Korean War

by Max Hastings

It was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle.

Now Max Hastings, preeminent military historian takes us back to the bloody bitter struggle to restore South Korean independence after the Communist invasion of June 1950. Using personal accounts from interviews with more than 200 vets—including the Chinese—Hastings follows real officers and soldiers through the battles. He brilliantly captures the Cold War crisis at home—the strategies and politics of Truman, Acheson, Marshall, MacArthur, Ridgway, and Bradley—and shows what we should have learned in the war that was the prelude to Vietnam.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Military History, War, Military Fiction, Audiobook, Asia

420 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL, FRHistS is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. His parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and war correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.

Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard.

Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize.

After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. He has won many awards for his journalism, including Journalist of The Year and What the Papers Say Reporter of the Year for his work in the South Atlantic in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988.

He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. His monumental work of military history, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 was published in 2005.

He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Sir Max Hastings honoured with the $100,000 2012 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.

Reviews

[Brett C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first Max Hastings book I've read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sir Max Hastings did a great job of telling the backstory of Korea as a sphere of influence for Russia, China, and Japan as early as the 1890s. The Japanese had imperial influence on Korea as early as 1904 until the US military moved in immediately following the defeat of Japan in 1945. Korea became the prototype Truman Doctrine power play for containment as north and south became to split itself. Russian influence became staple in the North and pro-Western democratic thought came to the South. The spill over from pressure both politically and militarily eventually led to North Korea's invasion into South Korea in June 1950.

I knew very little of this conflict before this. I can say I learned a lot and enjoyed while reading. There were chapters dedicated to the amphibious landing at Inchon, the Chosin Reservoir, the US Air Force with fighter jet warfare and bombing campaign, ground combat in the winter, and fighting from hill to hill (Pork Chop Hill for instance). One of the interesting things was the dismissal of General MacArthur. The author did an excellent job of detailing and escalating the tension between he and President Truman. There were differences in leading the war and decisions of using nuclear weapons. This eventually led to 'insubordination' of General MacArthur when he was relieved of command in April 1951. "It remains doubtful whether MacArthur's policy was militarily practicable, even with the support of nuclear weapons. If MacArthur had had his way, the cost to the moral credibility of the United States around the world would certainly have been historically disastrous." pg. 206

Secondly American POWs and captivity was an interesting chapter. "Korea became notorious as the first major modern conflict in which a combatant made a systematic attempt to convert prisoners to his own ideology." (pg. 287-8). The uniqueness of this war brought not only hard labor, starvation, and punishment but added other pressures like re-education for prisoners though Marxist-Leninist indoctrination. Some of the negative outcomes of this brought about breakdowns in order and discipline among the prisoners to include bad conduct, betraying fellow prisoners by informing, taking bribes from captors, and fear of a Manchurian Candidate among them. "One in seven of all U.S. prisoners were considered by subsequent Army investigations as 'serious collaborators.'" (pg. 304)

Sir Max Hastings write clearly and concisely with combined historical lecture and non-opinionated facts. Another unique quality to the writing were mini-vignette biographies including Koreans who lived through the ordeal to "boots on the ground" servicemembers. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to learn about contemporary history or military history. Thanks!

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 4 out of 5]

