Early in 1944, Churchill had pledged: Dwight Eisenhower, “Command in War,” lecture, National War College, October 30, 1950, text on file at USAMHI, 9. Eisenhower recalled in that lecture that Churchill told him, “There is no possibility of any British commander staying with you if you will express . . . any dissatisfaction.”
“He is going to do what I order”: Eisenhower, interview by Pogue, June 28, 1962, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library, 11.
“Since the Americans were the stronger”: De Guingand, Generals at War, 109.
“It’s on the cards”: De Guingand, Generals at War, 111.
“the situation began to deteriorate”: Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 565.
“What I did not say”: Montgomery, Memoirs, 282.
“I think probably the great generalship”: “Oral History of Bruce C. Clarke,” interview by Jerry Hess, January 14, 1970, Harry S. Truman Library, 23.
“most satisfying” . . . “let me completely free”: General Matthew Ridgway, interview by Forrest Pogue, February 26, 1959, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library, 28.
However, Lt. Gen. William Simpson: Forrest Pogue, notes from interview with Lt. Gen. William H. Simpson at Alamo National Bank, San Antonio, Texas, April 12, 1952, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library.
“The incident caused me more distress”: Eisenhower, Crusade, 356.
Even Simpson: Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 615.
“overwhelming egotism”: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 475.
“his full dislike and antipathy”: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 516.
“unwilling to be a member of the team”: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 517.
“I was just not interested”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, 76.
“Commanders and staff officers” . . . “then he must go”: Montgomery, Memoirs, 66–67, 79.
“today, fifteen years ago”: Robert Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (W. W. Norton, 1981), 366.
7. DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: THE GENERAL AS PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRANT
“MacArthur’s sense of duty”: Berlin, “Duties of Generalship,” 18.
“General MacArthur kept General Marshall”: Transcript of Tape 25, Omar N. Bradley, interviews by Forrest Pogue, May 27, 1957, and July 19, 1957, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library.
“Marshall is the exact antithesis” . . . “all the credit for himself”: General Matthew Ridgway, interview by John Toland, December 4, 1986, box 88, Matthew Ridgway Papers, USAMHI, 13.
In August 1942, Marshall: George Marshall to Douglas MacArthur, August 10, 1942, The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 3, 296–98.
“a message was received from you”: Marshall to MacArthur, February 15, 1943, The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 3, 551–52.
“as a matter of fact keeping his hand”: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 405.
“I heard both of them talk”: General A. C. Wedemeyer, Friends Advice, interview by Forrest Pogue, Boyds, Maryland, February 1, 1958, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library.
“After our entry into the war”: Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 12.
Marshall pushed to give him a Medal of Honor: Eisenhower, interview by Pogue, June 28, 1962, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library, 4. For Eisenhower arguing against it, see James, “Eisenhower’s Relationship with MacArthur,” 6.
“I wanted to do anything I could”: Bland, Marshall Interviews, 244. This was not the only time the nation’s highest citation for valor was used during the war by the administration for political ends. In 1943, Brig. Gen. William Wilbur was given the medal for his efforts to arrange the Vichy French surrender in North Africa. “The President gave a Medal of Honor to General Wilbur, and that was ground out for the benefit of the American people,” presidential aide Harry Hopkins dictated to a notetaker. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 687.
“No other crew member”: H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (HarperCollins, 1997), 51.
“because he knew of a man”: Jay Luvaas, ed., Dear Miss Em: General Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942–1945 (Greenwood, 1972), 76. In James, “Eisenhower’s Relationship with MacArthur,” 6, Eisenhower confirmed that he had told Marshall he would refuse a Medal of Honor for the North African landings. Elliott Roosevelt, the president’s son, wrote in his memoir As He Saw It (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), 145, that FDR told him, “At the same time MacArthur was given the Medal of Honor, it was offered to Ike, and he turned it down. Said it was given for valor, and he hadn’t done anything valorous.”
