By this time, Chi Pang-yuan was a student at Wuhan University, which had relocated to Sichuan. One day its president called faculty members and students together at a Confucian temple. He announced that ‘because the war is going badly and the Japanese might invade Sichuan, the Ministry of Education has ordered all universities to be ready to withdraw to a safe place in case it is needed’.60 A chemistry professor, wearing a traditional scholar’s gown, remarked, ‘We have already passed through eight hard years without ever giving up … not until the final day will the singer and instrument fall silent’, a reference to a phrase in one of the Chinese classics meaning that education would continue come what may.61 Chi Pang-yuan wrote to her parents, asking how she would find her way back to them if she indeed had to evacuate. Her father answered, ‘[O]ur fronts are overextended … but in the Pacific and in Europe, the situation is improving. My child, you will be safe if you stay with your school; no matter what will happen with the war, in the years that remain to me, I will find you.’ That last sentence left Chi Pang-yuan, she said, with ‘a feeling of unease’.62
Storms of criticisms erupted out of universities and schools,63 while foreign papers predicted a Nationalist collapse. The New York Times reported on 30 October that ‘the political fabric of China, never very strong, has been ripping; schisms have occurred between various local leaders; “war-lordism” has increased.’64 US military personnel were evacuated from the city of Guilin and 550 barrels of gasoline there were set on fire to prevent them from falling into Japanese hands.65 The US consulate in Guilin advised US citizens in southwest China to leave because ‘the Japanese are believed to have the strongest concentration of troops ever gathered in China’.66
Ichigo’s advance into Guangxi province went virtually unopposed. An attempt to stop the Japanese at prepared positions at the border failed miserably, with the execution, on Chiang Kaishek’s orders, of the commanding general doing little to improve military morale.67 Although Chiang Kaishek ordered that Guilin and Liuzhou be defended, General Bai believed that this would be futile. By this time, Chiang Kaishek’s orders were implemented only to the extent that the leaders of the Guangxi Clique approved of them. Guilin and Liuzhou were abandoned,68 but not before the usual scorched earth policy was implemented.
Once in possession of the main cities of Guangxi province, the Japanese struck north-west into Guizhou province, thus threatening to break into Sichuan itself. General Albert Wedemeyer replaced General Stilwell as Chiang Kaishek’s chief of staff on 27 October. He judged that ‘the Japanese were in a position not only to open their inland corridor to the south, but also to drive west, capturing the key cities of Kun-ming, Chung-ch’ing, and Hsi-an [Kunming, Chongqing, and Xi’an]. Inflation was rampant, economic collapse seemed close, and public confidence in the Generalissimo was at a low ebb.’69 He was appalled that ‘Chinese soldiers were starving in their hundreds’ but high-ranking Nationalists were ‘asking to facilitate their evacuation to America’.70 He counselled Chiang to prepare to evacuate Chongqing and concentrate on defending Kunming, the terminus of the supply line from India.71 Chiang told him that he could not accept that advice. Time and again he had insisted that Chinese cities should be defended to the death and the generals who failed to do so would be executed; he could not now just walk away from Chongqing and hope that his already-tarnished reputation would survive. Wedemeyer responded by stating that he would stay at Chiang Kaishek’s side come what may.72
To prevent the Japanese from breaking into Sichuan, General Wedemeyer moved two Nationalists divisions from Burma to Guizhou. Together with Nationalist forces brought in from other war zones, including several divisions led by General Tang Enbo, they formed a block in Ichigo’s path. On 18 December, on Wedemeyer’s request,73 20th Bomber Command firebombed Wuhan, Japan’s command and logistics centre in China, flattening the city. While the Japanese commander in charge of Ichigo, General Okamura Yasuji, continued to favour an attack on Chongqing,74 the Imperial General Staff decided against this, perhaps because of the bombing or perhaps because by this time the US was firmly in control of the Mariana Islands and had begun bombing Japan from there. The Imperial General Staff decreed a new strategy, instructing Japanese forces in China to redeploy along the Yangzi river and near Shanghai.
