The Ice and Fire Battle between Dorrenon and Wheat Pipe: What was the Korean War Like from an American Perspective?

June 25, 1950, an ordinary Sunday. Despite being the most powerful man in the world at this time, the pressure of Congress because of the loss of Chinese mainland still overwhelmed Truman, a former Missouri farmer, who took advantage of the weekend to hide on his hometown farm to clean up.

Suddenly, the silence was broken by an emergency phone call, which was spoken by Secretary of State Acheson, who brought the message: "The Korean People's Army has crossed the 38th line and launched an attack to the south."

In the past five years in power, Truman has become accustomed to seeing strong winds and waves. Countless storms from the Berlin crisis to the suppression of KKE have made his nerves very strong. But the crisis really shocked him. Because although the two koreas have clashed thousands of times in the past few years, large and small, the United States never imagined from top to bottom that war would break out at this time. After all, in the face of the dazzling United States of Nations, Churchill and de Gaulle were no more than toothless tigers, and Stalin could only carefully lie in the air and sell the Communist Parties of Greece, France, and Italy one by one to avoid displeasing the United States. As for New China, although it had sporadic exchanges of fire with marines stationed in north China from 1945 to 1947, it absolutely did not dare to engage in direct conflict with the United States.

Truman said he was going to return to the White House overnight, but Acheson told him that Mr. President had better come back tomorrow and not cause panic in the country because of this incident.

Truman tossed and turned, having trouble falling asleep. The only thing that made him feel that he had not completely lost control was that the boots of the Korean Peninsula had finally fallen.

What kind of Korean War did the Americans go through? What did they see as the Korean War? The gold lord dads buckled Q to get into the car.

Who drew the first and third and eighth lines?

Let's turn the clock back to 1945. After the Battle of Berlin, the Soviet Union completed the most imposing mobilization and campaign build-up in human history in two months. 2 million people crossed Eurasia, deploying from Eastern Europe to the Far East and Transbaikal regions. The fourth man of the army, Marshal Vasilevsky, with three fronts of the Nazi Army, which had crushed the most powerful Nazi army ever made in Western Europe, launched a centripetal assault on Shenyang and Changchun from the east and west. The million Kwantung Army was vulnerable and was rapidly divided and surrounded. After Japan's surrender on August 15, the Soviet army did not stop advancing, and on the 16th landed in Chiangjin, North Korea, cutting off the retreat route of the Kwantung Army to withdraw to the mainland through Korea. On the 22nd, it conquered Pyongyang, and on the 23rd, it crossed the 38th Line and approached Seoul. This speed of attack on the plains of Eastern Europe left the American top brass unprepared.

At this time, the main force of the American army was still concentrated in Ryukyu. In the face of the Soviet offensive, 24th Army Commander Hodge led three infantry divisions to hurriedly land on Busan and Inchon, and rushed to the 38th Line. But at this time it was already September 8, according to the speed of the Soviet army's previous advance, it could have drunk the Sea of Japan at the end of August, why did it leave such a big gap for the US army?

At the time of the rapid collapse of the Kwantung Army, the United States was considering how to extend its hand to the Korean Peninsula. Before the Japanese surrendered, the Army staff in Washington had to quickly come up with a procedure for accepting the Japanese surrender. Among them, how to divide the Surrender Area of the Japanese Army on the Korean Peninsula is a headache for the US military high-level, and the tight time does not allow slow and meticulous craftsmanship. Assistant Secretary of Defense McIlroy called in in the early hours of the morning to Army staff officers Colonel Bonistier and Colonel Lasker and asked them to come up with a practical plan as quickly as possible while the Soviets had not yet occupied the entire Territory of the Korean Peninsula.

The two staff officers had intended to study the administrative divisions of the Korean Peninsula slowly, but found that they only had a map of the world in their hands, and the Korean Peninsula itself was not much of a place. In the end, they chose the thirty-eighth parallel north as the boundary between the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union to divide the spheres of influence, on the one hand, this line seems to divide the Korean Peninsula into two equal parts, and Seoul is also south of the 38th line, so they hastily wrote the latitude on this map into the drafting order No. 1. The Soviets had no objection to this, and it was probable that they stopped after crossing the 38th Parallel for the sake of exchanging Japanese interests with the Korean Peninsula. The Korean Peninsula was thus split in two.

