On 1 August 1981, a revolutionary new television channel made is debut on cable television networks across the country broadcasting a new art form called music videos. The first video was an appropriately named song “Video Killed the Radio Star,” by the Buggles. Music Television, or MTV as it became known, would fundamentally change the music industry by blending both visual and audio art forms and creating what would become a ubiquitous platform for new bands and performers to be discovered. Disco was losing its appeal, punk rock was flaming out, and plain old rock and roll had become stale. People were looking for something fresh and MTV would help give birth to what would become affectionately known as New Wave. Bands such as Duran Duran, INXS, U2, Billy Idol would owe much of their success to MTV. In an industry in which the visual was previously limited to album artwork, videos became as equally important as the music itself and soon all types of bands and performers would jump on the video bandwagon. An entire generation of American teenagers would sit anxiously with their VCRs poised to record their favorite videos. MTV would go on to pioneer the reality TV genre with shows like the Real World and would eventually depart from its music video roots. Nevertheless, for those of us who were teenagers during the hey day of MTV it was a magical time.
It’s the summer of 1864 and the fortunes of the Confederacy are on the wane. The Army of Northern Virginia is suffering from shortages across the board but one shortage is especially problematic, manpower. The Army of Northern Virginia is steadily being attritted. A series of bloody battles beginning in early May have sapped the Army and put it on the defensive. In early May, at the battle of the Wilderness, Confederate losses number over 11,000. A week later at Spotsylvania Courthouse, the South suffers another 10,000 casualties. In early June, the Confederates return the favor at Cold Harbor inflicting over 10,000 Union losses but they also suffer another 4,500 losses. In little over a month, General Lee has lost a quarter of his army. Lee knows he cannot continue losing men at this pace but he has few options. Lee writes to his son, “Where do we get sufficient troops to oppose Grant? He is bringing to him now the Nineteenth Corps, and will bring every man he can get.” Unlike his predecessors, General Grant is a fighter. He knows that he has Lee on the ropes and he won’t let up. Grant continues to push towards Richmond forcing Lee to move his army to stay between Grant and the rebel capital. Grant deprives Lee of the initiative and Lee is now forced to fight a defensive campaign against Grant’s numerically superior army, one that is not Lee’s strong suit.
Unable to get between Lee and Richmond, Grant turns his eye toward the critical rail junction of Petersburg, thirty miles south of the capital. Petersburg is vital to the supply of Richmond and its loss would make Richmond’s capture almost inevitable. Shortly after Cold Harbor, Grant marches his forces towards Petersburg and Lee races southward toward Petersburg knowing what its loss would mean. By June 18, Grant had nearly 100,000 men under him at Petersburg compared to the roughly 20,000-30,000 Confederate defenders. Grant realized the fortifications erected around the city would be difficult to attack and pivoted to starving out the entrenched Confederates. Grant had learned a hard lesson at Cold Harbor about attacking Lee in a fortified position but is chafing at the inactivity to which Lee’s trenches and forts had confined him. A regiment of Pennsylvania miners offered a proposal to break the impasse. They would dig a long mine shaft under the Confederate lines and detonate explosives directly underneath fortifications in the middle of the Confederate First Corps line. If successful, not only would all the defenders in the area be killed, but also a hole in the Confederate defenses would be opened. If enough Union troops filled the breach quickly enough and drove into the Confederate rear area, the Confederates would not be able to muster enough force to drive them out, and Petersburg might fall.
The plan was met with great skepticism but Grant did not reject it out of hand. Digging commenced in late June. On July 17, the main shaft reached under the Confederate position. Rumors of a mine construction soon reached the Confederates, but Lee refused to believe or act upon them. For two weeks he debated before directing countermining attempts, which were sluggish and uncoordinated, and failed to discover the mine.
A division of new African-American soldiers was specially trained to carry out the assault once the explosives were detonated. For weeks the division prepared itself for all the chaos potential challenges they might encounter in leading the assault. Despite this intensive training, a decision was made a day before the impending attack to replace the African-American soldiers with another division that was less prepared. Elements within the Union high command lacked confidence in the black soldiers’ combat abilities.
The explosive charges were detonated at 4:44 a.m. on the 30th. They exploded in a massive shower of earth, men, and guns creating a crater that was over 100 feet wide and 30 feet deep. The initial explosive charges immediately killed 278 Confederate soldiers. The remaining troops were stunned by the explosions and did not direct any significant rifle or artillery fire at the enemy for at least 15 minutes. However, the Union troops selected to lead the assault were unprepared for what they encountered. Instead of moving around the crater, they advanced down into it and soon became trapped. The Confederates, under Brig. Gen. William Mahone, regrouped and counterattacked. They began firing rifles and artillery down into the crater in what was later described as a “turkey shoot.” The plan had failed and the battle was lost. However, the strategic situation remained unchanged. Both sides remained in their trenches, and the siege would continue into March of the next year.
On July 28, 1932, U.S. Army troops, under the command of General Douglass Mac Arthur violently dispersed the “Bonus Army”—roughly 30,000 World War I veterans and their families—who had gathered in Washington DC to demand early payment of a bonus they had been promised by Congress for their service. Amidst the worsening economic conditions of the Great Depression, these increasingly desperate veterans and their families travelled from all across the country to Washington DC to press their demand. They came in trucks, old buses, and railroad freight cars. The spectacle of heavily armed troops moving against the unarmed veterans, who had fought for their country years earlier, shocked and disgusted many Americans. It also reinforced the perception, right or wrong, that President Herbert Hoover was indifferent to the suffering of the American people during the depression and it played a significant role in Hoover’s decisive defeat in the 1932 presidential election. This episode would also prove to be a turning point in how our nation treated its veterans, serving as a catalyst for the G.I. Bill and other programs set up for returning veterans in the aftermath of World War II.
In 1926, Congress passed the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, otherwise known as the Bonus Act, over a veto from President Calvin Coolidge. The act promised WWI veterans a bonus based on length of service between April 5, 1917 and July 1, 1919; $1 per day stateside and $1.25 per day overseas, with the payout capped at $500 for stateside veterans and $625 for overseas veterans. The catch was this bonus would not pay out until each veteran’s birthday in 1945, paying out to his estate if he should die before then. Although veterans were allowed to borrow against the bonus certificate beginning in 1927, by 1932, banks were short on credit to give.
