The Super Summary of World History (90 page)

Figure 76 Map of Korean War

1950-1953

Background
to
Invasion

The Korean War is one of those almost-forgotten conflicts speckling the history of our planet. However, we need to remember Korea because it set the stage for the remainder of the twentieth century and established several foundational rules for the Cold War. America answered a direct challenge from the communist nations of China and the USSR while choosing to restrain the use of its available power. The Cold War had already started, tensions were soaring, and the stakes in Korea were high. The response of the United States of America, its allies, and the United Nations to this blunt challenge altered the course of history.

Before the invasion of South Korea, there were no negotiations, no demands, and no pre-war chest pounding—just pure aggression by way of an unannounced invasion. The United States could have ignored the plight of the small nation, but that would be an open invitation to more Hitler-like conquests. The experience of WWII filtered every decision of the Allies in the Korean conflict.

On June 25, 1950, the communist army of North Korea crossed the thirty-eighth parallel into South Korea beginning its bid to conquer the south. Stalin and Mao endorsed this move.
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Stalin (leader of the USSR) and Mao (leader of Red China), both brutal murdering dictators, decided to
push
Western
ideas
and
control
off
mainland
Asia
. The communist leader
Ho
Chi
Minh
would push the French out of Vietnam and then extend the assault to the rest of Indochina
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thereby driving all Western control off the Asian mainland. In Korea, Soviet-trained troops and massive amounts of Soviet equipment would drive the South Korean army into the sea uniting Korea under communism. Both communist leaders thought America would not interfere in the puny peninsula’s fall. Statements by the American Secretary of State
Dean
Acheson
in 1950 may have led the communist to this conclusion about Korea.
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Even if America wanted to defend, the assault would overrun the peninsula in thirty days, before the United States could respond. The communist dictators further calculated that America would not use the atomic bomb because of moral impediments. No such moral impediments existed in the communist dictatorships.

The
Red
Empires
Strike!

June
25,
1950

The attack on South Korea on June 25, 1950, was an unqualified surprise to American intelligence which had received but ignored information from Taiwan. Some additional clues about a massive buildup of arms and men reached MacArthur’s US Army staff, but it was thought to be unreliable. General
MacArthur
, who was running postwar Japan, did not even have his staff tell the South Koreans; thus, the Soviet buildup of North Korean forces went unnoticed. This kind of surprise would happen repeatedly over the years. The American intelligence services were nearly useless outside of aerial and satellite observation or electronic eavesdropping. Total defeats were imposed on the United States in the field of intelligence and counterintelligence decade after decade. For example, one man working for the US Navy in an extremely sensitive position was a Soviet spy, and he remained so for decades before his discovery. The amount of secret information delivered to the Soviets was beyond calculation, and it cost the lives of several Russians who were working with American intelligence. This disaster continues into 2010 and is a most important problem for the survival of America. Korea was a deep-seated failure for American intelligence organizations, and it should have been a wake-up call for improvement. Somehow, it was not.
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Communist success during the first days of the North Korean attack was so complete it appeared they would conquer the rocky peninsula in mere weeks. Truman moved at once and
without
a
declaration
of
war
from
Congress
to help the South Koreans. Untried American garrison units from Japan arrived to help stop the communist advance. Task Force Smith, one of the garrison units encountering the daunting communist attack, was shattered on first contact. Both American Army and South Korean infantry units were overwhelmed by North Korean human wave assaults supported by Russian T-34/84 style tanks that shrugged off American antitank weapons. Massive barrages from Soviet-supplied artillery swept the battlefield as the North Koreans tore through Allied defense lines scattering the defenders to the four winds.

Exhausted and battered, South Korean and Allied forces were brushed back to their last stronghold at the port city of
Pusan
. Within the tight perimeter, South Korean and American forces rallied to withstand communist attacks. Amid the rain of artillery, thunder of tanks, and crashing waves of screaming communist troops ripping at the defenders of Pusan, there was hope. From the sea came US Navy aircraft smearing the attackers with napalm. Tons of exploding steel flung from the guns of US warships cleaved enemy attacks, and reinforcements moved in to stitch tears in the Allied line. Japan’s airfields disgorged a mass of US Air Force bombers regurgitating death upon the brazen enemy. Far to the north, behind the Pusan perimeter, roads and bridges melted away under US bombardment, multiplying North Korean supply problems. The Soviet trained and supplied troops were not prepared for a US aerial armada projecting carnage and devastation deep behind their lines. Massive numbers of troops need massive amounts of supplies, and as the supplies dwindled so did the combat power of North Korea’s army (logistics . . .
again
). The Soviet preparation of their partners failed to include the impact of naval gunfire which dismayed and splintered the communist troops. North Korea’s leaders began to ponder the possible consequences of failure in the South.