during the war he had thwarted efforts: John Shortal, Forged by Fire: General Robert L. Eichelberger and the Pacific War (University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 66. On July 30, 1942, Marshall sent a message to Douglas MacArthur recommending that Wainwright be “awarded” the Medal of Honor. The next day, MacArthur responded, stating that he was “nonconcurring.” The recommendation was shelved with a note written on it by one of Marshall’s aides, Maj. Gen. Joseph McNarney, stating, “Personally, I question Gen. MacArthur’s motives. . . . I also question Gen. MacArthur’s judgment where matters of personal prestige are concerned.” Personal file on Gen. J. M. Wainwright, record group 165, entry 15, box 2, National Archives.
MacArthur also turned down: Taaffe, Marshall and His Generals, 170.
“Eisenhower raised his officers’ profiles”: Taaffe, Marshall and His Generals, 52.
“one of the two most dangerous men” . . . “make them useful to us”: Rexford Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt (Doubleday, 1957), 349–50. Similar accounts are in Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 305; and T. Harry Williams, Huey Long (Knopf, 1969), 640.
FDR was confronted by MacArthur: MacArthur, Reminiscences, 101.
“Most of the senior officers I had known”: Eisenhower, At Ease, 213.
“The general has been following”: Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, “September 26, 1936,” 21–22. See also Kerry Irish, “Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines: There Must Be a Day of Reckoning,” Journal of Military History, April 2010, 454.
Eisenhower turned down a similar gift: Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 315. See also Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, 63; and Carol Petillo, Douglas MacArthur: The Philippine Years (Indiana University Press, 1981), 211–13.
“pompous and rather ridiculous” . . . “virtually nonexisting”: James, “Eisenhower’s Relationship with MacArthur,” 2.
“What he had to say”: Eisenhower, interview by Pogue, June 28, 1962, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library, 3.
“My Chief talked of the Republican nomination”: Luvaas, Dear Miss Em, 71.
Vandenberg, an influential Republican: D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 1941–45 (Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 410. See also Michael Schaller, Douglas MacArthur: The Far Eastern General (Oxford University Press, 1989), chapter 6.
“I am certain that” . . . “our next president”: Time, April 24, 1944; quoted in Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 445.
MacArthur had responded: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 445.
At the Republican National Convention: James, Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 440.
“I dare to say that the American people”: Courtney Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History (Knopf, 1956), 125.
“General Eisenhower broke off his recital”: Joseph Alsop, I’ve Seen the Best of It (W. W. Norton, 1992), 338. See also James, “Eisenhower’s Relationship with MacArthur,” 4.
“accepting any public duty”: Charles Willoughby and John Chamberlain, MacArthur 1941–1951 (McGraw-Hill, 1954), 519.
8. WILLIAM SIMPSON: THE MARSHALL SYSTEM AND THE NEW MODEL AMERICAN GENERAL
“in battles of this kind”: Eisenhower, Crusade, 354.
“Well, I think f
rom what we have here”: General William H. Simpson, interview by Maclyn Burg, March 15, 1972, Eisenhower Library, 90.
“Simpson actually got more Ninth Army units”: Morelock, Generals of the Ardennes, 206.
“Simpson was smart, adaptive, and aggressive”: MacDonald, Siegfried Line Campaign, 379.
“Simpson, though little known”: Harmon, Combat Commander, 211–12, 216.
“Even-tempered and composed”: Thomas Stone, “General William Hood Simpson: Unsung Commander of the U.S. Ninth Army,” Parameters 11, no. 2 (1981), 44–45, 48.
“Simpson could think ahead”: General Jacob Devers, interview by Maclyn Burg, August 19, 1974, Eisenhower Library, 43.
“Our chins are up”: Butcher, Three Years, 737.
“a very pompous guy” who was overly cautious: Simpson oral history, Eisenhower Library, 72, 94–95.
“If Simpson ever made a mistake”: Eisenhower, Crusade, 376.
“uncommonly normal”: Bradley, Soldier’s Story, 422.
“the most forgotten American field army commander”: English, Patton’s Peers, 250.
