The General vs. the President

by H. W. Brands

  The end-the-war offensive began with great promise. Seven divisions of American Eighth Army and ROK troops, with a brigade of British troops, advanced on a sixty-mile front in northwestern Korea, crossing frozen rivers and encountering minimal resistance. American B-29 bombers pounded rail lines and depots, drawing only sporadic and ineffectual anti-aircraft fire. MacArthur’s forces gained eight, ten, as many as fifteen miles in mere hours. “The giant U. N. pincer moved according to schedule,” he announced after flying over the front and along the Yalu, where he instructed his pilot to dip the wings to salute the first American troops to reach the river. “Our losses were extraordinarily light,” he told reporters. “The logistic situation is fully geared to sustained offensive operations. The justice of our cause and the promise of early completion of our mission is reflected in the morale of the troops and commanders alike.”

  And then, on the night of November 25, the offensive hit a hidden wall. The Chinese troops had not gone away; they had gone to ground. And they were augmented by many more of their comrades, who had slipped into Korea undetected by MacArthur’s reconnaissance and intelligence. They appeared as if from nowhere and slammed into Johnnie Walker’s right flank. More than 100,000 Chinese troops surged at the American and ROK units from the front, the flank and soon the rear. Another 100,000 assaulted Ned Almond’s X Corps farther east. The surprise and ferocity of the Chinese attack resulted in heavy casualties, compelling Walker and Almond to pull back—in some cases to fight their way back.

  The extent and nature of the Chinese offensive took time to sink in. The first reports of Chinese contact put MacArthur in mind of the engagements of late October, which had come to seem mere warnings, followed by withdrawal. But by the third day of the new offensive, the general was willing to acknowledge that things had changed dramatically. “The developments resulting from our assault movements have now assumed a clear definition,” he wrote to the joint chiefs. “All hopes of localization of the Korean conflict to enemy forces composed of North Korean troops with alien token elements can now be completely abandoned. The Chinese military forces are committed in North Korea in great and ever increasing strength.” Intelligence and the interrogation of prisoners caused MacArthur to estimate the number of Chinese he opposed at 200,000. “No pretext of minor support under the guise of volunteerism or other subterfuge now has the slightest validity. We face an entirely new war.”

  MacArthur almost never admitted that a military situation was beyond his control. But the Chinese attack jolted him into doing so. His air force couldn’t interdict the Chinese columns crossing the frozen Yalu. The enemy outnumbered him and grew stronger by the day. He threw the matter back on Washington. “The resulting situation presents an entire new picture which broadens the potentialities to world-embracing considerations beyond the sphere of decision by the theater commander. This command has done everything humanly possible within its capabilities but is now faced with conditions beyond its control and its strength.”

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  CHINA’S SURPRISE OFFENSIVE stunned Truman as much as it did MacArthur. The president had been counting the days until the war’s end—until Christmas, when MacArthur would start withdrawing the American troops and the president could salute the season of peace and goodwill by claiming America’s first victory over communism. Now Truman felt that all that had been done since June was for nothing—indeed for worse than nothing. American troops were being mauled, and the mauling would likely get worse, because there appeared no limit to the reinforcements China could put into the fight. Truman cursed as he asked himself how he had got into this mess.

  In search of answers, and options, the president convened the National Security Council. Omar Bradley produced a map and sketched the disposition of forces in northern Korea. The joint chiefs chairman explained that MacArthur’s offensive had begun a week before but had been cut short by the sudden and unexpected appearance of the 200,000 Chinese troops. Referring to MacArthur’s cable declaring that the conflict had become an “entirely new war,” Bradley said that this had caused the chiefs to consider whether to send MacArthur a new directive to guide him. They had debated the question at length before reaching a conclusion. “No new directive should be issued for the time being, certainly not until the military situation clarifies,” Bradley said. “The reports coming in over the press and radio about the strength and momentum of the Chinese communist offensive might well be exaggerated.” He doubted that American lines had been breached as spectacularly as the reports were saying. “It is entirely possible that the Chinese offensive might not go very far because of the extremely difficult terrain, which we would find advantageous from the defensive point of view, and because the Chinese communists have a difficult supply situation.” Even so, the chiefs were watching the situation closely and might feel it desirable to issue a new directive in forty-eight or seventy-two hours.

  Bradley raised a second issue, which he considered more immediately serious than the situation on the ground. This was the balance of airpower over the battlefield. American intelligence revealed that the Chinese had or could have at least three hundred bombers based at fields in Manchuria. “These bombers could seriously curtail our air lift, and our planes are jammed so closely on the fields in Korea that surprise raids could do us very great damage,” Bradley said. Yet despite this vulnerability, the chiefs did not recommend that MacArthur receive authorization to bomb the Manchurian bases.

  Truman interrupted to ask if there was anything that could be done to mitigate the vulnerability of the American aircraft.

