The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur

by Perry, Mark

  For Roosevelt, the calls for public order were as old as the republic itself. In times of crisis, he told Tugwell, the American people flirted with the idea of sacrificing liberty to purchase stability. In such circumstances, the man on the white horse, a celebrated figure, “a man of charm, tradition and majestic appearance,” had a strong appeal. And who better than Douglas MacArthur—a man on a prancing steed, his military coat filled with medals—to provide it? These men, these soldiers, were not unpatriotic, or un-American, Roosevelt said, they were simply worried. They did not need to be opposed or fought; they needed leadership—a sense that something was being done to meet the crisis. He had said this himself, back in April, during a national radio address: “The country needs and, unless I am mistaking its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it and try another. But above all try something.” The observation remained true now, he told Tugwell, even as the calls for dictatorship resounded from the boardroom to the halls of Congress. But what should be done? Tugwell asked. Roosevelt thought for only a moment. “We must tame these fellows,” he said, “and make them useful to us.”

  From the day he was inaugurated as the thirty-second president of the United States until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt set out to “tame” Douglas MacArthur. In the course of those years, from the depths of the Great Depression until the eve of the twentieth century’s second global conflict, Roosevelt and MacArthur forged a volatile bond that helped define the course of the American republic. While the Roosevelt-MacArthur relationship was seeded by mutual suspicion, the two men held a grudging respect for each other. Roosevelt thought MacArthur a brilliant general, while MacArthur acknowledged Roosevelt’s considerable political skills. Theirs was less a voluntary partnership than an indispensable collaboration: In the midst of the Great Depression, Roosevelt shrewdly manipulated MacArthur’s ambitions to help implement his economic program.

  No one understood this involuntary bond better than George Marshall. Sworn in as Roosevelt’s army chief of staff on September 1, 1939 (the day that Hitler’s legions invaded Poland), Marshall seemed an unlikely mediator of the Roosevelt-MacArthur competition. As war loomed in Europe, he had angrily confronted Roosevelt over the nation’s military budget. As a young officer in the Great War, he had served as a distinguished member of General John Pershing’s staff—and so was, in MacArthur’s mind, a member of “the Chaumont crowd.” Yet it was Marshall who, as Japan’s armies extended their triumphant grip over the Pacific in World War Two’s early and darkest days, convinced Roosevelt to bring MacArthur out of the Philippines and give him command of American forces gathering in Australia. During the conflict that followed, Marshall adopted MacArthur’s strategic vision to shape victory in the Pacific, while using MacArthur as a foil to navy commander Admiral Ernest Joseph “Ernie” King, who considered the Pacific conflict “the Navy’s show.” So as Roosevelt had set out to tame MacArthur, Marshall worked to make him “useful.”

  A complex mix of ego, ambition, and brilliance, Douglas MacArthur was hardly a passive accomplice in either of these projects. As chief of staff, MacArthur fought Roosevelt’s cuts to the army budget, then turned a key pillar of the administration’s domestic economic program to his own purposes. So, too, in the fight against Japan, MacArthur adroitly manipulated Marshall’s suspicions of the navy to shape a military command that produced the most brilliant, if unacknowledged, leaders of the war: combat commander Robert Eichelberger, tenacious army fighter Walter Krueger, workaholic airman George Kenney, amphibious genius Daniel Barbey, and brilliant navy commander Thomas Kinkaid. With these men, MacArthur fought one of the most complex and visionary campaigns in history—the first combined arms operation ever conducted in warfare. MacArthur’s pioneering victory, reducing and then bypassing the Japanese at Fortress Rabaul, brought his forces to the doorstep of the Philippines, which he had pledged to liberate. Then, as MacArthur stood poised to make a final leap into what was, in effect, his second homeland, he and his nemesis and friend, Franklin Roosevelt, shaped a strategy for the defeat of Japan. With MacArthur’s implicit agreement, this strategy would bring Roosevelt a final and unprecedented fourth term as president. From the Great Depression to the end of World War Two, from the White House to Tokyo Bay, Roosevelt and MacArthur engaged in a delicate political minuet that recasts our understanding of one of the most important soldiers of our history.