In 1948, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Korea, and six months later, american troops also withdrew. But in this way, Rhee and South Korean right-wingers cannot sit still. In order to consolidate his political power, he first assassinated Kim Jiu, the father of the South Korean nation, and then vigorously purged the opposition forces at home, and even called for the armed force to move northward, creating a tense atmosphere on the peninsula in an attempt to get the US military to return to the peninsula. The result was self-defeating, not only did the Americans not take the bait, but also angered Kim Il-sung.

On January 12, 1950, Acheson publicly shouted that the U.S. defensive circle in the Far East did not include the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan, and at a dinner in Pyongyang on January 17, Kim Il Sung told Soviet Ambassador Stikov that China had been liberated and that it was time to liberate the Korean people.

The 110,000 People's Army is poised to attack, and there is no room for maneuver between the north and the south. In the end, Syngman Rhee was not waiting in Seoul for the U.S. military, but for the KPA's T-34.

After hurriedly returning to Washington, Truman organized cabinet members and senior Defense Department officials to discuss the situation in North Korea. Soon, three countermeasures came out in a hurry. First, MacArthur, emperor of the Far East, was authorized to provide "necessary assistance" to South Korea; second, the U.S. Air Force could bomb ground forces of the Korean People's Army; and finally, ordered the Seventh Fleet to sail to the Taiwan Strait. In fact, this series of actions is to prevent the defeat of South Korea and Taiwan from creating a knock-on effect and causing the US military in the Far East to lose all strategic pivots.

The slightly rusted but still huge war machine began to turn, the mountains and rain were about to come and the wind was coming, the entire Far East was full of clouds, and the great war was about to break out, and Truman and his staff did not expect that the first life-and-death battle of a million troops since the end of World War II was about to be staged.

Second, the handsome will lose peace! Truman and MacArthur's feud

However, the Korean battlefield at this time was simple and tedious compared to a year later, and the South Korean army, which was adapted from the police force and the Japanese puppet army, was on the verge of collapse in front of the former Soviet tank soldiers and the infantry of the former People's Liberation Army, and could only be supported by the US Navy and Air Force under the cover of the Busan defense circle. However, due to the long supply line and logistical supply difficulties, the KPA was unable to conquer Busan in one fell swoop, and for a while the two sides were deadlocked in the southeast of the peninsula.

After using the Eighth Army to stabilize the defense of the Daejeu-Busan line, MacArthur was determined to use his experience in World War II landing warfare to land at Inchon near Seoul, cut off the entire Korean Peninsula, and take advantage of the situation to encircle the main force of the front-line People's Army and completely solve the Korean problem. Although old-school naval officers considered Inchon the least suitable location in the world to land, MacArthur was determined to give it a try at great risk. Although the subsequent chaos allowed the main forces and command of the KPA to flee back to the north of the 38th Parallel before being encircled, the landing at Inchon quickly reversed the situation on the Korean battlefield. The KPA, which was tired of division veterans, was simply unable to counterattack in the face of the US army, which had a huge numerical and technical superiority, and was gradually defeated. The success of the Inchon landings and the victory of the battle won greater prestige for the out-of-the-air Mai Da Pipe, so he dismissed the warning issued by the New China on September 30 and ordered the United Nations army to cross the 38th Line and capture Pyongyang on October 19, a day of great significance. On the same day, 300,000 volunteers crossed the Yalu River into North Korea and were about to collide with the First Cavalry Division at Unsan.

Strictly speaking, Truman was a man who did not like to be too high risk and gamble. He was always worried that the Wheat Pipe would ignore the warnings of the Soviet Union and new China too much, and cause irreparable disasters in Asia. So he asked MacArthur to return home to report for duty. In fact, before that, Truman had twice conveyed through Marshall and Eisenhower the hope of returning to meet him, and the wording was very humble, but was flippantly rejected by The Pipe of Maceda. At this time, MacArthur, who was in the limelight, had no respect for his former opponent in the presidential campaign and his current boss.

Truman, a humble old farmer, decided to put up with it again, and went to the ocean, condescending to MacArthur's territory of Wake Island to discuss the Korean War with Marshal MacArthur. At the meeting, MacArthur had no regard for his boss's feelings, and although he knew that Truman hated others to smoke, he still took out his pipe and pretended to be even provocative and asked Truman if he could smoke? Truman put up with it again.

At the meeting, when Boss Du carefully inquired about the possibility of the Soviet Union entering the war with China, Marshal Mak was dismissive. In his view, Chinese without the Air Force, if they tried to advance to Pyongyang, they would surely suffer the heaviest casualties in human history. According to Assistant Secretary of State Lasker's recollection, MacArthur arrogantly said at the time that he did not understand at all why China should take care of this file, and they would regret it.

