Customer Reviews

Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

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This book is about a period that is both so important and yet largely neglected in American education. The book is quite easy to read with its strong steady narrative flow, its interest in the personalities at play as well as its study of the background of their struggles. Since the book came out around the time of the Vietnam War, I assumed it would be more anti-American foreign policy in tone than it is. It's quite balanced.

Tuchman obviously regards Stilwell as the hero of the tale. It's hard to come to any other conclusion about this deeply humble but brilliant, unwearying but always frustrated man. Yet she is quite fair in assessing the difficulties faced by Stilwell's close-to-home antagonist, Chiang Kai Shek. She is also not sparing in describing the courage, success and tactical genius of Claire Chennault, whose (clearly wrong-headed) conception of the War was opposed to that of Stilwell.

The story of America in China in WWII and its aftermath is so fascinating, so HUGELY important - and still so relatively little publicized - especially in relation to the affairs of MacArthur, Nimitz and Halsey in the Pacific or Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton in Europe.

I long for a movie that will show the fascinating struggle among Stilwell, Chiang, and Chennault in relation to the Japanese and Mao's Communists. It can be said that America's foreign policy in 1943-50 has far less immediate impact in post Cold War Europe today than in Japan, China, Burma, and Indonesia. America's two costly wars since WWII have been in Asia. This book gives a wonderful background to anyone interested in how did the existing state of affairs in China come to pass?

America was intimately involved - particularly two Americans - 1) Claire Lee Chennault, a maverick Cajun from Louisiana who resigned from the American Air Force in rage at their refusal to adopt his revolutionary views on fighters and bombing - and became the head of China's Air Force in 1937; 2) Joseph Stilwell, an upper middle class WASP from a family that went back to the early 1600s, who had been intimately involved with China since the 1920s.

It's just a great story, and it's unlikely you know much of it.

Barbara Tuchman's Pulitzer-winning history, STILWELL and the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN CHINA should be a must-read for every US historian, politician, or businessman dealing with the Middle Kingdom. Tuchman makes a very valid central point- that America doesn't 'get' China, understand recent Chinese history, or interact well with Chinese officials.

That theme has been espoused by others and we should ask if it is so. I can confidently say that Tuchman makes a compelling case. She uses old Vinegar Joe and his relationship with Chiang Kaishek (Jiang Jieshi)as a case study. \

Thus, although STILWELL stands well on its own as a history of US-China relations during WWII or as a biography of the general, those strengths should not obscure the main theme: that the US has not pursued relations with China effectively or listened to our experts.

Before those reading this review start voting "not helpful," let me interject that I speak fluent Mandarin, have lived in Taiwan and the mainland, have been to most of the places described in this history, have been a US diplomat in the PRC, and had an association with the Stilwell Museum in Chongqing.

Tuchman's book is full of nuggets about the life of Chiang and Stilwell, and has many other interesting people woven in: MacArthur, Pat Hurley, Pershing, Mao, Zhou Enlai, Terry and the Pirates, etc. That alone makes the book an excellent read, a fact furthered by Ms. Tuchman's accessible style.

Yet, her main point still hasn't poked anyone in Washington or the US public in the eye, apparently: that the US still sufferes from the delusion that it can somehow "control" or "change" China. As Tuchman remarks, China is not and has never been "ours" to lose, win, or modify.

Employment in 1930s China gave Barbara Tuchman an early start three decades before beginning this book. The wait was worth it, since "Stilwell" is an enduring classic, combining sound scholarship with fluid, often brilliant writing that makes for great popular history. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell was among the most interesting of WW2 generals, perhaps second only to friend and mentor George Marshall. Stilwell possessed an array of strengths (personal integrity, fluent Mandarin, well-informed sympathy for the Chinese) and weaknesses (lack of tact, acid disdain for Chiang Kai-Shek). But his task---maximizing China's war effort against Japan---was essentially impossible, since the deep roots of GMD-CCP rivalry reflected complex internal dynamics. US (and Soviet) attempts to influence the course of the Sino-Japanese struggle and subsequent civil war had only marginal impact. Recent research adds much detail to our knowledge of 1940s China, but Tuchman's cautionary tale has lost none of its relevance for today's policymakers, who seemingly still believe that it is possible (as per J. Spence's title) "To Change China." Among many works on this era, T. White ed., "The Stilwell Papers" features his blunt, earthy style, while J. Davies, "Dragon By The Tail" is a compelling account by an Old China Hand who served on Stilwell's staff.

Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, may not deliver that feel-good, "how we won the war" bump, but it does offer a thoughtful and highly readable account of America's attempts to come to terms with an emerging superpower.

Pulitzer laureate Barbara Tuchman follows the career of Joseph Stilwell, a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee and West Point graduate, who was posted as a military attaché to the Legation in Peking in l920 - only nine years after the Chinese threw off imperial rule. During World War II, he was named Allied Chief of Staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek. The contest of wills between these two men occupies much of the book: Stilwell wanting to take over and train Chinese into crack units to resist the Japanese; Chiang insisting that the Americans handle Japan while he and his lackluster troops occupied themselves hunting down Communists. Their story reveals a larger clash of cultures, pitting Stilwell, the pragmatic, tactless Westerner, against Chiang, a would-be emperor trapped by inertia and the need to save face.

Tuchman revels in detail but keeps her story moving briskly. (It tends to get bogged down in Burma, but so did the Allies.) Generally favorable to Stilwell, she points out the folly of trying to impose top-down a set of Western values upon a non-Western culture. As for training a listless army to prop up a tinpot dictator? It was not a good idea then, and it's not a good idea now.

This is a remarkable book and well worth reading nearly four decades after its initial publication. Tuchman is a gifted author and her subject, "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, is an outrageous, memorable figure. Even readers with a limited familiarity with China or the Pacific theater during the Second World War will find "Stilwell and the American Experience in China" captivating.

Joe Stilwell was, to say the least, an unusual Army officer for his generation. He had a gift for languages and was drawn to career-limiting foreign assignments from the moment in he left West Point. He spoke fluent Spanish and French before he accepted a chance posting to China in his mid-thirties primarily because it offered the opportunity to get out of the country and learn a new language and culture. By the time the US entered the Second World War, Stilwell was the most highly rated Corps commander in the Army, but also had many years experience in China and spoke fluent Mandarin. Although George Marshall wanted him to command the first US ground campaign of the war - the TORCH landings in North Africa - Stilwell was sent to Asia because no one else was better qualified to serve in China, a region of great importance after the British were booted quickly out of Hong Kong, Singapore and the rest of East Asia by the Japanese.

The irony of this book is that Stilwell was at once the best-qualified officer in the US Army to serve in Asia in support of Chiang Kai Shek's KMT Army and also the worst possible choice because of his abrasive mien. On the one hand, no other senior officer had his command of the language, years in country, or understanding of the Chinese culture. On the other hand, no other senior officer was as tactless or boorish - two qualities that do not serve one well in Asia. For instance, Stilwell had the habit of assigning mocking and often cruel nicknames to his tormentors, real and perceived. Almost from the beginning, Chiang Kai Shek, his nominal superior in the China theater, was "Peanut" - an insulting moniker that Stilwell used rather openly and regularly and was well-known by the Generalissimo and his staff, an incredible affront to the Chinese sense of position and authority. Even more insulting and offensive was Stilwell's occasional reference to his polio-stricken command-in-chief as "Rubber legs."

Yet, Tuchman is clearly a fan of Stilwell's. She sees in him the same talent, passion and energy that led Secretary of War Stimson and Chief of Staff Marshall to put him in the role and steadfastly defend him in the face of repeated requests for his dismissal by scores of highly placed US, British and Chinese officials, whose number included FDR himself. But after reading "Stilwell" one cannot help but think that Stimson and Marshall made a mistake in sticking with Joe for so long.

"Stilwell" also reads like a case study in the perils and heartaches of coalition warfare. From the outset, the major allies in the CBI Theater - the US, British and Chinese - were fundamentally at odds over objectives and therefore completely out of sync on strategy. The British did not see the point in bothering with China at all and wanted only to regain their colonial possessions, Hong Kong and Singapore above all, and Burma only if convenient and if it could be done without mixing Chinese and Indian troops. Chiang Kai Shek, on the other hand, had little interest in ejecting the Japanese from China in a bloody, all-out racial war, but rather preferred to stockpile American supplies and allow the US Navy and nascent Air Forces to slowly erode the Japanese war machine. Meanwhile, the US was guided by FDR's dream of seeing China emerge as one of the world's great post-war powers, fully on the side of the United States and committed to democracy. Tuchman stresses repeatedly that the US public, and to a certain extent the US government, was greatly misled on the truth of the KMT regime. The missionary lobby and other important Chiang supporters, including high-level visitors that were successfully hoodwinked, such as defeated presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, generated a flood of propaganda that gave the average American a wildly unrealistic and positive impression of the Chinese ally. Tuchman contends that Stilwell himself saw the balderdash written about the KMT as the primary culprit in the inability or unwillingness of Washington to change policy once it became clear that the continued support Chiang was a waste of resources and American prestige and position.

