In the biographies I've read on him, he seems to have been mostly uninterested in affairs outside of Eastern Asia (or at least thought they were less important), which makes sense considering he was in Asia continuously from the 1930s until he was dismissed by Truman. When I say I could see him siding with the UK, France, and Israel, I mostly mean that I don't think he would put too much effort into stopping them. More of a "this isn't a big deal to us so I don't care, im focused on other things" sort of attitude.
Patton in Korea/MacArthur in the White House
- Thread starter BiteNibbleChomp
- Start date
- Status
I haven't heard this one before, and Suez didn't come up anywhere in his memoirs. Do you have a source I could read?
- BNC
Thanks mate (and to everyone else who has voted too)!I voted for this TL to get the Cold War Turtledove
- BNC
No worries it's a great TL. Patton and Truman are such interesting personalities imaoThanks mate (and to everyone else who has voted too)!
- BNC
Wolf of Badenoch
Donor
I'm not sure that philosophy sits well with his attitude to 'our little brown brothers' in the Philippines.
You forget that everyone else is Imperialist and colonialist. The US just has control of overseas territory which it exploits economically while not allowing the people who live there votes. Completely different things!
He is a colonialist.
You are saddled with messy overseas obligations.
I am a benevolent uplifter of my little foreign brothers who love me.
It’s in monarchs in waiting. A book about pretenders to former thrones.
Mac Belived the Sunni Muslims simmlar to what President Trump tried to arrange, would unite against Iran. Under Egyptian hegemony
Part IV, Chapter 25
PART IV: TRIUMPH
CHAPTER 25
September 9, 1951
The signing of the Treaty of San Francisco, a document that finally ended the occupation of Japan, and with it the last vestiges of World War II, should have been an occasion worth a celebration. For the people of Japan, and forty-nine other nations including the United States and the recently reunified Republic of Korea, it was.
For President Harry Truman it was not.
A newspaper – today’s edition of the New York Herald Tribune – sat on his desk. Truman was used to being annoyed by the Tribune – the paper, like most of the media and indeed more than two thirds of the country, did not like him very much and often produced stories that served no purpose other than heap additional piles of dung onto his legacy. But today’s headline would have annoyed him even if it came from the Washington Post.
‘MacARTHUR: I HAVE RETURNED’
Quite likely part of that was just some editor making a joke about His Majesty’s most famous phrase, but for all the trouble He had caused when he was in Tokyo, right now Truman wished He had stayed there. Instead, the five-star general had decided to run for President in next year’s election.
“He’s a damned liar.” Truman had grumbled as he read the story earlier that morning. When president and general had met – for the only time – at Midway island, Truman had asked MacArthur if he had any aspirations for the highest office in the country. “None.” MacArthur had replied. “If a general will run against you, his name will be Eisenhower, not MacArthur.” Eisenhower hadn’t given any indication that he was the slightest bit interested in the office, even after Truman had offered him unconditional support should he run as a Democrat in 1948. MacArthur, or more likely his supporters, had organised a parade attended by around a million people in Los Angeles, and then announced his intentions in the most public way possible.
The worst part was, Truman couldn’t do a whole lot to stop him. A few weeks ago, MacArthur had made a formal request for indefinite leave effective September 1st. His five stars kept him in the Army for life, but this was as close to retirement as he would get. What he was going to do in retirement had been obvious for months: Patton, in one of his many angry speeches since he returned from Asia, had been praising MacArthur’s leadership and occasionally suggested that he become the nation’s thirty-fourth president (and proudly wearing his Medal of Honor – given to him by Congress over Truman’s personal objections – while doing so). Truman wished Patton would run himself: now that the furor over his firing had died down, his public rants were attracting smaller crowds by the week. Patton had no political skill to speak of either. Truman knew he was dead in the water if he ran next year against a serious candidate (which MacArthur, much to his frustration, would be). Against Patton, his chances wouldn’t be too bad.
Truman had thought about refusing that leave, and ordering MacArthur into some worthless position that would keep him from causing any more trouble than he already had (Wyoming had plenty of coastal defences that needed supervising). The only problem with that was, MacArthur would just ignore the order, the way he so often did, come home, and campaign regardless. If the president raised an objection to that, the public would just back MacArthur. They had when he relieved Patton, and they would again. At that point, it would be much easier to just hand MacArthur the keys to the White House.
A secretary appeared at the door. “Mr President, Mr Kennan is waiting to see you.”
