WI: Joseph Stilwell goes through with his plan to assassinate Chiang Kai Shek.

RandomFloridian

Banned
Alright,

I know you read the title and are probably thinking this belongs in the ASB forum.

However to your most likely surprise this had a real chance of happening in our timeline.

Let me explain,

During WW2 Joseph Stillwell was sent to the Burma theater to fight against the Japanese and help to command allied forces there.

While there Joseph Stillwell often clashed with Chiang Kai Shek.

Apparently due to their constant clashing Joseph Stillwell disliked Chiang so much that he was willing to assassinate him, telling chief of staff, Gen. Frank “Pinky” Dorn to “cook up a workable scheme and await orders.”

(Apparently earlier either Roosevelt or General Frank Dorn said to Stillwell “if you can’t get along with Chiang and can’t replace him, get rid of him once and for all. You know what I mean. Put in someone you can manage.”)

The plan to assassinate Chiang ultimately would have been done with either a botulinum toxin, which would have been undetectable in an autopsy, or a more complex plan that would involve Stillwell taking Chiang on a flight to Ramgarh in northeast India to inspect Chinese troops being trained there, as part of the effort to improve the Chinese Nationalist army. The pilot would pretend to have engine trouble and order his crew and passengers to bail out. Chiang would be escorted to the door of the plane wearing a faulty parachute and told to jump. "I believe it would work,” Stilwell told Dorn."

However ultimately in May 1944 meeting at his headquarters in Burma, Stilwell changed his mind about eliminating Chiang and nothing further was done.

But what if this didn't happen,

What if Stillwell went though with his plan sometime in 1943 and really did assassinate Chiang.

How much would this change Chinese history,

And if the truth ever came out in this timeline that a high ranking allied general had assassinated a fellow allied leader, just how much backlash and controversies will occur.


(I know that people will probably be asking for a source to confirm that these events really did happen in history and I did not just make all of this up so here is my source.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/03/assassinating-chiang-kai-shek-china-taiwan-japan-world-war-2/)


(Some have speculated that Stillwell wanted to assassinate Chiang so that he could become leader of China, but I don't really see why he would want to be leader of China and how he would be able to accomplish becoming leader of China at all. However that would make for an interesting ASB story or HOI4 mod, because Stillwell did know how to speak mandarin.)
 

Anarch King of Dipsodes

RandomFloridian said:
The plan to assassinate Chiang ultimately would have been done with either a botulinum toxin...
Click to expand...

According to OSS R&D chief Stanley Lovell:

The OSS sent a supply of botulinus toxin to China, to be used by Chinese prostitutes to poison Japanese officers. The China office decided to make sure the toxin was functional by feeding some of it to donkeys, which showed no effect. They concluded the toxin had lost effect in transit, and threw it away - not knowing that donkeys are immune to botulism.

Could this have been connected to Stilwell's plot? Perhaps the same supply was to be used, and when it was discarded, the parachute stunt was conceived instead.

The reference to Carl Eifler in the FP article is interesting; Lovell knew Eifler and discussed him in his book.
 
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Anarch King of Dipsodes

RandomFloridian said:
What if Stillwell went though with his plan sometime in 1943 and really did assassinate Chiang.

How much would this change Chinese history,
Click to expand...
A lot, obviously. Who would succeed Chiang? If anybody: could the RoC fragment, leaving no clear "successor"? Had Stillwell considered that?
RandomFloridian said:
And if the truth ever came out in this timeline that a high ranking allied general had assassinated a fellow allied leader, just how much backlash and controversies will occur.
Click to expand...
An enormous amount. Stilwell would be court-martialed, or maybe handed over to the RoC. If he claims, and can prove, that FDR "greenlighted" it, it could be impeachment.
RandomFloridian said:
(I know that people will probably be asking for a source to confirm that these events really did happen in history and I did not just make all of this up so here is my source.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/03/assassinating-chiang-kai-shek-china-taiwan-japan-world-war-2/)
Click to expand...
<voice name="Anna Russell"> "I'm not making this up, you know!"</voice >
 
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Canuck Wingnut

The major question is who replaces Chiang as head of the KMT? I don't get the impression that Chiang was surrounded by potential successors who had bold public plans for how they would direct China along a distinctly different path than Chiang had chosen (especially after the war had started, Wang Jingwei had started collaborating, and pressure to support the KMT party line became even more intense); but I'm certainly not an expert.

Assuming that this has relatively little effect on Chinese history (a dubious assumption, I know, but presume that the Chinese civil war ends up in more or less the same place, with the Communist Party seizing control of Mainland China) the effect on American politics might be profound. The accusation that State Department communist sympathizers "lost China" was a potent one OTL- it's not a coincidence that the John Birch Society was named after an OSS operative killed in China. Even if 1950s America doesn't know Stilwell killed Chiang, Chiang's death would still be a convenient point to hang an alternative narrative on: China was lost because the KMT splintered under pressure from the Japanese and the death of their leader, and the Communist Party's victory was inevitable before the Second World War ended. Later revelations that the Americans were the ones to assassinate Chiang would be incredibly explosive in an American political environment where that's more-or-less the 'official' line.
 

Cudymcar

This can lead to more efficient elements of KMT purging more corrupt elements amd establishing more sane economic policies. KMT's final loss has much to do with hyperinflation in KMT-controlled territories.
As for Chiang's successor, see
en.wikipedia.org

Li Jishen - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 

Strategos' Risk

Looks like Li wanted reconciliation with the communists. Now I'm imagining some sort of weird authoritarian pseudo-democracy resulting after the war, with one of the allowed political parties being the CPC.
 

