The Brink of World War III
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
April 19, 1951. General Douglas MacArthur's plane touches down in DC just after midnight. He’s coming home from fighting the Korean War. Over twelve thousand people are there to greet this person who the American people consider to be a national war hero. It’s quite the welcome for a general who has just been fired by the President of the United States. How, after this triumphant return, does the general end up losing his own party's political support? And could MacArthur have led his country into a nuclear war?
Thank you to our guests: Professor H.W. Brands, author of The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War, and Professor David Kang, the director of the Korean Studies Institute at USC. Thank you also to Professor James Matray for speaking with us for this episode.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | History this week, April 19, 1951. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:13.0 | General Douglas MacArthur's plane touches down just after midnight. |
| 0:18.0 | He's coming into Washington, D.C. from San Francisco. |
| 0:21.0 | When he landed there yesterday, it was his first time on U.S. soil in nearly 15 years. |
| 0:28.0 | All that time, the general has been overseas. |
| 0:31.0 | He's most famous for commanding the Allied troops in the Pacific during World War II. |
| 0:36.0 | And by this point, 1951, he is the country's best-known war hero. |
| 0:42.0 | When he lands in D.C., he gets a hero's welcome. |
| 0:46.0 | 12,000 people are at the airport to greet him. |
| 0:50.0 | Some of the news photographers have anticipated that the crowds will get rowdy, |
| 0:54.0 | so they've put on football helmets to prepare. |
| 0:58.0 | MacArthur arrives with his wife Jean and his 13-year-old son, Arthur MacArthur IV. |
| 1:03.0 | As the crowd swarms, Arthur MacArthur immediately gets lost in the fray, |
| 1:08.0 | and one of the general's close advisors gets knocked over and topples to the ground. |
| 1:13.0 | The walk from the plane to the car is only 50 feet, |
| 1:17.0 | but it takes the general 15 minutes to go that far. |
| 1:20.0 | He has to greet the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, make his way through the tangle of reporters and dignitaries, |
| 1:26.0 | greet his well-wishers, women waving their handkerchiefs, men waving their hats. |
| 1:32.0 | Quite the welcome for a general who has just been fired. |
| 1:38.0 | MacArthur is coming home from commanding troops in the Korean War, |
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