In the early dawn of Sunday, June 25, 1950, 8 divisions of the North Korean Red Army spilled across the 38th parallel and plunged southward toward the city of Seoul. Frantic calls went out from President Sigmund Rhee to the Security Council of the United Nations, to President Truman in Washington and to General Douglas MacArthur in Japan. All three responded. The Security Council pronounced North Korea guilty of a breach of the peace and ordered her troops back to the 38th parallel. (If Russia had been represented, she no doubt would have vetoed this action, but the Soviet delegates were boycotting the Security Council because China continued to be represented by the Nationalists rather than by the Chinese Communists.)
General MacArthur responded by flying to Korea and reporting the desperate situation to Washington. President Truman responded by completely reversing the policy of his diplomatic advisers and ordering General MacArthur to pour U.S. ground troops in from Japan to stop the red tide. Thus the war began.
For several weeks the situation looked very black. General MacArthur was made supreme commander of all United Nations forces, but at first these were so limited that the shallow beachhead at Pusan was about all they could hold. Then General MacArthur formulated a desperate plan. It was so difficult and illogical that he felt certain it would come to the Communists as a complete surprise. It did. On September 15, half way up the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. Navy (with two British carriers), the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps combined to launch an ingenious invasion at Inchon—a point where the 29-foot tide made a landing seem fantastic. Split-second timing permitted landings and the next thing the North Koreans knew they were trapped in the jaws of a mighty military pincer movement which cut across their supply lines and then rapidly closed in to wipe out the flower of the whole North Korean Army which, of course, was concentrated in the South. It was a magnificent victory.
MacArthur then turned his armies toward the north. The ROK’s (South Koreans) went up the East Coast while other U.N. troops went up the West Coast. In doing this, General MacArthur was required to act on obscure hints rather than specific directions from Washington and the U.N. For a while it appeared that he might be forbidden to pursue the enemy forces retreating to the North.
By the middle of October the coastal spearheads of the U.N. offensive were nearing the northernmost parts of Korea and the war appeared practically over. There was the immediate prospect of unifying the entire Korean Peninsula and setting up a democratic republic. Then, in November, unexpectedly disaster struck.
From across the northern Korean boundary of the Yalu River came the first flood tide of what turned out to be a Chinese Communist army of one million men. As these troops came pouring into North Korea, the U.N. forces found themselves smothered by a great wave of fanatical, screaming, and suicidal humanity. MacArthur radioed to Washington: “We face an entirely new war!”
The U.N. lines were cut to ribbons as their wall of defense was pushed back below the 38th parallel. General MacArthur could scarcely believe that the Chinese Communists would dare to risk the massive retaliation of the United States atomic bombing Air Force by this inexcusable assault on U.N. forces. However, what he did not know, but soon discovered, was the appalling fact that the Chinese had already been assured by their intelligence agents that the diplomats in Washington, London and New York were not going to allow MacArthur to retaliate with the U.S. Air Force. MacArthur was going to be restricted to “limited” warfare.
It was in this hour that General MacArthur found that pro-Communist forces in the U.N. and left-wing sympathizers in the State Department were swamping the policies of the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and those who had charge of the Korean War. He found that vast supplies which he badly needed were being diverted to Europe in accordance with point No. 1 of the State Department Conference. He was specifically restricted from following Chinese jets to their bases or bombing the Manchurian Railroad which was dumping mountains of supplies on the north banks of the Yalu River. He was forbidden to bomb the Yalu bridge over which troops and supplies were funneled, and his own supplies and replacements were cut back to the point where a counter-offensive became strategically difficult, if not impossible. The final blow came when the diplomats flatly turned down Chiang Kai-shek’s enthusiastic offer to send thousands of trained Nationalist troops from Formosa to fight in Korea.
Over a period of four months General MacArthur watched the slaughter resulting from these stalemate policies. Finally, he could contain himself no longer. He violated a presidential gag order dated December 6, 1950, and answered a written inquiry from Congressman Joseph W. Martin concerning the inexplicable reverses which U.N. forces were suffering in Korea. The General’s letter giving recommendations for the winning of the war was read in Congress April 5, 1951, and five days later, President Truman ordered MacArthur summarily withdrawn from all commands.
General MacArthur was relieved by General Matthew B. Ridgeway and he returned to the United States completely perplexed by the sudden termination of his military career. It was not until he landed in San Francisco and met the first wave of shouting, cheering, admiring fellow citizens that he realized that the sickness in the American body politic was not in all its members but only in one corner of its head.
It will be recalled that two more years of military stagnation followed the recall of General MacArthur. Subsequently, hearings before Congressional committees permitted General Mark Clark, General George E. Stratemeyer, General James A. Van Fleet, Admiral Charles Joy and others to explain what happened to their commands in Korea. Each one verified the fact that the military was never permitted to fight a winning war. The diplomats had imposed upon them a theory called “Communist Containment,” which in actual operation resulted in the containment of the U.N. fighting forces instead of the Communists. It soon became apparent that the Korean War had been run by the same team and according to the same policies as those which resulted in the fall of China.
It was also to be revealed at a later date that not only had the machinations of confused diplomats contributed to the semi-defeat in Korea but that fulltime under-cover agents of Soviet Russia had often stood at the elbows of officials in London, Washington and at the U.N. in New York to argue the Moscow line. Among the high-level spies for Russia during this critical period were two top British diplomats, Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess. MacLean was head of the American desk in Britain’s diplomatic headquarters at London; Burgess was the second secretary of the British Embassy in Washington. Both fled behind the Iron Curtain when they were about to be arrested by British Intelligence.
The Korean Armistice
By the time President Eisenhower took office in January, 1953, there was a general feeling of gloom and despair concerning Korea. The people desperately desired to somehow stop the bloodshed. The hopes for peace were suddenly accelerated by a news flash of March 5 which swept round the world. Joseph Stalin was dead!
The next day a new government took over in Russia and the leader turned out to be Stalin’s former secretary and the keeper of the secret Communist files—Georgi Malenkov. He had seized power by joining forces with Lavrenti P. Beria, head of the secret police who had an army of agents and troops numbering two million. Beria also had charge of the forced labor camps and supervised the atomic energy plants.