perhaps symbolised by his failure to meet the generalissimo at Cairo airport, with the loss of face for the Chinese that entailed.61 Cairo had been a full-blown fiasco as a summit, the smiling faces at the photo opportunities notwithstanding. The mutual contact between East and West had simply resulted in China’s augmented mistrust of the West and plummeting Western confidence in Chiang in grand strategy and geopolitical terms. The key event in the last week of November 1943 was not the opening of the Cairo conference but the successful landing of the US Marines on the Gilbert islands, confirming the success of the island-hopping strategy and hastening the day when Japan would come within range of the deadly B-29s.62 But Chiang was not prepared to take his eclipse lying down. Humiliated by the cancellation of the very operation that was supposed to underline his importance, he responded by making extortionate demands. The request for 20,000 tons a month over the Hump and double the aircraft assigned to the CBI front could conceivably be regarded as bargaining positions, but his concomitant requirement of a $1 billion ‘loan’ as ‘compensation’ was merely ludicrous. Both Stilwell and Ambassador Gauss opposed this vehemently.63 They had powerful allies in Washington. Secretary Morgenthau was determined Chiang would not get another cent after the fiasco of the 1942 ‘loan’. The KMT still had $460 million of unpledged funds in the USA, and everyone knew blatant cases of corruption; for example, Madame’s nephew Kung had been given $867,000 for his personal use. FDR sent Morgenthau’s exasperated comments on to the generalissimo. He responded by asking that the USA pay at an artificial rate of exchange (20 times the market rate) for the construction of the B-29 airfields in China. For Morgenthau this was the last straw. ‘They’re just a bunch of damn crooks,’ he wrote.64

  The reputation in Washington of Chiang and the Kuomintang had never been lower. Influential voices were heard demanding that Lend-Lease to China be cancelled, that Washington withdraw all its missions from Chungking and sever all contacts with Chiang, or at the very least that the US government find a new leader to replace the generalissimo. It was pointed out that instead of the $1 billion Chiang was seeking, it would be far cheaper to spend a tenth of that sum in organising a coup that would overthrow him.65 In this perfervid atmosphere Stilwell thought it worth sounding out FDR on his intentions. Did the cancellation of BUCCANEER signal a total change of policy towards China? Alas for Stilwell’s hopes, the interview with Roosevelt on 6 December followed the same pattern as previous encounters. The President drawled on garrulously without coming to any point, and Stilwell went away disgusted and despising his commander-in-chief even more: ‘the man is a flighty fool … hopeless outlook’. He did point out to FDR that it was now his unsavoury duty to follow Chiang back to Chungking and tell him that the Allies had reneged on their promise, which would of course then let him off the hook. All FDR could suggest was sweetening the pill by promising to fly more materiel in over the Hump, now that BUCCANEER was not competing for resources. A disillusioned Stilwell confided to his diary that after what he had seen of diplomacy close up, he would rather drive a garbage truck.66 The plain fact was that after all that had happened – enough to discredit any other leader a dozen times over – Roosevelt was still not prepared to abandon his impossible dreams for China. But if Stilwell could not find a way of budging the intransigent Chiang and the President would not help him, his close contacts with Marshall at Cairo had won him some significant victories. The GALAHAD force, originally assigned to Wingate, had now been returned to him, and he still retained direction of the USAAF units in the CBI theatre, despite Mountbatten’s insistence that they should be under his direct command.67 He flew back to Chungking via Basra, Karachi, Delhi and Chabua, starting the journey on 8 December and arriving on the 12th.

  It was now Stilwell’s intention to take his army into action and spend as much time as possible at the front, away from the putrid atmosphere of Chungking. His first interview with Chiang was predictably sterile. The generalissimo refused to allow Yoke force [Y-force] to fight in Burma as long as the Allies would not make a landing in the south of the country. All the indications were that the Chinese Communists under Mao were gaining in strength and no longer feared Chiang’s military capability. The Soong sisters confided to Stilwell that Chiang was becoming increasingly unpredictable and difficult to deal with, but neither they nor anyone else could put a dent in his obduracy.68 On 16 December Stilwell saw for himself how bad things were. In a second, and longer, interview Chiang reiterated all his tired old tenets. He intended to stand on the defensive and let the Japanese attack him. His ideal scenario would be for the British to invade Burma, become bogged down and then for large-scale US forces to intervene to help their ally out; meanwhile Chiang would conserve Yoke force intact. When Stilwell pressed him on why he would never take the offensive, he said that he required a three-to-one manpower advantage over the Japanese to be sure of beating them. Stilwell pointed out that he already had that, as there were only five enemy divisions in Burma. No, eight, Chiang corrected him. Stilwell showed him chapter and verse from his intelligence reports, indicating no more than five Japanese divisions, but Chiang was adamant that there were eight, and would not be gainsaid on the point.69 Seeing his chief of staff’s dejection, Chiang for the first time proposed that Stilwell be given full powers to use the troops trained at Ramgarh and actually put this in writing. This meant Stilwell had total command of the two Chinese divisions trained at Ramgarh (X- or Ledo force). His plan was to cross the Salween and engage the enemy in eastern Burma. He prepared to leave for the jungle and wrote jubilantly to his wife: ‘Put down December 18, 1943 as the day when for the first time in history a foreigner was given command of Chinese troops with full control over all officers and no strings attached.’ On 20 December he left for the front. ‘Off for Burma again. Under better auspices than last time. Can we put it over?’70

  Despite Stilwell’s sanguine attitude, a judicious conclusion on the events of autumn 1943 and the ‘conference season’ would be that he was only just holding his own against his many enemies, and that only the unwavering support of Marshall really sustained him. On the plus side, Roosevelt was definitely becoming disillusioned with Chiang; to an extent the debacle of the Cairo conference had opened his eyes. The generalissimo furthe
r blotted his copybook at the end of 1943 by truly asinine replies to FDR’s post-Cairo memos.71 There were distinct signs by New Year 1944 that the President was getting tough with the Kuomintang. He turned down contemptuously the generalissimo’s request for a new loan, though as a face-saver he allowed him to send a delegate to Washington to discuss exchange rates and the artificial pegging of the Chinese currency against the dollar. More immediately – and more worryingly for Chiang – he announced that US Army expenditure in China would henceforth be limited to $25 million a month.72 Thus far events seemed to be swinging in Stilwell’s favour. On the other hand, Vinegar Joe had narrowly escaped recall to Washington by the fortuitous coincidence of the Soong and Chinese army conspiracies. Stilwell’s great qualities aside, he had no skill as a politician. Machiavellianism was not in his make-up, and he compounded his problems with Chiang by, so to speak, fighting on a second front against his British allies. The Limey-bashing continued apace, fuelled by a viscereral distaste for British colonialism. Stilwell confided to his associate Frank Dorn that the riot of starving refugees he had seen at Indaw in 1942 had permanently disgusted him and convinced him that he was witnessing the last days of the British Empire.73 Yet a more circumspect, less call-a-spade-a-spade man might have decided that he could not realistically wrangle with the British and the generalissimo simultaneously. Marshall warned him at Cairo that calling Chiang ‘the Peanut’ might relieve his feelings but did little to advance his status with the generalissimo. When Stilwell protested that he never called Chiang ‘the Peanut’ openly, Marshall lost patience with his friend: ‘My God! You have never lied. Don’t start now … Stop talking to your staff about these things.’74