“Thank you. Send him in.” Truman said.
George F. Kennan wasn’t working for Truman’s government any more, but there was no-one else in the country who understood the Soviet Union as well as he did. They hadn’t intervened in Korea once the 38th parallel was crossed the way many had feared, and indeed shortly after the new year they apparently pulled out of Korea altogether, leaving the fight to the Red Chinese. Yet their refusal to sign the Treaty of San Francisco – announced in a statement by Andrei Gromyko yesterday – told Truman that this was no withdrawal from the ‘Cold War’ as a whole. So here he was, asking Kennan for advice once again.
“What do you think Stalin’s going to do?” Truman asked after greetings were exchanged. It was blunt, but he had always been one to get straight to the point.
“I cannot say what exactly – Russia’s pretty good at keeping secrets from us. What I do think is that they will do something. Stalin’s not happy about this.” Kennan said.
“He pulled out of Korea. Abandoned the place.” Truman observed. “And it is hard to believe that Mao agreed to that cease fire without Stalin’s approval.”
“Indeed, although I would find it hard to believe that Stalin wanted a war with George Patton of all people.” Kennan said. “That aside, he is not happy about Korea, and I’m not saying that just because red team lost. Stalin’s an old man, and some of my colleagues and I have been trying to get a sense of who his successor might turn out to be. One such candidate was Nikita Khrushchev, a Red Army commissar, present at Stalingrad, did some work in the Ukraine afterwards. He’s dropped off the map.”
“What happened to him?” Truman asked.
“There was no announcement of a death and a public mourning period, so I’d say we can rule out a natural death. He’d still be in his fifties, so retirement is unlikely. Past that, all I can guess is ‘nothing good’.” Kennan said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense for Stalin to blame Khrushchev for Korea, but it is one explanation.”
“In which case, Stalin would be looking for a way to get us back?” Truman asked.
“It’s likely.” Kennan said. “And if I had to guess where, I’d look at either Europe or the Middle East.”
***
In his 1882 ‘Chinese Memorandum’, future Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr had foreseen America playing a decisive role in acquiring the riches of Asia by dominating the trade routes of the Pacific. For this to be achieved, a major port would have to be established on the West Coast, which could then develop into “one of the leading handlers of commerce in the country”. Around the turn of the century, that envisioned trade hub became the artificial harbour of Los Angeles.
His son, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, had dedicated his life to following through on this grand vision that his father had once written. During the presidency of Chester Arthur, America’s influence in the Pacific had been little more than an optimistic dream. Now, he was the man who had restored American influence to the Philippines, and brought it to Japan and to Korea. Those nations, alongside Chiang’s Chinese holdout in Formosa as well as Australia and New Zealand, were now some of America’s staunchest allies. The United States dominated the Pacific just as his father had envisioned.
With his life’s work, at least as he saw it then, completed, MacArthur thought it fitting to return to the United States by arriving in the same city where it all began: Los Angeles, California. He had spent more than a third of his life out of the country. It would be his thirteen year old son’s first day here.
The path leading up to announcing himself as a candidate for the Republican nomination and been long and far more complicated than any outside observer was likely to acknowledge. When George and Beatrice Patton had suggested it to him, he had accepted their offered support (which in George’s case, meant frequent speeches that seemed to serve no purpose other than to attack people who had done him wrong in the past). Despite what George would later claim, he was not the first to suggest it. MacArthur had already been a presidential candidate twice, though he made no effort to campaign. A 1952 run was almost expected of him.
For months, years really, he had thought those people who expected him to run would be disappointed, until he saw the State Department completely mishandle the victory he had presented them with in Korea. State had cut him out of any negotiations with the Red Chinese, appointing John Foster Dulles for the job, and then found that Mao had exactly no intention of negotiating at all. Diplomatic overtures went ignored while the communist New Years’ Offensive killed thousands and took no ground. Another attempt around Easter proved even less successful, as by that point Ridgway had had enough time to build his defensive works on the Chongchon. Only after that, when Mao decided he had extracted enough prestige from the stalemate, did the communists agree to the terms that Dulles had offered in December.
Not all the blame for the extended war had to be pinned on State. Some of it belonged with Harry Truman himself. If Truman hadn’t insisted on firing Patton, the Red Chinese wouldn’t have spent months holding that pocket in northwestern Korea. They would have been forced back across the Yalu, a straightforward demand to follow: peace or utter destruction. Then, once they agreed to peace, MacArthur would have had all of 1951 to ensure the end of the Japanese occupation went as smoothly as possible. That had always been his first priority.
