Affection and Trust: The Personal Correspondence of Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, 1953-1971

by David McCullough

  Then following the Wake Island meeting: on October 15th MacArthur told HST that 60,000 men could not possibly get across the Yalu.

  On October 24, 1950, without consultation with Washington and contrary to the order of September 30, MacArthur ordered a general advance of all his armies to the north. His dispositions were amazing in view of the possibility of Chinese intervention. The 8th Army and 10th Corps were separated. Then the 8th Army was divided into four or five separate columns out of touch with one another. The 10th Corps was divided into three widely separated forces.

  On October 25th the Joint Chiefs protested against this departure from the September 30th order. MacArthur replied that “military necessity” required his actions; that he did not read the September 30 telegram as an order but as advice; and that the Wake Island conference had covered the situation.

  The Joint Chiefs and Marshall fumed, saw the danger involved, but, in view of the tradition since Grant of the authority of a theater commander, were not willing to order MacArthur back to the September 30 line. They thought they were too far away. (There was also MacArthur’s prestige.)

  Now this was a critical point in history. The defeat of the U.S. forces in Korea in December was an incalculable defeat to U.S. foreign policy and destroyed the Truman Administration. If we had had Ridgway in command this would not have happened.

  The extraordinary stupidity of MacArthur’s action is shown by chronology. This divided, seven pronged advance was ordered by MacArthur on October 24.

  October 26, first Chinese prisoners taken.

  November 4th, MacArthur reports Chinese intervention distinct possibility in an intelligence appreciation.

  November 5th, in special communiqué to U.N. MacArthur says North Korean forces have collapsed and “the most offensive act of international lawlessness ever known in history” has occurred in Chinese intervention in power into Korea.

  November 6th, MacArthur in special report to U.N. complains of Chinese intervention. This was debated in the U.N. on November 7th and 8th. (But the advance north continued.) We in State were almost wild by this time because in our meetings at the Pentagon no one could explain what MacArthur was thinking of.

  By this time, unknown to him, MacArthur had over 100,000 Chinese in his rear. See S.L.A. Marshall, The River and the Gauntlet.

  November 8th. The vote to put Chinese intervention on the U.N. Security Council agenda was 10 to 1, Malik voting no. The Red Chinese were invited to appear and rejected invitation on November 11.

  Meanwhile we met frantically at the Pentagon and with you—November 2, November 6, twice, November 13, November 14, November 17, November 29, December 1, December 2, December 3, December 4, etc.

  November 21. 7th ROK [Republic of Korea] division reached Yalu.

  November 21. MacArthur flew to Korea and announced on November 24, general assault which would end the war.

  By November 28–29–30, 8th Army and 10th Corps were in headlong retreat. This was the worst defeat of U.S. forces since Bull Run. The generalship was even more stupid.

  MacArthur’s true nature was never plainer than in defeat. He first lost his head and the game was up, and then started to blame his government for his own assininity.

  December 1st, MacArthur replied to a telegram from U.S. News & World Report that the limitations imposed on him were an enormous handicap, unprecedented in military history. On [the] same day he telegraphed Arthur Krock speaking of odds unprecedented in history.

  December 6th. President sent his directive to submit statements.

  December 11th, MacArthur made a statement that UN command was in fine shape having carried out “tactical withdrawals.”

  You have this in the text of his telegrams on (a) extending the war and (b) being unable to defend Korea and Japan.

  Collins and Vandenberg went to Korea and Ridgway took over in place of [General Walton H.] Walker. By January 17 the situation had improved.

  While we were approaching the 38th Parallel for the second time and discussing policy with our allies, MacArthur, I think in February, issued a statement that from a military standpoint we must materially reduce the existing superiority of our Chinese Communist enemy engaging with impunity in undeclared war against us, with the unprecedented military advantage of sanctuary protection for his military potential against our counterattack upon Chinese soil, before we can seriously consider conducting major operations north of that geographic line. This was open defiance again of the Government’s position.

  On March 7th, he said: “Vital decisions have yet to be made—decisions far beyond the scope of the authority vested in me as the military commander, decisions which are neither solely political nor solely military, but which must provide on the highest international levels an answer to the obscurities which so becloud the unsolved problems raised by Red China’s undeclared war in Korea.”

  In other words: war against China.

  Then came the episode of the President’s proposed statement and MacArthur’s interference. (Your text, page 722.)

  Another order to MacArthur to make no statements.

  He immediately made one to the effect that he had ordered the army to cross the parallel at will. This brought violent reaction from Nehru and others.

  Then the letter to Martin, released April 5th. At the same time the Daily Telegraph published an interview with the British General H. G. Martin, who quoted MacArthur to the same effect.

  Senator Ferguson proposed that a congressional committee go to Tokyo to learn from MacArthur his views on how war should be conducted. Smith of New Jersey supported him.

  P. 738, et seq. I have made some notes on the margin of your account of the meetings preceding MacArthur’s relief. The following is an account put together last year by Averell and me from our notes and recollections.

