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From General Stilwellfs Diaries
[ 5 July 1943 ]
Recent rumor here to effect that the Reds have been told they can gco-operateh . . . or else. The gelse being that he [Chiang] will attack them in September. Chou En-lai has left for Yenan. Reds reported to have asked for freedom of speech and no coercion to join the Kuomintang. Ha, Ha. How can he, the Great Democrat, answer that? This whole thing seems farfetched, unless the slippery little bastard is deliberately setting up a stop on Saucy. He is quite capable
of doing it and reporting that he is too involved against the Reds to join the party in Burma.
( pages 210-11 )
[ 15 December 1943 ]
The Reds are no longer afraid. The Central Government men desert to them. One whole company deserted and the Reds sent the rifles back. gWe canft force the men to return, but here are the rifles.h More troops moved up to contain the Reds, but their propaganda is working. They feel that Chiang Kfai-shekfs position is weak.
( page 262 )
[ undated ]
Chiang Kai-shek is confronted with an idea, and that defeats him. He is bewildered by the spread of Communist influence. He cant see that the mass of Chinese people welcome the Reds as being the only visible hope of relief from crushing taxation, the abuses of the Army and Tai Lis Gestapo. Under Chiang Kai-shek they now begin to see what they may expect. [Somebodys propaganda follows. (WPT).]
( page 317 )
[ Probably July, 1944 ]
The cure for chinas trouble is the elimination of Chiang Kai-shek. The only thing that keeps the country split is his fear of losing control. He hates the Reds and will not take any chances on giving them a toehold in the government. The result is that each side watches the other and neither
gives a damn about the war [against Japan]. If this condition persists, China will have civil war immediately after Japan is out. If Russia enters the war before a united front is formed in China, the Reds, being immediately accessible, will naturally gravitate to Russias influence and control.* The condition will directly affect the relations between Russia and China, and therefore indirectly those between Russia and U.S.
[etc].
( pages 321-2 )
* The Reds in China were never anything other than under the USSRs influence and control. The partial or impartial student will not find anything in the available records other than the meddling by the Kremlin, in China and in any other area hoped for by the Bolshevik racket.
One can entirely believe General Stilwells notes as representative of his own views on the situations ; it would not seem unfair to claim that those views were not fully informed. (WPT)
[ undated ]
Hurley and Nelson arrive full of P. and V. they are going to pound the table and demand:
1. Real unification in China. 2. Unification of command. Then and only then will they talk about what the U.S. will do for China economically.
It is one thing to make a brief call on Chiang Kai-shek, when he is on his good behavior, receive his assurances that he is liberal minded, admires the U.S., and is going to give full participation to the people in a democratic government. It is another to make him take action along these lines. (After concessions that give him a blank check and tie me up.)
SEPTEMBER 7. The G-mo calls. Date at (; 30, Hurley and Nelson at 11:00. Why me, ahead of them? Love feast. Peanut went right into it, and told me that up to now my work had been100 per cent military—now, AS COMMANDER OF THE CHINESE ARMY it would be 60 per cent military and 40 per cent political.
. . . said that if I used the Reds, they would have to acknowledge the authority of the National Military Council. He would advise me from time to time. He wanted no ko chi [politeness] between us. He had full confidence in me. Kidded about my saying Chinese commanders were no good—asked about commanders and divisions in Burma.
Hurley and Nelson saw him at 11:00.
( pages 325-6 )
SEPTEMBER 15 [ . . . ]
Chungking. G-mo calling for me. Took Hurley down at 12:00; one and a half hours of crap and nonsense. Wants to withdraw from Lungling, the crazy little bastard. So either 4 attacks in one week or he pulls out. Usual cock-eyed reasons and idiotic tactical and strategic conceptions. He is impossible.
SEPTEMBER 16. The G-mo insists on control of Lend-Lease5 Our stuff, that we are giving him. T.V. says we must remember the dignity� of a great nation, which would be affronted� if I controlled the distribution. Pat [Hurly] told him horsefeathers.� Remember, Dr. Soong, that is our property. We made it and we own it, and we can give it to whom we please. � (We must not look, while the customer puts his hand in our cash register, for fear we will offend his dignity�.) Pat said there were 130 million Americans whose dignity also entered the case, as well as the dignity� of their children and their childrens children, who would have to pay the bill. Hooray for Pat! (If the G-mo controls distribution, I am sunk. The Reds will get nothing.* Only the G-mos henchmen will be supplied, and my troops will suck the hind tit.)
( pages 330-31 )
* Hum. — (WPT).
SEPTEMBER 17, THE MANURE PILE: LETTER TO MRS. STILEWELL. We are in the midst of a battle with the Peanut, and it is wearing us out. . . .
( page 331 )
SEPTEMBER 28 —— saw Lin Wei. He does not know [about Chiangs demand for Stilwells relief]. Thinks the trouble is on account of the Reds. Thinks that Peanut believes I insist on arming them and that if I drop it, he will agree on other points: the Peanut has not told them about the aide memoire. No word from Washington yet. Pat says G-mo indicated conciliatory attitude toward Reds. K. C. Wus in. Movie.
