Was Douglas MacArthur the Greatest commander of WW2 or an absolute amateur?
I for one dislike Douglas MacArthur's command abilities, but I feel I must say that this thread is not for the discussion of his morality or career as a politician but merely to assess his skill as a military commander. Since I am not well versed in the Island campaigns during the Pacific War then I feel that I must ask for the consensus.
The problem with a good analysis of Douglas MacArthur's military skill is, in my opinion, based mostly around the propaganda that was placed around his character both by himself and by the media and government. It seems though that everybody is relatively split on the issue; that MacArthur is a horrible military commander or that, and I am quoting this, "the Caesar of America" or the "Greatest Commander of WW2".
Here are some arguments that I have found:
http://historum.com/war-military-his...general-5.html
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
For
AgainstMacArthur would spend the next few years as Field Marshall in the Philippines, and he was in command there when the Japanese attacked. MacArthur's record in foresight is somewhat mixed here. He can claim credit for brilliantly recognizing the threat that the Japanese posed and for calling (always in vain) for preparations to be made for a war with them, the Philippines reinforced. And yet he was vastly too confident about when and how the Japanese would attack the Philippines themselves, and this led him to the first of the two truly great blunders that he would make in his career. In fairness to him this may well be rooted in the fact with the meager resources he had to work with he would have been doomed to defeat no matter what the Japanese had done, and in rebellion against this he opted for optimism, but the result was the when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and were sweeping towards the Philippines MacArthur, stunned, seemed to go into a strange kind of shock. Like Napoleon at Waterloo or Stonewall Jackson during the Seven Days, he was bizarrely inactive for a crucial period of time, his massive mind apparently temporarily overloaded. In that crucial period of time disaster struck, with a series of miscommunications that likely would not have occurred had MacArthur been fully conscious leading to a good part of what little air force he had being left exposed to be bombed to pieces. Shortly afterwards MacArthur snapped out of his paralysis and was fully back to his old self, the finest general America had ever produced, but the damage had been done.
When the Japanese invaded the Philippines MacArthur soon realised that he could not oppose them directly, and so he made the decision to withdraw his forces to Bataan and Coregidor. He then proceeded to more than make up for his initial sorry start to the war. The maneuvers by which MacArthur withdrew to Coregidor/Bataan must truly stand as amongst the most brilliant of all time. A withdrawl in the face of the enemy is difficult at all times, but what MacArthur set out to do was mind-boggling in its complexity. He did it anyway. Even some of his strongest critics were rhapsodic about his coolness and military genius displayed in the withdrawl. Having completed that, he then proceeded with his legendary stand at Bataan, which lasted for months and was one of the great episodes of heroism of the entire war. On a regular basis MacArthur fearlessly risked his life, more than justifying his being awarded the Medal of Honor after his escape to Australia. The stand at Bataan was the only real bright spot for the Allies during those early grim days of the Pacific War.
Eventually MacArthur wasordered by FDR to escape, and in an adventure that could almost have come out of a novel he did so, arriving in Australia, where he made his famous vow:
"I came through and I Will Return."
MacArthur was named Commander in Chief of the South-West Pacific Theatre, and he carried out that role in what was probably the greatest few years of his entire brilliant 52 year military career. Basil Liddel Hart was now but one of the rapt admirers of the extraordinary feats of military genius that MacArthur carried out. Unquestionably he was the greatest strategist, the greatest tactician, that the war produced, with feats of logistics unrivalled to boot. His massive intellect was fully focussed upon the task at hand, and all with close contact to him were under no doubts that the South West Pacific Theatre was his completely. Nothing in it happened without his knowledge, without his will behind it, it was said. He not only knew everything about what was happening on his own side but seemed to know everything about the enemy as well. He was going over an intelligence report, hundreds of pages long and at one point called attention to a particular Japanese unit mentioned, saying that it could not be in New Guinea as it had just been posted to Singapore. That was typical of him. Commanding American, Dutch, Australian, and Filipino soldiers in a series of "Triphibious Thrusts" he carried out again and again operations that no other commander of the war could rival in complex brilliance. MacArthur never doubted that there was such thing as a military art, and he was now performing as a virtuoso.
