Douglas MacArthur is one of the most divisive political figures in American history. To some he is a dictator and a traitor who crushed American democracy, to others he is the man who saved America when it needed it most. He was born the third son of Arthur MacArthur, a man who was one of the greatest soldiers America ever knew. His mother Hardy MacArthur was a strong, independent and ambitious woman who pushed her son to be the best he could be, a drive that would carry him throughout his life. A graduate from West Point by 1903 with the highest marks in his class he spent the next decade as a junior engineer officer before being assigned to the general staff for four years. In 1914 he joined the US Task Force Green that occupied Veracruz, Mexico for seven months. During the Weltkrieg MacArthur was part of a small minority of officers who clawed at a chance to join the fight. In the end however his repeated offers to organize a volunteer division to head to France were denied and instead he ran a few army bases on the Mexican border for the duration of the War. As the war came to an end in 1920 with the Peace with Honor MacArthur was appalled and reportedly swore to strike back at the Hun for his unlawful domination of Europe. Twice more he volunteered to form and join a volunteer brigade to help the UK and France deal with their Revolutions but again he was rebuffed. Instead he sat in his post and stewed. As 1925 came he was promoted to Field Marshal of the Southern Armies and given command of all the forces in the Southern United States and tasked with turning the few rag-tag soldiers into a effective fighting force. MacArthur spent the next year relentlessly drilling the men in live fire exercises and mock invasions which only ramped up as Syndicalism stormed over Mexico. It was not long until the Southern Forces became the most well trained force in American history and were seemingly unceasingly loyal to MacArthur. This newfound and perceived loyalty to their general over the State worried Hoover, especially as things began to descend into chaos across the nation. Fearing MacArthur might do something rash he was hastily reassigned to the Asiatic Garrison in Manila where he was expected to stay until retirement; events at home however would force his hand.
While MacArthur was in the Philippines he kept close tabs on the growing chaos in the continental United States and grew increasingly worried about the survival of US democracy in the face of it. He drew several parallels to the late Roman Republic to the current chaos in the US. It was in these parallels we see MacArthur first formulate his so called "Operation Caesar" as a last ditch effort to save democracy should he fell it was threatened. However he was in the Philippines and far away from any potential base to launch any sort of plan. So he requested a transfer back to the Continent in 1932 and Hoover granted it, confident his growing popularity in the Army had faded. He was given the honorable task of commanding the Home Force that defended Maryland, DC and Northern Virginia from threats both foreign and domestic. Having just been raised the group was again little more than green militia units with little to no discipline and even less resolve should the unthinkable come to pass. MacArthur worked his now signature magic and turned the Home Force into a crack fighting force that could stand up to any threat thrown at it. That was however, until the 1936 election came.
In a stunning upset the vote was splintered between the four candidates and nobody was able to secure a electoral college majority so the vote went to Congress. After much backroom dealing and with considerable influence spent Huey Long was selected as the next President, despite only getting nearly 30% of the vote. MacArthur had no love for Long but, with the advice of his closest friends, he decided to give the Louisianan a chance before he worked against him. In the end he gave Long three months. In those three months Long started his controversial Share the Wealth program that he spoke so much about in his speeches. MacArthur was outraged and saw that as thinly-veiled Syndicalism and told Long bluntly to stop the program or he would have to act to save America. Long refused him and instead threatened to fire him. MacArthur responded the next day by marching his loyal Home Force into DC and secured major points throughout the city. When MacArthur and his men stormed the White House they found the building empty save for a few janitors. Long had gotten wind of the operation and fled South to save his skin, MacArthur missed him by half an hour. So MacArthur gave a speech to the nation over the radio informing them of his choice to depose Long and his AFP-led Congress for the good of the country. There were initial protests but MacArthurs power base in the military put a stop to any fomenting Revolt near instantly, or so he thought. A week after his announcement Long appeared on the front steps of the Georgia State Capitol and declared the MacArthur regime illegal. He urged all loyal Americans to join him as he took back his seat in Washington, by force if necessary. He gave MacArthur three days to resign his post and return power to Long or else the AFP Minuetman Militas would take over. Some days later MacArthur got a letter from Trade Unionist and Syndicalist John 'Jack' Reed that he to would use his militias to depose MacArthur if he was not given power within three days. Caught between a rock and a hard place MacArthur made a choice no leader should ever have to make. He gathered his junta and abandoned DC, seeing it as potentially indefensible due to its terrain and location. Instead he drove across the Mississippi and set up his Junta to rule from Colorado, far from any particular front line and a stronghold of Federalist sentiment. MacArthur stayed near the River as he called up the National Guard and ordered them to his side. Seeing this as the mobilization it clearly was Long and Reed did not wait a moment longer and ordered the National Guard to come to their aid, as they both claimed to be the legitimate government of the United States. The industrial belt stood by Reed and his Combined Syndicates of America, the South followed Long into the American Union State while the rest of the country stayed behind MacArthur.