The defeat and subsequent occupation of Japan involved the United States with Korea, a faraway Asian country, which Americans knew nothing about and which they initially regarded as irrelevant to their own security. They accepted a random division of this country along the 38th parallel, an idea suggested by Dean Rusk, and looked forward, as did the Soviet Union, to the withdrawal of troops and the creation of independent Korea.
However, the U.S military on the spot, ruling through the same oppressive apparatus the Japanese had used before them, regarded the fervent Korean nationalism as communist. This is why they imported their own substitute, Synghman Rhee, who was educated in America, ferociously nationalistic, brutal, and determined to reunite the whole peninsula under his rule.
Meanwhile in the North, from the Communist factions supported by Stalin, emerged a comparable figure, Kim Il Sung – a man no less ruthless, arrogantly ambitious, and eager to rule over the whole Korea. Reunification, naturally, became impossible. A staged election in 1948 was designed to help President Rhee present his regime as "democratic" to the West, but because of his oppressive domestic policy, Americans viewed him with deep mistrust and provided only light equipment for his forces. Nevertheless, Rhee was staunchly anti-communist and in the aftermath of the "loss" of China and the Berlin Blockade, that was all that mattered in Washington. The Americans did not like him and they could not spare resources to defend him; yet, they also could not abandon him.
As Barbara Tuchman said, "war is the unfolding of miscalculations". Out of the Rhee dilemma developed the misunderstandings and miscalculations that led to the Korean conflict. In 1949, the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised that "to apply the Truman doctrine in Korea would require prodigious effort and vast expenditure far out of proportion to the benefits to be expected." On January 12 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson publicly reviewed the U.S defense commitments in the Pacific, which had excluded Korea. In the light of such information from Washington, Stalin did not discourage Kim Il Sung from using the military equipment with which the Soviets had generously provided him, and on June 25th the In Min Gun struck south across the 38th parallel.
In spite of their deep internal disagreements, U.S military and political leaders all saw the invasion of South Korea as an overt act of Soviet-inspired aggression. Although Korea was irrelevant to America's security, this was a challenge to which, for political reasons, the Truman administration had to respond. The President had no doubts about it, but this response meant the militarization of the USA, the tripling of the defense budget, and the implementation of all remilitarization plans of the Armed Forces. In general, the the Korean War fit perfectly into the plans of those who believed in the need to remilitarize the United States. Nevertheless, Max Hastings refutes the argument that it were the South Koreans, who at American instigation had started the war. He reminds the reader of the scale and ferocity of North Korean attacks and of the fact that unlike the USSR, the States had deprived Syngman Rhee's forces of any offensive capabilities.
The Pentagon hoped that U.S air and sea power would be enough to support South Korean troops on the ground, but in the first hours of the war it'd already become clear how false this assumption was. The southern part of the Korean peninsula could be efficiently defended only on the ground, and American troops would have to be put in. The overtness of the action and the absence of the Soviet Union from the UN Security Council allowed the USA to mobilize its majority in the United Nations and conduct a war, for the first and last time, under "the banner collective of security". As Hastings reveals, Allied contributions were made not so much of enthusiasm for the cause as for the need to retain the good will of the United States for protection of their own territories. The British were especially eager to obtain U.S forces for the defense of Europe, and in spite of the overstretch of their armed forces realized the need to provide support in Korea. As an Englishman, Hastings offers interesting perspectives on the contributions of the Commonwealth and other nations. In addition to the omnipresent Inchon, Pusan, and Chosin campaigns, for example, he also covers the Gloucestershire Regiment's costly stand on the Imjin River, about thirty miles from Seoul. However, although the British troops acquitted themselves brilliantly, but the additional strain on the country's economy set back British recovery by ten years.

In this narrative, General MacArthur is treated in a balanced way. There is little new information about the Incheon landing, his subsequent mishaps, and his removal by Harry Truman. Yet, Hastings offers an insightful glimpse into Dugout Doug's personality.
MacArthur was egocentric and vainglorious, and he was fighting a different war than anyone else. He saw Korea neither in the context of Soviet "piecemeal aggression" nor as a feint to distract Americans from the main battlefield in Europe. For him, it was an opportunity to reverse "the loss of China". While it is impossible to confirm that his insistence on crossing the 38th parallel and advancing to the border with China was a part of a deliberate plan to involve the Chinese in the war, he certainly did lose interest in the Korean front once the Chinese began inflicting decisive victories, which showed where his heart lay and made his dismissal essential. As soon as the admirable Matthew Ridgway was promoted to full general and left to stabilize the front, the process of peacemaking could finally begin.

