+ +

+ +

Korean War Anthology

Truman and MacArthur:

The Winding Road to Dismissal

Michael D. Pearlman, Ph.D.

Combat Studies Institute

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
+ +

+ +

Cover Photo: Fond Encounter. The president and General Douglas 

MacArthur at Wake Island, 15 October 1950. (U.S. Department of 

State, courtesy of the Harry S. Truman Library)
+ +

+ +

Korean War Anthology

Truman and MacArthur:

The Winding Road to Dismissal

Michael D. Pearlman, Ph.D.

Combat Studies Institute

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
+ +

+ +
+ +

+ +
+ +

+ +

Combat Studies Institute

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027

CSI Press 03–03
1 

+ +

+ +

Truman and MacArthur:

The Winding Road to Dismissal

Michael Pearlman, Ph.D.

Combat Studies Institute

I have been with the president on occasions when he had what appeared to me to be a perfectly normal and amiable conversation with a 

caller. After the caller left, he would say to me ‘I certainly set him

straight’ or ‘I let him have it.’ The president’s remarks seemed to me 

to have no conceivable relation to the conversation I had just heard. 

He may have been commenting on what he wished he had said. 

As always he was very, very gentle—too gentle.

Admiral Robert Dennison,

White House assistant to President Truman, 1948-19531

Like most people, Harry Truman was subject to conflicting interests and impulses. He believed in strong executive leadership under the aegis of combative 

presidents, such as his life-long hero, Andrew Jackson. (He once told Dean

Acheson, his secretary of state, he liked “being a nose buster and an ass kicker 

much better” than a statesman.) On the other hand, Truman was too nice to be the 

man he dreamed of being, except in those rare moments when his temper took 

total control. Usually, he avoided personal confrontation, being a considerate,

rather modest individual. Personality aside, Truman served his Washington apprenticeship in the inner circle of Capitol Hill, where the upper house functions by 

compromise and conciliation. Whatever his ideals of heroic manliness, Truman 

enjoyed his reputation as “the nicest man in the Senate,” the place he would spend 

“the happiest time of my life.”

2

An avid reader raised on stories of military heroes, Truman particularly liked 

the biographical portraits of Hannibal, Gustavus Adolphus, Robert E. Lee, and 

“Stonewall” Jackson compiled in a Victorian anthology titled Great Men and 

Famous Women. His understanding of their conditions and careers would affect 

decisions he made throughout his life, whether running for the Senate, dealing 

with Douglas MacArthur, or courting Bess Wallace, the childhood sweetheart he 

would later marry. Truman tried to enter West Point, partly because Bess’s family 

was far more prominent than his own, as he later jotted down in a diary: “I studied 

the career of great men to be worthy of her. I found that most of them came from 

the Army.” His plans failed to make provision for the fact that he could not read 

the eye chart at the physical examination without the thick glasses he had to remove. His disappointment did not prevent the formation of the opinion revealed 
2 

+ +

+ +

on 14 May 1934, the day Truman made what he then called “the most momentous 

announcement of my life,” that of leaving country government to run for the U.S. 

Senate. He jotted down in his diary: “Of all the military heroes Hannibal and Lee 

were to my mind the best because while they won every battle they lost the war, 

due to crazy politicians in both instances, but they were still the great Captains of 

History.”3

The fear that he might go down in history as “one of those crazy politicians” 

responsible for losing a war would affect how Truman dealt with MacArthur 

whom he certainly disliked from afar until charmed up close the first (and last) 

time they met, at Wake Island in mid-October 1950. Truman, as a Jacksonian 

Democrat and former National Guardsman embittered by some handling from an 

insulting West Point graduate in World War I, had some choice words about the 

general’s style in mid-1945: “Mr. Prima Donna, Brass Hat Five Star MacArthur.” 

These heated words notwithstanding, the administration still gave MacArthur the 

deference traditionally granted to a man considered a military genius. “He was a 

great American,” confided Averell Harriman, Truman’s special White House assistant for national security and unofficial ambassador to MacArthur. “Very few 

others in either the Army or the Navy possessed his sense of strategy and tactics 

or his capacity for leadership,” said Paul Nitze, head of the State Department’s 

Policy Planning staff, “he had done tremendous things in World War II.” Truman 

himself would later write that he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) “leaned over 

backward in our respect for the man’s military reputation,” simply “one of the 

outstanding military figures of our time.”4

The Truman-MacArthur command interaction went through three stages in the 

Korean War. Stage 1, from the onset of the conflict in late June 1950 to the Inchon operation in late September, was one of implicit bargaining and compromise. Stage 2, from late September to China’s full-scale intervention in late 

