Between the wars, Stilwell served three tours in China, where he mastered spoken and written Chinese and was the military attaché at the US legation in
Beijing from 1935 to 1939. In 1939 and 1940 he was assistant commander of the
2nd Infantry Division and from 1940 to 1941 organized and trained the
7th Infantry Division at
Fort Ord, California. It was there that his leadership style which emphasized concern for the average soldier and minimized ceremonies and officious discipline, earned him the nickname of "Uncle Joe." Just prior to the United States entering
World War II, following the Imperial Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, Stilwell had been recognized as the Army's top corps commander, and he was initially selected to plan and command the
Allied invasion of North Africa. However, he and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff were skeptical about the operation and believed military planners underestimated the risk of submarine attacks interfering with the amphibious landings. He also believed that Allied military planners were too lenient towards
Francoist Spain and underestimated the risk of it joining the
Axis powers, writing "The Boches own the country.
Franco must pay the bill for
his war." After Stilwell prepared a scathingly
anti-British final report on the
Arcadia Conference, his superiors decided to reassign him. When it became necessary to send a senior officer to China to keep it in the war, Stilwell was selected, over his own personal objections, by US president
Franklin Roosevelt and his old friend, Army Chief of Staff
George Marshall. Stilwell became the chief of staff to
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, served as US commander in the
China Burma India Theater, was responsible for all
Lend-Lease supplies going to China, and later became deputy commander of
South East Asia Command. Despite his status and position in China, he became involved in conflicts with other senior Allied officers over the distribution of lend-lease materiel, Chinese political sectarianism and proposals to incorporate Chinese and US forces in the
11th Army Group under British command.
Burma retreat and offensive (left) with Stilwell in Burma In February 1942 Stilwell was promoted to lieutenant general and was assigned to the
China-Burma-India Theater (CBI), where Stilwell had three major roles: commander of all US forces in China, Burma, and India; deputy commander of the Burma-India Theater under Admiral
Louis Mountbatten; and military advisor to Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek, the commander of all Nationalist Chinese forces as well as commander of the Chinese Theater. The CBI was a geographical administrative command on the same level as the commands of
Dwight Eisenhower and
Douglas MacArthur, but unlike other combat theaters like the
European Theater of Operations, the CBI was never formally designated a "
theater of operations" and did not report to an overall American commander. The China Theater came under the operational command of Chiang, the commander of the
National Revolutionary Army, and the Burma India Theater came under the operational command of the British (first
GHQ India and later the Allied
South East Asia Command whose supreme commander was Mountbatten). During his tenure, there were hardly any American combat forces in the theater, and Stilwell commanded Chinese troops almost exclusively. The British and the Chinese were ill-equipped and the targets of Japanese offensives. Chiang was interested in conserving his troops and Allied lend-lease supplies to be used against any sudden Japanese offensive and against Communist forces in a later civil war. His wariness increased after he had observed the disastrous Allied performance during the
Japanese invasion of Burma. After fighting and resisting the Japanese for five years, many in the
Nationalist government felt that it was time for the Allies to assume a greater burden in fighting the war. The Chinese and American commands were beset by a difference in strategies. Chiang, having fought against Japan since 1937, favored "
defense in depth", an approach partially adopted by the British later in 1944. During the early stages of the conflict both the British and the Americans underestimated the Japanese. Captain
Evans Carlson, after observing the
Battle of Shanghai in 1937, called the
Imperial Japanese Army "third rate", while Stilwell wanted to go on the offensive to save Burma. The Japanese divisions there were proficient in both jungle and offroad warfare. They successfully outmaneuvred the road-bound British, coordinated with air support, and exploited local anticolonial sentiments. The situation was not helped by miscommunication and insubordination. In February 1942, while retreating across the
