Latest / Generals of WWII: The Art of Command / General MacArthur: the iconic commander of the Pacific War (with Winston Valentine) | Ep 11

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General MacArthur: the iconic commander of the Pacific War (with Winston Valentine) | Ep 11 · Generals of WWII: The Art of Command

• 0:06
  Welcome to generals of World War 2, the art of command.
• 0:10
  I am your host, John Viscardo. And with me today is a very
• 0:13
  special guest, the great Winston Valentine joining us.
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  He's actually written a book on Napoleon, Destiny.
• 0:20
  I believe it's or two destiny, correct?
• 0:22
  Yeah. And he came on our Napoleon
• 0:25
  podcast and did an excellent job, so I wanted to have him
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  back on the show for a World War 2 episode.
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  And who are we discussing today, Winston?
• 0:34
  General Douglas MacArthur. The great MacArthur we are only
• 0:38
  going to discuss just for time limitation since World War 2 and
• 0:42
  pre World War 2 activities. For post World War 2 we'll have
• 0:45
  to do a maybe a separate episode but let's jump into it.
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  Douglas MacArthur was born in 1880 at the Little Rocks
• 0:54
  barracks in Arkansas into a prominent military family.
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  His father was U.S. Army Captain Arthur MacArthur, a
• 1:01
  Civil War hero and Medal of Honor recipient.
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  MacArthur's mother, Mary Pinky MacArthur, strongly influenced
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  his education and ambition. What was his early life like?
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  Well, to talk about Douglas Mcgrathy, you need to know more
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  about his father. So his father was this young
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  tortured in the Civil War who at the Battle of Missionary Ridge
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  charged up Missionary Ridge, which is his massive mountain
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  like structure and let on his regiment at only 18 years old
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  and grabbed his regiment's flag and said onward.
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  Miss Johnson, which became kind of like a Wisconsin State motto
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  for a large period of time. And his father then became a
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  Brigadier General at the end of the war and essentially spent
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  the rest next 40 years of his life as a rising star in the US
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  Army. And then eventually by roughly
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  1900, he is the highest ranked soldier in the UN.
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  So his father's his true legend of American history, where at
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  this young age he did this dramatic act and won the Medal
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  of Honor, led his regiment through some of the bloodiest
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  battles of the Civil War, and then became this famous general
• 2:24
  of the frontier for the next 40 years.
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  And MacArthur to grow up in that shadow.
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  And unlike other Good War 2 generals who were born into
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  civilian life, MacArthur was born on a military base,
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  surrounded by soldiers, surrounded by this martial
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  attitude. He had a lot to live up to and
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  he in fact exceeded his father's accomplishments, which is hard
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  to do. Very hard to do, but during his
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  early life he was very nomadic. He never really had a true home
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  because his father would always move military bases.
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  Sometimes he'll be in Arkansas, sometimes in Texas, sometimes
• 3:00
  California, sometimes even in the New Mexico and Kansas.
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  So he truly got to see almost all of America because he was
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  born in Arkansas, but then spent a lot of his time in California,
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  then spent some time in Texas, then New York.
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  But he never had a true home. And because his father was so
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  busy being this hero of the US. So, I mean, he was raised by his
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  mother mostly. And he said of his mother that
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  she was the one who kind of pushed him to be a soldier and
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  saw his destiny and wanted him to live up to it.
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  So she was, when pushing him to do well in school, she pushed
• 3:41
  him to be a quarterback for his local school that he went to for
• 3:45
  a few years. She pushed him to do all these
• 3:47
  different things in order to live up to his father.
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  But also what's unique is his father's from Wisconsin, a
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  northern state, and his mother is from the South and had
• 3:57
  relatives fight for the South. So MacArthur is truly influenced
• 4:01
  by both sides, and he got almost all of American culture and saw
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  all of America from different perspectives, all in just a few
• 4:11
  short years. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
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  Grew up as a classic military brat and went to West Point,
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  where he graduated first in his class in 1903, despite facing
• 4:22
  hazing and isolation. How was his time there?
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  It was rough to say the least. He was bullied a lot.
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  He was he. He's a lot.
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  Most of that was because he viewed himself as this, you
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  know, great figure. He was so intelligent, so
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  talented, which he was because again, this is a guy who was
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  both deeply intelligent but also one of the star football
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  players. He was quarterback.
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  He was when the star, you know, tracked stars.
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  He was a star baseball player. He could do anything.
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  He was the best at almost everything.
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  So he was bullied for lot of jealousy, but also his father
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  was on top of everything in the military that he was kind of
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  bullied for his family position and the fact that he never was
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  he this guy never grew up in a civilian life.