“had to get results”: Gavin, interview by Edwin, Columbia Center for Oral History, 23.
“that he did not feel well” . . . “in charge of the battalion”: Gavin, On to Berlin, 128.
“Summarily relieving those who”: Gavin, On to Berlin, 259.
“unwarranted if not altogether unjustified”: Martin Blumenson, “Relieved of Command,” Army Magazine, August 1971, 36–37.
“a typical infantryman’s operation”: Harmon, Combat Commander, 208.
Some 59 percent: Edward Meyer and R. Manning Ancell with Jane Mahaffey, Who Will Lead?: Senior Leadership in the United States Army (Praeger, 1995), 223.
“in contrast to the Eastern theater”: Ellis, Brute Force, 380–81.
“The mission of this Allied Force”: Berlin, “Duties of Generalship,” 24.
“a New Deal war”: Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 3.
“The only basis upon which” . . . “are of minor importance”: Marshall Papers, vol. 3, 594–95.
“In all these matters”: The War Reports, 33.
“democratic theory”: The War Reports, 125.
Two-thirds of the Army’s combat officers: Of the 872,000 men who became commissioned officers between Pearl Harbor and the end of the war, some 72,000 were doctors and chaplains. “Of the remaining 800,000, some 531,000, or 66.37 percent, were commissioned after serving as enlisted men in this war,” noted Lt. Gen. Clarence Huebner, who, before becoming an officer, had himself served in the enlisted ranks for seven years, including time as a mess sergeant. Huebner, “Leadership in World War II,” 42.
“never was the strength”: The War Reports, 143.
“Those of us who had spent” . . . “to be so as well”: Paul Nitze, “Recollections of George C. Marshall,” June 23, 1987, in “Reminiscences About George C. Marshall,” box 1, folder 25, Marshall Library, 3.
“They were embittered”: Bland, Marshall Interviews, 536–37.
“you must remember that man”: Frank Hayne to Edgar Puryear, March 7, 1963, in “Reminiscences About George C. Marshall,” Marshall Library, 3.
When Middleton’s commander, George Patton: Price, Troy H. Middleton, 160.
Early in 1963, he was slightly wounded: Eric Pace, “Edwin Walker, Controversial General, Dies at 83,” New York Times, November 2, 1993.
a reputation for “irritable suspiciousness”: Russell Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany 1944–1945 (Indiana University Press, 1990), 131.
“merely competent”: Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 216.
“forward observers would bring down”: Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 360.
Despite his advantages: This sentence summarizes Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 356.
“a disturbing number of botched battles”: Daniel Bolger, “Zero Defects,” Military Review, May 1991, 62.
“I wish he had a little daring”: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 566.
“unimaginative caution”: Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 729.
“is essentially bland and plodding”: Martin Blumenson, “America’s World War II Leaders in Europe: Some Thoughts,” Parameters, December 1989, 3.
“at considerably less cost”: Gavin, interview by Edwin, Columbia Center for Oral History, 9.
“one avoids losing”: Bolger, “Zero Defects,” 62.
PART II: THE KOREAN WAR
It had 555,000 soldiers: Weigley, History of the United States Army, 501.
About half of its soldiers: Stewart, American Military History, vol. 2, 204.
9. WILLIAM DEAN AND DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: TWO GENERALS SELF-DESTRUCT
“not prepared mentally, physically”: Clay Blair, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953 (Times Books, 1987), xi.
The first American in Japan: Alexander Haig Jr., Inner Circles: How America Changed the World (Warner, 1992), 19. Over the next three decades, Haig would continue to display a knack for showing up in the middle of interesting situations, from the wars in Korea and Vietnam to the White House staff during the Watergate crisis and then again during the hectic aftermath of the near assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
“one man who could read my thoughts”: William Dean with William Worden, General Dean’s Story (Viking, 1954), 25.
“You have to remember”: Dean, General Dean’s Story, 145.
