Today in WWII History

How do you know all this (besides from the obvius ones)?

 

1942 : General Arnold fights for unique bombers

On this day in 1942, Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold gives highest priority to the development of two exceptional aircraft--the B-35 Flying Wing and the B-36 Peacemaker--intended for bombing runs from bases in the United States to targets in Europe.

General Arnold was a man of distinction from the beginning of his career: Not only was he one of the first pilots in the U.S. Signal Corps, he was taught to fly by none other than one of the Wright brothers. During World War I, Arnold was director of aviation training for the Army. Between the wars, he embraced a controversial military philosophy that emphasized strategic bombing, eliminating the need for the use of ground forces altogether.

At the time of the United States' entry into the Second World War, the Army Air Forces had become an increasingly distinct military service. Arnold was made its first chief. Along with this honor came the opportunity of a seat with the Joint Chiefs of Staff; initially intended to boost his status to that of his counterpart in Britain, it also increased the stature and independence of the Army Air Forces. Arnold was able to form alliances with British RAF allies who also favored the use of strategic bombing in lieu of ground-force operations.

In 1942, Arnold gave the highest priority to the development of two extra long-distance transatlantic planes that would prove most useful to his strategic bombing game plan: the B-35 and the B-36 transatlantic bombers. The B-35 had been first proposed in early 1941, intended for use in defending an invaded Britain. But the design was so radical (it was tailless), the plane was put on the back burner. It was finally revived because of advantages the plane afforded over the B-36--bombing range in relation to gross weight, for example. Fifteen B-35 planes were ordered for construction--but the first did not take flight until 1946. Designs for the B-36 were also developed early in 1941, on the assumption that the United States would inevitably be drawn into the war and it would need a bomber that could reach Europe from bases in America. It was to be a massive plane--162 feet long with a 230-foot wingspan. But its construction lagged, and it was not completed until after the war.

Although Hap's "high priority" could not cut through the military bureaucracy, 1947 would see the Nation Defense Act establish an autonomous Air Force--a dream for which he had worked. The B-35 would become the prototype for the B-2 Stealth bomber built in 1989. And the B-36 was used extensively by U.S. Strategic Air Command until 1959, but never dropped a bomb.

 

1939 : Nazis and communists divvy up Poland

On this day in 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union agree to divide control of occupied Poland roughly along the Bug River--the Germans taking everything west, the Soviets taking everything east.

As a follow-up to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, (also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact), that created a non-aggression treaty between the two behemoth military powers of Germany and the U.S.S.R., Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, met with his Soviet counterpart, V.M. Molotov, to sign the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty. The fine print of the original non-aggression pact had promised the Soviets a slice of eastern Poland; now it was merely a matter of agreeing where to draw the lines.

Joseph Stalin, Soviet premier and dictator, personally drew the line that partitioned Poland. Originally drawn at the River Vistula, just west of Warsaw, he agreed to pull it back east of the capital and Lublin, giving Germany control of most of Poland's most heavily populated and industrialized regions. In return, Stalin wanted Lvov, and its rich oil wells, as well as Lithuania, which sits atop East Prussia. Germany now had 22 million Poles, "slaves of the Greater German Empire," at its disposal; Russia had a western buffer zone.

On this same day, the Soviet Union also signed a Treaty of Mutual Assistance with the Baltic nation of Estonia, giving Stalin the right to occupy Estonian naval and air bases. A similar treaty would later be signed with Latvia. Soviet tanks eventually rolled across these borders, in the name of "mutual assistance," placing the Baltic States into the hands of the U.S.S.R. for decades to come. These "treaties" were once again merely the realization of more fine print from the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, giving Stalin more border states as buffer zones, and protecting Russian territory where the Bolshevik ideology had not been enthusiastically embraced from intrusion by its western neighbor, namely its non-aggression partner Germany. The highly vulnerable Baltic nations had little to say about any of these arrangements; they were merely annexed.

 

1938 : Hitler appeased at Munich

On this day in 1938, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sign the Munich Pact, which seals the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Upon return to Britain, Chamberlain would declare that the meeting had achieved "peace in our time."