Sittaung River, the main British force left two brigades on the wrong side after prematurely blowing up the bridge. During an ambush against incoming Japanese at
Pyinmana, only the Chinese 5th Army stayed in position. The British pulled back, fearing encirclement, while the
Chinese 200th Division refused to rush in. The first step for Stilwell was the reformation of the Chinese Army. The reforms clashed with the delicate balance of political and military alliances in China, which kept Chiang in power. Reforming the army meant removing men who maintained Chiang's position as commander-in-chief. Chiang gave Stilwell technical overall command of some Chinese troops but worried that the new US-led forces would become yet another independent force outside of his control. George Marshall's biennial report covering 1 July 1943 to 30 June 1945, acknowledged that he had given Stilwell "one of the most difficult" assignments of any theater commander. After the collapse of the Allied defenses in Burma cut China off from the remaining supply route, Stilwell declined an airlift offer from General Chennault and led his staff of 117 out of Burma into
Assam, India, on foot. They marched at what his men called the "Stilwell stride" of 105 paces per minute. Two of the men accompanying him, his aide
Frank Dorn and the war correspondent
Jack Belden, wrote about their experiences in
Walkout with Stilwell in Burma (1971) and
Retreat with Stilwell (1943) respectively. The Assam route was used by other retreating Allied and Chinese forces. Stilwell's walkout separated him from the approximately 100,000 Chinese troops still there. 25 thousand of them would later perish during their retreat due to the harsh jungle conditions, poor logistics, and Japanese military operations. In India, Stilwell soon became well known for his no-nonsense demeanor and his disregard for military pomp and ceremony. His trademarks were a battered Army
campaign hat, GI shoes, and a plain service uniform with no insignia of rank. He frequently carried a
Model 1903, .30–06 Caliber, Springfield rifle in preference to a sidearm. His hazardous march out of Burma and his bluntly honest assessment of the disaster captured the imagination of the American public: "I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake it." Stilwell's derogatory remarks on
Limey forces, however, did not sit well with British and Commonwealth commanders. After the Japanese occupied Burma, China was almost completely cut off from Allied aid and materiel except through the hazardous air route over the Hump. Early on, Roosevelt and the
US War Department had given priority to other theaters for US combat forces, equipment, and logistical support. The closure of the Burma Road and the fall of Burma made it extremely difficult to replace Chinese war losses. This jeopardized the Allies' initial strategy, which was to maintain the Chinese resistance to the Japanese by providing logistical and air support. In August 1942, Stilwell opened a training center in
Ramgarh, India, west of
Calcutta, to train Chinese troops which had retreated to Assam from Burma. Stilwell's decision to establish the center at Ramgarh met with opposition from several senior British commanders, including Wavell, primarily due to logistical reasons. Chinese soldiers at the center received medical care along with new weapons and uniforms and were trained how to operate artillery,
Universal Carriers, and
M3 Stuart tanks. By the end of December 1942, 32,000 Chinese troops were being trained at the center to create the 22nd and 38th Divisions along with three artillery regiments and a tank battalion. From the outset, Stilwell's primary goals were the opening of a land route to China from northern Burma and India by means of a ground offensive in northern Burma to allow more supplies to be transported to China and to organize, equip, and train a reorganized and competent Chinese army that would fight the Japanese in the China-Burma-India theater (CBI). Stilwell argued that the CBI was the only area with the possibility for the Allies to engage large numbers of troops against their common enemy, Japan. Unfortunately, the huge airborne logistical train of support from the US to British India was still being organized, and supplies being flown over the Hump were barely sufficient to maintain Chennault's air operations and replace some of the Chinese war losses, let alone equip and supply an entire army. As a result, most Allied commanders in India, with the exception of General
Orde Wingate and his
Chindit operations, focused on defensive measures.