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  So he was very headstrong and he actually had a multiple quotes
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  there because he was so talented, but he never had that
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  many true friends. He essentially learned that to
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  be talented, to do stuff in life, he couldn't trust anyone
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  else, caused some of his more difficult personality that would
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  shine through in Goodwood too. Yeah, it's lonely on the
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  mountaintop for sure. Yeah, but he did also testify
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  before Congress because one West Point to that I forget where he
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  was from, committed suicide because of all the hazing he
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  got. So Congress had this whole
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  investigation and MacArthur, because of his some of his
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  family connections and because the of the fact that he was
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  himself hazed, went before Congress and talked about
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  reforms that needed to happen, his experience being hazed.
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  So already he was being, you know, we're not groomed for
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  greatness, but was already in the spotlight to say.
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  Right. And we'll come back to West
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  Point here in a minute. But he serves in the Philippines
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  early in his career, gaining familiarity with the region he
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  would later defend in World War 2.
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  What was his early assignment like?
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  And do you think he struggled early in his career to escape
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  his father's shadow? So he graduated in 1903, and he
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  was actually on his father's staff for a few months as
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  comfort engineer to help build bridges, roads, stuff like that.
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  Then he was sent as in like a scout to Patan in the
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  Philippines, a place where he would lead it in national fame.
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  But he went to the Philippines but then contracted malaria and
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  did a few more months of stouting, but then was sent home
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  again as his father's aid of a free trip to Japan where he
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  would help advise the Japanese army.
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  And like, you know, they would see Port Lafa and these future
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  battles during the Musso Japanese War.
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  And he he was very confident in his job.
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  So he was sent to an engineer school in 19 O 7 and actually
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  was a military aid for Teddy Roosevelt in 19 O 8.
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  So most of that was because of connections that his father had.
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  But when he was separated from his father, such as in the
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  Philippines, he did well. But with those family
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  connections and the fact that his father was just this Olivian
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  legend, he usually could get whatever he wanted.
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  If he wanted to post, he could get it.
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  So people like Eisenhower, who had to Wick and sweat at these
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  positions, MacArthur had it easy, but it wasn't like he was
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  this incompetent. He was very good at his job.
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  So he had kind of both. He had the nepotism part, but
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  also he had the talent to back it up.
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  Yeah, because, I mean, opportunity's one thing.
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  Lots of people are given an opportunity, but you have to
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  have the talent to do something once you get there.
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  Well, during World War One, he becomes one of the youngest
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  generals in the US Army and earns multiple decorations.
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  Where did he serve during World War One?
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  So he was when the first officers sent to Europe from
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  America with the 42nd Rainbow Division, which was, it was told
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  a rainbow because it had units from all across America.
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  So most divisions in American history up until really last 60
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  years were units from certain areas.
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  But the Rainbow division was units from like Texas,
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  California, New York. And he was a division chief of
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  staff as a channel. And it was brilliant to
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  recognize it. And he was loved by the
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  soldiers. He was sent to the Lunaville
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  sector in 1918, which the whole plan for American units was to
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  go to less intense areas in the front, kind of learn how to do
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  trench warfare, learn how to, you know, find the weapons and
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  stuff like that. And then they will be sent to
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  the more heavy fighting areas of the battlefield.
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  So he actually was one of the first soldiers to actually do a
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  trench raid. He wouldn't be the first wave in
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  the septic and even the third wave, but he, as a panel and his
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  chief of staff of the whole division, would join his
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  soldiers in advances across No Man's Land and have bullets fly
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  around him and artillery shells landed near him.
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  And that's where he got the prod gear and the Silver Side
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  Distinguished Service Cross. So he got all these awards for
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  all this bravery that he showed. He got promoted to Brigadier
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  General at this very young age. He was one of the youngest in
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  the Army, really. In his mid phase, his division
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  was sent to the mine to stop this German offensive and he was
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  shifted back to brigade command to lead this attack, which did
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  very well and got the Legion of Honor.
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  He got two more Silver Stars. He found the Musear gone, he was
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  wounded badly a few times but he got the Pitbull Hut and stuff
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  like that. But by the end of the war he was
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  surpassing his father's legacy as just this truly brave,
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  brilliant and loved officer by his men.
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  He would still be in Europe for a few years after Rd.
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  War 2 Road War 1 ended. He would return to New York in
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  1919 for a few big parades, but he was the the Army's youngest
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  Major General by the end of the war.
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  And then when the Army shrunk in size, he kept his mind as a
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  Brigadier. So this guy who was still
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  thought well of, he's still a lot of connections to high
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  ranked officers and everyone knew that this guy is going to
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  do stuff with his career after the war.
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  Yeah, let's let's just recap because already he's number one
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  in his class at West Point. He's served in the Philippines
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  and he's a decorative war hero and World War One, and we're not
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  even to the good part of his resume yet.
