Paul V McNutt
Banned
MacArthur was unpopular among the among many of the serviceman.I wonder how this effects the political situation ITTL.
Outrun my Gun: The Presidency of Douglas MacArthur
- Thread starter GeneralInTheShell
- Start date
The paradox of Mac was that his troops tended to hate him but civilians tended to love him. Naturally there were exceptions on both sides.
I think his portrayal ITTL is quite realistic so far, and while he wouldn't be a viable VP candidate today, I see no reason he wouldn't be a good choice in the 1950s. The US has changed quite a bit over the last half century.
I think his portrayal ITTL is quite realistic so far, and while he wouldn't be a viable VP candidate today, I see no reason he wouldn't be a good choice in the 1950s. The US has changed quite a bit over the last half century.
Sean Mulligan
Banned
This seems like a caricature of Stalin. Stalin knew a lot about America and its Political system and wouldn't have been likely to so misunderstand this development. Why would Stalin be so sure that this is a coup? Only a few years earlier Truman had come to power the same way Macarthur was after the death of FDR. What does Beria possibly wanting to overthrow Stalin have to do with Beria not believing that the military was launching a coup in America?
Sean Mulligan
Banned
Didn't Macarthur also, publicly criticize Truman on other occasions. What do the Creots have to do with the Soviet Union. Did you mean the Krauts. The Chinese Nationalists would have been useless against the Chinese Communists. The only things the Nationalists were good at by that time was pimping and drug dealing.
By this time Stalin was a caricature of himself. Stalin suffered was an old man who had suffered several heart attacks and several strokes since the end of the Second World War. He was not as sharp as he had always been and he had grown incredibly paranoid. MacArthur's coming to power could be viewed as very different from Truman's because MacArthur was a military man born and raise (his father had served during the Civil War and his brother was in the navy), Taft was in office for such a short time, and MacArthur was virtual Emperor of Japan after the Second World War. For Stalin power was a big thing, so in his paranoid state he could see that MacArthur and the military had taken power.
Once again Stalin is largely unstable by this point. He did some pretty crazy shit OTL and he had been planning a purge already. Beria's wanting to overthrow Stalin had nothing to do with Beria not believing that the military was launching a coup in America. To any normal person one would not see the connection, but as stated before Stalin was not in his right mind his last year on earth; he how ever could easily see that if there could be a coup in America there could be a coup against him. Beria was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was a little too guilty for his own good. Plus don't forget Beria had stepped in it by being partially responsible for the sale of weapons to Israel.
He did, but that wasn't why he was fired, neither was his wanting to have the sole authority to use nukes. Truman had wanted to fire Mac for a while, but his staff was adamant that he couldn't; once MacArthur signed that Petition though he essentially signed his resignation. Mac was playing politics and he had overstepped his bounds, there was nothing Truman's staff could do to stop him from firing Mac after that.
Sorry, I really hate when I go over an update multiple times and don't catch an easily noticed typo like that.
I'm sorry, but you are wrong with that analysis of the KMT/NRA. Four years earlier the nationalists had saved Kinmen and Matsu during the Battle of Guningtou. They had trained for years to reinvade the mainland and fight the communists in 1953 and had become an excellent fighting force; it was only because of international pressure to keep the Korean War from growing into a wider war that this didn't happen. The use of Nationalist Chinese troops would also signify something else; think about all the people back in China who are still loyal to the KMT at this time. If the Nationalists reopen the Chinese Civil War then it raises the possibility that it won't just be China's Muslims fighting against the PRC (like they did in OTL for 8 years) it means others might decide that there is hope to throw off the Communists. Remember that in OTL there were a number of PVA troops that were ex-KMT who after they got captured renounced the Communists and wanted to go to Taiwan after the war.
pnyckqx
Banned
General, i don't have any real problems with the substance of MacArthur's conversations --it's YOUR time line-- but the style...you have MacArthur sounding more like Patton than like MacArthur.
Faults notwithstanding, MacArthur was more a Patrician by nature. While he did use profanity when he felt that the situation called for it, he didn't swear like a mule skinner. He tended to be a bit more formal with people.
A little trivia for your consumption: MacArthur's OTL plan for Korea DID NOT call for the use of nuclear weapons. As told to Eisenhower OTL, it called for spreading high level nuclear waste along the Chinese-Korean border so that Chicom troops would essentially be walking dead men as they crossed the border.
