85 Facts About Joseph Stilwell

Joseph Warren "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell was a United States Army general who served in the China Burma India Theater during World War II.

Joseph Stilwell spent the majority of his tenure striving for a 90-division army trained by American troops, using American lend-lease equipment, and fighting to reclaim Burma from the Japanese.

Joseph Stilwell's efforts led to friction with Chiang, who viewed troops not under his immediate control as a threat, and who saw the Chinese communists as a greater rival than Japan.

Joseph Stilwell delivered a message to the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek from President Roosevelt that threatened that lend-lease aid to China would be cut off.

The resulting friction atop an already tense relationship made Ambassador Patrick J Hurley advocate that Stilwell had to be replaced.

Chiang had been intent on keeping Lend-Lease supplies to fight the Chinese Communist Party, but Joseph Stilwell had been obeying his instructions to get the Communists and the Nationalists to co-operate against Japan.

Joseph Stilwell's admirers saw him as having been given inadequate resources and incompatible objectives.

Joseph Stilwell was born on 19 March 1883, in Palatka, Florida.

Joseph Stilwell's parents were Doctor Benjamin Stilwell and Mary A Peene.

Joseph Stilwell was an eighth-generation descendant of an English colonist who had arrived in America in 1638 and whose descendants remained in New York until the birth of Joseph Stilwell's father.

Under the discretion of his father, Joseph Stilwell was then placed into a postgraduate course and immediately formed a group of friends whose activities ranged from card playing to stealing the desserts from the senior dance in 1900.

Meanwhile, since he had already graduated, Joseph Stilwell was by his father's guidance sent to attend the US Military Academy at West Point, rather than Yale University, as had been originally planned.

In sports, Joseph Stilwell is credited with introducing basketball to the academy, participating in cross-country running as captain, and playing on the varsity football team.

Ultimately, Joseph Stilwell graduated with the class of 1904 and ranked 32nd out 124 cadets.

Joseph Stilwell later taught at West Point and attended the Infantry Advanced Course and the Command and General Staff College.

Joseph Stilwell was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal for his service in France, the medal's citation reading as follows:.

Joseph Stilwell contributed by the excellent performance of his task to the success of the operations.

Joseph Stilwell is often remembered by his sobriquet, "Vinegar Joe," which he acquired as a commander at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Joseph Stilwell often gave harsh critiques of performance in field exercises, and a subordinate, stung by the caustic remarks, drew a caricature of Joseph Stilwell rising out of a vinegar bottle.

Between the wars, Joseph Stilwell served three tours in China, where he mastered spoken and written Chinese and was the military attache at the US legation in Beijing from 1935 to 1939.

Just prior to the United States entering World War II, following the Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Joseph 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.

When it became necessary to send a senior officer to China to keep it in the war, Joseph Stilwell was selected, over his own personal objections, by US President Franklin Roosevelt and his old friend, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall.

Joseph 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.

In February 1942 Joseph Stilwell was promoted to lieutenant general and was assigned to the China-Burma-India Theater, where Joseph 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.

Joseph Stilwell's wariness increased after he had observed the disastrous Allied performance during the Japanese invasion of Burma.

Captain Evans Carlson, after observing the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, called the Imperial Japanese Army "third rate", while Joseph Stilwell wanted to go on the offensive to save Burma.

The first step for Joseph Stilwell was the reformation of the Chinese Army.

Joseph Stilwell's walkout separated him from the approximately 100,000 Chinese troops still there.

In India, Joseph Stilwell soon became well known for his no-nonsense demeanor and his disregard for military pomp and ceremony.

Joseph Stilwell's trademarks were a battered Army campaign hat, GI shoes, and a plain service uniform with no insignia of rank.

Joseph 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.

Joseph Stilwell left the defeated Chinese troops, and escaped Burma in 1942.

Joseph Stilwell was infuriated by the rampant corruption of Chiang's regime.

Joseph Stilwell faithfully kept a diary in which he began to note the corruption and the amount of money being wasted on the procrastinating Chiang and his government.

Joseph Stilwell, while attending the Cairo Conference, received a perceived and verbal order to plan an assassination of Chiang.

Joseph 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.

Joseph Stilwell 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.

Joseph Stilwell countered Mountbatten's January 1944 attempt to change the plans to favor an amphibious assault in the Bay of Bengal and Sumatra.

Joseph Stilwell sent Brigadier General Boatner to brief the Joint Staffs and Roosevelt.

Joseph Stilwell infuriated Calvert and the British by announcing via the BBC that Chinese troops had captured Mogaung but not referring to the British.

Joseph Stilwell expected the 77th Brigade to join the siege of Myitkyina, but Calvert was so sickened by demands on his troops that he considered abusive that switched off his radios and withdrew to Joseph Stilwell's base.

Joseph Stilwell finally appreciated the conditions under which the Chindits had been operating, apologized by blaming his staff officers for not receiving correct information, and allowed him and his men to withdraw.

Joseph Stilwell was angered that it was unable to do so, but Slim pointed out that Joseph Stilwell's Chinese 5,500 troops had failed in that task.

On 21 December 1943, Joseph Stilwell assumed direct control of planning for the invasion of northern Burma that culminated with the capture of the Japanese-held town of Myitkyina.

Joseph 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.

Joseph Stilwell rejected the evacuation recommendation but made a front line inspection of the Myitkyina lines.

Joseph Stilwell 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.

