During the discussion of Stilwell’s recommendations, Madame Chiang, in Stilwell’s words, “jumped up and… sat by me and said the G-mo had to consider ‘certain influences’ etc.” This was, in fact, quite true, and it was well understood by Stilwell. In order to keep the country together, Chiang had allowed various warlords to assume the position of commanders in the army, and if they didn’t like his orders or were offered better terms, they were perfectly capable of defecting to the Japanese or the Communists.
Moreover, an alternative to painful reform had already been presented to the generalissimo and his wife by Chennault, the “supremely confident” head of the Chinese air force, who got along beautifully with the Chiangs and made his solution to China’s problems sound absurdly easy. At the time, Chennault was operating the Air Transport Command (ATC) with only twenty-five planes, but he told the Chiangs that if he could get five hundred combat planes plus one hundred transports to bring in the necessary supplies, he would be able to cut through Japan’s sea-lanes, neutralize its air force, and make way for the Chinese land forces to take action. Claiming that his flyers had “borne [the] brunt in [the] defense of Rangoon, Burma and Yunnan,” Chennault made requests that necessitated increasing the amount and speeding the progress of war material over the Hump—the 550-mile “Skyway to Hell,” which took off from the northern part of the Indian province of Assam and landed in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan. After the fall of Rangoon in March 1942, “flying the Hump” was the only way for supplies to reach China. The perilous journey required unarmed cargo carriers to weave through or fly over 15,000-foot peaks through air currents strong enough to break up their planes. According to one account, “The five-hour 1,130 kilometer route was considered suicide by the pilots, with freak winds, monsoons, unpredictable turbulence, and the most treacherous landscape on earth.”
Conquering the Hump was only the central part of the problem. The supplies had to be shipped first from the United States to western India—a distance of 12,000 miles—then another 1,500 miles over Indian railways to Calcutta, and finally over a narrow-gauge railway to airfields in Assam. This railway, originally built to ship tea, was, in Tuchman’s words, “a bottleneck that drove men to despair.” Not only did it change rail beds three times, but shipments had to be unloaded and reloaded to cross an unbridged river by barge. Strikes due to labor conditions, sabotage by anti-British Indians, shortages from agreed-upon estimates, and the rigidity of the Indian railway managers tied up traffic for years until finally, in early 1944, the line was militarized and taken over by the Americans.
The Chinese side of the Hump was no better. Incoming fuel for planes and supplies had to be hauled over land and rivers several hundred miles past their landing place in Kunming to Chennault’s air bases, a trip that could take as long as eight weeks. In July of 1942, Chennault’s ATC became part of the U.S. Tenth Air Force, which was based in India. The incorporation did not improve its efficiency. The ATC burned one gallon of gas for every gallon it delivered to China, and eighteen tons of supplies were required for the ATC to drop a single ton of bombs on the Japanese.
With everything from gasoline and cigarettes to spark plugs and soap in such short supply, it is not surprising that intense competition developed among the users. Chennault wanted the bulk of the supplies for his airmen, while Stilwell wanted them for his ground troops. At the same time, both England and Russia were pressuring the United States for more planes and equipment. But T.V. chose to believe that Stilwell wasn’t pushing hard enough on behalf of China, and he took great pleasure in saying so. In a series of secret cables to Chiang sent in June and July 1942, he did everything he could to undermine Stilwell’s standing with the generalissimo. He apparently convinced Chiang that there was plenty of war material available, that Stilwell had the power to get it, and that the reason China was not first on the receiving end of American largesse was that Stilwell refused to ask for it. According to a wire Stilwell received from T.V., the U.S. War Department was reacting much too slowly to the generalissimo’s requests “in the absence of supporting telegram from you.” In order to encourage his cooperation in procurement, Chiang called a meeting to discuss Stilwell’s plan of training troops in India to go back into Burma. With May-ling pushing each of Stilwell’s points on her husband, he agreed to most of Stilwell’s recommendations.