Of course it would have generated it's own unique set of problems, and demonstrated that MacArthur really didn't realise what the use of nuclear technology really entailed, or he'd have never come up with such a hair-brained idea. Just think about what spreading that stuff would do to the people who spread it.
pnyckqx
Banned
Oh yeah. We're not dealing with "St. Douglas". There is the matter of 15 year old at the time Isabel Cooper, and plenty of lies made up by MacArthur's ex wife Louise. Drew Pearson had all the dirt. However, this is the 1950's Couple that with the fees paid to MacArthur to train up the Philippine army, which were outrageous.
Mac was a media whore. He's not Patton. While he could be and was contrarian, he's not into political suicide.
Not going to happen. It was common knowledge that Mac was ORDERED out by Roosevelt. He almost resigned over it.
It is popular garbage that Mac was a coward. Such stories have no basis in fact. George Patton called him "The bravest Son-of-a-Bitch I've ever seen" The guy lead trench raids as a colonel in WWI, and got three Purple Hearts for getting gassed.
One thing that the movie did get right was MacArthur's physical courage. He had an almost religious faith that the ammunition that would kill him had never been and never would be made.
General, i don't have any real problems with the substance of MacArthur's conversations --it's YOUR time line-- but the style...you have MacArthur sounding more like Patton than like MacArthur.
Faults notwithstanding, MacArthur was more a Patrician by nature. While he did use profanity when he felt that the situation called for it, he didn't swear like a mule skinner. He tended to be a bit more formal with people.
A little trivia for your consumption: MacArthur's OTL plan for Korea DID NOT call for the use of nuclear weapons. As told to Eisenhower OTL, it called for spreading high level nuclear waste along the Chinese-Korean border so that Chicom troops would essentially be walking dead men as they crossed the border.
Of course it would have generated it's own unique set of problems, and demonstrated that MacArthur really didn't realise what the use of nuclear technology really entailed, or he'd have never come up with such a hair-brained idea. Just think about what spreading that stuff would do to the people who spread it.
Mac's very stressed right now and he was getting defensive because Ike referred back to when he got fired and why. I could go through and tone down the language if that adds to the realism.
I actually had not heard of that plan in my research, which is a tad bit annoying as that is rather important information. I did know that his wanting to go nuclear was not infact what go him fired . Everything ITTL in regards to nuclear war in Korea and China is more along the lines of a combination of Operation Hudson Harbor a.k.a the tactical usage of weapons against massed infantry (hey it may have been tactically ineffective, but when you get the chance to blow up a mass of Chinese troops you take it) and something more like the attack against Japan.
Exactly, he wouldn't make a stupid mistake during the campiegn because public speaking was what he was all about; it was one ofthe reasons people loved him.
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pnyckqx
Banned
The information is found in Geoffrey Perret's biography of MacArthur. While Manchester's work is very good, it does make some unintentional errors, and gives more heed to Mac's detractors than the reality justified. Perret did manage to dispel some of that nonsense, and provided some not well known aspects of MacArthur's life.
Eisenhower was horrified when MacArthur told him the plan.
A MacArthur Presidency would have never happened, and we should all thank God for that!
MacArthur is the most over-rated military commander in American history. As a young officer, he was brilliant. He was probably the best division commander in the US Army during WW1. However, let's look at his record after WW1:
- While Army COS, he callously shit all over his fellow vets by employing troops and teargas to disperse the "Bonus Army" in Washington - 1932. This act alone illustrates his lack of political and civilian savvy.
- The US debacle in the Phillipines can be soley blamed on MacArthur. It is a travesty that FDR didn't let him be taken prisoner. Had MacArthur planned properly and not stubbornly clung to his "beat the Japs on the beaches" theory, he may have been able to hang onto part of Luzon for a much longer time. Instead, his poor judgment and over estimation of Phillipine Army capabilities led to the tragedy of Bataan & Corregidor.
If it wasn't for FDR's insistence to keep him around and order him out of the Phillipines, his military reputation would have been TOAST. And it should have been toast. He should never have been given another command after the Phillipine disaster.
- Korea. MacArthur had the onerous priviledge of overseeing the biggest military intelligence failure in american military history - failing to believe the imminent intervention of the Chinese into the war, and ignoring all of the factors that were pointing to it. Any other general would have seen the signs and acted accordingly. As COC Korea, MacArthur should have taken great care in his approach to the Yalu, instead he allowed US forces to become over extended, provoked the Chicoms into action, and advocated war with China - a war which we had no means to win, and no desire to be in. Truman definately did the correct thing when he canned him!