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  Yeah, he's already a person who's going to be in the history
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  books, and he hasn't even gone to the major part of his life.
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  Right well after World War One, he serves as Superintendent of
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  West Point, modernizing the academy's curriculum and
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  training. How do you think he enjoyed this
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  position? So he loved it, but West Point
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  during World War One was shrunk to really only two years to get
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  officers ready for the war. So he was kind of getting it
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  ready back in that normal position of being more of a a
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  full 4 year school. But he also, Petraeus recipient
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  was an engineering school for so long and the whole army was
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  meant to be, you know, building bridges, building roads, helping
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  build up the frontier. He wanted the Tin School into
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  more of an actual military school based off of like Sansia
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  in France and Scientist in London.
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  So he wanted to get more funding for the school.
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  He trained the cadets in more modern tactics that he saw in
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  weird War One. So instead of being, you know,
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  trained in more frontier tactics like cavalry operations, he
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  wanted to teach them in trench warfare and how to use tanks and
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  stuff like that. And he actually read with a
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  young George Patton 2 have and teach these tenets how to use
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  tents. He also wants to introduce more
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  military history into the curriculum because he believed
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  that military history is the best quality for an officer.
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  He got married in 1922, but that was the end of his stint in West
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  Point because he was sent to the Philippines.
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  But he was the one who kind of helped make West Point the store
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  that it is today. Yeah.
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  MacArthur was later appointed U.S.
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  Army chief of staff in the 1930s, overseeing a force
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  weakened by budget cuts. And then he controversially LED
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  troops against the Bonus Army, quote, UN quote, in Washington,
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  DC, which damages his public image.
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  Can you tell us briefly what happened here?
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  So MacArthur is a staunch Republican, but I want to say
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  he's a conservative, but he's more of a traditionalist in the
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  terms of politics. And he despised FDR and the New
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  Deal. He was made.
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  She was up in 1935. Was it in 1930, as you said?
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  And that kind of led to the Bonus Army debacle where a bunch
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  of these soldiers from River One, because the budget cuts no
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  longer had their lot of their pay.
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  They were retired, but they still got stipend from the
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  government. But that stipend ended.
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  And the Great Depression, these people needed money, they needed
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  food, so they wanted to peacefully go to the capital and
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  protest. But because it was the 30s and
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  MacArthur and a bunch of other people in the government, an
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  army thought that this Bonus Army was being infiltrated by
• 14:29
  communists and I guess, and they went just soldiers at soldiers.
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  They were now, you know, these massive rioters and protesters.
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  So they wanted to make sure that this, you know, potential
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  revolution would not happen. So MacArthur tasked Patton and
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  Eisenhower to lead cavalry and infantry troops to just, you
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  know, force these protesters and this Bonus Army out of DC in
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  that during the circumstances where the Army was beaten up,
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  these old veterans, a few veterans actually died during
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  this and caused massive pandemonium in DC itself.
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  And this was, you know, photographed a lot.
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  It was in all the papers. So MacArthur, who was, you know,
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  the main architect of this kind of disaster, publicity wise,
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  where U.S. troops were beating the hell out of these
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  defenseless veterans who had fought in World War One, many of
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  whom had actually fought with MacArthur.
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  This caused many people to hate MacArthur, view him as this
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  martial militarist who had no respect for civilians, which for
• 15:49
  a guy who never was a civilian, he didn't really have that much
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  respect for. He never had that much respect
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  for civilians because he never was 1.
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  But it's bad. It's bad optics like you're
• 16:00
  saying it's. Horrible optics.
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  An FDI who was more friendly to the Bonus Army was horrified by
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  this, so a few months later he was sent out of DC.
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  He was no longer the Chief of Staff of the Army and was sent
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  to the Philippines in essentially exile.
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  He was an exile to this colony, and he essentially was no longer
• 16:24
  imagined domestic and military life.
• 16:27
  He was off kind of like Napoleon St.
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  Selena off in his own domain. Well, in 1941, MacArthur was
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  recalled active duty to command US and Filipino forces in the
• 16:39
  Philippines. What mistakes did MacArthur make
• 16:43
  during the defense of the Philippines against Japan?
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  So one, he's in a bad situation, he is with really only a
• 16:53
  division of soldiers hundreds of miles away from Mili.
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  Any help? And he is essentially surrounded
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  by Japanese forces because to the north was Taiwan and China,
• 17:06
  where there's a lot of Japanese air and naval power.
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  Then to the West there's Indochina, where there's also a
• 17:13
  lot of Japanese bases, and then to the South it's ocean and
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  these poorly trained European formations.