Although the agreement was to give into Hitler's hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslovakia's coal, 70 percent of its iron and steel, and 70 percent of its electrical power. It also left the Czech nation open to complete domination by Germany. In short, the Munich Pact sacrificed the autonomy of Czechoslovakia on the altar of short-term peace-very short term. The terrorized Czech government was eventually forced to surrender the western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia (which became a protectorate of Germany) and finally Slovakia and the Carpathian Ukraine. In each of these partitioned regions, Germany set up puppet, pro-Nazi regimes that served the military and political ends of Adolf Hitler. By the time of the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the nation called "Czechoslovakia" no longer existed.

It was Neville Chamberlain who would be best remembered as the champion of the Munich Pact, having met privately with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, the dictator's mountaintop retreat, before the Munich conference. Chamberlain, convinced that Hitler's territorial demands were not unreasonable (and that Hitler was a "gentleman"), persuaded the French to join him in pressuring Czechoslovakia to submit to the Fuhrer's demands. Upon Hitler's invasion of Poland a year later, Chamberlain was put in the embarrassing situation of announcing that a "state of war" existed between Germany and Britain. By the time Hitler occupied Norway and Denmark, Chamberlain was finished as a credible leader. "Depart, I say, and let us have done with you!" one member of Parliament said to him, quoting Oliver Cromwell. Winston Churchill would succeed him as prime minister soon afterwards.

 

1944 : Experiments begin on homosexuals at Buchenwald

On this day in 1944, the first of two sets of medical experiments involving castration are performed on homosexuals at the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany.

Buchenwald was one of the first concentration camps established by the Nazi regime. Constructed in 1937, it was a complement to camps north (Sachsenhausen) and south (Dachau), and was built to hold slave laborers, who worked in local munitions factories 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts. Although not technically a death camp, in that it had no gas chambers, nevertheless hundreds of prisoners died monthly, from malnutrition, beatings, disease, and executions.

The camp boasted a sophisticated-sounding facility on its grounds called the Division for Typhus and Virus Research of the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS. In truth, it was a chamber of horrors where medical experiments of the cruelest kind were carried out on prisoners against their will. Victims were often intentionally infused with various infections to test out vaccines. Euthanasia was also performed regularly on Jews, Gypsies, and mentally ill prisoners.

Among the cruelest of Buchenwald's overseers was the infamous Ilsa Koch, wife of SS commandant Karl Koch and known as the "Witch of Buchenwald." Among her fetishistic tendencies was her penchant for lampshades, gloves, and other items made from the tattooed skin of dead inmates. She also had a reputation for forcing prisoners to participate in orgies. She was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for her sadism, but she hanged herself after 16 years behind bars.

Buchenwald was liberated by the Allies on April 11, 1945, one day before the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. It was later used by the Soviet Union as a concentration camp for the enemies of East Germany.

 

1946 : Nazi war criminals sentenced at Nuremberg

On October 1, 1946, 12 high-ranking Nazis are sentenced to death by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg. Among those condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force; and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior. Seven others, including Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's former deputy, were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. Three others were acquitted.

The trial, which had lasted nearly 10 months, was conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the USSR, France, and Great Britain. It was the first trial of its kind in history, and the defendants faced charges ranging from crimes against peace to crimes of war and crimes against humanity. On October 16, 10 of the architects of Nazi policy were hanged one by one. Hermann Goering, who at sentencing was called the "leading war aggressor and creator of the oppressive program against the Jews," committed suicide by poison on the eve of his scheduled execution. Nazi Party leader Martin Bormann was condemned to death in absentia; he is now known to have died in Berlin at the end of the war.

 

1941 : Operation Typhoon is launched

On this day in 1941, the Germans begin their surge to Moscow, led by the 1st Army Group and Gen. Fedor von Bock. Russian peasants in the path of Hitler's army employ a "scorched-earth" policy.

Hitler's forces had invaded the Soviet Union in June, and early on it had become one relentless push inside Russian territory. The first setback came in August, when the Red Army's tanks drove the Germans back from the Yelnya salient. Hitler confided to General Bock at the time: "Had I known they had as many tanks as that, I'd have thought twice before invading." But there was no turning back for Hitler--he believed he was destined to succeed where others had failed, and capture Moscow.

