Wang Yue-che ηŽ‹ηŽ‰ιΊ’ papers, 1960s-2020s

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Summary

Creators:
Wang, Yue-che, 1944-
Abstract:
The Wang Yue-che ηŽ‹ηŽ‰ιΊ’ papers (1969-2009) Memoirs, correspondence, reports, military documents, personal documents, and photographs, relating to West German military assistance to Taiwan.
Extent:
3 manuscript boxes (1 Linear Feet)
Language:
In Chinese and German
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Wang Yue-che ηŽ‹ηŽ‰ιΊ’ papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives

Background

Scope and content:

The Wang Yue-che ηŽ‹ηŽ‰ιΊ’ papers include correspondence, reports, memoranda, and minutes of the German military advisers and their meetings, as well as photos depicting their underground activities in Taiwan. Also in this collection are dozens of rare photos depicting the naval activities from the late Qing dynasty to the 1950s in the Republic of China, when Wang's grandfather was serving in the Chinese Navy.

Biographical / historical:

Wang Yue-che (Wang Yuqi, Wang YΓΌ-Ch'i) was a colonel in the Republic of China army, an aide-de-camp to General Oskar Munzel, and a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek.

For decades after his defeat by the Chinese Communists in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek relied heavily and almost exclusively on the United States to defend and consolidate his island redoubt, Taiwan, against the communist invasion. Under the facade of an ostensibly formidable US-Taiwan alliance during the cold war, however, Chiang would, from time to time, turn to his erstwhile enemies in World War II for military advice. In the early 1950s, he covertly employed former Japanese officers to educate his army officers. Beginning in the early 1960s, Chiang hired former German officers as his "personal advisers" to train, lecture, and assess the Taiwanese military forces; Wang was an aide-de-camp to one of them. Led by Oskar Munzel, a highly decorated Generalmajor in the Wehrmacht during World War II, and General der Kampftruppen of the Bundeswehr, who commanded all German army combat troops after the war, as well as Paul Jordan and Kurt Kauffmann, the "personal advisers" played a crucial role in reforming Taiwan's armored forces, bridging military cooperation between Bonn and Taipei, and transforming the mind-set of Chiang's military echelons. The German group was still at work well into the mid-1970s, after Taiwan was expelled from the United Nations and Bonn normalized its relations with the People's Republic of China. It came to a stop only after Chiang Kai-shek died in April 1975.

Acquisition information:
Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library Archives in 2013.
Physical location:
Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.

Terms of access:

For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Wang Yue-che ηŽ‹ηŽ‰ιΊ’ papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives

Location of this collection:
Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6003, US
Contact:
(650) 723-3563
hooverarchives@stanford.edu
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