A skilled storyteller, Max Hastings adds a much needed human element to the narrative. The fear and bewilderment thrusted into a struggle for which they were ill-trained and ill-equipped; the confusion and incompetence of commanders; the suffering of Korean civilians, caught between the brutality of their own compatriots and the bizarre American tendency to use airpower to make up for any shortcomings of their ground troops; the North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war, terrorized by their own commissars – Max Hastings intertwines all of these to create a single, multilayered, highly compelling history of the Korean War, fought by Americans in order to determine what kind of a superpower the United States would be.

[Chris Dietzel · Rating 1 out of 5]

On its face, this is a standard, establishment account of the Korean War. However, once you actually dissect much of what Hastings says and insinuates, you realize this book is filled with inconsistencies, disgusting romanticizing of war, and propaganda. Some of the main issues:

- He states that the war was worth it simply because it helped spread democracy. This is what politicians who play chess with men's lives say, as well as the hack journalists who repeat their lines. Find me a widow or orphaned children who think a war was worth it because of 'democracy'. Also, Hastings says this with a straight face while glossing over the fact that the U.S. installed a dictator into South Korea.

- He states North Korean soldiers were "savage hoards" while U.S. soldiers were "restrained platoons." Those "savage hoards" had their country invaded. I guess they should have politely asked for the invaders to leave. And the "restrained platoons" killed women and children so they didn't have to care for any prisoners of war. How very restrained of them!

- He criticizes U.S. soldiers for not more aggressively throwing themselves into war (i.e., not being willing to die). Hastings is the epitome of a guy writing about war who has never actually fought in a war. I'm sure Hastings would have been very eager to "throw himself into battle." Too bad he never picked up a gun.

- Everything is biased from a western perspective. He notes Chinese propaganda but not the U.S. propaganda. All fault lies with the North Koreans and Chinese and none with the U.S. He criticizes the Chinese for the same things he applauds the U.S. for.

I could go on and on with more flaws. Complete and utter garbage.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hastings lights a cold blue flame beneath the long-forgotten latrines of military propaganda. From the shattered perimeter of Pusan to the shattered illusions at Chosin, the reader meets men who did their duty with trembling hands and empty stomachs.

Task Force Smith arrives in the dark, digs without orders, and wakes to a battalion of Soviet-built T-34s that shrug off bazooka rounds like raindrops. This first American encounter ends with dismembered retreat and a burial of confidential documents too wet to burn. From this mud-caked opening, the book advances by real hills, by real names, by bodies dragged through sleet, by truck convoys blocked by villages emptied of civilians and filled with mines.

There is Lieutenant Mayfield, screaming into the void as his tank burns near Obong-ni. Marine officers at Chosin supervise amputations without anesthesia. Hastings strips away the conceit of strategy to show the futility in tactical victories traded for mountains strewn with corpses: “It was always the same hill, the same cost, the same stupid orders.”

Courage emerges in actions nobody witnessed and few remembered. A medic stitches wounds with borrowed thread. A retreating officer risks his life to drag a dying South Korean conscript across a minefield. A pilot flies twelve hours without sleep to drop crates of ammunition no one can carry. These are moments without trumpet or fanfare.

Across the scorched plains and icy ridges, he threads acts of unpolished, unromantic valor: the Belgian platoon holding off Chinese waves near Imjin while listening to BBC broadcasts in broken static; American black soldiers shackled by segregation, yet volunteering for point patrols in the bitter snow; a British sergeant wrestling a drunken tank commander into retreat while artillery rains down like “fists from a lunatic god.”

At Inchon, MacArthur “puffed on his pipe as if delivering Seoul from evil required only tobacco and swagger.” Later, near the Yalu, the illusion of American omnipotence dissolves into the yellow dust of Chinese battalions surging from the hills.

Hastings is merciless toward the generals, but reserves his full venom for the armchair patriots in Washington and Moscow who “drank whisky while boys drowned in their own blood.” Still, even he cannot suppress a kind of weary awe when describing the Marines' frozen march from Chosin: “They moved like ghosts pulling sleds of the dead.”

Hastings threads the war with grim mathematics: 142,000 United Nations casualties, over a million Korean deaths, untold numbers lost in Chinese assaults that came without warning and left with nothing.

