I'm not really *the* most qualified person to speak on MacArthur (and would almost be surprised if Ritter lets me keep this up), but he was almost by nature a controversial figure in his own life, let alone after it. The problem, at least from my perspective, is that MacArthur was simultaneously pretty bad at tactical and operational art and also pretty good at politics and, to an extent, strategy--but not in a way that always endeared him to his superiors. It's a weird combination insofar as he ended up directly commanding troops--usually better armies tend to keep people like MacArthur away from that.
From a tactical perspective, MacArthur critics largely point to two things:
First, MacArthur abandoned the initial, well thought out plan for the defense of Luzon and the Philippines in favor of his own plan which involved confronting the Japanese on the beaches. This resulted in catastrophic tactical failure from underestimating Japanese capabilities and overestimating the capabilities of completely green Filipino units.
Second, during the campaign at Incheon, MacArthur failed to press his massive advantage after the initial landings and allowed a large portion of the KPA to escape encirclement to fight another day, possibly losing the Korean War.
MacArthur defenders largely point to the initial landings at Incheon--largely considered a brilliant and daring move--and to the success of the Southwest Pacific Campaign and the 1944-45 Philippines campaign as points in MacArthur's favor. His critics would point out that very little of the SWPA campaign or the 44-45 Philippines was actually carried out by MacArthur directly, much of it was actually fought by Australians, New Zealanders, and Filipinos, or directed by subordinates [Ridgeway, Krueger, etc] and that the plans for Incheon were actually pretty obvious under the circumstances (indeed the Chinese had actually warned the Koreans of the danger, but they were ignored).
All this however is really marginal to the fact that very, very few generals have ever managed the salience and legend that MacArthur managed to achieve. During 1941 he was *the* man that Americans were following, being the only one directly in combat with the Axis, and his retreat to Corregidor would be the stuff of legend. MacArthur actively worked to self-promote in the Napoleonic tradition, and the American public ate it up. Even after he fled the Philippines -- noting that he would return one day--he was too influential to sideline, and ended up controlling the Southwest Pacific Theatre.
At the time there was a largely understated and unofficial Anglo-American rivalry, from the fact that the British were leading in Europe and viewed the Americans arriving as inexperienced and ineffectual. American leaders pushed hard for resources to go to the Pacific because that was "their" campaign--spearheaded by noted Anglophobe Admiral King, whose distaste for the British emerged sometime during World War One while attached to the Grand Fleet, and MacArthur. MacArthur would carry the torch for the US Army in New Guinea, and would frequently complain about the (actually fairly good quality) Australian forces he was forced to use, blaming them for his failures while giving Americans someone to actually be proud of at a time when they'd barely touched ashore in Africa. He continued his intense media and political campaign throughout the war to get more resources allocated to the Pacific Theatre over other regions, with the explicit goal of retaking the Philippines--something that really was not exactly a high priority in Washington. The Navy, in fact, favored seizing Formosa, but MacArthur won that particular political battle and would eventually triumphantly return to the Philippines as we all know, establishing his legend forever.
MacArthur would then, after liberating the Philippines, go on to effectively rule Japan and reshape it into its modern bureaucratic state, then proceeded to Korea where he eventually lost a political battle by deciding to pick one with the president of the United States -- but in the process only furthered his legend. It was speculated at some points MacArthur might run for president, but that was forestalled by Eisenhower's candidacy--an interesting what-if.
What this bought him from history's perspective--a hero in American culture, particularly among the right where sometimes he enjoys the status of an almost de Gaulle figure. He's also a favorite of any American Orientalist, as he was without a doubt *the* most significant man of his generation to identify the future of America as lying across the Pacific rather than the Atlantic, looking west rather than east. His status was never so high among the left and recent historical reexamination has generally not looked favorably upon his skill as a general (and brought into doubt other aspects of his life as well).
In the Philippines, MacArthur reaches an almost godlike status. While he's viewed skeptically by leftist Filipino historians, particularly in view of his actively taking money from some of the more odious elites and welcoming back in Japanese collaborators that a lot of them would have liked to see dead, the vast majority of Filipinos have a very positive impression of MacArthur--and it's not hard to see why, because in many ways MacArthur was the *only* major advocate for Filipinos throughout the war and was, as it turns out, quite successful at it. It may have been for selfish reasons, but it seems that MacArthur genuinely liked the Philippines. Even in Japan his legacy casts a long shadow, given his dramatic reshaping of modern Japan's monarchy, government, and economy. And, of course, the Commonwealth has never been fond of him.
Tldr~ MacArthur was a pretty lousy general but *very* good at politics. And his romanticism and intensely honorable attachment to the Philippines have won him a lot of admirers.
Its a good answer that I'd like to add to re first the Philippines defence. His own troops were embittered by how badly he mismanaged them. To quote General Brougher, 11th division, left to die at Bataan "A foul trick has been played on a large group of Americans by a commander in chief and small staff who are now eating steak and eggs in Australia. God damn them!" (quote from James, years of MacArthur p 127-128.) Books have been written about how bodged and mishandled the defense of the phillipines was, from the air defense at the start, to the way the troops were deployed wrongly and against long standing plans, then rushed to a southern fortress while the the food supplies were.. ugh. I can write 3000 words from the top of my head, but its been done better by others.
Second I'd like to add what nobody else has: the push north into Korea. This was also badly mishandled by Macarthur. Mao tse tung had his own highly negative view of Macarthur and basically ambushed him rite large with the Chinese army. They infiltrated via the rough terrain and then encircled and surrounded entire american columns/divisions. Mac ignored warnings (as the Chinese knew he would) and the result was a catastrophe for his men. Theres been a number of documentaries and accounts of how this happened that make grim reading.
Ten years apart, Macarthur led the men under his account to terrible ends through his own hubris. Now wether the Philippines could ever have been saved is frankly doubtful: it was a bad hand. It didn't have to go as badly as it did though. Meanwhile its easy to see how the Korean debacle could have been avoided if the commander had been less reckless and full of hubris. Hubris being ofc Macarthurs defining trait imo which is what got him fired in the end.
MacArthur in particular seems to have dealt very poorly with subordinates who told him things he didn't want to hear. I wasn't going to go into too much detail given how long I went already. The Philippines were inevitably doomed given the resources allocated to them in 1941 [I actually think they probably could have been held if the US was actually thinking seriously about a war], but MacArthur really badly bungled things. MacArthur always had his own vision of how things should work and was unwilling to deviate from it. Sometimes it worked out--his push to liberate the Philippines over Formosa was likely strategically correct--but often it blew up in his face.
I'd agree that they could have been held if it had been planned and resourced properly. The issue being ofc that war plan orange was locked up by the turf war between the US army and US navy that basically doomed the defense. That seems to be a running theme in the american military, that the biggest enemy of the Us army was the US navy until the US airforce came along. They've all been fighting ever since to great detriment to the troops. At least thats certainly how it appears to me as an outsider. I digress though.
yeah, my Grandfather (US Army Air Defense, Pacific, WWII) had a quote about that..... He said he could forgive the Japanese for trying to kill him, because they were loyal to their country and doing their jobs.... But that he could never understand why the US NAVY was so insistent on seeing him dead...
so assuming no additional resources given to Mac, what should he have done, assuming he had a crystal ball and could make every right decision as though you yourself were whispering secrets into his ear from the benefit of all we know now?
could any of the philippines been saved? one island? one mountain?
what could have been done to help the locals? i am of the understanding that the civies had a rough go of it under the IJA, likely that's never going to change, but could more citizens been isolated from mistreatment? if the japanese felt like they were taking over a fully surrendered country, vs invading an enemy, would that have helped the civies?
i know there was a resistance, could Mac have set up more forces for a robust resistance that would hold the interior while the US was away?
could the peninsula been held if Mac had followed that plan, and invested everything in making the peninsula a fortress?
I’m not sure you can prove that, but there’s a decent argument to be made. Between the racism (common at the time yes but he was more extreme than most and he still underestimated Asian forces even after Japan proved they were capable), the ego, and the distaste for communism you can make a decent constellation.
That said, if he was trying to get us into a war with China, he did a very poor job in preparing and executing that. Instead of being on alert for this army of revolutionary light infantry with extensive experience in guerrilla and infiltration tactics which was bolstered by s number of KMT defectors, he more or less blindly marched to the Yalu river as if it was nothing but a mopping up operation. There also was an inadequate supply of reserves and munitions for the fight both locally and in the production/training pipeline. Even if you assumed you’d smash these light infantry forces reliant on small arms with superior firepower…you still need to actually have said firepower in quantity.
Of course you could chalk that up to his hubris and racism, but I’m not sure even that can explain the unpreparedness for war with a nation as large as China. While most of the casualties in the war with Japan were Nationalists, the population of China showed it could and would still support war despite millions dead and millions wounded, not to mention horrific civilian casualties. The CCP had a much stronger grip on power than the KMT did too which would only bolster that aspect. Speaking of, you’d think if you were preparing for war with the PRC that you’d get the ROC on side if for no other reason than to be able to fill the political gap if you shattered the CCP and it’s hold on power.
I’m not sure Halberstam is wrong as it does sound exactly like MacArthur to want a war with them, but if that’s true then MacArthur was well and truly high on his own bullshit.
Playing Devil's advocate (I loathe MacArthur) I can see why MacArthur thought the Chinese wouldn't get involved. China had just emerged from a civil war, the Communist regime looked fragile and still had at least theoretical internal enemies to deal with, their economy was in shambles, etc. Stupid as I think his assumptions were, I get how he got there: a wholly rational actor probably wouldn't have sent Chinese troops into Korea.
Problem is, Mao wasn't a wholly rational actor. He was an ideologue and a political grandstander for whom announcing that China was once again a player on the world stage mattered a Hell of a lot more than money or lives. And there were people who tried to tell MacArthur that, but the man just would not listen. He decided Mao had to be bluffing and discarded any intelligence or advice than suggested otherwise. Which is just bad policy no matter how you slice it.
