title: Prema Powerteam

text: Prema Powerteam (competing as Prema Racing in the FIA Formula 2 Championship, the FIA Formula 3 Championship and European Le Mans Series and as Prema Orlen Team in the FIA World Endurance Championship) is a motorsport team from Italy. It mainly operates in the FIA Formula 2 Championship and FIA Formula 3 Championship since 2019 as well as various junior championships. In 2022 the team made its FIA World Endurance Championship and European Le Mans Series entries, beginning the efforts in the endurance racing. The team was founded in 1984. Prema has been a talent pool for Ferrari. As of 2021, 3 out of the 8 current drivers ran across different series are part of the Ferrari Driver Academy.


title: Prema Powerteam

text: For 2018 FIA Formula 2 Championship campaign the team fielded experienced drivers Sean Gelael and Nyck de Vries. In the 2018 FIA Formula 3 European Championship the team were represented by Ferrari Driver Academy members Marcus Armstrong, Robert Shwartzman and Guanyu Zhou. Their 2016 F3 driver Ralf Aron returned to the F3 team, as well as Mick Schumacher who went on to win the Formula. For their double ADAC and Italian F4 programme they signed Olli Caldwell and Ferrari Academy drivers Enzo Fittipaldi and Gianluca Petecof. Red Bull Junior Jack Doohan is scheduled to race with Prema for selected round in both championships.


title: Prema Powerteam

text: In the team is represented in FIA Formula 2 by Sean Gelael and their FIA F3 European Champion Mick Schumacher. Whilst the team only finished 9th in the team championship in F2, they were the champions in the inaugural F3 Championship with the drivers Robert Shwartzman, Jehan Daruvala and Marcus Armstrong. Shwartzman would also end up winning the driver's title, with Armstrong and Daruvala coming second and third respectively.


title: Prema Powerteam

text: Prema also competed in Italian F4 in 2019, where they came second in both championships, being beaten comprehensively by Van Amersfoort Racing and the Norwegian driver Dennis Hauger.


title: Prema Powerteam

text: Mick Schumacher was retained and Shwartzman was promoted for the following F2 season. Schumacher would go on to win the drivers title, with Shwartzman finishing in 4th with the most wins.


title: Prema Powerteam

text: In the 2020 F3 season, the driver line up was Logan Sargeant, Prema's 2019 FREC winner Frederik Vesti, and Oscar Piastri. Piastri would win the drivers' championship, with Sargeant and Vesti 3rd and 4th respectively.


title: Prema Powerteam

text: For the 2020 FREC season, Prema's line up consisted of four full time drivers; past Prema F4 drivers Oliver Rasmussen and Gianluca Petecof, as well as Arthur Leclerc and Jamie Chadwick. The season was completely dominated by the team, with Petecof, Leclerc and Rasmussen finishing in the first three positions of the drivers' championship, and as in 2020 F3 season winning the teams' championship by a more than comfortable margin.


title: Prema Powerteam

text: † Antonelli competed under the Prema Racing banner in Round 1 and under the Abu Dhabi Racing by Prema banner in Round 3.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: Herberts Cukurs, "The Butcher of Latvia" (17 May 1900 – 23 February 1965) was a Latvian aviator and deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, the Latvian Auxiliary Police Unit founded by Viktors Arājs, which carried out the worst mass murders of Latvian Jews in the Holocaust. Although Cukurs never stood trial (due to fleeing to Brazil and changing his name), multiple Holocaust survivors' accounts, including the testimony of Zelma Shepshelovitz, credibly link him to war crimes and crimes against humanity. After being identified by a local Holocaust survivor in Brazil, who tried to alert authorities after seeing Cukurs' face on the cover a Brazilian magazine, Cukurs was investigated and ultimately assassinated in 1965 during capture by Nazi hunter operatives from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: One of the Mossad agents who killed Cukurs, "Künzle," and a journalist, Gad Shimron, authored a book on the experience, "The Execution of the Hangman of Riga," in which they referred to Cukurs as the "Butcher of Latvia." The term was later picked up by several sources.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: As a pioneering long-distance pilot, Cukurs won national acclaim for his international solo flights in the 1930s (Latvia-Gambia and Riga-Tokyo). He was awarded the Harmon Trophy for Latvia in 1933, and was considered a national hero, in analogous fashion to Charles Lindbergh.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: Cukurs built at least three aircraft of his own design. In 1937 he made a tour visiting Japan, China, Indochina and India, flying the C 6 wooden monoplane "Trīs zvaigznes" (registration "YL-ABA") of his own creation. The aircraft was powered by a De Havilland Gipsy engine.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: During the occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, Cukurs became deputy commander of the newly renamed Latvian Auxiliary Police unit, the Arajs Kommando, which was responsible for carrying out some of the most brutal crimes against humanity in history. The Antisemitic unit already existed prior to World War II, as did walled Jewish ghettos in Latvia, but under the command of Viktors Arājs, and with the full backing of the Sicherheitsdienst(SD), the Nazi security and intelligence service, they launched an organized campaign to liquidate Latvia's large Jewish population. Latvia remained a sovereign nation until 1943, with leadership collaborating with the Third Reich.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: In his book "The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1945," Latvian historian Andrew Ezergailis writes that Cukurs played a leading role in the atrocities that were committed in the Riga ghetto in conjunction with the Rumbula massacre on 30 November 1941. After the war, surviving witnesses reported that Cukurs had been present during the ghetto clearance and fired into the mass of Jewish civilians.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: According to eyewitness sources, Cukurs was the most recognizable Latvian SD man at the scene of the Rumbula massacre. Ezergailis states that "although Arājs' men were not the only ones on the ghetto end of the operation, to the degree they participated in the atrocities there, the chief responsibility rests on Herberts Cukurs' shoulders." Cukurs was described as follows:


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: Later, Ezergailis retracted these interpretations, saying that in light of new documents, it would be wrong to claim that Cukurs had participated in the Rumbula shooting or the burning of the Riga synagogue. During interviews with the press, Ezergailis stated that there is no evidence that Cukurs had been at the pits at Rumbula, and that it has not been proven that Cukurs was "the most eager shooter of Jews in Latvia".


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: According to another account, Cukurs also participated in the Burning of the Riga synagogues. According to Bernard Press in his book "The Murder of the Jews in Latvia", Cukurs burned the synagogue on Stabu Street, but only after dragging Jews out of the neighboring houses and locking them inside:


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: "Time" magazine reported at the time of Cukurs' death in 1965, his crimes included setting the Riga synagogue fire, executing over 1,200 Jewish civilians (including infants) forced to stand over a lake (so victims fell into the water) in just one of many massacres he carried out, kidnapping and raping Jewish girls and young women at the Arajs Kommando Headquarters, and his participation in the 30 November 1941 murder of 28,000 Jewish people in a forest near Riga. Multiple eyewitnesses said they saw Cukurs snatching infants from the arms of their mothers and shooting them.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: After the war, Cukurs fled to Brazil via the ratlines, to evade justice for his war crimes and genocide. The Brazilian Consulate in Marseille issued the visa for permanent residency on 18 December 1945. The visa did not list the name of the Latvian Jewish woman Cukurs kidnapped and pretended was his wife, but it identified three minor children: Gunārs, Antinea and Herberts.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: Once in Brazil, Cukurs established a business in São Paulo, flying Republic RC-3 Seabees on scenic flights. While living in South America, he neither hid nor tried to conceal his identity.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: Cukurs is now known to have been assassinated by Nazi hunter Mossad agents, who persuaded him to travel to Uruguay under the pretense of starting an aviation business, after it was learned that he would not stand trial for his participation in the Holocaust. An acquaintance named "Anton Künzle", in reality the disguised Mossad agent Yaakov Meidad who had taken part in the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, cabled Cukurs from Montevideo. He was invited to a house in a remote suburb of the city that had just been rented by a man from Vienna. Inside, he was ambushed by a group of men.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: Cukurs fought back violently against his attackers. At one point, Cukurs bit the finger of one of the hitmen so hard it was nearly severed. Ultimately, however, Cukurs was overwhelmed. He was subdued after one of the men hit him in the head with a hammer. Now helpless, Cukurs started pleading with the men to let him speak before they did anything else. He got no response, and was promptly shot in the head twice with a suppressed automatic pistol, killing him instantly. His body, found in a trunk on 6 March, had several gunshot wounds elsewhere, and his skull was shattered. Next to his body, several documents were left pertaining to his involvement in the murder of Jews in the Riga Ghetto.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: The note was initially dismissed as a prank, but then police were notified and the body was discovered.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: One of the main motives of Cukurs's assassination was to deter West Germany from allowing the statute of limitations to expire on Nazi war crimes.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff has pointed out that the fact that Cukurs was not prosecuted has allowed for what he believes are "attempts by right-wing nationalists and his family to totally exonerate Cukurs and by other Latvians to question or diminish his individual culpability" and "to restore him to hero status in Latvia and whitewash his massive guilt".