Hastings' solemn and savage tone bristles with contempt for euphemism. His British heritage peeks through in dry, withering asides, but the real power of the book comes from his obsession with the ordinary man crushed beneath twentieth-century machinery.

His sources speak in sandpaper and smoke: “We didn’t think we’d live, so we sang songs and shot dogs and waited for the Chinese.”

The book, however, does not belong to statistics. It belongs to men like Ezra Burke, who thought he’d be in Korea for a week and found himself firing at retreating traitors after bartering a gold watch for a wooden handcart. It belongs to Sergeant Vann, who held his throat together with both hands and kept walking. It belongs to Lieutenant Carl Bernard, who navigated a wounded platoon with a child’s school atlas.

The book reads less like a history than a series of dispatches sent back soaked in fear and disbelief. A cautionary epic where ideology drapes itself in rags and frostbite. Hastings implies that no one won, except perhaps the maggots, who never ran out of work.

Hastings says everything about the war’s politics, and yet very little about its soul. I came away with a clearer view of who moved the pieces, but little sense of why the players stayed on the board or played the game in the first place.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember seeing this in bookshops when it was first published in the 80s. I thought about buying it at that time but decided I didn’t have enough of an interest in the subject. It’s quite topical now though…

This book provides the normal Max Hastings’ package - a very readable and well researched narrative of the political and military aspects of the conflict (with the emphasis on the latter) interspersed with personal testimony from veterans. What you also get with this author is a lot of outspoken opinion. I understand he upset a few people in the USA with this book, because he is a British author who was at times disparaging of the US Army’s performance during the Korean conflict. Most of the criticisms unsurprisingly refer to the notorious period of “bugout fever” after the Chinese intervened in the last months of 1950. He also quotes some British and Chinese veterans who are uncomplimentary about the fighting qualities of the GIs. Hastings did the same to Australia in his book “Nemesis”, about the Pacific theatre of WWII, but he’s not nationalist about this sort of thing. In other books and TV programmes he has often been critical of the performance of the British Army in WWII.

Hastings acknowledges that the book contains more testimony from British veterans than is justified by Britain’s numerical contribution to the UN forces, explaining that this arose from the simple fact it was logistically easier for him to talk to people living in Britain. He comments, with some justification, that what is related by one participant can often stand for many. On the strategic aspects, he pays due credit to MacArthur’s masterstroke at Inchon, whilst also levelling criticism for the Supreme Commander’s subsequent hubris about proceeding to the Yalu, despite numerous Chinese warnings that this was something they could not accept. His assessment of the relationship between MacArthur and Truman makes for interesting reading.

I had always tended to think of the Korean War as being closer in nature to WWII than to Vietnam, but Hastings takes the opposite view. Despite that, he considers the War as a relative success for the Western powers. (The outcome in Korea was certainly one the US would have settled for in Vietnam). The ceasefire line now has on one side one of the most advanced societies in the world, and on the other a backward and brutal prison state. Veterans who returned to Korea in later decades are quoted as saying that the sacrifices of the American and other veterans were, in hindsight, greatly appreciated by the local population. That’s more than can be said in many other cases.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this readable,insightful, and well-written volume, Hastings aims to paint a “portrait” of the war and does not claim to provide anything resembling a comprehensive history, although in the end the book is a fine balance of both for the most part. The book is also mostly focused on military actions.

Hastings argues that China’s intervention in the war was, to a large degree, motivated by a sense of patriotism, rather than a reflexive pro-Communist ideology. The Americans had, of course, committed naval forces to Formosa, which the Chinese viewed as a threat to their sovereignty; crucially, they also thought the defeat of US forces in Korea could resolve the Formosa issue. Hastings also argues that the chief aim of the Soviet Union’s Korean policy was to avoid a direct confrontation with the US, and that the Chinese acted unilaterally (more recent research into the issue has largely reached the same conclusion). Although Soviet-North Korean relations cooled as the war ground on, Soviet diplomatic and military support had, in a very real sense, made North Korea’s aggression possible.

