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Indlæser... MacArthur's War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Heroaf Stanley Weintraub
   Ingen Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog.  justindtapp | Jun 3, 2015 |    )1  Generals.dk | Aug 2, 2009 | When conflict broke out in Korea in 1950, MacArthur assumed command of American, South Korean and U.N. forces and drove back the North Korean army to the Yalu river, which is the border between Korea and China. And at center stage was his very risky yet stunning achievement, his amphibious attack behind enemy lines at Inchon. But his total lack of failure to anticipate Chinese entry into the war and his delusion that Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese forces in Formosa could be brought into the war to fight the Communists as a viable force had him lose all credability. Only by General Matthew Ridgway taking command of the Allied ground forces were the Allies able to reverse the trend. General Ridgway took the demoralized Allied troops and transformed them back into a strong fighting force. Which under his command was able to recapture some of the lands lost to the Communist. During this time MacArthur actual came up with a plan to sow a defensive field of radioactive waste on the southern bank of the Yalu. This plan helped Truman to make the to make the decission to dismiss MacArthur at the begining of April 1951. (  ) mramos | Jan 29, 2008 |
 Unfortunately, the book is a facile, cobbled-together mishmash of principally secondary sources, laced with myriad errors of chronology, fact, and interpretation—all poorly documented... It would have been useful to be able to refer to Weintraub’s sources to trace the origins of his errors, but unfortunately, he condescends that “endnote numbers are eschewed as intrusive, as are most footnotes.” ... Ultimately, MacArthur’s War contributes little to our understanding of the Korean War. It is so fraught with errors that it cannot be taken seriously. It is a regrettable book.  Weintraub's excellent account tracks the opening and conduct of the war on the American side until spring 1951, after the front stabilized and President Truman fired his supreme commander in the Far East, General Douglas MacArthur. As a campaign book, it is well written for the general reader yet still offers solid scholarship. Weintraub, a Korean war veteran, has a perceptive eye for action and makes clear-eyed judgments that are generally damning to MacArthur -- and to the high command in Washington. Although he is less knowledgeable about the wider strategic context, Weintraub has read enough to get by.
Douglas MacArthur towers over twentieth-century American history. His fame is based chiefly on his World War II service in the Philippines. Yet Korea, America's forgotten war, was far more "MacArthur's War" -- and it remains one of our most brutal and frightening. In just three years thirty-five thousand Americans lost their lives -- more than three times the rate of losses in Vietnam. Korea, like Vietnam, was a breeding ground for the crimes of war. To this day, six thousand Americans remain MIA. It was Korea where American troops faced a Communist foe for the first time, as both China and the Soviet Union contributed troops to the North Korean cause. The war that nearly triggered the use of nuclear weapons reveals MacArthur at his most flamboyant, flawed, yet still, at times, brilliant. Acclaimed historian Stanley Weintraub offers a thrilling blow-by-blow account of the key actions of the Korean War during the months of MacArthur's command. Our lack of preparedness for the invasion, our disastrous retreat to a corner of Korea, the daring landing at Inchon, the miscalculations in pursuing the enemy north, the headlong retreats from the Yalu River and Chosin Reservoir, and the clawing back to the 38th parallel, all can be blamed or credited to MacArthur. He was imperious, vain, blind to criticism, and so insubordinate that Truman was forced to fire him. Yet years later, the war would end where MacArthur had left it, at the border that still stands as one of history's last frontiers between communism and freedom. MacArthur's War draws on extensive archival research, memoirs, and the latest findings from archives in the formerly communist world, to weave a rich tale in the voices of its participants. From MacArthur and his upper cadre, to feisty combat correspondent Maggie Higgins and her fellow journalists, to the grunts who bore the brunt of MacArthur's decisions, for good and ill, this is a harrowing account of modern warfare at its bloodiest. MacArthur's War is the gripping story of the Korean War and its soldiers -- and of the one soldier who dominated the rest. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)951.904History and Geography Asia China and region Korean PeninsulaLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: (3.27)
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Korea was a fiasco from start to finish. MacArthur's hubris as America's greatest general was quite costly. His poor decisions probably cost us the war while his political statements kept the nation fiercely behind him, calling for an impeachment of the President that fired him. Most people probably remember the firing as being because of his threats to drop A-bombs on mainland China, but that would be inaccurate. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs concluded in the end that he should have been fired years earlier for incompetence and insubordination.
But, at the time, MacArthur was a living legend, "God among us," blasphemed many Congressmen.
There are perhaps several parallels to the Korean effort and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Korea had the potential to be a flashpoint for World War III. Great book, great read. (