Roosevelt (96 page)

Hull asked Harriman to spell out his views further. On reflection Harriman seemed more temperate—or ambivalent. Stalin, he said, seemed to have two strings to his bow—friendliness toward the West, and suspicion and hostility to it. The Russian people craved peace; they wanted the close Allied relations to continue after the war; Stalin could not disrupt the alliance without causing grave concern among the Russian people. On the other hand the Soviet leaders keenly felt the backwardness of their country; they were unduly sensitive and suspicious; and powerful elements close to the Marshal would insist on independent action where Russian security was strongly affected.

Practically, this meant, Harriman said, that Moscow would often take unilateral action; would block consideration by a United Nations security council of any question close to its national interests; would insist on shaping its own relations with neighboring states. Harriman’s advice was ambivalent, too—meet the Russians more than halfway, but “oppose them promptly with the greatest of firmness” when they seemed to “go wrong.”

All this left it to Roosevelt to decide when he should oppose the Russians, or when he should yield and release—it could be hoped—the potential for friendship and good will that even his hardheaded Ambassador saw in the Russian people.

In the Far East Roosevelt was facing a sharp and ominous contrast by the fall of 1944 between the brilliant military advances scored in the Pacific and the political-military stalemate on the land mass of Asia.

The invasion of Leyte challenged the imperial high command
even more blatantly than had Saipan. The Philippines shielded the vital lifelines across the South China Sea; they formed huge steppingstones for the American assault on Formosa, the Chinese coast, on Japan itself. Once again, as in the Marianas, Japanese naval chiefs planned a combined attack on the task forces guarding the American amphibious forces. As MacArthur’s infantry deepened the beachhead on Leyte, Japanese striking forces moved toward the central Philippines from the Singapore area and from Japan. Defending the Leyte waters were the Seventh Fleet, commanded by Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, who was under MacArthur, and the Third Fleet, under Bull Halsey, who was responsible to Nimitz’s command post thousands of miles away at Pearl Harbor.

The enemy’s big counteroffensive began on October 23. The largest Japanese fleet, under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, with two superbattleships and a dozen cruisers, advanced directly across the Sibuyan Sea toward San Bernardino Strait, only to meet such fierce attacks by submarines and carriers that after two days it turned about and started back west. To the south another Japanese fleet, under Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura, ran into a perfectly planned ambush in the Surigao Strait and was almost annihilated. A third and smaller enemy fleet sortied down from the Inland Sea, not to fight, but to lure Halsey’s big force north and thus leave the landing forces unguarded. Halsey, burning to come to grips with what he thought was the main enemy carrier strength, and persuaded that Kurita’s force was manageable if not beaten, steamed north to meet the enemy head on.

An epic of confusion and gallantry followed. Kurita’s fleet, battered but still formidable, turned back east to go for the unprotected invasion ships. Not one of the major Japanese fleets knew just what the others were doing. Halsey was about to close with the northern enemy fleet when he turned about to help block Kurita’s move. Too late—Kurita was already pounding the little collection of escort carriers and destroyers that lay between him and Leyte. Kurita’s battleships and heavy cruisers were just about to catch and sink the lightly armored American ships when he suddenly broke off the action for fear that Halsey’s big fleet would catch
him.
But Halsey had managed to steam three hundred miles north and three hundred miles south without engaging the main enemy forces.

In Washington the President jubilantly summoned reporters to his office. He had received a report from Admiral Halsey, he announced, that “the Japanese Navy in the Philippine area has been defeated, seriously damaged and routed by the U.S. Navy in that area.” Statistics later told the tale—the Japanese lost 306,000 tons of combat ships, including three battleships and ten cruisers
in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and the Americans 38,000. And behind the statistics, aside from brilliant seamanship and bad communications, was the ever-expanding industrial power and naval technology of the United States.

On the dusty plains of China, on the other hand, and in the jungles of Burma, the infantryman was still king, especially when assisted by aerial knights who could leap over obstacles. In the early months of 1944 the Japanese struck with their infantry forces against two vulnerable areas, India and China. Tokyo’s strategy was as much political as military—to divide the people and destroy the governments of the two most populous nations in the world.