Despite their initially limited goals, the Chinese soon, like the Americans, adopted “mission creep” and aimed for a decisive victory on the Peninsula, a decision that would cost them dearly in manpower as the war ground on. At the same time, US forces were woefully unprepared for war, as “nearly every unit in the army was under-strength, under-trained, and under-equipped.” Many GIs couldn’t even grasp the basics of handling a rifle, and more than one had been deployed from quiet postings with almost zero training but with their records marked combat-ready.

Hastings also gives us a good portrait of MacArthur (whose judgment he calls “fatally unstable”), who felt that, once a shooting war broke out, the military commander in the field should operate unhindered, become the primary decisionmaker, and be granted the widest discretion. This was basically the kind of authority he had exercised during the last war, and it seems that he felt the new age of superpowers, atomic weapons, and limited war was no different. From the beginning, however, the Truman administration was never entirely comfortable with MacArthur in charge. While it doesn’t always seem like MacArthur was any sort of military genius, his achievements in the Pacific theater in the last war were in many ways real. Hastings calls the decision to cross the 38th parallel “a classic example of military opportunity becoming the engine of political desirability...the very great political and diplomatic hazards were submerged by the public perception of the prospect of outright military victory.”

“In Korea as in Vietnam,” Hastings writes, “the United States showed itself militarily at a loss about the conduct of a war amid a peasant society. The will simply did not exist, in the United States and far less among her allies, to treat Kim Il Sung’s act of aggression in Korea as a pretext for all-out war against Asian communism. And had it done so, it remains doubtful whether MacArthur’s policy was militarily practicable, even without the support of nuclear weapons. If MacArthur had had his way, the cost to the moral credibility of the United States would almost certainly have been disastrous. Truman’s greatest difficulty was that his own political authority was too weak to explain to his own people the realities of the new world in which they lived, where immense military power could not always be translated into effective foreign influence. Perhaps more than any other conflict in history, the outcome of World War II could be claimed as a simple triumph of good over evil. Yet in 1951, only six years later, such clear-cut decisions already seemed obsolete. Americans were learning to come to terms with a world of constant crises, of problems chronically resistant to solutions. The finest minds in the Administration understood all this. But it was a wholly unwelcome message to convey to Middle America---or to such a man as Douglas MacArthur.”

Hastings also does a fine job fleshing out the moral ambiguity of the Korean War, and all sides had plenty of things they couldn’t particularly be proud of. The North Koreans committed plenty of well-documented atrocities, while at the same time the UN forces’ handling of POWs was less than stellar (Koje Island being an obvious example). He also vividly fleshes out the experience of UN POWs, which ranged from humorous to surreal to tragic (he also argues that the notion that the Chinese “brainwashed” many POWs is mostly unfounded, and that Chinese efforts to that end were mostly crude, clumsy, or stupid). Many Americans questioned the aims of the Korean venture, especially when confronted by the hostility or indifference of the Korean locals. And, of course, American GIs returned home after the war to an indifferent public pre-occupied with other things and disillusioned with the failure to achieve a decisive victory.

In all, Hastings’ writing is strong and vivid, and he covers the important parts of this story in an efficient manner. Some of Hastings’ arguments will provoke debate or maybe derision; he argues that British forces were in much better shape than the US, that the leadership of the US was often inadequate (mainly MacArthur, although Hastings isn’t the first historian to reach this defensible conclusion) and, of course, that the ceasefire really was a “substitute for victory.” He does not, however, dispute the argument that the war was unjustifiable. Hastings also includes plenty of situations of surreal humor, such as when US troops at the Chosin reservoir are air-dropped “recreation packs” that for some reason include condoms (“What the fuck do they think we are doing with those Chinese?”)

