Korean War Controversy Between Macarthur And Truman

The Korean War: Controversy Surrounding MacArthur and Truman Often referred to as the forgotten war, the Korean war had a significant impact on America’s domestic and foreign affairs. The two most important figures in the war were General Douglas MacArthur and President Harry S. Truman. During the war, a controversy regarding Truman’s dismissal of MacArthur, commander of the US army in Korea, loomed over Truman’s presidency. General MacArthur was a prominent five-star American General who was well liked by the public at that time. MacArthur’s great fame came with his service in the Pacific during World War II. He was appointed supreme commander of allied forces in the Southwest Pacific in 1942 and awarded a Medal of Honor for his service in

Following the liberation, Korea was divided by zones of occupation; the Soviet Union took control of the north and the United States took control of the south. Each country provided the military and financial support for the northern and southern regions. In the American occupation government of the south, Seungman Rhee was elected as the first president of Korea in 1945. Under the Soviets, a man named Kim Il Sung was strongly influenced by communist ideas and set out to establish a new kind of government. In 1948, Kim formed the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a communist group, and tried to unify the country under his rule by military force. On June 25, 1950, Kim led an invasion to the capital of Korea with seventy-five thousand soldiers, which marked the official beginning of the Korean War (Feldman). To compare, the North Korean Army was well trained and equipped under Kim, however the troops under President Rhee were unprepared for war and many fearfully fled the battlefield under provocation. Soon, the United Nations Command sent military assistance to the south to fight against communism, of which most were American. They entered the war in early July under the command of MacArthur. During the first half of the war, victory seemed highly feasible. MacArthur was easily able to push the northern forces back behind the 38th parallel and led his troops towards Yalu

President Truman’s main goal was to prevent a wide scale war. Although other countries had contributed to the war by providing weapons and troops, Truman feared that the direct intervention of the Soviet Union and other European nations would result in a third world war, which the world was not prepared for (Wainstock). Truman viewed the conflict as a simple problem of containment of communism in Korea. Overall, Truman wanted to fight a limited war, with the sole purpose to protect Korea from the influx of communism. On the other hand, General MacArthur believed that the Korean War was a chance to eradicate all communist roots and prevent it from spreading to other Asian countries. To him, this was a more effective strategy because saw that the origin of the problem only lied in the Pacific Hemisphere. The worries that Truman had about the European countries did not hinder MacArthur’s decisions (Feldman). MacArthur reasoned that if he was successful in removing the roots of communism in this war, it eradicate the need to meet communist aggression elsewhere. Unlike Truman, MacArthur wanted to pursue a full scale war and take all means possible to vanquish