USAHEC Educators' Toolbox: Korean War

Kindsvatter examines the Korean War soldier's experiences to show how something akin to "mass disaffection" did indeed take hold during the Korean War, a pattern repeated over the course of the Vietnam War. He addresses the soldier's faltering belief in the cause, the perceived lack of home front awareness or concern, the G. I.'s lack of faith in their South Korean allies, and the increasing challenges for junior leaders tasked to prosecute a war that their soldiers increasingly believed, as one put it, "was being fought for nothing."

During World War II, the U.S. Army gained an enormous amount of amphibious knowledge and experience with most of the Army’s amphibious operations taking place under General Douglas MacArthur. General MacArthur also carried out four major amphibious operations in the early months of the Korean War. The Inchon landing spearheaded by the 1st Marine Division was the most famous, but two of those amphibious operations were conducted exclusively by U.S. Army units and Navy ships that bypassed enemy forces to land in unexpected or lightly-defended areas. The Army also used amphibious vessels to insert and extract special operations forces, to shape enemy perceptions and actions through the threat of amphibious landings, and to sustain forces across unimproved beaches. During the last two years of the war, Army forces trained for and planned to conduct a major amphibious operation if circumstances had permitted. Since the Korean War, the Army’s amphibious maneuver role has greatly diminished, but Army over-the-shore logistics capability remains vital, and Army forces must be prepared to participate in amphibious operations as part of the joint force. Thus, this historical study chronicles an aspect of the U.S. Army’s history that may seem remote but continues to be very relevant.

In the decades since the "forgotten war" in Korea, conventional wisdom has held that the Eighth Army consisted largely of poorly trained, undisciplined troops who fled in terror from the onslaught of the Communist forces. The generalizations historians and fellow soldiers have used regarding these troops do little justice to the tens of thousands of soldiers who worked to make themselves and their army ready for war. This careful study of combat preparedness in the Eighth Army from 1949 to the outbreak of hostilities in 1950 shows that the U.S. soldiers sent to Korea suffered gaps in their professional preparation, from missing and broken equipment to unevenly trained leaders at every level of command. But after a year of progressive, focused, and developmental collective training - based largely on the lessons of combat in World War II - these soldiers expected to defeat the Communist enemy. By recognizing the constraints under which the Eighth Army operated, Hanson asserts that scholars and soldiers will be able to discard what Douglas Macarthur called the "pernicious myth" of the Eighth Army's professional, physical, and moral ineffectiveness.
Lieutenant Colonel Tom Hanson enlisted in the US Army as an infantryman in 1988. He earned a commission as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry from the US Army Officer Candidate School in 1992. He has commanded infantry units from fire team to battalion, and has served as a staff officer in several Army and joint organizations. He earned a PhD in history from The Ohio State University in 2006, and served as both an instructor at the US Military Academy and as a professor of military science. Since redeploying from Iraq in April 2012 LTC Hanson has served as Deputy Director, Combat Studies Institute, at Fort Leavenworth.

Though the Korean War was a limited conflict, there were many operational and technological temptations to expand it. America's allies feared the United States would again resort to atomic bombs as they did against Japan, and Communist enemies propagated elaborate accusations about the employment of biological warfare. Political and military leaders certainly considered using such weapons, though the reasons they never did are varied and complex. Dr. Conrad Crane will describe the practical and ethical reasoning behind strategic leaders' decisions, particularly emphasizing the pressures they faced in a limited war with the potential to be much worse. He will also discuss the research process to investigate such decision-making and the special difficulties involved in dealing with classified sources about weapons of mass destruction. The lecture is a detective story with twists and turns and more than a little luck involved. Dr. Conrad Crane is the Chief of Historical Services for the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center at Carlisle Barracks. Previously, he has worked as the Director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, served with the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) at the U.S. Army War College, where he held the General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research, held the General Hoyt S. Vandenberg Chair of Aerospace Studies at the U.S. Army War College, and served for twenty-six years in the U.S. Army, including nine years as a Professor of History at the U.S. Military Academy. He holds a B.S. from USMA and both an M.A. and Ph. D from Stanford University. He has authored or edited books and monographs on a wide range of military topics. While at SSI, Dr. Crane coauthored a prewar study on Reconstructing Iraq and influenced the Army in their decision-making. He was also the lead author for the new Army-USMC counterinsurgency manual which was put into action in Iraq at the request of General Petraeus. For that effort, he was named one of NEWSWEEK's people to watch in 2007. In November 2008, he was named the international Archivist of the Year by the Scone Foundation.