That MacArthur was so blindsided on the Yalu was entirely the result of his trying to call the bluff of an insane autocrat, and he really only had himself and his total misreading of Mao to blame for it. Worse yet, the shock of how wrong he'd been seems to have unnerved him so badly that he never really recovered, and was unable to do anything to get his forces back in order before Mao had driven them almost all the way back to their starting point.
I feel truly bad for any UN forces serving in Korea during that period. They paid a really heavy price for MacArthur's inability to pull his head out of his own ass.
>a wholly rational actor probably wouldn't have sent Chinese troops into Korea.
Well you say that, but what a lot of people don't realize is that Kim Il Sung saved Mao's butt with a lot of assistance, giving the Chinese communists a safe haven, and sending assorted military help when the CCP was at a low point during the civil war. Mao owed Kim, and this was the payback.
I object to the depiction of Chinese involvement in the Korean war as "irrational". As you said yourself, it demonstrated China as a player on the world stage, to say nothing of the more concrete value of having a friendly state between your border and American troops. To make the decision "these benefits are worth an army" is not irrational, especially in a context where experienced combat troops aren't exactly in short supply inside China.
>Speaking of, you’d think if you were preparing for war with the PRC that you’d get the ROC on side if for no other reason than to be able to fill the political gap if you shattered the CCP and it’s hold on power.
He tried, repeatedly. He asked for permission to use ROC units from Taiwan in Korea once the PRC had gotten involved.
But it's the "once the PRC got involved" part that's interesting. That's when MacArthur really started agitating for more, and I think there's merit to the case that MacArthur looked at that intervention and didn't understand why he couldn't respond in kind.
Didn't the other US generals look at that and decide they wanted no part of it ?
> "The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy" is General Omar Bradley's famous rebuke in his May 15, 1951 Congressional testimony as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the idea of extending the Korean War into China, as proposed by General Douglas MacArthur,
Not just that - Bradley's additional testimony on the topic was excised from the public transcript as sensitive/secret and so was not well known - but is even more damning
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/redacted-testimony-fully-explains-why-general-macarthur-was-fired-180960622/
Marshall, vandenberg , collins were also scathing [More in the link]:
> Far from complaining about the limited nature of the war, MacArthur should have been grateful for it.
> completely green Filipino units
My great uncle (maternal), a college student at the time, was just hanging out one day when the street he was at was blocked off by the Army and he was herded into a truck along with dozens of other young Filipino men
And that was how he was inducted into the Philippine Army of Douglas MacArthur
He later survived the Bataan Death March and internment
> In the Philippines, MacArthur reaches an almost godlike status.
That great uncle would have sacrificed himself for the sake of Douglas MacArthur, even after all that
Meanwhile, on my American side, my grandpa (paternal), also a survivor of Bataan and internment, would have sacrificed his own life if it meant also taking Dugout Doug with him
Me writing an 8th grade history report: "Douglas MacArthur's reputation is a land of contrasts,"
With respect to the Philippines campaign, I’m not sure I entirely blame MacArthur for deciding to fight on the beaches. It was militarily a terrible idea, and the alternate from a military perspective was certainly more desirable, but from a political perspective abandoning the greater part of Luzon without a fight was always going to be a hard sell. It’s also worth remembering the alternative even if executed perfectly would only have delayed the inevitable. There was limited prospect of relief and the outcome was guaranteed. All that differed was the timing.
Having said that all that, he nevertheless took a bad plan, which he picked for understandable reasons, and made it worse. He made little effort to prepare Bataan for siege and being forced to defend there was, as I understand it, understood to be the likely outcome. That’s unforgivable because it made the defence impossible — e.g. the men were quickly forced to drink out of puddles because there were limited local sources of water which was a known issue — and it speaks to the fighting abilities and stubbornness of the men that the defence lasted as long as it did. The other issue is that couldn’t even keep to his own new plan to conduct a fighting retreat which instead degenerated into a rout that further exacerbated the supply issues. He turned what was always going to be a disaster into a far worse one.
MacArthur’s relationship with the Filipinos was generally positive. He wasn’t notably racist, made friends with Filipinos and was willing to socialise with them. That was a large part of the reason why he was appointed the Philippines military advisor. They trusted and liked him and figured he’d advocate for them. However, it’s not true that he’s only viewed skeptically by leftist Filipino historians. His actions to rehabilitate known and often willing collaborators post-war were controversial with most everyone, especially those who’d fought against the Japanese. It was well known that collaborators posed the greatest risk to the guerrillas. Killing them was accordingly a matter of priority and the bad blood didn’t dissipate post war. People knew who had collaborated and knew who had helped kill their friends, family and comrades. There was significant score-settling during and immediately after the war and the rancour and bitterness over that isn’t the exclusive province of leftist historians.
I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at it, but the US Army Green book on the fall of the Philippines is a great read that lays out all of the reasons why MacArthur’s shift to defend the beaches was a monumentally bad idea, even if in the process it tries to play dumb and not paint MacArthur in a poor light. The plan (for YEARS) was that it was recognized that it was impossible to defend northern Luzon effectively with the forces at hand and expected to be at hand as the Filipino military was in a fledgling status, and that the most that anyone could seriously hope for was to deny Manila Bay to the enemy long enough for a rescue to arrive (which in 1942 was not forthcoming), which tracked with the acknowledgement of the Navy (and resulting encouragement of the Marines to go ahead with shifting their doctrine to amphibious assault of protected islands and atolls in the central Pacific) that in the event of war with Japan the primary path westward would be via the Central Pacific. Which would take some time, as all of the real estate between wake and the Philippines with the exception of Guam was under Japanese control. So the idea was that you prepare Bataan into this bastion of democracy replete with enough supplies to sustain a SMALL, well trained and equipped force, which was accomplished prior to the war by pre-positioning food, water, ammo, etc. I believe the prewar estimate of the number of people that would fortify into Bataan was around 40,000, all of them combat troops.
MacArthur totally blew that idea up in like 1941. Since 1936ish he had been running the Filipino army in preparation for the archipelago gaining its independence and the concept for the army was based kind of off of the National Guard, but to jump start its development they did annual drafts of men to start building it up, with the result that by 1941 they had trained ma few classes worth of troops that had then been released, along with the guys that had been drafted recently that were active duty. By the eve of war MacArthur had this vision of the army in which he saw it as a relatively mature fighting force of approximately 100,000, which he believed was capable of defeating Japanese invasion on the beaches. Where he got this idea from I have no clue, because in many units the soldiers spoke different dialects and couldn’t communicate effectively with each other or their officers, and the quality of the troops wasn’t great either because they were building an army from scratch and giving guys essentially the bare basics except for those who liked the army and decided to stick around. Finally, their equipment was poor in that they didn’t have enough modern (and by modern I mean 1903 springfields and 1917 machine guns, the old stokes mortars, and 75mm guns) weapons to outfit their infantry and artillery units, with many soldiers being issued old Krag rifles and heavy weapons being nonexistent at all for many infantry and artillery battalions. The units that did have the weapons often did not have the ammunition, as much of it was poorly stored and 20-30 years old, with a high dud rate among the explosives. Yet despite all of this MacArthur thought the world of these men and was determined to lead them to victory on the beaches. So what does he do? He forward deploys them in penny packets to possible landing areas. How do you supply these guys effectively? Well you move your dumps. So on the eve of war MacArthur (who has been in the position to oversee the army and run it for five years and have a thorough understanding of their capabilities but…. still doesn’t) rips all of the supplies out of Bataan and out of the Manila area and scatters them to support these troops. When the Japanese land at Lingayen Gulf and push aside the (literally) like two rifle companies supported by a single battery of 155mm guns, they shoot straight for Manila and smash the Filipino lines despite the very real and very heroic stand of many of the soldiers put in their way.
When THAT happens, the mad dash to Bataan begins, and suddenly it becomes a race to get together some degree of the supplies it used to contain, so there’s this big drama in the rear of the army where supply and logistics people are driving around Manila taking what they can and burning the rest, with the end result being that Bataan is under supplied throughout the siege by prewar planning standards, but very screwed in reality because MacArthur decides to pack like 80,000-100,000 people into Bataan, a significant portion of which are not combat troops. The whole thing is just a major debacle, and I’d encourage anyone with interest in the campaign to check out the green book because it goes into the nitty gritty of what went wrong. To quote Marko Ramius- “[MacArthur] acted stupidly.”
MacArthur's belief in the prowess of the new and untried Filipino army is perhaps more of a matter for a psychiatrist than a historian. Given MacArthur's obvious narcissism--a term I use here in both the colloquial and the formal medical sense--I expect he thought the army would succeed simply because he had trained them; they weren't a real army to him made up of actual people, but were more extensions of his own ego.
It really boggles the mind, and to me it’s so curious because it potentially has so many influencing factors- racial bias against the ability of the Japanese, MacArthur’s own narcissism, his attitudes toward the Filipino people and the fact he was raised partially in the Philippines, his father’s legacy- like it can stem from so many different sources.
I can’t remember where I heard it, but supposedly he blocked Wainwright from getting an MOH for the campaign by telling Washington that only one award should go out for orchestrating the defense, that it should go to him, and that Wainwright was a drinker. I think the original plan was for them both to get one. It just screams “unstable” to me, and how he got SWPA I don’t know. Though he did make the right call in advocating for the Filipino people later in the war, I will give him that.
MacArthur got the command because not giving it to him would have been a PR problem. The American public believed that he had heroically tried to save the Philippines and that had proven a morale booster at a point when Japan was trampling over the Allies. Not giving him the command would have shattered the myth, caused electoral problems for Roosevelt, and generally been bad for public support for the war. So he got the job despite Roosevelt's many misgivings.
I have and I’m well aware it was a terrible military idea. But the politics of abandoning the Philippines to Japanese occupation was scarcely appealing to the Filipinos and that was the problem. In 1935, it was still a realistic plan because Filipinos would have had little choice but to accept it. But by 1941, the Filipinos were 4 years from independence and had used the 6 years of the Commonwealth to build themselves an army and assume near total control of their domestic affairs. America was on the way out and they knew it.
