CHIANG KAI-SHEK

The collective denial of the Roosevelt administration about the reality of Chiang’s regime received a bad jolt in May when the well-known journalist Theodore White blew the lid off the Kuomintang in an article in Life. Describing the KMT as “a corrupt political clique that combines some of the worst features of Tammany Hall and the Spanish Inquisition,” he argued that it was madness to give the regime a “prolonged kiss of death” by continuing to prop it up. This was an open endorsement of what Stilwell had been saying for years. Perhaps encouraged by the new mood in the USA, from the beginning of September onwards Stilwell’s diaries became full of sombre reflections on the nature of the Kuomintang and its leader. Why were the Allies fighting the Nazis in Europe, with their one-party system, use of terror and the Gestapo, yet backing to the hilt the selfsame fascist system in China?

Why had Roosevelt never demanded a quid pro quo from Chiang for the Lend-Lease supplies that flooded into his country? The choice between the Kuomintang and the Communists was a classic “no-brainer,” the contrast between corruption, neglect, chaos, heavy taxation, hoarding, the black market and trading with the enemy on the one side, and the reduction of taxes, rent and interest and an increase in production and the standard of living on the other.

The Communists practiced what they preached; the KMT utterances were mere meaningless words. Above all, there was the personality of the generalissimo. “I have never heard Chiang Kai-shek say a single thing that indicated gratitude to the President or to our country for the help we were extending to him. Invariably, when anything was promised he would want more. Invariably he would complain about the small amount of material that was being furnished. Always complaints about the vast amount going to Britain and the trickle to China…The cure for China’s trouble is the elimination of Chiang Kai-shek.”

Even Stilwell’s promotion to de facto field marshal was problematical, for the Chinese army—or at least those portions that had not been trained at Ramgarh—was seriously deficient. On paper it contained 324 divisions plus another 60-odd specialist brigades and 89 so-called guerrilla units, which should have made it by far the most formidable army in the world. Unfortunately the paper strength masked the reality. Chinese divisions, supposed to be 10,000 men, rarely had more than 5,000, casualties were never replaced, all the officers were place men and political appointees, the troops were unpaid, unfed, sick and undernourished, training was non-existent and equipment antiquated or unserviceable, and there was no artillery, transport or medical corps worth the name.

This was to say nothing of the fact that Chiang habitually kept at least 20 divisions as reserves, facing north to deal with the Communist menace, and refused to release them to any other theatre. Above all, Chinese culture itself worked against military prowess. Taoism taught one to go with the flow, accept fate and never take risks, for if you did nothing, you couldn’t be blamed for whatever happened.

Frank McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster Into Triumph, 1942 – 1945 (The Yale Library of Military History) 391-392). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.