40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Intriguing Book About a Mesmerizing & Enigmatic Subject!, June 15, 2000
No other modern American military leader engenders such controversy and hotly-expressed differences in opinion than General Douglas MacArthur. Certainly, there can be no argument against the fact that his previous treatment by other authors such as William Manchester ("American Caesar") etc. does a much more comprehensive and objective service than does this book to anyone attempting to understand the man, his eccentricities, and his actions during the tenure of his fifty-year career as a virtual American military institution in the Orient. Yet, it should also be noted that this volume adds considerably to our understanding of MacArthur the man, the general, and the legend in an intriguing, unique, and somewhat different take on Macarthur, his character, vanity, conduct, and a blow-by-blow account of his prosecution of the Korean campaign.
At the outbreak of the Korean conflict MacArthur was preoccupied as the Governor-General of Japan with overseeing the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the defeated nation, and his first efforts to conduct the Korean campaign were through an attempt at long-distance management of the actions & ministrations of his field commanders. Of course, MacArthur couldn't stay out of the action long, & soon began actively interfering with command decisions from afar, and this led to a number of strains, breakdowns in communication, and military setbacks. The miscommunications and lack of clear and achievable military objective resulting from this situation soon turned into a both a political and military debacle, and according to Weintraub it was clear that MacArthur's fingerprints were all over the place in terms of poor planning, strategy, and tactics.
Moreover, given MacArthur's legendary self-absorption and his ego-driven association with Asian political potentates like national China's Chiang, his approach toward the military campaign in Korea often seemed less oriented to the stated and quite limited military goals of the Truman administration than it was an effort to achieve his own set of political objectives based on his own assessment of what the situation required, and these were possibly tied to his own aspirations for the 1952 Republican Presidential nomination, which he had reason to believe he could expect to come his way.
However, it should also be said that no one could lead a military action like MacArthur, and he was quite able, effective, and often brilliant in eventually pushing the Chinese back to the 38th Parallel. The problem was that he just would not yield to the chain of command, and through his campaign of sustained insubordination to President Truman forced his own recall and dismissal. Talk about being your own worst enemy!
In "MacArthur's War" author Weintraub treats us to a massively documented and carefully detailed yet quite readable and entirely entertaining view of the war in Korea. It is a blow-by-blow account of this, the bloodiest, fiercest, and most hotly contested military engagement since the Second World War. Told by way of the participants, and often in their own words, this is an engaging, entertaining, and scrupulously well-told history of a terrible conflict that cost 35,000 American lives and still, after almost fifty years, has over 6,000 American MIAs associated with it. This book should be read by anyone interested in military history, or with anyone who just loves a terrific story well told.
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28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Weintraub writes well, Mac fairs not so well, June 3, 2000
I am a fan of MacArthur. I am interested in his life. I am interested in his faults and his successes. If Inchon was his best, the rest of Korea was probably his worst. The author does a great job of detailing the faults in generalship and character of this man. Weintraub does a fantastic job of intertwining the story of the generals and the politicians with the stories of how the "forgotten war" plays itself out for the American GI. The book was very well researched and documented. I am still a fan of the general. I understand more, however, what perhaps his private ambitions truly were and what motivated him. While Truman was a great president and thought MacArthur's speeches were a bunch of bull----; I think they are inspiring. For further reference on Korea and MacArthur, Geoffrey Peret's "Old Soldiers Never Die" does a fairly good job describing the challenges at the end of the general's life. Without Marshall, Truman clearly wouldn't have faired as well as he did. As a history teacher, I find that George C. Marshall is not given his just due in the history texts of our time. Weintraub tries to credit him and brings him into the picture well. Overall, the author does a fine job to bring this often skipped-over piece of American History to life. I would like to thank him for that and for reminding us that there was a war before vietnam, because a lot of students do not.
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting new book for the 50th Anniversary of the war, June 20, 2000
It is difficult to write history that appeals both to the academic and to the layman, but Weintraub does it quite well with this book. He deftly weaves vignettes describing MacArthur's eccentricities and megalomania with some rarely heard viewpoints of the early days of the war- the correspondents on the ground, for example. The narrative also contains (barely) enough detail on ground combat operations to keep the reader oriented. It's a small criticism, but I longed for more detailed description and analysis of Mac's ground commanders-- even though that isn't really the purpose of the book. I would recommend T.R. Fehrenbach's "This Kind of War" and Russell Geugler's "Combat Actions in Korea" for those interested in a combat narrative.
While I understand the author's reasoning for leaving out footnotes, I still would have appreciated at least endnotes for specific pieces of evidence.
This is an attractive, well- written book that adds to our understanding of MacArthur. Especially now, with the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the war approaching, it is refreshing to see new and challenging interpretations of the Korean War emerge. Recommended reading.
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