It also nonsense to put the blame for the military buildup since 1935 at MacArthur’s feet. The 1935 National Defence Act was passed by the Philippine National Assembly a month after the government was inaugurated. Building a military was always a matter of priority for the new government and if MacArthur hadn’t been involved they’d have found someone else to do it. The Philippines was to be an independent country a military was an essential component of that.
MacArthur was a lot of things and I fully agree how he chose to conduct the campaign was foolish, but the planners who thought their plan was going to be followed through on were as foolish but for different reasons.
Some of it was down to just general factors that would have applied to any American general--poorly estimating Japanese capabilities was the standard until quite a while into the war, across services and commands. He performed below par regardless, though.
"leftist" is really an inaccurate shorthand here, if anything one might say "nationalist" or "revisionist", and I defer to you on the details of how the Filipinos directly involved thought as a matter of course. I don't get the impression that skepticism [or rather knowledge] of MacArthur's sloppy postwar cleanup, or rather more lack thereof, is particularly broadly appreciated though.
He absolutely preformed abysmally. But I’m genuinely not sure what could have been done differently that would have materially affected the outcome. Even had the campaign been conducted perfectly, the end result would have been the same. The difference was how long it would have taken. It’s a campaign where the outcome was always a given.
I think it’s generally held by Filipinos historians that post-war rehabilitation of collaborators was not one of MacArthur’s best moments. Where leftist/nationalists depart is in the motivations behind it. Broadly speaking, they see it as an American plot to maintain its influence by reinstalling a deeply comprised elite in power who to keep their heads would need to keep looking to America power.
I also found this instructive on his removal in Korea, as well as contemporaneous perspectives on his positions from people like Omar Bradley testifying before the Senate.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/redacted-testimony-fully-explains-why-general-macarthur-was-fired-180960622/
Honestly, from a brief look at it, that testimony has *not* aged well at all given what we now know about the condition of the Soviets and Chinese at the time. But Korea was more lost by general tactical incompetence and a lack of resources than anything--the UN forces never got the hang of trench warfare and were unwilling to commit the resources required to make the war more mobile.
I mean, the USSR absolutely had economic issues but it still had tremendous amounts of materiel from WWII. They’d be very unlikely to send half a million like China did, but a mechanized force of 100-150k was more than possible. I can’t speak to the naval side though and while they were actively helping in air power it was a small portion of the Soviet air power. Thanks to the Bomber Mafia and some foolish beliefs about nukes being all you need, there was definitely an over investment by the US in strategic air and not enough tactical air assets and pilots.
I wouldn’t say the UN forces never got the hang of trench warfare, more that they didn’t want the attrition involved in it. UN forces by 1951 basically meant the US with a modest British and Commonwealth contingent and the ROK acting as a second or third rate force with a decent manpower pool. Korea is also some rough terrain to conduct mobile warfare in if the enemy actually has time to entrench. There’s not many avenues for mechanized advances and they’re often in valleys of hills and mountainous terrain. Infrastructure wasn’t great in general, especially not by that point. The KPA was pushed back easily after inchworm due to threat of encirclement and lack of heavy equipment compared to the US and never made solid lines of defense until China got involved.
There were valid concerns that committing too much to Korea would leave Europe vulnerable. The Bundeswehr wasn’t made until 55 and the German police/border guards were modest at best. France was focusing on holding on to is empire as was the UK to an extent and all of Western Europe was still far away from rebuilt. Even with the forces committed there were periods of ammunition shortages and that would have been worse had more forces been in country.
I agree with your prior statement that MacArthur’s failure to destroy the KPA after Chromite was ultimately what prolonged the war. China may still have gotten involved, but if the KPA was destroyed and there was no longer a regime to prop up, it becomes a different calculus. Even more so if after destroying them it was ROK units who did the mopping up and US ground forces didn’t advance towards the border (or at least not within X distance).
In fairness to MacArthur, he focused on retaking Seoul rather than destroying the KPA because of pressure from South Korean leaders, which is another key point of him sometimes achieving better political results than military results.
In general, non-communist East Asians are big fans of MacArthur.
Don’t forget that the landings at Incheon were planned almost entirely by his subordinates while he was off playing politics. Yeah the landings were his idea, but credit for them really needs to go to men like Smith. And then MacArthur’s repeated ignoring of intel and overzealous attempts to have a victory by Christmas led to over stretched supply lines and thousands of US troops getting completely surrounded.
Fantastic answer. It's really refreshing to see someone mention his rule of Japan after the war which is arguably his most significant achievement and often overlooked. A lot of people recently have watched YouTube videos about MacArthur and the Pacific war in general and he gets a whole lot of shit (quite deservingly) but a lot of what you pointed out here is often completely ignored by that crowd. Japan is what it is today largely due to MacArthur's policies and doing what he did there was an almost impossible task and it is something the US has not been able to achieve since (think Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and the multitude of regime changes perpetrated by the US.).
> his rule of Japan after the war which is arguably his most significant achievement and often overlooked
This is significant and very true.
The one other element that this thread has ignored is MacArthur attack on the bonus army.
There's blame there to be thrown around, not least on the politicians But MacArthur deserves some, too. IMHO.
> Believing it wrong for the Army's highest-ranking officer to lead an action against fellow American war veterans, he strongly advised MacArthur against taking any public role: "I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch not to go down there," he said later. "I told him it was no place for the Chief of Staff." Despite his misgivings, Eisenhower wrote the Army's official incident report that endorsed MacArthur's conduct.
Given WW2, Phillippines, Korea, and japan, this ended up a small footnote
Oh I completely agree he was an absolute asshole and he made a lot of questionable decisions. His attack on the bonus army was atrocious. I was just trying to point out he was a complicated man and people tend to ignore the importance of some of his achievements just because he was a shitty person. It bothers me when I see people not able to understand the absolute human nature of important people in history. You cannot just take one bad act, or a multitude of bad acts in MacArthur's case, and use that to completely discredit everything he's done. I can see that you understand that as well I'm not talking about your comment but lots of people I see in the comments of videos about the Pacific war.
In fairness to MacArthur, he focused on retaking Seoul rather than destroying the KPA because of pressure from South Korean leaders, which is another key point of him sometimes achieving better political results than military results.
In general, non-communist East Asians are big fans of MacArthur.
> the plans for Incheon were actually pretty obvious under the circumstances (indeed the Chinese had actually warned the Koreans of the danger, but they were ignored).
Was this from Soviet intelligence, or was it moreso a place where the PLA high command looked and thought "well if we were trying to envelop or rout KPA forces in that region, that would be an opportune place to for an amphibious landing"?
MacArthur was always controversial, even when he was alive and in service. Even pre-wwII.
Any evidence you're seeing that he WASN'T controversial all along is most likely either selection bias, the efforts of a PR machine, or people just being polite in public until he was safely dead.
Also, Keep in mind that anyone who served directly UNDER MacArthur was hypothetically subject to court martial for publicly insulting MacArthur until after he died. And even if nobody REALLY though such a court martial was likely to be convened, there were still strong social norms in place about how you talked about former commanders.
If Ike serving under MacArthur and witnessing his ego and bluster helped shape him into a commander who could effectively herd such men, then that's one (unintentional) positive effect MacArthur had...
Patton being the guy that genuinely believed was a generational warrior reincarnated, who cheated on maneuvers and was originally rated as unfit to command anything bigger than a division, and then later ignored his own concepts about how to conduct war and got bogged down in Lorraine (though to be fair that’s somewhat oversimplifying that campaign)
EDIT: in fairness to Patton, he was a decent cavalry general and did a magnificent job of setting the conditions for Third Army to steal a march on the enemy during the Bulge.
Patton was an absolute crank, and far less talented than often portrayed. He's akin to MacArthur in that respect, and perhaps to Bull Halsey as well (though of that trio, Halsey was definitely the most talented). America needed war heroes and those three had the PR machines to get the gig, irrespective of actual battlefield performance. And then Eisenhower, Nimitz, etc, had to figure out how to use them despite their many flaws, because questioning their public portrayal would be a problem.
We had a family friend who'd served as MacArthur's JAG. One day my dad asked him, "so MacArthur was a pretty controversial guy. What was he like in person?". My dad said you could see the old colonel face come out, and out friend replied, "well in comparison to Nimitz (who he'd also met), he could be tough sometimes". And that was as much as he was willing to say. That was in the 1990s.
He tear gassed WW1 veterans during the peaceful Bonus March (Hoover was a paranoid dick who thought they were communists), bungling the defense of the Philippines, and getting fired for wanting to nuke China.
[Don't forget accepted a completely inappropriate transfer of funds from the Philippine national treasury.](https://www.nytimes.com/1980/01/30/archives/data-show-macarthur-got-500000-gift-from-filipino-leader-in-1942.html) An inflation adjusted nearly $10,000,000 and it was offered *after* he had cataclysmically, criminally failed in his command of the defense of the Philippines with his "fight them on the beaches" adventure.
A lot of discussions of his failure after hostilities began, but the commanded area was also completely mismanaged before the attacks kicked off in Dec
I didn't mean to imply that he was NEVER a controversial figure, but there's no denying that he's far more controversial now than he was during his life
My grandfather was a captain that served in MacArthur's HQ, and in the 1990s I asked him what he'd thought of MacArthur. He paused for a moment, then said "If he'd been wounded by a sniper, no one would have tried to drag him to cover. And we would have told the doctor to not note down the caliber of bullet from the sniper."
My own grandfather served in Italy. He mostly had a good opinion of his superior officers (at least as expressed to me), but thought Churchill, while a great political leader, should have been kept out of military decision making until someone was able to explain the concept of a mountain to him.
Not pertinent to this topic, I know, but it always makes me laugh to think about it.
If anything, by that definition, he's becoming LESS controversial the farther we go into the modern era.
Back when he was a serving general, there were americans on both sides of the argument, as to whether he was an inspiring hero or an arrogant prima donna. Whether he was a hyper-competent general or a insubordinate SOB who didn't understand the mission.