Many of these veterans were now unemployed, broke, and hopeless and began to demand immediate payment to help offset the pernicious impact of the depression. Led by a former Army Sergeant from Oregon, Walter M. Waters, the veterans called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force or “the Bonus Army.” They set up camps throughout the city and began to lobby Congress in the spring and summer of 1932 for their bonus. Two camps, in particular, stood out — a group squatting around buildings slated for demolition east of the Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue, and a larger shanty town in the Anacostia Flats, south of the 11th Street Bridge in what is now Anacostia Park.
The veterans found themselves a sympathetic supporter in Congressman Wright Patman (D-TX), a WWI veteran himself, who introduced a bill on June 15, to pay the veterans. The bill passed the House of Representatives but was subsequently voted down in the Senate, 62-18, with many Senators claiming the country lacked adequate funds to make the immediate payments that were demanded. With the defeat of the Patman bill, some of the veterans returned home believing their cause to be lost but 20,000 remained. Undeterred, Walter Waters vowed, “We’ll stay here until the bonus bill is passed.” He staged daily demonstrations before the Capitol and led peaceful marches past the White House but Hoover refused to give him an audience.
The Bonus Army stages a huge demonstration at the empty Capitol in July 1932.
Unwilling to meet their demands, the Hoover administration disparaged and denounced the veterans as criminals and communist agitators. President Hoover reportedly believed that veterans made up no more than 50 percent of Bonus Army members. In reality, members of the American Communist Party did seek to exploit the situation but they probably represented less than 10 percent of the marchers. A subsequent study conducted by the Veterans Administration revealed that 94 percent of the marchers had Army or Navy service records.
The Bonus Marchers’ Camp at Anacostia Flats
On July 28, the situation turned violent as the city police tried to remove a number of veterans who were encamped along Pennsylvania Avenue. Amidst the ensuing melee, two of the bonus marchers were killed. Fearing that this was the beginning of a larger riot, President Hoover ordered Mac Arthur and the Army to disperse the veterans. That evening, Mac Arthur and about 1,000 troops advanced with tanks, fixed bayonets, and tear gas seeking to drive the demonstrators back across the 11th Street Bridge to Anacostia Flats. Hoover reportedly warned Mac Arthur twice not to cross the bridge in pursuit of the retreating veterans but the General ignored these warnings believing he was suppressing a violent insurrection seeking to overthrow capitalism and the constitution. Mac Arthur continued to advance on the veterans’ camp. The troops drove off the remaining 10,000 inhabitants and set fire to the shanties. The Bonus Army had been dispersed permanently.
Although the operation was a success, the political consequences were disastrous . Hoover defended his use of force against the veterans, declaring, “A challenge to the authority of the United States Government has been met, swiftly and firmly.” However, many Americans were shocked and dismayed by the news and the images of tanks, soldiers with fixed bayonets, and saber wielding cavalry threatening the veterans. Alabama Senator and future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black denounced the military crack down as an overreaction. “As one citizen, I want to make my public protest against this militaristic way of handling a condition which has been brought about by wide-spread unemployment and hunger,” Black remarked. Senator Hiram Johnson of California, dubbed the incident “one of the blackest pages in our history.” Even the Washington Daily News, which was normally GOP friendly called it “A pitiful spectacle,” to see “the mightiest government in the world chasing unarmed men, women, and children with Army tanks. If the Army must be called out to make war on unarmed citizens, this is no longer America.”
This episode would torpedo Hoover’s re-election bid in 1932, confirming for many Americans that Hoover lacked the leadership skills and bold new ideas to lead the country through the economic crisis. Hoover would go on to lose in a landslide to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Remnants of the Bonus Army again began to trickle back into Washington DC shortly after Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933. Roosevelt also opposed meeting the demands of the veterans on the grounds that it would favor a special class of citizen over others at a time when all were suffering. However, unlike Hoover, Roosevelt would take other positive steps to try and ameliorate the economic hardship of the veterans. He would offer them jobs in his new Civilian Conservation Corps and set up Veteran Rehabilitation Camps to help address the unemployment problem. In 1936, Congress finally passed a bill over President Roosevelt’s veto. The Bonus Army had achieved its objective.
July 18, 1863- The battle of Fort Wagner- For three years Charleston South Carolina was an open wound for Union forces. It was here on April 14, 1861 that the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter, in the middle of Charleston harbor, was forced to surrender after being bombarded by Confederate forces in Charleston, initiating the Civil War. For, two and a half years the Union Navy had blockaded all of the major Southern ports in an effort to strangle the Confederacy. Repeated efforts to capture Charleston failed as the city was protected by a series of strategically placed forts and batteries.
In the spring of 1863, the Federals planned operations to neutralize the fortifications surrounding Charleston and capture the city. Crucial to their plan was the capture of Fort Wagner on Morris Island. On the evening of July 18, after a grueling day long bombardment, the 54th Massachusetts, a regiment of black soldiers spearheaded a direct assault on the fort. Commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the scion of a wealthy Massachusetts abolitionist family, the unit was made up of freedmen and escaped slaves and intended to show that African-Americans were more than willing and capable to fight for their freedom. Prior to he assault, the regiment had bee tasked mostly with manual labor and had seen only limited action, as the army command continued to view the 54th as a political project rather than a military unit. The attack started off slowly but proceeded to the double quick as Confederate artillery tore apart the ranks of the 54th with devastating effect. Scaling the top of the earthworks, the 54th was met with a murderous volley of musket fire from the forts defenders killing Colonel Shaw and many others. The attack would ultimately fail with the regiment suffering over 40 percent casualties. Nevertheless, the men of the 54th fought bravely and with great valor. Sergeant William H. Carney, was wounded three times in the hip, chest and head as he retrieved the regimental standard after the flag-bearer was shot. He would receive the nation’s highest combat decoration, the Medal of Honor. Because of the valor shown by the men of the 54th, the US Army increased the number of black enlistments so that by 1865 almost two hundred thousand African Americans had served from 1863-1865. African-American soldiers would fight bravely in other places such as Petersburg and suffer atrocities at the hands or rebel soldiers at Fort Pillow.
African-American soldiers would continue to lay down their lives for their country in World War I and World War II but would still face discrimination and be forced to serve in segregated units until July 26, 1948 when President Truman desegregated the military.
