The Korean War
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NSC-68National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) was a 58-page top secret policy paper by the United States National Security Council presented to President Harry S. Truman on April 14, 1950. It was one of the most important statements of American policy that launched the Cold War. In the words of scholar Ernest R. May, NSC-68 "provided the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s." NSC-68 and its subsequent amplifications advocated a large expansion in the military budget of the United States, the development of a hydrogen bomb, and increased military aid to allies of the United States. It made the containment of global Communist expansion a high priority. NSC-68 rejected the alternative policies of friendly détente and rollback against the Soviet Union.
During China's war with Japan, Chiang Kai-shek had moved his forces deep into the interior, leaving a political vacuum in the east to be filled by the Communists. And Communist forces confronted the enemy, the Japanese, beginning with the "Hundred Regiments Campaign" in North China in 1940, led by Peng Dehuai. When the war ended in 1945 the Communists had (according to Wei) about 2 million men in militia units and more than 900,000 regular troops. note12
During the war, China had lost 2.2 million military men, and it had lost more than 20 million civilians. More than 100 million Chinese had been made refugees. Families had been torn apart and a countless number of widows were left to make do as best they could, many of them destitute with children. The war had traumatized the Chinese people, creating a passion for peace and stability, but the nation was divided between opposing political camps.
In 1946, President Truman sent George Marshall to China to prevent a civil war between Chiang Kai-shek's forces and the forces led politically by Mao Zedong. The Truman administration was hoping that the Communists would accept Chiang's authority and that Chiang would allow them their rights to participate in elections, as Communists were doing in France and Italy. The Truman administration was hoping for a democratic China, but it did not work out that way. Talks between the two sides in 1946 broke down, and civil war erupted.
The Communists were appealing to poor peasants – China's majority – and to students, workers and others looking forward to change. Chiang Kai-shek's government was seen as a "landlord's government." At the end of the war it had lost prestige by using troops against students. By late 1948 Chiang's troops were suffering from demoralization and lack of discipline. People in Chiang's China were suffering from rising prices because of inflation, and corruption was siphoning off aide from the United States.
Chiang's forces had taken over Manchuria following the Soviet Union's occupation there, but they had been unable to hold it. Communist forces there pushed Chiang's forces out of Manchuria. Communist forces were using weapons taken from the Japanese, and they were capturing an abundance of US weapons from Chiang's forces. In 1948, Communists won numerous urban areas north of the Yangzi River. By August Chiang's currency had inflated to 67 times what it had been in January. In December, Communist forces moved into Beijing unopposed, and by then they had advanced south to the Yangzi River. By February 1949 Chiang's currency had inflated 32,000 times.
In the US a few Chiang supporters hoped for US intervention to stop the Communists at the Yangzi. The Communists had no navy. Crossing the river heavily defended on its southern banks could be difficult. Stalin advised Mao and his associates not to cross the Yangzi. The US continued to send aid to Chiang, including air transport. The US had given Chiang two billion dollars in military aid since 1945, but it was unwilling and unprepared to send troops to prevent the Communists from crossing the Yangzi. In the summer of 1949, the Communist forces swept across the river. And as Chiang's forces began their flight to Taiwan, they rounded up and executed those they saw as enemies.
In Beijing, on 1 October 1949, Mao Zedung announced the founding of the People's Republic of China. In December, he traveled to Moscow. Against the possibility of an attack by what he called "the imperialist countries," he and his associates wished to align China with the "socialist countries." note13 Mao had discussions with Stalin, and Stalin was friendly and congratulated Mao and the Chinese. But Mao was reserved. Back in 1945, Stalin had signed a treaty with Chiang in 1945, had advised Mao that the time was not ripe for revolution and had given the Communist movement in China little assistance. That Stalin did not now apologize for past wrongs Mao took as a sign that he wished to view China as a "little brother." But on 14 February 1950 the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union signed a "Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance. It included the Soviet Union promising to help China in its reconstruction.