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  So his forces have to defend this massive archipelago of
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  hundreds if not thousands of islands and against a much
• 17:31
  larger Japanese forest where he doesn't know where they're going
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  to land. But then when Pearl Harbor
• 17:36
  actually does happen and FDI tells him you are going to be
• 17:40
  attacked, be ready. He believes that the Japanese
• 17:44
  air power was not as talented as would have just happened at
• 17:48
  Pearl Harbor. So he did get away with stuff
• 17:51
  and it didn't take the threat too seriously.
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  So when all of his elite bombers were just bombed on the runway
• 18:01
  supplies, he had no clue that was going to happen.
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  He had no air power. His Navy was also bombed trying
• 18:06
  to Pearl Harbor style, and a bunch of his facilities were
• 18:10
  also bombed via air. So MacArthur, in just a few
• 18:15
  hours, the Pacific Fleet was gone, Hong Kong was being
• 18:17
  attacked, Singapore was being attacked, and MacArthur no
• 18:21
  longer had any air power or naval power.
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  So all of his troops were now stuck in Manila with thousands
• 18:29
  of Japanese troops now landing across the archipelago.
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  Then he had to follow this plan that had been set up before the
• 18:36
  war to fall back to this Bataan Peninsula.
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  So it's a little peninsula to the West of Manila that's pretty
• 18:44
  defensible and pretty strong for a defensive position.
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  But while he retreats from Manila, he fails to take all,
• 18:52
  all of the food with them. So his troops fall back to
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  Manila with, you know, ammunition supplies, but they
• 18:59
  don't have food. And so when the Japanese troops
• 19:02
  surround him in this peninsula, there's no really dough, really.
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  He doesn't have food to last that many more months.
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  And also his troops are not well trained enough to survive
• 19:13
  against some of these elite Japanese formations.
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  So he's such a bottleneck in this peninsula for a few weeks.
• 19:21
  He's putting up this very gallant fight that the papers
• 19:23
  love. He's actually fighting the
• 19:25
  Japanese. And well, all these other
• 19:27
  American formations or European formations are surrendering.
• 19:32
  However, that leads to FDI making the famous decision to
• 19:37
  pull MacArthur out of the Philippines and essentially lead
• 19:40
  this GS into their fate. Yeah, I was going to ask you
• 19:43
  about that. He escapes to Australia under
• 19:45
  direct orders from President Roosevelt, but do you think it
• 19:49
  affected his reputation at home and abroad?
• 19:52
  Do you think he should have stayed with General Wainwright
• 19:54
  and his troops? It depends on how you think of
• 19:59
  his role because he had just got what is from the president to
• 20:03
  retreat. But he'd also previously said to
• 20:06
  his soldiers that I will fight with you to the end.
• 20:09
  I will. If you guys are going to go to
• 20:11
  POW camps, I will join you. But also it would be a massive
• 20:16
  defeat for a man of MacArthur's fame and statue of being one of
• 20:21
  the highest ranking US generals to be captured in the first few
• 20:26
  weeks of the war. So there is the.
• 20:29
  Moral arguments of like he should have stayed with his
• 20:32
  troops, but there's the awesome more practical argument of like,
• 20:35
  hey, we need generals who know how to fight.
• 20:38
  And MacArthur, he didn't do the best job in the Philippines but
• 20:42
  he's this iconic figure in America.
• 20:45
  Everyone loves him because of his stand up attack.
• 20:48
  So we can't have this massive figure just be sent to a POW
• 20:52
  camp. So I would have agreed with FDI
• 20:55
  to pull him out, but there is that massive kind of hypocrisy
• 21:01
  where he was telling his troops that two days before he got the
• 21:04
  order that he was going to die with them if.
• 21:06
  You did so well. His pledge quote, I shall return
• 21:11
  in quote, became a powerful symbol of Allied resolve in the
• 21:14
  Pacific. Let's talk about his use of
• 21:17
  media and propaganda. Obviously there's that famous
• 21:20
  picture of him wading back ashore in the Philippines.
• 21:24
  It seems he and Patton and Montgomery were master
• 21:27
  marketers, don't you think 100? Percent.
• 21:29
  They were all very talented speakers.
• 21:31
  They knew how to cultivate relationships with the press and
• 21:34
  especially compared to other generals who as the military
• 21:38
  tended to more like corporations and generals between more
• 21:42
  bureaucrats like people like MacArthur and Patton were more
• 21:46
  characters in the old like Civil War sentence of these figures
• 21:50
  who would talk to the press a lot, would have a more personal
• 21:54
  have personality, have opinions. And MacArthur, there's a quote
• 21:59
  where someone says every photo of MacArthur from World War 2 is
• 22:04
  staged, which is pretty accurate.
• 22:07
  Where most of his photos of him with the pipe and the hat, the
• 22:11
  sunglasses, most of them were staged.
• 22:15
  He wouldn't just be wearing that regularly.
