The Korean War

Although I’ve done a blog on “M*A*S*H”, in which I briefly covered this war, I never did a blog on this war itself.  Coming shortly on the heels of World War II – just 5 years after – it pulled in many WWII veterans.

Phase I.  North Korea kicks ass.  On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army (Korean People’s Army, KPA) launched a surprise attack across the 38^th Parallel and pushed the South Korean (Republic of Korea, ROK) forces all the way down to the very southeast tip of the peninsula, at Pusan.  This small pocket held out against amazing odds.  [M*A*S*H item: Veteran surgeon cracks after too long – Hawkeye is disturbed, as the man was at Pusan.  If a man who survived Pusan can break, what hope is there for anyone who didn’t go through all that?].   In addition to the KPA outnumbering the AROK by 3 to 1, they had also had tanks – the South Koreans had none – and more aircraft.  There were no US forces in South Korea, but there were nearby in Japan.

The US got an UN resolution passed, and sent its own forces from Japan to reinforce the South Koreans.  Troops & tanks, of course, but also overwhelming air superiority which blitzed the KPA.  By September the UN forces were actually breaking out of the perimeter.  Note:  although the US provided the majority of troops, air support, and supplies, the Allied effort was a UN effort.  French and Turkish troops wound up playing pivotal roles in several battles.             

Phase II.  UN kicks ass.  September 15, 1950, MacArthur engineered a brilliant landing at Inchon, which is on the west coast of the peninsula about halfway up.  This was well behind North Korean lines and completely took them by surprise.  South Korea was liberated, and the UN forces rolled all the way up to the Chinese border on the Yalu River.  KPA forces disintegrated and left North Korea almost defenseless.  

MacArthur publicly argued that the UN should invade China, and Truman disagreed with him – and sacked him.  Remarkably, the US had competent military commanders aside from him who managed to get the job done. 

Phase III.  Mao kicks ass.  On October 25, 1950, Mao sent millions of “volunteers” over the border – mostly former Nationalist armies who surrendered after Chiang Kai-Shek fled to Taiwan, relabeled the People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) – to overwhelm the UN forces by sheer numbers.  After the initial shock, the UN forces rallied and held the communist forces…right around the 38^th Parallel – i.e. the original border.  The first half of 1951 involved a series of costly but strategically significant battles between the UN forces and the PVA, ending by June 1951.

Phase IV.  Stalemate.   For the next two years the battle dragged on at that place, neither side gaining an advantage over the other.  Peace talks dragged on, much to Hawkeye’s annoyance.  Mao seemed to be the only one who wanted to continue the war, but Hawkeye never bitched to him (by the time “M*A*S*H” aired, Nixon had made Mao a popular guy in the US).

Chinese forces suffered heavy casualties.   They had little air support.  The .50 machine gun did a great job of slicing through dense ranks of soldiers.  Most of the forces were former Nationalist armies Mao didn’t care about.  Moreover, Mao was trading Chinese lives to get Soviet technology from Stalin.    

Leaders.  US:  Harry S. Truman (until January 1953); Republic of Korea (South Korea): Syngman Rhee; Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea): Kim Il-Sung (grandfather of current leader); China: Mao Zedong; USSR: Josef Stalin.

Tanks. The communists used mainly T34-85s left over from WWII.  The US forces used M46 Patton tanks, which replaced the T26 Pershing tanks originally designed in 1945 but were outdated by 1951.

MiG-15.  This was originally my angle, until I realized that the war itself was a more substantial topic.  The war gave jets an opportunity to show what they could do on a broader scale than WWII, where the ME262 was the only jet to get any substantial airtime. 

            The Russians brought the MiG-15 to the table.  Although they trained North Korean and Chinese pilots, most of the planes were flown by Russian pilots.  They pretended to speak Korean on the radio, but reverted to Russian when under stress and/or swearing.  Since Stalin didn’t want any captured – which would prove the Russians were in the cockpits – they had orders not to fly over enemy territory. 

            The MiGs themselves were highly competitive with the US jets, the F86 Sabres.  They also shot B29s out of the sky fairly easily, which meant the US had to fly those bombers only at night. 