In the United States a Republican Senator, Joe McCarthy, and his allies maintained that holding off the Communists in China would have required just a little more aid and perhaps some air power. People began asking who lost China. Truman's approval rating had risen to around 70 percent in 1949, but it dropped to half that. Manliness in foreign policy, became an issue with some Republicans. Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, was called a coward and General George Marshall, his predecessor, a traitor.
Chiang, a Christian, was well-liked in the United States. Henry Luce, publisher of Time Magazine was especially close to Chiang. The view among many in the US was that the Chinese Revolution was an extension of the Soviet Union's power and will. Dean Rusk, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, described the Chinese Revolution not as Chinese but as made in Moscow. Purges of people working for the State Department and suspected of communist sympathies, or suspected of homosexuality had begun. To many in the United States it appeared that Communism was on a successful march and that if something were not done Communism would engulf the world.
The Allies had declared in December, 1943, that Korea was to become "free and independent," and it was agreed that the Soviet Union was to occupy northern Korea, to the 38th parallel, and that the United States was to occupy the southern half of Korea – to disarm the Japanese. This was done while the Roosevelt administration was is a wartime cooperation mood with Stalin, and there was not an appreciation of Stalinist dangers.
The Koreans did not need to be occupied. They had an organized and substantial resistance movement against Japanese rule. By 1945 they also had their own government in exile in China – at Chongqing. As the day of Japan's surrender neared, Japan's governor-general in Korea, Nobuyuki Abe, was looking forward to saving lives and property of the Japanese in Korea and looking forward to an orderly withdrawal from Korea, and he invited Korean leaders to meet with him to make this possible. Then came the Soviet troops, on August 12. Three days later the nation of Japan surrendered to the Allies, and joy immediately erupted in Korea. Japanese flags came down and Korean flags went up. The Koreans expected their government to arrive from Chongqing shortly. They were in contact with world news enough to expect the Americans, and the Americans arrived four weeks later, on September 8, at Inchon, near the capital, Seoul. In a ceremony in Seoul on September 9 Japanese forces in Korea surrendered to the Americans, marking the end of three and a half decades of Japanese rule in Korea. The government that had been in Chongqing was still in Chongqing.
Map of Korea Map of Korea. Click to enlarge Enlarged map of Korea
The northern zone, occupied by the Russians, was more heavily industrialized than the southern zone, and concerned with the devastation of their own homeland the Russians were interested not only in the north's machinery but also its coal. The Russians were taking machinery and whatever else they thought had belonged to the Japanese, which the Koreans could have used. And Soviet troops were stealing what they could from the Koreans.
Korea's economy had been integrated with Japan, and with that relationship now broken, so too was its economy. The Russians made matters worse by sealing their zone of occupation from the southern zone, halting coal deliveries to southern Korea, halting also railway traffic, mail deliveries and the transfer of electrical power southward across the 38th parallel. Through the autumn, the Russians refused to discuss their policies in Korea, and Soviet officers were surprised to learn of the American view that some of the coal they now controlled in the north should be delivered to the south.
The Russians wished to protect their interests in northern Korea through a joint administration with the Koreans, and working under the Russians in their zone was the Korean "Provisional People's Committee" dominated by Communists but also consisting of liberal democrats. At a conference in Moscow in December 1945 the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Britain, and the US Secretary of State met and discussed a five-year trusteeship for Korea. Across Korea, enraged people demonstrated against any such foreign intrusion. Communists in the northern zone were a part of the demonstrations. Then they shifted suddenly in support of the trusteeship, the Russians having decided that for them recognition of a trusteeship would be beneficial.
The Russians were moving into North Korea people originally from Korea who had fled Japanese colonial rule. Some of them had been guerrilla fighters against the Japanese. During their years in the Soviet Union they had absorbed the Soviet Union's version of communist ideology. In North Korea in February, 1946, a new governing body was created, called the People's Committee for North Korea. Heading this body was Kim Il-sung, a young man in his thirties who had been a celebrated anti-Japanese guerrilla and had spent considerable time in the Soviet Union.
