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Title: Wang Yue-che papers
Date (inclusive): 1969-2009
Collection Number: 2013C33
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material:
Chinese
Physical Description:
2 manuscript boxes
(0.8 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Memoirs, correspondence, reports, military documents, personal documents, and photographs, relating to West German military
assistance to Taiwan.
Creator:
Wang, Yue-che, 1944-
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
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.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2013.
[Identification of item], Wang Yue-che papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Yue-che Wang 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.
The 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.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Taiwan -- Military relations -- Germany (West)
Germany (West) -- Military relations -- Taiwan
Taiwan -- Armed Forces
Munzel, Oskar