American shogun

Scottish Northern and South Fruit

His father, Arthur, the boy of an immigrant from Scotland, was under 17 erstwhile he enlisted in the Union's troops and ended Civil War As a hero colonel. "Boy colonel" gained these shapes, not yet having – due to its snotty age – electoral rights. On the defeated South, however, an officer of the North met an even stronger individual who immediately took him into captivity. Mary “Pinky” Hardy had 4 brothers fighting for the defeated Confederacy; those of them who survived the war refused to attend the wedding ceremony.

Of the 3 sons of this pair, Douglas, born January 26, 1880, was the last. He spent his childhood on a vanishing borderline, playing with Indian boys and riding Mustangs; his father told him about his friends, “Wild Bill” Hickoku and Buffalo Bill. erstwhile he tried to make his first money selling newspapers, the older boys drove him off the street. My parent said she wouldn't come home until she sold all the copies. He did it, though he came back with a black eye.

In 1898 with a beating heart he crossed the elite threshold West Point Military Academy. The "long grey line" of cadets became his possibly top love of life – despite the fact that during the usual quakes he almost died out of spirit. In the school he was always the best – in the saddle, on the field, in fencing, in dancing, in mathematics, in Latin (the tyleronic 1 – he never cursed). He wanted to be worthy of his parents – especially of his father, who, after excellent service, having taken over the governorship of the conquered Philippines, was humiliatingly dismissed by William Taft, future president. erstwhile another president, Theodore Roosevelt, in a consolation motion sent MacArthur elder as an observer to the front of the Russian-Japanese War, Douglas went there as his father's aide. Additionally, he traveled around Japan, China, the islands of present-day Indonesia, Thailand and India. "I understood – he later wrote – that America's future is inextricably connected with Asia and the islands surrounding it."

Mars' favorite

He served in the Philippines, measured the not-known coasts, and in the spring of 1914, during a alternatively unlucky intervention of the United States in Mexico, for a bold action on the back of the enemy was nominated for the highest honor medal. The order of him whose bachelor his father was, at that time he did not receive what he considered to be the malice of the staffmen – on the point of honor he was so delicate that he had previously received a written reprimand twice for "suddenness."

He then became the first always press officer at the Army office to prove a priceless experience. In 1917 he set out for French front As a colonel. A fewer months later, he was already the youngest in the United States Army to be a Brigadier General, and just before the end of the war a division commander. Soldiers, including the allied army, adored him for his bravado, cold-bloodedness, and correct decisions on the battlefield. The commanders, with General John Pershing at the head (as an old friend of his parents), hated for dandy manners and insubordination. Killerly handsome, irreproachably kind, about the Olympic way of being, he could, like Charles de Gaulle, talk of himself in the 3rd individual ("it would be unworthy of MacArthur"). Not only did Pershing's chief of staff, Marshall, consider him a arrogant man. The fact was different, known to a fistful of people, mostly his closest women. Sir Galahad, as his first wife called him, was indeed an highly shy man. Jupiter's appearances were his armor.

After the war, he became superintendent (or rector) of West Point, in the eyes of the superiors of course controversial. Then, as whispered, the angry Pershing dismissed him to the distant Philippines—apparently for revenge, that he in a brawl manner gained the hand of his boss's future fiancé. He did not complain, his relation with the archipelago, already loved in the early century, proved to be more permanent than his relation with Louise Brooks. The latter, a divorcee with 2 children, could not bear not only the parish atmosphere of islands at the end of the world, but besides the fraternization of Douglas with various “niggers” – including the future president of the Philippines, Manuel Quezon. In this respect, in the era of racial segregation, he was a peculiar American. erstwhile asked years later about the defects of colored soldiers, he replied: “They were. I have always been sent besides few.”

‘Bataan lion’

Called back to Washington, he became chief of staff. He tried to modernize the military at minimum means – the army then had 1 service car, his own. erstwhile the fresh president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he was sick of it, went back to the autonomous Philippines. Quezon appointed him Field Marshal (a fresh adjutant, Eisenhower mocked it), and he promised to make an army capable of defending the island from powerful Japan. This army was to be ready by the mid-1940s. Unfortunately, The nipponese hit in December 1941...

The beginning was terrible. The aircraft of the Philippine marshal and chief of the United States forces on the islands was destroyed by 1 strike, and this on the ground. Then, however, “Mac” withdrew to the fortified Bataan peninsula, where the Philippine-American formations fought for 4 more months. In an age of incredible, disgraceful defeats, the news of the Allies about defending the Philippines was for Americans what Westerplatte was for Poles. "The lion of Bataan" became a national hero. In March 1942, Roosevelt, the so-far-hot but vague assurances of close rescue, ordered him to flee to Australia to aid him.

MacArthur – with his second wife Jean and his four-year-old son, who did not turn him aside – slipped through the nipponese blockade with a tiny racer to find out that no army was waiting for him in the Kangaroo Country. Bataan died a period later, nipponese prisoners were partially murdered. He received the – mockery of destiny – Medal of Honor, but for the remainder of his life he felt guilty towards his soldiers and deceived by the President. "Roosevelt died," he said in 1945, a man who, in his life, did not say a word of fact if a lie could better service his interests."