Strategos' Risk

I think he just wanted someone more pliable and less corrupt.

RandomFloridian said:
(Some have speculated that Stillwell wanted to assassinate Chiang so that he could become leader of China, but I don't really see why he would want to be leader of China and how he would be able to accomplish becoming leader of China at all. However that would make for an interesting ASB story or HOI4 mod, because Stillwell did know how to speak mandarin.)
Click to expand...

I think he'd be the leader of China in the same way MacArthur led postwar Japan, for a time. The real power behind the throne, etc.
 

Strategos' Risk

People are talking about the Chinese Civil War, but without Chiang, the actual war with Japan could be different. Especially if Stilwell and the Americans end up with more influence. Curious what some of the changes to that would be.

I think if Li Jishen succeeds him both during and after the war, the KMT reconciles with the CPC, at least for longer than the truce they had during the war.
 

Reggieperrin

Anarch King of Dipsodes said:
According to OSS R&D chief Stanley Lovell:

The OSS sent a supply of botulinus toxin to China, to be used by Chinese prostitutes to poison Japanese officers. The China office decided to make sure the toxin was functional by feeding some of it to donkeys, which showed no effect. They concluded the toxin had lost effect in transit, and threw it away - not knowing that donkeys are immune to botulism.
Click to expand...
This just goes to prove that a lot of these WW2 memoirs need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Donkeys are absolutely not immune to botulinum so if the toxin didn’t work it had most likely spoiled in transit, the dose was too small or the production process had failed in some way.

From https://www.anipedia.org/resources/botulism/951
Botulism or ‘lamsiekte’ (literally, paralysis disease) in livestock is a non-febrile, highly fatal intoxication of cattle, sheep, goats, horses, mules, donkeys and, very rarely, pigs.
Click to expand...
It seems canids and some similar scavengers may have some immunity but even then it’s likely a matter of degree. Complete immunity to a neurotoxin five orders of magnitude more potent than sarin doesn’t seem likely without major biological variation from the norm.
 

Lucius Verus

Banned
This sounds exactly like Stilwell, who tried to coup Chiang IOTL with a note demanding control of all the military or the cut-off of American aid while frittering away China's best troops in Burma. Unsurprisingly the Chinese refused and Chiang got him recalled. As for the KMT, this has happened before in 1931 when Chiang voluntarily resigned to prove a point and they recalled him as the warlords realized that they could work with Chiang much better than each other.

The succession is problematic, for one Stilwell had very limited influence and even less understanding of China; despite being able to speak Mandarin Stilwell seemed oblivious to Chinese politics, for example IOTL he recommend for Chiang to start

"reforms of the Chinese Army that would have reduced it from 300 small, poorly equipped divisions to a much smaller number of full-strength, properly equipped divisions, but either did not understand or did not care that this would have eroded Chiang's political power base with the warlords by eliminating a large number of senior officers who owed their positions to Chiang."

Pacific War Encyclopedia: http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/S/t/Stilwell_Joseph_W.htm

Its likely some sort of agreement will happen between the warlords and KMT without Stilwell's input, though lacking Chiang's pragmaticism and suffering in cohesion. Who it'll be I cannot say as I'm lacking in KMT knowledge but the overwhelming majority was anti-Japanese; not that Japan's going to loss or win the war because of China.
 
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arrowiv

Of course, there would be the reaction of the China Lobby in the US to all of this. They all thought Chiang and the Madame were such great people and wealthy Time-Life chief Henry Luce was a close personal friend of the Chiangs.
 

CountDVB

Hmmm... assuming this happens and Li Jishen takes control, I do think he could try and reconcile with the CPC. How this would look like I am not sure, but I imagine it would work like a two-party state of sorts. The Kuomintang and CPC give one another concessions of various matters. Kuomintang follows on some of the radical reforms of the CPC while the CPC probably doesn't do anything like the Cultural Revolution, just targetting some stuff with a more fine-tuned comb or at least "change" it.

Of course, the question on who would the two support during the Cold War if any of them, or remain in the good graces of both of them long enough to stabilize. Maybe in communication and so on, China undergoes something like Lenin's NEP sooner, especially if they get the information on it, and use that to stabilize their economy. Both the US and USSR wouldn't be too happy, bu they'd have to figure out how to navigate it. US would be forced to treat China like a giant Yugoslavia
 

Anarch King of Dipsodes

Reggieperrin said:
This just goes to prove that a lot of these WW2 memoirs need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Donkeys are absolutely not immune to botulinum so if the toxin didn’t work it had most likely spoiled in transit, the dose was too small or the production process had failed in some way.
Click to expand...
Hmmph. There are some other places where Lovell goes off the rails. Two are things he "knew about" but had no direct contact with: a garbled version of Britain's "Double Cross" system, and how an OSS agent thwarted a LONGJUMP -like Nazi assassination plot in Iran.
 
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Reggieperrin

Anarch King of Dipsodes said:
Hmmph. There are some other places where Lovell goes off the rails. Two are things he "knew about" but had no direct contact with: a garbled version of Britain's "Double Cross" system, and how an OSS agent thwarted a LONGJUMP -line Nazi assassination plot in Iran.
Click to expand...
I think it goes with the territory. Memoirs written 20+ years after events which weren’t exactly well documented even at the time and where the archives mostly stayed closed even if memos exist.
And even by the usual standards of WW2 memoirs the sort of people who ended up in SOE/OSS tended to love a colourful anecdote a lot more than fact-checking.
 
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