Dan Snow's History Hit - The Korean War: An American Perspective

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

I was thrilled to be joined by H. W. Brands. He's authored 30 books on American history and his works have twice been selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. On the 70 year anniversary since the start of the Korean War, he took me through the remarkable course of events which saw an immense civilian death toll and the destruction of virtually all of Korea's major cities. Why has the commemorations of this bloodbath been somewhat overlooked, and how did it lay the groundwork for the politics we see today? Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got a big focus on the Korean War this year. It's the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of that conflict. We've still got so many veterans to talk to, so we're very keen to do that. And it's a conflict that casts a very, very long shadow. There's never been a formal peace treaty between North and South Korea, and as everybody knows, North Korea in particular, its rocket programme, its nuclear programme is very near the top of the foreign policy agenda

of both China and the USA. Important stuff. It is also, in its own right, a war that deserves to be remembered. The experience of the civilians, the soldiers, a gigantic conflict that saw the highest loss of life for British forces of any war since the Second World War, and a huge deployment of US and other nationalities as well. On this episode of the podcast,

we've got the brilliant historian H.W. Brands. He's a historian in the University of Texas at Austin. He's been selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize many times. He's written loads of books. He's a total legend. And it's great to have him on the show. We've got a documentary landing soon on the Korean War on History Hit TV,

interviews with veterans of various nationalities, as well as historians like HW. It's going to be coming soon. So go and subscribe to History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history. If you use the code POD1 at checkout, you get your first month for free. And then the following month, just one pound, one euro, one dollar. Pretty sweet. Go and check it out.

People are frankly ignoring the Korean War anniversary this year. But at History Hit, we're certainly not. So please go and check it out. People are frankly ignoring the Korean War anniversary this year, but at History Hit, we're certainly not. So please go and check it out after listening to HW Brands. Enjoy. HW, thank you. It's a great honour having you on the podcast. Thank you for coming on. My pleasure. It's a big anniversary of the start of the Korean War. Does it feel like that over in the US? No. In fact, the Korean War has often suffered from being called the Forgotten War. And it was forgotten because it came so soon after World War II and it paled by comparison in the minds of Americans. The scale of the war was much less. And of course, the outcome was much less satisfactory. And then as the war in Korea

was winding down, and the thing is of course, it never ended definitively. There was no particular moment when people could say the war was over. There was an armistice and American forces remained in Korea for years after. By the time people were gaining historical perspective on the war in Korea, there was war in Vietnam going on. It was the misfortune historically of the Korean War and of the people who served in the Korean War, Americans in particular, to be sandwiched between World War II and Vietnam. And so in fact, in the United States today, this year, there has been very little remembrance of the Korean War. Yeah, that's the same with all historians and

veterans that I've talked to. Given how much we talk about veterans of both the Vietnam and the Second World War, that must be very difficult for those who served. Well, in some respects it is, but many of the American veterans of the Korean War had actually served in World War II. And so it's not as though their military service was being entirely overlooked. But it had none of the celebration associated with World War II. Because again, there was nothing to celebrate. The war ended with a stalemate. And it was the kind of thing that when the soldiers came home,

they didn't come home as a group, because a lot of them just stayed in the Korean theater. They were stationed in Japan. Some were stationed in South Korea. And again, there was nothing to celebrate. There was not even a moment to celebrate because the war ended in this armistice and it might have resumed. And so Americans never quite knew.

And of course, an armistice is all that we have even today. How should we think about the experience of the soldiers in the Korean War? Obviously, there were different phases of that war. The fighting was no less fierce than for many units in the Second World War. Do they feel that their contribution is overlooked? Well, while they were fighting, there were many of them who felt, understandably, they were not asked to win the war. They were simply asked to conduct a holding operation to defend South Korea. Then when they got the orders to go to North Korea, and it looked as though the only way to secure North Korea was to go into China, then they were definitely forbidden that.