Earlier on, however, the United States had promised to send 100 transport planes—a number that was cut first to 75 and then to 57. Now Stilwell had to tell Chiang that under these conditions, the 5,000 tons a month of war material that China expected would be cut to less than one tenth. The generalissimo was convinced that this shortfall was Stilwell’s fault for not sufficiently impressing Washington with China’s need, while May-ling believed that he was insufficiently powerful at home. “We’re going to see that you are made a full general,”* she told him, thinking he would be pleased. “The hell they are,” he wrote in his diary.
But the reason for the cuts had nothing to do with China. On June 21, the Germans had captured the coastal city of Tobruk in Libya, raising the possibility of a German breakthrough in the Middle East. To meet the emergency, bombers from the Indian-based U.S. Tenth Air Force, along with their transports and crews, were ordered to proceed immediately to Egypt. A group of B-24 bombers already on its way to China was told to stop at Khartoum to help the British, and, as usual, Stilwell was the bearer of the bad tidings. The Chiangs—both of them—exploded. May-ling said that every time the British got into trouble, it was the Chinese who suffered, “and such being the case there is no need for China to continue in the war.” Chiang complained that less than 10 percent of the material promised him by Roosevelt was being delivered; this, he claimed, amounted to “disobedience” of the president’s orders. “As chief of staff to me,” Chiang told Stilwell, “you are responsible for seeing to it that the promised material is forthcoming.” This was followed by an ultimatum delivered by May-ling: “The Generalissimo wants a yes or no answer whether the Allies consider this theater necessary and will support it.”
Three days later, Chiang issued what was called “The Three Demands,” to be fulfilled within two to three months’ time: (1) three American divisions to rebuild communications to China through Burma; (2) 500 combat planes; (3) delivery of 5,000 tons of war material a month. If these “minimum requirements” were not met, Chiang threatened, there would be a “liquidation” of the Chinese theater and a “readjustment” of China’s position. Stilwell agreed to forward Chiang’s terms to Washington but refused to include his personal recommendation—an addition that May-ling demanded. This, Stilwell said, would constitute his sending an ultimatum to his own government. “Madame,” he reported, “got hot… and started to bawl me out.” Stilwell took the occasion to inform May-ling that among his other, more exalted titles, he was also “a U.S. Army officer sworn to uphold the interests of the U.S.… If she doesn’t get the point,” he concluded, “she’s dumber than I think she is.”
Chiang’s threat to make “other arrangements” for China if he did not receive his designated quota of supplies was followed by purposeful rumors in appropriate places that an envoy from Japan and representatives from the puppet government in Nanking had arrived in Chungking to arrange peace terms with the Nationalist government. Ambassador Gauss agreed with Stilwell that the story was a “bluff” and so informed Washington. But Roosevelt, who did not want to take too many chances, wrote Chiang a conciliatory letter promising that as soon as there were sufficient armaments to go around, China would get them.
Chiang followed his “Three Demands” with a scheme to divest Stilwell of his control over Lend-Lease, since, as he wrote Roosevelt, Stilwell’s responsibilities to two governments were in conflict. Unlike other nations on Lend-Lease, which could use U.S. aid where and how they wanted, China was required to list its specific needs by project and give the list to Stilwell— a procedure that had been devised by the Russians, who wanted to keep Chiang from using U.S. wa
r materials to fight the Chinese Communists. The numbers were not in China’s favor. During 1942, the Lend-Lease Administration allocated 77 percent of available goods to Britain, 17.7 percent to Russia, and only 2 percent to China, of which, according to one member of the House of Representatives, less than one fourth ever even reached the Chinese.*
Aware that Lend-Lease was Stilwell’s ultimate power over the generalissimo, Chief of Staff George C. Marshall drafted a reply for the president to send Chiang in which he said that it was “not practical for all of General Stilwell’s duties to be subject to orders from you,” adding that any successors to Stilwell would face precisely the same problem. This letter broke the old Chinese convention of never saying no directly. Because of this, T.V. decided to take matters into his own hands; when it came across his desk, he changed the wording both as to what the president had said and how he had said it. He then forwarded his revised copy to Chiang. Meanwhile, Marshall had sent a copy of the original to Stilwell. After a few weeks of international misunderstandings, T.V.’s alteration was discovered. Chiang was insulted by the original letter and threatened once again to make a separate peace, while T.V. was called to the White House and informed that Stilwell’s status was not to be changed. Undeterred, T.V. continued to alter the content and wording of letters from Washington to Chungking until Roosevelt ordered that all communications from the president to the generalissimo be delivered by an official of the United States.