By the time Dulles informed him that a treaty would be signed in September, the only thing left to do was cut orders to send the occupation troops to other duties. His mission of building a free and democratic Japan accomplished, he turned over command of the Dai Ichi to Ridgway, and decided to embark on that most unusual transition, from soldier to candidate.
“Why did I finally decide to run?” he would explain to an interviewer later in his life. “If I didn’t, my father’s mission to project and preserve American influence over the Pacific would have been a failure. All the top candidates but myself did not properly appreciate what had been built there. Eisenhower was a fine man, but he spent too much time thinking about Europe. Taft wanted us to pull out of our international commitments everywhere. Dewey had lost to Truman once already, and the last thing we needed was Harry Truman of all people receiving a third term. There was no alternative to a MacArthur candidacy. The country was calling upon me, and I had to answer them.”
***
MacArthur chose Los Angeles as the point of his return for a number of reasons. Foremost among them, he didn’t want to be in the same city as the signing of the peace treaty. He wanted a distinct story in the papers, and the best way to get that was to stage a distinct event. Less obvious to outside observers was another reason: it was close to the Patton family home, and a personal meeting, the first since December 1950, could be valuable to the campaign.
So it was. While George acknowledged that his influence was fading quickly (“a damn shame” as he described it), and that he didn’t know the first thing about politics, Beatrice had been active in seeking support for MacArthur’s candidacy. She had a list, naming just about every prominent conservative in California except Richard Nixon, that she thought would support him. Then she produced a letter from George’s nephew Frederick Ayer Jr, who offered to be MacArthur’s campaign manager. Ayer had spent two months supporting Wendell Wilkie’s campaign in 1940 and had run as the Republican candidate for Massachusetts’ Attorney General in 1950, losing in a close election. He was well connected, and would be a valuable asset to the campaign; MacArthur accepted the offer on the spot. “Tell him I’d like to meet him when I arrive in Boston.”
That would not be for another six weeks: first he intended to cross the country making appearances in as many major cities as he could as the campaign built up momentum. He could count on a range of longtime supporters including Former House Majority Leader Joseph Martin and Senate Minority Leader Kenneth Wherry (who had recently recovered from a major surgery), as well as the conservative faction of Congress that followed them. Henry Luce and the Hearst press would back him, and Colonel Pat Echols, his press man in Tokyo, had left the Army to continue with him on the campaign (MacArthur promised him the position of Press Secretary if they won). There was no question of his popularity, but that popularity still had to be mobilised into a campaign worthy of America’s next President.
- BNC
CHAPTER 25
September 9, 1951
The signing of the Treaty of San Francisco, a document that finally ended the occupation of Japan, and with it the last vestiges of World War II, should have been an occasion worth a celebration. For the people of Japan, and forty-nine other nations including the United States and the recently reunified Republic of Korea, it was.
For President Harry Truman it was not.
A newspaper – today’s edition of the New York Herald Tribune – sat on his desk. Truman was used to being annoyed by the Tribune – the paper, like most of the media and indeed more than two thirds of the country, did not like him very much and often produced stories that served no purpose other than heap additional piles of dung onto his legacy. But today’s headline would have annoyed him even if it came from the Washington Post.
‘MacARTHUR: I HAVE RETURNED’
Quite likely part of that was just some editor making a joke about His Majesty’s most famous phrase, but for all the trouble He had caused when he was in Tokyo, right now Truman wished He had stayed there. Instead, the five-star general had decided to run for President in next year’s election.
“He’s a damned liar.” Truman had grumbled as he read the story earlier that morning. When president and general had met – for the only time – at Midway island, Truman had asked MacArthur if he had any aspirations for the highest office in the country. “None.” MacArthur had replied. “If a general will run against you, his name will be Eisenhower, not MacArthur.” Eisenhower hadn’t given any indication that he was the slightest bit interested in the office, even after Truman had offered him unconditional support should he run as a Democrat in 1948. MacArthur, or more likely his supporters, had organised a parade attended by around a million people in Los Angeles, and then announced his intentions in the most public way possible.
