Stilwell the Patriot

by David Rooney

  Hurley continued to be the channel for correspondence between Roosevelt and Chiang, and in the next exchange he added two comments of his own: first, he now felt that Chiang and Stilwell were incompatible; and second, ominously, that if Roosevelt continued to back Stilwell he might lose Chiang – and China as well. While these negotiations about his future continued, Stilwell had to carry out his normal responsibilities. He had once again to admonish Chennault for using – without permission – 3,000 tons of petroleum from the strategic stockpile, an action which endangered operations to help MacArthur’s advance in the Pacific. At almost the same time Chennault was very stiffly rebuked by MacArthur after his planes flew over Manila docks, compromising security covering actions in the Philippines. Stilwell, with his passion to ensure that every effort was made to fight the Japanese, went off even at this stage to visit the front near Kweilin and to bolster the Chinese leadership.

  On 17 October, in an atmosphere of gloom, he wrote to his wife:

  We are in the doldrums for fair, just sitting and waiting for the big Boys to make a decision. If a military commander took two months to make a decision, he would be drawn and quartered, skinned, hung, burned at the stake and otherwise suitably disciplined. But any goddam politician can horn in and keep the war dangling indefinitely. I am in the dark about the attitude our people are taking. But whatever the reason, we are the stepchildren of World War II (Election coming up). I am getting sour enough about this pusillanimous proceeding to warrant being called Vinegar Joe … The Peanut sits on his hands and watches with great glee the fool Americans who actually get out and fight. This is not a letter, I am just scribbling to keep from biting the radiator.

  During the next two days Stilwell must have realised that his recall was imminent because Chiang, at Roosevelt’s request, was suggesting possible successors – even nominating Eisenhower. On discovering that Hurley was no longer showing him messages from the President, he wrote, ‘The thing begins to stink badly.’ The next day, which was his thirty-fourth wedding anniversary he merely noted, ‘T.V. says G-mo will be adamant in getting rid of me. A hell of an anniversary Raining.’

  When the final crunch came on 19 October, he wrote:

  THE AXE FALLS, Radio from George Marshall. I am ‘recalled’. [General Daniel] Sultan in temporary command. Wedemeyer to command U.S. troops in China. C.B.I. to split. So F.D.R. has quit. Everybody is horrified about Washington … Hurley feels very badly. Told me he has lost me the command. Sees his mistakes now – too late. Says Peanut accepts Wedemeyer. Everything will now be lovely.

  In a letter to his wife he was deliberately low-key, saying that the axe had fallen and he would be on his way to see her in the next few days, though adding that from the start he had thought F.D.R. would sell out. He concluded, ‘So now I am hanging up my shovel and bidding farewell to as merry a nest of gangsters as you’ll meet in a long day’s march.’

  After the decision was made things progressed swiftly He was offered China’s highest award but declined because as a senior officer he could not accept a foreign award. Privately in his diary he wrote, ‘The Peanut offers me China’s highest decoration. Told him to stick it up his ——.’ The following day he had a farewell interview with Chiang, who appeared to be full of regret. Stilwell noted, ‘I told him whatever he thought of me, to remember my motive was only China’s good.’ He went to see Madame Sun Yat-Sen, ‘who cried and was generally broken up’. He called on the American ambassador, Gauss, who had decided to resign. He left Chungking at 7.15 a.m. on 22 October and flew to Myitkyina, where he met Wedemeyer and Sultan, who were to take over in Chungking and Burma. On 24 October he was in Delhi on his way home.

  He wrote a number of papers in the weeks after he left Chungking in which he refuted the report that he left because of friction with Chiang. He justified his whole policy, arguing that while the Japanese held Burma the most urgent task was to reopen the Burma Road to get supplies into China and help them to fight the Japanese. He referred scathingly to the decision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to give the bulk of the Hump supplies to Chennault and the Fourteenth Air Force. He had opposed this decision from the start, and now in reaction to the air attacks the Japanese had captured all the forward airfields, as he had always said they would. There was now nothing to show for all the effort and expense involved.