November, was one of de facto abdication by the president. The military commander, Commander in Chief Far East (CINCFE), made policy as recalled Richard Neustadt, then a member of the White House staff: Truman “passively

await[ed] the outcome of MacArthur’s plans for victory.” In Stage 3, after China 

pushed the UN forces back from the Yalu River, Truman handled MacArthur as 

best he could by ignoring the CINCFE’s outbursts against his policy war and 

shifting operational authority for the war to the commander of the Eighth Army 

and the JCS. The general might snipe and complain to the press, even sabotage 

potential peace negotiations in late March 1951, without provoking the president 

toward the confrontation he long tired to avoid. In early April, MacArthur, very 

frustrated with his status and the stalemate in the war, wrote an embittered letter 

to Congressman Joe Martin, the leader of the Republican opposition in the House, 

that seemed to brand the general as a partisan politician at least in Truman’s eyes. 
3 

+ +

+ +

One could argue that MacArthur had thereby done what only he could do, ensure 

his dismissal from command.5

Stage 1 was set by disputes over U.S. policy toward Formosa (now commonly 

called Taiwan) on the eve of the Korean War—Stage 0.5, so to speak. In January 

1950, the administration announced the end of military support for the Nationalist 

regime of Chiang Kai-shek, then holding his last redoubt on the island before 

what seemed his final defeat in the Chinese civil war. Truman hoped that his 

stance for nonintervention would foment latent hostility by Mao Zedong for Russia, assumed to be near the surface of a man who might break away from Kremlin 

dictates if Washington encouraged him to believe that it was not hostile to his regime. MacArthur had different concerns, whether speaking to the National Command Authorities and the JCS or to the foreign affairs columnist for The New 

York Times: “Formosa in the hands of the Communists can be compared to an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender located to accomplish Soviet offensive strategy.” He also had an agenda not discussed so frankly, outside of certain 

Chinese anti-Communists, such as Sun Li-jen, the most competent and incorruptible general the Nationalists had. He wrote MacArthur in mid-1949, after a private 

meeting they had in Tokyo headquarters: “If we can hold together [a] sufficient 

fighting force at a suitable place,” such as Formosa, “it would be possible to

recover our lost ground [as in mainland China] by a series of well-guided 

counterattacks.”6

Washington modified its policy toward Formosa after North Korea invaded 

the South in late June 1950. It was part of a belabored attempt by the administration to build a broad domestic and international coalition including the Robert 

Taft wing Republicans, who loved Chiang on one hand, and the European socialists in NATO and the UN, who despised Chiang, on the other. The result was a 

policy of utter confusion in which America would defend Formosa, but not the 

governing regime, and told Chiang he could not launch preemptive strikes on

Communist forces gathering along the coast to invade the island, presumably before September. In late July-early August 1950, when the North Koreans had 

backed UN forces into the Pusan perimeter, MacArthur went to Formosa for a 

personal inspection, wherein he called Chiang “my old comrade in arms” and said 

his “indomitable determination to resist Communist domination arouses my sincere admiration. His determination parallels the common interests and purpose of 

Americans that all people in the Pacific area shall be free.”7 

Truman hit the ceiling. He had authorized no such endorsement, not even the 

trip. (MacArthur had notified the Pentagon of his intention, but it had informed 

neither the White House nor the State Department.) Harriman, who had known 

MacArthur as a neighbor when the general was commandant at West Point, volunteered to go to Tokyo to confer with the general, wherein he got the following 
4 

+ +

+ +

guidance from the president: Tell him to “leave Chiang Kai-shek alone. I do not 

want to have him get me into a war with Mainland China.” In return, “find out 

what he wants, and if it’s at all possible to do it, I will give it to him,” that is as 

long as the CINCFE waged war exclusively against North Korea. Whereupon

MacArthur, after telling Harriman the Communists would not try to conduct the 

invasion “at the present time,” described his plan, germinating in his mind for 

years, to conduct a grand double envelopment, to be executed in this instance at 

Inchon. 8

Harriman returned to Washington from Tokyo on 9 August and immediately 

went to the White House, where he told Truman, in so many words, that MacArthur agreed to his half of the bargain: “MacArthur answered that he would, as a 

soldier, obey any orders that he received from the president.” He also told Truman 

about Inchon, which is what MacArthur wanted in return. Truman told Harriman 

to “go and see Louis Johnson and General Omar Bradley [the secretary of defense 

and the chairman JCS]. I want them to act on it rapidly,” meaning don’t study it to 

death. The president’s special assistant for national security stopped at home to 

shower and eat breakfast before arriving at the Pentagon two hours later. By then, 

Truman had already contacted Bradley once and Johnson twice, leading them to 

question: “Averell, what have you been doing to the president?” When Harriman 

replied, “I was there [in Tokyo] entirely for political reasons,” Johnson responded, 

“Well, the president has told me he wants this plan of MacArthur’s supported.”9

Inchon was the personification of Stage 1; Wake Island of Stage 2, created by 

the aura surrounding MacArthur when his personal plan seemed to have snatched 

victory from defeat, or at least a stalemate. There are alternative interpretations 

based on the data in the Army’s official history written by Roy Appleman: that 

the decisive operation of the war against North Korea was the defense on the 

Pusan perimeter, where UN forces under Lieutenant General Walton Walker were 

doing more damage than anybody knew, particularly MacArthur’s headquarters 

underestimating the casualties inflicted on the enemy by over 50 percent. MacArthur, when reviewing the manuscript in 1957, said, “These conclusions are 

completely unwarranted and based upon figures concocted by the author, with 

little substantiation.” More important is what the Truman administration believed. 

