MacArthur: the tyrant, the hero, unvarnished

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was one of the most shameless selfpromoters in history. In April 1951, after MacArthur gave his famous farewell address to Congress (“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away”), Rep. Dewey Short of Missouri cried out, “We heard God speak today, God in the flesh, the voice of God!” When MacArthur was cast (and posed) as the hero of Corregidor in the opening days ofWorldWar II, mothers named their newborns after him. Others, more familiar with the general and his moods, were less enraptured. President Truman firedMacArthur for insubordination, and his colleagues knew him to be vainglorious.

History has not been kind to MacArthur. “A recent, if informal Internet poll listed him as America’s worst commander; Benedict Arnold was second,” writes Mark Perry in his engrossing book on the great, if greatly flawed, general, “The Most Dangerous Man in America.” “A popular television series on the war has Marines on Peleliu cursing MacArthur for expending their lives in seizing the island needlessly.” Gen. MacArthur, the author notes, “had nothing to do with the battle.”

Perry sets out to rehabilitateMacArthur, or at least to set the record straight about his strengths as well as his weaknesses. A close student of Napoleon and Genghis Kahn, MacArthur was an innovative genius, especially when it came to moving enormous numbers of troops over vast distances. Perry deals with MacArthur’s role only inWorldWar II; the book ends before his successful shogunate in post-war Japan and his wildly up-anddown record in Korea. But fans of military history and general readers will have much to enjoy and ponder: The author offers a vivid and convincing recounting of MacArthur’s tremendous skill as a pioneer at air-land-sea battle in the Pacific, along with ample evidence that, “proud and egotistical” MacArthur “was his own worst enemy.”

MacArthur, Perry writes, could be “short-tempered, abrupt, sullen, and impatient.” Also “small-minded, embittered, suspicious.” His staffers were by and large toadies. “You don’t have a staff, general, you have a court,” scoffed his boss, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall.

Franklin Roosevelt was well aware of MacArthur’s limitations. In the summer of 1932, when then-Gov. Roosevelt was the newly anointed Democratic nominee for president, he discussed with his advisers MacArthur’s heavy-handed routing of the Washington Bonus Marchers, impoverishedWorldWar I veterans encamped along the Anacostia River in the nation’s capital. MacArthur was “the most dangerous man in America,” suggested Roosevelt, who saw MacArthur’s potential to become the Man on the White Horse, a pseudo-Napoleon willing to sacrifice liberty to restore stability to a frightened people. Roosevelt lumped MacArthur with demagogue Huey Long, the fiery populist governor of Louisiana. But, Roosevelt went on to say, “We must tame these fellows and make them useful to us.”

With his keen insight into human nature, Roosevelt understood that it takes outsize personalities to accomplish great things. Ordinary men, though saner and humbler, lack the will and boldness. The trick was to co-opt MacArthur, which Roosevelt cleverly did by holding him close (so that he would not be a political rival) and making sure that he had good commanders to carry out his orders. Perry notes that, while MacArthur’s staff was obsequious, his ground commanders in the Pacific island-hopping campaign were generally first-rate.

MacArthur had showy, inspirational bravery. Inspecting the front lines on the embattled island of Los Negros, he was momentarily stopped by an Army officer who said, “Excuse me, sir, but we killed a Jap sniper in there just a few minutes ago.” MacArthur responded, “Fine. That’s the best thing to do with them,” and kept moving forward into the jungle. But he was also a “realist, the quiet and somber man he rarely allowed anyone to see,” Perry notes.

BIOGRAPHY: MILITARYMAN

On the eve ofWorldWar II, MacArthur was visited in his Manila headquarters in the Philippines by journalist Clare Boothe Luce, who wanted to profile him for Life Magazine. Luce asked MacArthur his theory of offensive warfare. “Did you ever hear the baseball expression, ‘hit ’em where they ain’t?’ That’s my formula,” he jauntily explained. “But when she then asked him for his formula for defensive warfare, he hesitated,” Perry relates, “before finally answering. ‘Defeat.’ ”

Perry is an excellent military historian. He understands that human foibles are inevitable and particularly likely to show under the stress of wartime. These shortcomings can be unfortunate and self-destructive, but also reflect aspects of character that may be necessary to achieve victory. The media and popular opinion can be too quick to glorify military heroes, and historians and revisionists too eager to cut

them down to size.

Evan Thomas, the author of “Sea of Thunder” and “Ike’s Bluff,” is writing a biography of Richard Nixon.