The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [316]
[354] Satellite surveillance was not available in the 1950s.
[355] Seoul would change hands four times and be reduced to ruin by the time of the cease-fire in July of 1953.
[356] The Chinese and North Koreans did not use the AK-47 in Korea; they used the PPSh-41. This was a submachine gun with a 71-round drum magazine that fired a pistol round. It was very effective in spraying bullets all over the landscape, especially at night when they could get in close.
[357] For all my complaining about MacArthur, he was skillful in his management of Japan after World War II.
[358] Which US intelligence did not know about (wow, that’s news). The MIGs were a complete surprise.
[359] It should be noted this is the WWII kind of set-piece battlefield, not the “modern” battlefield of indiscriminate murder by people with bombs strapped to themselves firing them off in a crowded marketplace.
[360] As a side note, the US Marine 1st Division was in the line, yet no major communist assault was mounted against it. For the rest of the war, the communists would not frontally assault a US Marine position. When reviewing maps of this communist assault, look at the center of the UN line and look for the abbreviation 1st MarDiv (First Marine Division), and you will see the arrows of the communist advance hitting units on both sides of the division, but no attack on the position of the 1MarDiv.
[361] In my opinion, the Chinese communists lost almost 1 million men in its attempts to push the United Nations off the Korean peninsula. Since WWII, most wars are categorized as “small” because by comparison they are small.
[362] Note the Soviets did not use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. Were they somehow constrained by Truman’s decision?
[363] Technically, a cease fire just means the shooting has stopped for a time. N Korea repudiated the cease fire in June of 2009, but what this means is uncertain. N Korea has been developing nuclear arms. Pressure from the US to cease nuclear arms production has caused N Korea to lash back, and the repudiation of this agreement is part of the blowback.
[364] This Kind of War: the Classic Korean War History—Fiftieth Anniversary Edition by T.R. Fehrenbach
[365] The French have a way of dealing with others that seems to make everyone feel inferior, and this did not go over well after the Japanese had departed. The Japanese were far worse, but that did not mean the French were viewed as good.
[366] Stalin died in 1953.
[367] Many of them still maintain these were civil wars.
[368] By miserly, I do not mean insubstantial. I simply mean not enough was given in military aid and support troops. US airpower alone may have given Chang enough of an edge to survive.
[369] A set piece battle is a conventional battle. Two armies clash with lines of men, flanks, artillery and the rest. Guerrilla warfare entails avoiding set piece battles until the guerrilla units are strong enough for a set piece fight. The goal of turning to set piece battles is to finally destroy the government’s army and take over.
[370] Street Without Joy, Bernard B. Fall.
[371] The United States believed the days of colonialism were over—and how right Washington was; however, the politicians did not see the end results of this quick collapse which brought turmoil and death on a grand scale as small nations went to war with one another over the unrealistic boundary lines drawn by the colonial empires.
[372] For example, T. Roosevelt had interfered in other government’s internal affairs to get the Panama Canal constructed.
[373] Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq, and others.
[374] Johnson defeated Senator Goldwater by claiming Goldwater was a warmonger and implying he (Johnson) was a man of peace. It was Johnson that committed hundreds of thousands of US troops to Vietnam. Shows how much a person can trust the claims of a politician. LBJ also overcame Goldwater’s charges of corruption, mainly because the press ignored them.
[375] Documents show that no attack took place on the night in question;