In May, talks between the Russians and the US regarding Korea broke down. The Americans continued to rule their zone directly – a military government which refused to recognize the government that had been in exile in Chunking. But they were allowing a profusion of political parties to flourish, including a Communist party.
Many Koreans from the north were now moving by night, avoiding main roads and traveling through forests and mountains, with the few worldly possessions they were able to carry, crossing from the Soviet zone into the southern zone.
President Truman was no longer interested in a trusteeship for Korea. In early 1946 he was looking forward to turning Korea over to the Koreans. In May, talks between the Russians and Washington regarding Korea's future broke down. Talks resumed the following May, 1947, the US demanding that elections be held in both zones for the creation of a government across both zones. The Russians demurred. The US turned to the United Nations for help, and an overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly agreed to general elections for the whole of Korea.
In January 1948, the Russians refused the UN commission entry into its zone to prepare for nationwide elections. The UN General Assembly authorized elections in those areas where its commission members were allowed, and on May 10 the first general elections in Korea's history took place. The winners formed a National Assembly, and by July 12 the new government created a constitution. on July 20 an election was held for the government's president. Winning the election was Syngman Rhee, a 73-year-old Christian and an old fighter for independence venerated by the Koreans. He had been imprisoned by the Japanese when a young man and had then fled to the United States, where he had earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Georgetown, Harvard and Princeton universities.
The Russians blamed the United States for imposing its will on the United Nations and on South Korea. They saw American capitalism and imperialism at work, and they countered with single slate elections. In their zone a constitution was created and, on September 8, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed.
The Soviet Union was presenting North Korea as an independent nation, and the Soviet Union announced that it was withdrawing completely from the northern zone. But it would not allow a United Nations commission entry into its zone to verify the withdrawal.
In December, 1948, the UN General Assembly recognized the government in the south – the Republic of Korea – as the only lawfully constituted government in Korea. The Truman Administration also recognized it as such, as did some fifty other nations.
In Tokyo, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the US forces in the Pacific, wanted Washington to give more importance to developments in Asia. He saw communism as more of a threat in Asia than it was in Europe. In March, 1949, seven months before Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China, MacArthur had described the US defense parameter in the Far East as starting in the Philippines, running through Okinawa and the other Ryukyu islands to Japan and then to the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. MacArthur had left China and Korea – the Asian continent – outside this perimeter. note15
The US was training and supplying South Korea's military. But Washington did not want the South making trouble by invading the North. To prevent this it kept South Korea's military capacity limited while leaving Syngman Rhee's government with enough military strength to combat leftist guerrillas in the South fighting his government.
The Truman administration was eager to pull its troops out of Korea and give the Republic of Korea a greater aura of independence. The Russians had announced that the pull out of their troops from North Korea back in late 1948. The US pulled its troops out of the South in late June 1949, leaving behind an advisory group of about 500.
North Korea's leader, Kim Il-sung, journeyed to Moscow to meet with Stalin and requested aid so he could unite Korea by force. Stalin asked him some blunt questions. Kim replied that he was confident that he could defeat the forces of South Korea. But Stalin advised against it. It seems he did not want to provoke the West. He told Kim that it was important that the 38th parallel (between the North and the South) remain peaceful.
Truman's secretary of state after his 1948 election victory was Dean Acheson, an anti-Communist who believed in patience. Communists acquired power in China in December 1949, and Acheson said it was something that Americans would need to accept for at least a while. He said that people should learn to live with evil and observed that it had been around since the fall of Adam and Eve.
On January 12, 1950, at a National Press Club briefing, Acheson spoke of American interests in the Far East and described a defense parameter that was similar to MacArthur's. Acheson said nothing about defending South Korea from an attack by North Korea, but he believed this was needed no more that he had to mention defending New Zealand or Australia.
