MacArthur Reconsidered: General Douglas MacArthur as a Wartime Commander

“Ellman’s book is not history; it is not even revisionist history. It is a lengthy diatribe against one of America’s greatest generals.”

In his speech before a joint session of Congress after he was relieved of command in the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur stated, “I know war as few men living today know it.” Apparently, James Ellman, the founder of a hedge fund company with his bachelor’s degree in history and economics from Tufts and MBA from Harvard, thinks he knows more. In his new book MacArthur Reconsidered, Ellman pronounces MacArthur a poor wartime commander whose “insubordination” was a threat to the Republic. Ellman’s book is not history; it is not even revisionist history. It is a lengthy diatribe against one of America’s greatest generals.

Ellman’s book pretends to be an objective assessment of MacArthur’s command performances in World War II and Korea, but it reads more like a brief against MacArthur. For one thing, he excludes any assessment of MacArthur in World War I, where for a time he effectively commanded the so-called Rainbow Division in France, earning seven Silver Stars and demonstrated remarkable courage and leadership. Even where Ellman grudgingly credits MacArthur for his victories in World War II and Korea—New Guinea, retaking the Philippines, Inchon—he attributes those victories to luck or claims that there were better options that MacArthur ignored.

A glance at Ellman’s footnotes and selected bibliography is also telling. Although he obviously read D. Clayton James’ comprehensive three-volume biography of the general and William Manchester’s American Caesar, there is no evidence that he read Geoffrey Perret’s biography Old Soldiers Never Die or the most recent biography by historian Arthur Herman, Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior, or even British writer Robert Harvey’s American Shogun. Those real historians rank MacArthur, with all of his flaws, as one of America’s greatest generals.

That is not to say that MacArthur was a perfect general—there is no such thing. War is a very complicated business and what Clausewitz called “friction” can play havoc with any general’s performance on the battlefield. George Washington, after all, lost quite a few battles in the War of Independence and made plenty of mistakes, but he defeated the British Empire. Washington had his share of critics, too, even some who wanted to relieve him of command during the war.

Ulysses Grant, whom Geoffrey Perret ranks as America’s greatest general (he ranks MacArthur second), also suffered the slings and arrows of critics (he was called a drunk and a butcher) but he defeated the Confederacy in a costly but necessary battle of attrition.

MacArthur suffered early defeats in World War II, as Ellman notes, but he defeated the Japanese in the Southwest Pacific, and won plaudits both then and later for his generalship in the New Guinea campaign. Mark Perry calls MacArthur the greatest commander of the Second World War and praises MacArthur for coordinating “the most successful air, land, and sea campaign in the history of warfare.” Walter Borneman, though noting some of the same character flaws that Ellman emphasizes, acknowledges MacArthur’s strategic brilliance. Winston Groom concludes that MacArthur served his country with distinction, “marshaling huge victorious armies.” 

Ellman questions William Manchester’s assessment of MacArthur as the “most-gifted man at arms this nation has produced.” He accuses Manchester of exhibiting “fawning praise” for MacArthur in American Caesar. Here is what Manchester actually wrote of MacArthur: “He was a great thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of men and the worst of men, the most protean, most ridiculous, and most sublime.” Manchester noted that MacArthur refused to admit errors and worked to cover up his mistakes. This is hardly fawning praise.

Indeed, almost all of MacArthur’s admirers acknowledged his failings. Ellman is hardly the first to point out MacArthur’s mistakes and character flaws. There is nothing in Ellman’s book that is new about MacArthur’s penchant for embellishing his successes and downplaying his failures.

Yet there is no basis for calling MacArthur a “compulsive liar” or an insubordinate soldier. On that latter charge, Arthur Herman concludes that “there is very little in MacArthur’s actions that can be characterized as deliberate disobedience, let alone a challenge to civilian leadership of the military.” MacArthur was relieved of command and never challenged Truman’s authority to relieve him—there was no Constitutional crisis, as Ellman claims, and the Republic was not in danger because of Douglas MacArthur.

Ellman also criticizes MacArthur for failing to sufficiently train American and Filipino forces prior to Japan’s attack. This was a problem, however, throughout the American armed forces (except for the Navy) who were starved of money by the Roosevelt administration and a Democratic Congress. American soldiers on the home front—even after Pearl Harbor—were in many cases drilling with broomsticks instead of rifles. One only has to read Rick Atkinson’s splendid An Army at Dawn to understand just how unprepared the United States was prior to the Second World War. None of that was MacArthur’s fault.

Unsurprisingly, Ellman sees Korea as the most egregious example of MacArthur as a poor commander. While he briefly alludes to Inchon’s success—even the most vigorous MacArthur detractors admit the brilliance and daring of that operation—he attributes the success more to luck than strategic insight, and even suggests that MacArthur should have chosen another place to invade. For Ellman, even where MacArthur succeeds he falls short of what a good or great commander would have accomplished.

Ellman cannot even give MacArthur credit for his enlightened governance of postwar Japan, writing that the bureaucrats in Washington deserve the lion’s share of transforming Japan into a democracy. He even downplays the risks MacArthur took in landing at Atsugi airfield in late August 1945—an act of remarkable personal courage that Winston Churchill called the greatest act of bravery of the war. But perhaps Ellman thinks that he also knows more about courage than Churchill did.

Ellman, like many MacArthur haters (that is not too strong a word in this instance—Ellman has another book titled Trump and MacArthur: The Parallel Lives of Two American Demagogues—accuses MacArthur of disobeying orders in sending U.S. troops close to the Chinese border (even though General Marshall told him on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he should feel “unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed north of the 38th Parallel”—which Ellman fails to mention), and of wanting to start World War III in Korea after Chinese forces entered the war in October–November 1950. MacArthur privately suggested the use of atomic weapons in Korea. Perhaps Ellman is unaware of the fact that both Truman and Eisenhower publicly threatened to use atomic weapons in Korea.

At the end of his book, Ellman expresses the hope that we never again see the rise of another Douglas MacArthur. After MacArthur was relieved of command, Korea settled into a deadly stalemate—more American soldiers died after MacArthur left the scene than before he was relieved of command. The Korean War model as a substitute for MacArthur’s model (“no substitute for victory”) that Ellman is so enamored of was followed in Vietnam and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arthur Herman questions whether after the experiences of those later wars America is truly better off for rejecting the MacArthur model. But perhaps the hedge fund manager turned military historian knows better.