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: In 2004 postal envelopes with the image of Cukurs were issued and distributed by National Power Unity, a far-right nationalist political party in Latvia. The act was condemned by Yad Vashem, as well as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Latvia Artis Pabriks in a statement saying that "those who produced such envelopes in Latvia evidently do not understand the tragic history of World War II in Latvia or in Europe". The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that Cukurs was "guilty of war crimes", and that he "took part in the activities of the notorious Arajs Kommando, which participated in the Holocaust and was responsible for the killing of innocent civilians. The General Prosecutor's Office of Latvia has twice rejected the exoneration of Herberts Cukurs".


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: In summer of 2005, an exhibition titled "Herberts Cukurs: The Presumption of Innocence" took place in Liepāja; "organized by K@2, a culture and art NGO run by Swedish documentary director Carl Biorsmark." It consisted of three rooms. First room presented photos of Cukurs' travels as a pilot (pre-WWII), the second featured testimony and witness accounts allegedly "both accusing Cukurs and exonerating him," while the last room displayed only three photos: a portrait of Cukurs, a photo of the man accused of killing him, Anton Künzle, and a gruesome image of a dead body alleged to be Cukurs. Biorsmark, the Swedish-born creator, commented on his own exhibit stating, "This is what artists have to do – stay in the middle and raise question marks," calling his subject, Cukurs, the man recognized throughout the Baltics as responsible for the mass murder of 26,000 people -- "a hot potato." The exhibit faced heavy criticism, and ultimately "led to [a] political scandal involving Aleksandrs Kirsteins, the ultra-nationalist head of Parliament's foreign affairs committee." Per the creator, his controversial gallery exhibit and 52-minute documentary, were based on inexplicable skepticism after allegedly reading a Latvian translation of the book, "Execution of the Hangman of Riga". Biorsmark "wanted to know what the other side of the story was - what Cukurs had to say about accusations of his complicity in murder and genocide" -- despite Cukurs being dead for 40 years. Various media commentators, historical societies, and Holocaust Museum leadership and researchers from around the world denounced the Holocaust denial and historical revisionism on display.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: "The Baltic Times" reported that the Simon Wiesenthal Center published evidence against Cukurs in response to the exhibit:


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: In an editorial that first appeared in the leading daily Diena, Efraim Zuroff, head of the Jerusalem branch of the Simon Wisenthal Center, an organization dedicated to the pursuit of Nazi war criminals, cited testimonies from Israeli archives detailing Cukurs participating in crimes against Jews during the Holocaust in Latvia.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: After a letter from the Latvian Jewish community called Biorsmark's exhibit "an attempt to rehabilitate a war criminal," and made mention of Latvian MP, Kirsteins, for his tacit support of the controversial exhibit; he responded with threats "[warning] the Jewish community not to act as it did in 1940 when it 'welcomed' the state's enemies," and espoused further Antisemitic conspiracy theories, stating "Latvia's Jews should rid their ranks of former KGB agents." In response to Kirsteins' public comments, he was expelled from his own Political party (the People's Party), and Parliament attempted to remove him, but without success. After Margers Vestermanis, a Holocaust survivor and researcher and Director of the Jewish Museum, viewed the exhibit -- he wasn't impressed. Vestermanis found that the overall message of the show was, "Jews killed our hero."


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: Episode 1 of National Geographic's 2009 series "Nazi Hunters" recreated Mossad's assassination operation of Cukurs.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: On 11 October 2014, a musical "Cukurs. Herberts Cukurs", produced by Juris Millers, premiered in Liepāja. "We are not Herbert Cukurs' advocates and we are not his judges," Millers said at the premiere, "I hope this performance will make you think." Another performance initially scheduled for 17 March, the day after the Remembrance day of the Latvian legionnaires, was postponed in fear of "serious provocations". The musical was criticised by Zuroff tweeting he was "utterly disgusted" by it, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the musical a "vivid example" of open manifestations of neo-Nazism that he alleged had become "routine" in Latvia and other Baltic countries. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Latvia Edgars Rinkēvičs said the production “is not in good taste” and "cannot, in any way, be supported", but defended the producer's right to free speech.


title: Herberts Cukurs

text: In 2020, Stephan Talty published an account of the Mossad's hunt for Cukurs, titled "The Good Assassin: How a Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down the Butcher of Latvia".


title: Abide with Me

text: "Abide with Me" is a Christian hymn by Scottish Anglican cleric Henry Francis Lyte. A prayer for God to stay with the speaker throughout life and in death, it was written by Lyte in 1847 as he was dying from tuberculosis. It is most often sung to the tune "Eventide" by the English organist William Henry Monk.


title: Abide with Me

text: The author of the hymn, Henry Francis Lyte, was an Anglican cleric. He was a curate in County Wexford from 1815 to 1818. According to a plaque erected in his memory in Taghmon Church, he preached frequently in Killurin Church, about nine miles from there. During that time the rector of Killurin Parish, the Reverend Abraham Swanne, was a lasting influence on Lyte's life and ministry. Later he was vicar of All Saints' Church in Brixham, Devon, England. For most of his life Lyte suffered from poor health, and he would regularly travel abroad for relief, as was customary at that time.


title: Abide with Me

text: There is some controversy as to the exact dating of the text to "Abide with Me". An article in "The Spectator", 3 October 1925, says that Lyte composed the hymn in 1820 while visiting a dying friend. It was related that Lyte was staying with the Hore family in County Wexford and had visited an old friend, William Augustus Le Hunte, who was dying. As Lyte sat with the dying man, William kept repeating the phrase "abide with me…". After leaving William's bedside, Lyte wrote the hymn and gave a copy of it to Le Hunte's family.


title: Abide with Me

text: The belief is that when Lyte felt his own end approaching twenty-seven years later at the age of 54, as he developed tuberculosis, he recalled the lines he had written so many years before in County Wexford. The Biblical link for the hymn is Luke 24:29 in which the disciples asked Jesus to abide with them "for it is toward evening and the day is spent". Using his friend's more personal phrasing "Abide with Me", Lyte composed the hymn. His daughter, Anna Maria Maxwell Hogg, recounts the story of how "Abide with Me" came out of that context:


title: Abide with Me

text: Just weeks later, on 20 November 1847 in Nice, then in the Kingdom of Sardinia, Lyte died. The hymn was sung for the very first time at Lyte's funeral. Special thanksgiving services to mark Lyte's bicentenary were held in Taghmon and Killurin churches. Although Lyte wrote a tune for the hymn, the most usual tune for the hymn is "Eventide" by William Henry Monk.


title: Abide with Me

text: The hymn is a prayer for God to remain present with the speaker throughout life, through trials, and through death. The opening line alludes to , ""Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent"", and the penultimate verse draws on text from , ""O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"":


title: Abide with Me

text: Many hymnals omit some of the verses. For example, the compilers of one of the editions of "Hymns Ancient and Modern", of which William Henry Monk, the composer of the tune "Eventide", was the original editor, omitted the verse beginning ""Thou on my head in early youth didst smile;"" for being too personal.


title: Abide with Me

text: The hymn tune most often used with this hymn is "Eventide" composed by English organist and church musician William Henry Monk in 1861.


title: Abide with Me

text: The principal theme of the fourth movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9 is often noted for its similarity to Monk's "Eventide". Ralph Vaughan Williams composed an orchestral prelude ("Two Hymn-Tune Preludes", "1. Eventide") on the tune for the Hereford Festival of 1936. The hymn was also set to music around 1890 by the American composer Charles Ives, and was published in his collection "Thirteen Songs" in 1958, four years after his death.


title: Abide with Me

text: The hymn is popular across many Christian denominations and was said to have been a favourite of King George V and Mahatma Gandhi. In 1947 it was sung at the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II. It is also often sung or played at Christian funerals.


title: Abide with Me

text: The hymn is sung at the annual Anzac Day services in Australia and New Zealand, and in some Remembrance Day services in Canada and the United Kingdom. The song was part of the Beating the Retreat ceremony of the Indian Republic day celebrations till 2021 when it was replaced with an Indian Patriotic song "Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo".


title: Abide with Me

text: The hymn has been widely recorded, by artists in various genres. Several versions have charted on the UK Singles Chart. In 1984, a version by the Inspirational Choir, from their debut album "Sweet Inspiration", peaked at No. 36, and a re-release the following year also reached the same position. A dance version by Vic Reeves reached No. 47 in 1991, which is from his sole album "I Will Cure You". In 2012, Emeli Sandé recorded her version for the 2012 Summer Olympics on the soundtrack album "Isles of Wonder". It reached number 44 in the UK and number 63 on the Irish Singles Chart. A 2013 version featuring Joe McElderry and the Royal Mail Choir was released as a charity single raising money for Prostate Cancer UK, reaching number 19 on the UK Indie Chart.


title: Abide with Me

text: Since the 1927 FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Cardiff City, the first and last verses of the hymn are traditionally sung at the FA Cup Final about 15 minutes before the kick-off of the match. It has also been sung prior to the kick-off at every Rugby League Challenge Cup Final since 1929.


title: Abide with Me

text: It was featured in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, sung by Emeli Sandé as a tribute to the victims of the 7/7 terrorist attacks.


title: Abide with Me

text: The Victorian Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, according to Francis Turner Palgrave, on reading "Abide with Me", "was deeply impressed by its solemn beauty; remarking that it wanted very little to take rank among the really perfect poems of our language".


