Twilight of the Gods

by Twilight of the Gods (retail) (epub)

  In private conversations, MacArthur freely admitted that his aggressive public relations strategy was an instrument to achieve these ends. “They are afraid of me, Bob,” he told Eichelberger in early 1944, “because they know I will fight them in the newspapers.”81 MacArthur had to “win the war every morning in his communiqué,” observed a correspondent attached to his headquarters. “He had to convince the public that Roosevelt and the dastardly Chiefs of Staff were withholding from him the weapons that were rightfully his.”82

  In his 1964 autobiography, Reminiscences, MacArthur maintained that he never gave a moment’s consideration to seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 1944. The truth is that he cooperated willingly with a “kitchen cabinet” of powerful Republicans, business leaders, and media owners who shared a zealous desire to be rid of FDR, and regarded MacArthur as their best and only hope of defeating the popular incumbent in a wartime election. The SWPA commander discussed the project with various associates and subordinates, including General Eichelberger, who told his wife in June 1943, “My chief talked of the Republican nomination—I can see that he expects to get it and I sort of think so too.”83 The first public inkling of MacArthur’s potential candidacy came in April of that year, when Secretary of War Stimson announced that active-duty officers could not remain in uniform while running for office. Leading Republicans, including Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg and Congressman Hamilton Fish, interpreted this announcement as a shot across MacArthur’s bow. Each spoke out against Stimson for having meddled in politics, and each received a letter of thanks from MacArthur for his trouble.

  Senator Vandenberg of Michigan, unofficial chairman of the crypto-campaign, warned that MacArthur must not be seen to lift a finger to seek the nomination. His opportunity would come only in the event that the Republican convention, meeting in Chicago in June 1944, found itself deadlocked between the leading candidates, Thomas Dewey and Wendell Willkie. In that scenario, the party might nominate MacArthur by general acclamation. Vandenberg planned strategy with other leading supporters, including the newspaper owners Hearst and McCormick; retired general and Sears executive Robert E. Wood; Congressman Carl Vinson; and Time-Life publisher Henry Luce and his wife, Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce. The stateside supporters met periodically with senior members of MacArthur’s staff during their visits to the United States. (Many leading SWPA staff officers were none too scrupulous in conducting political work while shuttling between Australia and Washington on military aircraft.) As the primary season approached, MacArthur carried on a correspondence with his backers, but he chose his words carefully for fear that his letters might fall into the wrong hands. To Vandenberg, for example, he wrote: “I am most grateful to you for your complete attitude of friendship. I can only hope I can some day reciprocate. There is much more I would like to say to you which circumstances prevent. In the meantime I want you to know the absolute confidence I would feel in your experienced and wise mentorship.”84

  Biographers and historians have debated whether MacArthur really wanted the presidency. Some surmise that his only purpose was to exert pressure on FDR and the Joint Chiefs to put him in charge of the entire Pacific War, and to allocate the resources he needed to win it. Perhaps he was conflicted; perhaps he was flattered by the attention. MacArthur felt a burning desire to return to the Philippines, to free his army from its awful captivity, and to raise the American flag over Bataan. As president he would see those things done, but he would not do them himself. As a student of American history, he must have known that he would risk ending his career as another George B. McClellan, the Union general who had unsuccessfully challenged Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1864. Probably MacArthur liked the idea of responding to a groundswell of public acclaim, so long as he did not have to campaign for it. And he must have relished the vision of defeating FDR at the polls. The two men had known one another a long time; they had been colleagues, rivals, and even “friends,” in the shallow sense in which the term was sometimes used in Washington. MacArthur had been army chief of staff at the outset of FDR’s presidency. He had heatedly opposed FDR’s military budget cuts in 1934, and had behaved (even by his own account) with borderline insubordination toward the new president. Like many political conservatives, MacArthur regarded the New Deal as a homegrown strain of Bolshevism. Privately he referred to FDR, with ironic disdain, as “cousin Frank”—or with a crude anti-Semitism common on the political right of that era, as “Rosenfeld.”85 On several occasions, according to Eichelberger, MacArthur said that he would not want the Republican presidential nomination “if it were not for his hatred, or rather the extent to which he despised FDR.”86

  In early 1944, as the Republican primary campaign began in earnest, press reports based on anonymous sources suggested that MacArthur was preparing to return to the United States, where he would campaign full-time for the nomination. Vandenberg went public in an article for Collier’s entitled, “Why I Am for MacArthur.”87 A report approved for publication by Diller summed up the views prevailing in Brisbane: “It would not be surprising if General MacArthur felt—as do a good many here—that the shortest way to victory would be to place an experienced military man in the White House.” When asked on the record about the subject, all of the men around MacArthur gave the same stock answer, a coy nonreply: “Let’s get on with the war.”88 The syndicated columnist Raymond Clapper asked MacArthur directly and repeatedly whether he was interested in the Republican nomination, but he never got a straight answer: “Each time he acted as though he didn’t hear me.”89 It was noted that MacArthur had been placed on two state GOP primary ballots, in Wisconsin and Illinois—and in neither case did he ask that his name be removed.