On July 14, 1789, Parisian mobs stormed the Bastille—a notorious prison and symbol of royal tyranny—in what is generally regarded as arguably the beginning of the French Revolution. Inspired by the American Revolution, the French Revolution would prove to be a watershed event in the history of Western civilization helping spread many of the ideas that now form the foundation of modern liberal democracy. It would also inspire Karl Marx and other future socialists, with its emphasis on egalitarianism. However, the Revolution, which was originally a popular uprising against the absolute power of the king and the vast inequality between the rich and the poor, would eventually consume itself giving way to the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte and eventually a restoration of the monarchy.
By the mid-1780s, France found itself in deep economic crisis. Decades of war against Great Britain, especially support for the American colonies in their war for independence, had emptied the state coffers. Moreover, an inefficient and regressive taxation system in which the urban poor and middle class paid most of the taxes and the nobility lived lives of luxury combined with two decades of poor harvests left the country on the brink of financial ruin and a social implosion.
King Louis XVI of France
King Louis XVI sought to replenish the state treasury by raising taxes, including a universal land tax from which the nobility would no longer be exempt. However, he lacked the authority on his own to levy any new taxes. The only institution in France with that power was the Estates General an assembly representing France’s clergy, nobility and middle class. The King agreed to convene the Estates General in May 1789, which had not met since 1614, to garner support for his proposed reforms. The assembly consisted of equal numbers of representatives of each estate, and voting had been by order, with the First Estate (the clergy), the Second Estate (the nobility), and the Third Estate (middle class and peasants) each receiving one vote. Under this framework, the Third Estate routinely was outvoted by the combined vote of the nobility and clergy. Now representing roughly 95 percent of the population, the Third Estate demanded political power commensurate with the amount of the population it represented. Members argued that the Third Estate should be doubled in size and that voting should be by headcount and not order. However, a majority of the clergy and nobility balked at this idea.
Unsatisfied, the Third Estate now decided on a more radical course of action. They declared themselves the National Assembly, that was representative of all the people. This new National Assembly expressed its desire to include the other two Estates in its deliberations but also made it clear that it was determined to conduct the nation’s affairs without them. Faced with a growing insurrection and a threat to his absolute power, King Louis XVI tried to prevent the National Assembly from meeting by locking them out of the Salle des États, claiming it needed to be prepared for a royal speech. On 20 June, the Assembly met in a tennis court outside Versailles and swore not to disperse until a new constitution had been agreed. Messages of support poured in from Paris and other cities; by 27 June, they had been joined by 100 clergy and 47 members of the nobility. On July 9 the Assembly reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly.
A showdown between the crown and the general public was looming. The only questions remained how and when and what would be the catalyst. On 11 July, Louis XVI, acting under the influence of the conservative nobles, dismissed his finance minister, who had been sympathetic to the Third Estate, and rumors soon spread that he was preparing to use the military to shut down the Assembly. The news brought crowds of protestors into the streets who thought this was the beginning of a conservative coup and soldiers of the elite French Guards refused to disperse them. Paris was soon consumed with riots, anarchy, and widespread looting. The mobs now had the support of the French Guard, including arms and trained soldiers who were sympathetic to the people.
Storming of the Bastille
Events came to a head on July 14, when a mob, with the support of the disgruntled French Guard, stormed the Bastille in search of arms and ammunition and to release the large number of political prisoners rumored to be held behind its walls. After several hours of fighting the Governor of the prison surrendered. Shortly thereafter he was executed and his headed paraded around the city on a pike. Although the revolutionaries found stores of arms and ammunition, there were only seven prisoners at the Bastille: four forgers, two noblemen held for “immoral behavior”, and a murder suspect. Nonetheless, a blow had been struck against Royal authority and noble privilege.
The storming of the Bastille had fundamentally changed the balance of power and revealed the monarchy for the sclerotic and delegitimized institution it had become. It also put in motion a series of events over the next decade that would set not only France but the entire European continent aflame. By 1791, the moderates who held power following the attack on the Bastille gave way to more impatient and revolutionary Jacobin elements of the Sans Culottes—the working class—amidst growing food shortages and a worsening economic crisis. The following August, these revolutionaries would arrest Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette, and the rest of the Royal family. The King was executed by guillotine the subsequent January for allegedly conspiring with Austria and Prussia to overthrow the revolution and his wife suffered the same fate nine months later.
The execution of Louis XVI
The execution of the royals ushered in the most violent and bloody phase of the revolution, known as the “Reign of Terror.” Over a 10 month period, 17,000 suspected enemies of the revolution were guillotined without a public trial or any legal assistance. Many of the killings were carried out under orders from Maximilian Robespierre, one of the Jacobin leaders who dominated the draconian Committee of Public Safety that had been set up to root out enemies of the revolution. Intoxicated by his power, Robespierre called for increasingly more executions and purges, even though the threat to the revolution, at home and abroad, had receded. By the summer of 1794 many had begun to turn against Robespierre and his excesses. An uneasy coalition of moderates and revolutionaries formed to oppose Robespierre and his followers. On July 27, 1794 Robespierre was arrested and the next day he and 21 of his supporters were guillotined without a trial.
The death of Robespierre would bring the Reign of Terror to an end and lead to a less radical and less violent phase of the revolution. Executive power was now invested in the hands of a five-member Directory (Directoire) appointed by parliament. The Directory, however, would fail to distinguish itself as an effective governing body. The Directory’s four years in power were riddled with financial crises, popular discontent, inefficiency and, above all, political corruption. On November 9, 1799, as frustration with the Directory reached a fever pitch, a young and brash General named Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’état, abolishing the Directory and appointing himself France’s “First Consul.” The event marked the end of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic era, in which France would come to dominate much of continental Europe.
On the afternoon of July 3, 1863, 12,000 Confederate troops carried out a vain and desperate assault on the Union front along Cemetery Ridge seeking to break the Federal line and steal a victory from the jaws of defeat. The attack, which would cross over a mile of open field and come under a withering storm of artillery was easily repelled. The following day General Robert E. Lee gathered his forces and casualties and began the long retreat across the Potomac, back into Virginia. The second Confederate invasion of the North had again ended in failure.
The second day of the battle of Gettysburg proved as disastrous for the Confederacy as the first day was fortuitous. Every Confederate attack up and down the Emmitsburg Pike was beaten back. The rebels had their opportunities. They had broken the Union lines in spots but strong interior lines and and a reserve of reinforcements allowed the Federals to quickly plug any holes and push the rebels back.