In the eyes of the Wheat Pipe at that time, he had the courage to say this. He once asked his intelligence chief, Willoughby, whether the Chinese army had planes, tanks and artillery. Willoughby's answer was no or insignificant. The Wheat Pipe said, "Then how I wish they would go to war."

Behind these words is Marshal Mak's confidence in the strength of the US military and his contempt for new China. Before the first battle, Marshal Mai clamored for an end to the war before Thanksgiving. Even after suffering losses in the first battle, the Tenth and Eighth Armies were ordered to advance east-west to end the war before Christmas. As for the result, we all know that the U.S. military spent an icy Christmas in the snow on the peninsula.

Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Carol Dietz fought in the Battle of Lake Balaton as an observer. It was the last elite large-scale Offensive of the Germans of World War II, involving 20 infantry divisions and 11 armored divisions. But in his eyes, even the deadly battle of thousands of tanks on the shores of Lake Balaton was far less fierce than the Battle of Chosin Lake. In fact, this was the common impression of most Allied soldiers in the second campaign: heavy snow, ubiquitous volunteers, demoralized wounded soldiers, and a road of collapse with no end in sight.

With the loss of Seoul by the Americans in the third campaign, MacArthur's fiasco made the seemingly invincible Americans seem to be easier to fight than Chiang Kai-shek, and the volunteers even set up a flag that reflected the American troops: "From north to south, one push is finished, eliminate the devils, go home for the New Year."

Bradley, the theoretically highest-ranking officer and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also took the opportunity to say cool words, Chinese fooled the always correct military genius, and MacArthur could not fight Peng Dehuai. Even Marshal MacArthur's subordinate, Ridgway, who later saved the situation between the United Nations army and North Korea, spewed wildly in his memoirs: MacArthur could do nothing but reinforcements and atomic bombs.

During the fourth campaign, Ridgway quickly captured the volunteer army's undersupply fighters, and used his self-created "magnetic tactics" to attack all the way north, re-advancing the front line to the vicinity of the 38th Line. At this time, the TOP level of the United States fell into an extremely contradictory mood. Even the most hard-line anti-communist Secretary of State, Acheson himself, felt that being able to fight back the 38th parallel had saved the dignity of the UN army and could be accepted as soon as it was good. So Truman also began to ask the State Department and the Department of Defense to formulate a policy of armistice negotiations at this time.

One day in March 1951, the NSA sent a top-secret telegram to Boss Du's desk, a telegram sent to his government by the Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors detected by U.S. intelligence in Tokyo. The contents of the telegram were summaries of the ambassador's briefing to the government on conversations with the Maceda pipe. MacArthur not only ridiculed his bosses, but also said he would continue to expand the Korean War to completely eliminate communist forces in Asia. The focus has always remained in Europe, and Boss Du, who does not want to make a big deal in Asia, completely broke out after reading the telegram, which in his view is a serious act of gramming and must pay a price.

But even at the last minute, Truman wanted to maintain basic decency, and he was ready to issue a presidential statement to express his diplomatic efforts. But on March 24, before Boss Du issued a statement, Marshal Mak preemptively shouted in Tokyo: ... Now we have largely eliminated the organized communist army in South Korea... Within my authority as military commander, I am ready to meet with the commander of the enemy army on the battlefield at any time.

The statement, in the words of the Joint Chiefs of Staff report, was that the UN commander could not find a more effective way to provoke the president.

This statement not only violated the "statement of foreign policy without permission" signed by Boss Du, but also contradicted the content drafted by the State Department, which made all Truman's preparations for the armistice in vain, basically tantamount to shouting to New China and North Korea: The Allies are ready to mobilize all their forces against the volunteers. And it is a blatant provocation to the American leadership system.

The angry Boss Du immediately summoned his staff and said: ... Since the Wake Island meeting, I had counted on him to respect the president's authority. I realized that I myself had no choice but to dismiss the nation's supreme battlefield commander.

Acheson, who had been robbed of his diplomatic powers, also fell to the ground: MacArthur was a dirty farmer!

On April 6, Truman summoned Acheson, Marshall, and Bradley to make it clear that he was going to remove MacArthur, and those present said that it was time to do so.

On April 11, Truman announced on global radio that MacArthur had been dismissed and that the commander of the United Nations forces was acted by Ridgway. Boss Du finally punched him in the face successfully.

The Korean War officially entered the most dangerous second half, and the next period of the 38th line series continued.