Department of Defense Files: Telegram
The Commander in Chief, Far East (MacArthur) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff
emergency
C 68572. Re your msg JCS 96060, DTG 081753Z.2 I cannot agree with the interpretation of your paragraph 2 which by reference to [Page 1108] JCS 92801 of 27 Sept would require a reexamination of the mission of the United Nations Command in Korea. On the contrary the present situation is fully covered by the amplification of that directive contained in your JCS 93709 of 10 Oct3 reading as follows.
“Hereafter in the event of the open or covert employment anywhere in Korea of major Chinese Communist units, without prior announcement, you should continue the action as long as, in your judgment, action by forces now under your control offers a reasonable chance of success. In any case you will obtain authorization from Washington prior to taking any military action against objectives in Chinese territory.”
In my opinion it would be fatal to weaken the fundamental and basic policy of the United Nations to destroy all resisting armed forces in Korea and bring that country into a united and free nation. I believe that with my air power, now unrestricted so far as Korea is concerned except as to hydroelectric installations, I can deny reinforcements coming across the Yalu in sufficient strength to prevent the destruction of those forces now arrayed against me in North Korea. I plan to launch my attack for this purpose on or about November 15 with the mission of driving to the border and securing all of North Korea. Any program short of this would completely destroy the morale of my forces and its psychological consequence would be inestimable. It would condemn us to an indefinite retention of our military forces along difficult defense lines in North Korea and would unquestionably arouse such resentment among the South Koreans that their forces would collapse or might even turn against us. It would therefore necessitate immediately a large increment of increase in foreign troops. That the Chinese Communists after having achieved the complete success of establishing themselves within North Korea would abide by any delimitations upon further expansion southward would represent wishful thinking at its very worst.
The widely reported British desire to appease the Chinese Communists by giving them a strip of Northern Korea finds its historic precedent in the action taken at Munich on 29 Sept 1938 by Great Britain, France and Italy wherein the Sudeten Lands, the strategically important Bohemian mountain bastion, were ceded to Germany without the participation of Czechoslovakia and indeed against the protest of that govt. Within 10 months following acquisition of that vital strategic bastion, Germany had seized the resulting impotent Czechoslovakia declaring it had ceased to exist as a sovereign state and that the Reich forces would thereafter preserve order. Of that settlement [Page 1109] our own State Department has this to say in its public document “Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation [1939–1945]”4 page 14:
“The crisis occasioned by the German occupation of Austria in. March 1938 was followed by the Munich crisis in Sept, when the weakness of peaceful efforts toward just settlements in the face of determined aggression was unmistakably demonstrated.”
This observation of the State Department points unmistakably to the lessons of history. I am unaware of a single exception which would cast doubt upon the validity of this concept. In the case of the United Nations such action would carry within itself the germs of its own ultimate destruction, for it would bare its own weakness requiring that it limit the imposition of its decisions and orders upon the weak, not the strong. It is tribute to aggression which encourages that very international lawlessness which it is the fundamental duty of the United Nations to curb.
To give up any portion of North Korea to the aggression of the Chinese Communists would be the greatest defeat of the free world in recent times. Indeed, to yield to so immoral a proposition would bankrupt our leadership and influence in Asia and render untenable our position both politically and militarily. We would follow clearly in the footsteps of the British who by the appeasement of recognition lost the respect of all the rest of Asia without gaining that of the Chinese segment. It would not curb deterioration of the present situation into the possibility of a general war but would impose upon us the disadvantage of having inevitably to fight such a war if it occurs bereft of the support of countless Asiatics who now believe in us and are eager to fight with us. Such an abandonment of principle would entirely reverse the tremendous moral and psychological uplift throughout Asia and perhaps the entire free world which accompanied the United Nations decision of June 25 and leave in its place a revulsion against that organization bordering on complete disillusionment and distrust.
From a military standpoint I believe that the United States should press for a resolution in the United Nations condemning the Chinese Communists for their defiance of the United Nations orders by invading Korea and opening hostilities against the United Nations Forces., calling upon the Communists to withdraw forthwith to positions north of the international border on pain of military sanctions by the United Nations should they fail to do so.
[Page 1110]I recommend with all the earnestness that I possess that there be no weakening at this crucial moment and that we press on to complete victory which I believe can be achieved if our determination and indomitable will do not desert us.
- The source text does not indicate the time of receipt of this message in Washington, but, given the time difference between Tokyo and Washington, it was presumably received early on November 9.↩
- Of November 8, p. 1097.↩
- This message was transmitted on October 9; for the text, see p. 915.↩
- Department of State publication 3580 (Washington, Government Printing office, 1949). This publication was released in February 1950.↩