Prime Minister John Curtin of Australia turned over command of all Australian troops to MacArthur, and MacArthur put them to good use. Together with the American divisions begininng to land he made the crucial decision that he would send them to make a stand against the Japanese in Papua New Guinea. The Japanese never saw it coming - they never expected that MacArthur would do such a thing. The fighting that played out subsequently as the Japanese were pushed steadily back to places like Buna was the bloodiest of all MacArthur's WWII career. The Papua geography was truly terrible, the fighting in it truly horrific and costly, each step taken a struggle in itself. But MacArthur knew that if he could just push through it and get out to the other side then he would be vindicated - the South West Pacific would be opened up to a campaign of maneuver in which he could outmaneuver the enemy again and again. It was bloody and brutal but it worked. Soon Papua could be declared an Allied Victory, and MacArthur was ready to truly establish himself as one of the great commanders of all time.
In the campaigns that followed MacArthur steadily advanced up New Guinea, every bit of the way demonstrating again and again an unrivalled brilliance in tactics and strategy. Back and forth he flashed, working on the land, on the sea, and in the air, outmaneuvering, outwitting, outthinking, anticipating, defeating the Japanese, and achieving casualty lists that other commanders of the war could only dream of. For every GI that fell, thirty Japanese did. In total MacArthur lost fewer men in his conquest of New Guinea, even including the many that fell during the bloody push through the Papuan mountains and jungles, than fell in the battle of Normandy alone, and in his entire WWII career from Australia to VJ Day he lost fewer soldiers than fell in the Battle of the Bulge Alone. Such masterpieces of tactics and strategy as his lunge to sieze Los Negros and his later, even more daring one to take Hollanida, were military classics that belong in the annals of warfare with Caesar's Pharsalus, Napoleon's Austerlitz, and Hannibal's Cannae. And he only reinforced this impression when the time came for him to fulfill his vow to retake the Philippines. Although there threatened to be setbacks, such as the battle of Leyete Gulf, these were overcome, and when MacArthur got moving he was unstoppable. Initially he appeared to be moving slowly, cautiously, but this was simply a strategem: suddenly, like a spring uncoiling he flashed into top speed and caught his opponents utterly flat-footed. Even the most skilled of Japanese commanders were unable to cope with the sheer brilliance, the lightning nature, of his rapid movements. His re-conquest of Luzon stands as one of his masterpieces with Inchon and Hollandia. His achievements were, pure and simple, those of a great strategist and tactician for the ages. All of the Philippines were secured in a series of campaigns that each must stand as a true masterpiece of warfare, astonishing not only in brilliance but also in the way that MacArthur took care to preserve the lives of his men. MacArthur's liberation of the Philippines sealed the fate of the Japanese. The loss of the islands cut them off permanently from the flow of raw supplies they needed to effectively prosecute the war. MacArthur then went on to execute more masterful campigns in Borneo and other places. His personal courage remained as extraordinary as ever, and he could often be found well beyond the front line.
When the Korean War broke out MacArthur was designated the Commander in Chief of the first ever United Nations army to attempt to carry out such a war, a grand experiment in coaltion warfare. MacArthur's performance was once again superb. Landing in Korea, MacArthur's tactics and strategies used to slow down and prepare to reverse the situation were both brilliant and revolutionary, yet another great chapter in his illustrious military career. But it was merely a prelude. MacArthur immediately upon arriving in Korea and assessing the situation had concieved of the idea for a great Amphibious Landing that would reverse the situation at a stroke, and as he traded space for time he prepared to unsheath his sword in that singular, dazzling stroke.
Eventually the time came. It was MacArthur's mind that had concieved of the plan for landing at Inchon and what followed, MacArthur's iron will and eloquence that had ensured it would be carried out. It was the most brilliant success of his entire career, a triumph that some have declared to have been the boldest, most brilliant strategic course in military history. MacArthur crossed the 38th Parallel in Triumph.
And then came the second truly great blunder of his career. He became overconfident. He allowed himself to believe what other men were saying: that if he wanted to he could get a battalion to walk on water.
And so he ignored the intelligence reports suggesting that the Chinese were about to come in with both feet, and the plan for advancing up to Yalu, which would otherwise have been brilliant, was fatally flawed. The fact that MacArthur was not alone, that everyone from the Pentagon on down had similarly completely ignored the warning signs, does not excuse him. He was the commander on the spot and the greatest military mind of the age. He should not have been so careless. When the Chinese sprang out he was split tactically from hell to breakfast.
And yet just as he had in the Philippines after his first great military blunder, he once again redeemed himself. The steady retreat he conducted, pulling his troops back from the Chinese, was as astonishingly brilliant as ever in his strategy, tactics, execution - it should indeed stand as one of the greatest of all his feats of arms. But wars are not won by retreating, and now Korea looked like a war that nobody could win. Although eventually the UN forces would push their way back up to the 38th Paralle and hold the line, what ensued was a stalemate.