As the two competing forces moved into the Federalist states of Maryland, Tennessee and Kentucky MacArthur was pressured by his second in command, Dwight D Eisenhower, to launch an offensive to stop the rebels advance and save DC from occupation. MacArthur however turned him down sternly as the so called Ten-Tucky Corridor would be nearly impossible to defend on the best of terms and these were certainly not the best of terms . The troops he had at his disposal were spread out as it was just holding the Mississippi River, asking them to push the lines further would only sap his already small pool of manpower. Then MacArthur got more bad news as the West Coast, led by California had also declared their independence as the 'last bastion of true democracy on the American Continent'. MacArthur realized that the so called Pacific States of America would advance into open country behind his lines as most of his troops were on the Mississippi River. So instead he set a message to the leaders of the PSA that he would not attack them if they did not attack him; an offer that the PSA graciously accepted. With his rear flank secure MacArthur watched as the Ten-Tucky Corridor slowly snapped shut and the two rebel factions came to blows against each other instead of just against him. The fighting was brutal between the two, especially for Washington DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia. MacArthur however relished in it as he knew ever dead Red or Longist was one less man he would have to fight. MacArthur watched for six months has he whipped his weekend warriors into a true American Army, and in those six months he moved to secure his power base at home. He hired J Edgar Hoover, a paranoid man who saw enemies around every corner, to be his bull dog. MacArthur relied on Hoover and the FBI to keep internal dissent at a minimum and gave them sweeping powers to do so. Under the infamous CONINTELPRO program the FBI kept tabs on nearly every citizen in the United States. As soon as they showed any sign of dissent, they were 'reconstituted' into a loyal citizen in one of the numerous FBI black sites in the Rocky Mountains. MacArthur left no evidence of his knowledge about the extreme measures being taken by Hoover, but that has not placated his detractors in the years after his death. Nevertheless CONTINTELPRO did its job and MacArthur stood as the American Caesar, a nickname that was coined by the Denver Tribune in late 1937. As 1938 dawned however MacArthur found himself ready to launch an offensive into the rebel occupied Eastern US and put Dwight D Eisenhower in charge of the operation.
The Operation, code named Operation Door Knocker was to be a two pronged offensive into Minnesota and Louisiana by elements of the 1st and 4th US Armies respectively. Securing a beachhead across the River was key to taking back the rest of the mainland and with most of Long and Reeds forces stuck in the brutal attrition warfare that was devolving into in Kentucky, MacArthur felt his time was now. The Operation launched on March 1st, 1938 after months of preparation and was a debacle from the start. The river boats needed to ferry the men across the river (most of the bridges were blown in the retreat West) hadn't arrived yet so that meant more trips for the boats already there, Long and Reed also had heavily built defenses on their sides of the river making any landings difficult from the start. Not to mention the populations saw MacArthur as a tyrant and a usurper and not as the legitimate government of the United States leading to heated local resistance. However through grit and determination the beachheads were established nonetheless, with great casualties being sent home in bodybags. Within two days both beachheads had expanded to a 100 mile radius and was quickly growing throwing a large thorn into both Long and Reeds sides. Troops began to be diverted from the front to fight the Federals and the fighting in Kentucky more or less stopped altogether as a sort of impromptu truce was agreed upon. With growing pressure from both Long and Reed's armies MacArthur needed a ace in the whole to secure his victory over the rebels, that was when he was approached by a curious man named John Deere III. The grandson of the founder of John Deere tractors he had moved most of his companies factories out of the CSA when hostilities broke out mostly to avoid nationalization. He had some friends in the Pre-War US military who spoke of an experimental concept, the Heavy Tank. These beasts would trump anything the rebels could build and wipe their mainly infantry based armies into the dust under their tracks. Deere offered to switch his remaining factories over to build heavy tanks to be sold to the Army at a large discount. The only catch was that Deere be made the sole tank producer for the Army. MacArthur was initially hesitant but with pressure from Eisenhower he eventually relented and almost a month later the first T-10 MacArthur rolled off the assembly line.
