by Robert Lyman
Quoted in Stowe, They Shall Not Sleep.
For the straight-talking, no-nonsense American, these command arrangements were a daily frustration that very nearly sent him mad. Indeed, to understand China, as few statesiders truly did in 1942 and 1943, one needed to understand—as did Stilwell—a system of command that reflected the reality that Chiang Kai-shek himself didn’t possess the unequivocal support of his own warlords. They supported him so long as he remained successful in generating and protecting their wealth. Their armies constituted a significant part of that capital and were not to be frittered away in needless offensives that didn’t contribute to the perpetuation of their own positions and status. The long and protracted war against the Japanese during the past decade had forced them to develop an approach that conserved forces and avoided pitched battles. Large-scale actions and offensives were sought only when the Chinese, not possessing artillery or air support, otherwise enjoyed overwhelming odds over the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek also sought to retain his authority by means of the principle of divide and rule: if he allowed a degree of confusion to exist amongst his army and divisional commanders, it would ensure that they would never be organized enough to band together to depose him. As Jack Davies was presciently to observe in late July 1942, Chiang Kai-shek’s two objectives were first to ensure the perpetuation of the Kuomintang and its domestic supremacy and second to come to the peace talks at the end of the war as militarily powerful as possible.
After little more than a month of campaigning in Burma during 1942, Stilwell concluded that all the command problems he had encountered in the Chinese Army were the fault of Chiang Kai-shek. He would never change this view. By April 1942 he already regarded the Chinese leader as mentally unstable, two-faced, and surrounded by parasitic sycophants. Frustrated that he was being asked to command the Chinese armies in the field against a ferociously competent and disciplined enemy while being constantly undermined by the Chinese system of command, Stilwell complained bitterly to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately, his complaints were countered by effective messaging to the contrary and by the fact that Stilwell was well known for his misanthropic language and racist attitudes, not to mention his aversion to the British.
When the final evacuation from Burma had taken place in May 1942, Stilwell had wasted no time in making plans to rebuild his Chinese forces and retake Burma. To do this he proposed a new Chinese Army of 100,000 men, trained in India (at Ramgargh in Bihar, 230 miles northwest of Calcutta), equipped with American supplies, and commanded by American divisional and corps commanders. Once training had been completed, which he estimated would take six months, Burma could be attacked from the north and east. The essence of these plans was accepted by both Chiang Kai-shek and Washington (although Stilwell’s request for a full American infantry division was turned down), but Stilwell was now entering the dangerous waters of Chinese politics, which turned especially treacherous when they touched on relations with outside powers. As Stilwell was to realize in time, things were not always as they seemed. His purpose was to create an effective fighting army. It needed clear and unambiguous structures of command, the modernization of administration and supply, and the concentration of scarce US equipment in an elite thirty divisions.
Simple as these plans were in concept, they foundered repeatedly on the rocks of international politics and the domestic struggles for power in a divided China. The cutting of the Burma Road from Rangoon in 1942 as a result of the Japanese invasion had reduced the delivery of lend-lease supplies to a trickle, although T. V. Soong complained bitterly that the United States was failing to keep its end of the bargain and vociferously campaigned, cajoled, and threatened Roosevelt and Churchill to ensure that supplies kept coming through, by airlift if necessary.
Chiang Kai-shek’s policy toward the Allies was based largely on the argument that China played a critical role in Asia because it tied down large Japanese forces that would otherwise be directed against the Allies in southeast Asia and the Pacific. He used this bargaining chip ruthlessly for his own advantage, going so far as to threaten to withdraw from the fight and to strike terms with the Japanese if the Allies didn’t meet all his demands. Stilwell bore the brunt of Chiang Kai-shek’s politicking, finding himself unwillingly caught between a demanding and ungrateful China on the one hand and an uncomprehending United States on the other. He struggled to hold to a position of benign neutrality, insisting that his task was not to broker deals between Chiang Kai-shek and Roosevelt but to prosecute the war against the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek undoubtedly wanted Stilwell to become a mouthpiece for Chinese demands and saw his appointment merely as the key that unlocked the American piggy bank. Stilwell, in refusing to kowtow to Chinese demands and insisting on remaining concerned merely about military affairs, raised Chiang Kai-shek’s ire. Within months of Stilwell’s appointment, Chiang Kai-shek was calling for his dismissal. This response is hardly surprising. Stilwell refused to support Chinese demands for US supplies (which he constantly reminded the Chinese were “the gift of the hard-working American taxpayer”) for their own sake; he supported them only within the context of the military reconstruction of Chiang Kai-shek’s armies for the purpose of invading Burma. Stilwell recognized, as did most officials in Washington by mid-1942, that Chiang Kai-shek was interested in acquiring US resources as much to fight off the threat to his hegemony by the communists as to fight the Japanese. Because he refused to change his position, Stilwell was of no use to Chiang Kai-shek, who worked thereafter to engineer his removal. He was eventually to succeed.