  Behind all his comments lay Stilwell’s fury that, as a patriotic American, he had been unable to prevent the gigantic waste of resources provided by America from being squandered by Chennault’s misguided policy; even more, he directed his fury at the deliberate duplicity and deceit of Chiang, who grasped everything he could lay hold of and dishonestly put it on one side to increase his chances of defeating the Communists after the war instead of using it to fight the Japanese.

  CHAPTER 15

  Finale

  Mrs Stilwell heard of her husband’s recall in a thoughtful message from George Marshall, and she immediately travelled to Washington to greet him when he arrived back on 1 November 1944. They were quickly given an indication of what was to come. They embraced as Stilwell came off the aircraft, and as they got into the staff car they were surprised to see the crew lined up. A staff officer was haranguing the crew and warning that there must be no discussion of the China situation. They drove to the officers’ club and she noticed that he looked thin and weary. When they reached their apartment they were followed in by two generals. Stilwell said to his wife, ‘I think they want a word with me.’ He was told that the Chinese situation was dynamite; he must not say a word to anyone and must not give any interviews. Next, an impertinent young officer came in and virtually told Stilwell that he must leave Washington at once. Stilwell refused, saying he would not leave until he had spoken to Marshall. He was told that this was not possible because Marshall was away for a few days, but surprisingly Marshall, who lived quite close by, came to the apartment soon afterwards. Marshall brought the same message: ‘Not a word. This is dynamite.’

  The Stilwells were flown out of Washington. When their plane made a stop-over at a Dallas military airfield they were shocked when they were forbidden to leave the field and quartered in separate rooms. At last, in bright sunshine, they reached Carmel, where they were met by their three daughters.

  Sixty years later it might be assumed that tight security and the muzzling of a four-star general were a response to some dramatic military development, news of which could have jeopardised the lives of men in battle. The reverse was true. Stilwell arrived in Washington only a few days before the 1944 Presidential election. During the election campaign Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Roosevelt’s Republican rival, in an early indication of America’s paranoia about Communism, had alleged that Communists were taking over the allocation of supplies to China. Roosevelt claimed that it had become the dirtiest Presidential campaign in history. (Writing in the week of the Republican convention of George W. Bush in September 2004, it could be asked whether every Presidential election campaign is the dirtiest in history.)

  On 31 October, the day before Stilwell’s arrival, Brooks Atkinson – a journalist who had been with Stilwell in Chungking – managed despite efforts to block it to get an article published in the New York Times. It caused a furore. It claimed that Stilwell’s recall, demanded by Chiang, was the victory of a moribund and anti-democratic regime. It claimed that Chiang’s government was totally distrusted and that China was falling apart; to continue with support for Chiang would mean that the USA was acquiescing in an autocratic, unrepresentative regime. The article opened the floodgates of criticism, which for so long had been suppressed. When forced to comment on Stilwell’s recall, Roosevelt, the consummate politician, cleverly maintained that Chiang and Stilwell had fallen out some time before and that this was the result. He denied that it had anything to do with politics, or strategy, or the Hump supplies; it was just a matter of personalities. Fortunately for his campaign, this superficial and less than honest explanation appeared to satisfy American voters.

  Th
e frantic political reaction to Stilwell’s arrival may in part be explained by his increasingly outspoken views on the issue of Chiang and the Communists. He was known to have said that Chiang’s regime meant high taxes, corruption and neglect, and that it was a petty dictatorship supported by concentration camps, a Gestapo and a powerful secret service. In contrast the Communists cut taxes, ruled well and encouraged democratic processes, which was why the Chinese people were flocking to them. These views were fuelled by Stilwell’s passionate conviction, as a patriotic American, that Chiang’s gigantic deceit and dishonesty towards the American people in the diversion of Lend–Lease supplies for his own ends should be made public. At the same time, with equal passion and patriotic fervour he had devoted all his time and effort to the defeat of the Japanese. To achieve this goal he would have used any forces that were effective and available, and he had realised before anyone else did that the Chinese Communist forces were far more effective than those of the Kuomintang.