Although some German generals had warned Hitler against launching Operation Typhoon as the harsh Russian winter was just beginning, remembering the fate that befell Napoleon--who got bogged down in horrendous conditions, losing serious numbers of men and horses--Bock urged him on. This encouragement, coupled with the fact that the Germany army had taken the city of Kiev in late September, caused Hitler to declare, "The enemy is broken and will never be in a position to rise again." So for 10 days, starting October 2, the 1st Army Group drove east, drawing closer to the Soviet capital each day. But the Russians also remembered Napoleon and began destroying everything as they fled their villages, fields, and farms. Harvested crops were burned, livestock were driven away, and buildings were blown up, leaving nothing of value behind to support exhausted troops. Hitler's army inherited nothing but ruins.

 

1942 : Germany conducts first successful V-2 rocket test

On this day in 1942, German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun's brainchild, the V-2 missile, is fired successfully from Peenemunde, as island off Germany's Baltic coast. It traveled 118 miles. It proved extraordinarily deadly in the war and was the precursor to the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) of the postwar era.

German scientists, led by von Braun, had been working on the development of these long-range missiles since the 1930s. Three trial launches had already failed; the fourth in the series, known as A-4, finally saw the V-2, a 12-ton rocket capable of carrying a one-ton warhead, successfully launched.

The V-2 was unique in several ways. First, it was virtually impossible to intercept. Upon launching, the missile rises six miles vertically; it then proceeds on an arced course, cutting off its own fuel according to the range desired. The missile then tips over and falls on its target-at a speed of almost 4,000 mph. It hits with such force that the missile burrows itself into the ground several feet before exploding. It had the potential of flying a distance of 200 miles, and the launch pads were portable, making them impossible to detect before firing.

The first launches as part of an offensive did not occur until September 6, 1944 when two missiles were fired at Paris. On September 8, two more were fired at England, which would be followed by more than 1,100 more during the next six months. More than 2,700 Brits died because of the rocket attacks.

After the war, both the United States and the Soviet Union captured samples of the rockets for reproduction--they also captured the scientists responsible for their creation.

 

1943 : Heinrich Himmler encourages his SS group leaders

On this day in 1943, the Reichsfuhrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, addresses the squad leaders of his Nazi secret police, attempting to fill them with pride for the work they've accomplished-the murder of more than 1 million Jews in German-occupied Russia during a one-and-a-half-year period. "Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand," claimed Himmler. "To have stuck it out and at the same time...to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and shall never be written."

It was Himmler who oversaw the establishment of the Auschwitz concentration camp cluster, as well as the Warsaw ghetto massacre. The organizing of some prisoners for slave labor and the inflicting of gruesome medical experimentation on others can also be attributed to him. Consequently, it is little wonder that he could so blithely say, "Whether or not 10,000 Russian women collapse from exhaustion while digging a tank ditch interests me only in so far as the tank ditch is completed for Germany."

 

If interested in the Himmler´s speech it is available...

Himmler Projekt, Das (2000)

Experimental feature, in which the actor Manfred Zapatka reads a three-hour-long famous speech by Gestapo leader Heinrich Himmler, held on the 4th of October 1943 in front of leading Nazi officers at the Golden Hall of Posen Castle; giving an impressive insight into the perversions of Nazi ideology.

 

1944 : Ike warns of the risk of "shell shock"

On this day in 1944, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower distributes to his combat units a report by the U.S. Surgeon General that reveals the hazards of prolonged exposure to combat. "[T]he danger of being killed or maimed imposes a strain so great that it causes men to break down. One look at the shrunken, apathetic faces of psychiatric patients...sobbing, trembling, referring shudderingly to 'them shells' and to buddies mutilated or dead, is enough to convince most observers of this fact."

On the basis of this evaluation, as well as firsthand experience, American commanders judged that the average soldier could last about 200 days in combat before suffering serious psychiatric damage. British commanders used a rotation method, pulling soldiers out of combat every 12 days for a four-day rest period. This enabled British soldiers to put in 400 days of combat before being deleteriously affected. The Surgeon General's report went on to lament the fact that a "wound or injury is regarded, not as a misfortune, but a blessing." The war was clearly taking a toll on more than just men's bodie

 

1942 : "Stalingrad must not be taken by the enemy."

On this day in 1942, Joseph Stalin, premier and dictator of the Soviet Union, fires off a telegram to the German and Soviet front at Stalingrad, exhorting his forces to victory. "That part of Stalingrad which has been captured must be liberated."