Harriman, who brokered the Inchon deal, would call the landing “one of the most 

brilliant military achievements in our military history.” Truman, quite naturally 

would compliment himself for recognizing “a bold plan worthy of a master strategist.” Acheson would say Inchon “succeeded brilliantly.” He also admitted to 

Harriman in the fall of 1950, “there’s no stopping MacArthur now.” That is by the 

Truman administration relinquishing ultimate authority to the theater commander, 

at least until something went drastically wrong. 10

The primary purpose of the Wake Island conference was precisely what

MacArthur thought, a chance for the president to pose before photographers with 
5 

+ +

+ +

the hero of the hour, three weeks before the November congressional election that 

Truman passionately wanted his party to win. This was certainly not the most 

auspicious a time to cross-examine the general, whose military opinion he was not 

apt to challenge, partisan politics notwithstanding. A field grade officer, new to 

the G2 section of MacArthur’s headquarters, would say that many of his “staff 

and commanders regarded him as God, they really thought he could do no

wrong.” That October, much the same thing could be said about the president of 

the United States. Truman, always wanting to avert war with either Russia or 

China, should have relied on the CIA and State Department political intelligence 

departments for assessments about decisionmaking by Communist politburos. Instead, he had no qualms about asking MacArthur “what are the chances for Chinese or Soviet interference?” Nor did he hesitate about accepting the CINCFE’s 

immediate response, “very little.”11

Dean Rusk, the assistant secretary of state for Far East affairs, tried to point 

out that Chinese intervention “might not be impossible,” hardly strong words. He 

had been a staff officer in the China-India-Burma theater in World War II but 

could not force an airing of fallback, contingency plans. Truman passed him a 

message: “I want to get out of here before I get into trouble.” No wonder MacArthur was “effervescent” on the plane ride back to Tokyo that afternoon. “He 

was at his sparkling best,” a fellow passenger would recall. Unfortunately, the 

euphoria virtually assured trouble on the horizon. Truman’s deference to the

theater commander, so reported in Beijing, confirmed the proposition of

Communist hard-liners that the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) had no choice 

but to fight, if only for survival, because the MacArthur clique, allied with

Chiang, embodied American Far East policy.12

President Truman’s response to the Chinese attack of 25 November, the first 

day of Stage 3, was one of outrage, more at MacArthur than at Mao or Joseph 

Stalin. Forty-five days after Wake Island, he wrote his first memorandum for record about his meeting with the general, no longer feeling it was productive to 

avoid public conflict with the CINCFE. Truman, a former haberdasher said to 

have looked “immaculate” even in a trench during World War I, recorded that 

“General MacArthur was at the airport with his shirt unbuttoned, wearing a greasy 

ham and eggs cap that evidently had been in use for 20 years.” His wardrobe was 

bad; his assessment of the strategic situation in the Far East was worse. “He said 

the Chinese Commies would not attack, that we had won the war, and that we 

could send a division to Europe from Korea in January 1951.”13

Truman would be bitter at MacArthur the rest of his life. “I considered him a 

great strategist,” Truman said in 1959, “until he made the march into North Korea 

without the knowledge that he should have had of the Chinese coming in. That’s 

what caused most of his trouble.” The general, from the president’s point of view, 

either broke the agreement they made back in August not to bring Beijing into the 
6 

+ +

+ +

war or he did not really know what China would do. The latter would mean that 

the field commander was no smarter than the leading figures in Washington. 

China’s intervention “was really a great shocker,” in the words of the secretary of 

the Army, “Nobody had expected this at all.”14 

Truman, consciously or not, would use MacArthur as a scapegoat for the failure shared by his administration. Doing so, he moved a long way from his old inclination to find fault with “the crazy politicians” rather than blame failure on the 

great generals, such as Hannibal or Lee. A president so clearly disillusioned at his 

field commander must have had strong illusions about that man’s special prowess, 

not to be seriously questioned until events shattered the mystic. Truman’s memoirs, written in retirement, would point to instances where he thought about relieving MacArthur “then and there.” He did not do it in November-December 