For those who had been in World War II, especially the ones who had been in the European theater, it was as though they were expected to defeat Hitler's Germany without ever setting foot on German soil. So it was a war that was very unsatisfactory in that it was a limited war. And historically, most wars are limited wars. The unlimited wars are the unusual ones. But it was the case that for Americans of the 20th century, the world became the model of what they thought of when they thought of war was World War II,

which was effectively an unlimited war. And so the idea that Americans got of war was the United States is a peaceful country. It doesn't go to war until it's attacked. Once it is attacked, however, there are no holds barred and Americans can go all out to defeat the enemy. And in fact, that's exactly what happened, remarkably what happened in the Second World War. there are no holds barred and Americans can go all out to defeat the enemy. In fact, that's exactly what happened, remarkably what happened in the Second World War.

The United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor and three and a half years later the war was over. Americans had gone all out and then they expected at the end of such a war to go back to their peacetime activities. This had been the model throughout American history from the 18th century until the middle of the 20th century. But the Cold War, the Cold War was this very disconcerting thing because it was neither quite war nor quite peace. And for Americans, the Korean War was the first military conflict of the Cold War. It was something that they would get used to. They'd get used to the idea that, well, no, in the nuclear age, there's an upper bound

on what military force the United States can use. And there's an upper bound on where we can go. So we're not going to invade China. We're not going to use nuclear weapons against China. We have to be careful lest we bring the Soviet Union into the war. It was something that was easier for American leaders in Washington to understand than it was for soldiers in the field to understand, or for that matter, for the public at home to understand. Yeah, I mean, I think from the British historical experience, the Korean War feels far more familiar than the British Imperial

entanglements. The 18th and 19th centuries all had messy endings that were unsatisfying, if you like, particularly for a modern cinema-going public that want victory parades and boys coming home. Well, that's exactly it, because the British had experience of these imperial frontier wars. You hold the frontier, and you do it by defeating whatever local insurgency there might be. You don't expect that you're going to win this war, and then there will be peace for all time. When you have an empire, policing the frontier is what you get used to. The United States was constructing an empire at this time, but Americans weren't used to it. And Americans had this black and white attitude toward war. The United States is either at war or it's at peace. And when the Korean War came along,

and when Harry Truman declined to call it a war, but called it instead a police action, this implied that there were going to be more of these in the future. And that added to the dissatisfaction because Americans certainly at that time did not have any imperial kind of mindset. Americans very much resisted the idea that this system of alliances they created was anything like an empire. And in certain respects, it was different because it was voluntary. And when France decided to leave NATO in the 1960s, the United States said,

okay, go. But still, when the United States became essentially the world's top policeman at the end of the Second World War, then it wasn't something Americans were used to, but it was something they would have to get used to. And so by the 1960s with Vietnam, that's essentially the same thing.

So Vietnam was Korea a second time. By then Americans were a little bit more used to it. It still didn't help that the war in Vietnam went on and on, and the United States finally lost the war. But one thing about all this experience that gave greater status to the Korean War was that during the 1960s, when American forces went into Vietnam, Americans quickly caught on that there were worse outcomes for the United States than a stalemate. At the time of the stalemate in Korea, that was seen as terrible

because it wasn't the victory of World War II. But when the Vietnam War comes along, it looks like the United States might lose, and in fact did lose. Well, then Korea gains a little bit more respect in American eyes, but not a whole lot more remembrance. And I guess South Korea now looks like one of the most remarkably successful nation-state building exercises of the 20th century.