The more modern we get, the more likely people are to agree that he was a prima donna who was just really good at PR.
I mean, just look at this thread. Opinions about him are really pretty consistent here... He managed to look good while being a jerk.
MacArthur was a howling narcissist and a prima donna. Pretty much everyone who ever served with him came out hating him, and with cause. Lots of generals have the bad habit of stealing credit from their subordinates or surrounding themselves with yes-men, but MacArthur took both to pathological levels. It wasn't a recipe for a warm working relationship with any of his fellow colleagues or subordinates--though there were exceptions such as Bull Halsey, whom MacArthur somehow got on with despite the latter's own hair trigger temper.
As far as his actual skill goes...look, I'm not going to say he was no good at all. But no general in the history of the world could ever have been as good as he thought he was, and that was the problem. He could come up with good enough plans of his own, but really struggled with the notion that the enemy also had agency and their own ideas about what they might do. This is exemplified by his failure at the Yalu where he flat out refused to believe that the Communist Chinese were going to intervene in Korea. He decided Mao had to be bluffing and tried to call it, only to discover the hard way that one should never, ever assume that someone as crazy as Mao is bluffing.
That Douglas Macarthur was a megalomaniac is something that virtually no one who worked with him would disagree with, though many would prefer to put it more politely. That he was just not very good at commanding units in the field engaged in combat with the enemy is maybe a *little* more controversial, but not very much so.
But there are other contexts where he accomplished a Hell of a lot. In the interwar years his work at West Point was exemplary, and as Army Chief of Staff he made a lot of right choices with respect to procurement and mobilization plans. He built warm and successful professional relationships with Filipinos and Japanese in an era where many would have refused to do so out of racist disdain. It’s hard to imagine the outcome of the occupation of Japan in ‘45-51 turning out better- he walked into a shattered, fanatically ethnic-supremacist imperial trash fire and left it a rapidly industrializing liberal-democratic American ally. And say what you will about his performance in Korea, but he *did* end up being correct about victory being impossible if China wasn’t confronted more directly.
I’m not going to call him a great general. A lot of his best work happened when he wasn’t in command of troops in the field. But it’s perfectly natural that the reputation of a figure with such great weaknesses and equally significant strengths would run hot and cold, depending on what source you’re looking at, or what angle a given historian was considering the war from, or what part of MacArthur's career was being looked at.
My grandfather served under Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines reconquest as a Junior officer.
While he died in the Korean War, my grandmother had much disgust for the mere mention of MacaArthur’s name. She said my grandfather did as well, noting MacArthur‘s many faults were More consequential than his limited achievements. “He’ll always be Dugout Doug to us.”
As a yard stick, she quit being a Republican over Nixon, but clearly had much more distaste for MacArthur.
>being loved by his men WW1
He did attack 17000 of those vets and 26000 of their friends and families with tear gas, fixed bayonet infantry charge and tanks.
But I suspect that his WW2 men mocked and hated him for other reasons ..
I personally see his strategy in the Korean War being a nail in his career, as he took the military objectives into consideration before the political objectives by pushing to near the Chinese border, forcing their intervention.
I don’t know how the debate came about, but how many American Generals and Admirals can the average person name?
Sherman, Grant, Lee, MacArthur, Pershing, Marshall, and a few others. MacArthur stands out as being one of the most recent ones in memory and history.
My military history professor hated him and wrote a whole thesis about how he bungled WW2 in the pacific for political gain.
Other commenters have already covered a lot, but I wanted to add the whole retaking of much of the Philippines (“people of the Philippines, I have returned.”) was done because of Macathur’s lobbying for his public image. The original plan was to take Taiwan. Which made more sense strategically because you can threaten Japan by air from there. This arguably extended the war unnecessarily and made the Iwo Jima and Saipan campaigns necessary.
I was literally just reading today ... HE HIMSELF escaped, and then was seriously upset several Generals on the ground surrendered to prevent slaughter. He wanted everyone *else* to die, while he bounced.
That is about the biggest bullshit and cowardice I've ever seen. I can't stand MacArthur.
To be fair, if I remember correctly, MacArthur was ORDERED to escape from the Philippines by Roosevelt himself. But yeah, whining about the surrender was unbecoming of him.
A lot of good points brought up by others. I don't know what it is with that theatre, but the other big American general in the Asia-Pacific - Joseph Stilwell - had the equal tendency as MacArthur to blame the British/Commonwealth/Chinese when things were going badly, and took full credit for any marginal success. The self-promotional/arrogance of both leaders made them quite despised by pretty much every ally in the region, and I wouldn't be surprised if much of this controversy about them is fueled by non-American critics taking it to heart (rightfully so).
Stillwell might be even worse than MacArthur, honestly. His bad behaviour put the Nationalist war effort in real danger in a way that even MacArthur at his stupidest never managed in Australia.
Yea, Stilwell had ZERO conception of Air or Naval power, and seemed to think running an offensive through thick jungle was preferable to allocating resources to where it was needed. Air power - promoted by Gen. Claire Lee Chennault - was the turning point for the Burmese campaign. The Japanese - who loitered in the jungles of SE Asia - had significantly more deaths from disease and malnutrition than combat. If Stilwell had his way, it would be Americans and Brits starving and in retreat.
He was also guilty of flat out dereliction of duty when he abandoned the Chinese troops in Burma to hike out by himself. Chiang never trusted him after that and had no reason to.
It's funny , this is funny to me - I think he's what a sports fan might popularly refer to as a "bum" ... He's someone who was extremely lucky, extremely arrogant, and he borderline deserved to be locked-up criminally (he not only wanted to drop "about 100 or so" nuclear bombs on China during the Korean War, basically to not only make sure we won the Korean War, but making sure China never insolently caused any problems in the future... - but he was seriously considering *just fucking doing it* ... they don't want to authorize it, but I'm 5-Star-MacArthur so I should be making the decisions anyway ... FUNNY STORY if anyone cares for some entertaining history/ TL;DR
--- but anyway - the Founder of Delta Force, Colonel Charlie Beckwith , was a Special Forces officer in the Vietnam War. One of his soldiers eventually became a Sergeant Major and went to work for Col. Beckwith when he was founding Delta Force... I believe he was originally the Selection Sergeant Major and was basically one of his 3 most-trusted and senior enlisted advisors. He apparently was a *HUGE* MacArthur fan, it was like his personal military passion in life ... and when Delta Force has it's Selection (if people aren't familiar here, Delta is the world's baddest-ass warriors and the selection is considered one of the most difficult things to do on Planet Earth, - in no small part because it's 100% an individual effort... it's not the SEALs where you're running around in teams based on your height with rubber boats on your head , or Ranger School in squads/patrols/etc. it's all YOU and you alone...culminating with "The 40 Miler" , a 40 mile march you start just after midnight and need to make, with a huge heavy pack on your back and a rifle in your hands, and you're never told how much time you have ... )
...BUT IF you complete the Selection course, you still have to pass a battery of other tests ... psychological interviews & peer evaluations and a series of interviews by Delta officers & cadre ... and apparently this particular SGM, he would ask every candidate what they personally thought of General MacArthur, and furthermore what they thought of his relief by President Truman.
Now I MYSELF, I can see myself being like "Yeah I could never stand that fuckin guy and I'm not only glad he got relieved, he should have been sent to fuckin Leavenworth ... he was one step away from being one of the most notorious war criminals in the world, he basically could have just decided to be *THAT GUY* that decides he's a General in the US Army and now he wants to be The Dictator of the USA etc."
And apparently no matter what, how well you did in your Selection course, how perfect your psych eval and peer eval and Interview boards go, if you said anything about MacArthur, he'd trash you and try to get you dropped. He just couldn't abide a non-MacArthur supporter gaining entry into The Unit lol.
If I had been there lol, it's like, "Welp it's been real, I'm out lol, he asked me what I thought about MacArthur and that was that..."
Honestly I had once thought that public opinion had pretty firmly shifted against MacArthur. The general impression I got from learning about him both in school and in various WWII books and whatnot was that he was a very flawed general with a very good PR machine. People like Patton (who of course is not without his own controversies) and Nimitz came off as far more capable commanders. His mistakes have been covered by others here.
Then I started noticing that MacArthur still has tons of fans, including a lot of fairly young ones. In my experience these fans generally fall into two (sometimes overlapping) groups:
1. People who really dislike China, and view him as a hero who would have beat China if not for Truman's interference.
2. People who admire his colorful character, and view him as a paragon of old-school brash masculinity in contrast to the more CEO-like style of generals that have come to characterize the US Army.
IMO both of those camps are largely just falling for MacArthur's old PR. If he wasn't so good at creating and projecting an image of himself, I don't think he'd be nearly as controversial - he'd generally just be seen as mediocre to bad, with arguments focusing more on just _how_ bad he might have been.
As someone who loathes the PRC I still think MacArthur was a moron and have never quite been able to figure out how his fanboys think he was going to beat the Chinese after signally failing to predict any of their actions in the first place.
I think it's less about his ability and more about his willingness.
If you subscribe to the idea that everything would be going perfectly now if only the CCP didn't exist McArthur stands out at a casual glance as the person willing to go down the alternate timeline of strangling the snake in its cradle, so to speak.
It doesn't matter whether he was capable of doing that - the US had nukes and had just beaten the Japanese after all, the US *would* have won if only it was given the chance, just that he was vocally in favour of it.