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Joseph Warren "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell (March 19, 1883 – October 12, 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, his implacable demands for units debilitated by disease to be sent into heavy combat resulted in Merrill's Marauders becoming disenchanted with him. Infuriated by the 1944 fall of Changsha to a Japanese offensive, Stilwell threatened Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek that lend-lease aid to China would be cut off, which led Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley to decide Stilwell had to be replaced. Chiang had been intent on keeping lend-lease supplies to fight the Chinese Communist Party, but Stilwell had been obeying his instructions to get the CCP and the Kuomintang to co-operate against Japan.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Influential voices such as journalist Brooks Atkinson viewed the Chinese Communists as benign and Stilwell as a victim of a corrupt regime. The ousting of Stilwell sparked the beginning of anti-Chiang sentiment by US policymakers that culminated in the 1947 end of American assistance to the Republic of China during the Chinese Civil War.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell's admirers saw him as having been given inadequate resources and incompatible objectives. Critics viewed him as a hard-charging but ultimately unprofessional officer whose failings contributed to the loss of China.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell was born on March 19, 1883, in Palatka, Florida. His parents were Doctor Benjamin Stilwell and Mary A. Peene. Stilwell was an eighth-generation descendant of an English colonist who had arrived in America in 1638 and whose descendants remained in New York until the birth of Stilwell's father.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Named for a family friend and the doctor who delivered him, Stilwell, known as Warren by his family, grew up in Yonkers, New York, under a strict regimen from his father that included an emphasis on religion. 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."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell's rebellious attitude led him to a record of unruly behavior once he reached a postgraduate level at Yonkers High School. Prior to his last year, Stilwell had performed meticulously in his classes and had participated in football (as quarterback) and track. 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. The last event in which an administrator was punched led to the expulsions and suspensions for Stilwell's friends. Meanwhile, since he had already graduated, Stilwell was once again by his father's guidance sent to attend the US Military Academy at West Point, rather than Yale University, as had been originally planned.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Despite missing the deadline to apply for congressional appointment to the military academy, Stilwell gained entry through the use of family connections, via which US President William McKinley was approached. In his first year, Stilwell underwent hazing as a plebe which he referred to as "hell." At West Point, Stilwell showed an aptitude for languages such as French in which he ranked first in his class during his second year. In sports, Stilwell is credited with introducing basketball to the academy, participating in cross-country running as captain, and playing on the varsity football team. At West Point, he had two demerits for laughing during drill. Ultimately, Stilwell graduated with the class of 1904 and ranked 32nd out 124 cadets.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In 1910, he married Winifred Alison Smith (1889–1972). They were the parents of five children, including Brigadier General Joseph Stilwell Jr. (West Point 1933), who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell later taught at West Point and attended the Infantry Advanced Course and the Command and General Staff College. During World War I, he was the Fourth Corps intelligence officer and helped plan the St. Mihiel Offensive. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his service in France.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell is often remembered by his sobriquet, "Vinegar Joe," which he acquired as a commander at Fort Benning, Georgia. Stilwell often gave harsh critiques of performance in field exercises, and a subordinate, stung by the caustic remarks, drew a caricature of Stilwell rising out of a vinegar bottle. After discovering the caricature, Stilwell pinned it to a board and had the drawing photographed and distributed to friends. Yet another indication of his view of life was the motto he kept on his desk: "Illegitimi non carborundum", a form of fractured Latin that translates as "Don't let the bastards grind you down."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Between the wars, Stilwell served three tours in China, where he mastered spoken and written Chinese and was the military attaché at the US legation in Beijing from 1935 to 1939. In 1939 and 1940 he was assistant commander of the 2nd Infantry Division and from 1940 to 1941 organized and trained the 7th Infantry Division at Fort Ord, California. It was there that his leadership style which emphasized concern for the average soldier and minimized ceremonies and officious discipline, earned him the nickname of "Uncle Joe."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Just prior to World War II, Stilwell had been recognized as the Army's top corps commander, and he was initially selected to plan and command the Allied invasion of North Africa. However, he and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff were skeptical about the operation and believed military planners underestimated the risk of submarine attacks interfering with the amphibious landings. He also believed that Allied military planners were too lenient towards Francoist Spain and underestimated the risk of it joining the Axis powers, writing "The Boches own the country. Franco must pay the bill for his war." After Stilwell prepared a scathingly anti-British final report on the Arcadia Conference, his superiors decided to reassign him. 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell became the chief of staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, served as US commander in the China Burma India Theater, was responsible for all Lend-Lease supplies going to China, and later became deputy commander of South East Asia Command. Despite his status and position in China, he became involved in conflicts with other senior Allied officers over the distribution of lend-lease materiel, Chinese political sectarianism and proposals to incorporate Chinese and US forces in the 11th Army Group under British command.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In February 1942 Stilwell was promoted to lieutenant general and was assigned to the China-Burma-India Theater (CBI). In that position, Stilwell had three major roles: commander of all US forces in China, Burma, and India; deputy commander of the Burma-India Theater under Admiral Louis Mountbatten; and military advisor to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the commander of all Nationalist Chinese forces as well as commander of the Chinese Theater.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The CBI was a geographical administrative command on the same level as the commands of Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, but unlike other combat theaters like the European Theater of Operations, the CBI was never formally designated a "theater of operations" and did not have an overall American operational command structure. The China Theater came under the operational command of Chiang, the commander of the National Revolutionary Army, and the Burma India Theater came under the operational command of the British (first the India Command and later the Allied South East Asia Command whose supreme commander was Mountbatten). During his tenure, there were hardly any American combat forces in the theater, and Stilwell commanded Chinese troops almost exclusively.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The British and the Chinese were ill-equipped and more often than not on the receiving end of Japanese offensives. Chiang was interested in conserving his troops and Allied lend-lease supplies to be used against any sudden Japanese offensive and against communist forces in a later civil war. His wariness increased after he had observed the disastrous Allied performance against the Japanese invasion of Burma. After fighting and resisting the Japanese for five years, many in the Nationalist government felt that it was time for the Allies to assume a greater burden in fighting the war.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The Allied forces were beset by a difference in strategies. Chiang, having fought against Japan since 1937, favored "defense in depth", an approach partially adopted by the British later in 1944. During the early stages of the conflict both the British and the Americans underestimated the Japanese. Captain Evans Carlson, after observing the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, called the Imperial Japanese Army "third rate", while Stilwell wanted to go on the offensive to save Burma. The Japanese divisions there were proficient in both jungle and offroad warfare. They successfully outmaneuvred the road-bound British, coordinated with air support, and exploited local anticolonial sentiments.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The situation was not helped by multiple incidents of miscommunication and insubordination. In February 1942, while retreating across the Sittaung River, the main British force left two brigades on the wrong side after prematurely blowing up the bridge. During an ambush against incoming Japanese at Pyinmana, only the Chinese 5th Army stayed in position. The British pulled back, fearing encirclement, while the Chinese 200th Division refused to rush in.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The first step to fighting the war for Stilwell was the reformation of the Chinese Army. The reforms clashed with the delicate balance of political and military alliances in China, which kept Chiang in power. Reforming the army meant removing men who maintained Chiang's position as commander-in-chief. Chiang gave Stilwell technical overall command of some Chinese troops but worried that the new US-led forces would become yet another independent force outside of his control. Since 1942, members of his staff had continually objected to Chinese troops being used in Burma for what they viewed as returning the country to British colonial control.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Chiang therefore sided with Major General Claire Lee Chennault's proposals for the war against the Japanese to be continued largely using existing Chinese forces supported by air forces, which Chennault assured Chiang to be feasible. The dilemma forced Chennault and Stilwell into competition for the valuable lend-lease supplies arriving over the Himalayas from British-controlled India, an obstacle referred to as "The Hump."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: George Marshall's biennial report covering July 1, 1943 to June 30, 1945 acknowledged that he had given Stilwell "one of the most difficult" assignments of any theater commander.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: After the collapse of the Allied defenses in Burma, which cut China off from all land and sea supply routes, Stilwell declined an airlift offer from General Chennault and led his staff of 117 out of Burma into Assam, India, on foot. They marched at what his men called the "Stilwell stride" of 105 paces per minute. Two of the men accompanying him, his aide Frank Dorn and the war correspondent Jack Belden, wrote about their experiences in "Walkout with Stilwell in Burma" (1971) and "Retreat with Stilwell" (1943) respectively. The Assam route was used by other retreating Allied and Chinese forces.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell's walkout separated him from the approximately 100,000 Chinese troops still there. 25 thousand of them would later perish during their retreat due to the harsh jungle conditions, poor logistics, and Japanese military operations.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In India, Stilwell soon became well-known for his no-nonsense demeanor and his disregard for military pomp and ceremony. His trademarks were a battered Army campaign hat, GI shoes, and a plain service uniform with no insignia of rank. He frequently carried a Model 1903, .30–06 Caliber, Springfield rifle in preference to a sidearm. His hazardous march out of Burma and his bluntly-honest assessment of the disaster captured the imagination of the American public: "I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake it."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell's derogatory remarks castigating the ineffectiveness of what he termed "Limey" forces, which was often repeated by Stilwell's staff, did not sit well with British and Commonwealth commanders. It was well known among the troops that Stilwell's disdain for the British was aimed toward the high command officers whom he saw as overly stuffy and pompous.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: After the Japanese occupied Burma, China was almost completely cut off from Allied aid and materiel except through the hazardous route of flying cargo aircraft over the Hump. Early on, Roosevelt and the US War Department had given priority to other theaters for US combat forces, equipment, and logistical support. The closure of the Burma Road and the fall of Burma made it extremely difficult even to replace Chinese war losses. This jeopardized the Allies' initial strategy, which was to maintain the Chinese resistance to the Japanese by providing logistical and air support.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Convinced that the Chinese soldier was the equal of any other with proper care and leadership, Stilwell established a training center in Ramgarh, India, west of Calcutta for two divisions of Chinese troops from forces that had retreated to Assam from Burma. His effort in that regard met passive and sometimes active resistance from the British, who feared that armed disciplined Chinese would set an example for Indian insurgents, and from Chiang, who did not welcome a strong military unit outside his control.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: From the outset, Stilwell's primary goals were the opening of a land route to China from northern Burma and India by means of a ground offensive in northern Burma to allow more supplies to be transported to China and to organize, equip, and train a reorganized and competent Chinese army that would fight the Japanese in the China-Burma-India theater (CBI). Stilwell argued that the CBI was the only area with the possibility for the Allies to engage large numbers of troops against their common enemy, Japan. Unfortunately, the huge airborne logistical train of support from the US to British India was still being organized, and supplies being flown over the Hump were barely sufficient to maintain Chennault's air operations and replace some of the Chinese war losses, let alone equip and supply an entire army.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Additionally, critical supplies intended for the CBI were being diverted to various crises in other combat theaters. Of the supplies that made it over the Hump, some were diverted by Chinese and American personnel to the black market for their personal enrichment. As a result, most Allied commanders in India, with the exception of General Orde Wingate and his Chindit operations, were focused on defensive measures.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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. 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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 but countermanded some of the orders to Chinese units issued by Stilwell in his capacity as Chief of Staff.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: An outraged Stilwell began to call Chiang "the little dummy" or "Peanut" in his reports to Washington, DC, "Peanut" being originally intended as a code word for Chiang in official radio messages. 