“Has the time arrived to remove the laurel wreath from the brow of the ‘American Caesar’?”

By James Ellman

DOUGLAS MACARTHUR was fired by President Truman more than 70 years ago, but opinions regarding the general’s legacy continue to generate strong emotions today just as they did back in April of 1951.

Many argue he was the most gifted military leader this nation has ever produced. Others believe he was a dangerous narcissist and a mediocre general who defied a president in an effort to start a Third World War. A close reading of the historical record yields a decision much closer to the latter more negative assessment of MacArthur.

While the general certainly had his strong points, he repeated several errors throughout his career: he failed to prepare his men for battle in peacetime, underestimated the military capabilities of opponents, was philosophically opposed to shifting his forces into a defensive posture when necessary and ignored the importance of logistics in modern war. In light of such flaws, has the time arrived to remove the laurel wreath from the brow of the ‘American Caesar’?

The following will discuss two of MacArthur’s campaigns to highlight his weaknesses.

The Path to Bataan

After becoming a military hero for leading formations of men within the 42^nd Division in the First World War, MacArthur returned from Europe to a successful peacetime career in which he rose to become Chief of Staff of the Army from 1930 to 1935. Had MacArthur then retired from active military service, as was standard practice, few would likely remember him today. Instead, MacArthur moved to Manila in 1935 to oversee the formation of the nascent Philippine Army as the U.S. colony prepared to attain full independence.

While American relations with Japan deteriorated, several divisions of Filipinos were inducted into the new force. MacArthur assured Washington that the morale and training of his Philippine Army was excellent and that he would soon be able to repel a Japanese invasion of 100,000 men. This assessment was terribly flawed. In fact, MacArthur had little actual contact with his green recruits; he rarely left his home and headquarters located in downtown Manila.

At his own urging, MacArthur was recalled to the U.S. Army and placed in charge of all forces in the Philippines in July of 1941. Promised by the general that the islands could be held, Washington rushed reinforcements to the colony’s garrison, eventually sending additional infantry formations, 100 modern tanks and scores of its newest fighters and bombers.

MacArthur remained calm and expressed confidence that war would not break out before the middle of 1942, by which point he would have all necessary defenses in place. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall offered to send another division of American infantry to the colony, but MacArthur insisted they were not needed.

For decades the U.S. plan for the defense of the Philippines had been to cede control of the islands except the Bataan peninsula and island of Corregidor to deny an invading enemy the use of Manila Bay for as long as possible. MacArthur successfully argued that this strategy was ‘defeatist’ and urged that the entire colony be defended with a primary concentration of men and supplies along the expected landing beaches on Luzon’s Lingayen Gulf. As the general pronounced the Japanese military to be incompetent, such a strategy seemed sound.

Despite dire war warnings from Washington in late 1941, military forces in the Philippines remained on a lackadaisical peacetime training schedule. MacArthur was not the only American general to command unprepared and poorly equipped troops on the eve of America’s entry into the Second World War, nor was he alone in underestimating the abilities of the Japanese military. However, he claimed to be an East Asia expert, and assured his superiors that his forces were sufficiently prepared for battle even as he argued war was not imminent.

After the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor on December 7, there were several hours in which all remained quiet in the Philippines. Despite having an opportunity to withdraw his air force southwards to relative safety, or even send it north to attack enemy bases on Formosa (present-day Taiwan), he did neither. Subsequently much of his aircraft were destroyed on the ground by enemy land-based air attack on December 8. In the weeks that followed, fortifications at Bataan were not improved, nor were supplies moved there to prepare the peninsula to sustain a lengthy siege.

When the Japanese landed on the beaches along the Lingayen Gulf on December 22, MacArthur was offered an opportunity to maul the invaders. Instead, what took place was a debacle for the defenders.

High seas slowed Japan’s landing of much of its heavy equipment accompanying the 43,000 men it put ashore. The 25,000 men of the U.S. Army garrison on Luzon, and more than 60,000 men of the Philippine Army assisted by 100 M3 tanks should have been able to inflict heavy losses on the enemy during the landings. Instead, MacArthur refused to commit his armor and many Filipino soldiers melted into the hills. Inexplicably, he reported to Washington that the Japanese had landed 80,000 to 100,000 men, while he claimed he had only 40,000 of his own on Luzon. Once ashore with their heavy equipment, the invaders brushed aside resistance along the coast, and MacArthur reluctantly ordered a retreat to Bataan.

The defenders were soon besieged on the peninsula and the small adjacent island of Corregidor. This allowed the Japanese to shift forces from the Philippines to points further south. While Luzon was surrounded by Japanese forces on all sides, MacArthur repeatedly cabled Washington demanding that the U.S. Navy come to his aid and break through what he erroneously called a “paper blockade.” He raged against FDR’s ‘Germany First’ policy and demanded that the U.S. and British navies shift their forces out of the Atlantic and Mediterranean so as to relieve his garrison.

Woefully short on supplies, the men on Bataan were soon on starvation rations and weakened by disease. MacArthur could not bring himself to face his men. He only made the short trip from Corregidor to Bataan once during the siege. The defenders’ lines were compressed by the much smaller Japanese force, which at one point numbered only around 3,000 effective troops.