  “There is not, short of moving many of our planes back to Japan,” Hoyt Vandenberg replied. “This would, of course, mean a considerable slowing up of our operations.”

  Truman turned to George Marshall. The defense secretary said he had consulted with the joint chiefs and the service secretaries, asking each for their views, which he proceeded to summarize. “We are engaged with other members of the UN in suppressing a Korean aggression,” he said. “We are now faced by a new Chinese aggression.” The United States should maintain the UN coalition at almost all costs. And it should resolutely resist broadening the war, which would play into Moscow’s hands by weakening the United States elsewhere. “We should use all available political, economic and psychological action to limit the war,” Marshall said. “We should not go into Chinese Communist territory and we should not use Chinese Nationalist forces. To do either of these things would increase the danger of war with the Chinese Communists.” Marshall repeated, “We should not get into a general war with the Chinese Communists.”

  Marshall spoke of the situation on the ground in Korea. He noted that American forces in northeastern Korea were widely scattered. “There is a big gap in our lines, and I don’t know what MacArthur intends to do about that,” he said. But he added, “It is his problem. I won’t even ask MacArthur what he is going to do. We have no business, here in Washington, 8,000 miles away, asking the local commander what his tactical plans are. General Collins here, and General Smith”—Walter Bedell Smith, currently director of the CIA, formerly Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff—“know that all during the Battle of the Bulge the War Department did not ask them one single question. We let them do the fighting. It’s the same way now. We must follow hour by hour any developments pertaining to our getting further involved with the Chinese Communists, but we won’t ask MacArthur his tactical plans.”

  Marshall commanded the respect of any gathering he addressed. The members of Truman’s NSC sat silent and attentive to this point in the defense secretary’s presentation. But Alben Barkley thought he owed it to Truman and the administration to interrupt and relate what he was hearing on Capitol Hill, where the vice president retained close contacts. Democratic members of Congress were outraged at MacArthur’s boastfulness, which now seemed not just empty but insane. “Did General MacArthur make the statement attributed to him a week ago that the boys in Korea would be home by Christmas?” Barkley asked. “Did
he know what was going on? If he did know, why did he say it? How in the world could a man in his position be guilty of such an indiscretion?”

  Truman answered the question. “He made the statement,” the president said. “You will have to draw your own conclusions as to why he did it.”

  Barkley shook his head. “He couldn’t have known about the Chinese Communists if he made the statement in good faith,” he said. Barkley thought it was a stupid statement if sincere. “He couldn’t have gotten the boys home anyway.” Again he shook his head. “I can’t comprehend why the statement was made.”

  Omar Bradley, perhaps inclined to defend a fellow officer, proposed what he called a personal theory of MacArthur’s prediction. Bradley suggested that the general’s boast that American troops would be home by Christmas was a statement for Chinese consumption, a way of reassuring the Chinese that the United States had no permanent designs on Korea and were no threat to Manchuria. Yet Bradley acknowledged that even if this had been MacArthur’s thinking, he should have thought more carefully. “It was still a rash statement.”

  Truman didn’t disagree, but he cautioned against any sign from the administration that would suggest displeasure with MacArthur’s performance. “No matter what we might think about MacArthur’s statement, we have to be very careful not to pull the rug out from under him,” Truman said. “We cannot afford to damage MacArthur’s prestige at this point.”

  Marshall said the administration would simply have to deal with MacArthur’s statement. “We regard it as an embarrassment we just have to get around in some manner.” Marshall continued, “In defense of what Bradley says, MacArthur thought he had only 100,000 Chinese communists to deal with.” The 200,000 he now faced were a huge surprise. Yet the surprise was understandable. “They are skillful in concealing themselves in that terrain,” Marshall said.

  Barkley was far from mollified. “How can we have any confidence in MacArthur’s estimate that there are 200,000 Chinese communists facing us now?” the vice president demanded. “A week ago he thought there only 100,000. Maybe there aren’t 200,000; maybe there are 300,000 facing us. We can’t hold on if the Chinese communists go in for an all-out offensive. What do we do?”

  “I can’t give an immediate answer,” Marshall replied. “I will say that we can’t get completely sewed up in Korea. We can’t tie up everything we have there.” Marshall said that until very recently all the nation’s defense planning had been based on the assumption that MacArthur would succeed in Korea. Now the administration had to consider what to do if MacArthur failed. “This is a gloomy possibility,” he said. And it potentially presented a hard question: “How can we get out with honor?”

  Joe Collins informed the group that there were no fresh units to send to reinforce MacArthur. And there would not be any until March 1951. Individual soldiers might be sent as replacements after January 1, but full units would take longer.

  Marshall observed that the individual replacements wouldn’t do much good. MacArthur was already short of American troops by about 30 percent. Many American divisions had large numbers of ROK troops filling in.

