I had breakfast with a Korean veteran this morning. Actually, at the same table was someone who escaped from North Korea by swimming.

The Korean veteran mentioned something about chosen frozen and I thought that was just an alliteration for being there. I didn't know it was a reference to a place called Chozin.

Coming home, I found on Amazon a movie documentary about The Battle of Chozin.

Here's the issue: my friend the Korean veteran said that MacArthur was able to get all the way to the point of winning all of North Korea up to the border with China and for political reasons back home was prevented so as not to instigate a war with China. He did mention that China did send 300,000 troops to help North Korea.

The movie puts it that MacArthur was lured by China to quickly push forward thus stretching out it's lines and then pretty much surrounded the First battalion that was split on either side of the mountains both trapped on a single mountain pass road. It was just sheer determination and a lot of losses of the marines and the attached army to fight their way back in retreat.

So which is it? Did MacArthur really had victory in his grasp and was pulled back by Washington / Truman or was it a blunder of MacArthur that he fell into the trap?

Probably best on the subject here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americ...rience/films/chosin/

You're talking about Chosin resorvoir, one of the more famous events of the conflict.

It's where Chesty Puller, USMC famously told his men, "We're surrounded. That simplifies the problem. They're on our left, they're on our right. They're in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can't get away from us now. Attack."

IMO, MacArthur was overconfident in dealing with the Chinese Armies facing him. Some 250,000 Chinese, traveling at night, crossed into NK in the early weeks of November, 1950.

Sub Zero weather, narrow roads thru mountains, using old WWII equipment that sometimes froze up due to the cold. Truman had cut Military speeding two year earlier.

Korean refugees clogged the roads, hindering supply trucks with much needed gear.

Thanks to the Brits, the Russians were shooting down our B29's with the Mig 15, using British jet engines.

And Washington was scared that Russia had the Atom bomb.

IMO, it was a poorly run war which we were not prepared for.

I was stationed in Seoul and in winter, wearing wool clothing, flap hat and insulated rubber boots, I still froze my ass off.

Truman "fired" MacArthur , because Truman wished to play the "Atomic" card, then failed to follow through and break trump.

Had, he, we would have set China on it's ass, and hobbled the Soviets.

But Truman blinked, and the NORKs, with aid of China, took back all of North Korea, which the US and "UN" forces had occupied.

In the end, we screwed the pooch.

Better to win and write history as you wish, than to let the "revisionist" make you the bad guy.

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So which is it? Did MacArthur really had victory in his grasp and was pulled back by Washington / Truman or was it a blunder of MacArthur that he fell into the trap?

MacArthur was socializing back in Japan. It was LtGen Edward Almond's inability to see a massive Chinese army even when it was at his doorstep. Had he listened more to Smith and Walker, the battle would have went much better from the U.S. perspective.

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Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

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So which is it? Did MacArthur really had victory in his grasp and was pulled back by Washington / Truman or was it a blunder of MacArthur that he fell into the trap?

MacArthur was socializing back in Japan. It was LtGen Edward Almond's inability to see a massive Chinese army even when it was at his doorstep. Had he listened more to Smith and Walker, the battle would have went much better from the U.S. perspective.

What about five months earlier when the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel? How did MacArthur's staff miss that?

US leadership was taken completely by surprise when the Chinese crossed the border. Air Force counterintelligence agents working informants warned MacArthur's staff that the Chinese were going to come across the border but MacArthur's staff refused to believe it. There were other indicators as well but MacArthur was so certain the Chinese would not enter the war that the staff ignored the warnings.

Nothing I’ve ever read about the war had any indication that MacArthur was “lured” up to the border by the Chinese or that “Washington” kept him from crossing the border and conquering China.

MacArthur did push the North Koreans to the border and would have won the Korean peninsula war in short order, but going further and crossing the border and trying to take on the entire Chinese army and country would have been insanity, even without the Soviet Union factor. What happened of course was that when the Chinese saw that the North Koreans had been destroyed, they crossed the border themselves without waiting for MacArthur to get into position to do it.

For those who, with 65 years of hindsight, believe that MacArthur should have done things differently, how should that campaign been fought? MacArthur counterattacked and destroyed the forces that had started the war, which is what military commanders are expected to do (or at least were until then; we no longer do that). Should he have withdrawn back south after Inchon? Just established a defensive line and sat there before the Chinese invaded? Do we really believe that any US commander who had the North Koreans on the run would have done that?

History is replete with military intelligence failures and it’s quite possible that MacArthur’s arrogant personality contributed to the ones in Korea. I won’t offer an opinion about that, but keep in mind that success in any endeavor breeds confidence, and MacArthur was a very successful commander despite his failings and failures. Inchon in particular was a brilliant and bold success, but although popular, sensationalist histories tend not to focus on such things, I’d bet a nickel that he had advisors who were quaking in their boots over the possibilities of what could have happened with that operation.