MacArthur considered a counteroffensive to retake Manila, but decided against such a move as he believed he would eventually be forced back into Bataan. As the garrison’s position deteriorated, President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to escape to Australia in March, 1942 rather than surrender.

After the general left, Marshall and the War Department were dumbfounded to learn that nearly 90,000 defenders remained on Bataan and Corregidor. Starving and diseased, the garrison surrendered in early May. It was one of the most devastating defeats in U.S. military history. The Japanese had quickly achieved air supremacy, successfully landed an outnumbered amphibious force in the face of an opposing army and inflicted dramatically higher losses on the defenders.

The Race to the Yalu

In 1950 MacArthur was serving as the Allied commander of occupation forces in Japan and was once again called upon to lead an army in war.

As he did in 1941, the general spent the great majority of his time at his home and his office in downtown Tokyo while his men remained poorly trained and unready for battle. When the North Koreans crossed the 38^th parallel and invaded the South, MacArthur was made commander of the UN force tasked with resisting the communist onslaught. The U.S. Eighth Army was rushed across the Sea of Japan to land at the southern port of Pusan. Unprepared American units suffered painful defeats in the early days of the war, but a defensive line was successfully structured along what became known as the Pusan Perimeter.

Over the subsequent months, the U.S. and allied forces streamed into the region and increasingly gained the upper hand against the North Koreans. Not only did MacArthur’s forces come to outnumber the North Koreans by a ratio of four to one, but they had vastly more planes, tanks, artillery and naval ships. MacArthur carried out a landing in the enemy rear at Inchon in September despite the many risks associated with an amphibious operation there. He described the landing as a 5,000 to one gamble, but it paid off and shattered the North Korean forces.

MacArthur was authorized to advance across the 38^th parallel, and as UN forces moved forward, dangerously stretching their supply lines, Communist China threatened to enter the conflict to protect its North Korean allies. MacArthur believed however that Beijing had missed its chance to intervene earlier in 1950 and would be able to do little as his troops overran the North.

President Truman and the Joint Chiefs were much more concerned. On October 15, the President and JCS Chairman General Omar Bradley met with MacArthur on Wake Island to discuss the growing crisis. MacArthur assured them that the Chinese would not intervene. Even if they did, he pointed out, it would be a small contingent and his control of the air would allow him to slaughter their forces if they dared cross the border along the Yalu River. Despite his claims, the first units of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) were already slipping south unnoticed into North Korea.

On October 17, MacArthur ordered his troops north of the Chongchon River with instructions to drive to the Yalu. They were low on supplies and many were still wearing summer uniforms, even as temperatures were beginning to plunge.

That’s when the communists counter attacked. Overwhelmed, the UN forces were hurled back to the Chongchon with heavy losses. Despite taking many Chinese prisoners, MacArthur insisted that Beijing had not actually intervened and that complete victory in Korea would be achieved.

He reformed his army and launched what became known as the “Home by Christmas” offensive on November 24. Advancing UN columns, separated from each other by steep mountain ranges, found themselves ambushed by large formations of the PVA. MacArthur’s army was thrown back in confusion taking severe casualties and abandoning much of their equipment. In the rout that followed, UN forces retreated until they had relinquished not only all of North Korea but South’s capital of Seoul, as well.

Back in Tokyo, MacArthur was enraged by China’s intervention and demanded access to atomic weapons to be used as he saw fit. He argued that the PVA had invaded in such overwhelming numbers that it would be impossible to hold even Pusan in the south with conventional arms alone.

Luckily, General Mathew Ridgway arrived to take control of the tactical situation on the ground in Korea. He quickly made use of the massive UN advantages in armor, airpower and artillery, stabilized the line and began a series of small offensives that inflicted outsized losses on the PVA. After Seoul changed hands again, the front lines stabilized and changed little through the end of the war.

Beyond the press reports of “Invading Chinese Hordes” that had overwhelmed the UN command, the truth was that PVA forces committed at the end of 1950 were actually outnumbered by MacArthur’s men. The UN force at the time totaled 535,000 personnel while the invading Chinese had slightly more than 300,000 men assisted by less than 100,000 North Korean soldiers. It is true that MacArthur likely had fewer frontline infantrymen than the enemy, but his army could commit vastly more firepower through the use of M26 tanks, 155mm guns, F9F jet fighters and B-29 bombers. In contrast, the PVA had no armor, little artillery, few trucks and a significant portion of their troops were armed only with grenades. The Chinese sent a force armed akin to infantry troops in 1914 to attack a larger Cold War army bristling with modern weaponry. While we rarely discuss this in the U.S. today, the PVA’s victory is one of the most impressive in military history.

American Caesar?

Critiques of MacArthur are often focused on his confrontation with President Truman. However, in both 1941 to 42 and 1950 to 51, the general suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of inferior forces. An honest review of MacArthur’s wartime record yields a conclusion that while he was certainly not America’s worst general, he was far from its best.

James Ellman is the author of MacArthur Reconsidered: General Douglas MacArthur as a Wartime Commander. An investor and historian who lives in Hawaii, he has written several books including Hitler’s Great Gamble: A New Look at German Strategy, Operation Barbarossa, and the Axis Defeat in World War II (Stackpole, 2019).