General George Pickett
Despite the failures of the previous day, General Robert E. Lee was committed to continuing the battle the following day. Longstreet continued to argue against any offensive operations but his objections fell on deaf ears. Having attacked the left and right of the Union line with little success, Lee reasoned that the Union center must now be weakened. He incorrectly assumed that the Union Army commander, General George Meade, must have pulled reinforcements from the center to blunt the Confederate attacks on he flanks. Moreover, the last of his army, General George Pickett’s division of Virginians had finally arrived.
Lee’s plan of attack was simple. He would soften up the Union center with an artillery barrage, then, Pickett’s division, augmented by select regiments from Henry Heth and Isaac Trimble’s divisions that bore the brunt of the fighting on the first day, would advance across a mile of open field and strike the Union center. Although the plan was simple, execution was anything but.
The plan began to go awry from the get go. Around 1pm, 150 Confederate artillery pieces in a 2-mile long line along Seminary Ridge opened fire on the Union Center. Their orders were to silence as many Union batteries as possible on the north end of Cemetery Ridge before the infantry advanced. However, the barrage did not inflict the damage on the Union guns that the Confederate leadership had hoped. The immense amount of smoke generated by the cannonade hindered the aim of the Confederate gunners while inferior shell fuses ensured that some Confederate shells failed to detonate properly rendering them ineffective and leaving many Union batteries relatively unscathed.
As Confederate artillery began to run low on ammunition the infantry was ordered to form up and prepare for their advance. Around 3pm, Confederate troops stepped out from the tree line along Seminary Ridge and began to move forward in a mile long front proudly and in good order. Crossing over the Emmitsburg Pike, the rebels soon came under a withering fire from Union artillery. Federal guns atop Little Round Top ripped huge gaping holes in the Confederate right flank while those on Cemetery Hill did the same to the rebel left. Once on the other side of the pike, the attack began to falter as Union gunners along Cemetery Ridge switched to canister shot and musket fire became increasingly accurate and effective. Despite mounting losses the Confederates pressed on until they reached a small stone wall which was their destination. The remaining men rushed the stone wall and brutal hand-to-hand combat ensued. The Union quickly reinforced their lines with fresh men and counterattacked. The rebels, expecting reinforcements that never showed, were forced to flee back to their original lines. As the survivors straggled back to Seminary Ridge, many of them passed Robert E. Lee, who told them, “It is my fault.” The attack failed and with it any hope of victory.
Union forces push back the rebels at the stone wall
In the words of William Faulkner, “For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances…
The Southern rebellion is now doomed. It is just now a matter of time.
On July 2, 1863, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and 350 determined volunteers from the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment beat back repeated Confederate assaults on the Union position at Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg thwarting General Robert E. Lee’s plan for a decisive victory on Northern soil that would secure European recognition of the Confederacy and possibly bring Great Britain and France into the war on the side of the South.
Colonel Joshua Chamberlain
The first day was a clear and unequivocal victory for the Confederates. Lee’s army pushed the Union I and XI Corps south of town. However, Ewell’s failure to deliver the coup de grace and drive Union forces from their stronghold atop Cemetery Hill presented Lee with a dilemma. Should he follow the recommendation of his trusted “Old Warhorse” General James Longstreet to retreat, get between the Union Army and Washington, and to initiate a battle at a time and place of its choosing. Lee, the normally bold and aggressive strategist would have nothing to do with a retreat. He wanted to press his first day advantage.
For the better part of the day Lee and his staff vigorously debated the merits of continuing the battle or retreating. Six out of the seven corps that formed the Union Army of the Potomac were now on the field outnumbering the Confederates. In addition, they occupied a strong defensive position south of town in the shape of a fish hook. Union forces entrenched on Cemetery Hill constituted the barb of the hook while a long line of troops running along Cemetery Ridge formed the shaft. Longstreet argued it was imprudent to attack such a fortified position. However, the left flank of the Union army was exposed, ending at a lightly defended hill with the colorful name of Little Round Top. Here, Lee would focus his attack.
The Confederates began their assault around 4:30 pm led by Major General John Bell Hood’s Division. The right of Hood’s division, General Evander Law’s Alabama brigade spearheaded the attack on Little Round Top. In an effort to obscure their advance, Law’s men scaled the neighboring larger hill, Big Round Top. By the time they were in position to launch their attack, the men from Alabama were already exhausted and without water on what was a sweltering July day. Moreover, Confederate efforts to conceal their intentions went for naught. Union observers spotted the Confederate advance and reinforcements, including the 20th Maine, were rushed to Little Round Top. Chamberlain and his regiment arrived on the scene, taking up a position at the extreme left of the Union line, roughly 15 minutes before the Confederate attack began.
The Confederates stormed up the side of Little Round Top led by the 15th Alabama Regiment. Over the course of an hour, the 20th Maine repulsed two determined Confederate charges seeking to dislodge the Federals, sending the Alabamians tumbling back down the hillside. The Confederates launched a third charge against the 20th Maine as the regiment exhausted its ammunition. Faced with few good options, Lieutenant Colonel Chamberlain quickly ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge downhill to meet the advancing Confederates. Chamberlain’s counterattack would sweep the Alabamians from the field and for all intents and purposes end any further Confederate attacks against Little Round Top.
Despite their setback at Little Round Top, the Confederates would continue their echelon attack up and down the Emmitsburg Pike. The two sides would fight an incredibly bloody battle in the Wheat field in which control of the field passed back and forth between the two sides with the Union ultimately prevailing. Confederate General Ambrose Wright’s brigade of Georgians almost broke the Union line further up the Emmitsburg Pike if it were not for the timely arrival of the 1st Minnesota Regiment that blunted the Georgian advance and sent them retreating back towards Seminary Ridge. A twilight attack against entrenched Union forces on Culp’s Hill by General Edward “Allegheny” Johnson’s division was also turned back. The second day ended as a clear victory for the Union. All of Lee’s assaults had been repulsed. Even though the battle would continue into a third day, it was anti-climatic as the decisive Union victory on day two all but ensured the Confederates defeat.
