Word: chiangs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...American to operate effectively as Chiang Kai-shek's Chief of Staff would have been a delicate operation at best. Stilwell in his diary quotes George Marshall as telling him, "Get the various factions together and grab command and in general give 'em the works." Whether Marshall said that or not, that is the way Stilwell went about his task...
Three days after his first arrival in Chungking, this was Stilwell's attitude toward his superior, Chiang Kaishek: "[Dinner at Chiang's] turned out to be a session of amateur tactics by Chiang Kaishek, backed up by a stooge staff general. Chiang Kai-shek gave me a long lecture on the situation and picked on Mandalay as the danger point. 'If the British run away, the Japs will get to Mandalay and crucify us.' I showed him the solution, but [the] stooge jumped in and made a long harangue about how right Chiang Kai-shek...
...Sudden Death. In his diary and letters Stilwell usually refers to Chiang Kai-shek as "Peanut" and Roosevelt as "Old Softie." The crisis in Stilwell's struggles with "Peanut" and "Old Softie" came in September 1944. In nis disgust with Chiang, he wrote to Mrs. Stilwell, "Why can't sudden death for once strike in the proper place?" Two days later he was jubilant. He finally got from Roosevelt what Editor White describes as "the sharpest-worded American demand for reform and action on the part of the Chinese government that the war had evoked...
...Chiang Kai-shek didn't take it. He insisted that Stilwell be replaced. Stilwell writes, "It looks very much as if they had gotten me at last. The Peanut has gone off his rocker and Roosevelt has apparently let me down completely. If Old Softie gives in on this, as he apparently has, the Peanut will be out of control from now on. . . . God help the next...
After 19 hours the hunger strikers finally permitted themselves to be taken home by policemen. Tired-looking Chiang Kai-shek welcomed the delegates and then, in a mildly tolerant gesture, returned to his residence to have tea with the "irregulars." The day before, the Generalissimo had attended the last meeting of the People's Political Council (which for ten years had functioned as China's provisional Parliament). In his farewell address, Chiang had some significant things to say about tolerance: "I have committed many blunders during these past ten years, but the worst was my tolerance toward...