A document fundamental to the Truman Administrations foreign policy was the National Security Council (NSC) 48/2, which focused on stopping communist expansion by giving economic and military aid to various countries: to the French in their fight against Ho Chi Minh, to the Philippines government in its fight against the Huk guerrillas, and to the British in their fight against guerrillas in Malaya. There was in the document no mention of US military intervention anywhere, including defending Chiang's forces on Taiwan.
The Communists in Moscow and in North Korea apparently foresaw no quick move by Washington to send troops to defend the Republic of Korea. Kim Il-sung was complaining to the Soviet Union that peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula was impossible. He was encouraged by the communist victory in China and said that the Korean people want liberation and would not understand why the opportunity to have it was missed. Stalin also was impressed by the victory of the communists in China and perhaps by his possession of the atomic bomb, and he was interested in having another success for anti-capitalism. on January 30, Stalin informed Kim Il-sung in a telegram that he was now willing to help Kim in his plan to unify Korea. In the discussions with Kim that followed, Stalin suggested that in return for his support he would like a yearly minimum of 25,000 tons of lead. He advised Kim to minimize risk, the cautious Stalin apparently believing that it was possible to win a quick victory and present the world with a fait accompli.
Mao and his associates concurred in this, Mao having told Stalin that it was his opinion that the US would not intervene in Korea. Mao had been looking forward to furthering his advance against his enemy Chiang Kai-shek, now in Taiwan, which Mao saw as a part of China, and Mao believed that the US would not intervene there.
After Acheson's comments on January 12 came signs of Washington changing course in its strategy regarding the Far East. on January 25, General Omar Bradley of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in off-the-record testimony that a potential enemy (Communist China) possessing Taiwan would be a threat to America's position in the Pacific. In February, the alliance between China and the Soviet Union, signed that month, alarmed strategists in Washington. A revised bill on Korean aid reached Congress and was signed into law by Truman later in February. In early June, reflecting an increased concern over Korea, the Acheson State Department sent its bi-patrisan Republican operative, John Foster Dulles, to South Korea. Dulles visited the 38th parallel on June 17, and there he spoke of America's determination to stand by South Korea.
But Kim Il-sung and Stalin were not about to reverse themselves, and Kim remained confident, not unlike the Athenians before the Peloponnesian War.
A few dissident students have described North Korea's invasion of the South as a response to the South's aggression. The fact is that Kim Il-sung in the North wanted to unite Korea – just as Rhee wanted to unite Korea – and Kim chose to invade. Kim Il-sung sent his military south across the 38th Parallel on June 25, 1950. If he were just intested in defense, he could have pursued a defensive strategy that would have served him in the clash of world opinion.
Kim attacked with many World War II Russian tanks, and Rhee's forces were no match against Kim's. Rhee's forces fell back. In three days Kim's forces entered the Republic of Korea's capital: Seoul. The South's forces blew up the bridges that crossed the Han River, just south of Seoul – unfortunately while the bridges were packed with refugees fleeing southward.
In Washington, news of the invasion created excitement and dismay. The invasion was assumed to be Stalin's design. on the Senate floor, Lyndon Johnson of Texas spoke of Moscow being on the march again. Speaking after Johnson, and agreeing with him, was the liberal Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, Johnson's future vice president.
Truman was not about to respond to the invasion with anything but a show of strength. He told his daughter, Margaret, that "We are going to fight." The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Omar Bradley, called the invasion a moral outrage. He spoke against "appeasement" and said Korea was as good a place as any "for drawing the line" against communist expansion. By June 27, Truman had ordered American air and naval units into action. Troops on occupation duty in Japan were rushed to Korea.
seoul, 1950, rail yards being bombed. Communist occupied Seoul, 1950. Enlarged photo of Seoul rail yards being bombed.
