The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War | David Halberstam

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War | David Halberstam | The Coldest Winter

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The Coldest Winter...

	The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War David Halberstam Hyperion, 2007 - 736 pages average customer review:based on 133 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Good Solid Story of the Causes of the Korean war & Fall of MacArthur

While this is not a complete story about Americas Most Forgotten War- The Second Korean War. (We fought a brief Campaign in Korea during the Post Civil War Era of showing the Flag) It is however a brillantly written story of the fall of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and one of our greatest military defeats of the Cold War. (Korea has a lot to teach us about the way the world works if we were to take heed of its lessons offered.)
While it has been previously & rightfully pointed out in the other reviews, some minor errors of details in this book. None the less the Author (who will be sorely missed by this reader) creates an excellent overview of the causes of the war & the tragic fall of a great but in no way perfect American Icon. Altogether this book is well worth the time and coin to get and read if one is interested in this period of American History.
As an added plus two forgotten but excellent - Generals Walker & Ridgeway are brought back into the light. Walker being the fellow who with an ill trained, equipped, supported and poorly led Army fought the Ruthless North Korean Army to a Standstill at the Pusan Perimeter.
Ridgeway who later on took over the 8th Army after the death of Walker in a jeep accident. Proceeded to make it into one of Americas Premier Fighting Armies and gave the Communist a severe whipping on the field. Ridgeway also later on helped delay Americas entry into Vietnam for almost 10 years.

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The Coldest Winter

Accurate historic account of the Korean War. I remember the grueling hardships I endured to survive and this account was more accurate than most I've read.

Outstanding work.

This fine work on the Korean War sets the bar at a new level.

Simply Outstanding.

A Powerful Indictment of MacArthur

Whew! This is some read - great writing, heroes and villains, fatal errors of judgment and wonderful heroism all encompassed in Halberstam's last book.

Most of the dominant players in the book are well known - Truman, MacArthur, Stalin, Mao, Marshall. The author paints good portraits of Truman and MacArthur and their intense dislike for each other.
As a keynote speaker on communications I find it intriguing that Douglas MacArthur's speech to Congress - Old Soldiers Never Die - is treated as being one of history's great speeches. The man was a megalomaniac whom Halberstam suggests cared for no one but himself. His speech to Congress (as we Irish like to say) full of blarney, but blarney that had cost the lives of many. The author records many instances to indict MacArthur, but the simplest and most basic one is this man did not spend one night in Korea during the war. That is just mind-boggling.

MacArthur was badly served by a bunch of sycophantic nincompoops, who not only kow-towed to his every wish but deliberately misled Washington about what was really happening in Korea. The biggest culprit here was MacArthur's intelligence chief Brigadier General Charles Willoughby whose deliberate manipulation of intelligence cost the lives of many American soldiers. If Willoughby was half as devious as Halberstam suggests, his actions were not far short of treason.

While MacArthur and his acolytes are the true villains on the American side, Harry Truman does not escape unscathed. In a country that admittedly was tired of war, Truman allowed defense spending to fall to unacceptable levels. Thus when the Korean War broke out, the US initially could only send a poorly trained, poorly equipped military. The initial problem with Korea was Harry Truman was "dealing with a war he did not want, in a part of the world his national security people had not thought important, relying from the start on a commander in the field whom he did not like, and who in turn did not respect him." - Apart from that everything else was fine.

Halberstam takes us through some of the key battles of the war - Unsan, the failure to anticipate the Chinese invasion, Inchon (where MacArthur's plan proved brilliantly successful and according to a TIME correspondent led to the deification of the general fueled his ego), the breakout from the Chosin Reservoir and many others. In describing these battles he profiles many brave soldiers and the horrible weather conditions they had to endure.

If I have one criticism of his profiles it is that the good guys are really good - brave, upstanding, honest, genuine etc. while the bad guys are really bad - incompetent, lying, devious. Maybe they were but the portraits tend to be very black and white.

The turning point in the war was the appointment of Matthew Ridgway to lead the US effort and the recall of MacArthur, something which proved to be a major political liability for Truman initially. To some extent, Halberstam skims over the period after MacArthur's removal which is probably why some might claim this is not a true history of the war.

Overall, this is a great read. It is very long and for a non-military person sometimes (but not often) tough going. Halberstam died shortly after finalizing this book. The man went out in style.

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Not as good as I'd heard

I thought that this book would've earned 5 stars but I was disappointed. The research was outstanding, but little was done to help readers make their way through the text. Often times battles and territory were described without maps; other times, the maps seemed inadequate. The editor of this book should do better next time. Imagine your reader getting through the text for the first time....think, what might help him grasp this better? Also, there was no explanation of the difference between US troops and UN troops. Finally, photos would have enriched the text, but I would guess they were left out because of the bottom line.

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