The worst part was, Truman couldn’t do a whole lot to stop him. A few weeks ago, MacArthur had made a formal request for indefinite leave effective September 1st. His five stars kept him in the Army for life, but this was as close to retirement as he would get. What he was going to do in retirement had been obvious for months: Patton, in one of his many angry speeches since he returned from Asia, had been praising MacArthur’s leadership and occasionally suggested that he become the nation’s thirty-fourth president (and proudly wearing his Medal of Honor – given to him by Congress over Truman’s personal objections – while doing so). Truman wished Patton would run himself: now that the furor over his firing had died down, his public rants were attracting smaller crowds by the week. Patton had no political skill to speak of either. Truman knew he was dead in the water if he ran next year against a serious candidate (which MacArthur, much to his frustration, would be). Against Patton, his chances wouldn’t be too bad.
Truman had thought about refusing that leave, and ordering MacArthur into some worthless position that would keep him from causing any more trouble than he already had (Wyoming had plenty of coastal defences that needed supervising). The only problem with that was, MacArthur would just ignore the order, the way he so often did, come home, and campaign regardless. If the president raised an objection to that, the public would just back MacArthur. They had when he relieved Patton, and they would again. At that point, it would be much easier to just hand MacArthur the keys to the White House.
A secretary appeared at the door. “Mr President, Mr Kennan is waiting to see you.”
“Thank you. Send him in.” Truman said.
George F. Kennan wasn’t working for Truman’s government any more, but there was no-one else in the country who understood the Soviet Union as well as he did. They hadn’t intervened in Korea once the 38th parallel was crossed the way many had feared, and indeed shortly after the new year they apparently pulled out of Korea altogether, leaving the fight to the Red Chinese. Yet their refusal to sign the Treaty of San Francisco – announced in a statement by Andrei Gromyko yesterday – told Truman that this was no withdrawal from the ‘Cold War’ as a whole. So here he was, asking Kennan for advice once again.
“What do you think Stalin’s going to do?” Truman asked after greetings were exchanged. It was blunt, but he had always been one to get straight to the point.
“I cannot say what exactly – Russia’s pretty good at keeping secrets from us. What I do think is that they will do something. Stalin’s not happy about this.” Kennan said.
“He pulled out of Korea. Abandoned the place.” Truman observed. “And it is hard to believe that Mao agreed to that cease fire without Stalin’s approval.”
“Indeed, although I would find it hard to believe that Stalin wanted a war with George Patton of all people.” Kennan said. “That aside, he is not happy about Korea, and I’m not saying that just because red team lost. Stalin’s an old man, and some of my colleagues and I have been trying to get a sense of who his successor might turn out to be. One such candidate was Nikita Khrushchev, a Red Army commissar, present at Stalingrad, did some work in the Ukraine afterwards. He’s dropped off the map.”
“What happened to him?” Truman asked.
“There was no announcement of a death and a public mourning period, so I’d say we can rule out a natural death. He’d still be in his fifties, so retirement is unlikely. Past that, all I can guess is ‘nothing good’.” Kennan said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense for Stalin to blame Khrushchev for Korea, but it is one explanation.”
“In which case, Stalin would be looking for a way to get us back?” Truman asked.
“It’s likely.” Kennan said. “And if I had to guess where, I’d look at either Europe or the Middle East.”
***
In his 1882 ‘Chinese Memorandum’, future Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr had foreseen America playing a decisive role in acquiring the riches of Asia by dominating the trade routes of the Pacific. For this to be achieved, a major port would have to be established on the West Coast, which could then develop into “one of the leading handlers of commerce in the country”. Around the turn of the century, that envisioned trade hub became the artificial harbour of Los Angeles.
His son, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, had dedicated his life to following through on this grand vision that his father had once written. During the presidency of Chester Arthur, America’s influence in the Pacific had been little more than an optimistic dream. Now, he was the man who had restored American influence to the Philippines, and brought it to Japan and to Korea. Those nations, alongside Chiang’s Chinese holdout in Formosa as well as Australia and New Zealand, were now some of America’s staunchest allies. The United States dominated the Pacific just as his father had envisioned.
With his life’s work, at least as he saw it then, completed, MacArthur thought it fitting to return to the United States by arriving in the same city where it all began: Los Angeles, California. He had spent more than a third of his life out of the country. It would be his thirteen year old son’s first day here.