In Burma the Japanese attacked along the coast of Arakan in an effort to outflank a British advance south, only to be outflanked in turn and then repulsed as Mountbatten supplied his troops by air. The enemy then advanced on the Imphal Plain to the northwest; here again the British used gliders and air-borne troops skillfully to hold the attack. The approaches to India were secure, at least for a time. Roosevelt sent Churchill his congratulations on “an epic achievement for the airborne troops, not forgetting the mules.” To the east, Stilwell, who had left CBI theater headquarters to assume command in the field, deployed Chindits, Chinese, and Americans to capture the airfield at Myitkyina and hence safeguard the lifelines to China.

These heroic efforts soon were overshadowed by the successes Tokyo was scoring in its other great military-political effort. By late spring strong Japanese spearheads were cutting through disorganized Chinese resistance in Honan to seize control of Hankow-Canton communications and threaten Chennault’s advance air bases. Ambassador Clarence E. Gauss cabled that Chungking had been thrown into despair. Chinese peasants, he reported, were even turning on the Kuomintang troops. Stilwell, arriving in Chungking from his Burma headquarters early in June to resume his duties as commander of American troops, Chief of Staff to the Generalissimo, and trainer of his armies, shifted Hump tonnage to Chennault, but he feared that on the ground there was nothing to stop the Japanese.

The melting away of Chiang’s troops before enemy ground attacks realized Roosevelt’s worst fears about China. More than anyone, other than the Generalissimo himself, he bore responsibility for the diversion of men and war supply to China. He had personally sponsored Chennault’s efforts. He particularly had encouraged the Generalissimo, exhorting and persuading but not demanding or cajoling or really bargaining. Churchill had been skeptical of the effort in China; others had urged the White House to get tough with Chungking, but the President, sensitive to the
tangle of military problems and political disloyalties surrounding Chiang, had insisted that he be treated as an ally, as chief of state, and indeed as one of the Big Four.

And now after all his patient efforts in China, Roosevelt’s strategy seemed to be crumbling. The President’s tone with the Generalissimo took on an edge of sharpness. “The extremely serious situation which results from Japanese advances in Central China,” he radioed on July 6, “which threatens not only your Government but all that the United States Army has been building up in China, leads me to the conclusion that drastic measures must be taken immediately if the situation is to be saved.” He asked Chiang to put Stilwell in full command, under himself, of all Chinese forces. He added that he knew how Chiang felt about Stilwell, but the future of all Asia was at stake.

Chiang replied that he agreed in principle but asked for a delay, for “Chinese troops and their internal political conditions are not as simple as those in other countries”; he also asked Roosevelt to send a personal representative to help adjust relations between Stilwell and himself. The President agreed and chose Major General Patrick J. Hurley, an Oklahoma Republican, corporation lawyer, Secretary of War under Hoover, negotiator between Mexico and expropriated American oil companies, more recently a roving diplomat for the President, a towering picture-book general with considerable experience of almost everything except China. As Hurley proceeded to China, the Japanese were pressing on. In mid-September Stilwell cabled to Marshall that “the jig is up in South China.”

It was not, seemingly, in northern China. Armed with instructions from Roosevelt, Hurley plunged into the trackless problem of helping bring a settlement between the Kuomintang and Mao Tsetung’s Communist regime. He arrived at a time when American officials in China were at last seeing Chinese Communism firsthand. On Roosevelt’s prompting, Vice President Wallace had persuaded Chiang in June to allow embassy and army officers to visit Yenan, the Communists’ capital, for personal observations and talks. The visiting Americans, liberated from the drift and demoralization of Chungking, felt that they had come into a different country and were meeting a different people. From Mao down, the officials impressed them with their cordiality, directness, and lack of show. There were few police in Yenan, no beggars, no desperate poverty, the observers reported to Chungking and Washington. Morale was high. People were serious, busy, organized, confident. Even Hurley seemed to become drawn into Yenan’s intoxicating atmosphere of discipline and dedication.