  Collins nonetheless thought the situation was manageable. American forces could retreat to the narrow neck of the Korean peninsula and dig in there. “Despite the shortages, and unless the Tenth Corps really gets cut off, MacArthur can hold a line,” Collins said.

  Truman agreed, perhaps more hopefully than confidently. “MacArthur can hold a line,” the president said.

  Truman asked Dean Acheson to address the diplomatic issues the current crisis raised.

  The secretary of state was blunt. “The events of the last few hours have moved us very much closer to a general war,” he said. “There has always been some Chinese involvement in the fighting in Korea. First, the Chinese let the Koreans in Manchuria go back home to fight in Korea. Then they let a few ‘volunteers’ go into Korea. Now there is a mass movement of Chinese forces into Korea. What has happened is that the cloak of Chinese neutrality has been lifted gradually, and we have an open, powerful offensive attack.” But the conflict was bigger than Korea or even China. “We must all think about what happens in Korea as a world matter. We must think about it all around the world at the same time because we face the Soviet Union around the world. Whatever we think of current happenings in Korea must be in the light of world events.” Acheson strongly endorsed the view put forward by Marshall about limiting the Korean conflict. “We must not, under any circumstances, become involved in a general war with China,” he said.

  Acheson stepped conceptually back. “We must ask ourselves: What do we want in Korea?” He looked around the room. “The answer is easy,” he said. “We want to terminate it. We don’t want to beat China in Korea—we can’t. We don’t want to beat China any place—we can’t. They can put in more than we can.” American policy in Korea must keep the broader challenge in mind. “Our great objective must be to hold an area, to terminate the fighting, to turn over some area to the Republic of Korea, and to get out so that we can get ahead with building up our own strength, and building up the strength of Europe.” Europe was where the Cold War would be won or lost. The administration must never forget this essential point.

  Truman nodded agreement with what Acheson and the others had said. The Soviet Union, not China, was America’s principal enemy; Europe was the heart of America’s forward defense; Korea was symbolically important but not strategically vital; America must not alienate its allies. The president was pleased at the consensus in the highest councils of the administration.

  He left the meeting satisfied—but still uncertain. He knew that MacArthur had his own ideas about American strategy and that the general, by a single command, might put the administration’s consensus at naught.

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  TRUMAN HAD REFRAINED from speaking publicly about the rapidly shifting events in Korea, hoping time would make things clearer. When it didn’t, he decided he had to say something, so he called a news conference, which he opened with a prepared statement. “Recent developments in Korea confront the world with a serious crisis,” Truman said. “The Chinese Communist leaders have sent their troops from Manchuria to launch a strong and well-organized attack against the United Nations forces in North Korea. This has been done despite prolonged and earnest efforts to bring home to the Communist leaders of China the plain fact that neither the United Nations nor the United States has any aggressive intentions toward China.” Truman couldn’t predict with confidence what the immediate future would yield. “The Chinese attack was made in great force, and it still continues. It has resulted in the forced withdrawal of large parts of the United Nations command. The battlefield situation is uncertain at this time. We may suffer reverses as we have suffered them before.” But the resolve of the United States and the United Nations was as firm as ever. “The forces of the United Nations have no intention of abandoning their mission in Korea.” What happened in Korea mattered for the whole world, Truman said. “If the United Nations yields to the forces of aggression, no nation will be safe or secure. If aggression is successful in Korea, we can expect it to spread throughout Asia and Europe.”

  Truman said his administration would respond to the new situation by redoubling its diplomatic efforts at the United Nations and by accelerating the rearmament of America and America’s allies. The latter action was particularly crucial, Truman said. “Because this new act of aggression in Korea is only a part of a worldwide pattern of danger to all the free nations of the world, it is more necessary than ever before for us to increase at a very rapid rate the combined military strength of the free nations.” He pledged to work toward an integrated military command for the North Atlantic alliance, and he said he would be sending a supplemental defense request to Congress within days. He hoped the legislature and the American people would respond quickly. “This is a time for all our citizens to lay aside differences and unite in firmness and mutual determination to do what is best for our country and the cause of freed
om throughout the world.”

  When Truman took questions, reporters clamored to know what the president was hearing from MacArthur. “In what detail were you informed about these MacArthur moves?” one asked, apparently referring to the win-the-war offensive.

  “Every detail,” Truman replied.

  “Did you or the State Department raise the question of whether this offensive would affect the chances of a negotiated settlement with the Peiping government?”

  “The whole matter was clearly discussed with General MacArthur every day.”

  “Mr. President, there has been some criticism of General MacArthur in the European press—”

  “Some in the American press, too, if I’m not mistaken,” Truman said.

  “Particularly in the British press—”

  “They are always for a man when he is winning, but when he is in a little trouble, they all jump on him with what ought to be done, which they didn’t tell him before. He has done a good job, and he is continuing to do a good job. Go ahead with your question.”

  “The particular criticism is that he exceeded his authority and went beyond the point he was supposed to go.”