The US appealed to the United Nations, and there they had luck. The Soviet Union was staying away from its seat on the Security Council to demonstrate its frustration over the UN's refusal to seat the People's Republic of China. on June 27, the UN condemned Kim Il Sung's invasion, and without the Soviet Union there to veto the move the United Nations joined the war against Kim's invasion, to defend the Republic of Korea – the only government in Korea that the UN had recognized. The United States was entering the fight in Korea under the aegis of the UN. The UN Security Council asked the US to appoint a supreme commander for the its force, and Washington appointed General MacArthur.
On 29 June 1950 eighteen B-26 bomber aircraft struck against the North's airfield near Pyongyang. on July 3, the aircraft carriers USS Valley Forge and the British carrier, HMS Triumph, sent aircraft again against this base and other airbases in the North. In early July, US troops dug in fifty miles south of Seoul. The North Koreans overran them and inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans. US Major-Genera, William F. Dean was ordered to hold Taejon (about a hundred miles south of Seoul) until July 20 in order to buy the time necessary to deploy more military units to Korea from Japan. But Dean's infantry brigade was overrun and decimated, and Dean became one of the most senior US generals ever to be taken prisoner.
As the North Koreans pushed south they rounded up and killed people who had been civil servants. And rather than trouble themselves with the maintenance of prisoners of war, the North Koreans were killing their prisoners. on August 20, MacArthur sent a message warning Kim Il-sung that he would be held responsible for further atrocities committed against UN troops. on August 22, Pyongyang radio claimed that air raids on Pyongyang and five other cities between July 2 and August 3 had killed 11,582 civilians.
B-29 aircraft had begun bombing targets in North Korea. The US Air Forc did so rejecting the use of incendiary bombs in an effort to avoid civilian casualties. Meanwhile, US warships were shelling targets on North Korea's coast, and the Navy claimed to have destroyed 137 locomotives.
In the South, US air power was slowing the North's advance. By September, Kim's forces were stalled at what became known as the Pusan Perimeter, around the cities of Taegu (Daegu) and Pusan, which were defended by determined US and Republic of Korea (ROK) troops.
British commandos had gone ashore and attacked a radio station near Inchon on August 23. on September 15, 1950, MacArthur came with a much larger force – a daring amphibious invasion given the tides in the area and the timing required. It was more of MacArthur's strategy from the Second World War: striking "where the enemy ain't." Kim Il-sung's forces began pulling back to avoid entrapment. South Korean forces moved in behind them. There was one and perhaps more incidents of people being rounded up and killed – people who were reported to have welcomed or to have supported the Communist forces – with the dead being thrown into mass graves on the outskirts of town.
President Truman responded to Kim Il-sung's invasion of South Korea by giving additional support to the French in Vietnam and by sending the Seventh Fleet to defend Taiwan. Mao Zedong and his associates in Beijing, China, were concerned. Their regime was less than a year old, and they were concerned that new US aggressiveness would encourage Chinese "reactionaries." Concerning Taiwan, they saw what they called US imperialism interfering in China's internal affairs. They wanted to demonstrate to China's masses that they were able to protect China's prestige and interests, while they kept on hold their plans to "liberate" Taiwan.
In the US a debate had erupted over whether the UN forces should move north of the 38th parallel. In the State Department, George Kennan thought this too risky. Others in the State Department disagreed. John Foster Dulles argued that the 38th parallel was never intended as a permanent political boundary. The Pentagon agreed and argued that stopping at the 38th Parallel would leave military instability on the Korean peninsula. General MacArthur was on the side of those who wanted to cross the 38th parallel, and South Korea's President Syngman Rhee was ecstatic over the opportunity to unite Korea.
Truman agreed to the UN forces moving into North Korea, despite his worry that it might bring the Soviet Union or China into the war. Some others were worried that the war in Korea was just a feint by Moscow to divert US energies – that the communists might be planning a bigger assault elsewhere.