In fact, that's an interesting point on all of this because for the first, really, 30 years, 25 years after the Korean War, there wasn't a whole lot in South Korea to brag about. South Korea was anti-communist, but it was almost as authoritarian as North Korea. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but still, it was by no means a democracy, and its economy was not particularly thriving. It was only in the 1980s that the South Korean miracle really took place. And so by the 1990s and the early 2000s, then finally, Americans of that mind could look back on the American effort in Korea and say,

we did a good thing. We kept South Korea from going communism. Imagine if all of the Korean Peninsula today looked like North Korea. Instead, what we have is this thriving, bustling, prosperous half of the country. And that's the result. If Americans want to pat themselves on the back for this, and of course, the allies that went in with the United States to defend South Korea, this was a really good bit of work. But it took 30 years for it to become apparent how good the work was. took 30 years for it to become apparent how good the work was. It's getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. Let's talk about what was going on this summer back in 1950. The North Koreans, they crossed the border. Do you subscribe to the idea that the Americans had been ambiguous? They'd given out ambiguous diplomatic signals about whether or not they would mind if the communists sought to reunify the peninsula? I think that the signals

were not intended to be ambiguous, but they might very well have been interpreted ambiguously. Because when Dean Acheson gave a speech in the early part of 1950, and he said that Korea was, he did not include Korea in what he called America's defensive perimeter. The point he was trying to make was that the United States did not intend to contain communism, and containment was the term for America's policy regarding the Soviet Union and China. The United States did not intend to contain China on the Asian mainland. It would use its position in the offshore island chain of Japan, Philippines, and it didn't want to get involved in a war that might, well, basically would require

the United States, U.S. military forces to take on the vast number of ground troops that China had. But Acheson in that same speech did say, however, that that would be something for the United Nations to deal with. So if there was an attack on Japan, for example, the United States would defend Japan on its own. If there was an attack on the Philippines or on Taiwan, then the United States would go to the assistance of those countries without reference to the United Nations. But Acheson went on to say that if something happens to South Korea, that's a job for the United Nations. But Acheson went on to say that if something happens to South Korea, that's a job for the United Nations. Now, how did Kim Il-sung read that? How did Stalin read that?

How did Mao Zedong read that? I can't really say. I suspect that Kim Il-sung was itching for a reason, an excuse, to reunify Korea under his communist control. And if it looked as though the Americans wouldn't come to the aid, then that was all the better. And it would give him reason to launch a surprise attack, hoping to do what he very nearly did, and that is to occupy all of the southern part of Korea before the United States could respond. Now, I do not

know how surprised Kim Il-sung, how surprised Stalin was that Americans very quickly came to the defense of South Korea. I don't know that part. So the North Koreans invade, the South Korean army just falls apart. Talk to me about the decision that is then faced and who's making that decision? Is it the local theater commander? Is general macarthur or is it president truman who's in charge well that was a source of conflict during the entire war so american forces had been withdrawn from south korea the previous year so there were no american forces on the ground and if macarthur was going to come to the assistance of south korea he was going to have to send troops from Japan. There were troops in Japan. And he made ready to do it. He started to send troops already. But he was in almost

instant communication. It was a matter of just minutes. So communication was really good to Washington. So MacArthur would have done it on his own if Harry Truman had not given the okay and probably handed a fait accompli to President Truman. But Truman was in favor of doing it anyway, because Truman felt exceedingly vulnerable on the question of communist expansion. He had been blamed since the previous autumn, the autumn of 1949, for the communist takeover

of China. Now, he had made a decision in 1947 when the Civil War in China was going badly for the Nationalists, the anti-communist forces, and he made a very reasoned decision that the United States is not going to get involved in the Civil War and we're going to let things turn out the way they turn out. And it was a prudent decision at the time. The United States, absent a major involvement of force, could not have changed the outcome there. But nonetheless, when China went communist, Truman came under heavy attack for

this. And it was during the late winter and spring of 1950 that Joseph McCarthy launched his attack on the Truman administration for being infiltrated, said McCarthy, were of communists. The State Department and the Truman administration were infiltrated with communists. So Truman was in no position politically to see a country that had recently been under America's protection taken over by communists. So it was almost a reflex action.