• 22:18
  He usually would be in his office or where his staff would
• 22:22
  be. He never, you know, he would not
• 22:24
  visit the front very often. He wouldn't really do massive
• 22:28
  tours to see soldiers like Ike or Patton would do.
• 22:32
  He was more reserved. And he also famously had
• 22:36
  contempt for Australian troops. So he never really visited the
• 22:40
  Australian troops. But what he would do is if the
• 22:42
  press was outside, he would always, you know, put on the
• 22:45
  hat, put on the pipe, put on the sunglasses and pose and deliver
• 22:50
  some witty remarks to the press. And for an American public where
• 22:55
  they didn't lend that much about their generals early on because
• 22:59
  there wasn't this massive land one year where American troops
• 23:02
  and generals were fighting. And most American generals went
• 23:06
  that colourful. They were very reserved.
• 23:11
  They focused on their work more like corporate CEOs or more
• 23:15
  behind the shadows. So MacArthur being so open and
• 23:18
  talking to the press so much made him this famous figure in
• 23:23
  America. So there's a poll done of
• 23:26
  Americans in 1945 of who do you credit for winning the war at?
• 23:30
  People like Eisenhower, Pat and Marshall get like 10% each,
• 23:36
  while MacArthur gets 6070% because he's just so famous.
• 23:40
  And that's someone who they can tie the war effort to.
• 23:44
  I think you make a great point there.
• 23:46
  You look at all the pictures when you think of MacArthur and
• 23:48
  you're like, yeah, he looks tall.
• 23:50
  He has the sunglasses and the pipe and the perfect hat.
• 23:53
  He always looks calm and in command.
• 23:57
  Now, even if that wasn't the case, the pictures kind of
• 24:00
  showcase that. And maybe that's why he got such
• 24:02
  a high vote there on who was responsible for winning World
• 24:05
  War 2. During the war where so many
• 24:08
  people are dying, so many battles being lost, especially
• 24:12
  early on, it's him having that facade of being very strong,
• 24:18
  calm and brilliant. That's what made so many
• 24:23
  Americans view him as the man responsible for bidding the war.
• 24:28
  Because also Americans, especially in the first few
• 24:31
  years, didn't really care about Hitler or the war in Europe.
• 24:35
  They cared about Japan and who's delivering US victories in the
• 24:39
  Pacific. So that's why Nimitz, Halsey,
• 24:43
  Patton, Doolittle, those are the names of people that were just
• 24:47
  famous to the American public. Yeah.
• 24:50
  MacArthur led the Southwest Pacific campaign, advancing
• 24:53
  through New Guinea in the Philippines via island hopping.
• 24:57
  How did MacArthur's strategy of island hopping differ from the
• 25:01
  Navy's preferred approach? So this is the big controversy
• 25:06
  of the Pacific War is the MacArthur side of should we
• 25:11
  advance through New Guinea to capture a few islands, then
• 25:16
  capture the Philippines and then capture Taiwan, which cuts the
• 25:21
  Japanese homeland off from Indonesia and Burma and Vietnam,
• 25:26
  essentially cutting the the Japanese Empire too.
• 25:30
  Focusing on what a landward approach no longer because New
• 25:33
  Guinea, the Philippines that would require many more army
• 25:37
  divisions than moving divisions. Meanwhile, the Navy wanted to
• 25:42
  quickly advance to the Japanese home islands and cut them off
• 25:46
  through Okinawa in that way. And they wanted a more approach
• 25:52
  where they could use the bigger Navy, they could fight more
• 25:54
  naval battles, they could use the Marines more.
• 25:57
  So both sides kind of wanted to use their own troops, like the
• 26:02
  Army wanted to use Army troops and get fame and get attention,
• 26:06
  while the Navy wanted to use the Navy and the Marine divisions.
• 26:10
  They wanted to do it that way. So essentially they both had
• 26:14
  very similar ideas of not capturing every island, a bit of
• 26:19
  territory, but slowly advancing to the Japanese main islands.
• 26:24
  But both had different ways of doing it.
• 26:26
  One was what land with what jungle based.
• 26:30
  One was more island, more let's capture, you know, this small
• 26:35
  speck of dust in the middle of the Pacific Ocean because it'll
• 26:38
  be better for air bases. Both were very intelligent and
• 26:42
  well handled operations, but both were kind of done more
• 26:46
  selfishly by the Navy commanders and the Army commanders.
• 26:50
  Let's discuss MacArthur's leadership style.
• 26:53
  What traits made MacArthur both effective and difficult to work
• 26:56
  with during World War 2, and how did he manage relations with
• 27:00
  President Roosevelt and the Joint?
• 27:02
  Chiefs MacArthur was so such an imposing figure and someone of
• 27:12
  such gravitas that people would always be willing to meet with
• 27:17
  him and follow what he said and do what he said.
