On This Day: Truman fires MacArthur. Top brass criticize MacArthur's dangerous ideas in secret sessions. - Apr. 11, 1951
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Relief of Douglas MacArthur
On 11 April 1951, U.S. president Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands after MacArthur made public statements that contradicted the administration's policies. MacArthur was a popular hero of World War II who was then commander of United Nations Command forces fighting in the Korean War, and his relief remains a controversial topic in the field of civil–military relations.
MacArthur led the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, and after the war was in charge of the occupation of Japan. In the latter role, MacArthur was able to accumulate considerable power over the civil administration of Japan. Eventually, he gained a level of political experience that was unprecedented and not to be repeated by anyone else actively serving as a flag officer in the U.S. military.
When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, starting the Korean War, MacArthur was designated commander of the United Nations forces defending South Korea. He conceived and executed the amphibious assault at Inchon on 15 September 1950, but when he followed up his victory with a full-scale invasion of North Korea on Truman's orders, China inflicted a series of defeats, compelling him to withdraw from North Korea. By April 1951, the military situation had stabilized, but MacArthur continued to publicly criticize his superiors and attempt to escalate the conflict, leading Truman to relieve MacArthur of his commands. The Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate held a joint inquiry into the military situation and the circumstances surrounding MacArthur's relief, and concluded that "the removal of General MacArthur was within the constitutional powers of the President but the circumstances were a shock to national pride".
An apolitical military was an American tradition. The principle of civilian control of the military was also ingrained. Civilian control was an issue considering the constitutional division of powers between the president as commander-in-chief, and Congress with its power to raise armies, maintain a navy, and declare war. This was also an era when the rising complexity of military technology led to the creation of a professional military and American forces were employed overseas in large numbers. In relieving MacArthur for failing to "respect the authority of the President" by privately communicating with Congress, Truman upheld the president's role as preeminent.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_Douglas_MacArthur
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The Redacted Testimony That Fully Explains Why General MacArthur Was Fired
Far beyond being insubordinate, the military leader seemed to not grasp the consequences of his desired strategy
September 28, 2016
[The article is about secret testimony of U.S. military leaders to a Senate committee following Truman's action]
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Other excised testimony revealed a fundamental reason for the administration’s reluctance to escalate in northeast Asia: There was precious little for the United States to escalate with. American air power, in particular, was stretched very thin. Hoyt Vandenberg, the Air Force chief of staff, told the committee that Korea was already claiming a large part of America’s available air strength. “The Air Force part that is engaged in Korea is roughly 85 percent—80 to 85 percent—of the tactical capacity of the United States,” he said. “The strategic portion, which is used tactically, is roughly between one-fourth and one-fifth. The air defense forces are, I would judge, about 20 percent.”
Joe Collins, the army chief of staff, explained how Communist restraint had prevented an utter American debacle. Referring to the moment MacArthur had initially sought permission to bomb into China, Collins said, “When the first recommendations came in to bomb across the frontier, our troops were separated in Korea. The Tenth Corps was operating from the base at Hungnam, and our other forces were operating from bases at Pusan and Inchon. As soon as the Chinese attack began we were very much concerned about the fact that we would have to get that Tenth Corps out; and had we permitted the bombing north of the Yalu, we were dreadfully afraid that that might be the thing that would release the Russian planes, and additionally, have them give additional assistance to the Chinese, and might well have subjected the Tenth Corps to bombardment and possibly submarine attack during the perilous evacuation from Hungnam. Troops evacuating from a port of that character, in commercial ships, are terribly subject to air and underwater attack; and in my judgment, it would be a much too risky procedure.”
The committee members were sobered, if not stunned, by the chiefs’ and Marshall’s testimony. Americans tended to believe that, having won World War II, the American military could dispatch China with one hand and whack Russia with the other. The secret testimony of Marshall and the chiefs made patent that America’s military had its hands full already.
Republicans were compelled by the revelations about America’s vulnerability to rethink their endorsement of MacArthur and the belligerent course he favored. They didn’t recant in public; they wouldn’t give Truman that satisfaction. But they no longer looked to MacArthur as a credible alternative to Truman on military strategy or in politics. They eased away from the general, and because the testimony was sealed, they never said why.
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/redacted-testimony-fully-explains-why-general-macarthur-was-fired-180960622/
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Nuclear weapons
At a press conference on 30 November 1950, Truman was asked about the use of nuclear weapons:
Q. Mr. President, I wonder if we could retrace that reference to the atom bomb? Did we understand you clearly that the use of the atomic bomb is under active consideration?
Truman: Always has been. It is one of our weapons.
Q. Does that mean, Mr. President, use against military objectives, or civilian—
Truman: It's a matter that the military people will have to decide. I'm not a military authority that passes on those things.