MacArthur is the most over-rated military commander in American history. As a young officer, he was brilliant. He was probably the best division commander in the US Army during WW1. However, let's look at his record after WW1:
- While Army COS, he callously shit all over his fellow vets by employing troops and teargas to disperse the "Bonus Army" in Washington - 1932. This act alone illustrates his lack of political and civilian savvy.
- The US debacle in the Phillipines can be soley blamed on MacArthur. It is a travesty that FDR didn't let him be taken prisoner. Had MacArthur planned properly and not stubbornly clung to his "beat the Japs on the beaches" theory, he may have been able to hang onto part of Luzon for a much longer time. Instead, his poor judgment and over estimation of Phillipine Army capabilities led to the tragedy of Bataan & Corregidor.
If it wasn't for FDR's insistence to keep him around and order him out of the Phillipines, his military reputation would have been TOAST. And it should have been toast. He should never have been given another command after the Phillipine disaster.
- Korea. MacArthur had the onerous priviledge of overseeing the biggest military intelligence failure in american military history - failing to believe the imminent intervention of the Chinese into the war, and ignoring all of the factors that were pointing to it. Any other general would have seen the signs and acted accordingly. As COC Korea, MacArthur should have taken great care in his approach to the Yalu, instead he allowed US forces to become over extended, provoked the Chicoms into action, and advocated war with China - a war which we had no means to win, and no desire to be in. Truman definately did the correct thing when he canned him!
Eisenhower was there also and the orders came from higher ups.
Someone who disliked the man could say that, but this is 1952 so they wouldn't.
Korea did terrible things to Mac, he made stupid mistakes that he wouldn't have made in WWII; he was wrong about the Chinese very wrong in fact. But before that point he had handled the war flawlessly. Everyone had a great sense of euphoria after they took the North Korean Capital lots of stupid mistakes were made.
Once again Truman did not fire Mac for his wanting to have the authority to decide whether to use nukes; he fired him for signing a petition to have him impeached.
Mac wasn't a God or a St. by any means in fact he had a lot of faults a fact that I try and capture ITTL, but there are a lot of misconseptions about the man and a lot of things said about him that are untrue.
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March 9th, 1953
General Biao couldn’t believe it; he had thought that after the Soviet defector had warned Mao of Stalin’s plan to consume China when the Americans began their whole sale slaughter of China Mao would be forced to end the war in Korea. Mao had said it couldn’t be true, that though the USSR and China had a bit of a strained relationship because of the lack of Soviet support during the Civil War they would not invade China and he would not give into the Americans. Biao had asked Mao if keeping North Korea alive was worth the potential destruction of China. The Chairman rebuked Biao for his lack of faith in China and for his anti-war attitude; how China needed him to fight against the nationalists and the capitalists when the time came; how he couldn’t condone giving the Americans all of Korea since the Americans had refused to accept the Indian proposal. Now Mao had proven to Biao that he had been right all along about war in Korea; Biao could not help but think of a Korean proverb that stated that when whales collide it is the shrimp that suffers; for Biao China was the Shrimp in this instance and the USSR and the US were the whales. Mao was going to break China if he did not give up Korea to the American.
“Let the Koreans fight the Americans on their own.” Biao mutter under his breath.
As he walked up a flight of stairs to his room, having returned from his fruitless meeting with Mao, he started to think about the name the westerners had given him because of his role in the Civil War and in Viet Nam; they had called him the “Red Napoleon”. Napoleon had been a brilliant general who deposed the revolutionary government of France and made himself dictator before becoming Emperor of France. With the fate of China in mind Biao thought to himself “Perhaps for China I must become more like the man the westerners associate me with.” And so began Biao’s plot…
--
March 11th, 1953
Churchill almost couldn’t believe what John Alexander Sinclair was showing and telling him. The Head of the Secret Intelligence Service had presented him with statements taken from several Soviet defectors, having been Beria men they defected fearing Stalin’s wrath, their statements confirming that the USSR had been pulling troops from Eastern Europe and moving them eastwards. At first Churchill had thought it meant Stalin was looking to get directly involved in the Korean War if MacArthur enlarged the engagement with China, but the truth was very different.
“Are you sure?” Churchill asked.
“We can’t be one hundred percent when dealing with defectors, sir, but it is looking incredibly likely; Stalin plans on invading the Peoples Republic of China.”