  Pursuant to messages received from you on the afternoon of Thursday, April 5, there met with you in your study from 11:30 to 12:30 Friday morning, April 6, following the Cabinet meeting, General Marshall, General Bradley, Harriman, and myself. We discussed the question for an hour, and it was apparent that everyone took the most serious possible view of the situation. It was apparent that General Marshall had not come to a conclusion and wished to reflect further; also that General Bradley would have to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I believed that General MacArthur should be relieved, but thought that it was essential that you should act, if possible, with the unanimous advice of your military advisors—General Marshall, General Bradley, and the Joint Chiefs. Therefore, at this meeting, I analyzed the situation, without stating any other conclusion than that it should be thought over very carefully because it was a matter of the utmost seriousness. Harriman argued very strongly for the relief of MacArthur.

  The next morning, Saturday, April 7, at 8:50 a.m., the same group met for a short further meeting with you in your office. At that time you requested General Marshall and General Bradley to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and be prepared on Monday to make a final recommendation to you. On Sunday, the 8th of April, you sent for me to come to Blair House, discussed the matter briefly with me, and told me that you had consulted Snyder and, I think, Vinson. You said that you would be prepared to act on Monday when Marshall and Bradley made their report.

  We met in your office at nine o’clock on Monday morning—Marshall, Bradley, Harriman, and I. Bradley reported that the Joint Chiefs had met with him on Sunday, and it was his and their unanimous judgment that MacArthur should be relieved. General Marshall said that he had come to this conclusion. I said that I agreed entirely, and Harriman re-affirmed his opinion of Friday, to the same effect. You said that your own conclusion was the same and you directed General Bradley to prepare the orders and confer with me, since the office of Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, was also involved. The same group returned to your office at 3:15 on Monday afternoon, April 10, with drafted orders, which you signed. It was decided that the notification of these orders should be given to General MacArthur thro
ugh [Frank] Pace [Jr., Secretary of the Army, 1950–53], who was then in Korea, we thought at 8th Army Headquarters. You directed me to send the orders with a message also prepared, to Pace, through [John J.] Muccio, directing him to go to Tokyo at once and convey the orders. Our message was delayed in reaching Pace, both through mechanical difficulties in transmission and because Pace was not at Headquarters but was at the front with Ridgway. About ten o’clock Monday night I was informed that, due to this delay and to the fact that Bradley had reported the rumor of a leak, you had thought it best to send the message also by direct Army wire to MacArthur. I was then instructed to, and did, inform Congressional leaders and also got Dulles to come to my house, telling him of what had occurred and asking him to go to Japan to assure the Yoshida Government that the change in commander would not in any way affect our policy of pushing the Japanese Peace Treaty to a speedy conclusion. This Dulles agreed to do.

  This is the story according to the best recollection of Harriman and myself. I think it important that you should have it because it differs in some respects from the account which appears in your manuscript. Both Harriman and I were convinced then and now that your mind had already been made up, but it seemed to us then and now that you acted very wisely in not expressing your opinion to anyone until you had the views of all, which happily turned out to be unanimous. This proved to be a very strong point in the hearings which later occurred before the joint Congressional committee which investigated the MacArthur relief.

  Pp. 629–630. Suggest cutting out the paragraph at the bottom of the page. It is very speculative. I doubt whether there was a master plan there. We also tend to attribute too much of this to the Russians.

  I have not made detailed notes on your manuscript of the MacArthur story. It would help it a lot to pull it into sharper focus along the lines of my outline. Emerson said to Holmes after reading his critical essay on Plato—“If you strike at a king, you must kill him.” MacArthur can be shot right through the heart. I do not believe this text does it.

  [Truman marginalia: “Something to that. Let’s shoot him. God knows he should be!”]

  P. 658. Verbal change.

  P. 666. The statement attributed to me is quite contrary to what I have said. Wasn’t it, rather, that, if while we were so heavily engaged in Korea we permitted Formosa to be attacked and fall, we would raise the gravest dangers in Japan and the Philippines which were the bases from which our operations were being conducted and upon which our whole Pacific position rested? [Truman marginalia: “This is true.”]

  Pp. 721 and 722. Verbal.

  Pp. 737–8. I would omit this which seems to me untrue.

  Pp. 738–40. Please see my notes above on MacArthur’s relief.

  P. 677, 2nd line. This specific reference will embarrass Attlee and should come out.

  P. 686. You never can support the charge that MacArthur wanted war. His argument is that there would have been no war. You can win on the charge that he was willing to risk war when it was neither necessary nor warranted to do so.

  P. 689. These two sentences I would leave out. The first is garbled. The second seems very strange to me. I thought our Kansas line was about the strongest position in Korea. These southerly lines were so impractical anyway that even reference to them will give the idea that you or Bradley were contemplating them.

  P. 719. Please cut out marked paragraph. MacArthur’s generalship in Korea was awful and his leadership worse. Have you read S.L.A. Marshall’s The River and the Gauntlet? Don’t go down in history as authority for this dreadful endorsement. [Truman marginalia: “Let’s look. I’m in doubt.”]

  See also comments noted on pp. 744, 751, 755. Are these instructions declassified? Is it necessary to print them?

