MacArthur

Yeah, some people say he was overrated, some people don't. His defense of the Philippines was shit, but not his later island-hopping campaign.

Pablo22510 wrote:

His defense of the Philippines was shit, but not his later island-hopping campaign.

Diversion of Resources to Strategically Irrelevant Theater: Politics in the FDR era must have been weird if a general could wield as much political clout as MacArthur did. Both FDR and George Marshall had nothing but disdain for him and his inept performance in the Philippines. But he had a lot of support, particularly from congressional Republicans clamoring to bring him to Washington to run the war, so FDR and Marshall wanted him as far away as possible.

As luck would have it, a panicky Australian government appealed for US aid. Not having much aid to give, and correctly assessing the Japanese threat to Australia as minor, the duo decided to give the Australians MacArthur instead, thus hitting two birds with one stone: placating the Australians, and keeping MacArthur on the far side of the globe.

In order to placate him in Australia, and his supporters in Washington, the powers that be went and split the Pacific Theater of Operations into two and manufactured for MacArthur his own separate theater of operations, the Southwest Pacific. That drained men and resources from the shortest route of advance against Japan, which stood the best chance of taking the war directly to the Japanese home islands as speedily as possible - the Central Pacific.

But MacArthur had said “I shall return” when he skedaddled out of the Philippines (note the “I”, not “we” - you’d think he was paying for it out of his own pocket, or that the thousands of sailors and soldiers and airmen necessary to effect such a return were his private army or bodyguard), so Washington couldn’t bruise his ego by making him out to be a liar.

Thousands of Americans, not to mention Japanese and natives, paid with their lives in order to give MacArthur his own sandbox in which to play war.

His PR department made a lot of hay out of the supposed brilliance of his “island hopping campaign” in the SW Pacific (a strategy actually decided in Washington, rather than being MacArthur’s brainchild - his idea had been to recapture them one by one, until told by Washington that he won’t be getting enough resources for that, accompanied with plans to bypass many of them, instead. He accepted, and took the credit), which detracted attention from the fact that the whole SW Pacific could have been hopped and skipped in its entirety without making a difference. It would have been wiser to simply send enough men and resources to defend Australia, and redirect the effort wasted in that theater to the venue which actually mattered, in the Central Pacific.

Whatevs. I didn't even like him.

Lol, seems like no one else does either from this thread.

Ikr.