MacArthur Reconsidered PDF Download

Author: James Ellman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811771598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
James Ellman digs deep, connects the dots, and concludes that General Douglas MacArthur was decidedly not a military genius. One of America's most controversial generals, Douglas MacArthur’s rise through the U.S. Army’s ranks was meteoric. However, he did not lead large formations of men in combat until he assumed command of forces in the Philippines in 1941. When war commenced with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, MacArthur’s performance on the battlefield was a failure: he underestimated the Japanese, and his poorly trained forces were outmaneuvered and outfought by a much smaller invading force. However, in what became a repeating hallmark of his career, he successfully portrayed his actions to much of the American people as brilliant and heroic regardless of victory or defeat. After fleeing to Australia, MacArthur famously announced, “I will return,” and followed through on a quest to retake Manila regardless of its impact on Allied global strategy or its cost in American, Australian, and Filipino blood. In his subsequent role as America’s shogun in Tokyo, MacArthur was again surprised by an enemy he underestimated. The Korean War yielded his greatest victory, at Inchon, but also his greatest defeat, along the Yalu River. Unwilling to accept anything but complete victory, he openly defied President Truman: MacArthur fatally undermined chances for an early peace, planned to seed a great swath of enemy territory with radioactive cobalt, and attempted to widen a conflict which threatened to become a third world war. Raging against his subsequent firing, he only truly faded away after he was publicly criticized by a panoply of America’s greatest WWII generals. Today, MacArthur still polarizes. Many biographies agree he was a great and patriotic leader marred by a few failures. Ellman argues the opposite: MacArthur was a lackluster battlefield commander who suffered stunning defeats while undermining the command structure of our military.

Author: James Ellman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811768481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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On June 22, 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, one of the turning points of World War II. Within six months, the invasion bogged down on the outskirts of Moscow, and the Eastern Front proved to be the decisive theater in the defeat of the Third Reich. Ever since, most historians have agreed that this was Hitler’s gravest mistake. In Hitler’s Great Gamble, James Ellman argues that while Barbarossa was a gamble and perverted by genocidal Nazi ideology, it was not doomed from the start. Rather it represented Hitler’s best chance to achieve his war aims for Germany which were remarkably similar to those of the Kaiser’s government in 1914. Other options, such as an invasion of England, or an offensive to seize the oil fields of the Middle East were considered and discarded as unlikely to lead to Axis victory. In Ellman’s recounting, Barbarossa did not fail because of flaws in the Axis invasion strategy, the size of the USSR, or the brutal cold of the Russian winter. Instead, German defeat was due to errors of Nazi diplomacy. Hitler chose not to coordinate his plans with his most militarily powerful allies, Finland and Japan, and ensure the seizure of the ports of Murmansk and Vladivostok. Had he done so, Germany might well have succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union and, perhaps, winning World War II. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources (including many recently released), Hitler’s Great Gamble is a provocative work that will appeal to a wide cross-section of World War II buffs, enthusiasts, and historians.

Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812985109
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 978

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A new, definitive life of an American icon, the visionary general who led American forces through three wars and foresaw his nation’s great geopolitical shift toward the Pacific Rim—from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of Gandhi & Churchill Douglas MacArthur was arguably the last American public figure to be worshipped unreservedly as a national hero, the last military figure to conjure up the romantic stirrings once evoked by George Armstrong Custer and Robert E. Lee. But he was also one of America’s most divisive figures, a man whose entire career was steeped in controversy. Was he an avatar or an anachronism, a brilliant strategist or a vainglorious mountebank? Drawing on a wealth of new sources, Arthur Herman delivers a powerhouse biography that peels back the layers of myth—both good and bad—and exposes the marrow of the man beneath. MacArthur’s life spans the emergence of the United States Army as a global fighting force. Its history is to a great degree his story. The son of a Civil War hero, he led American troops in three monumental conflicts—World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. Born four years after Little Bighorn, he died just as American forces began deploying in Vietnam. Herman’s magisterial book spans the full arc of MacArthur’s journey, from his elevation to major general at thirty-eight through his tenure as superintendent of West Point, field marshal of the Philippines, supreme ruler of postwar Japan, and beyond. More than any previous biographer, Herman shows how MacArthur’s strategic vision helped shape several decades of U.S. foreign policy. Alone among his peers, he foresaw the shift away from Europe, becoming the prophet of America’s destiny in the Pacific Rim. Here, too, is a vivid portrait of a man whose grandiose vision of his own destiny won him enemies as well as acolytes. MacArthur was one of the first military heroes to cultivate his own public persona—the swashbuckling commander outfitted with Ray-Ban sunglasses, riding crop, and corncob pipe. Repeatedly spared from being killed in battle—his soldiers nicknamed him “Bullet Proof”—he had a strong sense of divine mission. “Mac” was a man possessed, in the words of one of his contemporaries, of a “supreme and almost mystical faith that he could not fail.” Yet when he did, it was on an epic scale. His willingness to defy both civilian and military authority was, Herman shows, a lifelong trait—and it would become his undoing. Tellingly, MacArthur once observed, “Sometimes it is the order one disobeys that makes one famous.” To capture the life of such an outsize figure in one volume is no small achievement. With Douglas MacArthur, Arthur Herman has set a new standard for untangling the legacy of this American legend. Praise for Douglas MacArthur “This is revisionist history at its best and, hopefully, will reopen a debate about the judgment of history and MacArthur’s place in history.”—New York Journal of Books “Unfailingly evocative . . . close to an epic . . . More than a biography, it is a tale of a time in the past almost impossible to contemplate today as having taken place, with MacArthur himself as a figure perhaps too remote to understand, but all the more important to encounter.”—The New Criterion “With Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior, the prolific and talented historian Arthur Herman has delivered an expertly rendered, compulsively readable account that does full justice to MacArthur’s monumental achievements without slighting his equally monumental flaws.”—Commentary

