American Caesar

Douglas MacArthur was a remarkable leader, and William Manchester's portrait of him is uniquely readable. I had trouble putting the book down.

Manchester is often credited with capturing MacArthur's contradictions and evenly detailing both the adulation and contempt that he inspired. He does this remarkably well. But Manchester's fundamental contribution is in bringing to life the raw leadership of one of history's greatest generals. His mix of clearly exhaustive research, lucid prose and constant perspective is unique among biographers. From it, the remarkable components of MacArthur's leadership emerged:

1. MacArthur was courageous. In World War I, MacArthur's commander said to him: "Give me Chatillon, or a list of five thousand casualties." According to Manchester, MacArthur replied, "If this brigade does not capture Chatillon you can publish a casualty list of the entire brigade with the brigade commander's name at the top." MacArthur's troops took Chatillon, but at great cost: one of his battalions lost over 3/4 of their men. There and elsewhere in World War I, MacArthur assumed personal command of his troops...not uncommonly being one of the first people over the hill. In World War II and Korea, as well, MacArthur unflinchingly put himself in harm's way.

When MacArthur (a brigadier general at the time) met Patton (a major) in World War I, Manchester says, "It came in the midst of enemy shellfire. Both stood erect, eyeing each other as the crumps got closer. According to Patton, 'We stood and talked but neither was much interested in what the other said as we could not get our minds off the shells.' According to MacArthur, Patton flinched at one point and then looked annoyed with himself, whereupon the brigadier said dryly, 'Don't worry,major; you never hear the one that gets you.'"

2. MacArthur was brilliant. My favorite passage in the book is the description of MacArthur's strategy for retaking Korea. Pinned down in the Pusan Peninsula, MacArthur proposed to land troops well behind the North Koreans, at Inchon. Manchester's description of the entire process -- from MacArthur's inspiring advocacy of the plan to the strategic brilliance of it to the skill with which it was carried out and the success which it achieved -- is fantastic. Check it out (pp. 575ff in my hardback text). A couple of samples:

Finally, after nine critics had completed an eighty-minute presentation [on why Inchon was too dangerous a landing spot], MacArthur rose. Afterward he wrote: "I waited a moment or so to collect my thoughts. I could feel the tension rising in the room...I could almost hear my father's voice telling me as he had so many years before, 'Doug, councils of war breed timidity and defeatism.'" Of the thirty-minute performance which followed, Doyle said, "If MacArthur had gone on the stage, you never would have heard of John Barrymore." [MacArthur proceeds to reference General James Wolfe's 1759 surprise attack on Quebec, and completely convince his audience that he could do the same at Inchon...which he did].

[Another part of the passage...Manchester is clearly impressed with MacArthur's brilliance and his leadership]: In the history of arms certain crack troops stand apart, elite units which demonstrated gallantry in the face of overwhelming odds. There were the Greeks and Spartans at Thermopylae, Xenophon's Ten Thousand...the Brigade of Guards at Dunkirk. And there was also the 1st Marine Division at Inchon. Veterans of Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, and Okinawa, the leathernecks were the cutting edge of the force...MacArthur put ashore behind enemy lines on September 15. In peak condition, thoroughly trained in amphibious warfare, they were now in the hands of the only army commander who really understood that kind of fighting."

3. In addition to his strategic brilliance, MacArthur had perspective. MacArthur writes (in his Reminiscenses): "Island hopping, with extravagant losses and slow progress, is not my idea of how to end the war as soon and as cheaply as possible. New conditions and new weapons require new and imaginative methods for solution and application. Wars are never won in the past." I think that this is very true of all types of competition (especially business). Just as MacArthur did, we have to study the past and learn what history can teach us, but the solution very often requires applying a new weapon or tactic in an old way...or a new weapon in a new way.

4. MacArthur was inspired by a higher purpose. MacArthur's Pacific strategy was as much about saving American lives as it was about defeating Japan. And once he had done so, his purpose became rehabilitation, not punitive. MacArthur's response to the punitive plan for Allied occupation of Japan:

If the historian of the future should deem my service worthy of some slight reference, it would be my hope that he mention me not as a commander engaged in campaigns and battles, even though victorious to American arms, but rather as one whose sacred duty it became, once the guns were silenced, to carry to the land of our vanquished foe the solace and hope and faith of Christian morals.

Wow. MacArthur had a knack for grandiloquent speech...but at the same time, his words are so true of both what one should set as the goal AND as a blueprint for what he actually carried out in Japan.

5. MacArthur inspired others. His troops, the Filipino people and the Japanese were all -- at times -- inspired by him (though strangely, many of his troops in World War II referred to him as 'Dugout Doug' despite his fearlessness and constant placement of himself in danger). He was also adulated, though. Upon his recall from Japan, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida made the following comments in a nationwide radio address:

It is [MacArthur] who has salvaged our nation from post-surrender confusion and prostration, and steered the county on the road [to]...reconstruction. It is he who has firmly planted democracy in all segments of our society. It is he who has paved the way for a peace settlement. No wonder he is looked upon by all our people with the profoundest veneration and affection. I have no words to convey the regret of the nation to see him leave.

When MacArthur left Japan, nearly 250,000 Japanese lined the twelve miles to the airport (at 6:30 AM). Half a million people thronged him in San Francisco when he finally returned the the United States, 7 years after World War II. Two million Filipinos greeted him in 1961 (16 years after he had liberated the country).

6. MacArthur was decisive. The American Ambassador to Japan at the time, William Sebald, commented, "Never before in the history of the United States had such enormous and absolute power been placed in the hands of a single individual." MacArthur directed a course of disarmament which did not spawn terrorism (that simple fact, in a people as devoted to American destruction as the Japanese in World War II, is amazing). He also liberated Japanese women by giving them rights including the right to vote (for two reasons: he saw their treatment as unacceptable, but he also felt their influence would moderate Japanese males' warlike tendencies). He wrote (almost single-handedly, evidently) the new Japanese constitution. He guided the beginnings of the economic turnaround which became (30 years later) one of the most powerful economies in the world.

I find MacArthur's accomplishment in rehabilitating Japan (in his seven years as Supreme Commander) to be by far the most stunning of his accomplishments. MacArthur was already 65 when he took on the task, and had spent years in the Far East which gave him tremendous experience and insight, but also makes the energy and speed with which he and Japan moved, to be even more amazing. I don't think MacArthur often gets credit for his accomplishment...perhaps because people didn't pay that much attention to the Pacific. Maybe, too, that was why MacArthur had such unbelievable power -- America wasn't paying that much attention. But at the end of the day, MacArthur WAS the one responsible. Manchester's description:

During [MacArthur's] lifetime, his admirers saw only his victories; his critics saw only his defeats. what neither appreciated was that identical traits led to his winnings and his losses. His hauteur, his willingness to defy his superiors, his fascination with the political process, his contempt for vacillation -- these would be his undoing in the end. But along the way they reaped historic fruit. There can be no doubt that they made a great democracy in Japan.

At the end of his life, though, we look back on several faux pas, but an even greater number of truly unbelievable accomplishments: from winning the war in the Pacific (after starting from defeat in the Phillipines), to rehabilitating Japan to one of the most incredible reversals in military history with his Inchon landing in the Korean War. An amazing leader.