How Douglas MacArthur Almost Started WW3

[00:00:00]Did you know that in 1951 the US came  this close to starting World War 3?

[00:00:07]It’s not a story your teachers  will tell you, but it’s true.

[00:00:11]Oh and by the way, if you’ve ever wanted  to support our humble little channel, we finally have merch! Check out the Stars  and Stripes Pin set, it’s very lovely.

[00:00:22]But I digress - here is the man who  almost dragged America into nuclear war.

[00:00:28]Douglas MacArthur, arguably the most  controversial US general of the 20th century.

[00:00:35]In case you don’t know him, a fact  which would totally bewilder him, Douglas MacArthur was one of America’s  most decorated military leaders.

[00:00:44]He was a strong, yet paradoxical figure. He came from an influential family, a sort of military aristocrat destined  from birth for the armed forces.

[00:00:55]He went to the most elite army school in America,  and of course graduated at the top of his class.

[00:01:02]He rose rapidly through the ranks during the  First World War, earning seven Silver Stars, two Purple Hearts and a bunch of other  awards, both domestic and foreign.

[00:01:14]By 1919, he was occupying Germany and in the  years between the two world wars he rose to become the US Army Chief of Staff. Yet despite his elite background and his position at the very top of the  US military, he breathed an aura of populism and presented himself as a bastion  against the corrupt Washington establishment.

[00:01:38]He had an almost Trumpian ego and built himself  a cult-of-personality in the military, which of course led to frequent clashes with his superiors. It should therefore come as no surprise that MacArthur’s later career saw him commanding  places as far away from the US as possible, like the Philippines during World War Two. When the Japanese Empire conquered the Philippines, MacArthur swore that he would return  - and when he did return victoriously, the whole of America celebrated him as a national hero. MacArthur was the one who received Japan’s surrender after the two atomic  bombings, and it was he who oversaw America’s occupation of the islands. His ego and grandeur grew over the next four years as he brought democracy to the  islands, instituted Japan’s new constitution and basically reshaped Japan to his liking. During this time, MacArthur was also in charge of South Korea, though  he didn’t pay it much attention.

[00:02:48]Korea, as we all know, was divided along  the 38th parallel when Japan surrendered, with communists in the North and  ostensible democrats in the South.

[00:02:59]This division was supposed to be temporary, but  like many Cold War arrangements it turned into a permanent crisis, much like Communist China and  Taiwan, which we covered in another sidequest.

[00:03:12]In any case, Kim Il Sung decided to take  matters into his own hands and to unify the Korean peninsula by force. And so in June 1950, North Korea invaded the south, with weapons  generously provided by Mao and Stalin.

[00:03:31]By the time General MacArthur  had drank his morning coffee, the North Koreans were well on their way to Seoul. The South Korean army was badly outnumbered and lacked planes and tanks, so it  began collapsing within days.

[00:03:46]In the eyes of the Americans, this was very much  looking like the first steps towards World War 3.

[00:03:53]Lest we forget, just within the last  year the Soviet Union had tested its first nuclear bomb and Mao had completed  the communist takeover of mainland China.

[00:04:04]President Truman pushed for an emergency  session of the United Nations, and within two weeks an American expeditionary  force was assembled to save South Korea.

[00:04:14]The man entrusted to lead this force  was, of course, General MacArthur.

[00:04:20]He took up this position with great  enthusiasm and saw it as a call from destiny to finally wage proper war on communism. Unfortunately for him, by the time America’s forces could actually be mustered, South  Korea had almost entirely been conquered.

[00:04:38]Only a sliver of territory in the southeast  remained, the so-called Busan perimeter.

[00:04:45]For MacArthur, the war seemed over before it had  even begun, and so a radical strategy was needed.

[00:04:53]Against the advice of almost  everyone else in the US military, MacArthur planned a daring naval invasion deep  behind enemy lines to cut off the North Koreans.

[00:05:05]The plan was bold and had a very high risk of  going wrong, which is exactly why the North Koreans didn’t expect it and why it worked. The Americans cut off the North Korean army’s supply lines and routed it in short order, pushing  it out of South Korea entirely in mere weeks.

[00:05:26]MacArthur was praised as a genius and  was awarded another bunch of medals.

[00:05:32]At this point, MacArthur did what any other  military genius would do - he pushed his luck.

