Word: commandant
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...have avoided condemning, MacArthur just as a military man; it is the type of military leader he has proved to be that we oppose. Other American generals have held high command without being autocratic, self-willed and unwilling to share responsibilities with others...
...Them Rant." In Washington's confusion after Pearl Harbor, Stilwell almost got the assignment which would have developed into command of the North African expedition. If the acid of his insecure and suspicious personality had been poured over U.S.-British relations, calamity might have come more dramatically. Stilwell's contempt was not confined to the Chinese government. In his diary and letters he sneered at the British, at Washington, at Mountbatten and at Chennault, who had been in China four years before Stilwell got there...
...American to operate effectively as Chiang Kai-shek's Chief of Staff would have been a delicate operation at best. Stilwell in his diary quotes George Marshall as telling him, "Get the various factions together and grab command and in general give 'em the works." Whether Marshall said that or not, that is the way Stilwell went about his task...
Stilwell again & again refers to himself as a "deck hand." He liked to drop the more important and troublesome aspects of his mission and turn to the jobs he could do well: troop training and tactical command. He believed that the Chinese soldier could be made into a first-class fighting man, and he proved it with the units he trained at Ramgarh in India. Crawling through the mud of the North Burma offensive, Stilwell looked like the hero he was. Chennault says it all when he calls Stilwell "one of the best divisional commanders the United States ever produced...
Washington quickly strengthened Clay's hand with two moves: 1) it announced that plans to transfer U.S. control in Germany from the Army to the State Department had been canceled, thus leaving Clay in command; 2) Secretary of State George Marshall served notice that "the U.S. intends to continue to fulfill its responsibilities as a member of the Control Council and as a joint occupant of the city of Berlin." The second statement was a flat warning to Moscow that the only way Americans could be got out of Berlin in the foreseeable future would be for the Russians...