1950 for more substantial reasons than his explanation: “I had no desire to hurt 

General MacArthur personally;” that is kick a man already down. 15

Good manners aside, there were good reasons per national security why “we 

could not cause the commanding general in the field to lose face before the enemy,” as Truman told the National Security Council (NSC) on 28 November, 

mainly encouraging the Communists to exploit their advantage by pouring reinforcements into the battle. Hence Truman did his best to maintain his pretense of 

confidence even to John Hersey, a prominent writer given exclusive access to the 

White House in December: “People who don’t know military affairs expect everything to go well all the time. . . .The greatest of generals have had to take reverses . . . [even] Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. . . . I’m not upset, like 

most people, about these reverses MacArthur is taking.” Better Oval Office actors, such as Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, could have pulled this off, not 

so Truman. He would tell his staff, in the presence of Hersey: “We’ve got a terrific situation on our hands . . . [MacArthur] says he’s stymied.” The President of 

the United States summed it up to the secretary of state on the 14th: “Dean, what 

a hell of a two weeks I’ve had.”16 

MacArthur, unlike his government, was never troubled by doubt or hesitation 

about what to do with Chinese bases beyond the Yalu River. On 1 December 

1950, a weekly magazine asked him if restrictions against attacks on these targets 

were “a handicap to effective military operations?” He replied “an enormous 

handicap, without precedent in military history” and then sent the transcript of the 

interview to the United Press for instant distribution. One understands his sense of 

frustration. Contingency plans Washington made in July 1950 that expressly assumed intervention by Beijing would elicit “air and sea attacks on targets in

Communist China directly related to the enemy effort in Korea.” However, when 

the NSC met in the White House on 2 December, the day after publication of 

MacArthur’s statement in the national press, it focused on the general’s comments, not just the PRC. Acheson insisted that “it was essential to get some kind 
7 

+ +

+ +

of censorship in the Far Eastern Command immediately.” Truman, torn again, 

tried to take control but remain conciliatory, that is reconcile his belief that a 

president must command, per his hero Andrew Jackson, with his personal and political desire to avoid conflict with MacArthur.17

The result of this ambivalence was a directive written by George Elsey, White 

House counsel, commonly known as “the gag order,” a misleading title too strong 

for its actual content. Sent on 6 December “in the light of the present critical international situation,” its stated justification suggested it was a temporary measure 

lasting no longer than the present emergency. Clear all “public” statements on 

foreign policy with the State Department—military policy with the Department of 

Defense. Submit them in advance to the “White House for information”; notice 

the absence of the word “approval.” The Pentagon, two days later, sent a clarifying message that contained more escape clauses and equivocations: “Intent of instructions not to prohibit speeches by military on suitable occasions. Necessity of 

imparting sound and authoritative information to the public is as important as it 

always has been. . . . Department of Army is prepared to assist with advice and 

clearances when you are in doubt”—all this to a man who rarely gave much indication that he entertained much doubt at all.18

The so-called gag order went out to all major military commands, as well as 

all members of the cabinet and the directors of the federal agencies for selective 

service, price stabilization, economic cooperation, central intelligence, and national resources—hardly what one would call a roundup of the usual suspects possibly guilty of insubordination. The government obviously put its directive “into 

general terms in order to avoid making it specifically personal to MacArthur,” as 

George Marshall later testified to the senate hearing on the CINCFE’s dismissal. 

MacArthur, back in December 1950, was certainly not mollified by the pretense 

that he was only part of a crowd. He wrote a confidant on the 20th: “this has been 

by far the most open drive from Washington against me with but little effort to 

conceal the individuals responsible.” However, at least for the time being, he 

would not defy the executive branch because he felt it must be behind the general 

criticism leveled on his command during its retreat from North Korea, hence disclosing it was searching for an excuse to dismiss him into retirement. He was now 

on guard against making public statements in an open forum, “I have [since 6 

December] made no effort to clarify any further questions raised concerning the 

Korean campaign.”19

Truman must have sighed a breath of relief for peace on the MacArthur front, 

at least for the time being. However, once UN forces pulled themselves together 

under Matthew Ridgway, held off the enemy after a long retreat south, and began 

to head back to the 38th Parallel, MacArthur returned to open words of warning 

on 13 and 20 February: “We must not fall into the error of evaluating such tactical 

successes as decisively leading to the enemy’s defeat.” One presumes the general 
8 

+ +

+ +

went public because Washington had not paid particular heed to his secret

message sent on 11 February: “Unless authority is given to strike bases in

Manchuria, our ground forces as presently constituted cannot with safety attempt 

major operations in North Korea.” With Manchuria left intact, the enemy “retains 

the potential to employ a force which will enable him to resume the offensive and 

force [another] retrograde movement upon us.”20

Six weeks later, by late March, the front lines were at or near the prewar

boundary between North and South Korea. The Truman administration felt this 

presented an ideal opportunity for a peace settlement since each side could retain 

politically its territorial integrity, having held it on the battlefield and hardened its 

lines. For MacArthur, this simply meant protraction as defined when arguing on 

behalf of Inchon, the only alternative to a “war of indefinite duration, of gradual 

attrition, and of doubtful results.” In 1951, he predicted the same outcome if

Washington rejected his plans to take the war beyond the peninsula. “Red Chinese 

aggression in Asia could not be stopped by killing Chinese, no matter how many 

in Korea, so long as her power to make war remained inviolate,” he told his staff 

in March. In impromptu press conferences, he began to call Ridgway’s step-bystep movement an “accordion war,” a term elaborated in his remarks about a 

