Joseph Warren Stilwell (March
19, 1883
–
October 12,
1946) was a
United States Army four-star
general
best-known for his service in
China.
His military career was unique: he rarely commanded American troops,
worked mostly on his own, and still managed to reach the rank of
four-star general on August 1, 1944.
Stilwell was born in
Palatka, Florida in 1883, and graduated from
West Point in 1904. He taught modern languages at West Point,
attended the Infantry Advanced Course, and the
Command and General Staff College. During
World War I, he was an intelligence officer assigned to the Fourth
Corps and helped plan the St. Mihiel offensive. He was awarded the
Distinguished Service Medal for his service in France. Between the
wars, Stilwell served three tours in China, where he became fluent in
Chinese and was the military attaché at the United States embassy in
Nanjing
from 1935 to 1939.
Stilwell served in many overseas and stateside commands. He organized
the the
U.S. 7th Infantry Division at
Fort
Ord,
California in 1940.
Although he was seriously considered for command in the
European Theater of Operations due to his success leading armored
formations in the Louisiana Maneuvers of 1939, Stilwell was sent to
China in February 1942 because he was the only high-ranking officer in
the U.S. Army who spoke fluent Chinese. His assignment was as Chief of
Staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek. However, as the campaign in
Burma
developed, he also took on a role there. The
U.S. Army established the
China Burma India Theater (CBI Theater) and placed Stilwell in
command. The CBI Theater was not supposed to be an operational
headquarters; it was merely supposed to be in charge of the
administation of American military formations in China, Burma and India.
However, Stilwell often broke the chain of command and communicated
directly with the
Joint Chiefs of Staff on operational matters, when all such
communications were supposed to go to Admiral
Lord Louis Mountbatten, the
Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia. Stilwell also took on
operational control of
Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC) through General
George Giffard commander of
11th Army Group.
Stilwell thus had four different jobs to perform, requiring him to be
in different places at once. For example, as Chief of Staff to Chiang he
was often needed in
Chungking, the Chinese capital, and as Deputy Allied Supreme
Commander he was needed at HQ South East Asia Command at
Kandy, in
Ceylon;
and as NCAC commander he was required to be relatively near the front
line in Burma. His personality also caused problems. Stilwell clashed
frequently with the commander of the 11th Army Group, General Giffard,
and would not accept being under his command, instead insisting that
NCAC came directly under the Supreme Commander. As Deputy Allied Supreme
Commander he was Giffard's superior, but as operational commander of
NCAC he should have been Giffard's inferior; as the two men did not get
on, in part due to Stilwell's pronounced Anglophobia; this inevitably
led to conflict and confusion. Similarly, he feuded with his own air
officer,
Claire Chennault, who in turn was apt to bypass Stilwell and deal
directly with Chiang Kai-shek.
"Vinegar Joe", as he was called, famously lacked tact and a capacity
for conventional diplomacy. In spite of this, he tried to convince
Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek to cede command of his armies to the U.S. military.
He intensely hated the Generalissimo, a feeling which was reciprocated,
and only managed to keep working together through the tireless diplomacy
of Chiang's wife,
Soong May-ling. Among the areas of contention between Stilwell and
Chiang was the distribution of foreign military aid. Stilwell wanted the
modern weapons distributed evenly between the
KMT and the
Communists in the fight against the Japanese; Chiang believed that
arming the Communists with American weaponry would compromise his
control. Furthermore, Stilwell desired a more aggressive role for the
Nationalist Chinese Army after 1941 but Chiang preferred keeping his
troops for defense and allowing the Americans to carry the fight in the
Pacific. Their differences could ultimately be traced to the
Chinese Civil War: Chiang believed that the greater threat was the
Communists rather than the Japanese. Stilwell, on the other hand, had
hoped for a
united front and for Chiang to put aside his fears, perhaps an
unreasonable expectation given the threat the Communists posed to
Chiang's regime.
In October 1944, due to personal disagreements with Chiang Kai-Shek,
President Roosevelt recalled Stilwell to the
United States. His former roles were divied up, as was CBI:
- Lieutenant General
Raymond Wheeler became Deputy Supreme Allied Commander South East
Asia.
- Major General
Albert Wedemeyer became Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai-shek
and commander of the U.S. Forces, China Theater (USFCT).
- Lieutenant General
Daniel Sultan was promoted from deputy commander of CBI to became
commander of the U.S. Forces, India-Burma Theater (USFIBT) and
commander of the NCAC.
Stilwell was reassigned to command the
Tenth Army during the final stages of the
Battle of Okinawa, after the Tenth Army's commander was killed by
enemy fire.
He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster
and the
Legion of Merit for his service in the Second World War. His WWII
motto was "Illegitimi
Non Carborundum," pseudo-Latin for "Don't let the bastards grind you
down."
As was the case with many other Americans involved in Chinese
affairs, Stilwell's diplomatic efforts were obliterated with the rise to
power of the
Communist Party of China and retreat of the
Kuomintang government to
Taiwan
in the
Chinese Civil War, after the United States withheld Congressional
appropriations money meant for Chiang's nationalists. Without these
vital funds, Chiang's currency went into hyper-inflation, and he was
unable to buy ammunition to fight against the Communist take-over of
China. Biographer
Barbara W. Tuchman chose the
metaphor "sand against the wind", to characterise the futile nature
of Stilwell's efforts in China.
In 1946, Stilwell was the commanding officer of the
U.S. Sixth Army and the commanding officer of the Western Defense
Command. He died in San Francisco later that year. He was cremated and
his ashes spread at sea. A
cenotaph was placed at the
West Point Cemetery.
His son,
Brigadier General Joseph W. Stilwell Jr., known as "Cider Joe,"
served as a senior commander during the early U.S. involvement in the
Vietnam War.
A street, Stilwell Court, was named after him in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. His residence during his assignment to
Fort
Ord in
Monterey, California was later renamed Stilwell Hall in his honor.
The mansion was a popular landmark along
California State Route 1 in between
Marina, California and
Seaside, California. Until its demolition in 2003,
Stilwell Hall was known as the local "haunted house" for students of
nearby
California State University, Monterey Bay due to numerous amateur
videos of seemingly paranormal occurrences and sounds.
Source: from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
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