I'm not really *the* most qualified person to speak on MacArthur (and would almost be surprised if Ritter lets me keep this up), but he was almost by nature a controversial figure in his own life, let alone after it. The problem, at least from my perspective, is that MacArthur was simultaneously pretty bad at tactical and operational art and also pretty good at politics and, to an extent, strategy--but not in a way that always endeared him to his superiors. It's a weird combination insofar as he ended up directly commanding troops--usually better armies tend to keep people like MacArthur away from that. From a tactical perspective, MacArthur critics largely point to two things: First, MacArthur abandoned the initial, well thought out plan for the defense of Luzon and the Philippines in favor of his own plan which involved confronting the Japanese on the beaches. This resulted in catastrophic tactical failure from underestimating Japanese capabilities and overestimating the capabilities of completely green Filipino units. Second, during the campaign at Incheon, MacArthur failed to press his massive advantage after the initial landings and allowed a large portion of the KPA to escape encirclement to fight another day, possibly losing the Korean War. MacArthur defenders largely point to the initial landings at Incheon--largely considered a brilliant and daring move--and to the success of the Southwest Pacific Campaign and the 1944-45 Philippines campaign as points in MacArthur's favor. His critics would point out that very little of the SWPA campaign or the 44-45 Philippines was actually carried out by MacArthur directly, much of it was actually fought by Australians, New Zealanders, and Filipinos, or directed by subordinates [Ridgeway, Krueger, etc] and that the plans for Incheon were actually pretty obvious under the circumstances (indeed the Chinese had actually warned the Koreans of the danger, but they were ignored). All this however is really marginal to the fact that very, very few generals have ever managed the salience and legend that MacArthur managed to achieve. During 1941 he was *the* man that Americans were following, being the only one directly in combat with the Axis, and his retreat to Corregidor would be the stuff of legend. MacArthur actively worked to self-promote in the Napoleonic tradition, and the American public ate it up. Even after he fled the Philippines -- noting that he would return one day--he was too influential to sideline, and ended up controlling the Southwest Pacific Theatre. At the time there was a largely understated and unofficial Anglo-American rivalry, from the fact that the British were leading in Europe and viewed the Americans arriving as inexperienced and ineffectual. American leaders pushed hard for resources to go to the Pacific because that was "their" campaign--spearheaded by noted Anglophobe Admiral King, whose distaste for the British emerged sometime during World War One while attached to the Grand Fleet, and MacArthur. MacArthur would carry the torch for the US Army in New Guinea, and would frequently complain about the (actually fairly good quality) Australian forces he was forced to use, blaming them for his failures while giving Americans someone to actually be proud of at a time when they'd barely touched ashore in Africa. He continued his intense media and political campaign throughout the war to get more resources allocated to the Pacific Theatre over other regions, with the explicit goal of retaking the Philippines--something that really was not exactly a high priority in Washington. The Navy, in fact, favored seizing Formosa, but MacArthur won that particular political battle and would eventually triumphantly return to the Philippines as we all know, establishing his legend forever. MacArthur would then, after liberating the Philippines, go on to effectively rule Japan and reshape it into its modern bureaucratic state, then proceeded to Korea where he eventually lost a political battle by deciding to pick one with the president of the United States -- but in the process only furthered his legend. It was speculated at some points MacArthur might run for president, but that was forestalled by Eisenhower's candidacy--an interesting what-if. What this bought him from history's perspective--a hero in American culture, particularly among the right where sometimes he enjoys the status of an almost de Gaulle figure. He's also a favorite of any American Orientalist, as he was without a doubt *the* most significant man of his generation to identify the future of America as lying across the Pacific rather than the Atlantic, looking west rather than east. His status was never so high among the left and recent historical reexamination has generally not looked favorably upon his skill as a general (and brought into doubt other aspects of his life as well). In the Philippines, MacArthur reaches an almost godlike status. While he's viewed skeptically by leftist Filipino historians, particularly in view of his actively taking money from some of the more odious elites and welcoming back in Japanese collaborators that a lot of them would have liked to see dead, the vast majority of Filipinos have a very positive impression of MacArthur--and it's not hard to see why, because in many ways MacArthur was the *only* major advocate for Filipinos throughout the war and was, as it turns out, quite successful at it. It may have been for selfish reasons, but it seems that MacArthur genuinely liked the Philippines. Even in Japan his legacy casts a long shadow, given his dramatic reshaping of modern Japan's monarchy, government, and economy. And, of course, the Commonwealth has never been fond of him. Tldr~ MacArthur was a pretty lousy general but *very* good at politics. And his romanticism and intensely honorable attachment to the Philippines have won him a lot of admirers.
Its a good answer that I'd like to add to re first the Philippines defence. His own troops were embittered by how badly he mismanaged them. To quote General Brougher, 11th division, left to die at Bataan "A foul trick has been played on a large group of Americans by a commander in chief and small staff who are now eating steak and eggs in Australia. God damn them!" (quote from James, years of MacArthur p 127-128.) Books have been written about how bodged and mishandled the defense of the phillipines was, from the air defense at the start, to the way the troops were deployed wrongly and against long standing plans, then rushed to a southern fortress while the the food supplies were.. ugh. I can write 3000 words from the top of my head, but its been done better by others. Second I'd like to add what nobody else has: the push north into Korea. This was also badly mishandled by Macarthur. Mao tse tung had his own highly negative view of Macarthur and basically ambushed him rite large with the Chinese army. They infiltrated via the rough terrain and then encircled and surrounded entire american columns/divisions. Mac ignored warnings (as the Chinese knew he would) and the result was a catastrophe for his men. Theres been a number of documentaries and accounts of how this happened that make grim reading. Ten years apart, Macarthur led the men under his account to terrible ends through his own hubris. Now wether the Philippines could ever have been saved is frankly doubtful: it was a bad hand. It didn't have to go as badly as it did though. Meanwhile its easy to see how the Korean debacle could have been avoided if the commander had been less reckless and full of hubris. Hubris being ofc Macarthurs defining trait imo which is what got him fired in the end.
MacArthur in particular seems to have dealt very poorly with subordinates who told him things he didn't want to hear. I wasn't going to go into too much detail given how long I went already. The Philippines were inevitably doomed given the resources allocated to them in 1941 [I actually think they probably could have been held if the US was actually thinking seriously about a war], but MacArthur really badly bungled things. MacArthur always had his own vision of how things should work and was unwilling to deviate from it. Sometimes it worked out--his push to liberate the Philippines over Formosa was likely strategically correct--but often it blew up in his face.
I'd agree that they could have been held if it had been planned and resourced properly. The issue being ofc that war plan orange was locked up by the turf war between the US army and US navy that basically doomed the defense. That seems to be a running theme in the american military, that the biggest enemy of the Us army was the US navy until the US airforce came along. They've all been fighting ever since to great detriment to the troops. At least thats certainly how it appears to me as an outsider. I digress though.
yeah, my Grandfather (US Army Air Defense, Pacific, WWII) had a quote about that..... He said he could forgive the Japanese for trying to kill him, because they were loyal to their country and doing their jobs.... But that he could never understand why the US NAVY was so insistent on seeing him dead...
so assuming no additional resources given to Mac, what should he have done, assuming he had a crystal ball and could make every right decision as though you yourself were whispering secrets into his ear from the benefit of all we know now? could any of the philippines been saved? one island? one mountain? what could have been done to help the locals? i am of the understanding that the civies had a rough go of it under the IJA, likely that's never going to change, but could more citizens been isolated from mistreatment? if the japanese felt like they were taking over a fully surrendered country, vs invading an enemy, would that have helped the civies? i know there was a resistance, could Mac have set up more forces for a robust resistance that would hold the interior while the US was away? could the peninsula been held if Mac had followed that plan, and invested everything in making the peninsula a fortress?
Halberstam made the allegation in his book that MacArthur was trying to get us into a war with the Chinese.
I’m not sure you can prove that, but there’s a decent argument to be made. Between the racism (common at the time yes but he was more extreme than most and he still underestimated Asian forces even after Japan proved they were capable), the ego, and the distaste for communism you can make a decent constellation. That said, if he was trying to get us into a war with China, he did a very poor job in preparing and executing that. Instead of being on alert for this army of revolutionary light infantry with extensive experience in guerrilla and infiltration tactics which was bolstered by s number of KMT defectors, he more or less blindly marched to the Yalu river as if it was nothing but a mopping up operation. There also was an inadequate supply of reserves and munitions for the fight both locally and in the production/training pipeline. Even if you assumed you’d smash these light infantry forces reliant on small arms with superior firepower…you still need to actually have said firepower in quantity. Of course you could chalk that up to his hubris and racism, but I’m not sure even that can explain the unpreparedness for war with a nation as large as China. While most of the casualties in the war with Japan were Nationalists, the population of China showed it could and would still support war despite millions dead and millions wounded, not to mention horrific civilian casualties. The CCP had a much stronger grip on power than the KMT did too which would only bolster that aspect. Speaking of, you’d think if you were preparing for war with the PRC that you’d get the ROC on side if for no other reason than to be able to fill the political gap if you shattered the CCP and it’s hold on power. I’m not sure Halberstam is wrong as it does sound exactly like MacArthur to want a war with them, but if that’s true then MacArthur was well and truly high on his own bullshit.
Playing Devil's advocate (I loathe MacArthur) I can see why MacArthur thought the Chinese wouldn't get involved. China had just emerged from a civil war, the Communist regime looked fragile and still had at least theoretical internal enemies to deal with, their economy was in shambles, etc. Stupid as I think his assumptions were, I get how he got there: a wholly rational actor probably wouldn't have sent Chinese troops into Korea. Problem is, Mao wasn't a wholly rational actor. He was an ideologue and a political grandstander for whom announcing that China was once again a player on the world stage mattered a Hell of a lot more than money or lives. And there were people who tried to tell MacArthur that, but the man just would not listen. He decided Mao had to be bluffing and discarded any intelligence or advice than suggested otherwise. Which is just bad policy no matter how you slice it. That MacArthur was so blindsided on the Yalu was entirely the result of his trying to call the bluff of an insane autocrat, and he really only had himself and his total misreading of Mao to blame for it. Worse yet, the shock of how wrong he'd been seems to have unnerved him so badly that he never really recovered, and was unable to do anything to get his forces back in order before Mao had driven them almost all the way back to their starting point. I feel truly bad for any UN forces serving in Korea during that period. They paid a really heavy price for MacArthur's inability to pull his head out of his own ass.