Hastings’ book is heavy on analysis (especially regarding the “unpreparedness” part), but the conclusions are often rather vague, with little solid evidence to back them up. Much of his criticism is also focused on the lower ranks, and Hastings often seems to suggest that the higher-ups were unaware of these shortcomings, but this part of the book seemed a little weak. Also, Hastings’ British perspective seems like a minor shortcoming at times; Imjin River gets an entire chapter while other actions by the Americans on a similar scale are given short shrift. And he doesn’t really look at how “unpreparedness” affected British performance. Nor is there much coverage of China’s participation, that of South Korean and North Korean soldiers, or on post-1953 Korea. Also while describing the history of unconventional warfare during the war Hastings writes that “Hans Tofte...set up a new unit named the Office of Policy Coordination to organize covert activity.” This is inaccurate. OPC was set up by NSC in 1948 with State, Defense, and CIA representatives, reported to State, and was eventually merged with the CIA in 1951. Tofte would work with OPC during the Korean War, but he wasn’t the one who set it up. And in a few instances his writing is odd, like saying that in 1949 “relations” between the Koreas “rose sharply.”

Overall, a balanced, compelling history with a fluid, gripping, and often surreal narrative.

[Igor Ljubuncic · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thrilling, compelling read.

Max Hastings tells a visceral story of the first "international" conflict of the post-WW2 era. It's not the first, but it's the one that shattered the illusion and naivety that was the foundation of the UN, it was the war that crystallized and defined the boundaries of the Cold War, and it's one that the US didn't learn from and went on to repeat in Vietnam a decade later.

The book is written superbly. It tells everything - the politics of Syngman Rhee, the plight of the Korean civilians, the demigod status and delusions of McArthur, the politics and counter-politics between the big powers, the bickering among the generals, the tragic personal stories of the soldiers fighting in the trenches, the surreal stories from captivity.

There's something rather "dirty" about the Korean War. It wasn't linear, it wasn't logical, and it doesn't have closure. It started as a panic ping-pong between the north and the south, became a major conflagration between the US and China, and ended up as a WWI trench warfare slog that simply ended because the big powers have had just the right amount of posturing.

Interestingly, the author does not hide his anti-communist streak, and he's also fiercely patriotic, giving a more-than-proportional share of attention to the British troops in Korea, but then, he does not try to hide his own message among facts, which is rather cool. This is atypical for nonfiction. Moreover, he also goes emotional here and there, and it's obvious that he does have some disdain for certain figures (politicians and top generals mostly), as well as a generally negative attitude toward China and north Korea. Who would have thought how relevant this book would some seventy years later?

Well, anyone who pays close attention to history.

In a way, it's like the clock stopped.

This is a very solid book, and an important read, because it also tries to go beyond the chessboard tactics and politics, and provide some insight into cultures, and the cultural clash, and the cardinal divide between the West and the East. It would be even better if there was more information from the other side, but again, the author laments a dearth of material from the "other" side. Even so, it's a top notch work of history.

Recommended.

Igor

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Korean War is often called the “forgotten war,” and at first glance it is difficult to understand how it earned such a label. What began as an invasion of South Korea by North Korea spiraled quickly into the deadliest conflict of the Cold War, one that engaged the armed forces of the United States, China, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and over a dozen other countries. Over the course of nearly three years of fighting approximately three million people were killed, with millions more becoming refugees. And with combat ending not with a peace agreement but with an armistice, the Korean Peninsula remains one of the tensest regions in the world, with the resumption of the fighting threatened periodically.

In the prologue to his history of the conflict. Max Hastings argues that the amnesia about it was a conscious choice by Westerners who were disappointed by its inconclusive outcome. In the process, however, what was lost was an appreciation of the importance of the war, not just to the Koreans but also for the superpower struggle that was still unfolding at that time. This latter point forms an important part of Hastings’s book, which draws upon official records, published works, and hundreds of interviews conducted with combatants on both sides in order to provide a penetrating examination of the conflict. It’s a highly readable work that features the hubris of the commanders and the suffering of the soldiers, the latter of which is recounted with great sympathy for their plight.