R&R in Tokyo.  Instead of being firebombed, Tokyo is where Hawkeye and Trapper John go for R&R.  Amusing turn of events, as least as far as the Americans are concerned.  Also, my military history professor at UM, Sumida, made an interesting observation.  It seems there were some North Korean prisoners who refused to talk.  The Americans brought in a Japanese officer, merely as an observer.  When the North Koreans saw him, they immediately started talking.  

Armistice, but no Peace Treaty.  Technically the war ended with a cease fire on July 27, 1953, not a peace treaty, so it’s going on right now.  The demilitarized zone was added as part of the armistice terms. 

Uncle Jeff.  The only relative I know who fought in Korea (he also fought in the Pacific in WWII).  Sadly, I can't remember any war stories from Korea.  For that matter, I don't recall him telling stories about WWII.  My Uncle Larry, navigator in a B17, did observe an ME262.  

Movies.  It turns out that there are lots of Korean War films, but I’ve only seen a handful.

M*A*S*H.  The original, with Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye and Elliot Gould as Trapper John.  This had Robert Duvall as Major Frank Burns and Rene Auberjonois – Odo on Boston Legal – as Father Mulcahy.  Gary Burghoff, aka “RADAR” O’Reilly, was the only actor to play in both the movie and the series.

            Since it mainly dealt with the doctors, I don’t really consider it much of a Korean War film.  Moreover, unlike the TV series, which was a comedy, this film is more of a drama, albeit highly irreverent. 

The Manchurian Candidate.  Although the events in question started in Korea – the US squad captured by the Reds – all the main plot takes place in the USA.  Not much of a Korean War movie.

The Steel Helmet.  B&W, made in 1951.  Features a gruff sergeant, a young Korean boy ("Short Round"), a Japanese-American soldier, Tanaka - proud veteran of the 442nd in WWII - and a black medic.  For a movie of that vintage, it pushes a whole bunch of buttons: racism in the US, internment camps, and general discord and nastiness among US soldiers.  I noticed a few Mosin-Nagants and a PPSH.  Thanks, Dave!

Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War.  A South Korean film from 2004, obviously inspired by “Saving Private Ryan” in terms of its direction, editing and pacing. When a South Korean family’s younger son gets drafted into the army, his older brother volunteers to serve so he can look after him.  Bad stuff happens after the South liberates their village which had been overrun and captured by the North Koreans.  Older brother goes apeshit, defects, and becomes a fanatical officer in an elite North Korean unit.  Very intense, and from the South Korean perspective (not US).  But excellent and exciting to watch.

Mao Tse-Tung

I recently finished reading a massive tome, Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. I had actually received it for Christmas in 2010 and only completed it now.  Rather than go into detail about the Chinese leader, some of the book’s more pertinent facts and trends would make a decent summary.

 He was born in December 1893 and died in September 1976, of natural causes.  He married 4 times and cheated on all 4 wives.  The fourth was the infamous Jiang Qing, “Madame Mao” (above), who killed herself in 1991.

 He never brushed his teeth and didn’t bathe.  He denied medical treatment, operas, sex, culture, books, music, etc. to the people of China but fully indulged in all of these himself with no shame.  He had concrete, bomb-proof villas built for him to stay in across the country but rarely visited them in person.  Mao essentially wiped out Chinese culture but didn’t replace it with anything except a bland cult of personality devoted to himself. 

 The Long March was a hoax, as the Reds went wherever Chiang Kai Shek wanted them to go.  Mao’s success in the Civil War (1946-49) was mainly due to several Nationalist generals who were sleeper Reds and essentially delivered their armies to Mao on a silver platter.  George C. Marshall also deserves some blame for this, forcing Chiang to a cease fire which allowed the Reds to reorganize their Manchurian operations at a time when Chiang had been close to wiping them out.  While the book is obviously highly critical of Mao, it pulls no punches re: Chiang, explaining how poorly Chiang vetted his generals – keeping them in command long after their “incompetence” (really simply secret alliance to Mao) became obvious – and how he failed to rein in his corrupt brother-in-law, T.V. Soong.

 The dynamic between Stalin and Mao was especially interesting.  Stalin never trusted Mao, and Mao never liked Stalin.  They saw each other more as dangerous rivals than fellow travelers – they were never friends.  Even after WWII, Stalin insisted on keeping concessions in Manchuria which the Tsars had won decades earlier, e.g. Russians considered exempt from Chinese jurisdiction.  Stalin was also extremely stingy about releasing nuclear and military technology to Mao and only traded on terms extremely advantageous to the USSR, just like he sold tanks, planes and guns to the Spanish Republicans at full price. 

