Douglas MacArthur Was Kind of a Scumbag

The “Old Soldier,” Five-Star General, Supreme Commander and first-ever head of the United Nations Command, nominated for the Medal of Honor three times and the only Field Marshal of the Philippine Army. It’s hard to imagine how, with all these titles and honorifics, someone could avoid being full of themselves. Gen. Douglas MacArthur sure didn’t avoid it, even if the honor was unwarranted – and sometimes it really was.

Today, he is both celebrated and controversial but he just might not be worthy of all the celebration. To be clear, no one is arguing that MacArthur wasn’t a knowledgable commander and leader. And he was very clearly dedicated to his country, even if it was sometimes unclear which country was his. 

Historians nowadays will rightly criticize MacArthur without the usual historical whitewashing Millennials and Gen-Xers were subjected to in grade school. Thos historians will focus on his disregard for civilian control over the military, disrespect for the chain of command or the public statements that got him fired. Here, we’ll talk about how MacArthur's ego was so large, it had its own gravitational pull and it made for some pretty questionable decisions, personally and professionally.

After the ego kicked in, so did his PR team and it wasn’t long before the general started drinking his own bullshit Kool-Aid. 

To his credit, he earned some of that ego. He was the son of a Medal of Honor recipient who was also the first Governor-General of the Philippines, but little Douglas didn’t have everything handed to him like some modern-day nepo-baby. He spent a lot of time as a child in the American Frontier (a harsh life for anyone) and attended the West Texas Military Academy. With his pedigree, one might think an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy from the President of the United States would be automatic, but young MacArthur had to actually test for the spot through his congressman, just like anyone else. Unlike anyone else, however, his lifelong exposure to the military helped him blow the test away. 

At West Point, he was a leader of cadets, both literally as First Captain and in academics. He had the third-highest score ever recorded and graduated first in his class. It’s hard not to admire someone who worked his whole life to reach the apex of military training and get a damn near perfect score. When he was actually in the military, he was ambushed in the Philippines, fought Mexican bandits and led engineers in the trenches of World War I France. 

But in seven month of fighting the First World War, he accumulated two Distinguished Service Crosses, two Croix de Guerre, at least seven Silver Citation Stars (later called the Silver Star), two Wound Chevrons (precursor to the Purple Heart), from German gas attacks that left him with little to no lasting damage and his citations for these awards don’t actually describe any combat. In one instance, he led a nighttime patrol and was wounded looking for a gap in barbed wire; he was the only survivor of the patrol and came out unscathed.

When he was promoted to brigadier general at age 38, he was the youngest in the military. And this is where MacArthur starts to tarnish his own legacy. He started by stealing the fiancée of one of Gen. John J. Pershing’s staff members, only to dump her after taking a mistress in the Philippines.

He became the Superintendent at West Point so he wouldn’t revert to his prewar rank of major, then became Army Chief of Staff. This is where he started to refer to himself as “MacArthur,” and let’s be real: talking about oneself in the third person, is infuriating for anyone who has to hear it. When it comes from a guy wearing kimonos at the office and smoking from a bedazzled cigarette holder, it has to be doubly annoying. MacArthur even hired a public relations firm to help his image with everyday Americans. 

Then, the Great Depression hit. 

Veterans of World War I showed up to Washington in droves in 1932. They wanted an early cash redemption of promised bonus certificates, a payout for the money they could have earned had they not enlisted with compound interest, that was supposed to be available to them in 1945. Since many of them had been out of work for years, they needed that money and formed a shantytown to show Congress it needed to act. President Herbert Hoover ordered the area cleared – so what did MacArthur do? He guided his fellow veterans out with a firm handshake.

Just kidding, he assaulted the homeless vets and their families with bayonets, swords, and tear gas. When national newspapers criticized his attack as "unwarranted, unnecessary, insubordinate, harsh and brutal,” MacArthur sued the journalists for defamation. The journalists responded by threatening to reveal the general’s Filipina mistress to the public. MacArthur ended up paying them off. Hoover rightly lost the 1932 presidential election and MacArthur apparently wasn’t any easier on his successor. 