  Initially, after he reached home, he was appointed to command ground forces in the USA and to oversee their training, but he soon realised that this was just a sop and found it deeply frustrating. He hankered after an active command, but this was not easy to arrange in view of his stature as a four-star general. His feelings are understandable because at the time it was generally assumed that the war against Japan would last another two years. His frustration continued, and his deep hurt at the way he had been treated and by Roosevelt’s refusal to see him lingered for the rest of his life. He received a little solace from his new role as a public figure. He was guest of honour at West Point and he had a meeting with Vice President Harry Truman, with whom he established a good rapport.

  In January 1945 the road from Ledo finally linked up with the Burma Road – a truly magnificent achievement by the American engineers. General Lewis Pick, who had stoically driven forward the whole project and was a staunch ally of Stilwell, sent out the first convoy, and Roosevelt and Chiang made the most of the publicity. Chiang claimed, ‘We have broken the siege of China,’ and he announced that the road would be named after Stilwell, who merely mused, ‘I wonder who put him up to that?’ General Sultan, who had worked with Stilwell in Burma and took over from him on his recall, said that it was Stilwell’s indomitable will that had opened the Burma Road. Stilwell himself had the opportunity to pay tribute to the soldiers, aircrew, engineers and labourers, many of whom had given their lives in the great enterprise.

  After this he spent many weeks with his staff preparing a very long and detailed report on the history of the China–Burma–India theatre. In this he robustly maintained his theme that America had made a major blunder by providing Lend–Lease without securing a firm commitment to action from Chiang. The report concluded with a severe condemnation of Chiang’s government and forecast its downfall. The report was never published because Stilwell refused to cut out his criticism of Chiang and the British. During this depressing period his achievements did gain some recognition. In February 1945 Stimson decorated him with the Legion of Merit and an Oak Leaf cluster to his Distinguished Service Medal. Stimson was a consistent supporter of Stilwell (though for political reasons he did not meet him on his return to Washington), and at the award ceremony he said that no decoration had given him more pleasure.

  Events in China were soon to justify Stilwell’s views. Assured of American support, Chiang became increasingly unreasonable. By this time Mao Tse-Tung had emerged as a brilliant and successful guerrilla leader, and the powerful position of the Communist forces would soon force America to face the dilemma this posed for its policy in China. In Chungking an increasing number of Americans were suggesting that the decision to co-operate with the Communists should be taken whether or not Chiang agreed. Responsibility for achieving some co-operation fell to Patrick Hurley, who became Ambassador when Stilwell left. He was expected to achieve great things, but he appeared to accept uncritically all the blandishments of Chiang and his circle, and he rapidly alienated most of his staff, who saw all too clearly that Stilwell had been right. Roosevelt clung to the argument, which Chiang had used at the time of Stilwell’s dismissal, that American demands could appear to be an infringement of Chinese sovereignty. He therefore insisted that America could not deal with the Communists without Chiang’s approval. He held to this position even though other well-informed advisers pointed out that Chiang would never agree to the Communists joining his government because their influence would be too strong. The alternative was that the Communists might overthrow Chiang anyway.

