October 1950: Not wanting a US-backed state on its border, China invaded Korea and drove the UN forces back below the 38th parallel. General MacArthur called for the use of atomic weapons but this was denied by President Truman and MacArthur was sacked.
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Truman relieves MacArthur of duties in Korea. In the early days of the war in Korea (which began in June 1950), the general had devised some brilliant strategies and military maneuvers that helped save South Korea from falling to the invading forces of communist North Korea. As U.S. and United Nations forces turned the tide of battle in Korea,...
In pushing for a larger conflict, MacArthur downplayed the risk of inciting a massive war in Asia. President Truman’s main concern was saving as many lives as possible, even if that meant signing a ceasefire along the 38th parallel.
Truman made every effort to dismiss MacArthur in a polite and political way. However, transmission of the message was botched, and MacArthur probably received the news secondhand before hearing direct from the President.
Outraged, Truman reportedly responded, “By God, I’m going to let them [North Korea] have it!” Truman did not ask Congress for a declaration of war, and he was later criticized for this decision. Instead, he sent to South Korea, with UN sanction, U.S. forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur to repel the invasion.
Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands after MacArthur made public statements that contradicted the administration's policies.
Commander of the UN forces at the beginning of the Korean War, however President Harry Truman removed him from his command after MacArthur expressed a desire to bomb Chinese bases in Manchuria. Line that divided Korea; Soviet Union occupied the north and United States occupied the south, during the Cold War.
Why did President Truman fire General MacArthur in 1951? President Truman fired General MacArthur in 1951 because of disagreements of foreign policy and he made critical remarks toward the administration (MacArthur wants to go after China - even bomb them - Truman says no - MacArthur is fired).
MacArthur asked for permission to bomb communist China and use Nationalist Chinese forces from Taiwan against the People's Republic of China. Truman flatly refused these requests, and a public dispute broke out between the two men. On April 11, 1951, Truman removed MacArthur from his command for insubordination.
PHOTO GALLERIES. The Korean war began on June 25, 1950, when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action ...
Instead, many feared it was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world. For this reason, nonintervention was not considered an option by many top decision makers. (In fact, in April 1950, a National Security Council report known as NSC-68 had recommended that the United States use military force to “contain” communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring, “regardless of the intrinsic strategic or economic value of the lands in question.”)
The agreement allowed the POWs to stay where they liked; drew a new boundary near the 38th parallel that gave South Korea an extra 1,500 square miles of territory; and created a 2-mile-wide “demilitarized zone” that still exists today.
The Korean War was relatively short but exceptionally bloody. Nearly 5 million people died. More than half of these–about 10 percent of Korea’s prewar population–were civilians. (This rate of civilian casualties was higher than World War II’s and the Vietnam War’s .)
The most famous representation of the war in popular culture is the television series “M*A*S*H,” which was set in a field hospital in South Korea. The series ran from 1972 until 1983, and its final episode was the most-watched in television history. By the end of the decade, two new states had formed on the peninsula.
In August 1945 , two young aides at the State Department divided the Korean peninsula in half along the 38th parallel. The Russians occupied the area north of the line and the United States occupied the area to its south.
Today, they are remembered at the Korean War Veterans Memorial near the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., a series of 19 steel statues of servicemen.
In perhaps the most famous civilian-military confrontation in the history of the United States, President Harry S. Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of command of the U.S. forces in Korea.
In the early days of the war in Korea (which began in June 1950), the general had devised some brilliant strategies and military maneuvers that helped save South Korea from falling to the invading forces of communist North Korea.
In October 1950, MacArthur met with Truman and assured him that the chances of a Chinese intervention were slim. READ MORE: MacArthur vs. Truman: The Showdown That Changed America. Then, in November and December 1950, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops crossed into North Korea and flung themselves against the American lines, driving the U.S.
President Truman’s main concern was saving as many lives as possible, even if that meant signing a ceasefire along the 38th parallel. General MacArthur did not think a ceasefire was an appropriate solution. The two men clashed.
This was not the first time the general had ignored direct orders from his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951 , President Truman officially relieved Douglas MacArthur of his command. Word of his firing spread quickly, and the American public found the news upsetting.
The two men clashed. For Truman, the war represented an opportunity to stop the spread of communism into South Korea. For MacArthur, the war was an opportunity to liberate the North from communist control , and aggressive action was required.
President Truman hand selected General Douglas MacArthur to lead the U.S. troops in South Korea.
In 1945, the scars of World War II across the world were still fresh. The fear of having to engage in another world war was very real. A mere two years after the end of WWII, the Cold War began.
Within a few months, MacArthur leaked news to a congressman that he planned to use Chinese Nationalist forces from Formosa in the Korean War. Such an act, of course, would only serve to further enflame the PRC, and it again went against Truman's diplomatic policies.
MacArthur's unilateral decision to threaten the PRC angered Truman because it only made the Chinese more resolved to stay in the war. MacArthur, acting without consulting Washington first, was becoming more and more undependable, although his assumption that Stalin and the USSR would stay out of fighting with the US ended up being correct. It is hard to say why MacArthur acted so haphazardly, although it might be the case that since he knew he was nearing the end of his career, he wanted to make himself into a martyr. Some may argue that he was deliberately trying to be dismissed so that he would become a Republican hero who could then run for President. Regardless, MacArthur went against his President's orders, given in person at Wake Island, to use tact and caution. Oddly, MacArthur decided to violate his constitutional duty to serve his commander-in-chief in order to protect his country, a country whose politics is largely based on the sanctity of that constitution.