On July 1, 1863 two Confederate brigades, one from Tennessee and one from Mississippi advanced down the Cashtown pike engaging elements of Union General John Buford’s Cavalry division west of the sleepy little Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Bufford’s mission is clear, Buy time for the first Corp and the rest of the Union army to arrive. Buffords cavalry is able to halt the Confederate advance for two hours allowing the first infantry brigades of the first Corps to arrive on the scene. However, Confederate General A.P. Hill deploys two more divisions and the Confederate II Corps under General Ewell is advancing from the North. By late afternoon the Rebels have taken Semminary ridge and forced the Union forces to retreat south of town. The rout is on. With the sun setting General Lee gives an ambiguous order to General Richard Ewell to push the scattered Union forces from Cemetery Hill, “if practical.” Ewell decides against such action, which becomes a pivotal point in the battle. Day one goes to the Confederacy but Ewell’s failure to act is a major turning point.
Left: The battle at 12:30pm; Center: The battle at 2:30pm; Right: The end of the first day
On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, presumptive heir to the Hapsburg throne, was assassinated in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo by a young Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip in what would prove to be a key turning point in the history of the 20th century. The Archduke’s murder put in motion a series of events that would unleash the greatest calamity the world had known up to that point, World War I. The war would destroy an entire generation of European young men, 20 million dead soldiers and another 21 million wounded. It would not be what U.S. President Woodrow Wilson declared, “the war to end all wars.” It only laid the ground work for an even greater catastrophe twenty five years later, World War II.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Hapsburg empire had become an increasingly unruly multi-ethnic empire with various ethnic groups at odds with each other or agitating for independence. One such problematic group was the ethnic Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a multi-ethnic territory the Hapsburgs seized from the Ottoman Empire in 1874. Ethnic Serbs comprised about 40 percent of Bosnia’s population, many of who were intent on integrating Bosnia with Serbia to form a “Greater Serbia” state, a goal that Serbia encouraged and actively worked to realize. Serbian military intelligence, with or without the consent of the Serbian government, was actively engaged in covert actions to undermine Vienna’s control over the province. One such operative was Colonlel Dragutin Dimitrijević, the leader of a secret Serbian military society, called “the Black Hand” whose aim was to unite all of the South Slavs of the Balkans under Serbian rule. Dimitrijevic, or Apis, as he was better known, was cultivating ties with a group of radical Serbian separatists called the “Young Bosnia” movement that would play a pivotal role in the events leading up to World War I.
Archduke FranzFerdinand
The Archduke was not only Emperor Franz Joseph’s presumptive heir; he was also inspector general of the Austrian-Hungarian army. And in that capacity, he agreed to attend a series of June 1914 military exercises in Bosnia. Franz Ferdinand was dismissive of the Serbs, often referring to them as “pigs,” “thieves,” “murderers” and “scoundrels.” Nevertheless he was also quite sensitive, perhaps more than any other high level official, to the ethnic powder keg that the multi-ethnic Hapsburg Empire had become as it expanded. The Archduke supported reforming the empire from the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy to a a triple monarchy of Slavs, Germans and Hungarians each having an equal voice in government. This idea was unpopular with the Hapsburg ruling elite but Franz Ferdinand saw it as a more effective way of neutralizing the problem of the Serbs than military force that risked a larger war with Russia, Serbia’s ally.
The date selected for Franz Ferdinand’s visit, June 28, unfortunately coincided with another important event in Serbian history. It was the anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Polje in which the Serbs were defeated by the Ottoman Turks and subjugated under Turkish rule for the next 500 years. The battle, in which both Serbian King Lazar and the Ottoman Sultan Murad were killed, plays a crucial role in Serbian national identity and the decision to hold the Archduke’s visit on that day only fanned the flames of dissent among Serbian nationalists even further.
The Archduke and his wife Sophie
News of Franz Ferdinand’s upcoming visit to Sarajevo prompted Serbian radicals associated with the Young Bosnia movement to begin plotting to assassinate him. On the morning of the Archduke’s visit, seven Bosnian Serbs, armed with pistols, bombs, and cyanide capsules likely provided by Serbian military intelligence, fanned out along the expected motorcade route as he and his entourage drove through the city to City Hall. As the motorcade approached the first two assassins, they lost their nerve and failed to act. A third assassin, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, was not so reticent. Shortly after 10:00am, Cabrinovic tossed a bomb at the open roof sedan carrying the Archduke and his wife. The bomb bounced off their car exploding underneath the one directly behind it injuring the occupants. The Royal couple arrived safely at City Hall for their scheduled reception with no further attempts on their lives.
After finishing up their reception at City Hall, Franz Ferdinand made the fateful decision that he wanted to go to the hospital and visit those who had been injured in the failed assassination attempt. This change in plans would end in tragedy. The driver, unfamiliar with the local streets accidentally turned down a wrong side street, just where another assassin, Gavrilo Princip, happened to be standing by chance. As the Archduke’s driver attempted to reverse back onto the main road, Princip pulled out his pistol and fired two shots at the archduke from point-blank range, piercing him in the neck and also striking his wife in the abdomen. Both would die within minutes of their wounds.
Austria-Hungary was convinced that neighboring Serbia was the true mastermind behind the attack and opted to use the crisis to settle its long-standing score with the Serbs. The Austrians hoped to strike a blow against Belgrade and stymie its efforts to unite the South Slavs of the Balkans under Serbian leadership. Their plan, developed in coordination with Germany, was to force a military conflict that would, they hoped, end quickly and decisively with a crushing Austrian victory before the rest of Europe—namely, Serbia’s powerful ally, Russia—had time to react.
Left: The Archduke’s automobile, Right: Princip’s pistol
On July 23, the Austro-Hungarian government issued Serbia an ultimatum in which it blamed Serbia for the assassination and presented Belgrade with a list of demands that it expected to be fulfilled by Belgrade or it would declare war. The Serbs were given two days to respond. The list consisted of ten demands, many of which the Austrian leadership believed Serbia would never agree to accept. Winston Churchill, at the time in charge of Britain’s Royal Navy, called the Austrian ultimatum “the most insolent document of its kind ever devised”. In short, the ultimatum was intended as a pretext to justify war. Much to the surprise of the Austrians, Serbia agreed to almost all of the demands, only refusing to accept a direct investigation by Austro-Hungarian police officers on its territory. Serbia continued to insist that it gave no moral or material support to Princip and the other assassins.
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, exactly a month after the assassination of the Archduke. The declaration set off a chain of events that would plunge the entire continent into crisis. Russia, Serbia’s long-time protector, condemned Austria’s aggression and on July 30 began mobilizing its military forces in support of its ally. Germany followed suit as expected and on August 1, declared war on Russia. At the same time Berlin demanded a declaration of neutrality from France to avoid a two-front war. When Paris refused, Germany felt it had no alternative and declared war on France on August 3. The next day Germany invaded Belgium to attack France. Great Britain, which had pledged to defend Belgium demanded an explanation for German aggression against Belgium. When one was not forthcoming Britain declared war on Germany. The war that all the European powers had long expected finally erupted.
