Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45
Posted on 04/20/2012 4:33:46 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45
John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/apr42/f20apr42.htm
British Spitfires reinforce Malta
Monday, April 20, 1942 www.onwar.com
Spitfire taking off from the deck of the HMS RenownIn the Mediterranean... Malta’s precarious position continues. German and Italian bombing continue. When the USS Wasp accompanied by HMS Renown, two cruisers and six destroyers attempt to deliver 47 desperately needed Spitfires to the island, thirty per cent of them are destroyed immediately after landing.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
April 20th, 1942
MEDITERRANEAN SEA:Operation CALENDAR. Aircraft carriers USS Wasp (CV-7) escorted by the battle cruiser HMS Renown along with 2 cruisers and 6 destroyers ferry 47 Spitfires to Malta. USS Wasp flies off a CAP of Wildcats then launches her first delivery of Spitfires to Malta. They deliver 46 to the island; however, their arrival is also watched on radar screens in Sicily, and Stukas attack; 30 are immediately destroyed and within four days all but six are destroyed. (Jack McKillop)
Paris: Corporal Rohland is severely wounded at metro Molitor, later dying.
Rennes: Resistants attempt to assassinate the leading French fascist Jacques Doriot.
VICHY FRANCE: The new head of the Vichy France government, Pierre Laval, today fawned on Hitler and attacked Britain that but sought friendship with the United States. Speaking on the very day that the Nazis shot 30 hostages in Rouen in reprisal for an attack on a German troop train, Laval called Hitler “a conqueror who did not abuse his victory”. The gigantic battle that Germany was waging against “Bolshevism”. he said, had given a new meaning to the war. But Laval took care not to attack the United States, which he hopes to influence.
ATLANTIC: Unarmed U.S. freighter SS West Imboden, her presence advertised by an accidental fire in her stack, is torpedoed by German submarine U-752 about 200 miles (322 km) off Nantucket lightship and abandoned as she is being shelled by the U-boat. U-752 nears one of the lifeboats and asks about casualties. “That’s good,” one German officer responds when told that the American merchant sailors have come through unharmed. (Jack McKillop)
AUSTRALIA: USAAF Major General George H Brett assumes command of the Allied Air Forces, which has units based in northern and eastern Australia, with advanced facilities in the Port Moresby, New Guinea, area. (Jack McKillop)
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: Japanese heavy artillery, including 9.5-inch (24,1 cm) mortars, on Bataan smash US positions on Corregidor, 2 miles (3,2 km) away.
The Japanese conquest of the central Philippines is nearly complete as Cebu and Panay are conquered. Small U. S. and Filipino garrisons have fled into the hills of Leyte, Samar, Negros and Bohol. (Jack McKillop)
Contrast the 1941 US Gov. being mum on the mission vs. 69 years later on the Osama raid, Biden: “It was the Navy SEALs!”.
Stilwell thought with envy of the 8th Route Army and wished, as he often told his staff, that he could "get those Communists down here to fight."
Does this indicate Stilwell's admiration for communism or his desperate need for troops that will fight? I notice that the other Stilwell quotes in this excerpt are presented as "noted," "said," or "concluded." In this case he "thought," as he often "told his staff." So it is possible Tuchman drew her own conclusion as to what Stilwell might have thought because of her own inclination.
Nevertheless I still see this excerpt as an interesting look at the Burma campaign that I haven't seen elsewhere.
By the same token, contrast the LA Times’ bolstering of the raid “Dolittle Did It!” with recent year’s constant lamentations of troop loses in Iraq, despite the great successes of our troops and then Pres W.
The press is no longer American, it’s liberal, first and foremost.
Plus todays media would have headlined, "US aircraft carrier loaded with bombers on deck seen approaching the Japanese coast".
Haha... Too funny. And sad.
I never said that Gen. Stilwell admired Communism. I said that Barbara Tuchman did. Did Stilwell really often tell his staff how much he admired Communists? Of course not.
Did the ChiComs ever fight against the Japanese in any significant way? No, they did not; in spite of what leftist Americans might claim. The ChiComs were at war with other Chinese.
How come I never saw hitchhikers like that. I always see the scary looking dude in the dirty orange jumpsuit.
He called him 'peanut'.
Didn’t mean to imply you did. Sorry if it sounded that way. I was sort of going through the thought process I followed as I reread the passage since you alerted me to Tuchman’s lefty bent. Personally, I have a hard time picturing Stilwell waxing wistfully about getting the People’s Army to join the heroic struggle to rid greater China of the imperialist Japanese pestilence. Maybe more like, “I’d take the goddamn commies if we could get them to stand and fight!”
During the war Whittaker Chambers was an editor at Time magazine. He was fighting a constant battle with the pro-Communist writers. Theodore White, later famous for “The Making of the President” books, was Time’s China correspondent. White was totally under the control of Chou Enlai, as he later admitted.
Whittaker Chambers’ 1952 Autobiography ‘Witness’, Allen Weinstein’s ‘Perjury’, and Sam Tanenhaus’ ‘Whittaker Chambers: a biography’ are all essential reading for those interested in 20th century history.
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