On July 20, 1942, Lauchlin Currie returned to Chungking. There is a school of historical thought, headed by Tuchman, that believes Currie was bamboozled by Chiang Kai-shek, “captivated” by May-ling, and, therefore, easily convinced that the Chinese “thought just as we did.” This view can now be disproved by the recent release of Currie’s papers, including his heretofore classified report to Roosevelt on this trip to China. Currie’s notes indicate that whatever his personal failings—and there were many—he understood Chiang, his wife, their party, and the causes of the most important misunderstandings between China and the United States.
Acting on the advice of T.V., the Chinese had asked the president to send Harry Hopkins to Chungking instead of Currie. Realizing that this was a matter of “prestige” and that Hopkins “did not know China,” Roosevelt decided to send Currie instead. T.V. was furious, going so far as to ask Currie to “stall” his trip and “see if we couldn’t get Hopkins after all.” Currie refused to stall; T.V. couldn’t get Hopkins; and Currie spent twelve days in Chungking in the summer of 1942, emerging with a comprehensive and perceptive forty-three-page report on the situation he found there.
While he was in Chungking, May-ling told Currie that T.V.’s stockbroker had been instructed to attribute his personal transactions to their sister Ai-ling. At one point, Currie said that Madame was positively “vitriolic” on the subject of T.V. and then suddenly blurted out, “He is my brother and I love him!” In a subsequent meeting with Madame and the G-mo, Currie talked about the misunderstandings in Washington caused by T.V.’s refusal to cooperate with the U.S. War Department in procuring war material for China. Instead of following normal procedures, Currie complained, T.V. tried to route China’s requests via the White House and, in so doing, put Roosevelt in embarassing situations.*
In his report to the president, Currie blamed the deterioration in relations between China and the United States on “the prior existence in both countries of illusions regarding the other.” Americans in China, he said, became disillusioned “when they discovered the degree of waste, inefficiency and corruption that pervades Chinese affairs,” while the Chinese, comparing their share of Lend-Lease to that of other countries, felt that “the Americans think far more of their fellow white allies than of their yellow allies.” Currie laid much of the blame for these misunderstandings on T.V.’s reluctance to forward the unvarnished truth from Washington. As an example, he cited the fact that T.V. had led Chiang to believe that Stilwell’s position would be advisory, while the United States considered Stilwell’s mandate multifunctional with the explicit power to command. The relationship between the two men, Currie said, was “the most difficult problem I had to deal with in Chungking,” and due to the clash of personalities, Currie recommended that Stilwell be replaced. He also advised that in “dealing with the Generalissimo, great care should be exercised not to wound his pride… the old Chinese forms really do matter to him, and it would pay large dividends for us to… make a point of consulting him on any of the moves we proposed in the Far East.”
On his return to the United States, Currie told one Chinese reporter that “Gen. Chiang has no intention” of engaging in an “effective war against Japan at any time” but that he “only wanted to get enough war materials from America to keep himself in power.” Currie’s analysis of the Chinese situation was followed by that of Stilwell’s aide Colonel Dorn, who wrote the War Department a few weeks later that “all aid to China must have a string which demands action from them.” Otherwise, “the present regime will do nothing but hoard the material in order to perpetuate itself after the war.… They expect an upheaval or revolution of some sort. In fact, T. V. Soong… expressed the opinion that the present regime would be out of a job six months after the war. He ought to know.”
STILWELL, WHO WAS still determined to lead a Chinese army back into Burma, had meanwhile managed to get the loan of Ramgarh, a former Indian prisoner-of-war camp west of Calcutta, in which to train the men. Britain agreed to house, feed, and pay the troops as payment for U.S. Lend-Lease, while the Americans supplied the equipment and personnel.* The program, aimed at reentering Burma in February of 1943, started in August with 8,000 to 9,000 men, and over a period of two years, 53,000 men were put through the training camp.