“We must inform the Americans of this turn of events. Should the USSR seek to bog itself down in China and turn away its menacing jaws from Europe I see MacArthur’s Asian strategy in a less negative light, perhaps the General may be of use to us in Malaysia. You may go for now John, I must contemplate the unique position we are in at this stroke in history; I need to put a call Viscount Head to have the War Office.”…
--
March 12th, 1953
In another world, a world Stalin knew nothing about, he was dead and a struggle for control was about to envelop the Soviet Union; Stalin knew nothing of this world, for though he was physically and mentally sick he was alive. He had suffered another mini-Stroke on the 5th, the day he died in a world that never would be, and had been bed ridden for several days. During which time plot had begun to form. These were not the imagined plots of Jews and Doctors but rather a real threat to the life of the Dictator. Stalin’s latest purge had debilitated the Soviet Union’s Foreign Intelligence and led to several agents defecting to the British for fear that the dictator would send them to Siberia or simply have them shot as the case had been for Beria and so many others. For Kliment Voroshilov,Nikolai Bulganin, Nikita Khrushchev, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lazar Kaganovich, men whom had competing interests within the inner workings of the USSR, Stalin’s broken mind was a danger to the USSR too great to be over looked. His plan for China, his purge, his war against the Jews; it all needed to be stopped.
They needed to depose Stalin and prevent a military rising against the new government. To do this they needed a military man who could replace Stalin, a figurative head of the USSR that the military would be far more inclined to follow; they wanted Georgy Zhukov…
--
March 16th, 1953
“I am calling time of death to be 5:37 p.m.”…
--
“We interrupt this evening’s episode of The Shadow to bring you an important news bulletin. President Robert Taft has passed away. I repeat the Press Secretary James Hagerty has announced that at roughly 5:30 this evening President Robert Taft passed away. We will bring you further details as they develop.”…
--
President MacArthur
MacArthur had already been sworn in; now he would make a speech to the press and to the nation; the speech he had practiced for several weeks would be on millions of radios and television sets. MacArthur, dressed in a suit and dark grey trench coat to keep off the light mist, looked out upon the crowd and spoke.
“My fellow Americans, I have lost a good friend and the nation has lost a great man. I am proud to have called Robert Taft my friend and to have served by his side as Vice-President; his memory will not vanish from this office or from my mind. I will hold the office of the Presidency with honor and with the utmost respect to the American people and the memory of my friend.
“We as a nation face a great challenge, a challenge no less in greatness than the previous World War. There can be no compromise with Red China - no half-way in the preservation of freedom. For once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. During our campaign President Taft and I promised that we would end the war in Korea and I say now that I will keep that promise; I will end the war in Korea, but I will not end it with appeasement of the forces of Red China. The Korean War will end in our victory as every war in American history has. There are those who would end war with Red China on any terms; they would turn ablind eye to history’s clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier wars. We cannot allow it to pass to allow Red China to be invigorated by a surrender of North Korea to Communism. If we should end war now we would see the Red Chinese look to expand their influence to all of Asia; to Indochina; to Malaysia; and once these have fallen they will turn again to Korea and not as a nation ravaged by civil war, but as an industrialized behemoth that would try and challenge America once again. And while I have no doubt that we would win that future conflict, we have the opportunity to prevent that future war here and now. I promise I will prevent that war by ending this war as it must.”…
--
March 9th, 1953
General Biao couldn’t believe it; he had thought that after the Soviet defector had warned Mao of Stalin’s plan to consume China when the Americans began their whole sale slaughter of China Mao would be forced to end the war in Korea. Mao had said it couldn’t be true, that though the USSR and China had a bit of a strained relationship because of the lack of Soviet support during the Civil War they would not invade China and he would not give into the Americans. Biao had asked Mao if keeping North Korea alive was worth the potential destruction of China. The Chairman rebuked Biao for his lack of faith in China and for his anti-war attitude; how China needed him to fight against the nationalists and the capitalists when the time came; how he couldn’t condone giving the Americans all of Korea since the Americans had refused to accept the Indian proposal. Now Mao had proven to Biao that he had been right all along about war in Korea; Biao could not help but think of a Korean proverb that stated that when whales collide it is the shrimp that suffers; for Biao China was the Shrimp in this instance and the USSR and the US were the whales. Mao was going to break China if he did not give up Korea to the American.
“Let the Koreans fight the Americans on their own.” Biao mutter under his breath.