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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. On two separate occasions, Stilwell drew up plans to assassinate Chiang and replace him, but ultimately they were never carried out.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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. 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: During his time in India, Stilwell became increasingly disenchanted with British forces and did not hesitate to voice criticisms of what he viewed as hesitant or cowardly behavior. Of the Chindit casualties, 90% were incurred in the last phase of the campaign from 17 May, while they were under Stilwell's direct command. The British viewed the situation quite differently and pointed out that from 6 June to 27 June, Michael Calvert's 77th Brigade, which lacked heavy weapons, had taken Mogaung and suffered 800 casualties (50%) among those of the brigade involved in the operation.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell infuriated Calvert and the British by announcing via the BBC that Chinese troops had captured Mogaung but not referring to the British. The Chindits were outraged, and Calvert famously signaled to Stilwell's headquarters, "Chinese reported taking Mogaung. My Brigade now taking umbrage." Stilwell's son was an intelligence officer and said that Umbrage was so small that he could not find it on the map.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell expected the 77th Brigade to join the siege of Myitkyina, but Calvert was so sickened by demands on his troops that he considered abusive that switched off his radios and withdrew to Stilwell's base. A court-martial was likely until Stilwell and Calvert met in person, the latter being ready to trade punches. Stilwell finally appreciated the conditions under which the Chindits had been operating, apologized by blaming his staff officers for not receiving correct information, and allowed him and his men to withdraw. He finally said to Calvert, "You and your boys have done a great job. I congratulate you". Stilwell also awarded number of medals including a Silver Star.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The 111th Brigade, after it rested, had orders to capture a hill known as Point 2171. That occurred, but the men were now utterly exhausted. Most of them were suffering from malaria, dysentery, and malnutrition. On 8 July, at the insistence of Mountbatten, doctors examined the brigade. Of the 2200 men present from four-and-a-half battalions, only 119 were declared fit. The brigade was evacuated. John Masters kept the fit men, sarcastically named "111 Company," in the field until 1 August.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The portion of 111 Brigade east of the Irrawaddy River was known as Morris Force, after its commander, Lieutenant-Colonel "Jumbo" Morris. It had spent several months harassing Japanese traffic from Bhamo to Myitkyina. It had then attempted to complete the encirclement of Myitkyina. Stilwell was angered that it was unable to do so, but Slim pointed out that Stilwell's Chinese 5,500 troops had also failed in that task. By 14 July, Morris Force was down to three platoons. A week later, it had only 25 men fit for duty. Morris Force was evacuated about the same time as 77th Brigade.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Captain Charlton Ogburn, Jr., a US Army Marauder officer, and Chindit Brigade Commanders John Masters and Michael Calvert, later recalled Stilwell's appointment of a staff officer specially detailed by him to visit subordinate commands to chastise their officers and men as being "yellow." In October 1943, after the Joint Planning Staff at GHQ India had rejected a plan by Stilwell to fly his Chinese troops to northern Burma, Field Marshal Archibald Wavell, asked whether Stilwell was satisfied on purely-military grounds that the plan could not work. Stilwell replied that he was. Wavell then asked what Stilwell would say to Chiang, and Stilwell replied, "I shall tell him the bloody British wouldn't fight."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: With the establishment of the new South East Asia Command in August 1943, Stilwell was appointed deputy supreme allied commander under Vice Admiral Mountbatten. Taking command of various Chinese and Allied forces, including a new US Army special operations formation, the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), later known as Merrill's Marauders, Stilwell built up his Chinese forces for an eventual offensive in northern Burma. On December 21, 1943, Stilwell assumed direct control of planning for the invasion of northern Burma that culminated with the capture of the Japanese-held town of Myitkyina. 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. In February 1944, three Marauder battalions marched into Burma. Stilwell was at the Ledo Road front when the Marauders arrived at their jump-off point, but the general did not walk out to the road to bid them farewell.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In April 1944, Stilwell launched his final offensive to capture the Burmese city of Myitkyina. In support of that objective, the Marauders were ordered to undertake a long flanking maneuver towards the town that involved a grueling 65-mile jungle march. Having been deployed since February in combat operations in the jungles of Burma, the Marauders were seriously depleted, suffered from both combat losses and disease, and lost additional men en route to the objective. A particularly devastating scourge was a severe outbreak of amoebic dysentery, which erupted shortly after the Marauders linked up with the Chinese Army in India, called X Force.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: By then, the men of the Marauders had openly begun to suspect Stilwell's commitment to their welfare and made no effort to hide their displeasure with their hard-driving commander. Despite their sacrifices, Stilwell appeared unconcerned about their losses and had rejected repeated requests for medals for individual acts of heroism. Initial promises of a rest and rotation were ignored, and the Marauders were not even air-dropped replacement uniforms or mail until late April.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: On May 17, the 1,310 remaining Marauders attacked Myitkyina airfield in concert with elements of two Chinese infantry regiments and a small artillery contingent. The airfield was quickly taken, but the town, which Stilwell's intelligence staff had believed to be lightly defended, was garrisoned by significant numbers of well-equipped Japanese troops, who were steadily being reinforced. A preliminary attack on the town by two Chinese regiments was thrown back with heavy losses. The Marauders did not have the manpower to overwhelm Myitkyina and its defenses immediately. When additional Chinese forces had arrived in a position to attack, the Japanese forces totaled some 4,600 fanatical Japanese defenders.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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. By then, most of the men had fevers and continual dysentery, forcing the men to cut the seats out of their uniform trousers to fire their weapons and relieve themselves simultaneously. Stilwell rejected the evacuation recommendation but made a front line inspection of the Myitkyina lines. He then ordered all medical staff to stop returning combat troops suffering from disease or illness but to return them to combat status by using medications to keep down fevers. The feelings of many Marauders towards Stilwell were summed up by one soldier, who stated, "I had him [Stilwell] in my sights. I coulda' squeezed one off and no one woulda' known it wasn't a Jap who got that son of a bitch."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell also ordered that all Marauders evacuated from combat from wounds or fever first submit to a special medical "examination" by doctors appointed by his headquarters staff. 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. Some of the men who were passed and sent back into combat were immediately re-evacuated as unfit at the insistence of forward medical personnel. Later, Stilwell's staff placed blame on Army medical personnel for over-zealously interpreting his return-to-duty order.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: During the siege, Japanese soldiers resisted fiercely and generally fought to the last man. As a result, Myitkyina did not fall until August 4, 1944, after Stilwell was forced to send in thousands of Chinese reinforcements, but Stilwell was pleased that the objective had at last been taken (his notes from his personal diary contained "Boy, will this burn up the Limeys!"). Later, Stilwell blamed the length of the siege partly on British and Gurkha Chindit forces for not promptly responding to his demands to move north in an attempt to pressure Japanese troops, but the Chindits themselves had suffered grievous casualties in several fierce pitched battles against Japanese troops in the Burmese jungles, along with losses from illness and combat exhaustion. Stilwell also had not kept his British allies clearly informed of his force movements or coordinated his offensive plans with those of General Slim.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Bereft of further combat replacements for his hard-pressed Marauder battalions, Stilwell felt that he had no choice but to continue offensive operations with his existing forces by using the Marauders as "the point of the spear" until they had achieved all their objectives or been wiped out. He was also concerned that pulling out the Marauders, the only US ground unit in the campaign, would result in charges of favoritism and force him to evacuate the exhausted Chinese and British Chindit forces as well. When General William Slim, the commander of the British Commonwealth Fourteenth Army in Burma, informed Stilwell that his men were exhausted and should be withdrawn, Stilwell rejected the idea by insisting that his subordinate commanders simply did not understand enlisted men and their tendency to magnify physical challenges. Having made his own "long march" out of Burma under his own power by using jungle trails, Stilwell found it difficult to sympathize with those who had been in combat in the jungle for months on end without relief. In retrospect, his statements then revealed a lack of understanding of the limitations of lightly-equipped unconventional forces that were used in conventional roles.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Only a week after the fall of Myitkyina in Burma, the 5307th Marauder force, down to only 130 combat-effective men of the original 2,997, was disbanded.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: One of the most significant conflicts to emerge during the war was between General Stilwell and General Claire Chennault, the commander of the famed "Flying Tigers" and later air force commander. As adviser to the Republic of China Air Force, Chennault proposed a limited air offensive against the Japanese in China in 1943 by using a series of forward air bases. Stilwell insisted that the idea was untenable and that any air campaign should not begin until fully-fortified air bases, supported by large ground forces, had been established. Stilwell then argued for all air resources to be diverted to his forces in India for an early conquest of northern Burma.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In following Chennault's advice, Chiang rejected the proposal, and British commanders sided with Chennault since they were aware that they could not launch a co-ordinated Allied offensive into Burma in 1943 with the resources that were available. 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell believed that after forcing a supply route through northern Burma by a ground offensive against the Japanese, he could train and equip 30 Chinese divisions with modern combat equipment. A smaller number of Chinese forces would transfer to India, where two or three new Chinese divisions would also be raised. 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In 1944, the Japanese launched the counteroffensive, Operation Ichi-Go; quickly overran Chennault's forward air bases; and proved Stilwell to be correct. By then, Allied supply efforts via the Hump airlift were steadily improving in tonnage supplied per month. With the replacement of Chinese war losses, Chennault now saw little need for a ground offensive in northern Burma to reopen a ground supply route to China. Augmented with increased military equipment and additional troops and concerned about defense of the approaches to India, British authorities now sided with Stilwell.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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. After heavy fighting and casualties, both forces linked up in January 1945. 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. The new road network, later called the Ledo Road, would link the northern end of the Burma Road as the primary supply route to China. Stilwell's staff planners had estimated the route would supply 65,000 tons of supplies per month.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Using those figures, Stilwell argued that the Ledo Road network would greatly surpass the tonnage being airlifted over the Hump. Chennault doubted that such an extended network of trails through difficult jungle could ever match the tonnage that could be delivered with modern cargo transport aircraft that were then being deploying in the theater. Progress on the Ledo Road was slow and could not be completed until the linkup of forces in January 1945.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In the end, Stilwell's plans to train and to modernize 30 Chinese divisions in China and two or three divisions from forces that were already in India was never fully realized. As Chennault predicted, the supplies carried over the Ledo Road never approached in tonnage the levels of supplies airlifted monthly into China by the Hump. In July 1945, 71,000 tons of supplies were flown over the Hump, compared to 6,000 tons using the Ledo Road, and the airlift operation continued in operation until the end of the war.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: When supplies were flowing over the Ledo Road in large quantities, operations in other theaters had shaped the course of the war against Japan. Stilwell's drive into northern Burma, however, allowed Air Transport Command to fly supplies into China more quickly and safely by allowing American planes to fly a more southerly route without fear of Japanese fighters. American airplanes no longer had to make the dangerous venture over the Hump, which raised the delivery of supplies from 18,000 tons in June 1944 to 39,000 tons in November 1944. On August 1, 1945, planes crossed the Hump a minute and twelve seconds apart from one another.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In acknowledgment of Stilwell's efforts, the Ledo Road was later renamed the Stilwell Road by Chiang.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: With the rapid deterioration of the China front after Japanese launched Operation Ichi-Go in 1944, Stilwell saw that as an opportunity to gain full command of all Chinese armed forces. Operation Ichi-Go was the largest Japanese offensive of World War II and was designed to "liquidate the China affair" by knocking China out of the war once and for all that saw half-a-million men and 800 tanks, supplied by 70,000 to 100,000 horses dragging wagons and 12,000 to 15,000 vehicles, committed to an operation that overran huge areas of China. Stilwell clashed with Chiang over the question of Guilin, a city was besieged by the Japanese. Chiang wanted Guilin defended to the last men, but Stilwell claimed that Guilin was a lost cause.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In his diary, Stilwell wrote: "What they ought to do is to shoot the G-mo [Chiang] and Ho [General He Yingqin] and the rest of the gang." Stilwell ordered the American troops to pull out of Guilin and managed to persuade a reluctant Chiang to accept the loss of Guilin. The clash over Guilin was only a prelude to another clash in which Chiang demanded the return of the Y Force from Burma to defend Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, which was also being threatened by the Japanese advance. After meeting Chiang, Stilwell wrote in his diary that Chiang was a "crazy little bastard with that hickory nut he uses for a head... Usual cockeyed reasons and idiotic tactical and strategic conceptions. He is impossible!"


