Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [21]
MacArthur’s belief that his critics were not merely wrong, but evil, verged on derangement. He claimed to perceive a “crooked streak” in both Marshall and Eisenhower, two of the most honourable men in American public service. When the Office of War Information wished to alter for national consumption his legendary remark on quitting the Philippines from “I shall return” to “We shall return,” MacArthur demurred. Early in 1944, the general wrote to Henry Stimson: “These frontal attacks by the Navy…are tragic and unnecessary massacres of American lives…The Navy fails to understand the strategy…Give me central direction of the war in the Pacific, and I will be in the Philippines in ten months…don’t let the Navy’s pride of position and ignorance continue this great tragedy to our country.” MacArthur’s personal behaviour was no worse than that of Patton and Montgomery, but he exercised command under far less restraint than either.
Perhaps most distasteful of all his wartime actions was a flirtation with a 1944 presidential election run against Roosevelt, whose liberalism affronted his own rabidly conservative convictions. MacArthur’s staff corresponded with potential campaign backers in the U.S., which they could not have done without his knowledge. Lt.-Gen. Robert Eichelberger asserted: “If it were not for his hatred41, or rather the extent to which he despises FDR, he would not want [the presidency].” The influential New York Times columnist Arthur Krock wrote in April 1944: “It is generally believed42…that General MacArthur is dissatisfied with the military strategy of the war as approved by the President and Prime Minister Churchill.” This was indeed so. Only when it became apparent that MacArthur could not defeat Thomas Dewey to secure the Republican presidential nomination did he finally exclude himself from candidacy.
He also possessed virtues, however. His air chief, George Kenney, observed shrewdly that “as a salesman, MacArthur has no superiors and few equals.” The USAAF responded to the general’s enthusiasm for air power by offering its passionate support to his causes. Though MacArthur’s hostility towards Britain was well-known, British brigadier Jack Profumo, attached to his staff, praised his private courtesy and warmth. The supreme commander’s senior British liaison officer described him to Churchill as “ruthless, vain, unscrupulous43 and self-conscious…but…a man of real calibre with a vivid imagination, a capacity to learn rapidly from the past, a leader of men…[with] a considerable understanding of personalities and political development.” MacArthur’s serene assurance, natural authority and charisma lent some substance to his claims to rank. If he was not among history’s outstanding commanders, he acted the part of one with unshakeable conviction.
In late summer 1944, MacArthur’s credit as a strategist stood higher than it ever had before, or would again. In two months he had conducted a dramatic advance 1,200 miles up Papua New Guinea, bypassing rather than lingering to destroy Japanese garrisons, staging a series of surprise amphibious assaults, of which the most recent and successful took place at Hollandia, where his headquarters was now being transferred. These achievements, however, won headlines without removing fundamental doubts about the usefulness of the army’s operations in the south-west Pacific, now that the threat to Australia was lifted. Geographical imperatives made the U.S. Navy the lead service in the Japanese war, to which the army was obliged to defer. Soldiers could nowhere engage the Japanese without being transported to objectives in ships, and supported in action by fleets. MacArthur could bend strategy and sustain his