Disagreements with Chiang and British and
Soong Mei-ling, 1942 Stilwell left the defeated Chinese troops, and escaped Burma in 1942. Chiang had given him nominal command of these troops, though Chinese generals later admitted that they had considered Stilwell as an "adviser" and sometimes took orders directly from Chiang. Chiang was outraged by what he saw as Stilwell's blatant abandonment of the
200th Division, his best army, without orders and began to question Stilwell's capability and judgment as a military commander. Chiang was also infuriated at Stilwell's strict control of US lend lease supplies to China. Instead of confronting Stilwell or communicating his concerns to Marshall and Roosevelt when they asked Chiang to assess Stilwell's leadership after the Allied disaster in Burma, Chiang reiterated his "full confidence and trust" in Stilwell but countermanded some of the orders to Chinese units issued by Stilwell in his capacity as Chief of Staff. An outraged Stilwell began to call Chiang "the little dummy" or "Peanut" in his reports to Washington, "Peanut" being originally intended as a code word for Chiang in official radio messages. On the contrary, the term "Peanut" was first mentioned during Stilwell's flight to the CBI Theater in March 1942. Col. Willard Wyman, a member of Stilwell's staff on that flight mentioned Chiang "...is like a peanut perched on top of a dung heap...". Chiang repeatedly expressed his pent-up grievances against Stilwell for his "recklessness, insubordination, contempt, and arrogance" to U.S. envoys to China and was angry at his obsession with going on the offensive in Burma when East China was falling into Japan's hands. Stilwell was infuriated by the rampant corruption of Chiang's regime. Stilwell faithfully kept a diary in which he began to note the corruption and the amount of money ($380,584,000 in 1944 dollars) being wasted on the procrastinating Chiang and his government. The
Cambridge History of China, for instance, estimates that 60%–70% of Chiang's Nationalist conscripts did not make it through their basic training, with 40% deserting and the remaining 20% dying of starvation before their full induction into the military. Eventually, Stilwell's belief that Chiang's and his generals were incompetent and corrupt reached such proportions that Stilwell sought to cut off lend-lease aid to China. Stilwell, while attending the
Cairo Conference, received a perceived and verbal order to plan an assassination of Chiang. Stilwell discussed this with his Aide, Col. Frank Dorn. Both were baffled, nevertheless, Stilwell delegated that task to Dorn. It was planned but was never carried out. Stilwell pressed Chiang and the British to take immediate actions to retake Burma, but Chiang demanded impossibly large amounts of supplies before he would agree to take offensive action, and the British refused to meet their previous pledges to provide naval and ground troops because of Churchill's "
Europe first" strategy. Eventually, Stilwell began to complain openly to Roosevelt that Chiang was hoarding U.S. Lend-Lease supplies because he wanted to keep the
Nationalist forces ready to fight
Mao Zedong's Communists after the end of the war against the Japanese. From 1942 to 1944, however, 98% of US military aid over the Hump had gone directly to the
14th Air Force and US military personnel in China. Stilwell also continually clashed with Field Marshal
Archibald Wavell and apparently came to believe that the British in India were more concerned with protecting their colonial possessions than helping the Chinese fight the Japanese. In August 1943, as a result of constant feuding and conflicting objectives of British, American, and Chinese commands, along with the lack of a coherent strategic vision for the China Burma India (CBI) theater, the Combined Chiefs of Staff split the CBI command into separate Chinese and Southeast Asia Theaters. Stilwell countered Mountbatten's January 1944 attempt to once again change the plans to favor an amphibious assault in the
Bay of Bengal and
Sumatra. "The limeys are welshing," he wrote in his diary and of the plan that seemed to him as nothing more than "fancy charts, false figures and dirty intentions". He sent Brigadier General Boatner to brief the Joint Staffs and Roosevelt.
Command of Chindits During his time in India, Stilwell became increasingly disenchanted with British forces and did not hesitate to voice criticisms of what he viewed as hesitant or cowardly behavior. Of the Chindit casualties, 90% were incurred in the last phase of the campaign from 17 May, while they were under Stilwell's direct command. Stilwell infuriated Calvert and the British by announcing via the
BBC that Chinese troops had captured Mogaung but not referring to the British. The Chindits were outraged, and Calvert famously signaled to Stilwell's headquarters, "Chinese reported taking Mogaung. My Brigade now taking umbrage." Stilwell's son was an intelligence officer and said that Umbrage was so small that he could not find it on the map. In October 1943, after the Joint Planning Staff at
GHQ India had rejected a plan by Stilwell to fly his Chinese troops to northern Burma, Field Marshal Archibald Wavell, asked whether Stilwell was satisfied on purely military grounds that the plan could not work. Stilwell replied that he was. Wavell then asked what Stilwell would say to Chiang, and Stilwell replied, "I shall tell him the bloody British wouldn't fight."