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell appealed directly to Roosevelt for help with his dispute with Chiang and so Roosevelt sent Chiang a message: "I have urged time and again in recent months that you take drastic action to resist the disaster which has been moving closer to China and to you. Now, when you have not yet placed General Stilwell in command of all forces in China, we are faced with the loss of a critical area... with possible catastrophic consequences." Roosevelt ended his ultimatum to Chiang by the threat to end all American aid unless Chiang "at once" placed Stilwell "in unrestricted command of all your forces."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Chennault later claimed that Stilwell had deliberately ordered Sino-American forces out of Guilin as a way of creating a crisis that would force Chiang to give up command of his armies to Stilwell. Stilwell's diary supported Chennault's claim, as Stilwell wrote that if a crisis emerged that was "just sufficient to get rid of the Peanut without entirely wrecking the ship, it would be worth it." Stilwell went on to write that the entire Nationalist system had to be "torn to bits" and that Chiang would have to go:


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: An exultant Stilwell immediately delivered the letter to Chiang despite pleas from Patrick J. Hurley, Roosevelt's special envoy in China, to delay in delivering the message and to work on a deal that would achieve Stilwell's aim in a way that was more acceptable to Chiang. Stilwell wrote in his diary about handing over Roosevelt's message: "I handed this bundle of paprika to the Peanut and than sank back with a sigh. The harpoon hit the little bugger right in the solar plexus and went right through him. It was a clean hit, but beyond turning green and losing his powers of speech, he did not bat an eye." 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."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Seeing that act as a move toward the complete subjugation of China, Chiang gave a formal reply in which he said that Stilwell must be replaced immediately and that Chiang would welcome any other qualified US general to fill Stilwell's position.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Chiang called Roosevelt's letter the "greatest humiliation I have been subjected to in my life" and stated that it was "all too obvious that the United States intends to intervene in China's internal affairs." Chiang told Hurley that the Chinese people were "tired of the insults which Stilwell has seen fit to heap upon them." Chiang delivered a speech before the Central Executive Committee of the Nationalist Party that was leaked to the press and called Roosevelt's letter a form of imperialism and stated that accepting Roosevelt's demands would make him no different from the Japanese collaborator Wang Jingwei in Nanking.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: On 12 October 1944, Hurley reported to Washington that Stilwell was a "fine man, but was incapable of understanding or co-operating with Chiang Kai-shek" and went on to say that if Stilwell remained in command, all of China might be lost to the Japanese. Before sending his cable, Hurley showed it to Stilwell, who accused Hurley to his face of "cutting my throat with a dull knife."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: On October 19, 1944, Stilwell, who had been promoted to four-star general on August 1, 1944, was recalled from his command by Roosevelt. Partly as a result of controversy concerning the casualties suffered by US forces in Burma and partly because of the continuing difficulties with the British and Chinese commanders, Stilwell's return to the US was not accompanied by the usual ceremony. Upon arrival, he was met by two army generals at the airport, who told him not to answer any of the media questions about China.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell was replaced by General Albert C. Wedemeyer, who received a telegram from Marshall on October 27, 1944 that directed him to proceed to China to assume command of the China Theatre and replace Stilwell. Wedemeyer later recalled his initial dread over the assignment, as service in the China Theater was considered to be a graveyard for American officials, both military and diplomatic.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: When Wedemeyer actually arrived at Stilwell's headquarters after the latter's dismissal, Wedemeyer was dismayed to discover that Stilwell had intentionally departed without seeing him and had not left a single briefing paper for his guidance. Most other departing US military commanders greeted their replacement to have them thoroughly briefed on the strengths and the weaknesses of headquarters staff, the issues confronting the command, and the planned operations.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Searching the offices, Wedemeyer could find no documentary record of Stilwell's plans or records of his former or future operations. General Wedemeyer then spoke with Stilwell's staff officers but learned little from them because Stilwell, according to the staff, kept everything in his "hip pocket".


