Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53571 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Customer Reviews

Little Known Much Respected
How far will the united States go to support a ruler on the words of others? Stilwell was, first and foremost, a soldier; a general of uncommon skills. Not so much the common touch as the respect by the troops for putting them first, their welfare was his top priority. His years in the east made him the obvious choice for the China post. No general has been asked to do as much as he had to do on the political front, treating with allies who were concerned above all for their place in the sun, while at the same time, fighting a tenacious, skilled, dedicated enemy. Surely a harbinger of what was to come in a place tro the north, called Korea.

Well written but biased
This book very elegantly and faithfully documented the Stilwell's point of view of what happened during this part of history, but it is very one-sided.

First of all, the KMT commanders were not mostly corrupt and incapable like Tuchman had described in this book. A direct quote from TIME artile titled "The Army Nodbody Knows" in the June 16, 1941 issue:
"...Four years of war have hurt China a lot, but have also taught China a lot. The most spectacular discovery, for a nation in which military leadership has classically been an affair of coin and cunning rather than martial skill, has been that China could turn out first-class officer talent.

There is no younger officer class in the world than that of the Generalissimo's crack divisions. Generalissimo Chiang is 53, Chen Cheng is 41, Chen's Field Chief of Staff is 34. It would be hard to find a divisional or regimental commander in those divisions over 40. Regimental colonels are sometimes in their 20s.

These baby officers are tough babies. They are trim as well-kept guns, big fellows, by Chinese standards, hearty and jolly in rest and brutally energetic in action. They lead in person. With their divisions they clamber up mountainsides which would put most corpulent U.S. colonels hors de combat. In nearly four years of fighting, the young officers have mastered the arts of the field--silent de ployment, timely retreat, sudden concentration, plausible ambuscade, dependable supply of vegetable camouflage..."

But as this book has gone out of its way to emphasize, it is true that Chiang's administration towards the end of the second Sino-Japanese war was becoming weak and corrupt, which eventually led to his lost of mainland China to the Communist. However, this fact needs to be put into context as well. China fought alone for 4 years against a vastly more superior enemy. Therefore many of the best Nationalist Chinese generals were KIA or incapacitated early in the war of resistance against Japan. There were 73 KMT generals KIA during WWII (plus 1 Chinese Communist general), more than any other country Allied or Axis. It is reasonable to assume that many of the KMT military commanders that managed to survive and rise in ranks to the end were more interested in self preservation and personal gain, rather than defeating the emeny. Chiang knew this all too well but could do very little to alleviate this problem, all he could do was execute one or two of them from time to time to warn others not to go too far. So Tuchman's analogy comparing KMT to AVRN is not only inappropriate, but also failed to take into account the context of China fighting a 8-year long war with marginal industrial capacity and grossly inadeqate military supplies. It is a miracle that Chiang did not surrender and broker some kind of peace agreement with the Japanese.

Finally, this book has indirectly proved that Stilwell spent (and wasted) way too much time and energy accusing the KMT leadership and fighting Chiang and Chennault, instead of accepting the tremedous shortcomings of his Chinese Ally and try to work out a less than perfect solution to fight the Japanese. His despise and hatred toward Chiang got to a point when Roosevelt gave Chiang an ultimatum to hand over command of all Chinese armed forces to Stilwell (with explicit instruction to keep this confidential), he rushed to have the letter read out loud in front of all the Chinese and American generals attending a meeting, for the sole purpose of embarrass and discredit Chiang in public. This event led directly to his recall as Chiang replied to Roosevelt that the KMT would rather fight alone than cave in to this ultimatum.

Important but ...
As much as I think this books has provided a lot of information/insight during the period, I found author's comtemptuous attidude towards Chinese a bit hard to swallow. In a way, she was somehow biased when she wrote the book. In no way I'm accusing her of distorting the fact, but, how the fact is presented will shape the opinion of a general reader about Chinese. This is probably not the main point of the book, but for a book that has won putlizer prize, I would have expected more.