Ichigo was finally over.
The Stilwell affair
The Stilwell Affair – that is, the recall of General Stilwell from China in October 1944 – formed a cathartic episode in the USA’s relationship with the Nationalists, one that would have a long afterlife. When Senator Joseph McCarthy began to hunt for Communists in the US State Department in 1950, his targets included some people who had served in China, many of whom had been involved with Stilwell. In the 1960s and 1970s, the opponents of McCarthyism used Stilwell – a Republican – to demonstrate that the criticism of these State Department officials made by the Nationalists at the time had been correct and that, had they been listened to, the USA would not have ended up supporting a moribund militarist regime. Because of the politically charged nature of the debate, and the sharp divisions it created in the USA, it became difficult even in US academic circles to discuss the Nationalists during the Second World War other than from a perspective determined by the Stilwell Affair.75 Criticising Stilwell became an academic taboo.
The Stilwell Affair gained an enduring significance in part because of its post-war role in the USA. At the time, Stilwell’s recall marked the moment when China changed from being the USA’s favourite ally to a constant source of problems, worry and disappointment. It did not help that General Stilwell was a difficult man. With the exception of General Marshall, he held everybody in contempt, not just Chiang Kaishek (‘the Peanut’) or the Nationalist commander-in-chief He Yingqin (‘graced by no distinction in combat command’),76 but also, on the British side, General Archibald Wavell (‘a tired, depressed man pretty well beaten down’);77 General Alexander (‘astonished to find ME – mere me, a goddam American – in command of Chinese troops. Extrawdinery! Looked me over as if I had just crawled from under a rock’);78 and Mountbatten (one of the ‘Kandy Kids’, that is, someone enjoying life at the splendorous headquarters of South East Asia Command at Kandy on Sri Lanka).79 His fellow Americans fared no better. Stilwell could not stand General Chennault, of course, but he had as little regard for his successor, General Wedemeyer: ‘Good God – to be ousted in favour of Wedemeyer – that would be a disgrace.’80
Throughout his time in China, General Stilwell clung to his view that Upper Burma had to be recovered so that an overland supply line could be laid between Assam in India and Yunnan in China. He was determined to show that his view was correct, and that, perforce, Chiang Kaishek and Chennault were wrong. Once X Force, the two Chinese divisions Stilwell had trained at Ramgarh, had begun to move into northern Burma in December 1943, he was at the front with them, rather than at his headquarters in Chongqing, giving rise to the jibe that General Stilwell was ‘the best three star company commander in the US Army’.81 Out of the strategic loop, Stilwell was largely ignorant of how Ichigo was unfolding in China.
Defeat may be an orphan, but misfortune always has company. At the same time that the Japanese forces were besieging Hengyang, Stilwell’s X Force was advancing through northern Burma before it became stuck at Myitkyina, in the centre of Upper Burma, unable to force its way into the city for three months. Before the Burma campaign began, the Nationalists had agreed to the deployment of Y Force, armed and trained by the US in Yunnan, for the Burma campaign, but only on condition that the US would make ground forces available and that the British would supply naval support.82 Neither had done so. Because of this and because of Ichigo, but also in order to put pressure on Washington to increase supplies to China, Chiang Kaishek declined to order Y Force to advance. Needing to relieve the pressure on X Force, Stilwell asked Washington to put pressure on Chiang Kaishek, who reversed his position after Roosevelt warned that US aid might be withdrawn if Y Force did not move.83 The first units
began to advance in May, but they advanced very slowly.84
Faced with a deteriorating situation in China and a stalled offensive in Burma, General Marshall then conceived the idea of putting Stilwell in charge of Chinese forces not just in Burma but in the whole of China. Confronted by the possibility of a Nationalist collapse and fearful that the Japanese might continue the war from China even if Japan itself was occupied,85 the appointment of Stilwell as commander of all forces in China opened the door to arming the Communists, whose help would be needed if the USA were to successfully land troops on the north China coast. In July 1944, a US Army Observation Group – the ‘Dixie Mission’ – arrived in Yan’an to scout out possibilities.86 Besides military officers, journalists and State Department officials formed part of the group. They filed enthusiastic reports about what they found, contrasting the corruption and despondency of Chongqing with a well-ordered, clean and confident Yan’an, where ‘morale is very high’.87 In December 1944, after Stilwell had been dismissed but before this policy had been abandoned, The New York Times asserted that Communist forces had ‘contained a large part of the Japanese army and have to a great extent prevented the Japanese from exploiting the agricultural resources of the occupied areas’.88 But the Commun ists lacked weapons. ‘All that is required to change the whole system in North and Central China is a reasonable supply of small arms ammunition and some easily portable weapons capable of breaching Japanese forts.’89