As he walked up a flight of stairs to his room, having returned from his fruitless meeting with Mao, he started to think about the name the westerners had given him because of his role in the Civil War and in Viet Nam; they had called him the “Red Napoleon”. Napoleon had been a brilliant general who deposed the revolutionary government of France and made himself dictator before becoming Emperor of France. With the fate of China in mind Biao thought to himself “Perhaps for China I must become more like the man the westerners associate me with.” And so began Biao’s plot…
--
March 11th, 1953
Churchill almost couldn’t believe what John Alexander Sinclair was showing and telling him. The Head of the Secret Intelligence Service had presented him with statements taken from several Soviet defectors, having been Beria men they defected fearing Stalin’s wrath, their statements confirming that the USSR had been pulling troops from Eastern Europe and moving them eastwards. At first Churchill had thought it meant Stalin was looking to get directly involved in the Korean War if MacArthur enlarged the engagement with China, but the truth was very different.
“Are you sure?” Churchill asked.
“We can’t be one hundred percent when dealing with defectors, sir, but it is looking incredibly likely; Stalin plans on invading the Peoples Republic of China.”
“We must inform the Americans of this turn of events. Should the USSR seek to bog itself down in China and turn away its menacing jaws from Europe I see MacArthur’s Asian strategy in a less negative light, perhaps the General may be of use to us in Malaysia. You may go for now John, I must contemplate the unique position we are in at this stroke in history; I need to put a call Viscount Head to have the War Office.”…
--
March 12th, 1953
In another world, a world Stalin knew nothing about, he was dead and a struggle for control was about to envelop the Soviet Union; Stalin knew nothing of this world, for though he was physically and mentally sick he was alive. He had suffered another mini-Stroke on the 5th, the day he died in a world that never would be, and had been bed ridden for several days. During which time plot had begun to form. These were not the imagined plots of Jews and Doctors but rather a real threat to the life of the Dictator. Stalin’s latest purge had debilitated the Soviet Union’s Foreign Intelligence and led to several agents defecting to the British for fear that the dictator would send them to Siberia or simply have them shot as the case had been for Beria and so many others. For Kliment Voroshilov,Nikolai Bulganin, Nikita Khrushchev, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lazar Kaganovich, men whom had competing interests within the inner workings of the USSR, Stalin’s broken mind was a danger to the USSR too great to be over looked. His plan for China, his purge, his war against the Jews; it all needed to be stopped.
They needed to depose Stalin and prevent a military rising against the new government. To do this they needed a military man who could replace Stalin, a figurative head of the USSR that the military would be far more inclined to follow; they wanted Georgy Zhukov…
--
March 16th, 1953
“I am calling time of death to be 5:37 p.m.”…
--
“We interrupt this evening’s episode of The Shadow to bring you an important news bulletin. President Robert Taft has passed away. I repeat the Press Secretary James Hagerty has announced that at roughly 5:30 this evening President Robert Taft passed away. We will bring you further details as they develop.”…
--
President MacArthur
MacArthur had already been sworn in; now he would make a speech to the press and to the nation; the speech he had practiced for several weeks would be on millions of radios and television sets. MacArthur, dressed in a suit and dark grey trench coat to keep off the light mist, looked out upon the crowd and spoke.
“My fellow Americans, I have lost a good friend and the nation has lost a great man. I am proud to have called Robert Taft my friend and to have served by his side as Vice-President; his memory will not vanish from this office or from my mind. I will hold the office of the Presidency with honor and with the utmost respect to the American people and the memory of my friend.
“We as a nation face a great challenge, a challenge no less in greatness than the previous World War. There can be no compromise with Red China - no half-way in the preservation of freedom. For once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. During our campaign President Taft and I promised that we would end the war in Korea and I say now that I will keep that promise; I will end the war in Korea, but I will not end it with appeasement of the forces of Red China. The Korean War will end in our victory as every war in American history has. There are those who would end war with Red China on any terms; they would turn ablind eye to history’s clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier wars. We cannot allow it to pass to allow Red China to be invigorated by a surrender of North Korea to Communism. If we should end war now we would see the Red Chinese look to expand their influence to all of Asia; to Indochina; to Malaysia; and once these have fallen they will turn again to Korea and not as a nation ravaged by civil war, but as an industrialized behemoth that would try and challenge America once again. And while I have no doubt that we would win that future conflict, we have the opportunity to prevent that future war here and now. I promise I will prevent that war by ending this war as it must.”…
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