The General vs. the President

The General vs. the President
PROLOGUE

December 1950

Clement Attlee didn t like appearing flustered. The British prime minister s predecessor, Winston Churchill, was the one who indulged in dramatics: the speeches about blood, sweat and tears; finest hours; Iron Curtains. Attlee had evicted Churchill from 10 Downing Street at the end of World War II in no small part because the British people wanted less drama and more predictability. Yet the sudden news from America had even Attlee sweating. The House of Commons was debating the optimal course of British foreign policy when the BBC brought word that Harry Truman was brandishing the atom bomb against China. This itself horrified the British lawmakers. The American president was the only person in history who had ordered the use of the monstrous weapon, and a man who had atom-bombed Japan might, without additional scruple, do the same to China. But there was a crucial new element, these five years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that made the prospect still more appalling. The Russians had the bomb, too, and were China s allies. A nuclear war in 1950 would not be one-sided.

And there was something else, something that pushed the alarm level in Britain far past that of any previous Cold War crisis. By Truman s own statement, the decision on use of the atom bomb rested with the American field commander in Korea, Douglas MacArthur. Attlee and many others in Britain could think of no one more frightening than MacArthur to have control of the bomb. MacArthur was brilliant, brave and imaginative even his critics granted that. But the general had isolated himself so long in Asia, and surrounded himself with such sycophants, that he had lost all perspective. He suffered from an extreme version of the theater commander s habit of thinking his own region the pivot of any conflict. During World War II MacArthur had behaved as though fascism would triumph or be defeated according to the outcome of

H. W. BRANDS holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. A New York Times bestselling author, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for The First American and Traitor to His Class.

"The General vs. The President is that rare military chronicle that becomes an instant page-turning classic." San Antonio Express-News

"Fast-paced, dramatic, and amply illustrates why Truman s stock has been on the rise in recent decades." Boston Globe

"A vivid accounting of an event that was, on the surface, a personality conflict between two strong-minded figures and, at the bottom, a courageous act that solidified civilian authority over the military in wartime." Dallas Morning News

"Brands spikes the shadowboxing between [Truman and MacArthur] with vivid dispatches from the battlefield that give his tale a get-along kick." TIME

"A highly readable take on the clash of two titanic figures in a period of hair-trigger nuclear tensions. . . . History offers few antagonists with such dramatic contrasts, and Brands brings these two to life." Los Angeles Times
 
Two American heroes tested and tried at their most inspired hours. . . . An exciting, well-written comparison study of two American leaders at loggerheads during the Korean War crisis. Kirkus Reviews, starred review