Entering the Korean war and facing up to the military might of the United Nations forces was an issue over which Mao and the Chinese Communist leadership agonized. After the Inchon landings and North Korea's reversals in September 1950, two high-ranking representatives from North Korea had arrived in Beijing asking the Chinese to send troops to Korea. on October 3, through India's ambassador to Beijing, K.M. Panikkar, China informed the world-at-large that if the United States crossed the 38th parallel China would intervene. Confident people in the US State Department, Dean Rusk among them, believed that the Chinese would not dare attack US forces in Korea. Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, believed it was a bluff and was concerned that a greater risk would arise if the US showed any "hesitation or timidity." A report by the Central Intelligence Agency dated 28 September 1950 held that China had missed its opportunity to intervene. That opportunity was described as when UN forces were almost defeated and within the Pusan Perimeter. The report claimed that China was not about to intervene now. And a CIA report for October 12 argued that intervention by China was unlikely because it would jeopardize China's domestic program and economy, encourage China's anti-Communists and endanger the Communist regime. Acheson agreed, saying it would be "sheer madness" for Beijing to enter the Korean war when they had numerous other problems.
By October 9, 1950, China had already massed four armies and three artillery divisions on the Yalu River – the force's commander, Peng Dehuai, complaining that he could use 700 more trucks and 600 more drivers. on October 10, in Moscow, Stalin and representatives from China met and discussed Korea. The Chinese were trying to get as much help from the Soviet Union as possible. Stalin complained that North Korea was about to be defeated. The Chinese pretended hesitation about intervening, but Stalin encouraged them, countering that the US was a menace to China's security and would be especially so if UN forces reached the Yalu River. Stalin said that the Soviet Union could not send troops because the Soviet Union, in 1948, had committed itself to an agreement to withdraw from North Korea. Besides, he claimed, his border with Korea was too small. But, he said, the Soviet Union would provide the Chinese sufficient military equipment and war material – weapons and ammunition left over from World War II. The People's Republic of China was, however, to pay the Soviet Union for all military supplies, which created some bitterness among the Chinese Communist leadership that was to last for years to come.
Mao was expecting the Soviet Union to supply air cover for China's forces, and after receiving a telegram from Moscow, Mao sent an urgent telegram of his own, ordering that his armies on the Yalu river put their operations on hold and concentrate on training. The commander of China's forces, Peng, threatened to resign. Stalin was holding to the position that the Soviet Union was not ready for a confrontation between his and US air forces. note17
US Military intelligence was aware of the Chinese troops across the Yalu River and described them as five divisions probably intending to protect China's hydroelectric generating plants. on October 15, 1950, MacArthur met President Truman on Wake Island. He assured Truman that victory was won in Korea and that the Chinese would not intervene. The Chinese, he said, have 300,000 men in Manchuria, "but only 50 to 60 thousand could be gotten across the Yalu River." They have no air force, he said, "and if they tried to get down to Pyongyang there would be the greatest slaughter." There, on Wake Island, Truman awarded MacArthur his fifth Distinguished Service Medal.
During the Wake conference, US and other UN forces were charging into North Korea. They entered Pyongyang on October 15. Mao and his associates worried that the UN forces would soon be at the Yalu River, and they decided to send their armies across the river, near the Chinese city of Dandong and a hundred miles upriver, near Manpo. It was a hush-hush operation, with the first of the Chinese troops dressed in North Korean uniforms.
MacArthur could have halted his troops at Korea's narrow neck – around 100 miles wide and 100 miles or more south of the Yalu River border. This would have left the UN forces with 90 percent of the Korean population and Pyongyang. This is what Winston Churchill, opposition leader in Britain, preferred that MacArthur do. A demilitarized zone could have been proposed between this line and the Yalu River. But MacArthur didn't want it. He headed for a 400-mile wide border. He split his forces, sending US troops up the west side of the peninsula and other US troops up the east side, with mountains between them. The Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon had ordered that only Korean forces be sent to the Yalu, but MacArthur was doing it his way and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were acquiescing. And MacArthur was confident enough that he was sending what he thought were spare supplies and ammunition back to Japan.
