MacArthur's War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero - Softcover

Weintraub, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1439152942 ISBN 13: 9781439152942

Publisher: Free Press, 2008

Synopsis

Douglas MacArthur towers over twentieth-century American history. His fame is based chiefly on his World War II service in the Philippines. Yet Korea, America's forgotten war, was far more "MacArthur's War" -- and it remains one of our most brutal and frightening. In just three years thirty-five thousand Americans lost their lives -- more than three times the rate of losses in Vietnam. Korea, like Vietnam, was a breeding ground for the crimes of war. To this day, six thousand Americans remain MIA. It was Korea where American troops faced a Communist foe for the first time, as both China and the Soviet Union contributed troops to the North Korean cause. The war that nearly triggered the use of nuclear weapons reveals MacArthur at his most flamboyant, flawed, yet still, at times, brilliant.

Acclaimed historian Stanley Weintraub offers a thrilling blow-by-blow account of the key actions of the Korean War during the months of MacArthur's command. Our lack of preparedness for the invasion, our disastrous retreat to a corner of Korea, the daring landing at Inchon, the miscalculations in pursuing the enemy north, the headlong retreats from the Yalu River and Chosin Reservoir, and the clawing back to the 38th parallel, all can be blamed or credited to MacArthur. He was imperious, vain, blind to criticism, and so insubordinate that Truman was forced to fire him. Yet years later, the war would end where MacArthur had left it, at the border that still stands as one of history's last frontiers between communism and freedom.

MacArthur's War draws on extensive archival research, memoirs, and the latest findings from archives in the formerly communist world, to weave a rich tale in the voices of its participants. From MacArthur and his upper cadre, to feisty combat correspondent Maggie Higgins and her fellow journalists, to the grunts who bore the brunt of MacArthur's decisions, for good and ill, this is a harrowing account of modern warfare at its bloodiest. MacArthur's War is the gripping story of the Korean War and its soldiers -- and of the one soldier who dominated the rest.

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Review:

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

About the Author:

Stanley Weintraub is Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Arts and Humanities at Penn State University and the author of notable histories and biographies including 11 Days in December, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, MacArthur's War, Long Day's Journey into War, and A Stillness Heard Round the World: The End of the Great War. He lives in Newark, Delaware.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1439152942
• ISBN 13: 9781439152942
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416