Myitkyina Offensive and aftermath With the establishment of the new South East Asia Command in August 1943, Stilwell was appointed deputy supreme allied commander under
Vice Admiral Mountbatten. Taking command of various Chinese and Allied forces, including a new US Army special operations formation, the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), later known as
Merrill's Marauders, Stilwell built up his Chinese forces for an eventual offensive in northern Burma. On 21 December 1943, Stilwell assumed direct control of planning for the invasion of northern Burma that culminated with the capture of the Japanese-held town of
Myitkyina. In the meantime, Stilwell ordered General
Frank Merrill and the Marauders to start long-range jungle penetration missions behind Japanese lines after the pattern of the British
Chindits. In February 1944, three Marauder battalions marched into Burma. Stilwell was at the Ledo Road front when the Marauders arrived at their jump-off point, but the general did not walk out to the road to bid them farewell. In April 1944, Stilwell launched his final offensive to capture the Burmese city of
Myitkyina. In support of that objective, the Marauders were ordered to undertake a long flanking maneuver towards the town that involved a grueling 65-mile jungle march. Having been deployed since February in combat operations in the jungles of Burma, the Marauders were seriously depleted, suffered from both combat losses and disease, and lost additional men en route to the objective. A particularly devastating scourge was a severe outbreak of
amoebic dysentery, which erupted shortly after the Marauders linked up with the
Chinese Army in India, called X Force. By then, the men of the Marauders had openly begun to suspect Stilwell's commitment to their welfare and made no effort to hide their displeasure with their hard-driving commander. Despite their sacrifices, Stilwell appeared unconcerned about their losses and had rejected repeated requests for medals for individual acts of heroism. Initial promises of a rest and rotation were ignored, and the Marauders were not even air-dropped replacement uniforms or mail until late April. On 17 May, the 1,310 remaining Marauders attacked Myitkyina airfield in concert with elements of two Chinese infantry regiments and a small artillery contingent. The airfield was quickly taken, but the town, which Stilwell's intelligence staff had believed to be lightly defended, was garrisoned by significant numbers of well-equipped Japanese troops, who were steadily being reinforced. A preliminary attack on the town by two Chinese regiments was thrown back with heavy losses. The Marauders did not have the manpower to overwhelm Myitkyina and its defenses immediately. When additional Chinese forces had arrived in a position to attack, the Japanese forces totaled some 4,600 Stilwell rejected the evacuation recommendation but made a front line inspection of the Myitkyina lines. He then ordered all medical staff to stop returning combat troops suffering from disease or illness but to return them to combat status by using medications to keep down fevers. The feelings of many Marauders towards Stilwell were summed up by one soldier, who stated, "I had him [Stilwell] in my sights. I coulda' squeezed one off and no one woulda' known it wasn't a Jap who got that son of a bitch."). Later, Stilwell blamed the length of the siege partly on British and Gurkha Chindit forces for not promptly responding to his demands to move north in an attempt to pressure Japanese troops, but the Chindits themselves had suffered grievous casualties in several fierce pitched battles against Japanese troops in the Burmese jungles, along with losses from illness and combat exhaustion. Having made his own "long march" out of Burma under his own power by using jungle trails, Stilwell found it difficult to sympathize with those who had been in combat in the jungle for months on end without relief. In retrospect, his statements then revealed a lack of understanding of the limitations of lightly equipped unconventional forces that were used in conventional roles. Myitkyina and the dispute over evacuation policy precipitated a hurried Army Inspector General investigation, followed by US congressional committee hearings, but no disciplinary measure was taken against Stilwell for his decisions as overall commander. Only a week after the fall of Myitkyina in Burma, the 5307th Marauder force, down to only 130 combat-effective men of the original 2,997, was disbanded.