He almost had to do it even without thinking very carefully about it. But the fact that the Soviet Union was boycotting meetings of the UN Security Council meant that he could do it under the aegis of the United Nations. And that was a bonus for the United States, because a principal project of Truman and his administration during the post-war era was to give credibility to the United Nations. The United States had not been a member of the League of Nations during the interwar period and partly for that reason many people thought Hitler and Mussolini had been allowed

to do their aggressions around Europe and even into Africa without great power response until too late. And so Americans, Truman was making up for this by supporting the United Nations. And the fact that the United Nations then, the Security Council, absent the Soviet delegate and therefore absent a Soviet veto, could ask the United States and Britain and other member nations to go to the aid of South Korea. And so Truman could say, in fact he did say to the leaders of Congress when he brought him into the White House,

he could say the United States is supporting the United Nations in this. It wasn't simply my idea. It is not simply Harry Truman. This is the United States on behalf of the United Nations. And the goal at that time, and not an entirely implausible goal at that time,

was that World War III will be prevented because decent law-abiding nations will respond to aggression by punishing the aggressor. And that's exactly the model for what happened in South Korea. It's so funny that the Korean War is overlooked. As you say, first of all, did lead to the construction of a very vibrant democracy. And secondly, it was actually an example of the UN working as its founders hoped. It's forgotten about. It's not seen as a war that people wish to talk about or use as an example. That part is very interesting, because you're absolutely right. This is a case where the United Nations worked. Although, unfortunately, it was almost the last case where the United Nations worked, because the

Soviet delegate, realizing his mistake, quickly got back to UN headquarters and therefore was able to veto any follow-on resolutions by the Security Council. Now the Truman administration finessed this a bit by going to the General Assembly, but resolutions by the General Assembly don't have the same weight as resolutions by the Security Council. And so the UN, the United Nations, was able to authorize the use of force for the defense of South Korea, but that was the last meaningful thing that the United Nations did. And it wasn't able to do it during, for example, the war in Vietnam or other wars until the Gulf War of 1991. That was sort of the next time that the Security Council could intervene in a regional war

without the veto of one side or the other in the Cold War. So if the Korean War had been a precedent for other things that happened usefully, then I think it would be remembered. That part of it would be remembered. And in fact, at the time of the Gulf War in 1991, and in the lead up to it in 1990, so 40 years later, people did point back to the Korean War.

And they said, this is the way it's supposed to work. And now finally, we can do what we did in 1950. And interestingly, the Gulf War of 1991, following UN resolutions of 1990, that gave ultimatums to Saddam Hussein to get out of Kuwait, they were limited in the same way that the original UN Security Council resolution in Korea was. Because that resolution said to remove the aggressors from South Korea. It didn't say anything about overturning the communist regime in North Korea. That's where Harry Truman basically pressed his luck,

and it backfired on him. And so those people who were making the decisions for the United States and for the United Nations in 1990 made clear that their resolution did not say, march to Baghdad and overturn the regime of Saddam Hussein, which is why the Gulf War of 1991, certainly in American eyes, had that same aspect of unfinished business as the war in Korea did. Land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories

that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. every week. As you point out, fascinating parallels there. So the North Koreans surge over the border with South Korea.

The Americans do intervene, but the American intervention is not as successful as hoped. The North Koreans were very effective as they marched down the peninsula. Well, the North Koreans had the advantage of surprise. They also had the advantage of terrestrial lines of communication. They didn't have to fly things in or sail things across the Sea of Japan. So they were all there. They also had the advantage of the disorganization of the South Korean, the Republic of Korea forces. Now, once the United States was able to regroup and get troops on the ground,

they were able to hold a perimeter at the southern part of the peninsula around the city of Pusan. But until they got there, it looked as though that both the Republic of Korea, South Korean forces, and American forces and the rest of the Allied forces would be driven off the peninsula, at which point it really would have been quite difficult to regain a foothold. But by this time, the U.S. Eighth Army, under Douglas MacArthur, who was by this time the United Nations commander, as well as the United States theater commander, they had the ground. And then MacArthur was able to plan, launch,

and to carry out this end run around the North Korean lines at Incheon, a very risky operation that succeeded brilliantly and almost trapped the North Korean army. So within the space of 48 hours, the fortunes of the war changed almost entirely. From nearly losing the war, the United Nations forces, including the US forces, had nearly won the war. And that was a stunning use of amphibious force. Did that huge victory encourage General MacArthur to go beyond his remit? Is success the seeds of the overreach? MacArthur never suffered from excessive modesty. And so he didn't require this success in his own mind.