"Stilwell" succeeds on many levels and will likely remain in print and widely read for decades to come. It is a stellar blend of biography, military history, American foreign policy, US-China relations, and a case study in coalition warfare.

This book explodes the myths and misconceptions of the American people during a time of great upheaval in China and Southeast Asia. It lays out the mistakes and misunderstandings of the America leaders and statesmen in trying to work with the real and supposed leaders of China. Covering the final times of Chinese Warlords through the times of Sun Yat Sen, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and into WWII with the Nationalist Chinese and Mao's Communist movement, this book reveals all of the history and understanding that only Barbara Tuchman is equipped to accomplish. This book holds no punches and exposes the many mistakes made by American leaders, who did not listen to Stilwell, in making foreign policy in an area of the world where foreign policy and gamesmanship was created and practiced to a high art. For example, Madame Chaing's propaganda trips to the US is an excellent example of how the American people and its leaders were duped into believing that the Nationalist Chinese were doing all they could to fight off the Japanese. When in reality they stockpiled the weaponry supplied by the US for their battles against Mao's Communists instead of their intended use against Japan. Ms. Tuchman enlightens the reader that when the Communists and Mao took control of China their hatred of the US for supporting the Nationalist Chinese was a foregone conclusion. Ms. Tuchman's coverage of the China, Burma, India (CBI) theater is masterful as well as her handling of "Vinegar" Joe Stilwell. "Vinegar" Joe is a General more skillfull, humble and knowledgeable than any US General to have ever held the rank. He was a master of winning battles and achieving success with the poorest health conditions, meagerest of men, supplies and support. If Joe Stilwell had the support given to Eisenhower or MacArthur, "Vinegar" Joe would have been recognized as one of America's greatest Generals. But then again, Joe Stilwell was a humble man who got the job done and didn't much care who got the credit. It is unfortunate that Ms Tuchman is no longer with us. This one book (which I have read three times) lays the ground work for understanding Asia and the thinking processes of its leadership in the present world.

This is one of the finest books I have ever read. The research is first rate. General Stillwell performed political and military feats that go unknown by most Americans. Beyond the physical hardships Vinegar Joe had to overcome separation from family, backstabbing politics, unsteady allies and, oh yes, the war. I will read this again.

I dicovered this book by accident in a used book store a few years ago. My first introduction to Barbara Tuchman, and I was hooked. The other reviewers have highly rated the ease of reading this book and I wholeheartedly agree. This is a substantial book on many levels. I would like to comment that in addition to its ease of reading, it brought to light a man that I believe has been neglected by post World War II historians, politicians and his own military. I recall the (1960s) film titled Merrill's Marauders in which General Stillwell makes a brief appearence. Little did I know then what depth of involvement he had in China and that theatre of the war. One knows of Patton, Nimitz, King, Halsey, and of course, Eisenhower and MacArthur, but Stillwell, well, he truly had the most thankless job in WW II. Ms. Tuchman did a wonderful job of describing a China caught between feeble attempts at modernizing and reverence for the old ways, competing political systems and national interests at a time of great change in the world at large. I came away from this book with the utmost respect for General Stillwell.

This book is, like all of Tuchman's, a good read, with her unique combination of good historiography and compelling writing.

In only one way does it fall short: Tuchman does not disclose in it that Henry Morgenthau Jr., who is mentioned in it, was her uncle, and she should have done this for ethical reasons. Morgenthau is mentioned in passing in the book, although as Treasury Secretary he was not a central player in Chinese affairs of that era. However, this entire book may be seen as an attempt to answer the "Who Lost China?" question central to the anti-Communist reaction of the late 1940s and 1950s. Tuchman is here defending the New Dealers from charges of being soft on Communism or in active collusion with the Communists, a charge that I'm sure must have put her uncle on the defensive. Because one of his top deputies was Harry Dexter White, proven to be part of the Alger Hiss spy ring passing secrets to the Soviets, and Morgenthau's judgment in keeping him aboard for years after suspicions were raised about him can certainly be questioned. U.S. policy on China may easily have crossed Morgenthau's desk and come into White's, and then Stalin's and Mao's, hands.