  A few iconoclastic journalists began to raise questions. Was it proper for a theater commander, in the midst of fighting a terrible war, to flirt with electoral politics at home? Given that MacArthur’s image was refracted through wartime media and warped by his own press censors, was it fair that he should compete against candidates who had no such advantage? Few Americans knew how unpopular MacArthur was among the rank and file of his own army. In the glare of the campaign spotlight, a backlash was inevitable. The January 1944 issue of the American Mercury supplied it. John McCarten, one of Henry Luce’s former editors, had traveled to Australia and returned, thus evading Diller’s censorship. In a harshly critical profile, McCarten wrote that MacArthur’s performance as a general had been overrated, that he was obsessed to an unbecoming degree with his public image, and that the imposition of heavy-handed censorship in his SWPA headquarters was an intolerable manipulation of the political process. McCarten highlighted the role of the anti-FDR press in creating and sustaining a “MacArthur cult.” He suggested that MacArthur was not qualified for the role he sought—that of Pacific Supremo—because he was “a ground general . . . in a predominantly aerial and naval theater.”90 Claims that MacArthur was not personally involved in the presidential campaign were not believable, wrote McCarten, and if he wanted to eliminate speculation, he should quote General Sherman’s famous statement of 1884: “If nominated I will not accept, and if elected I will not serve.”91

  MacArthur was infuriated by the American Mercury article, even more so because it happened to be included on a reading list distributed to servicemen overseas through the Army War College library service. In a long cable to Marshall, he called the article “scandalous in tone and even libelous” and complained that it parroted Japanese propaganda.92 But he chose not to refute it directly because (he told Eichelberger) it contained “a thread of truth which prevented his answering it.” To be attacked in such terms, he lamented, was a “cross it was necessary for him to bear.”93 He would have been even more chagrined had he possessed the power to see into the future, because on many counts McCarten’s “hatchet job” anticipated views that have since become conventional among historians.

  In any event, the dark horse candidacy of Douglas MacArthur had entered the home stretch and was about to pu
ll up lame. Tom Dewey, governor of New York, had shown unexpected strength with Republican voters and power brokers, and by late March it was clear that he would defeat Willkie. There would be no deadlock in Chicago, and therefore no chance to draft MacArthur onto the ticket. The shambolic finale was triggered by an unauthorized release of embarrassing letters written by MacArthur to a Nebraska congressman, Arthur L. Miller. Miller had urged MacArthur to accept the party’s call to serve: “You owe it to civilization and to the children yet unborn,” for “unless this New Deal can be stopped our American way of life is forever doomed.” Unwisely trusting to the congressman’s discretion, the general had written back directly, stating that he agreed “unreservedly” with the “complete wisdom and statesmanship of your comments.”94 Without asking MacArthur’s permission, Miller released the letters to the press on April 14. They were promptly reproduced in full in major newspapers across the country. If Miller had believed they would boost the MacArthur candidacy, he was badly mistaken. Vandenberg regarded the disclosure as a “magnificent boner” and a “tragic mistake.” I. F. Stone, writing in The Nation, concluded that the letters depicted MacArthur “in a very unsoldierly posture—disloyal to his Commander-in-Chief and a rather pompous and ignorant ass.”95

  According to MacArthur’s 1964 autobiography, that was the moment when he first learned that “my name was being bandied about” as a potential candidate on the GOP ticket—and having suddenly been alerted to the ridiculous and dishonorable project, he acted quickly and manfully to put an end to it. He released a statement disavowing presidential ambitions and dismissing any such interpretation of the Miller letters as “sinister.”96 When this first statement was deemed too equivocal, he released a second on April 30, 1944, concluding: “I request that no action be taken that would link my name in any way with the nomination. I do not covet it nor would I accept it.”97

  That ended MacArthur’s foray into presidential politics, at least in the 1944 election cycle. The sordid episode would be remembered as a minor footnote in his career. In a larger sense, however, the misadventure left an indelible mark on the last year of the Pacific War. Vital issues of global strategy had been dragged into the arena of partisan politics, and would remain there through the election. Governor Dewey, having accepted his party’s nomination, said in a speech on September 14, 1944: “Now that General MacArthur is no longer a political threat to Mr. Roosevelt, it would seem appropriate that his magnificent talents be given greater scope and recognition. . . . General MacArthur has performed miracles with inadequate supply, inadequate airpower and inadequate force.”98 Though innocuous in tone, Dewey’s remark contained a serious charge against the president, and by implication against the Joint Chiefs of Staff—that they had allowed politics to guide the allocation of military forces in the Pacific. Dewey did not pursue this line of attack, perhaps because he knew that the Joint Chiefs would refute the charge, but the damage had been done. Roosevelt never forgave Dewey, and the 1944 campaign was the bitterest of his career.