  CHAPTER 1

  The White House

  You must not talk that way to the President!

  —Franklin D. Roosevelt

  A leaden sky greeted Franklin Roosevelt when he awakened early on the morning of March 4, 1933. It was Inauguration Day in Washington, and Roosevelt should have been pleased: Just four months before, he had won a signal victory over Herbert Hoover, outpolling the incumbent Republican by 7 million votes, with a 472-to-59 edge in the Electoral College. A landslide. But Roosevelt was sullen, a fitting reflection of the day that awaited him. Outside his presidential suite at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, the sheets of rain that accompanied his arrival the night before had just ended. Roosevelt greeted his family at breakfast with a nod and ate in silence, after which his valet, Irvin McDuffie, helped him dress. McDuffie pulled the striped pants of a morning suit over the braces of Roosevelt’s legs, paralyzed by polio more than twenty years before, then helped him to button his stiff-collared white shirt. Roosevelt was then driven to St. John’s Episcopal Church for the traditional service for incoming presidents, before being taken to the White House to meet with Herbert Hoover.

  Members of the Senate who greeted Roosevelt at the Capitol read his mood and left him alone. John Nance Garner was sworn in as vice president in the Senate Chamber. Then at a little before one in the afternoon, Roosevelt, leaning on the arm of his son James—who helped him navigate the treacherous steps leading to the podium—was sworn in as president. Turning to address the vast audience, he gripped the presidential stand with his large hands, and his knuckles turned white with the effort to support his large upper body, a strength-sapping position he had mastered over many years. His head bobbed and turned when he spoke, in well-rehearsed mannerisms that compensated for the gestures he might have made, but couldn’t. He began: “I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel.” He then issued the call that would make this speech famous: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

  Finishing his address, Roosevelt was driven back up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House for a short buffet luncheon, then made his way outdoors to the reviewing platform to watch the inaugural parade. There were forty marching bands, dozens of floats, and various limousines carrying thirty-three governors. Leading it all, on a prancing stallion, was Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, who saluted Roosevelt and then joined him on the reviewing stand to watch as contingents of soldiers, sailors, and airmen marched by. The two chatted amiably, with MacArthur leaning toward Roosevelt and commenting on the passing troops. Roosevelt nodded and smiled. Overhead, the dirigible Akron navigated the cloudy sky.

  Before the parade ended, Roosevelt returned to the White House. MacArthur dutifully followed, standing for a short time beside the president during a reception. Breaking free, MacArthur made the rounds: He spoke with members of Congress and spent a moment in political conversation with Eleanor, and all with unforced charm. But then, knowing that he fit in here less well now that Hoover was gone, he walked the short distance to his office at the War Department before returning to his official quarters at Fort Myer. He would talk with Roosevelt only rarely in the days ahead but prepared himself for what he knew was coming: a round of cuts that would trim the military budget by tens of millions of dollars. This was Roosevelt’s nod to austerity, a pledge he had made as a candidate. MacArthur vowed to
fight him.