Author: James Ellman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
Douglas MacArthur ascended to the pinnacle of power at the inception of the American Century when his nation established itself as the world's preeminent superpower. Donald Trump's turn came at what appears to be the end of US dominance as we turn inwards and relinquish the mantle of global hegemon to the rising power of China. These two men have arguably inspired both greater adoration and more visceral antipathy than any other pair of Americans. Their long uneven climb to power and rapid fall from grace informs us not only about the weaknesses and strengths of the nation's constitutional system, but also that of ourselves as a people. . . The more one studies MacArthur and Trump, the more their remarkable similarities of ego, fate and path to power shine through.The parallels in their rise and fall reflect the peculiarities of the American Experiment and the nation's belief in its exceptionalism. It should be of no surprise that General MacArthur thought he should be president and President Trump has often referred to MacArthur as his favorite general. Both men rode waves of historical luck and self-promotion to great heights of power, challenged the nation's constitutional order and engendered utter devotion or loathing from millions of Americans.

Author: Mark Perry
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465080677
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
At times, even his admirers seemed unsure of what to do with General Douglas MacArthur. Imperious, headstrong, and vain, MacArthur matched an undeniable military genius with a massive ego and a rebellious streak that often seemed to destine him for the dustbin of history. Yet despite his flaws, MacArthur is remembered as a brilliant commander whose combined-arms operation in the Pacific -- the first in the history of warfare -- secured America's triumph in World War II and changed the course of history. In The Most Dangerous Man in America, celebrated historian Mark Perry examines how this paradox of a man overcame personal and professional challenges to lead his countrymen in their darkest hour. As Perry shows, Franklin Roosevelt and a handful of MacArthur's subordinates made this feat possible, taming MacArthur, making him useful, and finally making him victorious. A gripping, authoritative biography of the Pacific Theater's most celebrated and misunderstood commander, The Most Dangerous Man in America reveals the secrets of Douglas MacArthur's success -- and the incredible efforts of the men who made it possible.

Author: Terry Brighton
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1466859679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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On the 150th anniversary of the world's most famous cavalry charge comes a revisionist retelling of the battle based on firsthand accounts from the soldiers who fought there In October 1854, with the Crimean War just under way and British and French troops pushing the tsar's forces back from the Black Sea, seven hundred intrepid English horsemen charged a mile and a half into the most heavily fortified Russian position in the Crimea in Ukraine. In the seven minutes it took the cavalry to cross this distance, more than five hundred of them were killed. Celebrated in poetry and legend, the charge of the Light Brigade has stood for a century and a half as a pure example of military dash and daring. Until now, historical accounts of this cavalry charge have relied upon politically motivated press reports and diaries kept by the aristocratic British generals who commanded the action. In Hell Riders, noted historian and Crimean War expert Terry Brighton looks, for the first time, to the journals recorded by survivors-the soldiers who did the fighting. His riveting firsthand narrative reveals the tragically inept leadership on the part of the British commander in chief, Lord Raglan, whose orders for the charge were poorly communicated and misinterpreted, and an unfathomable indifference on the part of British officers to the men who survived the battle and were left to tend their wounds and bury the dead in the freezing cold. While the charge overran the Russians, it gained nothing and the war continued for another two years. In finally capturing the truth behind the charge of the Light Brigade, Brighton offers a stirring portrait of incredible bravery in the service of a misguided endeavor.