He didn't require the success at Incheon in his own mind to think, OK, now I can take the war to North Korea. He thought he could take the war to North Korea all along, but it did persuade skeptics on MacArthur, like Harry Truman, to give the general a little bit more leeway. And so when MacArthur assured Truman that if he were given permission, he could end the war by Thanksgiving. So this is in the autumn, early autumn of 1950. He could have American troops coming home by Thanksgiving.

Truman, all of a sudden, realized, oh my gosh, I have been accused by my domestic critics for having lost ground to communism. They say I lost China to the communists. Well, I really didn't. But here's a chance for the first time in the Cold War for the free world, the term that was already being used for the United States alliance system, for the free world to win ground back from communism. If Truman, if the Truman administration, the forces operating at his orders, could decommunize North Korea and unify South Korea, not under communist, unify Korea not under communist control, but under the anti-communist control of Syngman Rhee,

then that would be a terrific feather in Truman's cap. So he listened to MacArthur and he said, go ahead. And MacArthur was the five-star general. MacArthur was the hero of the Allied war in the Pacific. MacArthur knew all about military operations. And when MacArthur said, I can do it, Truman, who had been a captain of artillery in the First World War, said, sure. And he said, sure, if only because he knew that if he didn't, then MacArthur would accuse him, would be leaking that denial to the press and saying that the president is not allowing me to win the war. And so the mere defense of South Korea would come back and haunt Truman as,

wait, I was on the verge of victory of actually rolling back communism in North Korea, but I didn't give Truman his head. And so... Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows

or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Truman realized that MacArthur would use a denial of permission to go to North Korea against Truman. So it was one of the reasons he gave him permission. Do you think MacArthur had even more ambitious plans? Do you think he wanted to march into China and try and reverse the outcome of the Chinese civil war?

I don't think MacArthur had any desire to go to war against China until China intervened in the Korean War. But once China did, then MacArthur believed that, okay, our forces have been attacked. American, UN forces have been attacked in North Korea. China got in this war of its own volition. Now, having said that, people who had MacArthur's ear, notably Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of nationalist Chinese forces on Taiwan, they were itching for an opportunity to reopen the Chinese Civil War. It wasn't at the top of MacArthur's agenda, but MacArthur was quite willing for Chiang Kai-shek to use his forces as a diversionary force in southern China so that

the Chinese couldn't mass their forces in the north against MacArthur's forces in Korea. Now, once the Chinese took MacArthur by surprise and intervened by the hundreds of thousands, then MacArthur was of the opinion that the United States needed to take the war into China. And the Chinese did intervene. I got ahead of myself there. I'm too excited. They did intervene because the US-led UN forces approached the Chinese recce units

across the Yalu River, and China felt it had no choice. So Truman was in close communication with Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang Kai-shek still asserted that his government was the legitimate government of China. And so from Chiang Kai-shek's standpoint, the Civil War had never ended.

It was just a matter of when can we resume fighting. And MacArthur was known to be in close communication with Chiang Kai-shek. And Chiang Kai-shek was saying, we're going to reopen this war. So that by itself would get the attention of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese government in Beijing. And they were very wary of the United States. They knew there were plenty of people in the United States who, and the official position

of the American government was that the government in Beijing is not the legitimate government of China, but John Kajak's government is. So they had every reason to be suspicious, especially after the Chinese dropped some very clear diplomatic hints that we are not necessarily going to defend the government of North Korea. And so if non-American UN forces go up to the border, go up to the Yalu River, then China won't think much of that. If South Korean forces go up, that can be a squabble just among the Koreans. But if US forces go close to the Chinese border, then the Chinese will have to respond. And so the Truman administration took the position that the Chinese were bluffing.