  Douglas MacArthur first met Franklin Roosevelt in 1916, when the New Yorker was assistant secretary of the navy. Then-Major MacArthur served with him as part of the Wilson administration’s prewar mobilization planning. Roosevelt was thirty-four, MacArthur two years older. The two took each other’s measure. Outside of the obvious differences in their backgrounds, they had a fundamentally different approach to the military: Roosevelt was obsessed with sailing and the sea and had been since he was a small child, while MacArthur had had nothing to do with it. The fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt (and married to his niece, Eleanor), Franklin prized a copy of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History, which had been given to him by “Cousin Teddy” when Franklin was just fifteen. Roosevelt was an expert sailor and, like his distant cousin, loved the navy. No one would ever say that of MacArthur. The Roosevelt-MacArthur relationship grew by fits and starts through the years that followed as both men excelled in their careers. Yet, their political views were so starkly different that by the time Roosevelt became president, the two circled each other warily while feigning a comfortable friendship. While Roosevelt and MacArthur displayed a bonhomie they didn’t feel, Roosevelt’s aides felt no such requirement. Key members of Roosevelt’s inner circle regularly shared sniggling descriptions of the nation’s senior officer, whom they viewed as a “martinet,” “polished popinjay,” “bellicose swashbuckler,” and “warmonger.” MacArthur ignored the insults, knowing that the debacle at Anacostia Flats had made him a source of ridicule.

  Soon after the breakup of the Bonus March, a short play, General Goober at the Battle of Anacostia, had made the rounds, parodying MacArthur readying himself for battle with destitute veterans. When a servant questions his preparations, General Goober is offended: “My God, man, you don’t expect me to fight without a Sam Browne belt? This is war!” The line brought derisive hoots from crowds of theatergoers, including Roosevelt’s New Dealers. Among these was Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior. “MacArthur is the type of man who thinks that when he gets to heaven, God will step down from the great white throne and bow him into His vacated seat,” he explained. Many among Roosevelt’s brain trust agreed; at the very least, and even discounting the Bonus Army scandal, MacArthur was a holdover from an administration that had been repudiated by America’s voters. He didn’t fit in.

  But MacArthur’s most outspoken, if less public, detractor was Josephus Daniels, the North Carolina newspaper publisher and influential Roosevelt confidante who had served as secretary of the navy under Woodrow Wilson and had recommended Roosevelt for his department’s second spot. While there was no set term for an army chief of staff, it was generally acknowledged that each would serve for two two-year terms, which meant that MacArthur would be with the administration until 1934. Daniels, a self-made white-suited Southern gentleman, thought this was a bad idea. He probed the new president tentatively, hinting that Roosevelt should get rid of him. MacArthur had undermined public confidence in the military, Daniels said, and he had made enemies of powerful figures on Capitol Hill—people who were Roosevelt allies. One of these was Mississippi congressman Ross Collins, the powerful and acerbic head of the House Subcommittee on Military Appropriations—and a man whom Roosevelt would need in the years ahead.

  Collins, an admirer of Billy Mitchell, intensely disliked MacArthur. The legislator had publicly excoriated the general during the Hoover years for recommending that Congress adopt a budget that would retain financing for the army officer corps. MacArthur believed that retaining a strong officer corps, even at the expense of weapons’ upgrades, was essential. Collins strongly disagreed: “The only way to give adequate military preparedness without putting an overwhelming tax burden on the people is to cut down on personnel and put the savings in effective machines.” Retaining professional, trained, and veteran officers, MacArthur responded, was more important than better and newer equipment. Collins not only ignored MacArthur’s recommendations, but also belittled his views in a series of public hearings on the subject during Hoover’s final year in office: “The day has passed when a General Staff can overawe legislators or browbeat the common man by presuming to have inside information or superior knowledge of existing military conditions in other countries.”

  MacArthur seethed: He had been overseas twice as chief of staff and had seen how Europe was preparing, even then, for another war. He wasn’t willing to concede Collins’s point or give up the fight. After Collins’s dismissal of MacArthur’s views in public, the army chief enlisted the support of the powerful Army and Navy Journal, whose editor (at MacArthur’s direction) described Collins and his supporters as “the real dictators of the Republic.” Collins snapped back: He proposed a bill that slashed funding for the National Guard and Organized Reserve and reduced by two thousand the number of officers on active duty—and rammed the legislation through the House of Representatives. MacArthur responded by lobbying his friends in the Senate, which duly gutted the Collins bill. The victory saved the army officer corps and set MacArthur to chortling. “Just hogtied a Mississippi cracker,” he said. Collins heard of this comment, resented it, never forgave MacArthur—and bided his time.