• 27:19
  But if you ever, you know, disagreed with him or opposed
• 27:23
  him on some issue, he wouldn't want to talk to you, wouldn't
• 27:27
  want to spend any time dealing with you.
• 27:30
  So essentially, he surrounded himself with yes men by a guy
• 27:34
  called Keith Sutherland, who was his chief of staff.
• 27:37
  He had a chief of intelligence who was pretty incompetent in
• 27:42
  his job. He once said that on I forget
• 27:46
  what island, I think by AC he said that there was only going
• 27:49
  to be 2000 Japanese troops and it would be an easy win.
• 27:53
  It turned out there was 17,000 troops and the island is much
• 27:58
  more well defended than anticipated and that caused a
• 28:02
  lot more casualties than people would have liked.
• 28:05
  But MacArthur, because this guy who was his chief of
• 28:09
  intelligence was being much of like a yes man who would do
• 28:13
  whatever MacArthur said, kept him in his position.
• 28:17
  But MacArthur also managed to find people who where could
• 28:22
  manage to tell him what to do kind of thing, tell him which
• 28:27
  decision would be best to help him cultivate plans.
• 28:31
  So he had a brilliant air chief called out George Kenny.
• 28:35
  Kenny, who was probably one of the best air chiefs of River
• 28:39
  Hill, who helped him work out the get total air superiority on
• 28:43
  every operation he faced. He had a Walter Crudill and
• 28:49
  Edward Berger who were two army generals who were very good at
• 28:54
  their jobs and they didn't love Macgarthur, but they respected
• 28:59
  him enough to break with him and follow his plans.
• 29:03
  But also he had his own personal Navy that followed his army that
• 29:08
  was well cultivated enough to have those officers alike and
• 29:12
  respect him. Whenever Macgarthur actually did
• 29:14
  operations with other formations, whether that be
• 29:17
  Australian troops, British troops or the Navy itself, it
• 29:22
  always caused a massive issue because he thought he was the
• 29:27
  smartest, most talented man in the world.
• 29:30
  So it was his way of the highway and America of all else.
• 29:34
  So he didn't really trust Australian troops.
• 29:38
  He actually wouldn't help them a lot with their assignments and
• 29:42
  would give them backwater commands while to the Navy he
• 29:47
  would always snub them in some way.
• 29:50
  But actually to go to the how he cultivated relationships with
• 29:54
  President Roosevelt and the chief of staff, he always felt
• 29:59
  that he was the victim of some grand cabal in Washington where
• 30:04
  this cabal in Washington of generals and Roosevelt, who he
• 30:07
  knew didn't like him, was secretly working against him and
• 30:12
  working on his downfall. They weren't.
• 30:14
  But he always felt that way. So when George Marshall came to
• 30:20
  visit him, he actually left his command center a few hours
• 30:25
  before Marshall arrived to force Marshall to chase after him, to
• 30:31
  kind of show that MacArthur was kind of the boss, even though
• 30:34
  Marshall was, you know, much more important in Washington and
• 30:39
  to the Army itself than MacArthur.
• 30:41
  But it would be stuff like that. He would piss off random people
• 30:44
  who annoyed him or with threats to him in some way.
• 30:48
  So he was very difficult to work with.
• 30:51
  But he did find this kind of group of yes men, but more
• 30:56
  intelligent yes men to support him with all these endeavours.
• 31:00
  Yeah, it's, it's interesting. He he definitely has a problem
• 31:05
  with authority, but we don't have time for that right now on
• 31:08
  the Korean War. We're just doing World War Two.
• 31:11
  He accepts Japan's surrender aboard the USS Missouri in
• 31:14
  September 1945, cementing his legacy as a World War 2 legend.
• 31:20
  Why did MacArthur choose this venue to accept Japan's
• 31:23
  surrender? So this is one of my my personal
• 31:28
  favorite moments of good War 2 because it Harkins back to that
• 31:31
  old kind of traditionalist like peace treaty signing, because
• 31:37
  how the Nazi Germans surrendered was they stuck title and yodel
• 31:43
  in the room and had Zhukov just say sign the damn papers.
• 31:46
  And it wasn't that, you know, formal surrender ceremony like
• 31:50
  other words had, but for the the Japanese, MacArthur wanted to
• 31:55
  show that they were truly beaten.
• 31:57
  So in Tokyo Bay on one of the newest US battleships, the USS
• 32:01
  Missouri, he had this Japanese delegation surrender.
• 32:05
  But something interesting is there was a whole debate about
• 32:08
  who should the Japanese surrender to?
• 32:11
  Should they surrender to the Navy?
• 32:12
  Should they surrender to Truman? Should they surrender to the
• 32:16
  Army? Because the whole Pacific War
• 32:19
  was a debate between the Army and the Navy.