“heavy cost in Allied blood” and “the unprecedented military advantage of sanctuary protection” enjoyed by the Communist side. In ostensible defiance of directions to clear policy statements with Washington, he also made reference to the 

“unification of Korea” while confiding in a stage whisper: “This old soldier cannot obtain approval on any statement more significant than a [company status] 

morning report.”21 

The CINCFE had not run out of ideas. Truman’s liaison officer at Tokyo headquarters wrote the White House on 28 February, that “General MacArthur is on 

the verge of pulling twin white rabbits out of a black silk hat,” a reference to the 

CINCFE’s new plan—or should one say his old plan—for a spectacular military 

operation. He had thought, back in July 1950, of conducting amphibious landings 

behind enemy positions on both sides of the peninsula, a concept then scratched 

for lack of men and equipment. The general now dusted off the plan for this double envelopment, to be supplemented with airborne landings and Kuomingtang

(Taiwan’s political party) troops. Courtney Whitney, MacArthur’s closest confidant, would later call it “Inchon all over again, except on a far larger scale.” On 3 

April, the theater commander’s last trip to Korea, he said “our strategy [meaning 

my strategy] remains unchanged. . . . It is based on maneuver and not positional 

warfare.”22

In 1958, MacArthur told a confidant, in so many words, that the enemy was 

sitting there “naked, without ammunition, without sufficient anything. . . . He 

could have walked around ’em and trapped the whole damn Chinese army. As far 
9 

+ +

+ +

Map of Korea
10 

+ +

+ +

as he was concerned the whole thing would be finished.” MacArthur said he could 

not understand why Washington had turned him down flat. At other times, he had 

an all-purpose explanation. While still on active duty, he felt subjected to a “carefully outlined campaign of propaganda” to discredit his generalship vis-à-vis the 

commander of the Eighth Army. It would climax with the proposition from columnists well connected to the administration that “Ridgway, rather than MacArthur, has actually been in full command of the United Nations forces in Korea.” 

This claim, although overstated, reflected an essential fact. From Washington’s 

perspective, to quote Bradley’s posthumously published memoir: “There was a 

feeling that MacArthur had been ‘kicked upstairs’ to chairman of the board and 

was, insofar as military operations were concerned, mainly a prima donna figurehead who had to be tolerated.”23

Truman kept his distance through two months of violation of the intent, if not 

the letter, of the so-called gag order, even after MacArthur preempted a major 

presidential message with a public communiqué of his own on 24 March. Truman 

had planned to warn the enemy that “a prompt settlement of the Korean problem 

would greatly reduce international tension in the Far East and would open the way 

for the consideration of other problems in the area,” diplomatic code for Formosa. 

However, “until satisfactory arrangements for ending the fighting have been

reached, United Nations military action must be continued,” no hint of escalation, 

that is taking the war to China. MacArthur waved a much larger stick. “There 

should be no insuperable difficulty in arranging decisions on the Korean problem 

if the issues are resolved on their own merits, without being burdened by extraneous matters such as Formosa or China’s seat in the United Nations.” If the enemy 

still persisted, it could well expect his UN command “to depart from its tolerant 

effort to contain the war to the area of Korea, through an expansion of our

military operations to its coastal areas and interior bases [that] would doom Red 

China to the risk of imminent military collapse.”24

The status of Formosa, long a flash point of contention between Truman and 

MacArthur, had reared its head again. As for Beijing, it simply would not negotiate in response to the general’s ultimatum. Mao was hurting, but not so desperate 

as to swallow the humiliation served up by MacArthur, who would have him

crawl to an armistice for wanton fear of imminent destruction. Truman, in these 

circumstances, could only remove his own proposal before release and reply “no 

comment” to questions about MacArthur’s proclamation. If not, he would have 

drawn even more international attention to the disarray in America’s chain of

command, a topic of serious discussion among NATO allies who said MacArthur 

personified what was variously called Caesarism or Bonapartism, the threat of 

military men to republican government. The president in April would say that the 

presidency was at stake. In late March, the government’s immediate response was 

remarkably circumspect. State Department officials told reporters, “so far as they 
11 

+ +

+ +

Political Cartoon

could determine MacArthur’s statement was not cleared in Washington before he 

issued it in Tokyo.” Truman simply directed the Pentagon to tell the CINCFE to 

“direct that your attention be called to the order as transmitted 6 December 1950”; 

that is make no announcements on policy without government concurrence. “P.S.: 

Honest this time,” was the essence of the message, according to a Herblock

political cartoon in the Washington Post.