SEPTEMBER 28 Ho Ying-chin has Chinese and English versions
1. the suggestion for using the Communist troops was raised because it seemed advisable to make use of any and all military assets in this crisis. I was not insisting on the use of the Communists as a condition for agreement.
2. The matter or using the Communists can be dropped, and we can proceed advantageously with our other plans:
( page 337 )
LETTER TO MRS. STILEWELL It looks very much as though they had gotten me at last. The Peanut has gone off his rocker and Roosevelt has apparently let me down completely. If old softy gives in on this, as he apparently has, the Peanut will be out of control from now on. . . .
( page 339 )
( New York : William Sloane Associates, 1948. )
New York : Schocken Books, 1972
From Last Chance in China by Freda Utley, 1947
Japans ultimate defeat owed nothing to the much-publicized Burma-Salween campaign to which General Stilwell sacrificed all other considerations. But it resulted in Chinas National Government finding itself on V-J Day with its main forces concentrated in the Southwest and unable to reoccupy, at short notice, all the Chinese territories liberated by Japans sudden surrender. In other words, General Stilwells strategy, while contributing little or nothing to Japans defeat, materially aided the Chinese Communist postwar bid for power.
Chiang Kai-shek and his generals had not been alone in their opposition to the Stilwell strategy which utilized Chinas only properly equipped and Western-trained divisions for a campaign of greater benefit to the British Empire than to China. General Chennault, an advocate of air power and commander of the Fourteenth Air Force which had performed miracles with the little it had, considered the Burma campaign a waste and wanted to concentrate available supplies on severing Japans sea communications, thus starving out her forces in Burma and South China. He told me in Shanghai that Stilwell had refused to allocate to Chiang Kai-she enough American equipment to defend even the airfields in China. As Dr Walter Judd told Congress in March 1945, he had been informed by Americans in China that we did not give the Chinese infantry who had to defend those bases one rifle, or one machine gun, or even one bullet for the job.EYet
Stilwell and his friends and protagonists damned Chiang Kai-shek and his government for Chinas defeats, ascribed her
military reverses to the undemocratic nature of his government and wanted to arm the Chinese Communists instead.
General Wedemeyer, as Admiral Lord Louis Mountbattens chief of staff in Southeastern Asia, had also opposed the Burma campaign ; he favored a strategy which would have served both American and Chinese interests better. As he said to me, fighting the Japanese in the jungle gave them every advantage and prevented Americas technological superiority from being brought to bear against the enemy. He had argued in favor of amphibious landings to recapture first Rangoon and then a southern Chinese port. Japans forces could then have been cut off from their supply bases with less, or no greater, expenditure of lives than those sacrificed in the futile Burma campaign and in flying supplies to China over the Hump. Moreover, the opening up of such a port as Canton would have been of inestimably greater value to China than the trickle of supplies which could be carried over the Burma Road.
Until the history of the war is written by those who have the necessary inside knowledge and military competence, it is impossible for the layman to pronounce judgment. It is at least certain that the Chinese had reason to distrust Stilwells military judgment as well as his motives. Vinegar JoeEmade no secret of his dislike and contempt for Chiang Kai-shek and his government. He surrounded himself with Communist sympathizers. Any proposals made by Stilwell were naturally suspect in the eyes of the Chinese Command, since he had made it all too clear that he preferred the Communists and would not be at all sorry to see the National Government overthrown.
Indianapolis, New York : Bobbs-Merrill, 1947, pages 209-10.
From Soviet Russia in China by Chiang Kai-shek, 1957
General Joseph Stilwell was assigned to China by the United States to direct military operations against the Japanese in northern Burma. I was appreciative of his services and ordinarily I had confidence in his proposals on various matters. It so happened that when he was in the China-Burma Theater of War, the American Communists and their fellow travelers were busy in their propaganda depicting the Chinese
Communists as gagrarian reformersh and as elements of a gpatriotic democratic party,h and defaming me . . . General Stilwell was one of those influenced by this propaganda. He had mistakenly believed that the Chinese Communist forces would obey his command. He asked me to have the Government and Communist troops re-equipped on an equal basis, to send the Communist forces into battle and at the same time to use in operations against the Japanese the Government troops immobilized in Shansi and Shensi because of the Chinese Communistsf threat to revolt.
I regret to say that he had no idea whatsoever of the Chinese Communistsf schemes. He did not believe that the Communists had tried to sabotage Chinafs National Revolution upon Moscowfs instructions in the past. Nor did he foresee what the Chinese Communists would do, once they were re-equipped and sent out of the gborder area,h to impede Chinafs war effort and overthrow the Government. General Stilwellfs subsequent dispute with me was created entirely by the Communists and their friends. It almost caused disruption of Sino-American military cooperation in the China-Burma theater.
When General Stilwell first came to China I should have confided in him all the facts about Soviet Russiafs intrigues and her real aims in Chinafs revolution and in the war. He might have had a better understanding of the situation and taken appropriate precautionary measures. I regretted very much that I did not do this, but I thought he had just come to China and we had not had time to build up a relationship of mutual trust between us. On this point it might be said that I made a mistake. To this day my heart still aches over this unfortunate affair.