Tuchman argues strongly that Chiang Kai Shek himself lost China through his ineptness, his faction's corruption, and his preoccupation with hoarding U.S.-donated arms and aid to use in the struggle against Mao that he knew would begin once the Japanese were driven out of China. She shows Stilwell as a capable general whose advice Chiang would not take and whose authority Chiang repeatedly subverted.

Tuchman deals too quickly, however, with the wartime Communist regime, letting a benign and simplistic portrait of them as "agrarian liberals" stick even while noting that Americans who bought that phrase, had been misled. Her portrait of their areas as being well-managed places of peace and justice and equality - and the implication that the Americans should have backed this horse against the Japanese and would have been forgiven for so doing - is a little too simplistic. She should have backed it up with the same kind of research she dedicated to every other major player in the story. It leaves a bad flavor at the end; you sense her greater interest here was in posthumously defending her uncle's name (and she was the granddaughhter of Henry Morgenthau Sr.), which would be aided by the view that Roosevelt and the New Dealers could not have known how cruel Mao's regime would be and can be forgiven for any support they gave or sought to give to him.

Only at the end, when Tuchman gets shrill on the subject of McCarthyism, does the book falter. And she died before the Venona Files proved McCarthy right about highly placed spies in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.

The rest of this book is quite strong. But for her failure to disclose her personal connection to it, I'm docking her a star.

P.S. After initially posting this review, I came across yet another Tuchman conflict of interest. In Sam Tanenhaus's biography of Alger Hiss accuser Whittaker Chambers, he notes that Chambers' Communist spying associate John Sherman attempted to set up a Soviet spy ring in Japan using a press agency as a front. When the spying effort failed, he turned over the press agency's editorship to Barbara Wertheim - later Tuchman. Tanenhaus makes it clear that Tuchman herself was not a Communist. But this suggests yet another point of proximity with those involved in espionage, and one does not know how close she may have been to Sherman. Conceivably, if she was close to him, she may have had yet one more motive, as a historian, to attempt to shoot down the postwar anti-Communist effort.

This book is of exceptional quality and stands up very well after nearly forty years. If not for Tuchman, Stilwell, who was one of the best generals in the U.S. Army during World War II, would be lost to history given his unrewarding work in a backwater region.

Tuchman does an excellent job of letting Stilwell speak for himself. His integrity, brilliance, and humble nature come through. So do his pugnacious and combative personality, which while quite useful for a general in an operational command, were counterproductive in China. Having written a book on Stilwell myself, I believe she is absolutely right that he was the wrong man for this posting, which was about diplomacy as much as it was military campaigns. If he had not gone to China, he probably would have lead the U.S. invasion of North Africa instead of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Given their differing personalities and Stilwell's Anglophobia, Vinegar Joe would not have done well there either. He was an exceptionally able military leader, but he needed to be commanding field armies rather trying to be a diplomat.

This book, though, is more than a biography. It is a life and times study with Stilwell being a tool to study the U.S. relationship with China. Many people blamed Stilwell for poorly managing relations with China that ended up weakening Chiang Kai-shek and allowed the Communists to come to power. An easy claim to make since Stilwell died in 1946. Tuchman is balanced in her account and gives Stilwell's critics their moment. She also develops Chiang's point of view and shows that he and Stilwell were pursuing different policies because they had different goals. This leads to her main theme that China has never been under the sway or control of the United States, and that we have many experts on China, and ignore them at our peril. Tuchman was writing with the Vietnam War in mind, seeing Stilwell's experiences as setting in motion events that brought U.S. involvement in that region. That assertion seems a little simplistic, but this book is still highly, highly relevant given the current nature of U.S.-Chinese relations.

With all these points made, this book is not without certain shortcomings. She skimps a bit on operational matters, which is understandable given her focus. While this biography is good, very good, it is not Tuchman at her best. "Guns of August" is better. That comment, though, is like complaining that you won an Olympic gold medal without setting a world record. Most of us would take Olympic gold under those conditions and Tuchman really deserved the Pulitzer she won for this study.