Hastings begins his book by providing an overview of the events that led up to the war’s outbreak. He situates the origins of the conflict in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, with the downfall and occupation of Japan’s former empire. With Japan’s defeat, the United States suddenly found itself determining the fate of a Korean population about which Americans knew little and cared even less. What began as a temporary division of responsibility with the Soviet Union soon led to a permanent division of Korea into two countries, both of which were fixated on reunification. While critical of Kim Il Sung’s regime in the north, Hastings makes no excuses for Syngman Rhee’s equally brutal rule over the people of South Korea. Well aware of his ambitious designs on the north, American officials sought to rein them in by limiting the amount of military aid South Korea received to materiel that allowed Rhee’s regime to do little more than defend themselves against their northern neighbor’s border incursions.

Because of this, the South Korean military was unprepared for North Korea’s invasion in June 1950, which Hastings sees as motivated not by Josef Stalin’s designs but Kim’s ambitions. With South Korean forces reeling from the onslaught, President Harry Truman obtained support from the recently-created United Nations for an intervention by the American forces in the region. Yet the poorly-trained contingents from the American occupation forces sent from Japan quickly found themselves outmatched by the experienced soldiers of the Korean People’s Army, who by the end of July had bottled up the South Korean/UN forces around the port of Pusan in the southeast. Though abandonment of peninsula seemed likely, a daring decision by Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the UN effort, to seize the port of Inchon by amphibious assault transformed the situation, causing the exhausted KPA forces to withdraw northward in disarray. By the end of October, the North Korean capital of Pyongyang had fallen to UN forces, and American troops anticipated returning home by Christmas.

Communist China’s intervention thwarted these hopes, and redefined the conflict. Hastings’s incorporation of the perspective of Chinese soldiers is one of the great strengths of his book, as doing so provides a dimension missing from previous accounts of the conflict. The offensives launched by Chinese “volunteers” in November and December sent UN forces reeling, and the pages describing the fighting that winter are among the best in the book. As he notes, however, China’s early successes proved difficult to sustain, as their ability to support their troops logistically grew more difficult the further south they advanced. This muted the advantage their numbers gave them, and made it possible for the new commander of U.S. forces, Matthew Ridgway, to stabilize the situation and gradually return the front lines to a position roughly similar to the prewar border between the two countries.

There the battlefield remained largely unchanged for the final two years of the war. Unfortunately, this period frustrates even Hastings’s formidable skills as a writer, as the reduction of the war to a succession of minor engagements deprives him of a larger narrative. His admirable sympathies for the front-line soldiers and their frustrations with the static nature of the conflict also blind him analytically, as he overlooks how the decision not to conduct further major offensive operations after the spring of 1951 was driven not just by a political unwillingness to sustain the greater casualties required to do so, but an awareness that further UN advances would only reduce the Chinese leadership’s interest in an end to the war. Nevertheless, he captures well the frustration felt by the solders during this period, who suffered and died in a war with no end in sight.

Without a larger campaign to recount, Hastings shifts his focus to address aspects of the war absent from many histories of it, such as the intelligence campaigns and the experience of the prisoners of war. It was the latter which proved the greatest obstacle to an armistice, though Rhee’s unwillingness to accept anything less than total conquest of the north threatened to disrupt the agreement in the summer of 1953 on a cease-fire. Yet while many shared the South Korean leader’s frustration with the unresolved end of the fighting, this did not diminish its significance for its participants. That the Americans had forgotten the lessons learned in Korea by the time they intervened in Vietnam adds an extra note of tragedy to Hastings’s conclusion, though one supported fully by his narrative. It provides an absorbing account of the war that is especially valuable for its integration of the British and Commonwealth participation into the story of the West’s intervention, and can be recommended to anyone seeking an introduction to this unjustly overlooked conflict.