For his part, Stilwell quickly came to despise Chiang Kai-shek with an antipathy that he found hard to disguise and that ultimately served to undermine his position. To his diary, in letters home, and even in public, Stilwell referred to the Chinese leader as the “Peanut,” “coolie-class,” and “incompetent” and to the Chinese government in Chungking as the “Manure Pile.” Given the pungency of Chungking’s atmosphere, Stilwell tried hard to avoid the place. His focus was on preparing the Chinese to fight, and his natural orbit was Ramgargh, where 9,000 of his Chinese soldiers were being trained and equipped.
One of the first disputes that arose and that he could not avoid hinged on the role of airpower in the region. The Chinese had always urged the United States to commit significant air resources to the country, and the inability to deliver on promises during 1942 because of the pressures of the war in Europe caused anger in Chungking. Stilwell found himself caught up in lobbying from Chungking as well as from American air sources led by Colonel (soon to be Major General) Chennault. Chennault, commander of the AVG (the famous Flying Tigers) before being given command of the US Army Air Forces in the region, believed that Allied strategy in southeast Asia would best be served by building up an offensive air capability in China so that they could strike from there at Japan.
This idea clearly ran counter to the original mission, which was to use the aircraft flying over the Himalayas to build up supplies so that the Chinese land forces could take the war to the Japanese. Stilwell remained an advocate of this policy throughout the war and strongly rejected the arguments put forward by Chennault and his supporters. There were times when it appeared as if outright war had broken out between the two factions, one supporting Stilwell and the land policy and the other supporting Chennault’s air strategy.
Stilwell argued that it would be Chinese land forces that in due course of time would need to reconquer territory, something that could not be achieved by airpower alone. Indeed, the danger of using airpower was that the bases required to launch the aircraft would themselves become targets for Japanese attack and would also consume vast quantities of aviation fuel that would have to be flown in from India. The dispute, acrimonious at times, rumbled on at least until 1944 and caused a near breakdown in the relationship between Stilwell and Chennault, who had much to achieve in working closely and harmoniously together.
In late 1942, so as better to coordinate his wide responsibilities, Stilwell crea
ted the CBI theater with its main headquarters in Chungking. He built a rear headquarters in New Delhi and attempted to provide structure, purpose, and energy in a command that stretched from Karachi in the west to Chungking in the east.
In early 1943 Stilwell despaired of getting the Chinese leadership to achieve anything more than self-gratification and of getting Washington to comprehend the true nature of Chiang Kai-shek’s corrupt and self-serving regime. Though he thought much of the individual Chinese soldier when well trained and equipped, he thundered against the regime and its leaders like a medieval reformer, speaking contemptuously of “the Chinese cesspool. A gang of thugs with the one idea of perpetuating themselves. Money, influence, and position the only considerations of the leaders. Intrigue, double-crossing, lying reports. Hands out for everything they can get; their only idea to let someone else do the fighting; false propaganda on their ‘heroic struggle’; indifference of ‘leaders’ to their men. Cowardice rampant, squeeze paramount, smuggling above duty, colossal ignorance and stupidity of staff, total inability to control factions and cliques, continued oppression of masses.”
In the midst of what he regarded as widespread graft, Stilwell continued to try to improve the combat effectiveness of Chiang Kai-shek’s US-supported divisions. His view was that the supply and maintenance of these forces could be achieved only by building a new Burma Road to China, this time from Ledo in India across northern Burma. Building this road would necessitate British/Indian and American/Chinese combat operations to push the Japanese back far enough to prevent them from interfering with the project. The objective Stilwell had in his mind was the capture of the airfield and town of Myitkyina. In Allied hands, the town would greatly assist the air route to China by adding a staging post far from the dangerous mountains over which the Hump aircraft otherwise had to fly. Henceforth Stilwell’s single-minded focus lay on recovering those parts of northern Burma that had been captured by the Japanese in 1942 and were essential to the maintenance of a land supply route to China from Ledo.
Discussions with General Archibald Wavell (the British commander in chief in India) in New Delhi on October 18, 1942, regarding the possibility of operations in Burma the following spring using the newly trained Chinese divisions concluded with an agreement to mount an offensive down the Hukawng Valley to capture the airfield at Myitkyina. This operation would take place in conjunction with a British offensive against Arakan and a further Chinese offensive into the Shan states from Yunnan. Chiang Kai-shek eventually agreed to prepare a force of fifteen divisions, known as the Yoke Force, for the Yunnan offensive.
With these agreements secured, things were looking up for Stilwell. It appeared that both Wavell and Chiang Kai-shek were committed to operations in which the retrained and reorganized Chinese would play a significant part, and the hostility toward Stilwell in Chungking had abated. But by December the situation had quickly begun to unravel, and Stilwell’s plans were being assailed on all sides. Chiang Kai-shek had agreed to the creation of the Yoke Force only on condition that the Allies mount massive air and amphibious operations in the Bay of Bengal to prevent the Japanese from using Rangoon as a port. Stilwell knew this was impossible, although he promised to make the appropriate representations to Washington. However, the US War Department refused to underwrite Stilwell’s request for extra supplies to ensure the success of these plans. He responded angrily to Washington that US pusillanimity threatened to undo everything he was trying to do in China and Burma.