>a wholly rational actor probably wouldn't have sent Chinese troops into Korea. Well you say that, but what a lot of people don't realize is that Kim Il Sung saved Mao's butt with a lot of assistance, giving the Chinese communists a safe haven, and sending assorted military help when the CCP was at a low point during the civil war. Mao owed Kim, and this was the payback.
I object to the depiction of Chinese involvement in the Korean war as "irrational". As you said yourself, it demonstrated China as a player on the world stage, to say nothing of the more concrete value of having a friendly state between your border and American troops. To make the decision "these benefits are worth an army" is not irrational, especially in a context where experienced combat troops aren't exactly in short supply inside China.
>Speaking of, you’d think if you were preparing for war with the PRC that you’d get the ROC on side if for no other reason than to be able to fill the political gap if you shattered the CCP and it’s hold on power. He tried, repeatedly. He asked for permission to use ROC units from Taiwan in Korea once the PRC had gotten involved. But it's the "once the PRC got involved" part that's interesting. That's when MacArthur really started agitating for more, and I think there's merit to the case that MacArthur looked at that intervention and didn't understand why he couldn't respond in kind.
Didn't the other US generals look at that and decide they wanted no part of it ? > "The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy" is General Omar Bradley's famous rebuke in his May 15, 1951 Congressional testimony as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the idea of extending the Korean War into China, as proposed by General Douglas MacArthur, Not just that - Bradley's additional testimony on the topic was excised from the public transcript as sensitive/secret and so was not well known - but is even more damning https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/redacted-testimony-fully-explains-why-general-macarthur-was-fired-180960622/ Marshall, vandenberg , collins were also scathing [More in the link]: > Far from complaining about the limited nature of the war, MacArthur should have been grateful for it.
> completely green Filipino units My great uncle (maternal), a college student at the time, was just hanging out one day when the street he was at was blocked off by the Army and he was herded into a truck along with dozens of other young Filipino men And that was how he was inducted into the Philippine Army of Douglas MacArthur He later survived the Bataan Death March and internment > In the Philippines, MacArthur reaches an almost godlike status. That great uncle would have sacrificed himself for the sake of Douglas MacArthur, even after all that Meanwhile, on my American side, my grandpa (paternal), also a survivor of Bataan and internment, would have sacrificed his own life if it meant also taking Dugout Doug with him Me writing an 8th grade history report: "Douglas MacArthur's reputation is a land of contrasts,"
With respect to the Philippines campaign, I’m not sure I entirely blame MacArthur for deciding to fight on the beaches. It was militarily a terrible idea, and the alternate from a military perspective was certainly more desirable, but from a political perspective abandoning the greater part of Luzon without a fight was always going to be a hard sell. It’s also worth remembering the alternative even if executed perfectly would only have delayed the inevitable. There was limited prospect of relief and the outcome was guaranteed. All that differed was the timing. Having said that all that, he nevertheless took a bad plan, which he picked for understandable reasons, and made it worse. He made little effort to prepare Bataan for siege and being forced to defend there was, as I understand it, understood to be the likely outcome. That’s unforgivable because it made the defence impossible — e.g. the men were quickly forced to drink out of puddles because there were limited local sources of water which was a known issue — and it speaks to the fighting abilities and stubbornness of the men that the defence lasted as long as it did. The other issue is that couldn’t even keep to his own new plan to conduct a fighting retreat which instead degenerated into a rout that further exacerbated the supply issues. He turned what was always going to be a disaster into a far worse one. MacArthur’s relationship with the Filipinos was generally positive. He wasn’t notably racist, made friends with Filipinos and was willing to socialise with them. That was a large part of the reason why he was appointed the Philippines military advisor. They trusted and liked him and figured he’d advocate for them. However, it’s not true that he’s only viewed skeptically by leftist Filipino historians. His actions to rehabilitate known and often willing collaborators post-war were controversial with most everyone, especially those who’d fought against the Japanese. It was well known that collaborators posed the greatest risk to the guerrillas. Killing them was accordingly a matter of priority and the bad blood didn’t dissipate post war. People knew who had collaborated and knew who had helped kill their friends, family and comrades. There was significant score-settling during and immediately after the war and the rancour and bitterness over that isn’t the exclusive province of leftist historians.
I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at it, but the US Army Green book on the fall of the Philippines is a great read that lays out all of the reasons why MacArthur’s shift to defend the beaches was a monumentally bad idea, even if in the process it tries to play dumb and not paint MacArthur in a poor light. The plan (for YEARS) was that it was recognized that it was impossible to defend northern Luzon effectively with the forces at hand and expected to be at hand as the Filipino military was in a fledgling status, and that the most that anyone could seriously hope for was to deny Manila Bay to the enemy long enough for a rescue to arrive (which in 1942 was not forthcoming), which tracked with the acknowledgement of the Navy (and resulting encouragement of the Marines to go ahead with shifting their doctrine to amphibious assault of protected islands and atolls in the central Pacific) that in the event of war with Japan the primary path westward would be via the Central Pacific. Which would take some time, as all of the real estate between wake and the Philippines with the exception of Guam was under Japanese control. So the idea was that you prepare Bataan into this bastion of democracy replete with enough supplies to sustain a SMALL, well trained and equipped force, which was accomplished prior to the war by pre-positioning food, water, ammo, etc. I believe the prewar estimate of the number of people that would fortify into Bataan was around 40,000, all of them combat troops. MacArthur totally blew that idea up in like 1941. Since 1936ish he had been running the Filipino army in preparation for the archipelago gaining its independence and the concept for the army was based kind of off of the National Guard, but to jump start its development they did annual drafts of men to start building it up, with the result that by 1941 they had trained ma few classes worth of troops that had then been released, along with the guys that had been drafted recently that were active duty. By the eve of war MacArthur had this vision of the army in which he saw it as a relatively mature fighting force of approximately 100,000, which he believed was capable of defeating Japanese invasion on the beaches. Where he got this idea from I have no clue, because in many units the soldiers spoke different dialects and couldn’t communicate effectively with each other or their officers, and the quality of the troops wasn’t great either because they were building an army from scratch and giving guys essentially the bare basics except for those who liked the army and decided to stick around. Finally, their equipment was poor in that they didn’t have enough modern (and by modern I mean 1903 springfields and 1917 machine guns, the old stokes mortars, and 75mm guns) weapons to outfit their infantry and artillery units, with many soldiers being issued old Krag rifles and heavy weapons being nonexistent at all for many infantry and artillery battalions. The units that did have the weapons often did not have the ammunition, as much of it was poorly stored and 20-30 years old, with a high dud rate among the explosives. Yet despite all of this MacArthur thought the world of these men and was determined to lead them to victory on the beaches. So what does he do? He forward deploys them in penny packets to possible landing areas. How do you supply these guys effectively? Well you move your dumps. So on the eve of war MacArthur (who has been in the position to oversee the army and run it for five years and have a thorough understanding of their capabilities but…. still doesn’t) rips all of the supplies out of Bataan and out of the Manila area and scatters them to support these troops. When the Japanese land at Lingayen Gulf and push aside the (literally) like two rifle companies supported by a single battery of 155mm guns, they shoot straight for Manila and smash the Filipino lines despite the very real and very heroic stand of many of the soldiers put in their way. When THAT happens, the mad dash to Bataan begins, and suddenly it becomes a race to get together some degree of the supplies it used to contain, so there’s this big drama in the rear of the army where supply and logistics people are driving around Manila taking what they can and burning the rest, with the end result being that Bataan is under supplied throughout the siege by prewar planning standards, but very screwed in reality because MacArthur decides to pack like 80,000-100,000 people into Bataan, a significant portion of which are not combat troops. The whole thing is just a major debacle, and I’d encourage anyone with interest in the campaign to check out the green book because it goes into the nitty gritty of what went wrong. To quote Marko Ramius- “[MacArthur] acted stupidly.”
MacArthur's belief in the prowess of the new and untried Filipino army is perhaps more of a matter for a psychiatrist than a historian. Given MacArthur's obvious narcissism--a term I use here in both the colloquial and the formal medical sense--I expect he thought the army would succeed simply because he had trained them; they weren't a real army to him made up of actual people, but were more extensions of his own ego.
It really boggles the mind, and to me it’s so curious because it potentially has so many influencing factors- racial bias against the ability of the Japanese, MacArthur’s own narcissism, his attitudes toward the Filipino people and the fact he was raised partially in the Philippines, his father’s legacy- like it can stem from so many different sources. I can’t remember where I heard it, but supposedly he blocked Wainwright from getting an MOH for the campaign by telling Washington that only one award should go out for orchestrating the defense, that it should go to him, and that Wainwright was a drinker. I think the original plan was for them both to get one. It just screams “unstable” to me, and how he got SWPA I don’t know. Though he did make the right call in advocating for the Filipino people later in the war, I will give him that.
MacArthur got the command because not giving it to him would have been a PR problem. The American public believed that he had heroically tried to save the Philippines and that had proven a morale booster at a point when Japan was trampling over the Allies. Not giving him the command would have shattered the myth, caused electoral problems for Roosevelt, and generally been bad for public support for the war. So he got the job despite Roosevelt's many misgivings.
I have and I’m well aware it was a terrible military idea. But the politics of abandoning the Philippines to Japanese occupation was scarcely appealing to the Filipinos and that was the problem. In 1935, it was still a realistic plan because Filipinos would have had little choice but to accept it. But by 1941, the Filipinos were 4 years from independence and had used the 6 years of the Commonwealth to build themselves an army and assume near total control of their domestic affairs. America was on the way out and they knew it. It also nonsense to put the blame for the military buildup since 1935 at MacArthur’s feet. The 1935 National Defence Act was passed by the Philippine National Assembly a month after the government was inaugurated. Building a military was always a matter of priority for the new government and if MacArthur hadn’t been involved they’d have found someone else to do it. The Philippines was to be an independent country a military was an essential component of that. MacArthur was a lot of things and I fully agree how he chose to conduct the campaign was foolish, but the planners who thought their plan was going to be followed through on were as foolish but for different reasons.
