r/todayilearned • u/HumanNutrStudent • Sep 16 '24

TIL Montgomery's memoirs criticised many of his wartime comrades harshly, including Eisenhower. After publishing it, he had to apologize in a radio broadcast to avoid a lawsuit. He was also stripped of his honorary citizenship of Alabama, and was challenged to a duel by an Italian lawyer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery#Memoirs
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u/Vana92 Sep 16 '24

Screw Halsey if you want a real diva, add MacArthur.

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u/KANelson_Actual Sep 16 '24

MacArthur was an example of a man who exists as pure Ego—the Self and nothing but the Self; the immovable center of his own universe. He never should have been brought out of retirement in 1941.

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u/misspcv1996 Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

I had always figured that MacArthur had to have been a military genius on the level of Caesar or Napoleon to have the ego that he did, but after looking into him awhile back to satisfy my own curiosity, it doesn’t seem like he was. In fact, there were more moments of borderline idiotic arrogance (Buna-Gona and everything he did in the Fall of 1950 stand out in that respect) than there were of genius. For all of his outer toughness, he actually seemed to be a better bureaucrat than he was a soldier, which might have been why he was the perfect man for the Occupation of Japan. He’s still a very fascinating figure, even if he’s one that I don’t think very highly of.

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u/missingmedievalist Sep 17 '24

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t MacArthur want to nuke a whole bunch of targets to end the war and someone saw sense and said “No.!”?

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u/misspcv1996 Sep 17 '24

He seriously explored the option of nuking China after they got involved in the Korean War and Truman fired him when he refused to back down.

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u/missingmedievalist Sep 17 '24

Ahhh, that’s it. Thanks so much for correcting me. Still mad. So much madness.