Joseph Stilwell - Burma - Disagreements With Chiang and The Allies

Disagreements With Chiang and The Allies

I have 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.

The old harpoon was ready
With aim and timing true,
I sank it to the handle,
And stung him through and through.

The little bastard shivered,
And lost the power of speech.
His face turned green and quivered
As he struggled not to screech.

For all weary battles,
For all my hours of woe,
At last I've had my innings
And laid the Peanut low.

I know I've still to suffer,
And run a weary race,
But oh! the blessed pleasure!
I've wrecked the Peanut's face.

After Stilwell left the defeated Chinese troops that he had been given nominal command by Chiang Kai-shek (Chinese generals admitted later that they had considered Stilwell as an 'adviser' and sometimes took orders directly from Chiang), he escaped Burma in 1942, Chiang was outraged by what he saw as Stilwell's blatant abandonment of 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 U.S. lend lease supplies to China. But 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 the general while countermanding some 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" originally being intended as a code name for Chiang in official radio messages) while Chiang repeatedly expressed his pent-up grievances against Stilwell for his "recklessness, insubordination, contempt and arrogance" to U.S. envoys to China. Stilwell would press 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 due to 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 Chinese Nationalist forces ready to fight the Communists under Mao Zedong after the end of the war with the Japanese, even though from 1942 to 1944 98 percent of U.S. military aid over the Hump had gone directly to the 14th Air Force and U.S. 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 was infuriated also by the rampant corruption of the Chiang regime. In his diary, which he faithfully kept, Stilwell began to note the corruption and the amount of money ($380,584,000 in 1944 dollars) being wasted upon the procrastinating Chiang and his government. The Cambridge History of China, for instance, also estimates that some 60%-70% of Chiang's Kuomintang conscripts did not make it through their basic training, with some 40% deserting and the remaining 20% dying of starvation before full induction into the military. Eventually, Stilwell’s belief that the Generalissimo and his generals were incompetent and corrupt reached such proportions that Stilwell sought to cut off Lend-Lease aid to China. Stilwell even ordered Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officers to draw up contingency plans to assassinate Chiang Kai-shek after he heard Roosevelt's casual remarks regarding the possible defeat of Chiang by either internal or external enemies, and if this happened to replace Chiang with someone else to continue the Chinese resistance against Japan.