“I didn’t see any generals”: Lewis Sorley, Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command (University Press of Kansas, 1998), 97.
“There were heroes in Korea”: Dean, General Dean’s Story, 3.
“I didn’t recognize him”: Lieutenant General Henry E. Emerson, interview by Lt. Col. Jonathan Jackson, Senior Officer Oral History Program, December 17 and 23, 2003, USAMHI, 21–22.
“Unknown to either Harriman or Ridgway”: Blair, Forgotten War, 187.
MacArthur wondered aloud: Blair, Forgotten War, 287.
Consider the case of Lt. Col. Melvin Blair: Blair, Forgotten War, 474–76. See also William Bowers, William Hammond, and George MacGarrigle, Black Soldier, White Army: The 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1996), 176ff. Also see chronology of Bing Crosby’s life at Bing Magazine.co.uk.
Vain and mendacious, MacArthur was always: James Schnabel, United States Army in the Korean War: Policy and Direction, The First Year (Office of the Chief of Military History, U.S. Army, 1972), 77, footnote 51; 218.
resulting in the loss of almost all: Murray and Millett, A War to Be Won, 182.
“General, you don’t have a staff”: Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (Norton, 1969), 424.
The Chinese force, for example, had few trucks: F. M. Berger et al., Combat Studies Institute Battle Book: Chosin Reservoir (Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1983), 13.
he had a “far better feel”: Collins, interview by Sperow, USAMHI, vol. 2, 332.
Perhaps most damaging of all: Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 333.
He encouraged sycophantism: Blair, Forgotten War, 434, and Allan Millett, The War for Korea, 1950–1951: They Came From the North (University Press of Kansas, 2010), 316.
When questioned by the White House: MacArthur, Reminiscences, 342.
“The result was a reaction”: Blair, Forgotten War, 234.
When MacArthur greeted Truman: Joseph Goulden, Korea: The Untold Story of the War (McGraw-Hill, 1983), 265.
“Listen, you know I’m president”: “Oral History Interview with Frank M. Boring,” September 21, 1988, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Independence, MO, 25. Two weeks after the Wake Island session, Boring would be one of the agents who fired his weapon in defense of Tr
uman during an assassination attempt by Puerto Rican nationalists. The incident, which occurred outside Blair House—where the president was living while the White House, just across the street, was being refurbished—left a police officer dead, along with one of the assailants. Neither Truman nor Boring was harmed.
“I believe that formal resistance”: This and subsequent quotations from the Wake Island conference are from “Substance of Statements Made at Wake Island Conference on 15 October 1950, Top Secret, Compiled by General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, From Notes Kept by the Conferees from Washington,” in Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS], 1950, vol. 7, Korea (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), 948–60. Hereafter: FRUS 1950, vol. 7.
the CIA had just issued an analysis: For an illuminating discussion of how American officials were fooled by Chinese efforts to cloak their movement of troops into Korea, see Patrick Roe, The Dragon Strikes: China and the Korean War: June–December 1950 (Presidio, 2000), 404–7.
MacArthur later would bitterly deny: “Texts of Accounts by Lucas and Considine on Interviews with MacArthur in 1954,” New York Times, April 9, 1964, 16. In one of those birthday interviews, MacArthur would call President Eisenhower “a naïve and honest man,” while in the other he denounced him as “once a man of integrity.”
in a 1961 interview: Douglas MacArthur, interview by Forrest Pogue, January 3, 1961, Tape 75, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library. The “transcript” is actually Pogue’s thorough notes; the interview with MacArthur was not recorded.
“seemed to take great pride” . . . “he knew little”: MacArthur, Reminiscences, 361.
“a curious, and sinister, change”: MacArthur, Reminiscences, 363.
But with MacArthur, it was too late: I am indebted to Lt. Gen. (Ret.) James Dubik, one of the critical readers of an early draft of this book, for this observation, and for related ones about the strained civil-military discourse during the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. See also James Dubik, “Prudence, War and Civil-Military Relations,” Army Magazine, September 2010.
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