  Fundamental questions of grand strategy remained unresolved in the Pacific. Would MacArthur be given the green light to liberate all of the Philippines, including the main northern island of Luzon? Would Ernest King win his case for seizing Formosa? Should the Americans land on the coast of mainland China—and if so, would that lead to a wider direct involvement of U.S. forces in the Sino-Japanese war? More broadly, what was to be the endgame against Japan? Could Japan be persuaded to accept terms of surrender prior to a bloody invasion? What role might Hirohito, the Showa emperor, play in the war’s final act? These were complicated and immensely important decisions, and they could not be postponed indefinitely. Nor could the presidential election calendar be moved; come hell or high water, the voters would go to the polls on the first Tuesday in November. Inevitably, the big strategic issues looming in the Pacific would be decided in a political season—and they would be viewed through the prism of politics, by contemporaries at the time and by historians ever since.

  * COMINCH to CINCPAC, June 8, 1942, Message 2050, CINCPAC Gray Book, book 1, p. 559. According to Floyd Beaver, a signalman on Admiral Fitch’s flag allowance, Johnston and Seligman were “buddy-buddy,” roaming about the ship like “Siamese twins.” Author’s interview with Floyd Beaver, January 17, 2014. Johnston’s book, Queen of the Flat-Tops, confirms the impression.

  † The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, which effectively decided the campaign in favor of the Allies, was fought on November 12–15, 1942.

  Chapter One

  AFTER DARK ON THE NIGHT OF JULY 13, 1944, President Roosevelt and his traveling entourage were driven to an underground rail siding on Fourteenth Street in Washington, where they boarded a private train, the “Presidential Special.” With the help of porters and Secret Service agents, FDR moved into his stateroom on Pullman No. 1, the last car on the train. Eleanor Roosevelt moved into another stateroom on the same car, and Admiral William D. Leahy, the White House chief of staff and an old friend of the Roosevelts, moved into a third. As the train rolled north through Maryland cornfields, the party slept soundly in their swaying bunks.

  Pullman No. 1 was elegant and sumptuous, with oak panels, plush green carpets, mahogany furniture, and overstuffed chairs. It was also a virtual rolling battleship. The car’s undercarriage was armored with 12-inch steel plate, enough to shield it against a large bomb planted in the roadbed. Its Plexiglas windows were 3 inches thick and would stop a .50-caliber round fired at point-blank range. The sides carried enough steel to stand up to a medium-sized artillery shell. Pullman No. 1 weighed 142 tons, almost twice the weight of a standard car, but it was designed to draw no attention to itself, and looked no different from any other Pullman private car.

  The forthcoming trip would take the president to Chicago and San Diego, thence by sea to Hawaii, Alaska, and Puget Sound, and finally back across the continent by rail. The journey would last thirty-five days, one of the longest of his presidency. Its highlight would be a four-day visit to Oahu, Hawaii, during which time FDR would tour military installations and confer with his Pacific theater commanders, General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz, about their next moves in the war against Japan.

  Just two days earlier, FDR had surprised no one with the long-expected announcement that he would seek reelection to an unprecedented fourth term in office. He told the press that he had no choice, because “if the people command me to continue in this office and in this war, I have as little right to withdraw as the soldier has to leave his post in the line.”1 The president’s train would stop briefly in Chicago, where the Democratic National Convention was underway. The GOP had met two weeks earlier, also in Chicago, nominating Governor Dewey as their standard-bearer. Given the political season, the forthcoming trip would be denounced by FDR’s political rivals as an extended campaign event.

  In peacetime, the presidential train had carried up to forty members of the press corps. Now only three correspondents, representing the three major wire services, were permitted to come along on the trip—and their reporting was embargoed until the White House authorized release, usually after about a one-week delay. Wartime security provided the justification for these measures, but the press resented being kept in the dark about the president’s whereabouts, especially when he appeared before crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. The president was unmoved by their complaints, even seeming to relish the pretext to get the press out of his hair. “Quite frankly,” he told Steve Early, “I regard Freedom of the Press as one of the world’s most microscopic problems.”2 When the White House correspondents demanded to know his travel itinerary, FDR relayed his sarcastic reply through Early: “What do you want to do? Watch me take a bath or go with me to the toilet?”3

  Beginning in the spring of 1944, FDR and his circle had a compelling new reason to keep the press at bay. His health had taken a turn for the worse, and Washington was pulsating with rumors that he did not have the strength to remain in office. His pallor was gray, his eyes sunken and g
lassy, his voice wan and raspy. He had a nasty hacking cough. His lips and fingernails had a sickly bluish tint. Asked how he felt, the president answered: “Like hell” or “Rotten.”4 In March 1944, a navy cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, had found severely elevated blood pressure and diagnosed an acute case of congestive heart failure. Given the treatment options available in the 1940s, the patient’s chances of living through another four-year presidential term were not good. The median survival rate after such a diagnosis was less than two years. Bruenn later said that if his patient had been anyone other than the commander in chief of a nation at war, he would have insisted on retirement from office and immediate hospitalization. But the only doctor authorized to speak publicly about the president’s health was his personal physician, the surgeon general of the navy, Vice Admiral Ross T. McIntire, who told the press that FDR was “in better health than at any time since he came into office in 1933.”5 McIntire’s jaunty reassurances were a medical masquerade that would continue until (and beyond) the president’s death the following year.