MacArthur's proposed solutions for breaking the stalemate can be seen today, with the benefit of hindisght as potentially having had a good deal of merit (although some of his more extravagent measures that he advocated it is doubtful he was ever serious about), more evidence yet of the deep insight he was capable of, but at the time they were probably rightly dismissed as simply going too far. MacArthur could not tolerate a war in which he was not allowed to fight to the end of victory, and he forced a showdown with President Harry Truman that led to his famous dismissal. Returning to the US MacArthur began on a high note, his speech to Congress being an excellent example of his oratory at its best. After that though events took a sour note as MacArthur lashed out at Truman, in his rage and hurt blindly lavishing the good will so many people flet for him in a dirty campaign to do his best to wreck the President's chances of reelection. It was successful - MacArthur was doubtless at least part of the reason that Truman decided not to run again, but it could be said to have tarnished MacArthur's image forever.
For MacArthur againpost on MacAurthur may be correct in many ways, he was not over rated. However his analysis of New Guinea shows only a rudimentary understanding of what happened with the US and Australian armies on Kokoda and the subsequent battle of Buna - Gona. The Australians who where sent to defend Kokoda initially, were for the most part untrained militia (footballers and such) who thought they were in Morseby to unload ships. They became national heroes only after Australia found out that they had been standing against crack troops that outnumbered them at least four to one. After they were reinforced, one of the Australian Generals MacArthur sent, even disparaged their heroic running battle with the IJA by calling them running rabbits. Obviously HQ had little understanding of what was happening. And if it wasn't in code to be cracked or big enough to be seen by coast watchers, then they seemed to be pretty much in the dark as far as intel was concerned.
Sorry but the Japanese where never pushed back to Buna, they made a decision to concentrate resources on Guadalcanal and withdrew. When US and Australian forces arrived at their stronghold Buna, Sanananda and Gona on the north coast, they where in no shape to go into battle, particularly the Americans who had been stupidly forced over the toughest and most insect infested terrain on the island. MacArthur's solution was to end the careers of some good officers who followed bad orders and send exhausted men into battle against a well prepared and well organized proffesional army of 6500, some of who had been fighting since 1937 in Manchuria. MacArthur's intel assessment was they were up against no more than 2000 men who wouldn't fight and one of his generals even said maybe only 1000 who were sick and malnourished.
I could make it sound much worse for MacArthur but won't...I'll simply say that he was nothing like what I have just read. After 1943 the IJA was receiving little in the way of supplies and that was due to Nimitz and his flyers and not MacArthur (see Truk Lagoon). The high success rate and low casualty rates of allied forces later in the war were often due to frontal assaults on overwhelming numbers of Aussie and US troops and was seen by many Japanese as way to end quickly the dual horrors of starvation and cannibalism. For the most part nothing to do with MacArthur, who could have leap-frogged most of these combat ineffective units and got on with the job of ending the war sooner. I have even read reports of Australian soldiers wasting lives mopping up combat ineffective units of the IJA whose only function on Borneo was to grow crops for themselves and why, because MacArthur wanted to get all the "glory" elsewhere. In fact he could have done a lot more and with a lot more troops but seemed to have some other plan in mind that didn't include generals of another army.
The great "Field"Marshal decided that it would be clever to flank the retreating Japanese before they returned to their base at Buna-Gona. Despite having many days head start he sent his men through hell and then did the unforgivable.
This from the Red Arrow Association Website.
"Day after day the Battalion plodded through some of the worst and wildest jungle in the world. They went through waist deep streams and along trails that were waist deep channels of mud. It would take five or six hours to go a mile, edging along cliff walls, hanging on to vines, up and down, up and down. Men got weaker and began to lag back . . . . There wasn’t any way of evacuating to the rear. Everyone was driven on by the fear of being left behind.
"Their bones ached and dysentery had hit almost every man. They climbed to 8,000 feet, to the top of the gap through which they stumbled over the Owen Stanleys. It took them seven hours to crawl the last 2,000 feet. They couldn’t march for more than 15 minutes without lying down and resting."
Then MacArthur demanded that they fight the most dangerous animal in the jungle...MacArthur really excelled on this one.
"On 20 November 1942, after almost 42 days on the trail, crossing exceedingly difficult terrain, including hogback ridges, jungle, and mountainous high-altitude passes, E Company was the first to reach Soputa near the front. The remainder of the Battalion trickled in over the next few days. As a result of the extremely difficult march and the decimated ranks of the unit, the battalion earned the nickname of The Ghost Battalion."
Despite the extremely poor condition of the 2/126th, General MacArthur was desperate for men to put on the line, and he ordered them to the Buna-Gona front on 20 November.