On November 26 the Chinese invaded in earnest, with approximately 300,000 men against a UN force numbering 423,000 (224,000 South Koreans, 178,500 from the US, almost 15,000 from Turkey, 11,000 from Britain and 1,000 Australians). It was the beginning of an unusually cold winter. Many of the Chinese movements were at night, out of sight of UN air power. They were not well equipped with radios, and during their assault they communicated to an extent with bugles and other instruments.
The Chinese enveloped the US 2nd Division near Anju on the west side of the peninsula. Troops from Turkey stood their ground and fought until forced to surrender. The Chinese, holding the sides of a pass, mauled UN forces retreating southward, the dead mixed with shattered trucks,. Napalm from US air strikes trickling down from the hillsides. This was the Battle of Chongchon, which ended on November 28. The US Commander in Korea, General Walton Walker, called for a renewed drive to the Yalu. But, in Tokyo, MacArthur, realized that "an entirely new war" had begun, and he informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington that his plan was now "to pass to the defensive."
called by U.S. Marines the Frozen Chosin. The Changjin ("Chosin") reservoir Enlarged photo of the Chosin reservoir
US Marines fought their way from the Changjin (Chosin) Reservoir area, some US Army troops helping the 1st Marine Regiment withdraw to Hagaru, their last point before leaving the reservoir area. The 1st, 5th and 7th Marine regiments, with Army and British Marine Commandos, marched and fought their way south, reaching the port city Hungnan in mid-December, where they were picked up by the US Navy.
On December 6, the Chinese overran Pyongyang, the UN forces leaving the city in a bumper to bumper column of vehicles, with a massive number of refugees and a mile-high column of smoke rising above the city from burning supplies and fuel.
Responding to the first news of China's massive entry into the Korean War, President Truman at a press conference stated that the United States would take "whatever steps are necessary to meet the military situation." Asked if this meant the use of nuclear weapons, Truman replied that it included "every weapon we have."
Europeans were aghast. Britain's socialist prime minister, Clement Atlee, came rushing to Washington, arriving on December 4. After four days of talks with the Truman Administration it was agreed that extending the war against China was to be avoided. Atlee was interested in taming China, suggesting that Communist China be recognized and brought into the United Nations. The Truman Administration and US public opinion were not prepared for that, but Truman was ready to return to his strategy of containment of communism, which in Korea meant holding the communists at the 38th Parallel – in other words, fighting a war with a limited objective. on December 16, Truman coupled this with a declaration of a State of National Emergency.
By December 16, 1950, the US Eighth Army had reached the 38th Parallel, after covering 120 miles southward in ten days. The Chinese drive was now weakened because of their slow supply system. The Chinese were moving by foot, oxcart, pack horse and camel.
Calls could now be heard from unaligned nations for talks between the warring sides. China's Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai claimed that only by a withdrawal of US forces from Korea and from around Taiwan could a cease fire be realized. He stated that China would reunite Korea by force. The Soviet Communist Party newspaper, Pravda, was gloating over the US pullback in Korea, and an editorial announced that the paper was looking forward to the "American aggressors" being "totally defeated and annihilated."
On New Year's Eve, Chinese forces moved across the 38th Parallel to accomplish their goal of uniting Korea, and with them were North Korean units. on January 4 they reached Seoul. Disturbed by the war, rats were running through streets jammed with people trying to flee southward. At the Han River a US force halted refugees at gunpoint to prevent them from jamming the US withdrawal. US troops destroyed their pontoon bridges across the Han River and as they withdrew they torched the port of Inchon.
In the United States 50 percent of those surveyed believed that World War III was imminent. In the Mediterranean, the US Sixth Fleet had put to sea. A total embargo had been put on trade with China and China's assets in the US frozen. Congress had loosened its purse strings and voted more money for defense. An economic boom was beginning in the US and Japan. The US was sending more troops to Europe, along with Dwight Eisenhower, who had been appointed Supreme Commander of NATO.
