In his own estimation...
A trio of excellent posts have examined the role and status of Dugout Doug, aka General Douglas MacArthur. Foseti starts off with a review of "American Caesar" and then Isegoria and Joseph Fouche chime in. The latter two are a little less convinced of MacArthur's greatness than Foseti.
Over on those three posts, you'll get a deluge of information about MacArthur, all factually accurate and fascinating. While I am dubious of MacArthur's Alexandrine brilliance, I will fully grant Foseti's point that his role as proconsul in Japan was near genius, perfectly executed, and of long-term significance. And he is certainly not the worst American general - Foseti names Mark Clark in WWII, and I could add Bradley and others to the list. But to get to the worst American commander, you'd probably have to look back to the Civil War, where Union generals in the early phases of the war (the first two years, mostly, but some lasted much longer) were frighteningly incompetent, or administrative geniuses totally lacking in a martial spirit. Ambrose Burnside and George McClellan are the two exemplars of each type. Even the better Union commanders were noticeably flawed - Meade, Hooker, and the like lost their nerve at key points.
My view is that the greatest American general of the Second World War was undoubtedly Patton. Three times Patton broke free, and started making huge advances against the Germans - and each time, he was reined in and forced to slow his advance. And each time he did, the Germans were able to dig in and the whole process had to be repeated. The Third Army advanced further, and captured more German soldiers than any other element of the European war. Had Patton been given operational freedom, I believe he would have been across the Rhine in October '44 at the latest. Hell, the rumor of his command of an army of invasion aimed at Calais was one of the factors that kept German forces concentrated out of Normandy.
Bradley defenders will generally argue that the hard facts of logistics are what led to Patton's leash being yanked. That's true to an extent, but resources were diverted from Patton's rapidly advancing formations to units that units that were not achieving similar success, or in fact were stationary. And then you have the whole Market Garden disaster. I think Montgomery and MacArthur have a lot in common, and not the good stuff.
It's inarguable that Patton and MacArthur shared the view, "I am the greatest general now living." MacArthur's lauded island hopping strategy resulted in a slow slog through strategically unimportant territory. At the operational level, his strategy resulted in brutal frontal assaults against prepared positions. Where he was most successful, it was the result of his enemy being isolated or starved into ineffectiveness by the efforts of his real rivals, the US Navy. The signal victories of the Pacific Campaign are mostly owned by the Navy - which is to be expected, they don't call it the Pacific Campaign for nothing. But the significant land victories were most often won by the Marines. (A Marine friend of mine said that MacArthur designed his strategy to kill Marines.)
And on top of that, MacArthur was fighting the Imperial Army. Of the Japanese Army and Navy, it's clear that the Navy got most of the brains in the family. The Japanese never did figure out how to kill an American soldier without losing ten of his own. I don't think anyone would rank the Imperial Army even in the top ten of the 20th Century. Maybe in the top ten of WWII.
Patton, on the other hand was up against what is widely regarded to be one of the best armies of modern times. The Wehrmacht was better trained, better equipped, and better led at the lower levels than the Americans could hope to match. They were often fighting from prepared positions, and had the advantage of interior lines and better logistics. What the Americans had was air support, and Patton.
Yet, over and over, Patton forced them out of their positions and onto the tun. I think that Patton has a much stronger claim to being right.
[wik] I'd say that the three greatest generals in American history are, more or less in order, Sherman, Patton, Stonewall Jackson. They are the best of the best of the best. Other candidates for rounding out a top five would be Winfield Scott, Lee, Grant, and Washington.
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I'm not really sure what MacArthur did during WWII that was so great other than the morale building theater. He, along with Nimitz with FDR acting as referee, picked the islands to attack and allocated resources. After the disaster in the Philippines early on, he never really commanded troops on the ground. As mentioned, a lot of those picks were wrong. Peleliu and the return to the Philippines probably the biggest wastes.
Mac also gets huge demerits for Korea. His 8th Army was totally unprepared for battle in 1950. The equipment and supply situation can be blamed on Truman and Johnson. The poor training and condition of the men was their commander's fault. Playing Emperor wasn't supposed to be the whole job. Lots of officers have been relieved for far less.
Mac and his sycophant second Almond blew the Chinese invasion in spectacular fashion. Arrogance and incompetence are the only adequate explanations. The Marines and at least some Army units knew that they were making a mistake.
I always liked the guys who got the job done without all the drama. In WWII that was Courtney Hodges in Europe and Roy Geiger (the only U.S. Marine to command a numbered army of the U.S. Army in combat) in the Pacific. No fuss, no theater, just a string of victories.
I really am not aware much…
I really am not aware much of the history of the Korean War - I've had Fehrenbach's This Kind of War on my to read shelf for almost a decade now, sadly. I really should pull that down and start it. The Korean War is really ignored compared to the other American conflicts this century. My uncle was a Marine in the Korean war, I should really learn more.
But I wouldn't be surprised if MacArthur's performance mirrored that of WWII. From what little I know, Inchon was well executed, and strategically sound. But his unpreparedness for the Chinese assault seems rather uncharacteristic of a genius general. Didn't the chi-coms infiltrate a couple whole divisions through his lines?
I really need to read more.
Forget divisions, the Chinese infiltrated TWO COMPLETE ARMY GROUPS (9 Army Corps) into Korea in October and November of 1950. Even after the first Chinese formations were encountered, Mac and his tops guys didn't believe the Chinese were committed to an attack. All intelligence regarding big Chinese troop formations were disregarded. MacArthur and Almond were disregarding information that was common knowledge to every Army and Marine Private on the ground.
The result: The First Marine Division had to fight its way out of the Chosin Reservoir after being surrounded by most of EIGHT Chinese Divisions. It was a worse disaster in the west. The ROK divisions and Eighth Army were shattered in a series of battles in late November and literally had to run away with the longest retreat in U.S. Army history (“the Big Bug-Out”).
It was probably the lowest point in history for the U.S. Army. Far worse than anything that happened in Vietnam. The shameful and unnecessary result of poor leadership.
Two whole army groups? …
Two whole army groups? Sheesh. I think that would count heavily against being ranked best American general.
Big Mac's handling of intelligence in both World War II and Korea was consistently bad. Some of this may have been poor collection but analysis of what information they did gather was consistently bad, consistently missing large numbers of Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese. I'm sure if you could put a large Thai, Tibetan, Laotian, or Vietnamese army north of the Yalu they would have missed them too. MacArthur's G2 and intelligence staff seem to have been incompetent toadies. MacArthur's toleration of incompetents as long as they orbited MacArthur's star of destiny is another argument against his being the top American general of all time.
Hey Bram,
MacArthur might have erred in his assessment of Chicom strength, but shouldn't the CIA and the State Department been taken to task as well? The CIA and Foggy Bottom had FAR more resources at their disposal than Mac did. Both of them never predicted the strength of the Chinese infiltration. Hell, just before the Chicoms struck in November, the General flew along the ENTIRE length of the Yalu River (which was extremely dangerous because of his plane's vulnerability to communist attack) to observe for himself whether the Chicoms were crossing over from there. Mac and the flight crew saw no enemy build-up. Just a lot of barren land covered in snow. So you're totally way off base to blame Mac completely for the debacle in Korea, son.
General Courtney Hodges's performance at the start of the Battle of the Bulge was extremely poor according to several American generals, including George S. Patton Jr. It is totally unreasonable to say that Hodges's engineered "a string of victories" in Europe as you have suggested my boy.