Now, in fact, if the Chinese were indeed bluffing, they would have said exactly what they said. So Truman couldn't know if the Chinese were bluffing or not. But he also had the assurances once again of MacArthur, who claimed particular insight into what MacArthur liked to call the Oriental mind. So MacArthur had spent much of his professional life in Asia. He had been in the Philippines for almost five or six years before the outbreak of the Second World War. He had spent all of the war in the Pacific Theater,

and then he had spent the five years after the war as head of the occupation in Japan. So he believed he had more insight into the politics of East Asia than anybody in the United States did. He exaggerated there, although he did have some insight, but he told Truman, who made a special trip clear across North America, across most of the Pacific to Lake Island, to talk to MacArthur, because MacArthur would not take the time to fly to Washington to brief the President of the United States. So Truman goes out and he puts the question to MacArthur point blank, where the

Chinese entered the war? And MacArthur said they would not dare. But then he sort of weakened that by saying, and if they do, I will annihilate them. So Truman gets this on record somewhat surreptitiously because MacArthur claimed not to be aware that there was a stenographer around the corner in the next room from where this meeting took place and the stenographer was taking all of this down. So MacArthur, Truman got MacArthur on record as guaranteeing that the Chinese would not enter the war and if they did they would be annihilated by US forces. So on that assurance by MacArthur, Truman said, okay, fine, you do what you're going to do.

But there was another angle to this as well, and that is that MacArthur had almost gotten beyond the point where even the President of the United States could give him orders. Because he was politically more popular than Harry Truman. He was this war hero, and in the middle of the war, who are you going to listen to? The war hero, Douglas MacArthur, or Harry Truman, a hack politician from Missouri? So the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to give MacArthur direct orders. And so it was put to one of them one time, so why don't you just tell MacArthur what to do? He's supposed to take orders from you.

And one of them responded, well, what would we do if he refused, if he disobeyed the orders? Because at that point, nobody was in a position to think about firing MacArthur. Now, he would come to that before the end of the war, in fact, before very long. But at that time, there was this unwillingness to give direct orders to MacArthur. So MacArthur, from his perspective, was getting mixed signals from Washington. It was as though Washington wanted him to win the war, but don't break the rules, but we're not going to tell you exactly what the rules are.

So very often, orders were sent out, not as orders, but here are some things for you to consider as you develop your policies. The Chinese did intervene. The Americans were sent back down south. They lose control of Seoul again. I mean, Seoul was changed down so many times didn't it yes and this is one of the reasons that the world was so destructive for south korea

because they had to evacuate their capital once and then they regained it and they restored a resemblance of life and they had to evacuate it again and From the American perspective, the retreat from North Korea, almost the retreat from almost the Yalu River, was one of the really dark hours in American military history because you never had American forces lost so much ground so quickly. The U.S. Marines, who were the spearhead of the American operation, they had a long tradition where they just didn't retreat, they always stood their ground. They were forced to retreat. And so sometimes they referred to it as an offensive in reverse. But it was a very trying time. And for those American soldiers who were involved, it was some of the most excruciating experience they ever

had under arms. Speaking of which, when the line does stabilize, let's talk just briefly about the last great Chinese offensive in the spring of 1951. Was that still an attempt to completely destroy the Allied lines, or was this the beginning of jockeying for position, giving them more sort of strength around the negotiating table? The way I read it is that it was to set up the negotiations, because I think that, first of all, the Chinese would have been quite wrong to think that they were going to be able to drive the United States out of South Korea. And I don't think that they consider that necessary. I think that by this time, what they wanted was a buffer state

