Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-1945

by Barbara W. Tuchman

Their concern was not simply how to win but how to emerge from the war with existing interests enhanced or at least preserved. The United States had not yet adopted the Clausewitz concept of war as a continuation of policy. War was still considered an aberration, something to be finished off as quickly as possible so that society could go about its regular business.

In a wrathful reply to the War Department, intended for if not addressed to Marshall, he said he wanted no more expressions of support if this was what they came to in practice. “I read your profane message,” Marshall acknowledged by letter, “and I sympathize with you in your reaction.”

At dinner one evening, apropos of a miners’ strike called by John L. Lewis, Roosevelt asked Madame what her Government would do in such circumstances in wartime, and when she drew a finger across her throat he threw his head back and laughed aloud and called across the table to his wife, “Eleanor, did you see that?”

Stilwell was pleased that his visitors had had a look for themselves at the “machinery of Chinese government” and at the personalities—meaning Chiang and Ho Ying-chin—with whom he had to deal. Arnold had said to him on leaving, “You ought to get a laurel wreath,” and wrote afterwards, “Dear Joe: You have one S.O.B. of a job….If at any time you think I can help, just yell.”

Fillers repeatedly promised by the War Ministry, according to a definite schedule negotiated with Stilwell, never appeared, or straggled in prodded by bayonets in such sorry shape that it required a special program of five or six weeks with three meals a day, and mainly sleep and short walks the first week, to make them fit for duty. On the way to the depots recruits were not fed; they lived on what they could snatch from the villages at gun point, adding to the anger and misery of the country people. Surplus drafts were always ordered on the basis of expected loss. “Ho expects one third of replacements to die or desert en route,” Stilwell wrote. “And he calmly accepts the situation.” The rate of loss by death or desertion of all Chinese conscripts in 1943 was 44 percent, or 750,000 out of a total of 1,670,000—a “terrible indictment of China’s leaders.”

A strike was called soon after the opening by the 23 interpreters, who as members of the scholar class suffered severely from the inflation. Colonel Tseng demonstrated to an American friend how these matters were settled in China. He issued ammunition to a platoon of school troops whom he assigned to guard the interpreters’ barracks with orders to shoot anyone leaving, even for meals. When the interpreters sent word the next day that they were willing to negotiate, he had them brought to his office under armed guard, placing a loaded pistol and a prepared statement on his desk, and ordered each to sign the paper stating they were satisfied with their pay, otherwise “I will shoot you dead.”

Informed by Marshall, Stilwell summed up the decision as based on “total misapprehension of the character, intentions, authority and ability of Chiang Kai-shek.” Privately he thought Madame had “put it over FDR like a tent.” Chiang’s Government was “a one-man joke. The KMT is his tool. Madame is his front. The silly U.S. propaganda is his lever. We are his suckers.”

At one point in discussions after the formal session the President, who was intensely interested in the character of Chiang Kai-shek, asked Stilwell and Chennault for their opinions. “He’s a vacillating tricky undependable old scoundrel who never keeps his word,” Stilwell replied. Chennault nobly offered, “Sir, I think the Generalissimo is one of the two or three greatest military and political leaders in the world today. He has never broken a commitment or promise made to me.”

Stilwell had made no contact with Chou En-lai or other Communists and, except for Davies, had not allowed any of his staff to meet with them. “Don’t let me hear of your trying it,” he warned when Dorn suggested it; “we’re here with the Government.” Six months earlier Chou En-lai had reiterated his invitation to American military observers to come to north China to study the ground for future operations at first hand, but the suggestion was not pursued.

He was one of those individuals who, though conscious of their quick intelligence and superior ability, for some reason do not think highly of themselves and even more lowly of most other people. This makes for being cantankerous. Yet Stilwell was basically optimistic and cheerful and happy when with his family or people he trusted.

He once said to Ambassador Bullitt, “I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing of him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.” He believed that by cooperating fully and amicably with Stalin on such matters as OVERLORD, and meeting legitimate demands such as access to a warm-water port like Dairen, he could bring the Soviet Union wholeheartedly into the planned league of united nations. In the cordial mood of a historic meeting he formed the conclusion that Stalin was “getatable” and could be drawn into postwar cooperation for common aims.

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.

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.

He lived with his aide Dick Young in a basha or bamboo hut or sometimes a tent, with an underground dugout for shelter, a packing case for a desk and only the luxury of two wicker chairs as a concession to rank. Here he slept on a cot or in a hammock stretched between two trees, shaved and washed from a helmet, stood in line for chow and ate C-rations from a mess kit.

