In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950-1953

 

In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950 – 1953 by John Toland

A book about the entire Korean War; about 800 pages.  I’ve read several books on this particular conflict.  Whereas this one was good overall, I have to honestly say it was probably my least favorite.  Whenever a history book is written about a war, the author can choose to approach the tough subject  from many angles.  Some choose to focus only on the politics and the maneuvering of the leaders of the respected countries.  Others put you in the thick of the battle focusing on particular soldiers and their recollections.  While others, still, prefer to give you detailed events of every battle; including troop movement, detailed accounts of weapons used, and plenty of named locations and directions in which everything seems to be moving.

This book actually does all of the above, yet I never felt like any of it was quite as good as it could have been.  One example is the tumultuous relationship between Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur.  Now, to be fair, entire books have been written about these two adversaries during the early 1950s, so I’m not suggesting a detailed rehash, yet I simply felt that not enough emphasis was being placed on the relationship and how it affected not only the war, but the sentiments of the United States at the time.  Then, when the author spends a meticulous amount of page space of the intricacies of the battles being fought, I confess I was bored most of the time.  Then again, these kind of details in a book about war don’t go over well for me.  I prefer to view the action from 30,000 feet as opposed to, say, 500 feet. If you prefer the opposite, you might enjoy this book a bit better than I did.

The Korean War was a bit of an odd conflict; although it does seem a bit of an oxymoron to call a war “normal”.  In June 1950, Communist North Korea invaded Democratic South Korea.  Harry Truman and the United Nations threw themselves into the battle, and managed to not only expel North Korea, but drive them all the way up to the Chinese border.  Then, China entered the war, pushed the U.N. backed South Korea back to the dividing line (the 38^th parallel) which was essentially where both sides were when the fighting began.  This all happened within the first six months of the war.  The war then dragged on for 2 ½ more years while the powers that be negotiated truce talks.  Neither side ever picked up much ground while their leaders were haggling, and it seemed like an awful lot of people died in this war for no good reason.

So about 65-70% of this book is the first six months of the conflict since this was where most of the movement was.  Once the fighting was in a stalemate, so to speak, more focus is made on the key leaders, the motives, and the reasons for delayed peace.  As I’ve already mentioned, I personally prefer reading about these type of events as opposed to detail after detail of particular battles.

Don’t misunderstand, this wasn’t a bad book, it just wasn’t my favorite.  Two other books on The Korean War that I would recommend over this one are T.R. Fehrenbach’s “This Kind of War” and “Brothers at War” by Sheila Miyoshi Jager.  For a good account of the animosities between Truman and MacArthur, I would recommend H.W. Brands’ “The General vs. the President”.  All of these books were slightly better, and somewhat shorter in terms of page length as well.