The introduction of the American heavy tanks into the battlefield was a huge tipping point in favor of the Federals. Their thick armor and large armament made it the deadliest tank on the battlefield and sent Reed and Long's armies scrambling to find something that could beat it. After much trial and error the first enemy heavy tank the T-1 Reed type tanks began to roll out of Detroit while their Southern counterparts instead found that throwing an improvised bottle bomb onto its rear vents would overheat the engines and cause it to burn out. This however was to little to late. While the Reed tanks were nominally effective against the MacArthur if they could get around behind it, and the bottle bombs became a symbol of the Southern resistance to both Reed and MacArthur, the Federalist forces had regained the momentum. The Northern and Southern beachheads linked up in Quincy, Illinois in July of 1938, securing the entire Mississippi River for the Federal cause, and began to push East. The entire US Army had grown to astronomical size and was better equipped by late 1938 than the rebels were. As they advanced deeper into Long and Reed's territory however resistance began to stiffen as more fanatical elements came out in droves (Pelley's Silvershirts for Long and Bowders Peoples Defense Army for Reed) to defend their chosen ideology. Cities like Detroit and Atlanta, the capitals of the CSA and AUS respectively, are now forever etched into military history as the locations of some of the most costly battles in the Western Hemisphere if not the world. However by that time many were seeing the writing on the wall they were being lined up against and decided to jump ship before the ship jumped them. In late January of 1939 Reed was on a boat to France to continue the struggle from far away, and Long fled to Bolivia a week later as Federal forces stormed into Charleston. Not long afterword both nations solemnly gave up the fight and MacArthur ruled supreme over the United States...well most of it. The Pacific States were still around sitting pretty in defiance of MacArthurs wishes and in the chaos of Civil War New England also declared independence under Canadian auspices. This could not stand. The first to go was the Pacific States. MacArthur met with President Frank Merriam of the PSA in Denver and offered him a simple choice. Readmit the PSA into the Union or it would be readmitted by force. Merriam knew that the US Army outclassed the PSA Army in nearly every way after almost two years of warfare and a total national mobilization and wanted to spare his people the same fate of the South and the North. So he signed the PSA back into the Union right then and there. When US troops entered the PSA soon after there were no cheering crowds like MacArthur expected, just stone faced civilians watching the nation they saw as right fall under MacArthurs boot.
New England was a bit more tricky as it was a puppet of Canadian interests and a member of the Entente Alliance. Not wanting to spark a global war just yet MacArthur came up with a plan. Using the recently established OSS, the foreign intelligence branch of the FBI, pro-US agitators were smuggled into New England en mass. Within a few months the young nation was descending into chaos over a sudden upsurge of popular support to be readmitted into the USA even if it was under MacArthur. While King Edward was skeptical and personally considered interference from the US highly likely, he ultimately did nothing when US troops invaded and bloodlessly occupied the region in mid-1939. As a 'show of support' Edward also agreed to give back Alaska, the Panama Canal, Puerto Rico and Guantanamo Bay; they were just keeping it for safe keeping after all. While Hawaii still evaded his grasp MacArthur considered his work complete and from a makeshift balcony in front of a still-being rebuilt Capitol Building MacArthur declared the beginning of Reconstruction of the country. All states that left the Union would be allowed full re-admittance into the Union as soon as the local government took an oath of loyalty to the US Government and if they hand over any government administrators for the traitorous CSA and AUS. MacArthur in private laid out an ambitious plan to rebuild the countries also broken industry using the base he built in the West during the Civil War. He however was never able to see his plans come to fruition. On January 15th, 1940 Douglas MacArthur was going on a tour through Atlanta. He stopped for a moment to shake hands when suddenly a man appeared from the crowd with a hand grenade. He screamed "Death to MacArthur, Long Live the Union State!" then pulled the pin, soon after the device exploded. 12 people were killed in the ensuing blast including MacArthur who died after three days of agony, and a further 10 were wounded in the attack. In the aftermath Eisenhower attempted to seize control of the state and preserve the government but powerful people in Washington each tried to do the same. The different attempts to take power all fell over each-other and failed. There were sudden outbursts of violence across the country annd within a week the US dissolved once more. This time however there was no war to reclaim the mantle of the nation now lost. It's legacy will forever be tainted by the American Caesar.
And I didn't have any ME plans, so I'd be interested to see what you have!