"American Shogun" – General Douglas MacArthur with Emperor Hirohito. Public domain

For the time being, as a defender trembling against the nipponese invasion of Australia, he felt it essential to defend it actively, in neighboring fresh Guinea, alternatively of passively looking like a landing. The first fights, in 1942 and at the beginning of the next one, fought in tropical moisture, with leeches falling from trees to soldiers, were highly dense and costly. But they hardened the army and the chief. As the only leading United States military commanders, he most likely rose above their level of belief that the way to win the war was to attack the full line. Its alleged frog jumps – hitting selected points, building airports on them, blocking another enemy positions and hitting another goal – required precise interaction of land forces with the fleet and aviation.

By the end of the war he carried out 46 victorious landings. The most crucial thing was the landing in the Gulf of Leyte in the Philippines started on 20 October 1944 – the realization of the Bataan promise "to return" (I Shall return). The Capital Manila was not recaptured until March 3, after months of gruesome fighting. MacArthur banned the bombing of the historical downtown, but the sight of debris and the bodies of the nipponese civilians murdered among them shook him to the depths. "This city – he whispered – is destroyed like Warsaw".

Friend of Poland

He knew Warsaw from the autopsy, visited her as chief of staff in 1932. He squeezed his hand. Marshal Józef Piłsudski, saluted the cavalry and joked in a liquid French with akin in many respects General Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski. In news of the tragic death of the first Uvan of the Republic, in the terrible moments of the summertime of 1942 he found time to compose to the widow the words: “The deceased was my individual friend. I'm profoundly sorry. The soul of the Dead left the body to join God and the beloved Marshal of Piłsudski. The boundless efforts made by the Dead 1 for the affairs of the Homeland will not be in vain: God will not let his and his like efforts to fail. Poland’s resurrection!”

Late in the spring of 1945, the fresh president – Truman, the successor of the abruptly deceased "FDR", appointed MacArthur as the chief of the upcoming invasion of the remaining nipponese forces. There was no invasion. This was judged by 2 atomic bombs, which the general called "laboratory Frankenstein". On September 2, Douglas MacArthur – as chief of all allies, including China and the russian Union – accepted Japan's surrender on board the ‘Missouri’ battleship. The ship chose carefully – Truman came from a state of that name.

Enemy No. 1 of Communism

He has now begun the strangest and top chapter of his era. With minimal influence from another allies – unlike in Germany, they only had an advisory vote – 80 million nipponese ruled. He demobilized their army, tried war criminals, cleaned up the power apparatus, resigned 200,000 officials. However, Emperor Hirohito – who impressed him at the first meeting, announcing that he felt liable for all the activities of his government – left on the throne. The Monarch was to play the function of “the hostage of democracy” and the guarantor of reforms introduced by whom his subjects would call “the American Shogun”. They owed him the endurance of the first hungry years of occupation—the “shogun” sent them $2 billion worth of humanitarian aid from America; he wrote to Washington: “Send me food or bullets.”

He had a fresh pacifist constitution developed and signed a decree on agricultural reform, making nearly 5 million tenants owners of his plots. The effects were fast – production increased and the economical situation improved. The co-founder of the economical miracle, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, was only 1 blunder – fresh democratic elections, for the first time involving women, 20 1000 votes gave a parliamentary mandate to the well-known courtesan. "I don't think all these voters knew her personally," replied the general, who sent congratulations to all the Members.

Head of the U.S. Army General Staff General Douglas MacArthur to visit the march of Józef Piłsudski in Belvedere. Visible from the left: Major William Colbern, N.N., Gen. Janusz Gąsiorowski, N.N., Adjutant Captain George Davies, chargé d’affaires Sheldon L. Crosby, march. Józef Piłsudski, Captain Mieczysław Lepecki, General Douglas MacArthur, September 1932. National Digital Archive

June 25, 1950 Communist Korea hit South Korea, with the approval and support of Moscow and new, red China. MacArthur, appointed chief of the United Nations forces, completely destroyed the assault army. At the time, in November 1950, Beijing attacked him with a immense wave of “volunteers” – the name was expected to propose neutrality People's Republic of China. Forced to retreat, he counterattacked, demanding a fight until victory, summoning reinforcements from Taiwan (China's spray maintained by Chang Kaj-shek) and threatening the communists with atomic attack.

Then – April 11, 1950 – Truman, impeached by Marshall, dismissed MacArthur from all positions. "His strategy was only right, the 1 that threatened Russia the most," noted Despaired Jan Lechon. – The same forces that built Mao destroyed Chang Kaj-shek, the same donkey Marshall, and the same dark individual from the State Department now vowed to prevent America's triumph to effort a peace that would spread America morally. [...] Drowning MacArthur during the war, at a time erstwhile he was irreplaceable, as shortly as large people can do something, it is madness or foolishness of unknown stories.”

He lived for 13 years – controversial in Europe and his homeland, adored in Australia, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan, which became 1 large monument to the top of his achievements. "If I had said in a 100 years at the end of my life, I would have received even a line in past that I had contributed to peace, I would have gladly given all honour offered by the war."

Jakub Polit, prof. of habilitated doctor, assistant prof. at the Department of Universal past of the Latest Faculty of past of the Jagiellonian University. He examines, among others, the influence of the British Empire on the global relations of the 20th century and the expansion of powers in East Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries. He published “Retreat from the Pacific? Britain to the Far East, 1914–1922; "Lew and Dragon. Britain to the Chinese Crisis 1925–1928" and "China" (in the series "History of planet States in the 20th Century"); "A Bitter Triumphant. The 1937–1945 Chinese War" and others.