Editing Joseph Stilwell (section)

===Disagreements with Chiang and British===
[[File:Chiang Kai Shek and wife with Lieutenant General Stilwell.jpg|thumb|250px|Stilwell sharing a laugh with Generalissimo [[Chiang Kai-shek]] and [[Soong Mei-ling]], 1942]]
Stilwell left the defeated Chinese troops, and escaped Burma in 1942. Chiang had given him nominal command of these troops, though Chinese generals later admitted that they had considered Stilwell as an "adviser" and sometimes took orders directly from Chiang.<ref>Tuchman, p. 372</ref> Chiang was outraged by what he saw as Stilwell's blatant abandonment of the [[200th Division]], his best army, without orders and began to question Stilwell's capability and judgment as a military commander.<ref>Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo, p.208</ref>

Chiang was also infuriated at Stilwell's strict control of US lend lease supplies to China. Instead of confronting Stilwell or communicating his concerns to Marshall and Roosevelt when they asked Chiang to assess Stilwell's leadership after the Allied disaster in Burma, Chiang reiterated his "full confidence and trust" in Stilwell<ref>Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo, p.204</ref> but countermanded some of the orders to Chinese units issued by Stilwell in his capacity as Chief of Staff.

An outraged Stilwell began to call Chiang "the little dummy" or "Peanut" in his reports to Washington,<ref>Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo, p.216</ref> "Peanut" being originally intended as a code word for Chiang in official radio messages.<ref>{{cite book |title= China-Burma-India Theater: Stilwell's Mission to China|last1=Romanus |first1=Cha, p. 23rles F. |last2=Sunderland |first2=Riley |year=1987 |publisher= United States Army Center of Military History|location=Washington, D.C. |page=318}}</ref> On the contrary, the term "Peanut" was first mentioned during Stilwell's flight to the CBI Theater in March 1942. Col. Willard Wyman, a member of Stilwell's staff on that flight mentioned Chiang "...is like a peanut perched on top of a dung heap...".<ref>Frank Dorn, Walkout with Stilwell in Burma, p.23</ref>  Chiang repeatedly expressed his pent-up grievances against Stilwell for his "recklessness, insubordination, contempt, and arrogance" to U.S. envoys to China and was angry at his obsession with going on the offensive in Burma when East China was falling into Japan's hands.<ref>Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo, p.214</ref><ref>Bernstein (2014), p. 41-44</ref>

Stilwell was infuriated by the rampant corruption of Chiang's regime. Stilwell faithfully kept a diary in which he began to note the corruption and the amount of money ($380,584,000 in 1944 dollars) being wasted on the procrastinating Chiang and his government. The ''Cambridge History of China'', for instance, estimates that 60%–70% of Chiang's Nationalist conscripts did not make it through their basic training, with 40% deserting and the remaining 20% dying of starvation before their full induction into the military. Eventually, Stilwell's belief that Chiang's and his generals were incompetent and corrupt reached such proportions that Stilwell sought to cut off lend-lease aid to China.<ref>Wesley Marvin Bagby, The Eagle-Dragon Alliance: America's Relations with China in World War II, p.96</ref> Stilwell, while attending the [[Cairo Conference]], received a perceived and verbal order to plan an assassination of Chiang.  Stilwell discussed this with his Aide, Col. Frank Dorn.  Both were baffled, nevertheless, Stilwell delegated that task to Dorn.  It was planned but was never carried out.<ref>Frank Dorn, Walkout with Stilwell in Burma, p. 75–79</ref>

Stilwell pressed Chiang and the British to take immediate actions to retake Burma, but Chiang demanded impossibly large amounts of supplies before he would agree to take offensive action, and the British refused to meet their previous pledges to provide naval and ground troops because of Churchill's "[[Europe first]]" strategy.<ref>Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo, pp. 224–225</ref>

Eventually, Stilwell began to complain openly to Roosevelt that Chiang was hoarding U.S. Lend-Lease supplies because he wanted to keep the [[National Revolutionary Army|Nationalist forces]] ready to fight [[Mao Zedong]]'s Communists after the end of the war against the Japanese.<ref>Roosevelt, As He Saw It, p.207</ref> From 1942 to 1944, however, 98% of US military aid over the Hump had gone directly to the [[14th Air Force]] and US military personnel in China.<ref>Jay Taylor, Stilwell's The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, pp. 271</ref>

Stilwell also continually clashed with Field Marshal [[Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell|Archibald Wavell]] and apparently came to believe that the British in India were more concerned with protecting their colonial possessions than helping the Chinese fight the Japanese. In August 1943, as a result of constant feuding and conflicting objectives of British, American, and Chinese commands, along with the lack of a coherent strategic vision for the China Burma India (CBI) theater, the Combined Chiefs of Staff split the CBI command into separate Chinese and Southeast Asia Theaters.

Stilwell countered Mountbatten's January 1944 attempt to once again change the plans to favor an amphibious assault in the [[Bay of Bengal]] and [[Sumatra]]. "The limeys are welshing," he wrote in his diary and of the plan that seemed to him as nothing more than "fancy charts, false figures and dirty intentions". He sent Brigadier General Boatner to brief the Joint Staffs and Roosevelt.<ref>{{Cite journal| issn = 1546-5330| issue = 107| pages = 6–27| last = Kolakowski| first = Christopher L.| title = "The Coming of Modern War"| journal = Army History| date = 2018| url = http://www.jstor.org/stable/26478824| jstor = 26478824}}</ref>

{{Quote box
|quote  = "Whatever the fiasco, aplomb is unbroken. Mistakes, failures, stupidities and other causes of disaster mysteriously vanish. Disasters are recorded with care and pride and become transmuted into things of beauty. Official histories record every move in monumental and infinite detail but the details serve to obscure."
|author = — [[Barbara Tuchman]]
|source = on official British accounts of World War II in Burma
|bgcolor = #F0FFFF
|width  = 30%
}}