Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-1945 by Barbara W. Tuchman (Random House)
Joseph Stilwell loved China. From his first visit in 1911, when he spent seventeen days traveling through a country that was racked with revolution, he soaked up everything he could with complete gusto.
By the time the Qing Dynasty was replaced by Sun Yat-sen’s Republic, China was a country that still lived in the Middle Ages. While western countries applauded a new age of freedom and democracy under the new republic, the fledgling government was faced with a population of 400,000,000 that was 70-80 per cent illiterate, in a country that was largely without sanitation, running water, electricity, or a transportation system that wasn’t “conducted by human muscle.” When Stilwell returned to China after World War I, little had changed but the reigning players. Sun Yat-sen was dead and three warlords battled for supremacy against the Nationalist forces of the Republic, the Kuomintang, led by Sun’s protege, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. By 1928, Chiang’s forces had prevailed, the General was in control of the government, while Japanese influence was making itself known in Manchuria.
The stage was being set for a military, political, and psychological disaster that would take place over many blood-soaked years and would drag China into the 20th century. The three main players were the Generalissimo, President Franklin Roosevelt, and the stubborn Yankee soldier. Joe Stilwell.
When the Japanese invaded China, the Domino Theory was born. If China fell, so would all of Asia. Southeast Asia was already being devoured by Japan and within China, two battles were raging, one against the Japanese and one against Communist rebels who had broken with the Kuomintang. Although Roosevelt was reluctant to send troops to Asia, Pearl Harbor drew him into war, with the defense of China becoming a paramount issue. Stilwell, who had made a name for himself both as an unconventional military tactician and a knowledgeable Old China Hand, was designated as commander of Chiang Kai-shek’s troops. Unfortunately nobody had clarified that point with the Generalissimo.
Roosevelt’s family fortune was based on the China Trade; his mother’s family kept a home in Hong Kong and Roosevelt’s Hyde Park home was sprinkled with looted Chinese treasures. “Because his ancestors had traded with the Chinese he had always had the deepest sympathy with the Chinese people,” he claimed. His point of view was colonial and his naivete was crippling, leading to the Lend-Lease Act that guaranteed an unrestricted flow of war materiel into China, $700 million dollars worth to start. For years China received all that it asked for under the U.S. aim of creating “Chinese military self-sufficiency”.
However, “the American purpose was not the Chinese purpose.” Chiang had no intention of launching offensives against the Japanese Army; his goal for China was to “strengthen itself with American arms and money.” To Chiang, the primary danger wasn’t the Japanese but the Communists. His strategy was to let the Allies do the fighting. He was saving the Lend-Lease money and weapons and his soldiers for the battle that would come later, against the forces of Mao Tse-tung.
Meanwhile Roosevelt’s romantic view and idealistic trust in Chiang Kai-shek’s China became American propaganda, merrily spread through the U.S press and adopted by the American people. For three years, hundreds of millions of dollars in money and weaponry were sent to China, and were taken by Chiang, not as a loan, but as a form of reparations for past Western crimes against his country. It slowly became clear that “ even the United States was not rich enough to fight in China.”
Pitted against Roosevelt’s absurd ignorance and the bottomless greed of Chiang Kai-shek was Stilwell. Nominally in charge of Lend-Lease largesse and ostensibly the military commander of all the troops in China, this straight-talking Yankee was miserably out of his depth. He had no diplomatic skills and had mortally insulted Chiang Kai-shek at the start of their ill-fated relationship by scoffing at Chiang’s order to provide one watermelon for every four men in Burma at the height of their losing battle against the Japanese. (This, according to Madame Chiang years later, was “bitterly and openly contemptuous” and poisoned any possible meeting of the minds between Stilwell and the Generalissimo.)
Stilwell lacked the polished skill of Lord Mountbatten who had delighted the Chiangs with flattery and a Cartier vanity case monogrammed in diamonds for the demanding Madame Chiang. He managed to offend Mountbatten as well, by disdaining his lordship’s offer to divert Stilwell’s troops with the talents of Noel Coward. (Coward came and was an absolute flop with the GIs, leading Stilwell to announce “If any more piano players start this way, you know what to do with the piano.”)
Stilwell also labored under the New England creed that a man’s word was his bond and Chiang played upon that viciously, msking promises and then altering them to the point of nonexistence. In spite of the morass of corruption, greed, and lies that he waded through, “Vinegar Joe” continued to be convinced that the Chinese soldiers were capable of greatness, if only he were allowed to lead them. He proved that with the seizure of Mytkina in Burma, while leading Chinese troops in addition to those from the British and American armies.
It’s a tragedy that Stilwell’s passion for China led to the waste of his military talents during World War II. A year after witnessing the surrender of Japan, he died of abdominal cancer. On the day before his death, General Stilwell was given the only honor he had always wanted, the Combat Infantryman Badge, “reserved for the enlisted foot soldier who proved himself under fire.”
A final honor that Stilwell would have relished came several days after he died. His widow was told she had a visitor at her California home, a man who identified himself only as “the Christian.”. She came downstairs to find “the huge figure and the cannonball head of Feng Yu-hsiang”, a Chinese warlord who had fought with Stilwell. Using her husband’s Chinese name, Feng said to her, “I have come to mourn with you for Shih Te-wei, my friend.”.~Janet Brown