Also at this time in 1943 the proponents of Major General Chennault’s airpower strategy began pressing his ideas of aerial bombing against the Japanese from inside China instead of a land campaign in Burma and to voice public criticisms of Stilwell’s plans for an advance to Myitkyina. Chennault worked hard to persuade Roosevelt with a plan to win the war in six months by launching a bombing campaign from China with him in command. His plan was to provide 147 fighters and bombers on Chinese air bases to fly long-distance missions against the Japanese homeland in the sure and certain hope that such aerial bombardment would quickly bring Japan to its knees. Chennault’s ideas resonated positively in Chungking, as such a strategy would not entail any greater Chinese commitment to the war effort than the provision of air bases, and Stilwell’s plans for an expensive land campaign, with the expenditure of blood and treasure that it would inevitably entail, could be shelved.
Stilwell rejected the idea of an air-only campaign. He realized precisely what Chennault had failed to learn from experience of air campaigning elsewhere in the war, namely, that air forces alone could not retake lost ground. He was angered as much by Chennault’s failure to comprehend this fact as he was by Chennault’s disloyalty in proposing alternative plans to Washington behind his back. More in exasperation than anger, he wrote in his diary that this was just the excuse that Wavell and Chiang Kai-shek (although for different reasons) were seeking in order to halt offensive operations into Burma. He believed that the British would do anything possible to avoid a commitment to a land offensive into Burma and saw the difficulties with which he was faced as a vindication of his fears: “What a break for the Limeys. Just what they wanted. Now they will quit, and the Chinese will quit, and the goddam Americans can go ahead and fight. Chennault’s blatting has put us in a spot, he’s talked so much about what he can do that now they’re going to let him do it.” To reinforce Stilwell’s fear of British perfidy, Wavell, a month after his agreement to support an advance to Myitkyina, suggested that he might not have the air supply resources available after all.
In truth there were a series of competing strategies for defeating the Japanese through China, one of which was Stillwell’s and another Chennault’s. As is so often the case in these matters, the debate between Stilwell and Chennault was driven down party lines, the army supporting Stilwell and the air force Chennault. The fact that Stilwell had been appointed by the War Department (i.e., the army) under General Marshall and not the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t help his cause, despite Marshall’s consistent loyalty to him.
In theater Stilwell found it difficult to confide fully in peers, superiors, or subordinates (although he wrote regularly to Marshall), with the result that there was little effective dialogue in the CBI headquarters, and the group processes that existed in other headquarters to weigh and decide on issues of military strategy (and even, on occasion, grand strategy) were nonexistent. Stilwell’s unhelpful habit was to bottle up his frustrations and express himself freely only to his diary. He was a poor communicator and was not able to press his ideas with the dispassionate vigor needed to ensure that his voice was heard in a reasoned and winning argument. The situation was not helped by the fact that Chennault’s powerful personality gave considerable impetus to his grandiose, ill-formed plans for the aerial bombardment of Japan from airfields in China and allowed little room for disagreement.
The clamor around Chennault’s ideas intensified during 1943. The basic problem Stilwell faced was that US military strategy remained undecided. The grand strategy of US policy was support to China; the military strategy, however, remained an issue of dispute between the War Department and Chennault’s airpower supporters. Disregarding the fact that in Europe the impact of aerial bombardment had already been shown to be grossly exaggerated, Marshall and Stilwell were concerned that such a plan would provoke the Japanese to launch strong counteroffensives against Chennault’s air bases in China and that without effective land forces these bases would quickly fall.
Chennault’s plan, and the support it rapidly acquired from Madame Kai-shek and T. V. Soong, made Chungking’s agreement to Stilwell’s requirements increasingly difficult. The fact that Stilwell was ultimately to be proved right in 1944 didn’t help him to fight the argument in 1943. On January 2, 1943, Chiang Kai-shek proposed the Chennault plan to Roosevelt and added the rider that the Yoke Force could be used from Yunnan only in conjunction with a wider Allied attack—by sea and air—in Burma. Without these commitments, the Chinese leader insisted, Stilwell
’s spring offensive could not be countenanced. The battle with Chennault for strategic dominance raged throughout 1943 and was one that Stilwell, loyally supported by Marshall, lost in the face of Chennault’s successful lobbying of Roosevelt and the American press, combined with the vociferous support given to Chennault by Chiang Kai-shek.
Stilwell found himself struggling against the enemy within—Chinese ignorance, selfishness, and greed dangerously combined with American political naïveté—as much as he was fighting the Japanese. In preparation for the Trident Conference in Tehran in May 1943, he summarized the strategic dilemmas he faced and the consequences of not keeping a close rein on Chinese demands:
