MacArthur's War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero
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MacArthur's War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero description
Douglas MacArthur, in William Manchester's memorable phrase, was an American Caesar, a general accustomed to having his own way on or off the battlefield. He surrounded himself with fawning aides, commanded imperiously and sometimes impetuously, and did not kindly accept criticism. Stanley Weintraub, who served as an Army lieutenant during the Korean War, makes the persuasive case that MacArthur's character and methods as commander of the Allied forces in Korea led him to commit disastrous errors of judgment--among them his failure to anticipate the Chinese entry into the war when MacArthur's troops approached the Yalu River, and his odd plan to seed South Korea's defensive perimeter with nuclear explosions and thus make the border impassable for generations. Weintraub praises MacArthur's brilliance as a tactician and student of military history, pointing out that MacArthur's audacious landing at Inchon was straight out of Xenophon. He also notes that MacArthur correctly predicted that the Allied conduct of the Korean conflict would lead to stalemate. Still, Weintraub quietly insists that President Harry Truman was right in removing MacArthur from command on the grounds of insubordination, an act with enormous political repercussions at the time. An outstanding contribution to the literature of the Korean War--a conflict that is again in the news--Weintraub's book spares no detail in examining the end of Douglas MacArthur's checkered career. --Gregory McNamee |
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MacArthur's War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
An Unbalanced History of the Korean War!
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Although a relatively good history of the early years of the Korean War and the resurrection and failure of General Douglas MacArthur in that conflict, "MacArthur's War" suffers from glaring inaccuracies.
Historian and Korean War veteran Stanley Weintraub is at his best when describing the war in Korea. To his credit he lets the veterans, who participated in the conflict, narrate much of the action. The author also makes use of new archival sources, especially when describing the origins of Operation Chromite - the amphibious landings at Inchon. And the personal insights provided by MacArthur's commanders and staff members are revealing.
That said, Weintraub is at his worse when he touches on the U.S. Army's ethnic formations - especially the African-American 24th Infantry Regiment and the all-Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment. His description of both units in Korea is unbalanced and historically inaccurate. A published history of the 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea ("Black Soldier, White Army"), which Weintraub cites but appears not to have read, shows that the failures of the unit in the Korean War were the result of racist policies, weak leadership by its white officers, poor training, and a lack of equipment. And a new forthcoming history of the 65th Infantry Regiment in Korea will show that the unit arrived in country as the largest and one of the best trained infantry formations in Eighth Army. The 65th fought brilliantly for the first two years of the war and then failed at two battles in the fall of 1952 for many of the same reasons the 24th Infantry failed earlier in the war.
Thus, as in another of his more recent works in which he touches on the conflict ("15 Stars. Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall. Three Generals Who Saved the American Century), Stanley Weintraub perpetuates inaccurate and hurtful racial stereotypes of African Americans and Hispanic fighting men in the Korean War.
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