On 6 July, President Roosevelt wrote to Chiang Kaishek for the first time to suggest that he hand over command of his forces to General Stilwell.90 Chiang Kaishek was shocked, because of the implied insult, because he had no faith in General Stilwell, because it implicitly reduced China’s status to that of a US colony, and because he did not want US military supplies to reach the Communists. Chiang’s response was that he agreed in principle, but insisted that authority over the distribution of US supplies be assigned to China.91
Messages went back and forth until 16 September, when Roosevelt sent Chiang a telegram, drafted by General Marshall, which could not have been blunter:
I have urged time and again in recent months that you take drastic action to resist the disaster which has been moving closer to China and to you … I am certain that the only thing you can now do to prevent the Jap from achieving his objectives in China is to reinforce your Salween armies immediately and press their offensive, while at once placing General Stilwell in unrestricted command of all your forces.92
Stilwell also received this message, presumably because it was sent by Marshall, and rushed to Chiang Kaishek’s residence. He declined an offer by Ambassador Gauss, who was there, too, to convey the message verbally so as to soften its tone. The general insisted on handing it to Chiang personally. As he wrote in his diary, he ‘handed this bundle of paprika to the Peanut and then sank back with a sigh. The harpoon hit the little bugger right in the solar plexus.’93 He composed a little piece of victory doggerel afterwards, the first stanza of which read:
I’ve waited long for vengeance
At last I’ve had my chance
I’ve looked the Peanut in the eye
And kicked him in the pants.94
In an aide memoire to Roosevelt of 9 October, Chiang recounted that he had consistently disagreed with Stilwell about the significance of the Burma campaign, that at Cairo the USA had made promises it had failed to live up to, and that he had agreed to deploy Y Force units into Burma only after General Stilwell had threatened to withhold US supplies. He then stated that while in China the Nationalists had faced Japanese forces six times larger than those faced by the Allies in Burma, operations there ‘had drained off most of the properly trained and equipped reserves in China’. The only aid the Nationalists had received, he said, were ‘60 mountain guns, 320 anti-aircraft guns, and 506 Bazookas’. Chiang concluded by noting that ‘we have taken Myitkyina but lost all of East China’.95 Having said his piece, he agreed to place Nationalist forces under US command, on the one condition that the US commander was anyone but Stilwell.
Marshall urged President Roosevelt to insist on Stilwell, but Roosevelt changed tack. The year 1944 was an election year, with the conduct of the war inevitably an important issue and the polls suggesting a ‘photo finish’ between Roosevelt and the Republican nominee, Thomas Dewey. Gallup predicted a ‘very close race’ and highlighted several factors favourable to Dewey.96 In October, support for Roosevelt slipped. For the USA to be held accountable for the crisis in China would have been a boon to Dewey’s campaign.
Much better to have Chiang Kaishek take the blame. President Roosevelt decided, as he told Chiang, that ‘the US Government should not assume the responsibility in placing an American officer in command of your ground forces’.97 If China did fall, it would be with Chiang Kaishek as commander-in-chief, not with an American in charge. As Ambassador Hurley was to tell President Harry S. Truman, Roosevelt ‘definitely refused to appoint an American commander when the situation in China appeared to be approaching collapse’. Roosevelt warned Chiang that ‘a full and open explanation of the reasons for General Stilwell’s recall will have to be made. The American people will be shocked and confused by this action.98 I regret the inevitable harm it will do to the sympathetic attitude of the American people toward China.’99 Until Stilwell’s recall, the US press, which was censored during the war, had reported the disaster unfolding in China only vaguely. Roosevelt made sure this was about to change.