Instead, at Truman's prompting, the UN censured the PRC for aggression. On his own, MacArthur decided to go even further in antagonizing the Chinese. In March, without consulting Washington, he decided to send an ultimatum to the PRC. MacArthur demanded that the Chinese withdraw their troops.
Regardless, MacArthur went against his President's orders, given in person at Wake Island, to use tact and caution. Oddly, MacArthur decided to violate his constitutional duty to serve his commander-in-chief in order to protect his country, a country whose politics is largely based on the sanctity of that constitution.
The outreach was limited, China asked for a 7-power conference to be held on the issues of the fate of Korea and Formosa's, as well as on the question of a Chinese UN seat. The Americans, who considered the Chinese nationalists on Formosa to be the rightful government of China, did not want to give China a seat in the UN;
After the congressman, Jospeh W. Martin, read MacArthur's message before Congress, Truman began talking about dismissing MacArthur with the JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff). Meanwhile, in Operation Rugged, General Matthew Ridgway was busy entrenching the Eighth Army in favorable terrain about 20 miles north of the 38th Parallel.
Ultimately, the committee found that MacArthur's dismissal was justified.
The Korean war officially began in 1950 when...
In October of 1950 un troops pushed far into north Korea which...
North Koreans took control of the south Korean capitol of seoul.
In his struggle with MacArthur, the President faced severe handicaps, most of them self-inflicted. The political derangement of the country was to a large extent his own doing. Determined to arouse the nation to the menace of Soviet expansion, yet convinced that he governed an obstinately “isolationist” people, Truman had never scrupled to exaggerate every danger, to sound alarms, to decry in any communist move he opposed another step in the “Kremlin plot for world conquest.” Moreover, he had constantly used the great World War II generals—MacArthur included—to defend his policies and shield him from criticism. The results were inevitable. Because Truman had glorified the wisdom of the generals, he had weakened the civilian authority he was now forced to defend. Because he justified even prudent deeds with inflammatory words, it had become difficult to justify prudent deeds with prudent arguments—the sort of argument he was now forced to make.
Because Truman had glorified the wisdom of the generals, he had weakened the civilian authority he was now forced to defend. Because he justified even prudent deeds with inflammatory words, it had become difficult to justify prudent deeds with prudent arguments—the sort of argument he was now forced to make.
At 12:31 P.M. on April 19 a record thirty million people tuned in their radios to hear General MacArthur address Congress, his countrymen, and the world. This was the moment every supporter of the President had dreaded. Truman’s case for a limited war of attrition had not yet been effectively made.
Yet the means to achieve victory were swift and sure. Three quite moderate military measures would drive the Chinese from the Korean peninsula: bombing China’s “sanctuaries” in Manchuria; blockading the Chinese coast; unleashing Chiang Kai-shek’s army, holed up in Formosa, for diversionary raids on the Chinese mainland. Such was MacArthur’s plan “to bring hostilities to a close with the least possible delay.” What was there to be said against it? “In war, indeed, there is no substitute for victory,” said MacArthur, providing his supporters with their most potent slogan. “‘Why,’ my soldiers asked of me, ‘surrender military advantages to an enemy in the field?'” MacArthur’s voice fell to a whisper: “I could not answer.” Why fight Red China without attempting to drive her from Korea? This was a policy of “appeasement,” said the general, hurling the deadliest epithet of the day at the Truman administration. Moreover, said MacArthur, his plan to carry the war to the Chinese mainland had been supported by “our own Joint Chiefs of Staff.” With that assertion Republicans in the House gave the speaker a thunderous standing ovation, for, in fact, it was the most devastating remark in MacArthur’s entire speech. In the prevailing atmosphere of derangement and conspiracy it implied that victory in Korea had been snatched from America’s grasp not by the military judgment of the Pentagon but by a mere, meddlesome civilian, the President of the United States. MacArthur’s assertion also posed a challenge to the Joint Chiefs themselves: he was daring them to side with the President when, as he fully believed, their purely military judgment agreed with his own.
To the intense relief of the President’s supporters, that is exactly what they proceeded to do. Truman’s five military spokesmen spent nineteen days in the witness chair, nineteen days in which MacArthur’s conduct, MacArthur’s victory plan, and even MacArthur’s military reputation were ceaselessly battered.
THE TESTIMONY of the President’s generals had a curious effect on public opinion. It brought no rush of support for the President —far from it. It did not personally discredit the general. It accomplished something far more significant than either: it put an end to hysteria. It compelled an inflamed citizenry to stop and think for themselves. It is to the credit of the American people that they did so and still more to their credit that they proved so openminded, too much so for some of the President’s warmer partisans— The New York Times , for example.
We must cut this whole cancerous conspiracy out of our Government at once,” said William Jenner of Indiana. Truman had given “the Communists and their stooges … what they always wanted—MacArthur’s scalp.”. So spoke the country’s fastest-rising politician, Richard Nixon.