In the early morning hours of June 25, 1950, the army of the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea stormed across the 38th parallel into the Republic of South Korea in an attempt to unify the Korean Peninsula under Communist rule. The war would see-saw back and forth over the next three years with no clear victor. The fighting would end in June 1953 with the belligerents agreeing to an armistice at Panmunjom. However, no peace treaty was ever signed and both sides technically remain at war. The Korean War would demonstrate that the United States would not shrink in the face of Communist aggression. It would also exert powerful influence over the U.S. defense establishment, introducing a new concept known as “limited war,” give birth to the Eisenhower administration’s New Look defense policy, and shape U.S. attitudes toward intervention in and the conduct of what would later become the Vietnam War.
One Peninsula Two Koreas
After Japan’s surrender in World War II, the Korean peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel split two zones of occupation – the U.S.-controlled South And the Soviet-controlled North. There was an understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union that the division was a temporary condition until the Koreans were deemed ready for self-rule. Beyond this rather vague agreement, however, much about the future of Korea was left uncertain.
By 1948, the Cold War was in full swing and the dividing lines in both Europe and Asia, once thought to be temporary, became permanent. The Soviets established a socialist state in the north under the totalitarian leadership of Kim il-Sung and a capitalist state in the south emerged under the authoritarian strongman Syngman Rhee who was installed as the South Korean leader by the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Both governments of the two new Korean states claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea, and neither accepted the border as permanent.
It was clear early on that Kim il-Sung had ambitions to reunite the two Koreas through military force. The North Koreans had been sponsoring a communist insurgency inside South Korea and provoking border clashes with South Korean military forces since 1948 but the naturally cautious leader of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin, whose assistance and approval would be necessary for any invasion of the South was reluctant to give the go ahead. Stalin worried how the US would respond to any invasion of South Korea but three factors would influence his decision making calculus. In 1949, the Soviet Union would successfully test its own atomic weapon and and in October the Chinese Communist under Mao Zedong finally defeated Chiang-Kai-Shek and his nationalists to gain power in China. Lastly, in January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered a highly publicized speech at the National Press Club in which he laid out the United States’ vital interests in Asia and those it was willing to go to war for. In his speech Acheson mistakenly omitted South Korea.
Left: Kim il-Sung, leader of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea; Center: Syngman Rhee, President of the Republic of Korea; Right: Dean Acheson, U.S. Secretary of State
In April 1950, Stalin reportedly gave Kim permission to attack the government in the South under the condition that Mao would agree to send reinforcements if needed. Stalin made it clear that Soviet forces would not openly engage in combat, to avoid a direct war with the US. Kim met with Mao in May 1950 . Mao was concerned the US would intervene but agreed to support the North Korean invasion. China desperately needed the economic and military aid promised by the Soviets.However, Mao sent more ethnic Korean PLA veterans to Korea and promised to move an army closer to the Korean border.Once Mao’s commitment was secured, preparations for war accelerated.
The Cold War Turns Hot
The North Korean Peoples’ Army (NKPA) invaded South Korea at Dawn on the morning of Sunday, June 25, 1950, under the fabricated pretext that South Korean military forces attacked first. Catching South Korean and U.S. military forces completely by surprise, the North Korean penetrated deep into South Korea. U.S. military planners had been fixated on the potential for a major military conflict with the Soviet Union in Europe and did not anticipate that the first test of U.S. resolve and the first military conflict between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their proxies in the new Cold War would be a localized war in Asia on the remote Korean Peninsula.
The United States reacted swiftly to the news of the invasion by immediately taking steps to convene the United Nations Security Council. For, the United States this was not simply a intra-Korean conflict but war against international communism. On June 27th the Security Council asked UN members to provide military assistance to help South Korea repel the invasion. The United States appeal to the UN was successful only because the Soviets were boycotting the UN in protest because of its refusal to recognize the new Communist Peoples’ Republic of China as the legitimate government of the Chinese people. U.S. forces entered the conflict on June 30th but by this time the North Koreans had taken the South Korean capital of Seoul and continued to drive South. Because of the extensive defense cuts after World War II and the emphasis placed on building a nuclear bomber force, none of the U.S. Armed Forces were in a position to make a robust response with conventional military strength. By August, the North Koreans had pushed the South Korean military forces and the U.S. Eighth Army back to the port of Pusan in what would become desperately known as the “Pusan Perimeter.” The North Koreans continued to press the attack on the Pusan perimeter as the US continued to ferry troops in from Japan in an attempt to buy time.
General Douglass MacArthur during the Inchon landing
To relieve the pressure on the Pusan perimeter, General Douglass MacArthur, the overall commander of U.N. and South Korean military forces, planned a bold and audacious amphibious landing behind enemy lines at Inchon. On September 15, 1950, over 50,000 American troops from the 1st Marine Division and the 7th Infantry Division landed at Inchon taking the North Koreans completely by surprise and within two weeks liberated the capital of Seoul. With their supply lines now threatened by the loss of Seoul the North Korean army began to fall back from Pusan and across the 38th Parallel.
The retreat of the NKPA back across the border presented the United States and its U.N. allies with a conundrum, whether or not to pursue them across the 38th Parallel. Up until this point of the conflict, the US and its allies had been on the defensive. The U.N. mandate for intervention only pertained to resisting North Korean aggression. It authorized no offensive operations to reunite the peninsula under democratic rule. Lastly, Chinese leaders began to issue not so subtle warnings to the US that China would intervene militarily in the conflict if the US crossed the 38th Parallel into North Korea. On 27 September, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent to General MacArthur a comprehensive directive to govern his future actions: the directive stated that the primary goal was the destruction of the North Korean army, with unification of the Korean Peninsula under Rhee as a secondary objective. Three days later, Secretary of Defense, General George C. Marshall authorized MacArthur to cross the border into North Korea but to be watchful for any signs of Chinese intervention.