There are a lot of anecdotes where Gen. MacArthur reportedly poked Franklin Roosevelt, berated him and basically told him the blood of American soldiers were on his hands, but the two were supposedly old friends. So, despite any misgivings about treating the President of the United States that way, old friends have a different vibe. We can let that stuff go. Besides, we’re not even to World War II yet. There’s a lot more Douglas MacArthur to come.

One of the most questionable moves MacArthur ever made was becoming Field Marshal of the Army of the Philippines. President Manuel Quezon asked the general to help him create a new army for his newly-independent country and not only did MacArthur draw a second salary (despite being the U.S. military advisor to Quezon’s government anyway), he asked for the title of Field Marshal, to which Quezon probably said “whatever, sure.” He received his title in a lavish 1936 ceremony that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower remembered as being “pompous and ridiculous.” The next year, MacArthur retired.

But Mac didn’t leave the Philippines, and he was back in uniform by July 1941, recalled by President Roosevelt months before the Japanese invaded the island. With war on the horizon, he looked at the islands’ carefully-created defense plan, which involved a strategic retreat to Luzon and a defense in-depth to inflict maximum pain on the invaders and buy time for a relief force. MacArthur, the master strategist, looked at the plan and immediately gave it his blessing.

No, he absolutely didn’t. For readers who missed the rest of this article and are somehow dropping in just now, MacArthur is kind of a scumbag. He ditched the defense plan the Philippines had been preparing for months and decided to try to defend the entire island of Luzon at once and hit Japanese ships with B-17 bombers. Not only did he hamper the war plans Washington had in place, he launched his planes too early and the Japanese caught them on the ground while refueling. 

The defense of Luzon collapsed because he didn’t have the manpower for his plan and then implemented the retreat to Bataan anyway, except then the defenders didn’t have the horde of supplies the plan called for. Japan had complete tactical surprise, caught the Americans unprepared and it was all MacArthur’s fault – and his troops knew it, too. They sang a song about it to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and boy did “Dugout Doug” pull no punches. 

As the Philippines collapsed, Roosevelt ordered the Field Marshal to leave and head for Australia. He took his family and senior officers, but not before accepting a payment of $500,000 from Manuel Quezon for his “service to the country.” He then received the Medal of Honor for his defense plan, but only because the Army didn’t want any propaganda value from his abandoning his troops. The valor and gallantry requirements for the award were waived. 

He was made famous for his promise to return, but everyone (especially American history textbooks) seems to forget the thousands of men he left behind to become Japanese prisoners.

His performance in World War II is misremembered at best and at worst, overrated. He was even against the Navy’s “island hopping” plan. Anything and everything we know about MacArthur in World War II is questionable and anyone who somehow still believes he’s the godsend America needed for World War II is a victim of his public relations team.

Douglas MacArthur’s biggest contribution to the war effort was having Dwight Eisenhower as his chief of staff in the Philippines for seven years, so Ike could learn how to handle the egos and agendas of his wartime allies.

Fast-forward to Korea, where General MacArthur gets a lot of praise for the Inchon Landing. But should he? In reality it was a move so obvious that even the Soviet Union and China saw it coming. They warned the North Koreans but apparently the only person MacArthur surprised was Kim Il-Sung.

If he had landed at Kunsan, he could have cut off the North Koreans trying to escape from Gen. Walton Walker’s breakout of Pusan. Instead, he headed to Seoul, which allowed the Korean Army to escape to the North. When he finally pursued them up the Korean peninsula, he ignored warnings that China would enter the war. He moved too fast for the Army’s supply lines to keep up, so when China did intervene, it was a catastrophe. His solution: just nuke China. The U.S. military would have been much better off if that old soldier had just faded away when he was supposed to.