Conflict with Chennault One of the most significant conflicts to emerge during the war was between General Stilwell and General
Claire Chennault, the commander of the famed "
Flying Tigers" and later air force commander. As adviser to the
Republic of China Air Force, Chennault proposed a limited air offensive against the Japanese in China in 1943 by using a series of forward air bases. Stilwell insisted that the idea was untenable and that any air campaign should not begin until fully fortified air bases, supported by large ground forces, had been established. Stilwell then argued for all air resources to be diverted to his forces in India for an early conquest of northern Burma. In co-ordination with a southern offensive by Nationalist Chinese forces under General
Wei Lihuang, Allied troops under Stilwell's command launched the long-awaited invasion of northern Burma. After heavy fighting and casualties, both forces linked up in January 1945. Stilwell's strategy remained unchanged: opening a new ground supply route from India to China would allow the Allies to equip and train new Chinese army divisions to be used against the Japanese. The new road network, later called the
Ledo Road, would link the northern end of the
Burma Road as the primary supply route to China. Stilwell's staff planners had estimated the route would supply 65,000 tons of supplies per month. Progress on the Ledo Road was slow and could not be completed until the linkup of forces in January 1945. In the end, Stilwell's plans to train and to modernize 30 Chinese divisions in China and two or three divisions from forces that were already in India was never fully realized. As Chennault predicted, the supplies carried over the Ledo Road never approached in tonnage the levels of supplies airlifted monthly into China by the Hump. In July 1945, 71,000 tons of supplies were flown over the Hump, compared to 6,000 tons using the Ledo Road, and the airlift operation continued in operation until the end of the war. When supplies were flowing over the Ledo Road in large quantities, operations in other theaters had shaped the course of the war against Japan. On 1 August 1945, planes crossed the Hump a minute and twelve seconds apart from one another. In acknowledgment of Stilwell's efforts, the
Ledo Road was later renamed the Stilwell Road by Chiang.
Recall from China Efforts to counter
Operation Ichi-Go were hampered in part by disagreements between Chennault and Stilwell. Stilwell also clashed with Chiang over the question of
Guilin, a city that was besieged by the Japanese. Chiang wanted Guilin defended to the last man, but Stilwell claimed that Guilin was a lost cause. The clash over Guilin was only a prelude to another clash in which Chiang demanded the return of the
Y Force from Burma to defend
Kunming, the capital of
Yunnan Province, which was also being threatened by the Japanese advance. Chennault later claimed that Stilwell had deliberately ordered Sino-American forces out of Guilin as a way of creating a crisis that would force Chiang to give up command of his armies to Stilwell. Stilwell's diary supported Chennault's claim, as Stilwell wrote that if a crisis emerged that was "just sufficient to get rid of the Peanut without entirely wrecking the ship, it would be worth it." Stilwell went on to write that the entire Nationalist system had to be "torn to bits" and that Chiang would have to go. Stilwell wrote in his diary about handing over Roosevelt's message: "I handed this bundle of paprika to the Peanut and than sank back with a sigh. The harpoon hit the little bugger right in the solar plexus and went right through him. It was a clean hit, but beyond turning green and losing his powers of speech, he did not bat an eye." Seeing that act as a move toward the complete subjugation of China, Chiang gave a formal reply in which he said that Stilwell must be replaced immediately and that Chiang would welcome any other qualified US general to fill Stilwell's position. Chiang called Roosevelt's letter the "greatest humiliation I have been subjected to in my life" and stated that it was "all too obvious that the United States intends to intervene in China's internal affairs." Chiang told Hurley that the Chinese people were "tired of the insults which Stilwell has seen fit to heap upon them." Chiang delivered a speech before the Central Executive Committee of the Nationalist Party that was leaked to the press and called Roosevelt's letter a form of imperialism and stated that accepting Roosevelt's demands would make him no different from the Japanese collaborator
Wang Jingwei in
Nanjing. When Wedemeyer actually arrived at Stilwell's headquarters after the latter's dismissal, Wedemeyer was dismayed to discover that Stilwell had intentionally departed without seeing him and had not left a single briefing paper for his guidance. Most other departing US military commanders greeted their replacement to have them thoroughly briefed on the strengths and the weaknesses of headquarters staff, the issues confronting the command, and the planned operations. Searching the offices, Wedemeyer could find no documentary record of Stilwell's plans or records of his former or future operations. ==Reassignment==