• 32:22
  So how they figured it out would be it would be on a Navy ship.
• 32:27
  It will be MacArthur, an Army general, who would accept the
• 32:31
  surrender. But Nimitz would sign the treaty
• 32:34
  for the Navy and for America. But it would be on the USS
• 32:38
  Missouri, named after Harry Truman's old home state.
• 32:43
  So it kind of showed American power, but it also had different
• 32:49
  things where the Navy could say the Japanese surrender to us,
• 32:54
  Henry Truman could say, oh, I had a role in it.
• 32:57
  And the Army and MacArthur could say I was the one who, you know,
• 33:01
  had the Japanese surrender to. So it was all this kind of petty
• 33:04
  infighting and lust for prestige and glory that caused the
• 33:10
  surrender ceremony. But of course right after the
• 33:14
  Japanese surrender, they have 1000 American planes fly
• 33:19
  overhead and a massive multi battleship gun salute.
• 33:24
  Which is funny because the Japanese no longer had any
• 33:28
  battleships because all of them were sunk at this point and most
• 33:31
  of the Navy aircraft were destroyed and shot down.
• 33:35
  So it's essentially saying, yeah, you guys can still try to
• 33:38
  fight or just this small Navy task force is short enough to
• 33:43
  destroy your Navy that's left. Right.
• 33:46
  Yeah, MacArthur leads the occupation of Japan after the
• 33:49
  war, which could have easily gone awry.
• 33:52
  How does he navigate this tricky situation with the Emperor?
• 33:56
  So he understood that you can just let Japan back into its old
• 34:03
  Roya routes, not knowing they would defeat him like the
• 34:07
  Germans after World War One, where the defeat hadn't been
• 34:11
  significant enough to enforce on the home people that know you
• 34:15
  people are defeated, you have to change your ways.
• 34:19
  But he also knew we can't just change Japanese society like
• 34:24
  completely randomly, like you can't get rid of the emperor
• 34:27
  because he is this God like figure who if you just get rid
• 34:31
  of him, you're going to have this massive Japanese insurgency
• 34:36
  and this figure of stability is just going to be gone.
• 34:39
  So he preserved the emperor, but ensure encouraged that Japan
• 34:44
  would move more towards a constitutional monarchy with a
• 34:48
  stable democracy and also women's suffrage.
• 34:51
  And he essentially rewrote the Japanese constitution to make it
• 34:55
  so Japan would no longer have a military, but they would also be
• 35:01
  full of that. It wouldn't be like the Germans
• 35:03
  after World War One where they hate not having the military.
• 35:06
  The Japanese would like not having the military.
• 35:09
  They would change their ways from being this big warrior
• 35:13
  samurai culture to enter into the more modern world of being a
• 35:18
  stable democracy, but having the emperor as the sum, you know,
• 35:22
  connection to the old medieval samurai roots.
• 35:27
  The Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshida, he said he ruled us
• 35:31
  like a benevolent Shogun. He said something like that,
• 35:34
  where he dismantled Japanese militarism, but he did it in a
• 35:39
  nice, very kind way to the Japanese people, so ensured that
• 35:45
  the Japanese people themselves were getting out of this
• 35:49
  complete state of just destruction, where Tokyo's gone,
• 35:53
  Hiroshima, Nagasaki, they're gone.
• 35:55
  All these Japanese cities are just gone in ruins.
• 35:59
  He ensured that the military would help rebuild them, then
• 36:02
  make them into the cities. I feel like today where they
• 36:05
  they're these massive cities, they are beautiful cities to
• 36:09
  look at. And to think of it how just 80
• 36:12
  years ago all these cities were just non existent.
• 36:15
  They were all ruins. And it was McGrath who helped
• 36:18
  set up programs to rebuild Japan into this very stable country
• 36:24
  that it is today. Yeah.
• 36:26
  Unfortunately, we don't have time to discuss his later years
• 36:28
  in Korea and afterwards, let's just say they were eventful.
• 36:33
  He dies in 1964. And I'm going to ask you about
• 36:36
  his World War 2 legacy in a minute.
• 36:38
  There's a great quote I wanted to read from historian Gavin
• 36:41
  Long. Quote.
• 36:42
  In a fragile period of the American psyche, when the
• 36:46
  general public, still stunned by the shock of Pearl Harbor and
• 36:49
  uncertain what lay ahead in Europe, desperately needed a
• 36:52
  hero, they wholeheartedly embraced Douglas MacArthur.
• 36:56
  Good press copy that he was. There simply was no other
• 37:01
  choices that came close to matching his mystique.
• 37:04
  Not to mention his evocative lone wolf stand, something that
• 37:08
  has always resonated with Americans.
• 37:09
  What do you think his legacy is in World War 2?