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[00:07:14]But back to our story, MacArthur did push his luck pretty soon after his successful invasion. Rather than stopping at the former border, as was the operation’s original goal,  he pushed deeper into North Korea to reunify the peninsula under the south. President Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were worried that China would intervene, but  MacArthur’s popularity outweighed their concerns.

[00:07:41]When intelligence came in that 400,000  Chinese troops were amassing in Manchuria, MacArthur brushed it off as a bluff by Mao. In his eyes, the Chinese were a weak army, so even if they did intervene, they’d just be  slaughtered - and they’d also be giving him a convenient excuse to expand the war into China. When China did attack, supposedly with a “volunteer” army so that it wouldn’t really be  a war, MacArthur got a big fat reality check.

[00:08:14]In just over two months, the Americans  were pushed back to the 38th parallel, with thousands dying in the retreat. By this point, President Truman was looking for a diplomatic way out of the conflict, which  was becoming increasingly unpopular back home.

[00:08:31]He was also deathly afraid of the  Soviet Union joining the party.

[00:08:36]MacArthur was furious and was  pushing for the opposite - more forces and escalation against China. Initially, he proposed dropping nuclear bombs in Manchuria to create an impassable  radioactive belt between China and Korea.

[00:08:54]Truman naturally rejected that  plan, but MacArthur persisted.

[00:08:59]He called for a naval blockade and  aerial bombing of China, followed up by an amphibious invasion from Taiwan so that  Chiang Kai-shek could finally get his revenge.

[00:09:10]All these unhinged proposals were  almost certain to cause World War 3, not least because the Soviet Union had just  signed a mutual defense treaty with China.

[00:09:21]MacArthur’s pride, however, was too great,  so instead of submitting to the President’s orders of limiting the Korean War, he tried  to escalate it outside the chain of command.

[00:09:33]He reached out to foreign diplomats  to assure them that America was committed to waging war with China. He also sent a letter directly to Congress, advocating for a wider war and  publicly criticizing President Truman.

[00:09:48]Worse yet, he sabotaged the peace talks between  the US and China right when they were starting, by publicly demanding China’s  surrender and threatening a blockade.

[00:10:00]For President Truman, this was the  last straw - he took the big political risk of firing the extremely popular  war-hero general in the middle of a war.

[00:10:13]Ironically, news of his dismissal reached  MacArthur right when he was executing his most brazen scheme yet for expanding the war. On the very same day of his firing, MacArthur had commanded 18 ships from the Seventh  Fleet to the coast of China near Taiwan.

[00:10:32]He had previously received approval to  retaliate against Chinese provocations and apparently he was trying  to fabricate one from scratch.

[00:10:42]MacArthur had one of the ships move to within  3 miles of mainland China as bait, then had planes do mock bombing dives over the nearby  city of Shantou, hoping to provoke a response.

[00:10:55]The Chinese did respond, by  surrounding the lone American ship in a tense standoff that lasted 5 hours. Luckily, nobody was trigger happy and no shots were fired, so escalation was averted. MacArthur was officially relieved of his post, but his ambitions were far from over. He returned to US soil for the first time in over a decade and was greeted  as a war hero with triumphant fanfare.

[00:11:26]In Washington DC, he drew a quarter of a  million people along Pennsylvania Avenue as he made his way towards the Capitol  with air force jets racing above.

[00:11:37]Reporters at the time noted the surreal  fear they felt, that if MacArthur had tried to seize the White House, he may very  well have succeeded with the crowd’s support.

[00:11:49]Thankfully, he didn’t try to take power  by force - and by the 1952 election next year his name had faded from the headlines. President Truman, however, never recovered politically from firing MacArthur and in 1952  he didn’t even try to run for reelection.

[00:12:10]History did vindicate Truman’s actions in  the decades since, but he only lived until 1972 so he didn’t get to see most of that. In any case, if you enjoyed this brief march through hypothetical armageddon,  consider supporting us on Patreon.

[00:12:28]Also consider getting our  first-ever merch, the Stars and Stripes Pin Set linked in the description. Let us know in the comments what other topics you’d like us to cover and stay tuned for the next  delusionally grandomanic episode of SideQuest!

[00:12:47]What was MacArthur's favorite fast food?

[00:12:50]The Big Mac.