A large proportion of the first group, those who had survived the first Burma campaign and walked to India, had to be hospitalized on arrival. Starving, dressed in rags, riddled with malaria and dysentery, their flesh was rotted by sores caused by infected leeches that had attached themselves to the men in the jungles. They were given shots against cholera, typhoid, and smallpox, fed three meals a day, and on average gained around twenty-one pounds. In spite of a promise to send the rest of the trainees in good condition, the next groups to arrive were rejected by the American medical officers on an average of four out of ten, due to disease and underweight. The Chinese had packed thirty-five to forty men into cargo planes, some of which lacked doors, to send them to India. Chinese General Lo Cho-ying had had an even better idea: “Put 50 in a plane naked. It’s only three hours!” On the theory that it was ridiculous to waste uniforms if the men were to be given new ones in India, the soldiers were put into the planes wearing nothing but undershorts and carrying paper bags for airsickness. After several died of the cold en route, the Americans at the receiving end asked that quilted cotton jackets be left on the planes to protect the men from the freezing air, but the Chinese thought them unnecessary. Only the crew were given oxygen masks.
Once the men were inoculated and properly fed, they were issued uniforms, helmets, and boots, and put into training. Although Stilwell welcomed the recruits in their own language, their training was based on demonstration, since the rest of the American officers spoke no Chinese. “They are the greatest mimics in the world and are learning very, very fast,” said one of the generals. American officers working in tandem with Chinese officers, however, led to distinct clashes. One point of contention was the harsh discipline imposed by the Chinese. A man could be shot for using a grenade to catch fish or beaten to the bone for losing his blanket. One American general was appalled to see his Chinese counterpart throw a paper listing the number of soldiers who had died on their way to the camp into the wastebasket, while carefully accounting for lists of supplies. The biggest disagreements, however, arose over the issue of the traditional Chinese squeeze, since the enlisted men’s pay no longer went through the hands of their superiors but was distributed directly to them. General Lo, the Chinese general who had suggested sending the men t
o India naked, left Ramgarh when it became clear that he could no longer net the 100,000 rupees* a month he was accustomed to keeping for himself.
Every so often Stilwell had to fly to Delhi for meetings and what he termed “poisonous paper work.” He was disgusted, as only he could be, by the magnificence of both American and British headquarters, where, it was said, the “gleam of brass hats… lit the way for airplanes to land in a fog.” On August 30, he wrote his wife that he had “now arrived at the pinnacle of social success,” having been invited to lunch by the antediluvian marquess of Linlithgow, a six-foot, six-inch Scotsman who served as His Majesty’s viceroy in India. The Viceroy’s Palace, which Tuchman called “the architectural apotheosis of the British Empire,” required a staff of three hundred Indian servants, all of whom wore white robes. Stilwell, who had never been fond of the British, thought it the apotheosis of pretension.
Returning from India to Chungking, Stilwell showed Chiang photographs of the training camp at Ramgarh. With the help of his wife, Chiang was playing both ends against the middle—encouraging Stilwell because he was still in control of Lend-Lease and at the same time actively supporting a bid by Chennault to take over Stilwell’s position. Chennault did not believe in ground campaigns. He pointed with pride at the past successes of his Flying Tigers and sent a personal letter to President Roosevelt claiming that if he were given 105 modern fighter planes, 30 medium bombers, and 12 heavy bombers, he could “accomplish the downfall of Japan… probably within six months, within one year at the outside.”* As a follow-up to Chennault’s letter, Chiang increased his campaign for Stilwell’s recall, relying on James McHugh,† who could be counted on to pass information he had gleaned in the Chiang home on to the U.S. government. After lunch with the Chiangs, McHugh sent off a letter to Frank Knox, secretary of the navy, in which he said that Stilwell’s plan to recapture Burma was, in fact, purely a matter of regaining personal pride and not the best way to conduct the war. The secretary of the navy showed the letter to Secretary of War Stimson, who passed it on to Chief of Staff Marshall, who said that McHugh, then on his way back to the United States, should never again be allowed to serve in China.
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