  Indeed, the forces arrayed against MacArthur both inside the new Roosevelt administration and in the U.S. Congress were formidable. They included not only Roosevelt confidante Daniels and Collins, but also Ickes and many members of Roosevelt’s influential brain trust. But they were no match for Roosevelt, who had other plans for MacArthur. For while MacArthur might be controversial, he had done nothing to merit relief, and Roosevelt didn’t want to begin his administration by sparking a controversy with the military. Then, too, Roosevelt could use MacArthur as a conservative voice in what was shaping up as an overwhelmingly progressive administration. There was also MacArthur himself. While Roosevelt’s inner circle hooted at MacArthur’s militarism, the army chief of staff had given the new administration a wide berth. During Roosevelt’s first weeks in office, MacArthur arrived each morning at the War Department in civilian dress, rarely stayed in his office past working hours, and attended administration meetings in a uniform unadorned by the ribbons and medals he had received. In fact, as Roosevelt’s team was consumed with shaping the avalanche of new laws and regulations designed to spur the still declining economy, MacArthur was cooperative, even deferential.

  Roosevelt also realized that while many in his administration might dislike MacArthur, many more in the military supported him. For instance, James Gavin—a brilliant and widely respected young army lieutenant—believed MacArthur’s decision to personally oversee the breakup of the Bonus March back in July was an act of courage: “I have never read anywhere the feeling of the junior officers toward MacArthur’s participation,” Gavin said. “We all felt that it was a gesture of personal responsibility on his part, and it was deeply appreciated by us.” Gavin was not alone in this assessment or in his skepticism toward Roosevelt. While Roosevelt’s revolutionary first one hundred days (and the welter of economic legislation that accompanied it) was greeted by accolades from much of the public, that wasn’t true for the military, whose professional officer corps believed that the New Deal’s sweeping economic changes might well come at their expense.

  These doubts extended to MacArthur aide Dwight Eisenhower, whose sober mien was a bellwether of officer corps beliefs: While Eisenhower was inclined to like Roosevelt, the aide mistrusted what he viewed as the new president’s usurpation of power. Like many in the military, Eisenhower was skeptical of Roosevelt’s far-reaching programs for economic recovery, which established a National Recovery Administration to regulate industrial practices and eliminate cutthroat prices. Roosevelt’s NRA proposal was breathtaking: It put unprecedented economic power in the hands of the federal government—and in the hands of the White House. “As I look back over the past few months,” Eisenhower wrote in his diary, “I have to laugh at the antics we go through in support of a shibboleth. Specifically the word ‘dictator’
has always (and properly) been anathema to the average American. So today, when in some respects we have the strongest possible form of dictatorship—we go to great lengths to congratulate ourselves that we have not fallen for the terrible systems in vogue in Italy, Germany, Turkey, Poland and etc. . . . President Roosevelt’s power is of tremendous extent—greater by far than is realized by the average citizen.”

  More than twenty years later, Douglas MacArthur would write in his memoirs that when Roosevelt revived their friendship during the new administration’s first crucial months, he found that the president “had greatly changed and matured since our former days in Washington.” But the same might have been said of MacArthur. It was not simply the controversy of the Bonus March that “matured” the chief of staff; he realized that to survive the Roosevelt years, he would have to carefully maneuver among Roosevelt’s New Dealers, who viewed the army budget as easy pickings. While focusing on initiatives that spurred economic growth, the administration also intended to enforce a program of severe austerity that had significant public support and that included the unpopular army budget. MacArthur could fight these cuts or he could find a way around them. In truth, there wasn’t much of a choice: With the economy driven to its knees, unemployment at an all-time high, and the public clamoring for relief, it would be far better for the army to cooperate with Roosevelt than oppose him. MacArthur was no fool. If he opposed Roosevelt after the new president had just won the largest landslide in history, the chief of staff would lose.