25

 

Within a month, Truman would begin spinning a myth that MacArthur’s

ultimatum caused his relief from command. On 28 April, he would tell Elsey, 

draftsman of the gag order, that the general’s action “was inexcusable,” forgetting 

that he had excused it at the time. In 1952, Truman’s staff would tell the National 

Cyclopedia of American Biography, per its entry on the president, that the action 

to relieve MacArthur “was taken following an unauthorized ultimatum containing 

unauthorized terms.” (Did the word “following” mean the exact same thing as the 

phrase “caused by”?) In 1955, Bradley told two research assistants working on 

Truman’s memoirs that the message to China “was the straw that broke the

camel’s back . . . that was when the president finally gave up.” In the memoir, 

published the following year, Truman stated without equivocation that
12 

+ +

+ +

MacArthur’s message to the enemy on 24 March sealed his fate: “I could no 

longer tolerate his insubordination.” He said no such thing in his diary until 6 

April.26 

By drawing attention to MacArthur’s diktat to China, Truman diverted attention from something he would later call “regrettable and shameful”; that is the 

making the Korean War “a football in a partisan political campaign.” Something 

like that happened on 5 April, when Roger Tubby, the president’s deputy press 

secretary, rushed into the oval office with a ticker tape copy of Martin’s latest political attack. The Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives just 

said that “our great ally, the established government of the Republic of China,” 

should be released to establish “a second front on China’s mainland” with the 

force Truman held back on the island of Formosa. Taiwan, always near the surface of the conflict between the president and MacArthur, thereby reared its head 

again.27

Martin was strongly of the opinion that Chiang’s army of some 800,000 was 

the key to victory. “It is high time,” he went on, “that the administration and the 

Pentagon came clean with the Congress and with the American people . . . If we 

are not in Korea to win, then the Truman administration should be indicted for the 

murder of thousands of American boys.” He followed this assertion with a declaration that “the only way to achieve the leadership we so desperately need is by a 

landslide Republican victory next year.” Embedded in the speech was a letter of 

endorsement MacArthur wrote back on 20 March about Martin’s way to wage the 

war. What he proposed, according to the general, was “in conflict with neither 

logic nor [the] tradition” of “meeting force with maximum counterforce, as we 

have never failed to do so in the past,” at least until now. MacArthur closed his 

letter with one of his favorite phrases: “As you point out, we must win. There is 

no substitute for victory.” Truman, when not claiming this was small potatoes in 

relationship to the ultimatum to China, said those particular words were the real 

“clincher.”28

Truman, a military history buff, had been engrossed in reading Bradley’s recently released memoir of World War II serialized in Life Magazine when Tubby 

busted in on 5 April. Not wanting to be disturbed, he quickly passed over the wire 

service press release Tubby handed him and calmly said, “the newspaper boys are 

putting [MacArthur] up to this.” There was nothing particularly new about remarks from MacArthur, although the gag order of December expressly told him 

“to refrain from direct communications on military or foreign policy with newspapers, magazines, or other publicity media in the United States.” The general had 

routinely ignored that directive, if only to defend his reputation damaged by defeat, even when the blame then fell on his boss, the President of the United States, 

who had not penalized his comments, as of yet. Tubby, however, persisted, although well aware that his junior position scarcely warranted involvement in high 
13 

+ +

+ +

Protest of General MacArthur’s Dismissal

(AP photo, Youngstown Ohio, 13 Apr 51)

matters of state. He told the president: “this man is not only insubordinate, he’s 

insolent and he ought to be fired.” Truman only then read the press copy

carefully, apparently finding some disturbing factor heretofore overlooked. When 

finished, he looked up and said, “By God, Roger, I think you are right.”29

What was new, different, and decisive? Heretofore, partisan Republicans endorsed MacArthur’s comments on Formosa, Korea, China, and other sundry matters. He had not endorsed them directly on what seemed a partisan basis. Once he 

did, he was in Truman’s mind a political, not a military, figure as indicated in 

Truman’s diary entries on 5 and 6 April: “The situation with regard to the Far 

Eastern general has become a political one.” “MacArthur shoots another political 

bomb [this time?] through Martin, leader of the Republican minority in the

House.” When that happened Truman was—in his own mind—no longer one of 

those “crazy politicians” turning on a general trying to win a war. He could wash 

Hannibal and Lee out of his mind and think of another historical precedent, that of 

a great president, even if AbrahamLincoln was a Republican. On 11 April, the day 
14 

+ +

+ +

The General Hangs at Dawn (AP photo, Seattle,

Washington, 13 Apr 51)

Truman announced the discharge of MacArthur, he told his White House staff 

that the general, like George B. McClellan in the 1860s, “worked with the

minority to undercut the administration when there was a war on.” The next day, 

the New York Herald Tribune summarized the progression of events quite

perceptively: “The most obvious fact about the dismissal of General MacArthur is 

that he virtually forced his own removal.”30
15 

Notes

1. Admiral Robert Dennison, “Oral History,” 10 September, 6 October, 2 November 1971, Truman 

Presidential Library (TPL), 108,. 