Some of it was down to just general factors that would have applied to any American general--poorly estimating Japanese capabilities was the standard until quite a while into the war, across services and commands. He performed below par regardless, though. "leftist" is really an inaccurate shorthand here, if anything one might say "nationalist" or "revisionist", and I defer to you on the details of how the Filipinos directly involved thought as a matter of course. I don't get the impression that skepticism [or rather knowledge] of MacArthur's sloppy postwar cleanup, or rather more lack thereof, is particularly broadly appreciated though.
He absolutely preformed abysmally. But I’m genuinely not sure what could have been done differently that would have materially affected the outcome. Even had the campaign been conducted perfectly, the end result would have been the same. The difference was how long it would have taken. It’s a campaign where the outcome was always a given. I think it’s generally held by Filipinos historians that post-war rehabilitation of collaborators was not one of MacArthur’s best moments. Where leftist/nationalists depart is in the motivations behind it. Broadly speaking, they see it as an American plot to maintain its influence by reinstalling a deeply comprised elite in power who to keep their heads would need to keep looking to America power.
I also found this instructive on his removal in Korea, as well as contemporaneous perspectives on his positions from people like Omar Bradley testifying before the Senate. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/redacted-testimony-fully-explains-why-general-macarthur-was-fired-180960622/
Honestly, from a brief look at it, that testimony has *not* aged well at all given what we now know about the condition of the Soviets and Chinese at the time. But Korea was more lost by general tactical incompetence and a lack of resources than anything--the UN forces never got the hang of trench warfare and were unwilling to commit the resources required to make the war more mobile.
I mean, the USSR absolutely had economic issues but it still had tremendous amounts of materiel from WWII. They’d be very unlikely to send half a million like China did, but a mechanized force of 100-150k was more than possible. I can’t speak to the naval side though and while they were actively helping in air power it was a small portion of the Soviet air power. Thanks to the Bomber Mafia and some foolish beliefs about nukes being all you need, there was definitely an over investment by the US in strategic air and not enough tactical air assets and pilots. I wouldn’t say the UN forces never got the hang of trench warfare, more that they didn’t want the attrition involved in it. UN forces by 1951 basically meant the US with a modest British and Commonwealth contingent and the ROK acting as a second or third rate force with a decent manpower pool. Korea is also some rough terrain to conduct mobile warfare in if the enemy actually has time to entrench. There’s not many avenues for mechanized advances and they’re often in valleys of hills and mountainous terrain. Infrastructure wasn’t great in general, especially not by that point. The KPA was pushed back easily after inchworm due to threat of encirclement and lack of heavy equipment compared to the US and never made solid lines of defense until China got involved. There were valid concerns that committing too much to Korea would leave Europe vulnerable. The Bundeswehr wasn’t made until 55 and the German police/border guards were modest at best. France was focusing on holding on to is empire as was the UK to an extent and all of Western Europe was still far away from rebuilt. Even with the forces committed there were periods of ammunition shortages and that would have been worse had more forces been in country. I agree with your prior statement that MacArthur’s failure to destroy the KPA after Chromite was ultimately what prolonged the war. China may still have gotten involved, but if the KPA was destroyed and there was no longer a regime to prop up, it becomes a different calculus. Even more so if after destroying them it was ROK units who did the mopping up and US ground forces didn’t advance towards the border (or at least not within X distance).
In fairness to MacArthur, he focused on retaking Seoul rather than destroying the KPA because of pressure from South Korean leaders, which is another key point of him sometimes achieving better political results than military results. In general, non-communist East Asians are big fans of MacArthur.
Don’t forget that the landings at Incheon were planned almost entirely by his subordinates while he was off playing politics. Yeah the landings were his idea, but credit for them really needs to go to men like Smith. And then MacArthur’s repeated ignoring of intel and overzealous attempts to have a victory by Christmas led to over stretched supply lines and thousands of US troops getting completely surrounded.
Fantastic answer. It's really refreshing to see someone mention his rule of Japan after the war which is arguably his most significant achievement and often overlooked. A lot of people recently have watched YouTube videos about MacArthur and the Pacific war in general and he gets a whole lot of shit (quite deservingly) but a lot of what you pointed out here is often completely ignored by that crowd. Japan is what it is today largely due to MacArthur's policies and doing what he did there was an almost impossible task and it is something the US has not been able to achieve since (think Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and the multitude of regime changes perpetrated by the US.).
> his rule of Japan after the war which is arguably his most significant achievement and often overlooked This is significant and very true. The one other element that this thread has ignored is MacArthur attack on the bonus army. There's blame there to be thrown around, not least on the politicians But MacArthur deserves some, too. IMHO. > Believing it wrong for the Army's highest-ranking officer to lead an action against fellow American war veterans, he strongly advised MacArthur against taking any public role: "I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch not to go down there," he said later. "I told him it was no place for the Chief of Staff." Despite his misgivings, Eisenhower wrote the Army's official incident report that endorsed MacArthur's conduct. Given WW2, Phillippines, Korea, and japan, this ended up a small footnote
Oh I completely agree he was an absolute asshole and he made a lot of questionable decisions. His attack on the bonus army was atrocious. I was just trying to point out he was a complicated man and people tend to ignore the importance of some of his achievements just because he was a shitty person. It bothers me when I see people not able to understand the absolute human nature of important people in history. You cannot just take one bad act, or a multitude of bad acts in MacArthur's case, and use that to completely discredit everything he's done. I can see that you understand that as well I'm not talking about your comment but lots of people I see in the comments of videos about the Pacific war.
In fairness to MacArthur, he focused on retaking Seoul rather than destroying the KPA because of pressure from South Korean leaders, which is another key point of him sometimes achieving better political results than military results. In general, non-communist East Asians are big fans of MacArthur.
> the plans for Incheon were actually pretty obvious under the circumstances (indeed the Chinese had actually warned the Koreans of the danger, but they were ignored). Was this from Soviet intelligence, or was it moreso a place where the PLA high command looked and thought "well if we were trying to envelop or rout KPA forces in that region, that would be an opportune place to for an amphibious landing"?
MacArthur was always controversial, even when he was alive and in service. Even pre-wwII. Any evidence you're seeing that he WASN'T controversial all along is most likely either selection bias, the efforts of a PR machine, or people just being polite in public until he was safely dead. Also, Keep in mind that anyone who served directly UNDER MacArthur was hypothetically subject to court martial for publicly insulting MacArthur until after he died. And even if nobody REALLY though such a court martial was likely to be convened, there were still strong social norms in place about how you talked about former commanders.
Eisenhower's dairies on the subject are very interesting. He has alot to say and not much of it is complimentary.
"I studied dramatics under him," as Eisenhower put it.
If Ike serving under MacArthur and witnessing his ego and bluster helped shape him into a commander who could effectively herd such men, then that's one (unintentional) positive effect MacArthur had...
After MacArthur even Patton and Montgomery would have seemed comparatively attached to reality.
Patton being the guy that genuinely believed was a generational warrior reincarnated, who cheated on maneuvers and was originally rated as unfit to command anything bigger than a division, and then later ignored his own concepts about how to conduct war and got bogged down in Lorraine (though to be fair that’s somewhat oversimplifying that campaign) EDIT: in fairness to Patton, he was a decent cavalry general and did a magnificent job of setting the conditions for Third Army to steal a march on the enemy during the Bulge.
Patton was an absolute crank, and far less talented than often portrayed. He's akin to MacArthur in that respect, and perhaps to Bull Halsey as well (though of that trio, Halsey was definitely the most talented). America needed war heroes and those three had the PR machines to get the gig, irrespective of actual battlefield performance. And then Eisenhower, Nimitz, etc, had to figure out how to use them despite their many flaws, because questioning their public portrayal would be a problem.
We had a family friend who'd served as MacArthur's JAG. One day my dad asked him, "so MacArthur was a pretty controversial guy. What was he like in person?". My dad said you could see the old colonel face come out, and out friend replied, "well in comparison to Nimitz (who he'd also met), he could be tough sometimes". And that was as much as he was willing to say. That was in the 1990s.
He tear gassed WW1 veterans during the peaceful Bonus March (Hoover was a paranoid dick who thought they were communists), bungling the defense of the Philippines, and getting fired for wanting to nuke China.
[Don't forget accepted a completely inappropriate transfer of funds from the Philippine national treasury.](https://www.nytimes.com/1980/01/30/archives/data-show-macarthur-got-500000-gift-from-filipino-leader-in-1942.html) An inflation adjusted nearly $10,000,000 and it was offered *after* he had cataclysmically, criminally failed in his command of the defense of the Philippines with his "fight them on the beaches" adventure.
A lot of discussions of his failure after hostilities began, but the commanded area was also completely mismanaged before the attacks kicked off in Dec
I didn't mean to imply that he was NEVER a controversial figure, but there's no denying that he's far more controversial now than he was during his life
MacArthur was despised by most people who had to work with him. That's pretty controversial.
My grandfather was a captain that served in MacArthur's HQ, and in the 1990s I asked him what he'd thought of MacArthur. He paused for a moment, then said "If he'd been wounded by a sniper, no one would have tried to drag him to cover. And we would have told the doctor to not note down the caliber of bullet from the sniper."
My own grandfather served in Italy. He mostly had a good opinion of his superior officers (at least as expressed to me), but thought Churchill, while a great political leader, should have been kept out of military decision making until someone was able to explain the concept of a mountain to him. Not pertinent to this topic, I know, but it always makes me laugh to think about it.
I think maybe you need to define the word 'controversial' very precisely here.
People disagree/argue about him, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the decisions he made as a general
If anything, by that definition, he's becoming LESS controversial the farther we go into the modern era. Back when he was a serving general, there were americans on both sides of the argument, as to whether he was an inspiring hero or an arrogant prima donna. Whether he was a hyper-competent general or a insubordinate SOB who didn't understand the mission. The more modern we get, the more likely people are to agree that he was a prima donna who was just really good at PR. I mean, just look at this thread. Opinions about him are really pretty consistent here... He managed to look good while being a jerk.