Q. Mr. President, perhaps it would be better if we are allowed to quote your remarks on that directly?
Truman: I don't think—I don't think that is necessary.
Q. Mr. President, you said this depends on United Nations action. Does that mean that we wouldn't use the atomic bomb except on a United Nations authorization?
Truman: No, it doesn't mean that at all. The action against Communist China depends on the action of the United Nations. The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has.
The implication was that the authority to use atomic weapons now rested in the hands of MacArthur. Truman's White House issued a clarification, noting that "only the President can authorize the use of the atom bomb, and no such authorization has been given," yet the comment still caused a domestic and international stir. Truman had touched upon one of the most sensitive issues in civil-military relations in the post-World War II period: civilian control of nuclear weapons, which was enshrined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.
On 9 December 1950, MacArthur requested field commander's discretion to employ nuclear weapons; he testified that such an employment would only be used to prevent an ultimate fallback, not to recover the situation in Korea. On 24 December 1950, while responding to a formal request from the Pentagon, MacArthur submitted a list of "retardation targets" in Korea, Manchuria and other parts of China, for which 34 atomic bombs would be required.
In June 1950, Louis Johnson released a study on the potential uses of radioactive agents. According to Major General Courtney Whitney, MacArthur considered the possibility of using radioactive wastes to seal off North Korea in December 1950, but he never submitted this to the Joint Chiefs. After his dismissal, Congressman Albert Gore Sr. put a similar proposal to Truman. In January 1951, MacArthur refused to entertain proposals for the forward deployment of nuclear weapons.
In early April 1951, the Joint Chiefs became alarmed by the build up of Soviet forces in the Far East, particularly bombers and submarines. On 5 April 1951, they drafted orders for MacArthur authorizing attacks on Manchuria and the Shantung Peninsula if the Chinese launched airstrikes against his forces originating from there. The next day Truman met with the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Gordon Dean, and arranged for the transfer of nine Mark 4 nuclear bombs to military control.
Dean was apprehensive about delegating the decision on how they should be used to MacArthur, who lacked expert technical knowledge of the weapons and their effects. The Joint Chiefs were not entirely comfortable about giving them to MacArthur either, for fear that he might prematurely carry out his orders. Instead, they decided that the nuclear strike force would report to the Strategic Air Command (SAC). This time the bombers deployed with the fissile cores. SAC did not intend to attack air bases and depots; the bombers would target industrial cities in North Korea and China. Deployments of SAC bombers to Guam continued until the end of the war.
There has been debate whether MacArthur advocated the employment of nuclear weapons, including over whether his submission to the Joint Chiefs of Staff was tantamount to a recommendation. In his testimony before the Senate Inquiry, he stated that he had not recommended their use. In 1960, MacArthur challenged a statement by Truman that he had wanted to use nuclear weapons, saying that "atomic bombing in the Korean War was never discussed either by my headquarters or in any communication to or from Washington"; Truman, admitting that he did not have documentation of any such claim, said that he was merely providing his personal opinion. In interview with Jim G. Lucas and Bob Considine on 25 January 1954, posthumously published in 1964, MacArthur said,
Of all the campaigns of my life, 20 major ones to be exact, [Korea was] the one I felt most sure of was the one I was deprived of waging. I could have won the war in Korea in a maximum of 10 days.... I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs on his air bases and other depots strung across the neck of Manchuria.... It was my plan as our amphibious forces moved south to spread behind us—from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea—a belt of radioactive cobalt. It could have been spread from wagons, carts, trucks and planes.... For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the north. The enemy could not have marched across that radiated belt.
In 1985 Richard Nixon recalled discussing the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with MacArthur:
MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy the bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants... MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off, which I think speaks well of him.
MacArthur's advice to President John F. Kennedy during the next nuclear crisis of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, divulged his viewpoints on nuclear warfare while acting as Kennedy's personal military advisor. In a very long meeting in the White House between MacArthur and Kennedy in August 1962 after Kennedy received intelligence that the Soviet Union transported nuclear weapons to Cuba, MacArthur told Kennedy to not invade or bomb Cuba and also to not use nuclear weapons on Cuba, which would have led to the deaths of thousands of Soviet and Cuban soldiers. He advised Kennedy to simply do a naval blockade, which was exactly what Kennedy did two months later when the crisis reached its zenith. “The greatest weapon of war is the blockade,” he told Kennedy. “If war comes, that is the weapon we should use.” In contrast to MacArthur, all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the majority of EXCOMM urged Kennedy to first bomb and then invade Cuba, claiming that a blockade would show weakness and entice the Soviets to become more aggressive. They also argued for nuclear weapons to be used on Cuba if the Soviets responded militarily to a first-strike attack by the United States.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_Douglas_MacArthur#Nuclear_weapons
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