Old Soldiers…
In light of the Chinese intervention, General MacArthur demanded permission to retaliate against the Chinese by bombing Manchuria. President Truman and the United Nations-fearing that direct aggression against China would trigger nuclear war with the Soviets—turned MacArthur down. The confrontation was controversial, and many Americans—including Senator Joseph McCarthy—vociferously sided with the general against the president. Contrary to the accepted military practice of refraining from publicly differing with the civilian administration, MacArthur loudly blamed his military setbacks in Korea on Truman’s policies. Finally, on March 25, 1951, just after Truman had completed preparation of a cease-fire plan, MacArthur broadcast an unauthorized and provocative ultimatum to the enemy commander. In response to this insubordination, Truman relieved MacArthur of command in Korea on April 11.
Thrust, Counterthrust, and Stalemate
General Matthew B. Ridgway assumed command of U.S. and U.N. forces after the dismissal of MacArthur, and Lieutenant General James A. Van Fleet led the U.S. 8th Army northward. But on April 22, nearly half a million Chinese troops initiated an offensive, driving the 8th Army to within five miles of Seoul. On May 10, the Chinese launched a second offensive, concentrating on the eastern portion of the U.N. line; however, Van Fleet counterattacked in the west, north of Seoul, taking the communists entirely by surprise. In full retreat, the communists suffered their heaviest casualties of the war and withdrew into North Korea. By the beginning of summer 1951, the war was stalemated at the 38th parallel. For the next two years, both sides, now dug in, pounded one another fruitlessly.
Peace Table
Armistice negotiations began at the behest of the Soviets in June 195 1 and dragged on for two years. It took until July 26 even to establish an agenda for the conference. The participants decided that an armistice would require agreement on a demarcation line and demilitarized zone, impartial supervision of the truce, and arrangements for return of prisoners of war. The toughest single issue involved the disposition of POWs. U.N. negotiators wanted prisoners to decide for themselves whether they would return home; the communists, fearful of mass defection, held out for mandatory repatriation. In an effort to break the negotiation stalemate, General Mark Clark, who had succeeded Ridgway, stepped up bombing raids on North Korea. At last, during April 1953, the POW issue was resolved; a compromise permitted freed prisoners to choose sides, but under supervision of a neutral commission.
The Unhappiest Ally
After this long and frustrating process, the only individual who remained thoroughly displeased was Syngman Rhee (1875-1965), president of South Korea. Rhee desired nothing less than unification of Korea and wholly voluntary repatriation as absolute conditions for cease-fire. So he threw a monkey wrench into the proceedings by suddenly ordering the release of 25,000 North Korean prisoners who wanted to live in the South. To regain Rhee’s cooperation, the United States promised him a mutual security pact and long-term economic aid. Nevertheless, the armistice signed on July 27, 1953, did not include South Korea. Still, the cease-fire held, and the shooting war was over.
The Korean War did succeed in containing communism—confining it to North Korea—but in all other respects, this costly conflict was inconclusive, except that it provided a precedent for intervention in another Asian war. This time the war would take place in a divided Vietnam, beginning in the next decade.
The Least You Heed to Know
Jubilation at the end of World War II was short lived, as the Western capitalist nations and the eastern European and Asian communist nations squared off for a Cold War.
A policy of “containing” communism and a fear of touching off a nuclear World War III dominated American foreign policy in the postwar years.
Main Event
The major German war criminals were prosecuted in the Nuremberg Trials, which took place in that German city from November 1945 to October 1946, presided over by jurists from the Allied nations. The principal trial brought 22 German Nazi leaders to justice, of whom 12 were sentenced to death, including Wilhelm Keitel (Hitler’s closest military adviser), Joachim von Ribbentrop (German foreign minister), Alfred Rosenberg (a principal architect of Nazi genocide programs), and Martin Bormann (Hitler’s secretary). Bormann vanished after Hitler’s suicide on April 30, 1945, and was tried in absentia; in 1972, a skeleton identified as his was discovered in West Berlin. Hermann Goering, second only to Hitler in authority, committed suicide before he could be executed. Three other war criminals were given life sentences, and four received 20-year terms. Three of the first 22 tried were acquitted. Over the succeeding months, lesser criminals were tried in a series of 12 proceedings.
Word for the Day
Coined in 1947 by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope in a speech lie wrote for financier Bernard Baruch, cold war refers to the postwar strategic and political struggle between the United States (and its western-European allies) and the Soviet Union (and communist countries). A chronic state of hostility, the Cold War was associated with two major “hot wars” (in Korea and Vietnam) and spawned various “brushfire wars” (small-scale armed conflicts, usually in Third World nations), but it was not itself a shooting war. The end of Cold War was heralded in 1989 by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Voice from the Past
The crux of the North Atlantic Treaty, which created NATO, is Article 5: “The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”
Main Event