2. Truman described and quoted in David McCullough, Truman (New York: Touchstone, 1992), 141, 969; 

special counsel to the president Charles S. Murphy quoted in Robert Donovan, The Presidency of Harry 

S. Truman (New York: Norton, 1977-1982) 2:25; Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private 

Writings of Harry S. Truman, Margaret Truman, ed. (New York: Warner, 1989), 2.

3. Truman Diary, May 1931 and 14 May 1934, President’s Secretary’s File, Box 334, TPL.

4. Truman Diary, 17 June 1945, Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, Robert E. 

Ferrell, ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 47; “Oral Reminiscences of Governor W. Averell Harriman” (hereafter referred to as “Oral Reminiscences”), 20 June 1977, D. Clayton James Papers, MacArthur Memorial Foundation Library (MMFL); Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the 

Center of Decision (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), 39; and Nitze, “Interview given for BBC 

Documentary, ‘Korea,’” ca. November 1986, Nitze Papers, Box 130, Library of Congress; Truman, 

Memoirs by Harry S. Truman (New York: Doubleday, 1955-1956), 2:443-44.

5. Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: Signet Books, 1964), 

138; Truman Diary, 6 April 1951, in Off the Record, 210.

6. MacArthur, 18 May 1950, quoted in C.L. Sulzberger, A Long Row Of Candles (New York: Macmillan, 

1969), 562; Sun Li-jen to MacArthur, 18 May 1949, RG 5, OMS Correspondence, “Sun Li-jen,” 

MMFL.

7. MacArthur’s press statement reproduced in Courtney Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous With History (New York: Knopf, 1956), 373.

8. Truman quoted in Harriman, “Oral Reminiscences,” 29 June 1977, 8; Harriman (May 1975), in The 

Korean War: A 25 Year Perspective, Francis Heller, ed. (Lawrence. KS: Regents Press of Kansas, 

1977), 25; for double envelopment at Lae, see Reports of General MacArthur: Vol. 2, Part 1: Japanese 

Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966), 

216; “Extracts of Memorandum of Conversations by Harriman and MacArthur, 6 and 8 August 1950,” 

Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter referred to as FRUS] 1950, 6:429.

9. Harriman’s memorandum reprinted in Truman, Memoirs, 2:349-53, quotation on 352-53; Truman and 

Bradley quoted in, “Oral Reminiscences,” 8-9; Rudy Abramson, Spanning The Century: The Life of W. 

Averell Harriman, 1891-1986 (New York: William Morrow, 1992), 453-54; Johnson quoted by

Harriman, 4 February 1954, Princeton University Seminar, Reel 5, Track 2, 7.

10. For favorable UN force ratios before Inchon, the effect of the Air Force since July, and casualty estimates, see Roy Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, (Washington, DC: Center of Military History (CMH), 1992), 256, 263, 392, 546-47; MacArthur to General Richard Stephens, Director, 

CMH, 15 November 1957, RG 10, Box 142; “Oral Reminiscences,” 20 June 1977; Truman, Memoirs, 

2:348, 358; Dean Acheson, Present At The Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: 

New American Library, 1970), 579; Acheson quoted in Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise 

Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York: Touchstone, 1988), 532.

11. General [then Lieutenant General) James H. Polk, 9 December 1971, “Oral History,” (Carlisle Barracks, 

PA: Army War College) 25; “Substance of Statements Made at Wake Island Conference on 15 October 

1950, ” FRUS, 1950, 7:953.

12. Dean Rusk, “Oral History,” Rusk Papers, University of Georgia, 4; John Muccio quoted in Wiltz, 

“Truman and MacArthur,” 173; “Memorandum of Conversation [with Chinese informant], Prepared in 

Department of State,” 2 February 1951, FRUS, 1951, 7:1558.

13. Truman’s attire described in Harry Vaughn, “Oral History,” TPL, 6; “Wake Island,” 25 November 

1950, Documentary History of Truman Presidency, in Dennis Merrill, ed. (Washington, DC: University 

Publications of America, 1997), 20:57.

14. Truman (1959) in Talking with Harry: Candid Conversations with President Harry S. Truman, Ralph 

Weber, ed. (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001), 194; Frank Pace “Oral History,” JanuaryJune 1972, TPL, 102.

15. Truman, Memoirs, 2:355-56, 384.
16 

+ +

+ +

16. Truman quoted at NSC Meeting, 28 November, FRUS, 7:1245; John Hersey, “Profiles: Mr. President,” 

New Yorker, (7 April 1951), 1; (14 April 1951), 52; and (5 May 1951), 52. Lest I sound too cynical, I do 

not mean to minimize Truman’s genuine reluctance “to go back on people when luck is against them.” 

