was rated as one of the best combat commanders in the Army. Lieutenant General Hugh A. Drum was Stilwell’s recommendation because, as he observed in his diary, Drum was pompous and of high rank. As for himself in the China role, “No thank you.” The Chinese “remember me as a small-fry colonel . . . Drum by all means.” Stilwell’s predilection of course, was for a fighting rather than a representational and administrative command.
Drum regarded the China assignment as vague and not worthy of a general of his pretensions. And he made a poor impression on Stimson and Marshall. They turned to Stilwell. Would he take the China mission? “I’ll go where I’m sent,” Stilwell characteristically replied.
Stilwell viewed the plum proffered him not without misgivings. From his considerable experience in China he had few illusions about the quality of the Chinese military leadership. And the current reports from China of an American military mission headed by the urbane and discerning Brigadier General John Magruder supported what he knew—that the Chinese Army lacked aggressive fighting spirit and that the materiel demanded by the Chinese National Government was not for fighting the Japanese but for ensuring Chiang’s domestic ascendancy against internal rivals after the defeat of Japan.
At the same time, China had an insidious lure for Stilwell, as it did for many China hands. And Stimson, who had been emotionally involved as Secretary of State in trying to defend China in the early 1930s against Japan in Manchuria, envisioned the command offered to Stilwell as charged with keeping China in the war and securing it as a base, initially for limited operations and eventually for a counteroffensive, possibly by Chinese forces. By mid-January the concept of the China assignment had expanded to embrace a nebulous position as chief of the Generalissimo’s nonexistent allied staff. In addition to controlling the distribution of lend-lease supplies, Stilwell was told he would train Chinese troops and even command them.
How many, where and under what circumstances was undefined—until the Japanese surged out of Thailand into Burma, intent on cutting China’s only remaining line of surface communications with the West, stretching from the port of Rangoon half the length of Burma to the Yunnan border. Thereupon the Chinese indicated that an American lieutenant general, but not Magruder (who knew them so well), would be granted “executive control” of Chinese forces dispatched to Burma. Whether the Generalissimo would permit an American to command Chinese troops was, Stilwell thought, a test of Chiang’s willingness to allow him to function effectively.
The exchange between Washington and Chungking regarding the appointment of an American commander in China passed through T. V. Soong, Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s Americanized, clever, brazen, and ambitious brother. He was Chinese Foreign Minister and resident in Washington, where he acted as the Generalissimo’s alter ego, interpreting and editing communications between the American Government and Chiang.
Through one or more of his many highly placed sources of information in Washington, Soong learned that Stilwell was the probable choice for China. So he made inquiries about the General and was satisfied with what he had learned. Subsequently, the Generalissimo declared that Stilwell would be “most welcome.”
With “executive control” promised Stilwell and a welcome to him from Chiang and Soong, Marshall asked Stilwell on January 23, “Will you go?” Again, “I’ll go where I’m sent.” But with feelings far from undiluted elation—“the blow fell,” he wrote that night in his diary.
The War Department orders to Stilwell, dated February 2, designated him as Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander of the Chinese Theater (Chiang Kai-shek) and Commanding General of the American forces (initially headquarters staff, liaison officers and technicians) in China-Burma-India. Soong confirmed that Stilwell was to act as Chief of Staff for the Generalissimo, to supervise and control all American defense aid for China and, under the Generalissimo, to command such Chinese forces as were assigned to him. To emphasize the purpose of military assistance, Marshall directed Stilwell “to increase the effectiveness of United States assistance to the Chinese Government for the prosecution of the war and to assist in improving the combat efficiency of the Chinese army.”
And so a general who had been appraised as one of the best fighting commanders in the American army was dispatched on a ceremonial, negotiatory, administrative mission in which he was also to command Chinese troops at the pleasure of the Generalissimo, whom Stilwell regarded as disastrously incompetent in military matters. Why, when given the opportunity to decline, did Stilwell accept the assignment? He did because as a thoroughgoing professional soldier he took the wish of his commanding officer, George Marshall (who was one of the few men he really respected), as tantamount to an order. Then too, Stilwell believed what became something of an American military creed: that, properly fed, trained, equipped and led, the Chinese soldier would be the equal of any. This just might be the chance for him to prove this belief.
Nevertheless he already longed for the reassuring presence of American combat troops under his command. To Marshall he described the Southwest Pacific as a defensive theater, whereas China was the area from which to launch the offensive against Japan—employing at least one American army corps. This was to be a reoccurring plea throughout Stilwell’s China assignment; not granted until the last year of his ordeal, and then with but one regiment.
The American high command, however, looked upon China as of relatively slight military significance. The American grand strategy assigned priority to the defeat of the German-Italian Axis over the defeat of Japan. In the secondary effort against Japan, four possible avenues of attack existed. One was the northern Pacific and the Aleutians. Weather and terrain severely limited the practicability of this route. A second was westward from the Central Pacific, a flank assault, which proved to be the main road to victory. A third, starting from Australia, was northward island hopping in arduous frontal assaults against the maximum extension of enemy strength, but enabling MacArthur to fulfill his promise to return to the Philippines.
And finally, China. Effectively blockaded from its allies for most of the war, it was a logistical monstrosity, with a line of communications stretching from the United States across the Atlantic, around Africa, through the Indian Ocean, and then either across or around the Indian subcontinent, up the Brahmaputra valley to the foothills of the Himalayas and thence, by airlift, across Burma and the high ranges to the east and so into the southwest mountain-girt corner of China. China was indeed, as often said during the war, “at the end of the line.” In retrospective military logic, commitment of American men and materiel to the China-Burma-India Theater was a diversion from theaters where they could be more effectively used against the enemy.
Who was this Chiang Kai-shek to whom Stilwell was assigned? He was a slight, sleek, alternately impassive and overwrought, obstinate and vacillating, fifty-six-year-old native of the lower Yangtze valley. As a student at military academy in Japan he joined Sun Yat-sen’s republican movement plotting the overthrow of imperial rule over China. Chiang had a minor part in the ensuing 1911 revolution, following which he cultivated Shanghai financial contacts, became a broker and established connections with the powerful and sometimes benevolent Shanghai underworld.
The new republic was soon fragmented by warlordism. Chiang maintained his ties with Sun, joining in at least one of that erratic leader’s military campaigns to capture a base for his Kuomintang (national people’s party). This paid off for Chiang. When Sun made a deal with the Soviet Union for assistance, he sent Chiang on a visit to Moscow in 1923 as his military representative. Having established a base at Canton, Sun appointed Chiang head of a new military academy there, complete with Soviet military advisers, headed by the ascendant General Vasily Blyukher.
With Sun’s death in 1925, Chiang slickly disposed of his competitors, took over as Sun’s successor, and showed that he knew how to handle foreign advisers. He called a Soviet bluff to terminate aid, put his Soviet military tutors briefly under house arrest, and forced the recall of several for attempted reforms of his army and one for allegedly making fun of him. Against the advice of his Soviet mentors, he launched