• 37:14
  He's really the last of this more colorful age of generals
• 37:19
  within not just, you know, corporate CE OS they're they
• 37:24
  much like their own people who do their own certain things and
• 37:27
  a very lone wolf. And MacArthur had this this
• 37:31
  great quote that I love and I'm paraphrasing, but it's the day
• 37:35
  after he he heard about the bombing of Nagasaki.
• 37:39
  He said men like me are no longer needed in the world.
• 37:42
  So men like me are going to disappear from this veil.
• 37:45
  And I love that quote because you don't see a general that
• 37:49
  colourful that, you know, polarizing really.
• 37:54
  Again, at least in the West, general is very corporate, the
• 38:00
  very much like CEOs. Now you have like people like
• 38:02
  Schwarzkopf who are very successful, but you don't have
• 38:06
  the same reverence and more like same to him that MacArthur had
• 38:11
  during those years of World War 2.
• 38:13
  But as a general, he's very debatable because he was
• 38:17
  absolutely abysmal during the Philippines and pretty mediocre
• 38:24
  during some of his champions in New Guinea.
• 38:26
  But his Admiralty Islands operation, he essentially
• 38:31
  outflanked and subounded a whole Japanese field, I mean, and just
• 38:35
  pinned them into this one little city called Labao for four
• 38:39
  years. Essentially ensured that
• 38:42
  hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops would just be
• 38:46
  left behind the lines starving to death as MacArthur's main
• 38:50
  thrust could continue to advance.
• 38:54
  He wasn't the best at predicting, you know, enemy
• 38:59
  strength. He said that, you know, before
• 39:02
  they invaded the Philippines in 1944, he estimated that the
• 39:06
  Japanese strength would be roughly 400,000.
• 39:10
  It was actually 2.5 million. And that caused this vague,
• 39:15
  bitter, long slog throughout the Philippines, where he wasn't
• 39:20
  really tactically involved, but from a more strategic point of
• 39:23
  view. He kept shifting the goal posts.
• 39:27
  So they famously land at Leyte. But then after a few weeks, he
• 39:31
  lands north of Manila and takes troops away from Leyte to land
• 39:36
  at Manila. The battle of Manila is called
• 39:38
  the Asian Stalingrad. It's this very bitter, bloody
• 39:42
  fight which destroys the city, but it's slow.
• 39:46
  There's not that many gains to be won and the Philippines
• 39:49
  campaign is very well handled on the actual operational level,
• 39:55
  but on the more strategic and capital level, it's not the
• 39:58
  best. So it's this man who has
• 40:00
  massive, massive highs but also massive, massive lows.
• 40:06
  So that adds to the mystique of Macgarth of he's so complex,
• 40:11
  like people say Napoleon's complex.
• 40:13
  Macgarth is far more complex and attempts of how he likes it in
• 40:19
  people but then also how he hates it in people.
• 40:21
  How he, you know, can win these brilliant victories, but then
• 40:25
  also have massive setbacks. But to end the whole MacArthur
• 40:31
  tangent that I'm having right now, he is the hero of American
• 40:36
  Edith. He is this symbol of defiance,
• 40:38
  confidence, but also drama where Americans like that.
• 40:44
  Americans like someone who's an individualist, a lone wolf who
• 40:49
  is successful and can't do the job that they're given.
• 40:53
  Well, he was, he was flawed. I, I think it was a flawed
• 40:56
  person like all of us are. But you know, he could be
• 40:59
  brilliant and have great speeches, but he could also be
• 41:02
  very petty and not listen to people.
• 41:04
  Yeah, he's petty. I think that's the way to
• 41:06
  describe MacArthur on a more personal setting, but more
• 41:10
  flawed is a team to describe on a more general military point of
• 41:15
  view where after he has his success, he kind of becomes
• 41:19
  overconfident in his abilities and in his troops, where he
• 41:23
  thinks, oh, I just want this great victory, my troops and I
• 41:27
  can do anything from now on. And then he faces defeat.
• 41:30
  So then he becomes more cautious and then he dives more into that
• 41:35
  brilliant that he had to get himself out of that nest.
• 41:38
  So it's a man who he's never really one thing, he always
• 41:43
  changes. Yeah, I think that's a good way
• 41:45
  to wrap up on the great General MacArthur.
• 41:47
  And Winston, I appreciate your time with that.
• 41:49
  Again, Winston Valentine, if you want to check out his book on
• 41:52
  Amazon, it's fabulous. It's the first half of
• 41:55
  Napoleon's basically Life destiny.
• 41:58
  And if you like our podcast, please give us a follow on
• 42:03
  Facebook, YouTube and X Twitter. And we appreciate the listen.
• 42:08
  Thank you, Winston for your time and we'll see you soon.