Stalingrad was a key to capturing the Soviet Union, in many ways as important as capturing Moscow itself. It stood between the old Russia and the new, a center of both rail and river communications, industry and old-world Russian trade. To preserve Stalingrad's integrity was to preserve Russian civilization past and present. As the Germans reached the Volga, thrust and counterthrust brought the battle to a standstill. Everyone from Russian factory workers to reinforcements of more than 160,000 Soviet soldiers poured into Stalingrad to beat back the German invader. Despite dwindling supplies, such as tanks and troop reserves, Hitler would not relent, convincing himself that the Russians could not hold out for long.

But Stalin appealed not only to Russian patriotism but also to Allied armaments. Requests to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill for aid had not gone unheeded, as five British merchant ships arrived in northern Russia, loaded with supplies

 

1945 : Pierre Laval attempts suicide

On this day in 1945, former French premier and Vichy collaborator Pierre Laval tries to kill himself on the day he is to be executed for treason. He fails.

Laval served as premier of France twice, the second time from June 1935 to January 1936, but fell from power primarily because of his appeasement of Italy after the invasion and occupation of Ethiopio by Mussolini and his fascist regime in 1935. Upon the German invasion of France in 1940, Laval, ever the opportunist, saw a chance to re-establish himself in office by supporting a puppet government headed by Henri Philippe Petain, who, when he acceded to the position of premier in June 1940, rewarded Laval by making him deputy head of state and foreign minister.

Laval was always more slavish in his devotion to his German masters than was Petain; for example, Laval began secret negotiations for a formal collaboration with Germany, convinced that the future lay in the hands of the Axis power. Petain finally fired him in December 1940. But the Germans questioned Petain's double loyalty and pressured him to reinstate Laval. Petain fell further from German favor, and when Hitler's forces occupied France in 1942, Laval, wanting to reassure Germany of his loyalty, began sending French workers to Germany and stripping French Jews of their rights. He also helped the Nazis capture and deport non-French Jews. He openly announced that he wished for a German victory. "An American victory would mean victory for the Jews and the communists."

As the end for Hitler grew near, Laval fled first to Germany, then to Spain, then to Austria, where he was arrested and sent back to France and was tried, along with Petain, on the charge of treason. Laval defended his actions, believing he had done nothing wrong. He was sentenced to be shot by firing squad on October 6, 1945, but swallowed cyanide before they could come for him. A physician saved his life--just in time for Laval to be executed a little less than two weeks later.

 

1940 : German troops enter Romania

On this day in 1940, Hitler occupies Romania as part of his strategy of creating an unbroken Eastern front to menace the Soviet Union.

As early as 1937, Romania had come under the control of a fascist government that bore great resemblance to that of Germany's, including similar anti-Jewish laws. Romania's king, Carol II, dissolved the government a year later because of a failing economy and installed Romania's Orthodox Patriarch as prime minister. But the Patriarch's death and a peasant uprising provoked renewed agitation by the fascist Iron Guard paramilitary organization, which sought to impose order. In June 1940, the Soviet Union co-opted two Romanian provinces, and the king searched for an ally to help protect it and appease the far right within its own borders. So on July 5, 1940, Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany-only to be invaded by its "ally" as part of Hitler's strategy to create one huge eastern front against the Soviet Union.

King Carol abdicated on September 6, 1940, leaving the country in the control of fascist Prime Minister Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard. While Romania would recapture the territory lost to the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded Russia, it would also have to endure the Germans' raping its resources as part of the Nazi war effort. Nevertheless, with German troops now occupying his nation, Antonescu would go on to sign the Tripartite (Axis) Pact in November, tying Romania to the military machinations of not only Germany, but Italy and Japan as well.

 

1941 : Germans overrun Mariupol, in southern Russia

On this day in 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union begins a new stage, with Hitler's forces capturing Mariupol. The Axis power reached the Sea of Azov.