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Despite prompting by the news media, Stilwell never complained about his treatment by either Washington or Chiang.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: After a three-month furlough, Stilwell, on 24 January 1945, assumed command of the Army Ground Forces with its headquarters at the Pentagon and oversaw all mobilization and training of army ground units in the United States.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: On 23 June 1945, after the death of Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner, Jr. on 18 June, Stilwell was appointed as commander of the Tenth United States Army shortly after the end of Japanese resistance in the Battle of Okinawa. The Tenth Army was slated to participate in Operation Olympic, the planned invasion of the island of Honshu, the largest Japanese home island. The Tenth Army was disbanded on 15 October 1945, after the surrender of Japan.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In November, Stilwell was appointed to lead a "War Department Equipment Board" in an investigation of the Army's modernization in light of its recent experience. 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. His most notable recommendation was for a vast improvement of the army's defenses against all airborne threats, including ballistic missiles. In particular, he called for "guided interceptor missiles, dispatched in accordance with electronically computed data obtained from radar detection stations."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: On 1 March 1946, Stilwell assumed command of the Sixth US Army, with its headquarters at the Presidio of San Francisco. It had been reorganized as an administrative command in charge of army units in the Western United States. In May 1946, Stilwell and his former subordinate Frank Merrill led two US Marine platoons in suppressing a prison uprising, the Battle of Alcatraz.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell died after surgery for stomach cancer on October 12, 1946 at the Presidio of San Francisco. He was still on active duty and five months short of reaching the army's mandatory retirement age of 64. He was cremated, his ashes were scattered on the Pacific Ocean, and a cenotaph was placed at the West Point Cemetery. Among his military decorations are the Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Legion of Merit degree of Commander, the Bronze Star, and the Combat Infantryman Badge; the last award was given to him as he was dying.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Barbara W. Tuchman recorded that Stilwell was a lifelong Republican: "he retained the family Republicanism and joined naturally in the exhilarating exercise of Roosevelt-hating." She later noted that when he met Roosevelt, "At home Stilwell was a conventional Republican who shared the sentiments and adopted the tone of the Roosevelt-haters, in which he was influenced by his brother John, an extremist of the species." Elsewhere she notes that in the view of an (unnamed) close friend, "Stilwell was liberal and sympathetic by instinct. But he was conservative in thought and politics."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Tuchman also noted his use in his letters and diaries of a catalogue of now-insulting words: "he used easily and seemingly without pejorative content." They included "limeys for the English, frogs for the French ('met a frog and his wife on shipboard'), huns and squareheads for Germans, wops for Italians, chinks or chinos for Chinese, googs for Filipinos, niggers or coons for Negroes." 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."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: His diary entry for 1 September 1945 (in Yokohama) stated in part, "What a kick to stare at the arrogant, ugly, moon-faced, buck-toothed, bowlegged bastards, and realize where this puts them. Many newly demobilized soldiers around. Most police salute. People generally just apathetic. We gloated over the destruction & came in at 3:00 feeling fine."


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell’s diaries are contradicted by his speaking out for Japanese-American servicemen threatened with racist incidents postwar. Because of his statements, Stilwell was recruited by the War Department to support Japanese-American servicemen. He attended rallies against racism and personally presented 442nd RCT SSG Kazuo Masuda’s family with the Distinguished Service Cross. In an event at Santa Ana, CA also attended by actors Ronald Reagan and Robert Young, Stilwell praised Nisei soldiers. He remarked: “Who after all is the real American? The real American is the man who calls it a fair exchange to lay down his life in order that American ideals may go on living. And judging by such a test, Sgt. Masuda was a better American than any of us today.”


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In her book "Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45", Tuchman wrote that Stilwell was sacrificed as a political expedient because of his inability to get along with his allies in the theater. Some historians, such as David Halberstam in his final book, "", have theorized that Roosevelt was concerned that Chiang would sign a separate peace with Japan, which would free many Japanese divisions to fight elsewhere, and that Roosevelt wanted to placate Chiang. The power struggle over the China Theater that emerged among Stilwell, Chennault, and Chiang reflected US political divisions of the time.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: A very different interpretation of events suggests that Stilwell, pressing for his full command of all Chinese forces, had made diplomatic inroads with the People's Liberation Army commanded by Mao Zedong. Stilwell bypassed Chiang, his theater commander, and had gotten Mao to agree to follow an American commander. Stilwell's confrontational approach in the power struggle with Chiang ultimately led to Chiang's determination to have Stilwell recalled to the US.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Although Stilwell was a "soldier's soldier," he was an old-school American infantry officer and could 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. One of the disagreements was with the equally-acerbic General Chennault, who Stilwell felt to overvalue the effectiveness of air power against massed ground troops, as was demonstrated by the fall of the 14th Air Force bases in eastern China (Hengyang, Kweilin, etc.) during the Japanese offensive in eastern China in 1944.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell also clashed with other officers, including Orde Wingate, who led the Chindits, and Colonel Charles Hunter, who was in charge of Merrill's Marauders. Stilwell could not appreciate the toll that constant jungle warfare took on even the most highly-trained troops or the incapacity of lightly-armed fast-moving jungle guerrilla forces to dislodge heavily-armed regular infantry that was supported by artillery. Accordingly, Stilwell abused both Chindits and Marauders and earned the contempt of both units and their commanders.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: In other respects, however, Stilwell was a skilled tactician in the US Army's land warfare tradition, with a deep appreciation of the logistics required of campaigning in rough terrain, which caused his dedication to the Ledo Road project for which he received several awards, including the Distinguished Service Cross and the US Army Distinguished Service Medal. The trust that Stilwell placed in men of real insight and character in understanding China, particularly the China Hands, John Stewart Service and John Paton Davies, Jr., confirms that assessment.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Arguably, if Stilwell had been given the number of American regular infantry divisions that he had continually requested, the US experience in China and Burma could have been very different. Certainly, his Army peers, General Douglas MacArthur and General George Marshall had the highest respect for his abilities, and both ensured that he replaced General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. as commander of Tenth US Army at Okinawa after the latter's death. During the last year of the war, however, the US was strained to meet all its military obligations. The cargo aircraft diverted to supply Stilwell, the 14th Air Force for the Chinese in the East made airdrop-dependent campaigns in the West, such as Operation Market Garden, woefully short of aircraft.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Although Chiang succeeded in removing Stilwell, the public relations damage suffered by the Nationalist regime was irreparable. Right before Stilwell's departure, "The New York Times" drama critic-turned-war correspondent Brooks Atkinson interviewed him in Chungking and wrote:


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The decision to relieve General Stilwell represents the political triumph of a moribund, anti-democratic regime that is more concerned with maintaining its political supremacy than in driving the Japanese out of China. The Chinese Communists... have good armies that are now fighting guerrilla warfare against the Japanese in North China... The Generalissimo regards these armies as the chief threat to his supremacy... has made no sincere attempt to arrange at least a truce with them for the duration of the war... No diplomatic genius could have overcome the Generalissimo's basic unwillingness to risk his armies in battle with the Japanese.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Atkinson, who had visited Mao in Yan'an, saw the communist forces as a democratic movement. After Atkinson visited Mao, his article on his visit was "Yenan: A Chinese Wonderland City". The Nationalists were in turn viewed as hopelessly reactionary and corrupt, a view that was then shared by many of the US press corps in China. 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.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The British historian Andrew Roberts quoted Stilwell's disparaging remarks about the British war effort in Asia to illustrate his strong Anglophobia, which became a stumbling block to smooth co-operation between American and British forces in Asia. The British historian Rana Mitter argued that Stilwell never appreciated that his position as Chiang's chief of staff to Chiang did not give him as much authority as Marshall had in his position as army chief of staff. Chiang, not Stilwell, was the Chinese forces' commander-in chief, and Chiang resisted Stilwell's initiatives if they involved committing Chinese forces to do-or-die engagements or if Chinese troops were removed from his immediate control to bases in India. Mitter viewed Chiang as correct in attempting to husband China's resources after the serious losses in 1937 to 1941. Mitter also supported the view that Chennault could have accomplished much more if Stilwell had not diverted a large proportion of lend-lease equipment to the Chinese troops in India. Mitter factored in the impact of the collaborationist Wang Jingwei as yet another major force in China. Stilwell's mastery of written and spoken Chinese made him the default American choice for the China command. Mitter projected that his talents could have been far better employed in North Africa, as Marshall had originally planned.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell's home, built in 1933 to 1934 on Carmel Point, Carmel, California, remains a private home. A number of streets, buildings, and areas across the country have been named for Stilwell over the years, including Joseph Stilwell Middle School in Jacksonville, Florida. The Soldiers' Club that he envisioned in 1940, when there was no such thing as a soldiers' club in the army, was completed in 1943 at Fort Ord on the bluffs overlooking Monterey Bay. Many years later, the building was renamed to Stilwell Hall in his honor, but because of the erosion of the bluffs over the decades, the building was taken down in 2003. Stilwell's former residence in Chongqing, a city along the Yangtze River to which Chiang's government retreated after it had been forced from Nanjing by Japanese troops, has been converted to the General Joseph W. Stilwell Museum in his honor.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Stilwell is portrayed on film by Erville Alderson in "Objective, Burma!" (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).