between the border of China and wherever American forces might end up, and that border state would be North Korea. So they wanted to make sure that American forces were largely or entirely out of North Korea. And once they got that, then essentially when they restored the status quo as of just before the original attack in June of 1950, then I think that pretty much everybody, including the Chinese, understood that, okay, this is the way the war is going to end. It's going to end essentially in terms of the status quo ante, which is essentially the way it did end. While the diplomats and the politicians talked, it must have been brutal on those hills in the Korean peninsula for years in a stalemate, almost like the Western Front in World War I. Oh, exactly. And it was so disillusioning because

the soldiers got their orders to fight and to take that hill, and they would take that hill with great sacrifice and loss of lives, limbs, and everything else. And then they would know that that doesn't really lead to anything. All that does is perhaps slightly strengthen the negotiation position of the diplomats. And it wasn't as though, okay, if we take this hill, we can take the next hill, and then we can go win the war. By this time, I think pretty much everybody realized there was no winning the war, or at least winning the war simply meant

leaving the status quo as of before the war in place, which meant, of course, that Americans couldn't go home because if Americans evacuated South Korea as they had in 1949, then the North Koreans would be tempted to do exactly what they did in June of 1950. So this was the first time Americans realized that they might have to permanently garrison South Korea, which indeed is where we still are today. Let's finish up on that, really. The Korean War has never formally ended. No, and this because, especially from the side of the North Koreans, but at least initially from the side of the South Koreans as well,

each of the governments claimed control, authority over the entire peninsula. So you had two competing governments. And so each one, the Republic of Korea was called the Republic of U. It wasn't called the Republic of South Korea. And the Democratic Republic of Korea was North Korea. It always said Korea. And each one imagined, each one dreamed that one day they'll take over the whole thing.

Now, something similar happened in Germany. But of course, Germany was finally unified, reunified under the control of the Federal Republic. So, if you have a long memory, if you had determination, you could think that one day, and who knows, it might still happen, that South Korea might extend its authority over North Korea. And whatever leader of South Korea was in office at the time, would be able to claim status as a great Korean hero. And there's almost no incentive at this point

for either side to say, okay, we're going to give up our claims to your side. I mean, maybe if they could get a final peace deal, but at least the North doesn't seem to be in any mood for that. So we still have this armistice. Now, in effect, it's been, no, not a peace treaty, but there have been no organized attacks. There have been no sustained military operations on the part of either side ever since.

So, in effect, the agreement of the summer of 1953 ended the war. And how many approximately U.S. troops? What's the U.S. presence in South Korea today? I don't know what it is exactly. For many years, there were scores of thousands, 40 or 50,000 U.S. troops there. Their numbers are reduced now. I think that it is maybe 10 to 20,000. I don't know it exactly. But there really is a signal. So North Korea has, over the last four or five years, acted more belligerently than it did for many years before that, and any removal of those last American troops would be seen as a sign. Well, it would be seen as a sign somewhat similar to the sign

that Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State, presumably gave in saying that we won't defend South Korea. So I don't know what long historical memories the officials of the current administration in Washington have, but if they started to bring the rest of those troops home, you can bet that people with long historical memories, including historians themselves, maybe in fact some Korean War vets would say, wait a minute, remember what happened

the last time you did that? The signal was that the United States is not going to aid South Korea. Do you want to send that kind of signal to North Korea today? And I think the answer, even part of this administration, which has pulled American troops out of other places,

will be no. Well, I'd love to think of this administration being full of people with long historical memories. Let's end on that note, and a hopeful and optimistic note, perhaps. Thank you so much. That was a tour de force. I really, really appreciate coming on the pod for this anniversary. Tell me, what's your most recent book? My most recent book is a history of the American West called Dreams of El Dorado. My upcoming book is a book on John Brown, the abolitionist, and Abraham Lincoln, and it's called The Zealot and the Emancipator, and that will be out in three months.

Well, if you're not careful, I might have to get you back on the podcast to talk about that. I would be delighted. Oh, thank you very much. That's very kind of you. Hopefully see you soon in that case. Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it

and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes wherever you get your podcasts and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps basically boost up the chart, which is good. And then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favor. Thanks. you