The Chinese Counterattack
MacArthur’s decision to pursue the retreating North Korean army back across the 38th Parallel prompted a great deal of angst in Moscow and Beijing. Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai publicly warned:”The Chinese people will no supinely tolerate seeing their neighbors savaged by the imperialists.” In a back channel warning to the United States, Zhou told the Indian ambassador, that if the American troops entered North Korea, China would intervene in the war. On 1 October 1, 1950, the day that UN troops entered North Korea the Soviet ambassador to China forwarded a telegram from Stalin to Mao Zedong requesting that China send five to six divisions into Korea, and Kim Il-sung sent frantic appeals to Mao for Chinese military intervention. At the same time, Stalin made it clear that Soviet forces themselves would not directly intervene.
Clockwise: Mao Zedong, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, General Peng Dehui
Chinese military intervention to save the North Koreans was not a certainty, despite the repeated warnings that Beijing was sending. MacArthur’s rapid advance posed a clear and present danger for China which could not be sure that the UN forces wouldn’t cross over the Yalu River and try to topple the new Peoples’ Republic or at a minimum install a hostile regime along its border. Mao clearly supported the idea of intervening but other members of the Chinese Leadership were more wary. In a series of emergency meeting from October 2-5, Chinese leaders debated the merits of a military intervention in the Korean conflict before reaching a consensus in favor of such action. To enlist Stalin’s support, a Chinese delegation led by Zhou Enlai arrived in Moscow on October 10. Stalin initially agreed to send military equipment and ammunition but warned Zhou that the Soviet Air Force would need two or three months to prepare any operations. In a subsequent meeting, Stalin told Zhou that he would only provide China with equipment on a credit basis and that the Soviet Air Force would only operate over Chinese airspace, and only after an undisclosed period of time. Stalin did not agree to send either military equipment or air support until March 1951.
Pushing further North, the UN forces captured the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on October 19. That same day, Beijing ordered more than 250,000 “volunteers” under General Peng Dehuai to secretly cross over the Yalu into North Korea. The Peoples’ Volunteer Army (PVA) as it became known, launched its first combat operation on October 25, routing the South Korean II Corps at the Battle of Onjong. A week later, the PVA surprised U.S. military forces, encircling the entire 8th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of Unsan in one of the most devastating U.S. loses in the entire war. The surprise Chinese assault sent the US forces reeling back to the Ch’ongch’ on River unsure whether they were attacked by Chinese or North Korean military forces. In retrospect the events on the battlefield in late October and early November 1950 were harbingers of disaster ahead. They had been foreshadowed by ominous “signals” from China, signals relayed to the United States through Indian diplomatic channels. The Chinese, it was reported, would not tolerate a U.S. presence so close to their borders and would send troops to Korea if any UN forces other than ROK elements crossed the 38th Parallel.
Chinese PVA soldiers inside North Korea
By the second week of November, MacArthur and the rest of UN command finally acknowledged that Chinese military forces had indeed entered the conflict but continued to downplay the significance of the intervention and vastly underestimate the number of forces involved. The PVA had pulled back to regroup after the battles of Onjong and Unsan because of ammunition and food shortages which reinforced MacArthur’s preconceived ideas that any Chinese involvement in the conflict was minimum. MacArthur argued that there were no more than 25,000 Chinese troops inside North Korea, when in fact the PVA now numbered closer to 300,000. Overconfident from his previous success and undaunted by this new foe, MacArthur planned a new “end the war” offensive, a drive to the Yalu, which he promised would end the war by Christmas. The Chinese had other plans.
The UN forces launched their “Christmas Offensive” on November 24 and for the first twenty-four hours they encountered little enemy opposition. However, the Chinese were waiting in ambush and the following evening they carried out a series of surprise attacks against the U.S. Eighth Army along the Ch’ongch’on River Valley almost encircling the entire army. It was soon apparent that the bulk of the enemy forces were not NKPA but organized Chinese Communist units and that there were many more than the 70,000 U.S. military intelligence assessed. On November 27, the Chinese attacked the U.S. X Corps near the Chosin Reservoir, encircling the 1st Marine Division. These forces would eventually breakout after nine days of heavy fighting, and carry out a successful withdrawal to the coast. Pressing their advantage, the Chinese pushed the UN forces 300 miles back down the peninsula and across the 38th parallel with the South Korean capital changing hands a third time on January 4, 1951. The operation which began with such confidence and optimism, was a complete disaster and perhaps the greatest debacle the U.S. armed forces suffered in the entire twentieth century.
As UN forces retreated back down the peninsula and across the 38th parallel, MacArthur warned that the United States now faced “an entirely new war.” He refused to accept any responsibility for the flawed offensive or that he had disobeyed a specific order from the Joint Chiefs to use no non-Korean forces close to the Manchurian border. He denied that his strategy had precipitated the Chinese invasion and argued his inability to defeat the new enemy was due to restrictions imposed by Washington that were “without precedent,” instead of acknowledging his own failure to take the Chinese threat seriously. In December 1950, MacArthur requested permission to use nuclear weapons against the Chinese. He also called for instituting a naval blockade of China, authorization to bomb Chinese military installations in Manchuria and bridges across the Yalu, the deployment of Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist forces in Korea, and launching of an attack on mainland China from Taiwan. Truman flatly refused these requests and a very public argument began to develop between the two men.
The President vs. the General
The complete and abject failure of MacArthur’s offensive and China’s intervention into the war forced a great deal of soul searching amongst U.S. political and military leaders as to what the US and its UN allies could realistically achieve in Korea. Truman and MacArthur each derived completely different lessons from the Chinese intervention. For Truman, it was clear the idea of unifying the Korean Peninsula under democratic rule was pure folly. Beijing made clear that it would never allow such an outcome and further efforts in that direction only risked escalation and a broader conflict. In Truman’s mind, the time had come to return to the pre-war status quo and to end the conflict honorably. For MacArthur, such an approach was tantamount to surrender. MacArthur essentially believed that World War III had begun in Korea and the U.S. had to wage it.
President Truman and General MacArthur at their October 1950 meeting on Wake Island.
Truman was looking for was an opportunity to exit the conflict with U.S. credibility in tact and that opportunity came early in the new year. The U.S. Eighth Army had regrouped from the disaster of the previous year and now under the able leadership of General Mathew Ridgway, began a series of offensives at the end of January 1951 to push the Chinese back across the 38th parallel. The PVA, for all its battlefield success, still suffered from an underdeveloped logistics network. In advancing too far south the PVA had outpaced its supply lines, leaving it vulnerable to a counterattack. On March 18, Seoul changed hands a fourth time, as the Chinese retreated back across the 38th parallel. For Truman and his Pentagon and State Department advisers, the time was ripe to press for a negotiated end to the conflict. The pre-war status quo had been restored and prospects for a much better outcome were dim. Moreover, the mood of the American public was souring on the war. A Gallup Poll in March revealed the Truman’s approval rating had slipped to only 22 percent and people began to refer to the war as “Harry Truman’s War” or “Truman’s Police Conflict.”