The Communists did not conceal their interest in the United States and its President. They bombarded their visitors with questions. Might America swing back to isolationism and let China “stew in her own juice”? Was it really interested in democracy? Did it realize that Chiang was in no way representative of China, that even Hitler had a better claim to power? Much depended on Roosevelt—was he going to be re-elected? Chairman Mao, in a fine humor after dancing gaily with his wife, sat down next to an American second secretary during a lull and talked about the possibility of a Kuomintang-Communist compromise. He thought Roosevelt would not put any pressure on Chungking until after the election because he would not want to stir up Chiang’s supporters.

“We will wait,” Mao added. “We have had a long training in patience.” Laughingly he asked about Roosevelt’s chances of re-election.

Roosevelt at the moment was far more worried about the Generalissimo than about the Chairman or even perhaps his own re-election chances. As the Japanese pressed on in eastern China, and as Chiang showed no signs of reorganizing and reforming his government, or seeking unity with the Communists, the President decided on a firmer hand. In a stinging cable to Chiang he said that China was facing the disaster he had feared. Chiang would have to assume personal responsibility for what was happening.

“I have urged time and time again in recent months that you take drastic action to resist the disaster which has been moving closer to China and to you.” He and Churchill had just decided at Quebec, he went on, to accelerate operations to open the land line to China. “The action I am asking you to take” was “at once placing General Stilwell in unrestricted command of all your forces.”

It fell to Stilwell to deliver this message personally to the Generalissimo. Vinegar Joe could not resist a surge of pleasure in presenting to his chief the kind of near-ultimatum that for months he had wanted Washington to send. “I handed this bundle of paprika to the Peanut and then sank back with a sigh,” he wrote happily in his diary. “The harpoon hit the little bugger right in the solar plexus, and went right through him. It was a clean hit, but beyond turning green and losing his power of speech, he did not bat an eye. He just said to me, ‘I understand.’ ”

For Stilwell it was but a brief moment of triumph. The Generalissimo was stung by the handling of the message as well as by its content; a subordinate had thrust upon him an ultimatum. Stilwell must go, he hold Hurley; he was unfitted for the vast, complex, and delicate duties of the new command. He had never been able
to get along with the Generalissimo. Chiang would tolerate him no longer.

So the gauntlet was thrown at Roosevelt’s feet. Marshall urged him to stand behind Stilwell. It was a last chance to appeal to liberal, reformist, or even Communist elements in China. But here Roosevelt hesitated. Expressing his surprise and regret to Chiang, he agreed that Stilwell be relieved as Chiang’s chief of staff but asked that he be placed in direct command of Chinese troops in Yunnan and Burma. Chiang refused. He stood by his original demand that Stilwell be relieved of all his offices and replaced. And now Roosevelt submitted. Stilwell would be brought home. Clearly no American general would take over-all command of the armed forces of Nationalist China. There would be no basic reorganization of the Chinese Army, no fundamental social reform, no pressure on Chiang to make a settlement with the Communists—and probably no real drive against the Japanese in South China. By November 1944 Roosevelt’s China strategy seemed to be in ruins.

Why did Roosevelt reverse his China strategy at the critical moment? Stilwell’s answer was simple: the Commander in Chief was a weak and procrastinating politician, an “old softy” who had refused to bargain with Chiang, who knew little about China, and who was probably ill, to boot. The truth, as usual, was not so simple. Roosevelt, with his sensitivity to personalities, doubtless felt that he was responding mainly to Chiang’s insistence on his prerogatives as chief of state, to Stilwell’s crusty individualism and inability to get along with Chiang, Mountbatten, or Chennault, to the views of Hurley, who was siding with the Generalissimo against Stilwell. But his main reason for ending pressure on Chiang stemmed from his basic Chinese strategy.

Since Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had been pursuing two aims in China: to strengthen it as the central base for the final attack on Japan, and to treat it as a great power that would be a bulwark of Asian stability and democracy after the war and a focus of American co-operation with Asia. While the first aim was a matter of military need and the latter of long-run hopes, the two goals meshed. By sending men, munitions, and money to China he was strengthening its postwar as well as its war role; by including China as one of the Big Four, by bringing it into summit conferences such as that at Cairo, he was bolstering Chungking’s legitimacy, giving it a greater claim on war supply and on participation in military decisions.