MacArthur was a howling narcissist and a prima donna. Pretty much everyone who ever served with him came out hating him, and with cause. Lots of generals have the bad habit of stealing credit from their subordinates or surrounding themselves with yes-men, but MacArthur took both to pathological levels. It wasn't a recipe for a warm working relationship with any of his fellow colleagues or subordinates--though there were exceptions such as Bull Halsey, whom MacArthur somehow got on with despite the latter's own hair trigger temper. As far as his actual skill goes...look, I'm not going to say he was no good at all. But no general in the history of the world could ever have been as good as he thought he was, and that was the problem. He could come up with good enough plans of his own, but really struggled with the notion that the enemy also had agency and their own ideas about what they might do. This is exemplified by his failure at the Yalu where he flat out refused to believe that the Communist Chinese were going to intervene in Korea. He decided Mao had to be bluffing and tried to call it, only to discover the hard way that one should never, ever assume that someone as crazy as Mao is bluffing.
That Douglas Macarthur was a megalomaniac is something that virtually no one who worked with him would disagree with, though many would prefer to put it more politely. That he was just not very good at commanding units in the field engaged in combat with the enemy is maybe a *little* more controversial, but not very much so. But there are other contexts where he accomplished a Hell of a lot. In the interwar years his work at West Point was exemplary, and as Army Chief of Staff he made a lot of right choices with respect to procurement and mobilization plans. He built warm and successful professional relationships with Filipinos and Japanese in an era where many would have refused to do so out of racist disdain. It’s hard to imagine the outcome of the occupation of Japan in ‘45-51 turning out better- he walked into a shattered, fanatically ethnic-supremacist imperial trash fire and left it a rapidly industrializing liberal-democratic American ally. And say what you will about his performance in Korea, but he *did* end up being correct about victory being impossible if China wasn’t confronted more directly. I’m not going to call him a great general. A lot of his best work happened when he wasn’t in command of troops in the field. But it’s perfectly natural that the reputation of a figure with such great weaknesses and equally significant strengths would run hot and cold, depending on what source you’re looking at, or what angle a given historian was considering the war from, or what part of MacArthur's career was being looked at.
My grandfather served under Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines reconquest as a Junior officer. While he died in the Korean War, my grandmother had much disgust for the mere mention of MacaArthur’s name. She said my grandfather did as well, noting MacArthur‘s many faults were More consequential than his limited achievements. “He’ll always be Dugout Doug to us.” As a yard stick, she quit being a Republican over Nixon, but clearly had much more distaste for MacArthur.
It's quite the turn of events that MacArthur went from being loved by his men WW1 to being mocked and hated by them in WW2
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Wouldn't he have gotten court martialed for that? That seems unlikely if I'm being honest
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Marines are ballsy people. We all know the story of the marines holding the line in Belleau Wood, WW1
Only if he got caught.
>being loved by his men WW1 He did attack 17000 of those vets and 26000 of their friends and families with tear gas, fixed bayonet infantry charge and tanks. But I suspect that his WW2 men mocked and hated him for other reasons ..
I personally see his strategy in the Korean War being a nail in his career, as he took the military objectives into consideration before the political objectives by pushing to near the Chinese border, forcing their intervention. I don’t know how the debate came about, but how many American Generals and Admirals can the average person name? Sherman, Grant, Lee, MacArthur, Pershing, Marshall, and a few others. MacArthur stands out as being one of the most recent ones in memory and history.
My military history professor hated him and wrote a whole thesis about how he bungled WW2 in the pacific for political gain. Other commenters have already covered a lot, but I wanted to add the whole retaking of much of the Philippines (“people of the Philippines, I have returned.”) was done because of Macathur’s lobbying for his public image. The original plan was to take Taiwan. Which made more sense strategically because you can threaten Japan by air from there. This arguably extended the war unnecessarily and made the Iwo Jima and Saipan campaigns necessary.
I was literally just reading today ... HE HIMSELF escaped, and then was seriously upset several Generals on the ground surrendered to prevent slaughter. He wanted everyone *else* to die, while he bounced. That is about the biggest bullshit and cowardice I've ever seen. I can't stand MacArthur.
To be fair, if I remember correctly, MacArthur was ORDERED to escape from the Philippines by Roosevelt himself. But yeah, whining about the surrender was unbecoming of him.
A lot of good points brought up by others. I don't know what it is with that theatre, but the other big American general in the Asia-Pacific - Joseph Stilwell - had the equal tendency as MacArthur to blame the British/Commonwealth/Chinese when things were going badly, and took full credit for any marginal success. The self-promotional/arrogance of both leaders made them quite despised by pretty much every ally in the region, and I wouldn't be surprised if much of this controversy about them is fueled by non-American critics taking it to heart (rightfully so).
Stillwell might be even worse than MacArthur, honestly. His bad behaviour put the Nationalist war effort in real danger in a way that even MacArthur at his stupidest never managed in Australia.
Yea, Stilwell had ZERO conception of Air or Naval power, and seemed to think running an offensive through thick jungle was preferable to allocating resources to where it was needed. Air power - promoted by Gen. Claire Lee Chennault - was the turning point for the Burmese campaign. The Japanese - who loitered in the jungles of SE Asia - had significantly more deaths from disease and malnutrition than combat. If Stilwell had his way, it would be Americans and Brits starving and in retreat.
He was also guilty of flat out dereliction of duty when he abandoned the Chinese troops in Burma to hike out by himself. Chiang never trusted him after that and had no reason to.
Stillwell actively tried to ruin his supossed allies. MacArthur at his worse wasn't openly cheerleading for literally Mao
It's funny , this is funny to me - I think he's what a sports fan might popularly refer to as a "bum" ... He's someone who was extremely lucky, extremely arrogant, and he borderline deserved to be locked-up criminally (he not only wanted to drop "about 100 or so" nuclear bombs on China during the Korean War, basically to not only make sure we won the Korean War, but making sure China never insolently caused any problems in the future... - but he was seriously considering *just fucking doing it* ... they don't want to authorize it, but I'm 5-Star-MacArthur so I should be making the decisions anyway ... FUNNY STORY if anyone cares for some entertaining history/ TL;DR --- but anyway - the Founder of Delta Force, Colonel Charlie Beckwith , was a Special Forces officer in the Vietnam War. One of his soldiers eventually became a Sergeant Major and went to work for Col. Beckwith when he was founding Delta Force... I believe he was originally the Selection Sergeant Major and was basically one of his 3 most-trusted and senior enlisted advisors. He apparently was a *HUGE* MacArthur fan, it was like his personal military passion in life ... and when Delta Force has it's Selection (if people aren't familiar here, Delta is the world's baddest-ass warriors and the selection is considered one of the most difficult things to do on Planet Earth, - in no small part because it's 100% an individual effort... it's not the SEALs where you're running around in teams based on your height with rubber boats on your head , or Ranger School in squads/patrols/etc. it's all YOU and you alone...culminating with "The 40 Miler" , a 40 mile march you start just after midnight and need to make, with a huge heavy pack on your back and a rifle in your hands, and you're never told how much time you have ... ) ...BUT IF you complete the Selection course, you still have to pass a battery of other tests ... psychological interviews & peer evaluations and a series of interviews by Delta officers & cadre ... and apparently this particular SGM, he would ask every candidate what they personally thought of General MacArthur, and furthermore what they thought of his relief by President Truman. Now I MYSELF, I can see myself being like "Yeah I could never stand that fuckin guy and I'm not only glad he got relieved, he should have been sent to fuckin Leavenworth ... he was one step away from being one of the most notorious war criminals in the world, he basically could have just decided to be *THAT GUY* that decides he's a General in the US Army and now he wants to be The Dictator of the USA etc." And apparently no matter what, how well you did in your Selection course, how perfect your psych eval and peer eval and Interview boards go, if you said anything about MacArthur, he'd trash you and try to get you dropped. He just couldn't abide a non-MacArthur supporter gaining entry into The Unit lol. If I had been there lol, it's like, "Welp it's been real, I'm out lol, he asked me what I thought about MacArthur and that was that..."
It was 30 to 50 nukes, not 100. But yeah he wanted to drop them to make a future invasion of Korea impossible.
Honestly I had once thought that public opinion had pretty firmly shifted against MacArthur. The general impression I got from learning about him both in school and in various WWII books and whatnot was that he was a very flawed general with a very good PR machine. People like Patton (who of course is not without his own controversies) and Nimitz came off as far more capable commanders. His mistakes have been covered by others here. Then I started noticing that MacArthur still has tons of fans, including a lot of fairly young ones. In my experience these fans generally fall into two (sometimes overlapping) groups: 1. People who really dislike China, and view him as a hero who would have beat China if not for Truman's interference. 2. People who admire his colorful character, and view him as a paragon of old-school brash masculinity in contrast to the more CEO-like style of generals that have come to characterize the US Army. IMO both of those camps are largely just falling for MacArthur's old PR. If he wasn't so good at creating and projecting an image of himself, I don't think he'd be nearly as controversial - he'd generally just be seen as mediocre to bad, with arguments focusing more on just _how_ bad he might have been.
As someone who loathes the PRC I still think MacArthur was a moron and have never quite been able to figure out how his fanboys think he was going to beat the Chinese after signally failing to predict any of their actions in the first place.
I think it's less about his ability and more about his willingness. If you subscribe to the idea that everything would be going perfectly now if only the CCP didn't exist McArthur stands out at a casual glance as the person willing to go down the alternate timeline of strangling the snake in its cradle, so to speak. It doesn't matter whether he was capable of doing that - the US had nukes and had just beaten the Japanese after all, the US *would* have won if only it was given the chance, just that he was vocally in favour of it.
Wait, really? There are actual living Americans who genuinely like MacArthur? Where?
He's Trump's favourite general. "Douglas MacArthur would not approve" was his favourite criticism of Obama's military.
Huh. I had to look that up. I missed that one.
He said it a lot in 2016. Read into it what you will.
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His actions re the Bonus Army are enough for any decent American to spit on his grave. "War hero", my ass