 The “Chinese volunteers” Mao sent to fight in Korea were mostly former Nationalist armies which Mao simply fed into the meat grinder to be slaughtered.  I recall so many “M*A*S*H” episodes where Hawkeye bitches and moans that the Korean War is going on forever, and he invariably blames MacArthur and the US brass, never mentioning the North Koreans or Mao.  The North Koreans wanted the war over – they knew it had been blown.  The US and its allies had no interest in continuing the slaughter.  Mao continued the war because he was angling to get concessions from Stalin, particularly nuclear weapons and military factories, essentially trading Chinese lives for technical know-how from the Soviets. 

 Likewise during the Vietnam War, Mao was willing to sell out the North Vietnamese if it meant getting favors from Nixon, since by that time the Russians had long stopped helping the Chinese.  The last thing Brezhnev wanted was to give Mao missiles he could use to nuke Moscow.  Having alienated Krushchev, then Brezhnev, Mao’s source of expertise dried up in the mid-60s.  The Chinese couldn’t build jets or helicopters that wouldn’t fall out of the sky.  Mao threw money at Third World countries (bought with Chinese lives starved to pay for the hard currency), who accepted the aid with a “big smile” but wouldn’t reciprocate with anything useful.  Albania was Mao’s lone ally and even Hoxha berated Mao for cozying up to Nixon. 

 I recall my high school history teacher laughing that “Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom”, a late 50’s campaign of openness (what Gorbachev would later call “glasnost”), resulted in an embarrassing explosion of gripes and complaints against the regime, but according to this book, Mao was well aware of his unpopularity and used the campaign as a way of luring his critics out into the open.

 Mao knew his Great Leap Forward in the early 60s was killing the Chinese peasants, but like Lenin before him, was indifferent to the millions of deaths by artificial famines.  The grain was shipped to Russia to pay for military factories, nuclear technology, and Mao was especially hoping for ICBM technology.  This much was evident for ages:  Mao was yet another dictator who did not care how many people died because of his policies and did whatever he wanted. 

 One son died in the Korean War, the other was mentally handicapped. With Kim Il Sung’s death in North Korea, it has been mentioned that “even Mao” did not favor hereditary succession, but he had no suitable male heirs to appoint anyway.  Even if he had, he probably wouldn’t have done so, out of paranoia that his son would probably dispatch him prematurely.  He told Deng Xiaoping, the man he guessed (correctly) would most likely succeed him, to consider open season on his wife.  What happened to China after his death was not his concern.

 In some ways Mao reminds me of George W. Bush and Warren Harding: politicians who had no genuine skills in any line of work or profession EXCEPT politics.   Mao was an indifferent student, never had a real job or legitimate skill, and his sole talent seemed to be getting himself into power and remaining there.  He was ruthless about sacrificing others to his ambitions: whether it was Red armies commanded by his political rivals thrown to Chiang in the 30s; Nationalists forced to fight the Japanese, with no help from existing Red armies, because Mao wanted Chiang to wipe himself out fighting the invaders; and during the Cultural Revolution, dozens of cadres sacrificed and disgraced, tortured, imprisoned, and executed, either because they had opposed his famine-inducing policies of prior years or simply because he considered them dangerous rivals.  Outwitting political opponents, all this “sausage-making” and behind-the-scenes intrigue, back-stabbing, manipulation, etc. were what Mao knew best, really the only thing he knew how to do.  None of this was motivated by any genuine affection for China or its people – for anyone except himself.       

The Vladimir Ilyich Code

Recently I caught “The Da Vinci Code” on DVD at last, followed up immediately by seeing “Angels & Demons” in the movie theater.  Having seen “National Treasure” (both of them) earlier, the similarities were striking.  I suppose you could call “The Da Vinci Code” the Catholic version of “National Treasure”, or “National Treasure” the American version of “The Da Vinci Code”.

 Maybe expand the franchise to include a communist version, the “Vladimir Ilyich Code”.  Putin has been murdered, and to solve the crime, the Moscow Militia calls in veteran Kremlinologist – but non-communist – Richard London.  If anyone can get to the bottom of this crime, it’s him!  No one knows more obscure communist mythology, trivia, and minutiae than this man – even veteran Politburo members can’t remember half the stuff this man has forgotten!  Plied with vintage Stolichnaya and some rare Lenin pamphlets, he agrees to take the case.