The president personally approved the publication of a report on the front page of The New York Times on Tuesday 31 October, a week before the elections. This declared that General Stilwell’s recall was due to the ‘political triumph of a moribund anti-democratic regime’, which was not committed to fighting the Japanese, had become ‘increasingly unpopular and distrusted in China, that maintains three secret police services and concentration camps for political prisoners, that stifles free speech and resists democratic forces’ and which was led by a man ‘bewildered and alarmed by the rapidity with which China is falling apart’.100 The article justified the decision not to appoint a new US chief of staff to Chiang because it would have ‘the effect of making us acquiesce in an unenlightened cold-hearted autocratic regime’.101 Roosevelt was re-elected, although not, of course, simply because of this exercise in the use of the political dark arts – even if this election was, as he himself acknowledged, ‘the dirtiest in history’.102 He had not wanted to take the risk.
Although personality clashes, politics and racial prejudice all played their roles in the Stilwell Affair, the most important drivers were, firstly, a shortage of resources and, secondly, China’s minimal value to US and UK conceptions of how to win the war. America’s industrial productivity was phenomenal, but it was not unlimited and hence choices had to be made. The US and the UK reneged on promises to Chiang Kaishek because they judged that their resources could be deployed more usefully elsewhere. The conflicts between Stilwell, Chennault and Chiang Kaishek were at bottom the struggle for control over US supplies to China. Because China was not considered strategically important, until the last year of the war it was not provided with adequate supplies, meaning that the fight for what was available was intense. This prevented the solution Roosevelt used elsewhere with commanders who were at logger-heads with each other, namely to give all of them all they said they needed.
This way of solving difficulties, only possible because of the USA’s abundant productive capacity, buried a problem that in the Korean War would come to haunt America. Its overseas commanders were able to pursue their own strategy without sufficient oversight and control from Washington. The Joint Chiefs of Staff did not maintain an effective balance between giving full play to personal initiatives on the ground and exercising effective oversight over what was going on. That was less a personal than an institutional issue, resulting from the fact that the USA was only in the process of becoming a world power.
The USA’s Withdrawal from China’s War with Japan
W
hen General Wedemeyer arrived in China in November 1944, he was told that ‘your primary mission as to US combat forces is to carry out air operations from China. In addition, you will continue to assist the Chinese air and ground forces in operations, training, and logistical support.’103 The priority remained to support Operation Matterhorn, Marshall’s strategic bombing offensive on Japan from China by 20th Bomber Command. The Combined Chiefs of Staff of the US and the UK had already decided in August that supporting such an offensive on Japan from China by ferrying supplies from India to China would be impossible. Once the Marianas had been secured, defending and supplying air bases there would be far easier. However, in September Roosevelt ordered that Operation Matterhorn proceed because he wanted to give the Chinese war effort a boost and because he wanted the bombing of Japan to begin as early as possible. The Marianas campaign did not end until 27 November.
Resource constraints meant that other operations in China had to make do with either less or nothing at all. In May 1944 Marshall made clear to Stilwell that he should abandon his notion of fighting Japan in China, telling him that ‘Japan should be defeated without undertaking a major campaign against her on the mainland of Asia.’104 This meant, Marshall insisted, ‘that priority be given during the next several months to a build-up of our air effort in China’ – Matterhorn. Marshall ordained that 200 of the 500 aircraft of General Chen-nault’s 14th Air Force be used to defend the Chengdu air fields and 150 to assist Stilwell in Burma, leaving only another 150 to support Nationalist ground forces.105 At the time of the Battle of Hengyang, Stilwell had declined an appeal by Chiang Kaishek to allocate supplies destined for the Superfortresses to General Chennault’s 14th Air Force – a decision in which personal animosities no doubt played a role, but which also conformed to the USA’s overall military strategy in China.
China at War Page 28