He never had any trouble getting along with either British or Chinese who in his opinion were doers and fighters. This was the reason why he often wished he could command the Communists who seemed to be both, and why he admired the Russians for their stunning resistance at Leningrad and fight at Stalingrad. He sent congratulations to the Red Army on the occasion of its twenty-sixth birthday and received a message from Stalin in reply.

General Sultan asked him the unavoidable question: how was it possible that three Japanese divisions could come through the mountains in sufficient strength to endanger Imphal when the British staff had been claiming for two years that to send an expedition in the opposite direction through the same country was impossible? Mountbatten offered the usual SEAC explanation of resources and logistics and this and that, but the real reason was will. In military as in other human affairs will is what makes things happen. There are circumstances that can modify or nullify it, but for offense or defense its presence is essential and its absence fatal. In India the will to hold was firm, withdrawal was unallowable, and the British fought in that spirit.

The 66th Regiment took the Jambu Bum on March 19, his sixty-first birthday. By some miracle in the woods, a large chocolate cake inscribed in icing “Happy Birthday Uncle Joe” graced the occasion, served from a makeshift camp table under tall trees. Wearing an old sweater, Stilwell cut the cake with a bolo knife and handed out pieces to officers and enlisted men as they filed past. His face had changed in two years. In contrast to the hard healthy look at the start of the war, he appeared old and worn with deep lines around mouth and eyes and a white patch in the middle of his hair. He was suffering from a liver ailment but, bent on reaching his goal in time, he refused to be hospitalized. A birthday telegram from Marshall assured him that “your work may well be of historic importance in this war and the future of China” and his staff in Chungking radioed, “You have the admiration, affection and loyalty of every individual in your command.” Roundup published an analysis of CBI’s controversial commander which concluded, “Someday when the war is only a filthy memory the whole story of Stilwell in Asia will be told, the epic of an unpretentious man who went forth sword in hand and slew the dragons of adversity in their dens.”

Alone of all commanders, Allied or enemy in any theater on any front, he could not count on field commanders who would carry out his directions as a matter of course.

At this point American impatience at last reached the point of quid pro quo, although, as sometimes happens at historic moments, the originating authority for the decision is not clear cut. Roosevelt was absent in Warm Springs. Stilwell communicated with Marshall and received assurance that unless the Y-force moved, its Lend-Lease supplies should end. Stilwell so instructed General Hearn, his Chief of Staff in Chungking, in a message reading, “I agree fully with George. If the Gmo won’t fight, in spite of all his promises and all our efforts, I can see no reason for our wasting another ton. I recommend diversion to air activities of all tonnage being delivered to any Chinese agency.” To avoid another issue of face with Chiang Kai-shek the ensuing negotiations were carried on by Hearn with Ho Ying-chin at the working level below the throne.

When retreat was finally ordered in mid-July Japanese casualties including ill and wounded had reached 85 to 90 percent and the dead numbered 65,000 out of the original 155,000. On these same trails the refugees of the exodus of 1942 had dropped and died, now to be covered by the rotting corpses of their conquerors. The senseless tides of war rolled and receded impersonally over the shadowed uplands of Burma.

After six months in Chengtu an American captain confessed, “I’d like to get a year’s leave of absence from the Army to organize a really efficient revolution in this country.”

China’s misgovernment was not so much a case of absolute as of ineffective rule. If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements, corrupts even more.

In the summer of 1944 growing impatience with the paralysis of Chungking turned American military interest toward the war potential of the Communists.

He had been favorably impressed in 1938 by Yeh Chien-ying, the Communist Chief of Staff, and his associates, and he had not forgotten the word passed to him from Chou En-lai after the defeat in Burma: “I would serve under General Stilwell and I would obey.”

At one time he thought of using Communists to make up the desperately needed replacements for the Y-force on the basis of 20 to a company of 100. The idea was dropped after Dorn discussed it with Hsiao I-shu, the Y-force Chief of Staff, who said that on a 20 percent basis the newcomers would have the whole company Communist within two weeks.

Under the name DIXIE for the rebel side, and for the song “Is It True What They Say About Dixie?,” the Military Observers Mission was ready to go in March but the Generalissimo continued to stall. The President renewed his request in April, without success, and at that point the matter passed into the hands of yet another special envoy, Vice-President Henry Wallace.

Langdon’s own conclusion, as radical as Stilwell’s, was that nothing much could help China without a change at the top. “Present trends,” he wrote, “can be changed only through the death of Chiang or by successful revolution.”

In a brief prepared for Wallace, John Service suggested the answer lay in broadening American options not only by support of liberal elements but also by withdrawing unconditional support for a government which in any free election would be rejected by 80 percent of the voters. A United States policy that could find no other option, he suggested, was one of “indolent short-term expediency.”

He joined Mountbatten at his residence, the King’s Pavilion, for a farewell lunch, remarking afterwards, “I’ve got to quit eating with Louis. I actually like those rum cocktails.” Two days later at 3:45 on the afternoon of August 3 Myitkyina fell after a siege of 78 days. “Over at last,” Stilwell wrote next morning. “Thank God. Not a worry in the world this a.m. For five minutes anyway.”

Chungking and in some cases killed in toto, the tone of enthusiasm could not be squeezed out. The correspondents humanized the Communist leaders for their readers, telling how Mao had worked his way through school; how Kao Kang, chief of the Party’s Northwest Bureau, was the son of a poor peasant beaten to death by the bailiffs of a Shensi militarist because he had failed to pay the tax on his donkey; how Wang Chen, a “dashing brilliant” brigade commander, had once been a fireman on the Peking-Hankow Railway. They told of doctors, students, university teachers and former YMCA secretaries all working “at a high pitch for their country with the conviction that the ways adopted here are right.” In the fall when a second group of journalists came, they reported plentiful harvests and fruit in abundance, pears and grapes, pumpkins and tomatoes, buckwheat, millet, cotton and tobacco.

Brooks Atkinson happily described local theatricals and unrationed gasoline for the ten trucks of Yenan and the Times obliged him with a friendly headline, “YENAN, A CHINESE WONDERLAND CITY.” The journalists reported what they saw and heard and the saddest thing about it, in the long, cruel light of history, was that it was all true.

The Chinese Communists of 1944 did not appear alarming, but on the contrary, like most challengers who have yet to succeed, rather attractive. In their rough and rumpled clothes, their earnest talk, their hard work and simple life, their energy, vitality and sincerity, they were a refreshing contrast to the world of the Kuomintang. That was their chief charm. In the absence of war effort by the Central Government especially after ICHIGO, it began to be taken for granted by Americans that the United States would have to cooperate with the Communists. As soldiers they looked useful. They were “better men physically,” as General Dorn later testified, “better fed, better clothed…with better morale than the Nationalist troops.” Their leaders on the whole appeared more able, less corrupt, fundamentally stronger men than those of the Kuomintang.

Nelson’s selection was the genesis of a principle of political appointment. “You get three years in Washington to find out whether or not you are a schlemiel,” Morgenthau said of him at this time to his assistant Harry Dexter White. “And if you are you get promoted,” White replied.

Believing that the war could be won for him without his additional effort, Chiang predicated his policy in so far as he had any, on survival in power while the Japanese were defeated by the Allies outside China. As far as the external enemy was concerned, he had made a shrewd, and as it was to prove, a sound calculation.

Stilwell stated his position on the Communists flatly and frankly in a memorandum for Hurley. “The 18th Group Army (Reds) will be used. There must be no misunderstanding on this point. They can be brought to bear where there will be no conflict with Central Government troops but they must be accepted as part of the team during the crisis.” This was not exactly a conspirator’s undercover plot to use the Communists to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek as was later, in the hysterical days of American anti-Communism, suggested. Hurley, who subsequently joined and largely assisted the hysteria, at this time took Stilwell’s proposition for granted and made no demurrer. Stilwell was equally plain with Marshall. “If CKS and Co are allowed to control supplies you know who will get them. You also know who will not get them. Somehow we must get arms to the Communists who will fight.” In the last three words lay his interest.

A rigid Communism was not seen as the replacement, and the reason why it was not was that few believed the Chinese Communists were “real” Communists. This negative assumption was derived from the syllogism that while Communism was known to be a bad thing, it seemed to operate in many ways as a good thing in China; therefore it could not be orthodox Communism. The difficulty was resolved by referring to its proponents, as did the President and Captain Carlson in an exchange of letters at this time, as “so-called Communists.”*

Stilwell invariably referred to them, as he had to the Kuomintang in its early days, as Reds (interchanging it with “Rebs” in 1911), signifying revolutionaries. To a man named for a hero of Bunker Hill there was nothing inherently un-American about revolution. China had been in need of revolution for a long time, and to most Americans sympathetic to that need, the Communists appeared as modern Taipings. They were considered to be an energetic variety of progressives or, in a phrase of the time, “agrarian reformers” (once rendered by Stilwell as “agricultural liberals”), nor was this necessarily naive.

“agrarian reformers” (once rendered by Stilwell as “agricultural liberals”),

Their future alignment in international affairs was not, in 1944, necessarily fixed. What course Chinese Communism might have taken if an American connection had been brought to bear is a question that lost opportunities have made forever unanswerable. The only certainty is that it could not have been worse.

Although there was much murmuring only one member of the Standing Committee ventured a reply. He said Stilwell might be the best man they could get “who understands China and the ways of the people” whereas a new man might be worse “because the usual American is not so considerate and he may want things done quicker and he may be more brusque.” That at least was a unique tribute.

The guest was laconic. Asking that the Generalissimo remember only that his motives had been for China’s good, he gave the war slogan Tsui hou sheng li (For the final victory) and departed.

Because of the secrecy only Hurley and T. V. Soong were at the airfield to say goodbye. Atkinson joined the departing party and at the last minute Ho Ying-chin drove up, emerged from his car and saluted. Stilwell returned the salute, looked around, asked, “What are we waiting for?” and took off.

Chiang Kai-shek still stood, confident of American support, “too weak to rule,” as a fellow countryman said, “too strong to be overthrown.”

American policy remained fixed in the proper position of refusing to deal independently with, or aid, a dissident group in domestic conflict with the sovereign government. This was correct but unreal. The sovereignty of the Central Government was a husk, just as its democracy was an illusion. The Communists were not, as Hurley maintained in a statement to Chou En-lai, merely one of the political parties of China different from the rest only because it was armed, but a virtually independent body with the de facto attributes of statehood—political organization, territorial control and an army. The Communist pretense, for the time being, that they were merely an element within the state and willing to negotiate unification on certain terms helped to confuse the issue but not the facts. They were dynamic and growing while the Kuomintang was eroding.

The best it could offer was a general directive of October 22 stating that America’s aim was to see China a friendly, unified, independent nation “with a stable government resting, in so far as practicable, on the freely expressed support of the Chinese people.” Under this canopy, acts and decisions in China continued to tie the United States to a government which met none of the criteria.

But the hounding of the China foreign service officers through multiplying loyalty investigations and subversion hunts had barely begun. The attacks and savagery that were soon to rage over America’s China policy wrecked careers, blasted reputations and by the eventual dismissal of Davies, Service and others cowed the future exercise of independent judgment in the foreign service.

In charters and declarations American aims were democratic but in practice the executants opted for the old regime. In China the decision was not merely futile; it aligned America in popular eyes with the oppressor and landlord and tax collector, it disheartened the liberal forces and violently antagonized the future rulers. While many suspected that the effort was misguided, American policy could not readjust. It preferred the status quo even when the status quo was a sinking ship. There seemed to be no feasible alternative. To abandon the legal government for the Communists was not within American capacity and would have meant political suicide at home. The only other possibility was Stilwell’s advice to “get out—now” and this was ahead of its time by a year and a half.

“Isn’t Manchuria a spectacle?” Stilwell wrote. Then followed the comment about Marshall, and then the sentence, “It makes me itch to throw down my shovel and get over there and shoulder a rifle with Chu Teh.”*1 The itch represented for Stilwell, as for so many others, an inclination toward the Chinese Communists that was simply the obverse of disgust with the Kuomintang. His casual remark tossed off in a private letter was seized upon by extremists of both left and right and made the foundation of a marvelous ideological structure purporting to demonstrate his allegiance to Yenan.

Only the unlimited accusations of the McCarthy era combining with the relentless animus of Alsop and Chennault could have produced this remarkable fiction.

It was known that although he had the DSC, DSM and Legion of Merit, his one wish was for the Combat Infantryman Badge, a simple pin with a wreathed rifle generally reserved for the enlisted foot soldier who proved himself under fire. Award of the badge to General Stilwell was announced on October 11 by Under Secretary of War Patterson who brought it in person to San Francisco. It was not, however, pinned on in a bedside ceremony lest Stilwell realize that he was dying. He slept during most of the last two days, woke briefly to ask the nurse, “Say, isn’t this Saturday?” (it was), and died in his sleep shortly after noon on October 12, 1946.