With men dying from his bad planning, the least he could have done was have a look at the terrain.
One last testimony and then I'll leave it to everyone else to decide on "Field" Marshal MacArthur... This time from an Aussie officer.
Sadly, many Australian casualties were due to the American general commanding the South-West Pacific Area-Douglas MacArthur-who had fled the Philippines and arrived in Australia on 17 March 1942. MacArthur had outstanding military ability, but he was not a soldiers' soldier. He never ventured beyond Port Moresby, and never took the trouble to familiarize himself with either the terrain or the enemy's defenses. Yet, for his own publicity purposes, he applied great pressure for quick results-which were quite impossible in the circumstances. He caused attacks to be mounted without adequate preparation, without adequate support, and astride approaches that held no hope for success.
It's "more complicated" than that. See Louis Morton's Fall of the Philippines(Washington, 1953). The planes destroyed on the ground were, for the most part, re-fueling after having spent hours hunting vainly for the Japanese invasion fleet. This effort included the B-17s because Brereton knew from intelligence reports that cloud and fog covered the Japanese airstrips on Taiwan(and so rendering bombing them unfeasible).
New Guinea culminating in Buna/Gona was by far the bloodiest part of MacArthur's WWII campaigns, and his darkest hour in that war after Bataan. It is the part of his career where he is most open to criticism. But on it I will stand firmly by several main key points: that MacArthur's goal in this section of his campaigns was indeed pure and simple to make a bloody push to get out through to the other side where he had the necessary elbow room to begin the campaign of suuply and maneuver that he had been planning ever since he first arrived in Australia, that prior to that it was he who made the key and crucial decision for the stand against the Japanese to be made in New Guinea, that the Japanese had never expected him to do this and their plans were thus completely thrown off balance, and that his decision to send in Bob Eichelberger to take command was a brilliant one - Eichelberger was one of the excellent figures of the Pacific War.
It is certainly true that MacArthur carried out a number of operations in the latter part of the war that really were not necessary from a strategic point of view. There was no need for him to recapture every single part of the Philippines, but he did so anyway, and then liberated great parts of Borneo for good measure. His motives were partly personal - who wanted to be the universal liberator of the Philippines, to conquer more territory and add to his reputation and glory, but also partly political - he wanted to pave the way for the later political developement of these countries, and also humanitarian - he feared that the Japanese might exact reprisals against the locals. He would have gone even further than Borneo, but the Chiefs of Staff finally called a halt to his conquests. That being said, it must stand that each of these unnecessary campaigns was a masterpiece of tactics and strategy that was remarkably economical in the casualties of his men, and each of which must stand as a military masterpiece for the ages.
All in all many of MacArthur's accomplishments must be seen as the man himself: a mixture of good and evil. But the genius is undeniable.
I don't think that it would be fair to judge MacArthur as being lacking in knowledge about the capabilities and limitations of Air Power. Quite apart from the fact that long before then he had shown himself to be highly sympathetic to the need for Air Power, and the papers that he wrote on how future wars would likely be fought won high acclaim from men who would later have great cause to be vindicated, not long after his escape from the Philippines we find him able to engage experts on the subject and have them come away convinced that he knew more about it than they, the specialists did.
The events surrounding the destruction of the planes were complicated and remain controversial to say the least. The general purpose of my two posts on the previous page was to demonstrate decisively that MacArthur was a commander of genius who was most definitely not overrated, and so I moved through this straight on to the brilliance that MacArthur demonstrated in his withdrawal to Bataan/Coregidor.
The essential key fact I think is that MacArthur was right in assessing the Japanese as a threat and recommending that preparations be made, but he was wrong in thinking that they would not attack until months after they actually did. Based on the reports of those close to him in those critical few days it is hard not to get the impression that MacArthur genuinely went into some kind of shock - at times reduced to being capable of doing no more than sitting at his desk and mumbling as he read passages out of his bible. It didn't last long - he soon snapped out of it and was back to his old, brilliant self, but I have never been able to shake off the firm impression that this was one of the key factors in MacArthur having such a sorry start to the greatest war he would fight in.
I myself have always considered MacArthur an overblown military commander which incurred massive casualties on campaigns that were never needed and wih troops that were better suited elsewhere in the Pacific. He had many times more men and resources than his enemies in all of his military campaigns and seemingly only scored some major victories or otherwise failed altogether or did not accomplish anything that was particularly spectacular. I can say that he did pretty well at first in North Korea, but the rest of his military career I just see as ranging from defeat to "meh, that was an okay battle/campaign, that wasn't such a great feat".
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Originally Posted by Markas
