‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell, whose vocal contempt for Chiang (and Roosevelt, and the British, and so on) made it necessary to replace him

From Small Wars, Faraway Places by Michael Burleigh. Page 106.

Even under Roosevelt, US policy towards China was focused on winning the war against Japan. But behind that simple goal there were different perceptions of what was happening in China. Foreign Service officers in Chongqing and Yan’an had a higher opinion of the honesty and efficiency of the Communists than of the Nationalists. The pro-Soviet Vice President Henry Wallace convinced himself that Mao’s adherents were, as Stalin put it, ‘margarine Communists’ rather than real butter. The State Department’s Division of Chinese Affairs (part of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs) were under no illusions about the Communists, but rather hoped that a liberal, pro-Western third force might emerge to supplant both them and the Nationalists, an illusion special unto itself. Then there was the US military mission to Chongqing, under ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell, whose vocal contempt for Chiang (and Roosevelt, and the British, and so on) made it necessary to replace him with the more diplomatic Albert Wedemeyer, whose primary role was to get the Chinese to draw off as many Japanese as possible while the US converged on the home islands. It is easy to see how policy towards China was always incipiently a blame game in the making.

Truman harboured no sentimental delusions about China. He knew that US support for Chiang (around $2.5 billion before 1949) was like gambling on a three-legged horse. It would take an authentic American hero to broker a deal between the Nationalists and Communists, whereby the latter would take their place in a democratic China, and he trusted military men far more than diplomats. In December 1945, Truman telephoned General George Marshall, around six days into a well-earned retirement from directing the US war effort, at his home in Leesburg, Virginia. ‘General, I want you to go to China for me,’ said the President. ‘Yes, Mr President,’ replied Marshall before he hung up, lest Mrs Marshall overhear his acceptance of a new appointment.