The path leading up to announcing himself as a candidate for the Republican nomination and been long and far more complicated than any outside observer was likely to acknowledge. When George and Beatrice Patton had suggested it to him, he had accepted their offered support (which in George’s case, meant frequent speeches that seemed to serve no purpose other than to attack people who had done him wrong in the past). Despite what George would later claim, he was not the first to suggest it. MacArthur had already been a presidential candidate twice, though he made no effort to campaign. A 1952 run was almost expected of him.
For months, years really, he had thought those people who expected him to run would be disappointed, until he saw the State Department completely mishandle the victory he had presented them with in Korea. State had cut him out of any negotiations with the Red Chinese, appointing John Foster Dulles for the job, and then found that Mao had exactly no intention of negotiating at all. Diplomatic overtures went ignored while the communist New Years’ Offensive killed thousands and took no ground. Another attempt around Easter proved even less successful, as by that point Ridgway had had enough time to build his defensive works on the Chongchon. Only after that, when Mao decided he had extracted enough prestige from the stalemate, did the communists agree to the terms that Dulles had offered in December.
Not all the blame for the extended war had to be pinned on State. Some of it belonged with Harry Truman himself. If Truman hadn’t insisted on firing Patton, the Red Chinese wouldn’t have spent months holding that pocket in northwestern Korea. They would have been forced back across the Yalu, a straightforward demand to follow: peace or utter destruction. Then, once they agreed to peace, MacArthur would have had all of 1951 to ensure the end of the Japanese occupation went as smoothly as possible. That had always been his first priority.
By the time Dulles informed him that a treaty would be signed in September, the only thing left to do was cut orders to send the occupation troops to other duties. His mission of building a free and democratic Japan accomplished, he turned over command of the Dai Ichi to Ridgway, and decided to embark on that most unusual transition, from soldier to candidate.
“Why did I finally decide to run?” he would explain to an interviewer later in his life. “If I didn’t, my father’s mission to project and preserve American influence over the Pacific would have been a failure. All the top candidates but myself did not properly appreciate what had been built there. Eisenhower was a fine man, but he spent too much time thinking about Europe. Taft wanted us to pull out of our international commitments everywhere. Dewey had lost to Truman once already, and the last thing we needed was Harry Truman of all people receiving a third term. There was no alternative to a MacArthur candidacy. The country was calling upon me, and I had to answer them.”
***
MacArthur chose Los Angeles as the point of his return for a number of reasons. Foremost among them, he didn’t want to be in the same city as the signing of the peace treaty. He wanted a distinct story in the papers, and the best way to get that was to stage a distinct event. Less obvious to outside observers was another reason: it was close to the Patton family home, and a personal meeting, the first since December 1950, could be valuable to the campaign.
So it was. While George acknowledged that his influence was fading quickly (“a damn shame” as he described it), and that he didn’t know the first thing about politics, Beatrice had been active in seeking support for MacArthur’s candidacy. She had a list, naming just about every prominent conservative in California except Richard Nixon, that she thought would support him. Then she produced a letter from George’s nephew Frederick Ayer Jr, who offered to be MacArthur’s campaign manager. Ayer had spent two months supporting Wendell Wilkie’s campaign in 1940 and had run as the Republican candidate for Massachusetts’ Attorney General in 1950, losing in a close election. He was well connected, and would be a valuable asset to the campaign; MacArthur accepted the offer on the spot. “Tell him I’d like to meet him when I arrive in Boston.”
That would not be for another six weeks: first he intended to cross the country making appearances in as many major cities as he could as the campaign built up momentum. He could count on a range of longtime supporters including Former House Majority Leader Joseph Martin and Senate Minority Leader Kenneth Wherry (who had recently recovered from a major surgery), as well as the conservative faction of Congress that followed them. Henry Luce and the Hearst press would back him, and Colonel Pat Echols, his press man in Tokyo, had left the Army to continue with him on the campaign (MacArthur promised him the position of Press Secretary if they won). There was no question of his popularity, but that popularity still had to be mobilised into a campaign worthy of America’s next President.
- BNC
Last edited:
It's nice to be backWouldn't be a MacArthur presidency without one!
- BNC
bguy
Donor
How did Dulles (a Republican and one that was closely aligned with Thomas Dewey) end up as Truman's Secretary of State?
That's not really an accurate take on Taft's views as he was much more open to US involvement in Asia than he was in Europe. For instance even as early as 1950 Taft believed the US should defend Taiwan, and he also supported US intervention in South Korea (though he was critical of Truman not having sought congressional approval for the US intervention.)
- Status