The
United
Nations
entered the war on a fluke. Normally, the
Security
Council
of the United Nations must act before intervention in a war, and any member of the Security Council could veto such an intervention. The Soviet Union was a member of the Security Council and would have vetoed any action aimed at North Korea, but they were absent. The Soviets walked out of the United Nations in protest of another problem and were unavailable to file their veto when the war broke out. Thus, the United Nations could, and did, vote to intervene in Korea in accordance with the UN Charter to protect a nation from invasion. This was the first time the United Nations had acted with significant armed force to protect a nation invaded for the purpose of conquest. It was the best of “collective security” dreamed about by President Wilson after WWI. Unfortunately, it would also be the last until 1990.
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For the most part, the responders were the Western Democracies. The United States of America, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom sent the most troops, but numerous other nations helped as well. Once again, even though it looked like the world was responding, it was the Western Democracies
against the totalitarians of the East. So it had been since Marathon, so it was again.

The US Military was a shadow of its World War II self. The Truman administration had dismantled the world’s best invasion forces after the war. Ships were decommissioned and entire units were disbanded as soon as the war ended. President Truman and his secretary of defense Louis Johnson tried to eliminate the US Marine Corps. After they were through, the US Marines had 27,000 men and a few World War II landing craft. The Marine Corps had to call up its veteran reserve units to build an amphibious force, but they responded at once. These men were experienced warriors and well able to fight and win land battles in Asia. After the problems at Tarawa, the US Marines put large amounts of firepower at the squad level to repel the Japanese human wave suicide assaults (Bonsai attacks) and dig them out of caves and other well placed defensive positions. This additional firepower at the squad level would be critical in the fight for Korea. In addition, naval gunfire and close air support were familiar additions to marine operations. The marines were the first units at Pusan to have extensive previous combat experience in Asia which served them well as they were shifted from one hot spot to another to repulse North Korean assaults on the fragile perimeter.

The US Army also dissipated after WWII, and the men who had destroyed Hitler and Tojo were in civilian jobs by 1950. Many who remained in the army were garrison troops without combat experience or training for a land war in Asia. US equipment was in storage, much of it out of date, and it would take time to assemble. Somehow, against all odds, the US Army managed to get good units to Korea in time to save Pusan. But it was close, and the communists were on the verge of overrunning Korea.

The problems with the US ground and amphibious forces could be traced to the development of the atomic bomb, coupled with the arrogance of the
US
Air
Force
, plus the folly of decision makers in Congress and the Truman administration. The Air Force had become a separate service in 1947, and they decided ground and sea forces were no longer necessary because the atomic bomb made them obsolete. They made this pitch to Congress and the Truman administration. They believed it; thus, non-Air Force budgets were gutted so the new US Air Force could have the needed aircraft and atomic bombs necessary for mid 20
th
century warfare.

Since late in World War I, the air forces of the world wanted a new strategic role not a tactical role. Airmen did not fancy being “flying artillery” under control of ground units. The air forces even chafed at the reconnaissance role which had proved vital in both World Wars because it entailed assignments from ground units. The attitude of the US Navy airmen was poles apart. They felt bombing a ship or enemy units ashore was vital to the fleet, and finding the enemy fleet was accepted as critical to victory. This difference in attitude is explained by the differing corporate cultures and equipment of the two services. The main difference was that naval aviation was small compared to the Air Force, and naval aviation did not stress large bombers because they could not take off from aircraft carriers. In the naval aviation services sinking ships, reconnaissance, and close air support for marines ashore were the primary roles; thus, they did not have the equipment or the numbers to be a decisive factor in crushing a nation from the air. The Air Force thought they did have the equipment and numbers to defeat an enemy from the air.

Using theories developed in the 1920s, air force proponents claimed air units could bomb an enemy nation into submission. This was attempted in World War II, first by the Germans, then by the English in partnership with the United States. Thousand plane raids against the Third Reich and the Japanese empire did not deliver victory. The
US
Bombing
Survey
conducted after the war admitted that the bombing raids did not have the desired impact of causing the enemy to quit the war. Before the war, air theorists had opined that civilian morale would collapse under bombing raids and they would demand their government to stop the war at any cost rather than suffer the bombings that would shatter their lives and cities.
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In fact, civilian morale did not fail and often the bombings stiffened the resolve of the nation to fight on against the heartless villains who destroyed their lives from the sky. Then the atomic bomb was developed and used for the destruction of two Japanese cities. Japan surrendered and millions of lives were spared. Now the US Air Force had its war-winning combination. If wars could be won with the A-bomb, why fund the other services? The US ground and naval forces were dramatically cut. Saving money after the worst war in the history of the world was important to the Western Democracies.

History has a way of bringing irrational hopes to an end rather quickly. The A-bomb was not going to end wars where it was not used, and the A-bomb did not end the need for ground troops or naval units. After the Soviets developed their own A-bomb, new worries about a nuclear war popped up to further dilute the concept that the atomic bomb had ended conventional wars. If no one could use the bomb then wars would go on. After all, who would risk the destruction of the world over a place like Korea? The Western Democracies had cut their militaries too much, and now their soldiers, sailors, and marines were going to pay the piper for the shortsighted decisions of their leaders (
again
, just like WWII).