Sounds like an interesting topic I’d like to discuss, but I’m not sure what aspects you’d like to pursue.
Would you like to start a thread to outline the areas of interest to you?
I would be intersted in this thread as well - I think that WWI and its immediate aftereffects would play a significant part.
Yes, RS, Wainwright was there, as were many imprisoned general officers and MacArthur was courteous to each of them to a fault. This did not prevent the owner of his towering ego from putting a roadblock between Wainwright and the Congressional Medal of Honor. As the awardee of the same medal (and his father won one too), perhaps he was galled that a defeated general should be so honored as well. As I said, his intransigence was not successful.
MacArthur was a defeated general in the Philippines, too. He just happened not to be there at the surrender of his forces.
Unlike Wainwright in captivity 1942-45, MacArthur built himself up through remorseless personal propaganda so that his later successes obscured his profound incompetence, worse than Percival’s in Malaya given their respective resources and circumstances, in the Philippines in 1941-42.
I agree that MacArthur is overrated - but you’ve got to give him credit for Inchon.
I’d give him credit for a lot more than that. Although I think he was driven by personal ambition and conceit, as amply demonstrated by his contol of the press and steady stream of personal propaganda which was at times an outright lie in placing him at the battlefront in the early part of the Papuan and New Guinea campaigns, he was a very much better commander on the offensive (admittedly with the advantage of sound resources) when the tide turned against Japan than he was on the defensive in the opening months of the war.
The wartime American perspective on him would be rather different to the Australian one. Down here, he arrived and was presented to us in the face of the remorseless Japanese advance towards us as the hero who would save us (despite having stuffed up the defence of the Philippines, which was conveniently overlooked then and usually now in popular opinion). He was inspirational in that capacity. Like Churchill, his inspirational capacity was not matched by perfection as a military commander, but each landed on their stage at a critical moment and by force of personality and oratory inspired people to follow them to victory, regardless of the dire circumstances each faced.
Like most great men, and women, his real life didn’t live up to the popular image, but it doesn’t detract from him being the architect of some great achievements against the Japanese. Even if he was a mammoth p rick in some other respects.
History is littered with great military geniuses who were numb nuts in other domains. The list is long, but it might be fun to see how many we can come up with.