Tag: MacArthur

MacArthur Reconsidered General Douglas MacArthur as a Wartime Commander [Audiobook]


Free Download James Ellman, Kent Klineman (Narrator), "MacArthur Reconsidered: General Douglas MacArthur as a Wartime Commander"
English | ASIN: B0D389N92K | 2024 | MP3@64 kbps | ~12:08:00 | 333 MB
One of America’s most controversial generals, Douglas MacArthur’s rise through the US Army’s ranks was meteoric. However, he did not lead large formations of men in combat until he assumed command of forces in the Philippines in 1941. When war commenced with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, MacArthur’s performance on the battlefield was a failure: he underestimated the Japanese, and his poorly trained forces were outmaneuvered and outfought by a much smaller invading force.
In his subsequent role as America’s shogun in Tokyo, MacArthur was again surprised by an enemy he underestimated. The Korean War yielded his greatest victory, at Inchon, but also his greatest defeat, along the Yalu River. Unwilling to accept anything but complete victory, he openly defied President Truman: MacArthur fatally undermined chances for an early peace and attempted to widen a conflict which threatened to become a third world war. Raging against his subsequent firing, he only truly faded away after he was publicly criticized by a panoply of America’s greatest WWII generals.
Today, MacArthur still polarizes. Many biographies agree he was a great and patriotic leader marred by a few failures. James Ellman argues the opposite: MacArthur was a lackluster battlefield commander who suffered stunning defeats while undermining the command structure of our military.

(more…)

MacArthur’s Air Force American Airpower Over the Pacific and the Far East, 1941-51 [Audiobook]


Free Download MacArthur’s Air Force: American Airpower Over the Pacific and the Far East, 1941-51 (Audiobook)
English | September 17, 2019 | ASIN: B07XHN7PMH | M4B@128 kbps | 10h 30m | 573 MB
Author: Bill Yenne | Narrator: Joe Barrett
General Douglas MacArthur is one of the towering figures of World War II, and indeed of the 20th century, but his leadership of the second largest air force in the USAAF is often overlooked. When World War II ended, the three numbered air forces (the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Seventh) under his command possessed 4,004 combat aircraft, 433 reconnaissance aircraft, and 922 transports. After being humbled by the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942, MacArthur and his air chief General George Kenney rebuilt the US aerial presence in the Pacific, helping Allied naval and ground forces to push back the Japanese Air Force, re-take the Philippines, and carry the war north towards the Home Islands.
Following the end of World War II, MacArthur was the highest military and political authority in Japan, and at the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 he was named as Commander in Chief, United Nations Command. In the 10 months of his command, his Far East Air Forces increased dramatically and saw the first aerial combat between jet fighters.

(more…)

Yamashita’s Ghost War Crimes, MacArthur’s Justice, and Command Accountability (Modern War Studies)


Free Download Yamashita’s Ghost: War Crimes, MacArthur’s Justice, and Command Accountability (Modern War Studies) By Allan A. Ryan
2012 | 408 Pages | ISBN: 0700618813 | EPUB | 2 MB
"I don’t blame my executioners. I will pray God bless them."So said General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Japan’s most accomplished military commander, as he stood on the scaffold in Manila in 1946. His stoic dignity typified the man his U.S. Army defense lawyers had come to deeply respect in the first war crimes trial of World War II. Moments later, he was dead. But had justice been served? Allan A. Ryan reopens the case against Yamashita to illuminate crucial questions and controversies that have surrounded his trial and conviction, but also to deepen our understanding of broader contemporary issues-especially the limits of command accountability.The atrocities of 1944 and 1945 in the Philippines-rape, murder, torture, beheadings, and starvation, the victims often women and children-were horrific. They were committed by Japanese troops as General Douglas MacArthur’s army tried to recapture the islands. Yamashita commanded Japan’s dispersed and besieged Philippine forces in that final year of the war. But the prosecution conceded that he had neither ordered nor committed these crimes. MacArthur charged him, instead, with the crime-if it was one-of having "failed to control" his troops, and convened a military commission of five American generals, none of them trained in the law. It was the first prosecution in history of a military commander on such a charge. In a turbulent and disturbing trial marked by disregard of the Army’s own rules, the generals delivered the verdict they knew MacArthur wanted. Yamashita’s lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose controversial decision upheld the conviction over the passionate dissents of two justices who invoked, for the first time in U.S. legal history, the concept of international human rights.Drawing from the tribunal’s transcripts, Ryan vividly chronicles this tragic tale and its personalities. His trenchant analysis of the case’s lingering question-should a commander be held accountable for the crimes of his troops, even if he has no knowledge of them-has profound implications for all military commanders.

(more…)