  By the time Stilwell received his decoration, the focus of Sino-American relations had moved from the crisis area of southern China and Chungking to the world stage, when Roosevelt and Churchill met with Stalin at Yalta in the Crimea in early February 1945 to plan for the post-war world. Roosevelt travelled on the USS Quincy to Malta, where he met Churchill, and they flew on to Yalta. Each leader had different agendas, but clearly the resettlement of Europe after the defeat of Germany had the highest priority. Roosevelt, now very ill and exhausted, wanted to ensure the creation of the United Nations. Churchill, more cynical and realistic, wanted to concentrate on the future of Poland and prevent the spread of communism into central Europe. In sharp contrast Stalin, ruthless and well prepared, was determined to establish – as he argued – an independent Poland under his influence. Because of their differing agendas Roosevelt and Churchill were outsmarted by Stalin. Attempting to be the benign elder statesman, Roosevelt thought he was better than Churchill at handling Stalin, but in fact they were both hoodwinked (it was later discovered that all their rooms and even the garden around the former imperial palace where they stayed had been bugged). By brutal realpolitik Stalin achieved his objective over Poland, but the issue of the Far East was more easily settled. Roosevelt wanted Russia to attack Japan as soon as Germany was defeated, hoping that this would save an estimated one million American lives in the final onslaught on Japan. Stalin, for his part, was happy to declare war at that stage, when most of the fighting was over, and, at little cost, to gain a powerful place at the peace settlement where he could advance Russia’s interests in Manchuria. The actual agreement for Russia to attack Japan was made privately between Roosevelt and Stalin on 8 February.

  Chiang was not present at Yalta and his interests were hardly mentioned, but partly for form’s sake it was agreed that when the United Nations was set up China would have a permanent seat on the Security Council. This apparently innocuous decision was to cause bitter international conflict for the next twenty years. Chiang had failed to carry out any of the undertakings he had made at the Cairo Conference, and partly for this reason the promise – made at Cairo – to allow him to take over Indo-China was reversed.

  In March 1945, when Stilwell was receiving flattering comments from Chungking saying how greatly he was missed, he did at last meet Roosevelt, who was affable. Stilwell thought the President looked terrible, though not as bad as he appeared in the pictures from Yalta. In Chungking Wedemeyer, now the senior American commander there, failed to grasp the issue of Lend–Lease, and the tonnage that was being flown over the Hump increased to more than 30,000 tons a month, on top of which there were now the supplies that were beginning to move up the Stilwell Road. Still there was no adequate response from Chiang.

  By this time it was clear that Germany was close to defeat. Stalin was determined that Soviet forces, not the western Allies, should capture Berlin, and there was intense competition between Zukov and the other Red Army commanders to achieve that prize. More than 150 infantry divisions and over 6,000 tanks raced towards the German capital, determined to exact savage revenge for all the Nazi atrocities. The end came more quickly than expected when, on 30 April, Hitler committed suicide in the Berlin bunker. The defeat of Germany turned attention back to the Pacific and the campaign against Japan.

  In the background to the assault on Japan, with its complex military and political issues, lay the development of the atomic bomb – the Manhattan Project
– but in the spring of 1945 it was still not known when it would be completed. Already on 1 April American forces had attacked Okinawa, some 400 miles southwest of Japan, and were engaged in a prolonged and bitter fight for this crucial island base. At the same time General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz, now respectively commanders of land and sea forces in the Pacific, were ordered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to finalise plans for the assault on Japan. The uncertainty about when the atom bomb would be ready is highlighted by the plan which MacArthur and Nimitz produced. In the first phase, code-named Olympic and to be carried out in November 1945, twelve divisions would take Kyushu, the nearest Japanese mainland island to Okinawa, and in the second phase, Coronet, Tokyo would be taken by fourteen divisions in March 1946.

  After a prolonged and bloody fight, the Americans captured Okinawa by the middle of June 1945. They sustained 50,000 killed and wounded, and the Japanese double that number. The very heavy losses of men and ships on the American side were mainly caused by the kamikaze attacks on the US fleet. This was a new tactic and difficult to counteract as the suicide pilots would hit their target unless their plane was literally blown out of the sky. The capture of Okinawa and the terrific build-up of American pressure had an almost immediate effect in southern China, an area where Stilwell was still hankering after active command. Fulfilling all his worst predictions, the Japanese threatened an attack on Kunming, but before this happened they started to withdraw from southern China, destroying all the towns and cities as they left. The Kuomintang forces slowly occupied the areas the Japanese had left, often with false or even ludicrous claims of military success. Although Chiang was then receiving a huge increase of supplies both over the Hump and from the Stilwell Road, he did nothing, and Wedemeyer came face to face with the frustrations that Stilwell had suffered for so long