Republicans were criticizing the Democrats and President Truman. Among the Republicans was a mix of isolationism and more revulsion for Communism. The party's senior member, former US President Herbert Hoover, now seventy-six, claimed that it would be best for the nation to withdraw to Fortress America and become the "Gibraltar of Western Civilization."
In the Congressional elections of 1950 the Republicans had campaigned against inflation and Truman having lost China. They had supported Truman's war policy regarding Korea, but they criticized him for having made numerous mistakes. In November, the Republicans had gained eight seats in the Senate and fifty-two seats in the House of Representatives, leaving the Democrats with only a two-seat advantage in the Senate and an advantage of thirty-six seats in the House of Representatives – a drop from the gains the Democrats had made in 1948. Senator Eugene Millikin of Colorado, who had been charging that Americans were dying in Korea because of spies in the State Department, won his election. The Senator who had been leading the fight against hysteria and wild charges, Millard Tydings of Maryland, lost his re-election bid. A Republican from Illinois, Everett Dirkson, who had called the Marshall Plan "Operation Rathole," won a Senate Seat. Congressman Richard Nixon, running for a California Senate seat, defeated his incumbent opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, a Cold War liberal who had supported Truman against Henry Wallace. During the campaign, Douglas was portrayed as a communist sympathizer.
Senator Robert Taft of Ohio won his re-election by a wide margin, and conservatives were looking forward to running him for President in 1952. Taft began the new session of Congress in January, 1951, by criticizing President Truman for sending troops to Korea without the approval of Congress. Communists in Korea, he declared, can be stopped by air and navel forces instead of ground forces. Taft wanted to take the Republican Party away from Eastern establishment internationalists – men like Dewey. He declared against US troops fighting in Europe. The NATO alliance, he said, was a mistake. And Russia, he said, should either be kicked out of the UN or the UN should be dissolved and reorganized without Russia.
From his command post in Tokyo, MacArthur was opposed to a negotiated settlement of the war in Korea. MacArthur wanted to bring Chiang's Kai-shek's troops to Korea from Taiwan, to blockade China's ports, to bomb China's military installations and to use atomic bombs if necessary. He spoke of a blindness to "history's clear lesson and of the appeasement at Munich in 1938. MacArthur declared that there was "no substitute for victory." Many in the United States agreed with him. The concept of limited war was winning few adherents. MacArthur's position was easier to understand. Many people saw the US not as limiting its goal to defending South Korea but as trying to fight with one arm tied behind its back. And demoralized American troops were writing home and wondering what they were fighting for.
Turn Around and MacArthur versus Truman
In Korea, across a front from the west to east coasts, the Chinese in January pushed to more than fifty miles south of Seoul. Then in February the communist advance collapsed. The new commander of UN forces in Korea was General Matthew Ridgway, an energetic and determined man. He talked his troops into standing their ground and attacking. He began employing the UN's superior firepower, using heavy artillery ten miles from the Chinese and then lighter weapons closer in, while aircraft swooped down on the Chinese, firing rockets and dropping napalm.
In Tokyo, Ridgway's commander, MacArthur, still favoring complete victory, wanted to bomb bases in China. He would not refrain from making public statements about the war, and on April 10th Truman fired him for insubordination.
Two days later, Senator Taft attacked what he called Truman's "appeasement of the Chinese." This appeasement, he said, "makes a larger war more likely in the future." Taft spoke in favor of bombing China and helping Chiang Kai-shek's forces invade the mainland.
MacArthur got a hero's welcome in the United States, and telegrams poured into Congress demanding Truman's impeachment. MacArthur made an emotional farewell address to Congress, which the public liked and Truman, in private, denounced. Polls described Truman's popularity as having dropped to around 35 percent of those polled, and his popularity would stay there for the remainder of his term in office.
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