How to win the Korean War

Reading actual history, he was one of the absolute worst generals of the entire war, in either western front, eastern front, or pacific theater

The only reason why there is any level of modern reverence to the man, is because he was a massive Madonna, and utilized a massive public relations program for his image back into burgerland

Virtually every fricking time, the Pacific High command ignored his stupidity, they hastened america's island hopping victories

James Gavin fricked over market garden (although his bong superiors should have checked his paranoia and told him the reason his fricking division is being paradropped is to take the fricking bridge not some hills to the east)

Joseph Stilwell was given command of few good troops china had left, and proceed to yeet them away by ignoring advice from their Chinx commanders. He then fled the battle while most of his army was disorganized but still fighting. Having fricked up Chinese war effort bigly, he proceed to blame it all on Chinx incompetence/corruption, contributing to Truman abandoning them to commies. He then wrote his memoirs saying that Chiang China was so fricked up commie victory was inevietable, which was picked up by academia and got him whitewashed as it was 'Nam already and commie 5th columnists wanted to pretend the same applies to Norks.

And while admirals aren't generals, William Halsey Jr. fricked off from protecting invasion troops in Philippines chasing literal , leading to costliest US naval battle of the war, and it's a miracle it wasn't a defeat followed by slaughter of troop transports.

(at the same time US fleet subordinated to Big Mac actually did their fricking job and sank Jap southern force without losses)

Also Big Mac was bigly influential in rebuilding Japan and making it a functional country, at a time when Washington decision makers focused on euros and didn't give two fricks about Asia.

!historychads

His reputation for being an r-slur is as exaggerated by his critics (especially in the age of youtube and zoomers) as his reputation for being a genius by his supporters of the time.

The best impression I've gotten of him is from Ridgway who worked directly with him, certainly was qualified to judge, and was not a butthurt political wingcuck. He pointed out that nobody else but MacArthur would have recognized the opportunity at Incheon, have the guts to try it, and be able to sell it to the joint chiefs. On the other hand he made some big mistakes afterward like shifting X Corps to the east coast that were typical of him.

If you look at his campaigns in WW2 he knew how to integrate air, land, and sea power in a way that few other leaders had to. Mistakes were made but he wiped out a huge part of the Japanese military and secured the bases in the Philippines that we would have needed to invade Japan at relatively little cost.

He also had a tendency to go to pieces when things went wrong (Philippines 1941, Korea) and just become catatonic for days. That's less a matter of r-sluration and more of some kind of mental illness.

I like Ike

Punched a journ*list in the face

This almost makes up for the rest of it.

Wave/wind speed. But nvm.

Yeah I was under the impression that we basically knew frick all about Soviet military capabilities around that time, and it wasn't until we started flying U-2's over Soviet territory that we got anything even remotely resembling good intel. It's just much easier to keep things secret in an oppressive, authoritarian regime where they can just shoot you on suspicion of being a spy without any kind of trial.

It's probably ultimately a good thing that we've never really had a nuclear war (I barely count the end of WW2 given its limited scope, and the fact that we arguably killed far more people in firebombing campaigns than with the nukes). I doubt it would have ended up like The Road (was that nukes?) or other similar dystopian worlds since I think governments are much more resilient than those stories give them credit for, but it sure would suck having to live your life close to a nuclear bunker, plus I think you'd see a lot of anti-urban planning because a bunch of far-flung suburbs are much more difficult to target than a tightly-packed city.