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: On August 24, 2000, the US Postal Service issued the first 10¢ Distinguished Americans series postage stamp honoring Stilwell.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: The award for the Outstanding Overall Cadet, Senior Division, in the California Cadet Corps is the General Joseph W. Stilwell Award.


title: Joseph Stilwell

text: Streets in Marina, California, Kendall Park, New Jersey Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Presidio of San Francisco are named for him.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the first fabless manufacturing model.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx was co-founded by Ross Freeman, Bernard Vonderschmitt, and James V Barnett II in 1984 and the company went public on the NASDAQ in 1990. AMD announced its acquisition of Xilinx in October 2020 and the deal was completed on February 14, 2022 through an all-stock transaction worth an estimated $50 billion.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx was founded in Silicon Valley in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, USA, with additional offices in Longmont, USA; Dublin, Ireland; Singapore; Hyderabad, India; Beijing, China; Shanghai, China; Brisbane, Australia and Tokyo, Japan.


title: Xilinx

text: According to Bill Carter, former CTO and current fellow at Xilinx, the choice of the name Xilinx refers to the chemical symbol for silicon Si. The "linx" represents programmable links that connect programmable logic blocks together. The 'X's at each end represent the programmable logic blocks.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx sells a broad range of FPGAs, complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), design tools, intellectual property and reference designs. Xilinx customers represent just over half of the entire programmable logic market, at 51%. Altera (now Intel) is Xilinx's strongest competitor with 34% of the market. Other key players in this market are Actel (now Microsemi), and Lattice Semiconductor.


title: Xilinx

text: Ross Freeman, Bernard Vonderschmitt, and James V Barnett II—all former employees of Zilog, an integrated circuit and solid-state device manufacturer—co-founded Xilinx in 1984 with headquarters in San Jose, USA.


title: Xilinx

text: While working for Zilog, Freeman wanted to create chips that acted like a blank tape, allowing users to program the technology themselves. "The concept required lots of transistors and, at that time, transistors were considered extremely precious—people thought that Ross's idea was pretty far out", said Xilinx Fellow Bill Carter, hired in 1984 to design ICs as Xilinx's eighth employee.


title: Xilinx

text: It was at the time more profitable to manufacture generic circuits in massive volumes than specialized circuits for specific markets. FPGA promised to make specialized circuits profitable.


title: Xilinx

text: Freeman could not convince Zilog to invest in FPGAs to chase a market then estimated at $100 million, so he and Barnett left to team up with Vonderschmitt, a former colleague. Together, they raised $4.5 million in venture funding to design the first commercially viable FPGA. They incorporated the company in 1984 and began selling its first product by 1985.


title: Xilinx

text: By late 1987, the company had raised more than $18 million in venture capital (equivalent to $ million in ) and was making nearly $14 million a year.


title: Xilinx

text: From 1988 to 1990, the company's revenue grew each year, from $30 million to $100 million. During this time, Monolithic Memories Inc. (MMI), the company which had been providing funding to Xilinx, was purchased by AMD. As a result, Xilinx dissolved the deal with MMI and went public on the NASDAQ in 1989. The company also moved to a plant in San Jose, California, to handle increasingly large orders from HP, Apple Inc., IBM and Sun Microsystems.


title: Xilinx

text: Other FPGA makers emerged in the mid-1990s. By 1995, the company reached $550 million in revenue. Over the years, Xilinx expanded operations to India, Asia and Europe.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx's sales rose to $2.53 billion by the end of its fiscal year 2018. Moshe Gavrielov – an EDA and ASIC industry veteran who was appointed president and CEO in early 2008 – introduced targeted design platforms that combine FPGAs with software, IP cores, boards and kits to address focused target applications. These targeted design platforms are an alternative to costly application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and application-specific standard products (ASSPs).


title: Xilinx

text: In 2011, the company introduced the Virtex-7 2000T, the first product based on 2.5D stacked silicon (based on silicon interposer technology) to deliver larger FPGAs than could be built using standard monolithic silicon. Xilinx then adapted the technology to combine formerly separate components in a single chip, first combining an FPGA with transceivers based on heterogeneous process technology to boost bandwidth capacity while using less power.


title: Xilinx

text: According to former Xilinx CEO Moshe Gavrielov, the addition of a heterogeneous communications device, combined with the introduction of new software tools and the Zynq-7000 line of 28 nm SoC devices that combine an ARM core with an FPGA, are part of shifting its position from a programmable logic device supplier to one delivering “all things programmable”.


title: Xilinx

text: In addition to Zynq-7000, Xilinx product lines include the Virtex, Kintex and Artix series, each including configurations and models optimized for different applications. In April 2012, the company introduced the Vivado Design Suite - a next-generation SoC-strength design environment for advanced electronic system designs. In May, 2014, the company shipped the first of the next generation FPGAs: the 20 nm UltraScale.


title: Xilinx

text: In September 2017, Amazon.com and Xilinx started a campaign for FPGA adoption. This campaign enables AWS Marketplace's Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) with associated Amazon FPGA Instances created by partners. The two companies released software development tools to simplify the creation of FPGA technology. The tools create and manage the machine images created and sold by partners.


title: Xilinx

text: In July 2018, Xilinx acquired DeepPhi Technology, a Chinese machine learning startup founded in 2016. In October 2018, the Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+ FPGAs and NGCodec's H.265 video encoder were used in a cloud-based video coding service using the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). The combination enables video streaming with the same visual quality as that using GPUs, but at 35%-45% lower bitrate.


title: Xilinx

text: In November 2018, the company's Zynq UltraScale+ family of multiprocessor system-on-chips was certified to Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 3 HFT1 of the IEC 61508 specification.  With this certification, developers are able to use the MPSoC platform in AI-based safety- applications of up to SIL 3, in industrial 4.0 platforms of automotive, aerospace, and AI systems. In January 2019, ZF Friedrichshafen AG (ZF) worked with Xilinx's Zynq to power its ProAI automotive control unit, which is used to enable automated driving applications.  Xilinx's platform overlooks the aggregation, pre-processing, and distribution of real-time data, and accelerates the AI processing of the unit.


title: Xilinx

text: In November 2018, Xilinx migrated its defense-grade XQ UltraScale+ products to TSMC's 16 nm FinFET Process.  The products included the industry's first Defense-grade heterogeneous multi-processor SoC devices and encompassed the XQ Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoCs and RFSoCs as well as XQ UltraScale+ Kintex and Virtex FPGAs. That same month the company expanded its Alveo data center accelerator cards portfolio with the Alveo U280.  The initial Alveo line included the U200 and U250, which featured 16 nm UltraScale+ Virtex FPGAs and DDR4 SDRAM. Those two cards were launched in October 2018 at the Xilinx Developer Forum.  At the Forum, Victor Peng, CEO of semiconductor design at Xilinx, and AMD CTO Mark Papermaster, used eight Alveo U250 cards and two AMD Epyc 7551 server CPUs to set a new world record for inference throughput at 30,000 images per second.


title: Xilinx

text: Also in November 2018, Xilinx announced that Dell EMC was the first server vendor to qualify its Alveo U200 accelerator card, used to accelerate key HPC and other workloads with select Dell EMC PowerEdge servers. The U280 included support for high-bandwidth memory (HBM2) and high-performance server interconnect. In August 2019, Xilinx launched the Alveo U50, a low-profile adaptable accelerator with PCIe Gen4 support. The U55C accelerator card was launched in November 2021, designed for HPCC and big data workloads by incorporating the RoCE v2-based clustering solution, allowing for FPGA-based HPCC clustering to be integrated into existing data center infrastructures.


title: Xilinx

text: In January 2019 K&L Gates, a law firm representing Xilinx sent a DMCA cease and desist letter to an EE YouTuber claiming trademark infringement for featuring the Xilinx logo next to Altera's in an educational video. Xilinx refused to reply until a video outlining the legal threat was published, after which they sent an apology e-mail.


title: Xilinx

text: In January 2019, Baidu announced that its new edge acceleration computing product, EdgeBoard, was powered by Xilinx. Edgeboard is a part of the Baidu Brain AI Hardware Platform Initiative, which encompasses Baidu's open computing services, and hardware and software products for its edge AI applications. Edgeboard is based on the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC, which uses real-time processors together with programmable logic.  The Xilinx-based Edgeboard can be used to develop products like smart-video security surveillance solutions, advanced-driver-assistance systems, and next-generation robots.