Author: Stewart L. Winger
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 070062936X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
At the very end of the Civil War, a military court convicted Lambdin P. Milligan and his coconspirators in Indiana of fomenting a general insurrection and sentenced them to hang. On appeal, in Ex parte Milligan the US Supreme Court sided with the conspirators, ruling that it was unconstitutional to try American citizens in military tribunals when civilian courts were open and functioning—as they were in Indiana. Far from being a relic of the Civil War, the landmark 1866 decision has surprising relevance in our day, as this volume makes clear. Cited in four Supreme Court decisions arising from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ex parte Milligan speaks to constitutional questions raised by the war on terror; but more than that, the authors of Ex parte Milligan Reconsidered contend, the case affords an opportunity to reevaluate the history of wartime civil liberties from the Civil War era to our own. After the Civil War, critics of Reconstruction pointed to Milligan as an example of the Republican Party’s abuse of federal power; even historians sympathetic to Lincoln have found it necessary to apologize for his administration’s record on civil liberties during the Civil War. However, the authors of this volume argue that this distorts the nineteenth-century understanding of the Bill of Rights, neglects international law entirely, and, equally striking, ignores the experience of African Americans. In reviving Milligan, the Supreme Court has implicitly cast Reconstruction as a “war on terror” in which terrorist insurgencies threatened and eventually halted the assertion of black freedom by the Republican Party, the Union Army, and African Americans themselves. Returning African Americans to the center of the story, and recognizing that Lincoln and Republicans were often forced to restrict white civil liberties in order to establish black civil rights and liberties, Ex parte Milligan Reconsidered suggests an entirely different account of wartime civil liberties, one with profound implications for US racial history and constitutional law in today’s war on terror.

Author: Tanya Smith Brice
Publisher: ACU Press
ISBN: 0891125973
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Reconciliation Takes Time. A broad racial divide mars Churches of Christ, and courageous leaders from across the United States have joined together to listen to one another. Rather than adopt a posture of resignation, they have met for honest, God-honoring conversation. In Reconciliation Reconsidered, Tanya Brice pulls together the early fruit she has gleaned from this ongoing conversation about racial reconciliation. Learn about yourself in the context of community as you explore these key ideas: •Exercise truth-telling: it's what is needed before any reconciliation can happen •Discover how race relations are not as simple as you think •Challenge your stereotypes •Understand the meaning of current events like the Ferguson shooting in fresh ways •Revisit Christ's teachings with a careful eye toward discipleship and love of your neighbor •Each chapter concludes with discussion questions that can help you and others navigate this perplexing and difficult topic.

Author: William B. Hopkins
Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA
ISBN: 1616732407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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This “important comprehensive study” of WWII in the Pacific examines the high-level decision-making and strategy that led to victory (Roanoke Times). Once the stories have been told of battles won and lost, most of what happens in a war remains a mystery. So it has been with accounts of World War II in the Pacific, a complex conflict whose nature is often obscured by simple chronological narratives. In The Pacific War, William B. Hopkins, a Marine Corps veteran of the Pacific war and respected military history author, opens the story of the Pacific campaign to a broader and deeper view. Hopkins investigates the strategies, politics, and personalities that shaped the fighting. His regional approach to this complex war conducted on land, sea, and air offers an insightful perspective on how this multifaceted conflict unfolded. As expansive as the immense reaches of the Pacific, and as focused as the most intensive pinpoint attack on a strategic island, Hopkins’ account offers a fresh way of understanding the hows—and more significantly, the whys—of the Pacific War.

Author: James Ellman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 153813747X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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The world is warming, our portfolios will have to adapt, and the stocks we own can help shape our future; James Ellman shows how to invest wisely as climate change impacts multiple sectors across the stock market. The costs of global warming and its mitigation will have a major impact on equity market performance over the next two decades. As the climate changes, investors will need to understand which are the best-positioned market sectors and stocks as well as those to avoid. Hot Stocks provides a roadmap detailing how to invest in this new reality. It evaluates the many ways global warming will affect profit flows in the economy: • Impacts of a warmer climate, rising ocean levels, more frequent extreme storm events, land desertification and ocean acidification. • Potential for government taxation on greenhouse gas emissions. • Accelerating switching to renewable power systems that are increasingly cost competitive with those powered by oil fossil fuels. • Government bans on sales of cars powered by internal combustion engines and the electrification of the terrestrial vehicle fleet. • Potential for hydrocarbon reserves and equipment becoming impaired or ‘stranded assets’. • Rising demand for major infrastructure projects to protect valuable coastal real estate from inundation. • Litigation aimed at forcing legacy polluters to pay mitigation costs. The book drills down on how these changes will depress or support stocks in sectors such as the petroleum industry, automakers, renewable power providers, regional banking, property insurance, heavy equipment manufacturers, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and agricultural chemicals. The analysis then pivots away from a US-centric focus to identify those nations around the world whose economies are best positioned to successfully adjust to the impact of rising prevailing temperatures, as well as those likely to suffer the most from the trend.