  Pp. 763–4. I suggest cutting the marked paragraphs and substituting the short suggested conclusion. These paragraphs add nothing to the story already told. Furthermore, the word “unthinkable” drives me wild. If something is unthinkable it is unwritable too, or ought to be. Unthinkable is a new kind of superlative which has been downgraded to mean that almost everyone has already thought the unthinkable thoughts. My favorite sentence would be “to implement the over-all, unthinkable picture.”

  P. 786. Isn’t it poor taste to designate your own lawyers as “distinguished” men while your opponents’ are “high powered corporation lawyers”? They were all lawyers and like Senators, they are all “distinguished” or “eminent.” Let’s stick to tradition.

  P. 792. This should come out. The sound rule is, never argue with the court that decides against you. It impresses no one. You have made all the arguments in the foregoing pages. This hurt you much more than it does the court.

  P. 797, 1st paragraph. The first sentence is not correct. It would be if rewritten: “The off-shore oil and mineral resources from 1ow watermark to the three mile limit fall, as the Supreme Court has held, within the full ‘dominion’ and ‘power’ of the United States Government. From the three mile limit to the end of the continental shelf it is the policy of the United States Government, in the words of a proclamation which I signed on September 28, 1945, that they are ‘appertaining to the United States, subject to its jurisdiction and control.’ ”

  I would also eliminate the paragraph at the bottom of the page. The claims of Texas and Louisiana vary from time to time. But the point is not that federal control is the only logical position. The other positions are logical enough, if that matters at all. The point is the federal control is the right answer.

  P. 810. The marked sentence is a bad one. It is wrong for a man on the court to have further ambitions. It is Douglas’s curse. If Hughes “used” the Court, that is no reason why Fred [Vinson] should. But Hughes didn’t. In his case it was a draft, as it would not have been in Fred’s.

  In view of the fact that Fred’s heart we now know was in poor shape in 1952, I would leave out the last sentence on this page. It sounds a little as though you were callous about his survival and you have already expressed your opinion of his qualifications.

  P. 822. I would leave out this paragraph. In the first place, I don’t think that the phrase, “The mess in Washington,” was Adlai’s at all. So he did not waste his gift for phrasing. He quoted the other fellow’s question in answering it. This may have been a mistake. But it was like the attack on you for the “red herring” sentence which was not yours but your questioner’s.

  In the second place, it may or may not have been a mistake for any candidate not an incumbent President to say that if there were any corruption around he would be twice as much against it as the other fellow. The alternative was to deny that there was any and get on the defensive at once.

  This paragraph doesn’t sound well coming from you. In fact, I would be just as happy, indeed more so, without any discussion of Adlai’s mistakes.

  P. 829. The sentence at the top of the page has no verb. This sentence and the next paragraph I would regard as really saying nothing, but leaving a disparaging atmosphere about Ike which is a little small. If you leave the paragraph, “in the first instance,” etc., in, the last sentence needs something. Is that cloak worn by all politicians, including you, or only bad politicians? I am for cutting the whole business out.

  These suggestions were written under great pressure for time and are not very tactfully put. I hope that they won’t offend you. The book is a fine job. It ought to be sound as a bell on every point, and is on most of them. My points are intended to raise a few points which I hope you can consider when you go over the galleys, though this may be difficult. I did not realize that you were so far along until your last letter. When my work was nearly done. So I send it along anyway.

  Our most affectionate greetings.

  Most sincerely,

  Dean

  Truman expresses gratitude for Acheson’s comments on his memoirs, especially those pointing out errors.

  August 12, 1955

  Dear Dean:

  It was a great treat to me to talk with you the other
day. To learn that my mysterious $5,000 Library contributor is a friend of yours made the contribution twice as valuable to me.

  I am still reading proof and correcting errors and misstatements. It is certainly surprising what can creep into a simply common sense statement of what is supposed to be fact. Someone who doesn’t know his Scripture has quoted old man Job as saying, “Oh! that mine enemy would write a book.” Job didn’t say it in his book, but it’s a good quotation anyway. I’ve been told or read it somewhere that Herodotus said that “the man, the event and what happened hardly ever arrived at the same place at the same time, but a good historian would take care of that.”

  Well, I guess that’s a good idea but I’ve tried to avoid it in my effort, thanks to the ideal help I’ve had in the form of an intellectually honest Secretary of State. There have been some others too who have said plainly and bluntly that my memory is at fault. And, Dean, I like it. There’s nothing worse for a man’s character than friends who tell him always how good he is.

  May you and Alice have a wonderful trip. I hope Bess and I may have the good luck to see you when you return.

  Most sincerely,

  Harry

  The Achesons left for a lengthy vacation in Europe, stretching over two months, sometime in August.

  Dean Acheson and Harry Truman with Winston Churchill aboard the presidential yacht, the U.S.S. Williamsburg, during Churchill’s brief visit to Washington on January 5, 1952. Also pictured is Sir Anthony Eden, British Foreign Secretary.

  4

  August 1955 to September 1956

  The Potsdam Papers – “Intellectual Prostitutes” – Margaret Is Married – A Trip to Europe