 He starts in Moscow, but wait – he has to borrow Lenin’s embalmed body to find a crucial clue…

 Which leads him to St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, where some Rasputin-oriented clue leads him to….

 Sverdlovsk, formerly Ekaterinburg, where the Romanovs were murdered by Ermakov and his henchmen, which leads him to…

 London!  To Karl Marx’s grave, and the tombstone provides the obscure and counterintuitive hint to another clue in…

 Beijing!  It turns out something to do with Chairman Mao – oops, can we borrow his embalmed corpse for a bit? – will lead us closer to the answer, in…

 Hanoi! Something Ho Chi Minh wrote way back when, before he died in 1969, will tell us to go to…

 Paris!  Where he helped form the French Communist Party in 1920, but wait, his clue leads us back to….

 Moscow!  And the killer is….

Communism vs. National Socialism vs. Capitalism

This is NOT a rehash of my GULAG v. HOLOCAUST blog, nor is it an attempt to apologize for or glorify National Socialism, but more of an overall discussion on a wider topic, authoritarianism vs. totalitarianism vs. capitalism.

Authoritarian regimes are typically the right-wing dictatorships and juntas, such as Brazil’s military from 1964-85, Marcos, Pinochet, Salazar, Batista, the various South Vietnamese governments from 1955-75, etc.  Really you just have a thug or general who wants power for its own sake, little excuse beyond that, and all he cares about it making sure he gets his “piece of the action” and enough pussy (or whatever his particular vice happens to be).  He has no grand vision, no big plans, no grandiose scheme or desire to micromanage the entire country down to the last molecule – and no pretensions thereof.

Totalitarian regimes are what we think of like 1984, where the state encompasses the entire society and attempts to control literally everything.  With the exception of Nazi Germany, they are invariably communist regimes: Soviet Russia, Red China, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea.  From cradle to grave, the regime seeks to modify not merely our behavior but our very thoughts.  Unlike authoritarian regimes, which rarely bother to justify their existences, power, or authority, totalitarian regimes cloak their actions in the veneer of ideology and moral superiority.  “We represent the PEOPLE – if you oppose us, you oppose the people, and must be struck down.”

Class.  According to Marxist doctrine, there are three classes: the aristocracy (kings, queens, nobles), the bourgeois (merchants and capitalists), and the proletariat (workers and peasants).  Under feudalism, the aristocracy rules, with a small but growing bourgeois class.  Eventually the bourgeois overthrows the aristocracy and institutes capitalism, then sets about exploiting the proletariat until it too is eventually overthrown in a proletarian revolution - and we get socialism.  Eventually the state withers away to a point of anarchy called communism, and we all live happily ever after.  “Communist” regimes are actually socialist, as true communism has never been achieved in any country – nor is it ever likely.

Under a socialist dictatorship, the state is supposedly the legal representative of the proletariat.  The bourgeois are dispossessed and thrown into re-education camps to be rehabilitated into socialist society.  Without any class besides proletariat, such a society is, theoretically, classless.  By comparison, under the fascist/National Socialist dictatorship, all three classes are subjugated to the state, which represents the people.  Worker, farmer, businessman, industrialist, all are enslaved to the state.  For this reason, fascists and communists ostensibly hate each other and oppose each other vigorously, yet the reality is that they have far more in common than the theoretical ideological deviations would suggest.

In many countries in Western Europe, the socialist party has taken power, yet without installing the dreaded dictatorship of the proletariat.  Instead, they maintain the market system, individual rights, and otherwise a capitalist democracy, though with 90% taxes, free health care, free education, 40 hour work week, pensions, etc.  These are essentially capitalist countries with substantial doses of socialism added.

Stalin v. Trotsky.  Neither had much of any ideological differences with the other: Trotsky was merely the loser of the power struggle.

Cult of personality.  Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Tito, Ho Chi Minh, Ceaucescu.  Despite being about “the people”, communist regimes oddly focused on strong single personalities, individual leaders.  The reality was, none of these leaders cared about the people: they simply cared about power for its own sake, and were predictably brutal and ruthless about suppressing revolt even from within the proletariat.  Lenin dismissed reports of cannibalism among Ukrainian peasants by laughing that this meant they were too weak to oppose him.  The rare examples of sincere patriots inevitably became the first victims of the purges, in which the revolution weeds out the idealists in favor of the pragmatists - who are the only ones devious and ruthless enough to survive or prosper under such regimes.

