Of all the great American captains of World War II, none remains more controversial than General Douglas MacArthur, whose genius and folly have taken on mythic proportions. MacArthur alone among them fought in all of America’s major 20th-century wars as a general — World War I, World War II, and Korea — and he was the most versatile military figure since Ulysses S. Grant, as a combined tactician, strategist, geostrategist, diplomat, and politician.
Yet history has not with the same zeal sought to balance the strengths and weaknesses of the often hard-to-like MacArthur as it has with, for example, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was a brilliant organizer but often strategically obtuse; George S. Patton, who was a dazzling field general but mercurial; and Omar Bradley, who was a media favorite but often plodding.
There are a number of writs against MacArthur, but perhaps three stand out. First, there is no doubt that his narcissism could reach obnoxious proportions. His ego was more than just superficial vanity that characteristically led him to stare endlessly in the mirror, pepper his speech liberally with first-person pronouns, and choreograph his public image with corncob pipe, shiny khakis, gold-braided cap, aviator sunglasses, and leather coat. At times his sense of self led to hubris — and nemesis often followed. He certainly proved personally reckless in a way at odds with his public persona of a ramrod-straight devout Christian. In 1930, the 50-year-old, divorced MacArthur had an affair with the underage 16-year-old Isabel Rosario Cooper and brought the young Filipina mistress back with him to Washington — only to be both blackmailed by columnist Drew Pearson into dropping his libel suit concerning Pearson’s allegations about the 1932 Bonus March and eventually leveraged into paying Cooper $15,000 to go away.
The more experienced MacArthur saw himself as intellectually superior to younger presidents and so talked down to both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. He thought the wisdom of his strategy of island hopping through the Philippines should be judged by all as his personal redemption for his earlier loss of the archipelago. And by 1943, his “I shall return” press releases seemed to conflate his huge land, air, and naval forces with his own person, in a manner that had already irked Eisenhower, worried George Marshall, and frightened Roosevelt. Early on, MacArthur saw himself as a figure uniquely favored by God. In World War I, all on his small patrol near the Côte de Châtillon were killed by a surprise artillery barrage — a disaster known only by MacArthur’s own testimony, which would later be questioned. MacArthur remarked of his amazing survival: “It was God, He led me by the hand, the way He led Joshua.”
Second, MacArthur’s most brilliant victories — the Operation Cartwheel reconquest of much of the Japanese-held South Pacific and the brilliant Inchon landings near the Korean DMZ — were bookended by equally disastrous failures. He was ultimately responsible for, despite warnings, allowing his newly supplied air forces on Luzon to be caught by surprise hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. His incautious approach to the Chinese border in November 1950 — albeit approved by almost everyone in Washington — downplayed growing warnings about the bitter cold, the difficult terrain, and the likelihood of the entrance of the huge Chinese Red Army across the Yalu River. MacArthur for the most part claimed the strategic breakthroughs as his own virtuoso performances but fobbed off the disasters on subordinates and politicians.