His own life in business was a long record of bouncing back from failure and trying once again.

17. The New York Times, 2 December 1950, 1, 4; D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1970-1985), 3:540; NSC, 1 July 1950, quoted and issue discussed in Shu Guang 

Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949-1958 (Ithaca, NY: 

Cornell University Press, 1992), 85-88, Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, 3 December 1950, in Documentary History of Truman Presidency, Merrill, ed., 19:149.

18. JCS to major commands, 6 December 1950, in Ibid., 20:58; Department of Army to CINCFE, 8 December 1950, RG 9, Box 9, MMFL.

19. Marshall at United States Senate, 83d Congress, 1st Session, Hearings before the Armed Services and 

Foreign Relations Committee, Military Situation in the Far East (hereafter referred to as MacArthur 

Hearings); 342; MacArthur to Roy Howard, 20 December 1950, RG 5, Box 28, MMFL.

20. Collins and Vandenberg, Memorandum for JCS, “Consultations with General MacArthur,” 19 January 

1951, RG 218, JCS, Geographical File, 1951-1953, Box 14, National Archives; MacArthur press conferences on 13 and 20 February 1951 in A Soldier Speaks: Public Papers and Speeches of Dougla s 

MacArthur, Vorin Whan, ed. (New York: Praeger, 1965), 234-37; CINCFE to Department of the Army, 

11 February 1951, RG 61a, Box 5, MMFL.

21. MacArthur’s remarks, 6 to 20 March 1950, quoted in Whitney, MacArthur, 462; MacArthur quoted in 

The New York Times, 14 February 1951, 3; in James, Years of MacArthur, 3:582-83; and in Stanley 

Weintraub, MacArthur’s War: Korea and the Unmaking of an American Hero (New York: Free Press, 

1999), 312, 318.

22. Major General Frank Lowe to President Truman, 28 February 1951, President’s Secretary’s Files, Box 

245, TPL; James F. Schnabel, Policy and Direction: The First Year (Washington, DC: CMH, 1972) 

187, footnote 27; Whitney, MacArthur, 461; MacArthur quoted in New York Herald Tribune, 4 April 

1951, 1.

23. MacArthur paraphrased by associate Arnold A. Saltzman, “Oral History,” 17 May 1996, MMFL; 6-7. 

For feelings that Washington was conducting a media campaign to discredit him, see MacArthur to Roy 

Howard, 20 December 1950, RG 5, Box 28, MMFL and Whitney, MacArthur, 454; quote from columnist Stewart Alsop, “Korea Is Still the Key,” New York Herald Tribune, 15 April 1951, 2:5; Omar 

Bradley and Clay Blair, A General’s Life: An Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 

623.

24. Truman’s draft proposal in Memoirs, 2:439-40; MacArthur statement of 24 March 1951 reprinted in 

MacArthur Hearings, 3541-42.

25. Truman at Press Conference, 29 March 1951, Truman Public Papers, 203; London Daily Herald (organ 

of the Labour government) quoted in New York Herald Tribune, 27 March 1951, 7; also see “French 

Express Alarm,” The New York Times, 25 March 1951, 4; and “Issue of M’Arthur Is Skirted in U.N.,” 

The New York Times, 10 April 1951, 3; for U.S. government response, see New York Herald Tribune, 

25 March 1951, 1, and 28 March 1951, 4; JCS to CINCFE, 24 March 1951, State Department Records 

Relating to Korean War, Box 10; Herblock cartoon reprinted in The New York Times, 1 April 1951, 4:3.

26. Truman, 28 April 1951, to Elsey and Eben Ayers in “MacArthur” notes of Elsey, Eben Ayers Papers, 

Box 7; Joseph Short to E.J. Williams, 25 July 1952, PSF, Box 298; Bradley, interviewed by Hillman 

and Heller, 30 March 1955, Post-Presidential Papers, Box 641, all in TPL; Truman, Memoirs, 2:442; 

Off the Record, 210-11.

27. Truman, comment at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 15 December 1961, Merle Miller Papers, Box 6; TPL; 

Martin in the Congressional Record, 82d Congress, 1st Session, 3380.

28. Martin and MacArthur in Ibid., 3380-81; Truman, Memoirs, 2:446.

29. Tubby, “Oral History,” 10 February 1970, TPL, 39-40, 129; and statement by Tubby in The Truman 

White House: The Administration of the Presidency, 1945-1953, Francis Heller, ed. (Lawrence, KS: 

Regents Press of Kansas, 1980) 147-48.

30. Diary, 5 and 6 April 1951, PSF, Box 33; Truman at staff meeting, 11 April 1951, Eben Ayers Papers, 

Box 7, both in TPL; “The Removal of MacArthur,” New York Herald Tribune, 12 August 1951, 30.