Furthermore, it’s always assumed that the Chinese entered the war because MacArthur pushed to the border. What’s the basis for that? Do we have such insights into the minds of the Chinese leadership that we can know they would have stayed out if MacArthur hadn’t pushed north after Inchon?

And yes, I’m glad that Korea didn’t turn into the first large scale nuclear war even though we now know that the Soviets probably weren’t in a position to respond in kind immediately. I hope that anyone with an above-room-temperature IQ and any knowledge of military history whatsoever agrees.

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Originally posted by HayesGreener:
US leadership was taken completely by surprise when the Chinese crossed the border. Air Force counterintelligence agents working informants warned MacArthur's staff that the Chinese were going to come across the border but MacArthur's staff refused to believe it. There were other indicators as well but MacArthur was so certain the Chinese would not enter the war that the staff ignored the warnings.

Very similar to history repeating itself prior to the Tet offensive and the attack and takeover of Hue.

Chesty Puller really stepped up during the battle that took place at the Chosin reservoir. He proved to be a leader for the ages in this one. Although, he did not do so bad in WW2.

My cousin was in the Marines and awarded a Silver Star there. A very good friend of mine who died in 2010 at 96 was a Navy Corpsman (Medic) with the Marines Island hopping in WWII and in Korea. He knew Chesty Puller very well. I spent time in Viet Nam.

There is a lot of difference in being there with what you know or believe and looking back with many years of hindsight. Now we know MacArthur and Senator Joseph McCarthy were right.

I have a working knowledge of the Korean War, but I'd like to get a better understanding and perspective on it.

Any recommendations for reading material, or perhaps documentaries, podcasts/ books on disc on the subject?

In the extensive reading I have done on these events, it looks to me like MacArthur was considered an overly dramatic egomaniac, according to quite a few of his contemporaries.

It's impossible to say with certainty whether his recommendations would have worked out better, but the decisions were not his to make. Instead of saluting and saying, "Yes, sir!", or resigning if he felt strongly about his orders, he chose to go public, take his arguments to the press, defying the President. So, he had to go.

It is true that US military had been reduced after the war. Without the Chinese, the Korean situation was being handled, but once the Chinese came in, the resources weren't available and would not be.

The factors that prompted the use of nukes to end WWII weren't present with the Chinese.

A good read on the subject is Breakout: the Chosin Reservoir Campaign, by Martin Russ. All officers of a previous regiment had to read it and discuss weekly with the CO.

One major aspect often overlooked is the fact that the Chinese troops at Chosin were often battle hardened veterans of fighting the Japanese and then the civil war against the Nationalists. The Chinese revolution had just ended in 1949, all of those veterans were available in 1950 for Korea. The US, in contrast, had a drastic troop draw down after WW2, and very few of those in Korea had any combat experience. Another good book that documents how few combat vets were in the Marines in 1950 in Korea is
Forgotten Warriors: The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, the Corps Ethos, and the Korean War, by T X Hammes.

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Originally posted by LimaCharlie:
My cousin was in the Marines and awarded a Silver Star there. A very good friend of mine who died in 2010 at 96 was a Navy Corpsman (Medic) with the Marines Island hopping in WWII and in Korea. He knew Chesty Puller very well. I spent time in Viet Nam.

There is a lot of difference in being there with what you know or believe and looking back with many years of hindsight. Now we know MacArthur and Senator Joseph McCarthy were right.

We tend to forget about McCarthy. His histrionics over powered the facts.

Read this:

https://www.cia.gov/library/ce..._2001/article06.html

The north was about to loose when the Chinese entered with overwhelming manpower, we had a choice to use nukes or not.
We chose not.

Marine Corps lore has it that when the bugles blared and the tracers started flying that Chesty got on the hook with the Marines at the FEBA and asked the battalion commander how many he faced. the colonel responded that he didn't know.
Chesty kept going and got the company commander that was supposed to be right at the tip of contact and got the same answer, didn't know.
Chesty stayed on the hook and got a platoon sergeant that he could barely hear over the fight and asked,"How many?"
The platoon sergeant said "A whole shit-load, sir"
And Chesty said, "Thank God we've got somebody up there that can count."

Although it is a bit long on youtube there is a lecture delivered by Thomas Ricks that basically states that General O.P. Smith and his outstanding leadership helped keep the 1st Marine Division from becoming a division sized frozen Little Big Horn massacre.

The book Breakout by Martin Russ is a good and informative read, yet there is a bit of a disparaging undertone toward the Army troops also at Chosin.

The Army trops did not have the unit cohesiveness, invididual toughness, or leadership quality that the Marines had but they provided crucial peotection to the Marine's right flank.

A good but somewhat dry read is Roy E. Appleman's East if Chosin. It does a good job of describing how the Army troops of east of Chosin met their fate.

Another link for interesting reading about the Korean war... The enemy's view...

http://www.centurychina.com/history/krwarfaq.html