New York : Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957, pages 118-9.
[some notes]
Even before his major intrusion into Chinese affairs, General Marshall made a grave mistake when he sent General
Joseph W. Stilwell to China as military adviser to Chiang kai-shek. Stilwell was an old soldier with many human and soldierly qualities. He knew something of china, where he had served for a spell. but he was utterly unconscious of its strange world of Communist dialectics and strategy. He was pathetically lacking in tact. He was, in fact, an irascible, intolerant and vitriolic partner. There was a gulf between this self-opinionated old warrior and the grave and reserved oriental Generalissimo.
When Stilwell got to china in 1942, he flung himself into the struggle for the Burma Road then raging. In hits he suffered a disastrous and, as he called it, "humiliating defeat." The China war, after that, for him was lost in the immensity of his own war against the Japs—to wipe out this stain on the fame of Joe Stilwell.
When he reached chine he fell—as did everyone—into that busy, virulent cabal of State Department officials and news correspondents, almost all of whom had become the feverish protagonists of the "agrarian reformers" headed by Mao Tse-tung, and the bitter, busy critics of General Chiang Kai-shek. One of these china officials—John P. Davies, whom we have already met—was assigned to him as his adviser. Fred Utley, who was there, says that Agnes Smedley, an old and lyrical champion of the Chinese Red leaders, fascinated Stilwell.149 He and Chiang could agree on nothing The Generalissimo resolutely refused to authorize another Burma expedition because he believed it hopeless unless he could get amphibious reinforcements. this ripened into a bitter feud on Stilwell's part. He poured out his scorn on the Generalissimo to the correspondents and State Department philosophers at his headquarters, who served as an admiring audience. Reports of Stilwell's unhappy relationships in China reached Roosevelt's ears. Harry Hopkins made a note at the time:
"The President indicated his strong dissatisfaction with the way the whole shoe was running in China. He stated that
Stilwell obviously hated the Chinese and that his cablegrams are sarcastic about the Chinese and this feeling is undoubtedly known to the Generalissimo."150
Roosevelt decided to bring Stilwell home, but Marshall defended him. Sherwood, Hopkins's biographer, wrote that Marshall had told him that his only serious disagreement with Hopkins was on the issue of Stilwell. Sherwood adds that "he was unquestionably a serious nuisance to Roosevelt and there were many times when he was on the verge of recalling him."151
However, in spite of all this, Stilwell finally persuaded Chiang to launch another expedition into Burma. In addition, he persisted in his demand that he be made commander-in-chief of all Chiang's armies. In the midst of this situation, General Patrick J. Hurley arrived from Washington with a demand from the President, instigated by Marshall, that Stilwell be made commander-in-chief. Stilwell was an inveterate diarist and on September 12, 1944, he wrote triumphantly: "Chiang Kai-shek agrees to appoint Joseph W. Stilwell and give him his full confidence."153 But there was some delay . .&nbps;.
. . . A few weeks later he had to write in his diary: "The ax falls. Radio from George Marshall . . . I am recalled . . . so FDR has quite. Everybody at headquarters horrified."156 This meant the State Department and newspaper claque. But in Washington Marshall did not quit so easily. Admiral Leahy records what happened. The Generalissimo wrote Roosevelt that he "was willing and anxious to meet Roosevelt's wishes" that an American officer command all Chinese forces. But he insisted that "it must be one in whom I can repose confidence. . . . the officer must be capable of frank and sincere cooperation, and General Stilwell has shown himself conspicuously lacking in these indispensable qualifications."157 Admiral Leahy writes that Marshall even after this made an effort to dissuade Roosevelt but without success. . . .
Stilwell, Joseph Warren, 1883-1946.
Title Stilwell's personal file--China, Burma, India, 1942-1944 / edited by Riley Sunderland and Charles F. Romanus.
Publisher Wilmington, Del. : Scholarly Resources, c1976.
Description 5 v. (xx, 2613 p.) : ill. ; 29 cm.
ISBN 0842017992
Language English
Note Includes index.
Subject Stilwell, Joseph Warren, 1883-1946.
Stilwell, Joseph Warren, 1883-1946.
Title The Stilwell papers. Arr. and edited by Theodore H. White.
Imprint New York, Schocken Books [1972, c1948]
Descript xvi, 357 p. illus. 22 cm.
[ New York Library ; not in the University of California ]
Stilwell, Joseph Warren, 1883-1946.
Uniform Title [ Stilwell papers. Chinese]
Title Shih-ti-wei jih chi / Shih-ti-wei chu ; Lo Po-hung i.
Publisher Shang-hai : Hai kuang chu pan she, Min kuo 37 [1948]
Description 4, 182 p. : ports ; 19 cm.
Language Chinese
Note Translation of: The Stilwell papers.
Stilwell, Joseph Warren, 1883-1946.
Title The Stilwell papers / by Joseph W. Stilwell ; arranged and edited by Theodore H. White.
Publisher New York : William Sloane Associates, c1948.
Description xvi, 357 p. : ill. maps ; 22 cm.
Language English
Note Includes index.
[ University of California ; not in the New York Library ]
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