Joseph Warren "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell (19 March 1883 – 12 October 1946) was a United States Army general who served in the China Burma India Theater during World War II.

An early American popular hero of the war for leading a column walking out of Burma pursued by the victorious Imperial Japanese Armed Forces, Stilwell's implacable demands for units debilitated by disease to be sent into heavy combat resulted in Merrill's Marauders becoming disenchanted with him.

Barbara Tuchman, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her work on Stillwell, concluded he failed to accomplish an impossible task notwithstanding his indomitable will, and the failure lay with the Chinese's innate rejection of Western means.

Stilwell later admitted to his daughter that he picked up criminal instincts by "being forced to go to Church and Sunday School, and seeing how little real good religion does anybody, I advise passing them all up and using common sense instead.

[3] Under the discretion of his father, Stilwell was then placed into a postgraduate course and immediately formed a group of friends whose activities ranged from card playing to stealing the desserts from the senior dance in 1900.

As Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, 4th Army Corps, during the St. Mihiel offensive, and later during the operations in the Woevre, Lieutenant Colonel Stilwell displayed military attainments of a high order.

With great energy and zeal he pursued the developments of the enemy activities on the corps front, securing invaluable information which assisted in a marked degree to the planning of the operations.

[14] When it became necessary to send a senior officer to China to keep it in the war, Stilwell was selected, over his own personal objections, by US President Franklin Roosevelt and his old friend, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall.

Stilwell's decision to establish the center at Ramgarh met with opposition from several senior British commanders, including Wavell, primarily due to logistical reasons.

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.

[42] Eventually, Stilwell began to complain openly to Roosevelt that Chiang was hoarding U.S. Lend-Lease supplies because he wanted to keep the Nationalist forces ready to fight Mao Zedong's Communists after the end of the war against the Japanese.

[44] Stilwell also continually clashed with Field Marshal 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 the meantime, Stilwell ordered General Frank Merrill and the Marauders to start long-range jungle penetration missions behind Japanese lines after the pattern of the British Chindits.

[55][56] During the siege, which took place during the height of the monsoon season, the Marauders' second-in-command, Colonel Hunter, and the unit's regimental and battalion level surgeons, had urgently recommended for the entire 5307th to be relieved of duty and returned to rear areas for rest and recovery.

These examinations passed many ailing soldiers as fit for duty; Stilwell's staff roamed hospital hallways in search of any Marauder with a temperature lower than 103 degrees Fahrenheit.

[54][65] Myitkyina and the dispute over evacuation policy precipitated a hurried Army Inspector General investigation, followed by US congressional committee hearings, but no disciplinary measure was taken against Stilwell for his decisions as overall commander.

[30] During the summer of 1943, Stilwell's headquarters concentrated on plans to rebuild the Chinese Army for an offensive in northern Burma despite Chiang's insistence on support to Chennault's air operations.

That plan then remained only theoretical since the limited available airlift capacity for deliveries of supplies to China over the Hump was being used to sustain Chennault's air operations, instead of equipping Chinese ground units.

[67] In co-ordination with a southern offensive by Nationalist Chinese forces under General Wei Lihuang, Allied troops under Stilwell's command launched the long-awaited invasion of northern Burma.

Stilwell's strategy remained unchanged: opening a new ground supply route from India to China would allow the Allies to equip and train new Chinese army divisions to be used against the Japanese.

"[79] The British journalist Jonathan Fenby wrote about Roosevelt's letter, "Unless the President was ready for America to take over effective control of China, or halt Lend-Lease supplies and abandon the KMT to its fate, his stern words merely amounted to bluff.

Among his recommendations was the establishment of a combined arms force to conduct extended service tests of new weapons and equipment and then formulate doctrine for its use, and the abolition of specialized anti-tank units.

"[95] At the end of the war, Tuchman stated that he took "a harsh pleasure in touring the gutted and burned-out districts of Yokohama and staring at the once arrogant [Japanese] now living in shanties of scrap lumber and tin and scratching in the dirt to plant onions.

He attended rallies against racism and personally presented the family of 442nd Regimental Combat Team staff sergeant Kazuo Masuda, killed in action in Italy in 1944, with the Distinguished Service Cross.

[104] According to Guan Zhong, the president of the Examination Yuan, Stilwell had once expressed his regret of never having the opportunity to fight alongside the Chinese Communists, especially with General Zhu De, before his death.

[105] Stilwell did not appreciate the developments in warfare brought about by World War II, including strategic air power and the use of highly trained infantrymen as jungle guerrilla fighters.

[111] The negative image of the Nationalists in the US played a significant factor in President Harry Truman's decision to end all aid to Chiang at the height of the Chinese Civil War.

(1945), by John Hoyt in Samuel Fuller's Merrill's Marauders (1962), by Robert Stack in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979), and by Yachun Dong in Chinese Expeditionary Force (TV series) (2011).

His awards include: Stillwell's official Distinguished Service Cross citation reads:[121] The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, 9 July 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Lieutenant General Joseph Warren Stilwell, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism and conspicuous bravery in action while in command of the Chinese Forces in Burma during the Spring of 1942.

General Stilwell's presence and personal example in an exposed position in the front lines of a Chinese division on 23 April 1942, inspired the unit to a renewed effort which resulted in the capture of Taunggyi.