Despite the fact that Germany and Russia had signed a "pact" in 1939, each guaranteeing the other a specific region of influence without interference from the other, suspicion remained high. Despite warnings from his advisers that Germany could not fight the war on two fronts (as Germany's experience in World War I proved), Hitler became convinced that England was holding out against repeated German air assaults, refusing to surrender, because it had struck a secret deal with Russia. Fearing he would be "strangled" from the East and the West, he created, in December 1940, "Directive No. 21: Case Barbarossa"--the plan to invade and occupy the very nation he had actually asked to join the Axis only a month before. On June 22, 1941, after having postponed the invasion of Russia when Italy's attack on Greece forced Hitler to bail out his struggling ally in order to keep the Allies from gaining a foothold in the Balkans, three German army groups struck Russia hard by surprise. The Russian army was larger than German intelligence had anticipated, but they were demobilized. Stalin had shrugged off warnings from his own advisers, even Winston Churchill himself, that a German attack was imminent. By the end of the first day of the invasion, the German air force had destroyed more than 1,000 Soviet aircraft. And despite the toughness of the Russian troops, and the number of tanks and other armaments at their disposal, the Red Army was disorganized, enabling the Germans to penetrate up to 300 miles into Russian territory within the next few days.

Hitler's battle for Stalingrad and Moscow still lay ahead, but the capture of Mariupol, at the sea's edge, signaled the beginning of the end of Russia-as least as far as Hitler's propaganda machine was concerned. "Soviet Russia has been vanquished!" Otto Dietrich, Hitler's press chief, announced to foreign journalists the very next day.

 

8 October 1943.

U 643. (Type VIIC)

Attacked with depth-charges by Liberator T/120 (F/O. D. Webber) and Liberator Z/86 (F/O. C. Burcher, DFC) and sunk in position 5614N/2655W with the loss of 30 crew. 21 crewmen were rescued by HM destroyer ORWELL and made PoW.

 

1944 : Churchill and Stalin confer

On this day in 1944, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin begin a nine-day conference in Moscow, during which the war with Germany and the future of Europe are discussed.

Germany's defeat now seemed inevitable, and Stalin was prepared to commit the USSR to intervening in the war against Japan once Germany had formally surrendered. This optimistic outlook enabled a significant portion of the talks to center on the relative spheres of influence of the two superpowers in a postwar European environment. Churchill ceded the disposition of Romania, which Stalin's troops were liberating from German control even as the conference commenced, to the Soviet Union. But the British prime minister was keen on keeping the Red Army away from Greece. "Britain must be the leading Mediterranean power." They made a deal: Romania for Greece.

Churchill was more accommodating elsewhere, willing to divvy up the spoils of war. Yugoslavia could be cut down the middle, east for Russia, west for the West. Churchill also laid out a plan by which the German populations of East Prussia and Silesia would be moved into the interior of Germany, with East Prussia split between the USSR and Poland, and Silesia handed over to Poland as compensation for territories Stalin already occupied and intended to keep.

But Churchill was insistent on one issue that would be harder to negotiate in 50-50 terms-freedom. Churchill wanted every nation to be free to select the government most amenable to its people, especially smaller, more vulnerable nations. "Let them work out their own fortunes during the years that lie ahead." Churchill was frank about the West's fear of expansionist communism. But none of what was discussed was carved in stone or even put on paper--a fact that would be all too obvious as the Cold War commenced.

 

1944 : Eight hundred children are gassed to death at Auschwitz

On this day in 1944, 800 Gypsy children, including more than a hundred boys between 9 and 14 years old are systematically murdered.

Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III. There were also 40 smaller "satellite" camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing ground: 300 prison barracks; four "bathhouses," in which prisoners were gassed; corpse cellars; and cremating ovens. Thousands of prisoners were also used as fodder for medical experiments, overseen and performed by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele ("the Angel of Death").

A mini-revolt took place on October 7, 1944. As several hundred Jewish prisoners were being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to the furnace to dispose of the bodies, they blew up one of the gas chambers and set fire to another, using explosives smuggled to them from Jewish women who worked in a nearby armaments factory. Of the roughly 450 prisoners involved in the sabotage, about 250 managed to escape the camp during the ensuing chaos. They were all found and shot. Those co-conspirators who never made it out of the camp were also executed, as were five women from the armaments factory-but not before being tortured for detailed information on the smuggling operation. None of the women talked.

Gypsies, too, had been singled out for brutal treatment by Hitler's regime early on. Deemed "carriers of disease" and "unreliable elements who cannot be put to useful work," they were marked for extermination along with the Jews of Europe from the earliest years of the war. Approximately 1.5 million Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis. In 1950, as Gypsies attempted to gain compensation for their suffering, as were other victims of the Holocaust, the German government denied them anything, saying, "Gypsies have been persecuted under the Nazis not for any racial reason but because of an asocial and criminal record." They were stigmatized even in light of the atrocities committed against them.