Meanwhile, MacArthur, who harbored ambitions of being elected President, continued to insist on prosecuting the war to the fullest extent of U.S. capabilities, even at the risk of a broader war with the Soviet Union. As Truman worked to negotiate a peace, MacArthur announced his own terms for ending the fighting. In a public statement, again without getting any clearance from Washington, MacArthur taunted the Chinese for failing to conquer South Korea. He then went on to threaten to attack China unless the Chinese gave up the fight. He also issued thinly veiled criticisms of Truman and his advisers for their peacemaking efforts. It soon became quite apparent to Truman as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff that MacArthur’s continued challenges to presidential authority posed a direct threat to the principle of civilian control over the military and that he needed to be relieved. On April 5, Republican House Minority Leader Joe Martin read a letter from MacArthur in the House chamber declaring, “There is no substitute for victory.” The letter not only intentionally torpedoed Truman’s cease-fire proposal but now MacArthur was wading in the forbidden territory of domestic U.S. politics. Truman was furious.
Six days later MacArthur was relieved of his command. In a written public statement Truman acknowledged MacArthur “as one of our greatest commanders.” However, he also explained that “military commanders must be governed by the policies and directives issued to them in the manner provided by our laws and Constitution.” In private, Truman was more blunt, remarking, ““I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was,” Truman later said. “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the president.” Public reaction was overwhelmingly against the firing of MacArthur. Tens of thousands of telegrams opposing MacArthur’s dismissal flooded the White House. President Truman himself was booed at a baseball game while MacArthur returned to the United States and was welcomed by huge emotional crowds and a ticker tape parade. Nevertheless, even though Mac Arthur was extremely popular with the public, only 30 percent of the public agreed with his view of escalating the war.
From Stalemate to an Armistice
Truman replaced MacArthur with General Mathew Ridgway, commander of the U.S. Eighth Army, and for the next two years the war settled into a stalemate with no dramatic swings one way or the other, as was indicative of the first year of the conflict. There was still fierce fighting to be sure but neither side made any significant headway. As the stalemate settled in, public opposition to the war grew. In 1952, a politically wounded Truman decided against seeking re-election and General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, was elected President largely on a promise that he would find an honorable end to the conflict. On the other side there were also huge shake-ups. Stalin died in March of 1953 and there was some concern that the new Soviet leadership might not be as supportive of the Chinese and North Korean war effort. That year the United States successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb increasing its destructive capacity. By July 1953, both sides were worn out by the conflict and on July 27, 1953, North Korea, China, and the United States signed an armistice agreement. South Korea, however, objected to the continued division of Korea and did not agree to the armistice or sign a formal peace treaty. So while the fighting ended, technically the war never did.
Eisenhower in Korea shortly after his election
Nearly 40,000 American troops, and an estimated 46,000 South Korean troops, were killed. Casualties were even higher in the north, where an estimated 215,000 North Korean troops and 400,000 Chinese troops died. But the vast majority of the dead—up to 70 percent—were civilians. As many as four million civilians are thought to have been killed, and North Korea in particular was decimated by bombing and chemical weapons.
Aftermath
The Korean War has often been called the “Forgotten War” but its importance is huge. The use of US military forces to defend South Korea against communist aggression gave credibility to U.S. security guarantees and reassured our allies that these guarantees were not empty promises on a piece of paper.
The conflict also introduced the concept of “limited war,” which essentially was at the heart of the Truman-MacArthur feud. A limited war can best be defined as a conflict in which the belligerents restrict the purposes for which they fight to concrete, well defined objectives that do not require the utmost military effort of which the powers are capable and that can be accommodated in a negotiated settlement. Up until Korea, the United States was accustomed to fight wars in which all means of national power were used to achieve the enemy’s unconditional surrender. In World War II the United States used maximum force to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan. However, in Korea, the US needed to limit both its objectives and means in order to avoid escalating the conflict into a broader war with a nuclear armed Soviet Union. The concept of limited war without the possibility of complete and total victory was alien to the American public but it would become norm for many conflicts in the nuclear age.
The Korean War also marked a major turning point in US security affairs, serving as the impetus for Eisenhower’s “New Look” defense policy, with its heavy emphasis on strategic nuclear weapons to deter conflicts both conventional and nuclear. Eisenhower understood the need to stop the spread of communism but he was skeptical of the American people’s’ willingness to support future limited wars. He also questioned the wisdom of sustaining such expensive defense budgets. To square this circle, the Eisenhower administration adopted a purely American solution to the problem. It would replace manpower with technology, nuclear weapons. Essentially, the U.S. proclaimed that any attack, no matter how small, would be met with force disproportionate to the original. The Eisenhower administration calculated that the threat of massive retaliation would be sufficient to deter communist aggression. In reality the policy was flawed because it effectively left Eisenhower without any options other than nuclear war to combat communist aggression in the face of “less than total challenges” such as the 1954-1955 Quemoy and Matsu crisis.
General Mathew Ridgway in Korea
Lastly, the frustration and anger over the Korean War affected not only the U.S. public but the military as well. There was a strong feeling in the upper echelons of the U.S. armed forces that Korea, to quote General Omar Bradley, was “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time,” and that the United States should “never again” fight a land war in Asia for limited objectives. These officers would be dubbed the “Never Again Club” and would include Army Chief of Staff General Mathew Ridgway who commanded the U.S. Eighth Army in Korea and replaced MacArthur after he was dismissed by Truman. Almost a year after the armistice in Korea was signed the United States found itself on the precipice of another land war in Asia as the French were on the verge of defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese communists and were seeking U.S. military intervention. Serious debate within the Joint Staff occurred regarding the use of AirPower and nuclear weapons to save the French but Ridgway led the fight against intervention arguing that the risks far outweighed the rewards. The power and influence of the “Never Again Club” would ebb by 1960 as the Army suffered from resource cutbacks under Eisenhower’s New Look defense policy and searched for new opportunities to demonstrate its relevance and Vietnam would come to be that opportunity.
Tragedy and Farce 