title: Xilinx

text: In February 2019, the company announced two new generations of its Zynq UltraScale+ RF system on chip (RFSoC) portfolio. The device covers the entire sub-6 GHz spectrum, which is necessary for 5G, and the updates included: an extended millimeter wave interface, up to 20% power reduction in the RF data converter subsystem compared to the base portfolio, and support of 5G New Radio. The second generation release covered up to 5 GHz, while the third went up to 6 GHz. As of February, the portfolio was the only adaptable radio platform single chip that had been designed to address the industry's 5G network needs. The second announcement revealed that Xilinx and Samsung Electronics performed the world's first 5G New Radio (NR) commercial deployment in South Korea. The two companies developed and deployed 5G Massive Multiple-input, Multiple-output (m-MIMO) and millimeter wave (mmWave) products using Xilinx's UltraScale+ platform. The capabilities are essential for 5G commercialization. The companies also announced collaboration on Xilinx's Versal adaptable compute acceleration platform (ACAP) products that will deliver 5G services. In February 2019, Xilinx introduced an HDMI 2.1 IP subsystem core, which enabled the company's devices to transmit, receive, and process up to 8K (7680 x 4320 pixels) UHD video in media players, cameras, monitors, LED walls, projectors, and kernel-based virtual machines.


title: Xilinx

text: In April 2019, Xilinx entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Solarflare Communications, Inc. Xilinx became a strategic investor in Solarflare in 2017. The companies have been collaborating since then on advanced networking technology, and in March 2019 demonstrated their first joint solution: a single-chip FPGA-based 100G NIC. The acquisition enables Xilinx to combine its FPGA, MPSoC and ACAP solutions with Solarflare's NIC technology. In August 2019, Xilinx announced that the company would be adding the world's largest FPGA - the Virtex Ultrascale+ VU19P, to the 16 nm Virtex Ultrascale+ family. The VU19P contains 35 billion transistors.


title: Xilinx

text: In June 2019, Xilinx announced that it was shipping its first Versal chips. Using ACAP, the chips’ hardware and software can be programmed to run almost any kind of AI software. On October 1, 2019, Xilinx announced the launch of Vitis, a unified software platform that helps developers take advantage of hardware adaptability.


title: Xilinx

text: In 2019, Xilinx exceeded $3 billion in annual revenues for the first time, announcing revenues of $3.06 billion, up 24% from the prior fiscal year. Revenues were $828 million for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2019, up 4% from the prior quarter and up 30% year over year. Xilinx's Communications sector represented 41% of the revenue; the industrial, aerospace and defense sectors represented 27%; the Data Center and Test, Measurement & Emulation (TME) sectors accounted for 18%; and the automotive, broadcast and consumer markets contributed 14%.


title: Xilinx

text: In August 2020, Subaru announced the use of one of Xilinx's chips as processing power for camera images in its driver-assistance system. In September 2020, Xilinx announced its new chipset, the T1 Telco Accelerator card, that can be used for units running on an open RAN 5G network.


title: Xilinx

text: On October 27, 2020, AMD reached an agreement to acquire Xilinx in a stock-swap deal, valuing the company at $35 billion. The deal was expected to close by the end of 2021. Their stockholders approved the acquisition on April 7, 2021. The deal was completed on February 14, 2022. Since the acquisition was completed, all Xilinx products are co-branded as "AMD Xilinx".


title: Xilinx

text: In December 2020, Xilinx announced they were acquiring the assets of Falcon Computing Systems to enhance the Vitis platform.


title: Xilinx

text: In April 2021, Xilinx announced a collaboration with Mavenir to boost cell phone tower capacity for open 5G networks. That same month, the company unveiled the Kria portfolio, a line of small form factor system-on-modules (SOMs) that come with a pre-built software stack to simplify development. In June, Xilinx announced it was acquiring German software developer Silexica, for an undisclosed amount.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx designs and develops programmable logic products, including integrated circuits (ICs), software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as intellectual property (IP) cores, design services, customer training, field engineering and technical support. Xilinx sells both FPGAs and CPLDs for electronic equipment manufacturers in end markets such as communications, industrial, consumer, automotive and data processing.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx's FPGAs have been used for the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) at the CERN European laboratory on the French-Swiss border to map and disentangle the trajectories of thousands of subatomic particles. Xilinx has also engaged in a partnership with the United States Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate to develop FPGAs to withstand the damaging effects of radiation in space, which are 1,000 times less sensitive to space radiation than the commercial equivalent, for deployment in new satellites. Xilinx FPGAs can run a regular embedded OS (such as Linux or vxWorks) and can implement processor peripherals in programmable logic. The Virtex-II Pro, Virtex-4, Virtex-5, and Virtex-6 FPGA families, which include up to two embedded IBM PowerPC cores, are targeted to the needs of system-on-chip (SoC) designers.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx's IP cores include IP for simple functions (BCD encoders, counters, etc.), for domain specific cores (digital signal processing, FFT and FIR cores) to complex systems (multi-gigabit networking cores, the MicroBlaze soft microprocessor and the compact Picoblaze microcontroller). Xilinx also creates custom cores for a fee.


title: Xilinx

text: The main design toolkit Xilinx provides engineers is the Vivado Design Suite, an integrated design environment (IDE) with a system-to-IC level tools built on a shared scalable data model and a common debug environment. Vivado includes electronic system level (ESL) design tools for synthesizing and verifying C-based algorithmic IP; standards based packaging of both algorithmic and RTL IP for reuse; standards based IP stitching and systems integration of all types of system building blocks; and the verification of blocks and systems. A free version WebPACK Edition of Vivado provides designers with a limited version of the design environment.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx's Embedded Developer's Kit (EDK) supports the embedded PowerPC 405 and 440 cores (in Virtex-II Pro and some Virtex-4 and -5 chips) and the Microblaze core. Xilinx's System Generator for DSP implements DSP designs on Xilinx FPGAs. A freeware version of its EDA software called ISE WebPACK is used with some of its non-high-performance chips. Xilinx is the only (as of 2007) FPGA vendor to distribute a native Linux freeware synthesis toolchain.


title: Xilinx

text: Xilinx announced the architecture for a new ARM Cortex-A9-based platform for embedded systems designers, that combines the software programmability of an embedded processor with the hardware flexibility of an FPGA. The new architecture abstracts much of the hardware burden away from the embedded software developers' point of view, giving them an unprecedented level of control in the development process. With this platform, software developers can leverage their existing system code based on ARM technology and utilize vast off-the-shelf open-source and commercially available software component libraries. Because the system boots an OS at reset, software development can get under way quickly within familiar development and debug environments using tools such as ARM's RealView development suite and related third-party tools, Eclipse-based IDEs, GNU, the Xilinx Software Development Kit and others. In early 2011, Xilinx began shipping the Zynq-7000 SoC platform immerses ARM multi-cores, programmable logic fabric, DSP data paths, memories and I/O functions in a dense and configurable mesh of interconnect. The platform targets embedded designers working on market applications that require multi-functionality and real-time responsiveness, such as automotive driver assistance, intelligent video surveillance, industrial automation, aerospace and defense, and next-generation wireless.


title: Xilinx

text: Following the introduction of its 28 nm 7-series FPGAs, Xilinx revealed that several of the highest-density parts in those FPGA product lines will be constructed using multiple dies in one package, employing technology developed for 3D construction and stacked-die assemblies. The company's stacked silicon interconnect (SSI) technology stacks several (three or four) active FPGA dies side by side on a silicon interposer – a single piece of silicon that carries passive interconnect. The individual FPGA dies are conventional, and are flip-chip mounted by microbumps on to the interposer. The interposer provides direct interconnect between the FPGA dies, with no need for transceiver technologies such as high-speed SerDes. In October 2011, Xilinx shipped the first FPGA to use the new technology, the Virtex-7 2000T FPGA, which includes 6.8 billion transistors and 20 million ASIC gates. The following spring, Xilinx used 3D technology to ship the Virtex-7 HT, the industry's first heterogeneous FPGAs, which combine high bandwidth FPGAs with a maximum of sixteen 28 Gbit/s and seventy-two 13.1 Gbit/s transceivers to reduce power and size requirements for key Nx100G and 400G line card applications and functions.


title: Xilinx

text: In January 2011, Xilinx acquired design tool firm AutoESL Design Technologies and added System C high-level design for its 6- and 7-series FPGA families. The addition of AutoESL tools extended the design community for FPGAs to designers more accustomed to designing at a higher level of abstraction using C, C++ and System C.


title: Xilinx

text: In April 2012, Xilinx introduced a revised version of its toolset for programmable systems, called Vivado Design Suite. This IP and system-centric design software supports newer high capacity devices, and speeds the design of programmable logic and I/O. Vivado provides faster integration and implementation for programmable systems into devices with 3D stacked silicon interconnect technology, ARM processing systems, analog mixed signal (AMS), and many semiconductor intellectual property (IP) cores.


title: Xilinx

text: In July 2019, Xilinx acquired NGCodec, developers of FPGA accelerated video encoders for video streaming, cloud gaming and cloud mixed reality services. NGCodec video encoders include support for H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, VP9 and AV1, with planned future support for H.266/VVC and AV2.


title: Xilinx

text: In May 2020, Xilinx installed its first Adaptive Compute Cluster (XACC) at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. The XACCs provide infrastructure and funding to support research in adaptive compute acceleration for high performance computing (HPC). The clusters include high-end servers, Xilinx Alveo accelerator cards, and high speed networking. Three other XACCs will be installed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC); and the National University of Singapore (NUS).