 

October 11, 1942

United States defeats Japanese in the Battle of Cape Esperance
On this day in 1942, the American Navy intercepts a Japanese fleet of ships on their way to reinforce troops at Guadalcanal. The Navy succeeded in its operation, sinking a majority of the ships.

The battle for Guadalcanal began in August, when the Marines landed in the first American offensive of the war. The ground fighting saw U.S. troops gain a decisive edge, wiping out detachments and regiments in brutal combat. The most effective Japanese counterstrikes came from the air and sea, with bombing raids harassing the Marines and threatening their dwindling supplies. But before the Japanese could reinforce their own ground troops, the Navy went to work.

The battle of Cape Esperance, on the northwest coast of Guadalcanal Island, commenced at night between surface ships; all Japanese reinforcements came at night, an operation nicknamed the Tokyo Express. The Navy sank one Japanese cruiser, the Furutaka, and three destroyers, while losing only one of their own destroyers. In characteristic fashion, those Japanese sailors who found themselves floundering in the water refused rescue by Americans; they preferred to be devoured by the sharks as a fate less shameful than capture.

Unfortunately, the loss of American manpower was greater than that of hardware: 48 sailors from the American destroyer Duncan were the victims of crossfire between the belligerents, and more than a hundred others died when an American cruiser turned on a searchlight to better target a Japanese ship. It also had the unintended effect of illuminating the sailors of the cruiser, making them easy targets.

The American Navy continued to harass Japanese ships trying to reinforce the Japanese position on the island; relatively few Japanese troops made it ashore. By the end of 1942, the Japanese were ready to evacuate the island--in defeat.

 

October 12, 1946

Gen. Joseph Stilwell dies
On this day in 1946, Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, the man who commanded the U.S. and Chinese Nationalist resistance to Japanese incursions into China and Burma, dies today at age 63.

Born March 19, 1883, in Palatka, Florida, and a graduate of the West Point Military Academy, Stilwell began distinguishing himself early in his career. In World War I, he served with the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, as well as in the Philippines. He was also a student of the Chinese language, which garnered him a position as military attache in Peking from 1935 to 1939. It was during the 1930s that Stilwell began to bond with the Chinese peasantry--and developed an infamous distrust, if not contempt, for Chinese political leadership. Known for his straight-talking manner and as a man who did not suffer fools gladly, he made no qualms about his dislike for Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who Stilwell considered corrupt and greedy (and whom he nicknamed "the Peanut").

Nevertheless, when World War II broke out, Stilwell reluctantly accepted Chiang's offer to become commander of U.S. Army forces in China and Burma-as well as to become Chiang's chief of staff. Stilwell also supervised the dispersion of American Land-Lease shipments to China, much-needed supplies for the war effort that Chiang wanted funneled through his office.

Stilwell's initial military operation, to keep open the Burma Road between India and China and to repel Japanese incursions into Burma, failed. The operation in Burma was so disastrous that Chinese forces under his command stopped taking orders. And as Allied supplies to China were being strangled (the Burma Road was the necessary shipping route), Stilwell and his forces were forced to retreat into India. "We got run out of Burma, and it is humiliating as hell," the general later admitted.

Further attempts by Stilwell to rally Chinese forces against the Japanese in both Burma and China were often thwarted by both Chiang, who was more concerned about the communist threat of Mao Tse-tung, and not allowing his ultimate authority to be usurped by the Americans, and the American Air Force, which, naturally, wanted to divert the war effort from the ground to the air.

Stilwell did manage to lead Chinese divisions to retake Myitakyina, and its airfield, from Japanese control, rebuilding the Ledo Road, a military highway in India that led into Burma (the road was later renamed Stilwell Road). But conflicts with Chiang resulted in Stilwell's removal in 1944. He then served as commander of the 10th Army on Okinawa, ultimately receiving the surrender of 100,000 Japanese troops in the Ryukyu Islands, in southern Japan. Stilwell finished off his career as commander of the 6th Army. The man who Gen. George C. Marshall declared "far-sighted" and "one of the exceptionally brilliant and cultured men in the Army...qualified for any command in peace or war," died in San Francisco--with his nation at peace.