Joseph Stilwell ordered that all Marauders evacuated from combat from wounds or fever first submit to a special medical "examination" by doctors appointed by his headquarters staff.

Later, Joseph Stilwell's staff placed blame on Army medical personnel for over-zealously interpreting his return-to-duty order.

Joseph Stilwell had not kept his British allies clearly informed of his force movements or coordinated his offensive plans with those of General Slim.

Bereft of further combat replacements for his hard-pressed Marauder battalions, Joseph Stilwell felt that he had no choice but to continue offensive operations with his existing forces by using the Marauders as "the point of the spear" until they had achieved all their objectives or been wiped out.

Joseph Stilwell was concerned that pulling out the Marauders, the only US ground unit in the campaign, would result in charges of favoritism and force him to evacuate the exhausted Chinese and British Chindit forces as well.

Joseph 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.

Joseph Stilwell then argued for all air resources to be diverted to his forces in India for an early conquest of northern Burma.

Joseph Stilwell believed that after forcing a supply route through northern Burma by a ground offensive against the Japanese, he could train and equip 30 Chinese divisions with modern combat equipment.

The operation quickly overran Chennault's forward air bases and proved Joseph Stilwell to be correct.

In co-ordination with a southern offensive by Nationalist Chinese forces under General Wei Lihuang, Allied troops under Joseph Stilwell's command launched the long-awaited invasion of northern Burma.

Joseph 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.

Joseph Stilwell's drive into northern Burma allowed Air Transport Command to fly supplies into China more quickly and safely by allowing American planes to fly a more southerly route without fear of Japanese fighters.

Joseph Stilwell 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 Joseph Stilwell claimed that Guilin was a lost cause.

Chennault later claimed that Joseph 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 Joseph Stilwell.

Joseph Stilwell's face turned green and quivered As he struggled not to screech.

An exultant Stilwell immediately delivered the letter to Chiang despite pleas from Patrick J Hurley, Roosevelt's special envoy in China, to delay in delivering the message and to work on a deal that would achieve Stilwell's aim in a way that was more acceptable to Chiang.

On 12 October 1944, Hurley reported to Washington that Joseph Stilwell was a "fine man, but was incapable of understanding or co-operating with Chiang Kai-shek" and went on to say that if Joseph Stilwell remained in command, all of China might be lost to the Japanese.

On 19 October 1944, Joseph Stilwell, who had been promoted to four-star general on 1 August 1944, was recalled from his command by Roosevelt.

On 1 March 1946, Joseph Stilwell assumed command of the Sixth US Army, with its headquarters at the Presidio of San Francisco.

Joseph Stilwell died after surgery for stomach cancer on 12 October 1946, at the Presidio of San Francisco.

Joseph Stilwell was still on active duty and five months short of reaching the army's mandatory retirement age of 64.

Joseph Stilwell was cremated, his ashes were scattered on the Pacific Ocean, and a cenotaph was placed at the West Point Cemetery.

The content in Joseph Stilwell's diaries is contradicted by his speaking out for Japanese-American servicemen threatened with racist incidents postwar.

Joseph Stilwell attended rallies against racism and personally presented the family of 442nd Regimental Combat Team staff sergeant Kazuo Masuda, killed in action in Italy in 1944, with the Distinguished Service Cross.

Joseph Stilwell bypassed Chiang, his theater commander, and had gotten Mao to agree to follow an American commander.

Joseph Stilwell did not appreciate the developments in warfare brought about by World War II, including strategic air power and the use of highly trained infantrymen as jungle guerrilla fighters.

Joseph Stilwell clashed with other officers, including Orde Wingate, who led the Chindits, and Colonel Charles Hunter, who was in charge of Merrill's Marauders.

Accordingly, Joseph Stilwell abused both Chindits and Marauders and earned the contempt of both units and their commanders.

In other respects Joseph Stilwell was a skilled tactician in the US Army's land warfare tradition, with a deep appreciation of the logistics required of campaigning in rough terrain, which caused his dedication to the Ledo Road project for which he received several awards, including the Distinguished Service Cross and the US Army Distinguished Service Medal.

The trust that Joseph Stilwell placed in men of real insight and character in understanding China, particularly the China Hands, John Stewart Service and John Paton Davies, Jr.

Arguably, if Joseph Stilwell had been given the number of American regular infantry divisions that he had continually requested, the US experience in China and Burma could have been very different.

The decision to relieve General Joseph Stilwell represents the political triumph of a moribund, anti-democratic regime that is more concerned with maintaining its political supremacy than in driving the Japanese out of China.

The British historian Andrew Roberts quoted Joseph Stilwell's disparaging remarks about the British war effort in Asia to illustrate his strong Anglophobia, which became a stumbling block to smooth co-operation between American and British forces in Asia.

The British historian Rana Mitter argued that Joseph Stilwell never appreciated that his position as Chiang's chief of staff to Chiang did not give him as much authority as Marshall had in his position as army chief of staff.

Chiang, not Joseph Stilwell, was the Chinese forces' commander-in chief, and Chiang resisted Joseph Stilwell's initiatives if they involved committing Chinese forces to do-or-die engagements or if Chinese troops were removed from his immediate control to bases in India.

Mitter supported the view that Chennault could have accomplished much more if Joseph Stilwell had not diverted a large proportion of lend-lease equipment to the Chinese troops in India.

The General Joseph Stilwell House was built between 1933 and 1934, located at 26218 Inspiration Avenue, in Carmel Point, at the southern city limits of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.