1984 & Animal Farm.  George Orwell’s pair of books, each explaining these concepts in a different way.  1984 examines the nature of the state itself, which ultimately exists for its own sake, against its own people.  Ayn Rand once defined “dictatorship” as a war between the government and its own, legally disarmed, people.  And this is explained in even more detail in the book Winston reads, provided to him by O’Brien, who is pretending to be part of the resistance but is in fact an officer of the secret police.  Odd, though:  O'Brien turns out to be more of a source of information to Winston than the other way around, and the torture Winston endures is not to extract information - he knows far less than O'Brien does, and little of value - but to corrupt him, force him to betray his lover, and destroy him as a person and an individual.  Indeed, the movie "The Lives of Others", concerning a Stasi agent in East Berlin in the mid 80s, shows that the quality of life of the secret police really wasn't that much better than that of the poets, playwrights, actors, etc. who were the victims of the police state.  It was all one big  dark, depressing prison for everyone concerned.

            Animal Farm works on several different levels.  The animals sincerely want liberation from their human master, and were reasonable in following the pigs’ revolution.  But you can also see how the worker – Boxer, the horse – is ultimately exploited by the same revolution, and how the pigs eventually took over the same role as the human farmer.  Even the vicious, snarling, dogs act as the enforcers for the pigs.

Nazi Germany.  The notable exception, the only totalitarian regime which was not communist.  The Nazis had an ideology, a Final Solution, the SS, the Gestapo, and the will to carry it out.  Hitler had a master plan, as described (vaguely) in Mein Kampf, for anyone patient enough to read it.  Cloaked in German nationalism and anti-semitism, the Nazis terrorized not only the Jews and subject occupied nations, but their own people, as willing victims, co-conspirators in mass insanity as they may have been.  But while the world is fairly unanimous in challenging and condemning this form of totalitarianism, equally oppressive and evil forms – especially Soviet Russia – found no shortage of “useful idiots” apologizing for, or even supporting, their ideologies.  Tom Morello, I’m talking to you...

Statism vs. capitalism.  For all its faults, capitalism remains the ideal form of economic system.  Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes (Nazi and socialist) can be collectively referred to as statist or collectivist.  They boil down to the priority: individual vs. collective, the needs of the many vs. the needs of the few.  The cruel irony of collectivist regimes is that in their rampant and fanatic devotion to “the people”, “society”, “the collective”, etc. they completely negate the individual, yet society is, ultimately, nothing more than an aggregate of individuals.  The ultimate minority is, of course, the individual, who is the ultimate victim, the sacrificial offering to the sacred collective.  By destroying the individual as a person with any rights or importance per se, the collectivists ultimately destroy themselves.  Without freedom for the individual, there is no freedom for anyone.

The response to this, from most socialists, is that left to its own devices, capitalism produces various market failures: poverty, hunger, economic injustice, inequality of wealth and income.  Politics and economics, the distribution of scarce, limited and finite resources, is too important to be left up to the whims, caprices, and apparently random vicissitudes of at best an impersonal market and at worst an aggregate of sometimes monopolistic and oligopolistic markets.  Why leave this to chance, when there are highly intelligent planners who can redistribute wealth and income, and micromanage the entire country, far better?  If we need to do this by a brutal dictatorship, well, so be it – better than being run by Big Business, right?  Raise the spectre of a country run by GM, IBM, Ford, or Bill Gates to scare us into the arms of Big Brother.  (Comrade Moore & Comrade Nader will be happy to oblige).

Who are these geniuses?  They’re the socialists themselves.  Have we ever met an avowed socialist who was not highly intelligent AND fully confident in his or her intelligence and wisdom (e.g. Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, or Christopher Hitchens).  The one problem with their “brain the size of a planet” issue is that no two socialists can ever agree on anything (see “Life of Brian” for this symptom of continually splitting socialist factions).  Fortunately for us, that is.  But there were no shortage of highly intelligent opponents to collectivism, including, but not limited to, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ludwig von Mises.  Bottom line is that for all its faults, capitalism keeps us free – which is far more than can be said for its alternatives.