[S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sir Max Hastings answered a fan message I left him on his website so I'm going to rate everything I read of his five stars. I don't care that he voted Tory in 2001. actually, the Pan Grand Strategy entry for "The Korean War" is a five-star book, too. they say a big war generates a book every decade, as global politics shift and values evolve. the way this pattern emerged for the 1950-1953 U.N. "police action" is also telling:

1967 T.R. Fehrenbach's "This Kind of War"
1987 Max Hastings "The Korean War"
1990 Stokesbury "Short History of the KW"
2007 Halberstam "The Coldest Winter"
2010 Cumings "KW: A History"

I'm a war-buff. Have read three of the five. The missing decade is the 70s, where the US was still reeling from Vietnam and unable to articulate a new understanding of its proto-involvement in Asia. Hastings' work does capture some of the 80s neo-con air, the age of Reagan and Thatcher, but benefits from Sir Hastings' military experience as well as decades spent at the helm of one of the UK's leading newspapers of record. Hastings' additional advantage is his British perspective; if on one hand we get a very detailed account of the British Army's performance during the Korean War, on the other, Hastings can analyze the good and bad aspects of the US performance without fear of being called "un-American" or "ideological" in the way a U.S. author would also have in the back of his mind.

this is the irony of the American position with regard to the UK, that allegiance to the foreign policy of the United States is part of the national identity to a degree British and Commonwealth nationals may take issue with. however, the famous London society madam's comment aside (viz., "America is the first country to go from barbarism to decadence without passing through civilization"), clearly to some degree the relationship is mutually beneficial, as the experiences of the first world empire in history to peacefully withdraw from its foreign frontiers permits the optimistic American empire-in-becoming to understand its limitations. I think this is a good compromise text of the situation, although anyone who wants to comment further is welcome.

anyway returning to the book. Hastings does a little over-strong UK coverage and then as per most writers passes quickly over the 1951-1953 years; he does not pay as much attention to the firepower solution organized at Chipyongni as Halberstam, but thankfully he does not fill his book 50% with criticism of MacArthur as Halberstam does. though I did read the Fehrenbach book of the 60s, actually I'll have to re-read it in order to remember comparisons, but Hastings does provide documentary coverage of the Fehrenbach's analysis of the North Korean POW riot, and his work is balanced and insightful.

"The Forgotten War;" the KW was briefly last month in the media again as N. Korea sabre-rattled. at time of writing, China is attempting to assert sovereignty over the Diaoyu/Senkaku island chain. maybe we are all in the shadow of another 3 year war?!

13 February 2022 reread. Reiterate 5/5. Thank you Sir Hastings for writing such a brillliant book. Today, as the Russo-Ukrainian crisis heats up, more than ever historians are needed.

[Boudewijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, what can I say. Another Hastings's masterpiece. You know what you get: an interesting book about one of the lesser known wars in the last century. Hastings shows how quickly the might of the American army was diminished after WOII, how brutal the regime of Rhee was and MacArthur's megalomania. Although he focusses mostly on the experience of the British contingent, do not let this decide you to skip this book - if you want a good account of the Korean war, choose this one. If you want to have a good account of any war, make sure you pick Hastings.

[Urey Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed emotions - Hastings is a superb historian and one I recommend. His wide view treatment of the Korean War is excellent. He lays out the political, military and ideological factors that led to the war and sustained it for the three years it ran, the inextricably interlaced influences of the leadership and decision making personalities, the tactics and strategic considerations - examined from the perspectives of both sides, the US, Britain, South Korea and the UN on one side and the Soviets, Red Chinese and North Koreans on the other. It is illuminating, and perceptive - and well worth reading the book. In addition to the conflict as a whole, he also devotes chapters to specialized topics such as the air war, intelligence, prisoners of war, that nicely examine their dedicated topics within the larger, wider narrative of the war as a whole to which the bulk of the book is devoted.

On the other hand, Hastings intersperses his narratives with digressions into individual story lines that, while interesting, are to me disruptive and more of a distraction than a supplement to the history he is relating on a larger scale. For example, his chapter on intelligence suddenly veers off into a lengthy account of the experiences of a single British intelligence officer that comprises about two-thirds of the chapter. Hastings indulges in similar digressions throughout the book, and I found it often awkward, often distracting, and seldom supplementary to the larger and superbly narrated history that is in fact the subject of the book. He is also quite Anglo-centric in his views... he relates British experiences, battles and events in detail, less so American, and his consistent disparagement of the American side of the story perpetuates the haughty "we do things better" arrogance of the British that exacerbated Allied relations during World War II. That is not to say that terrible decisions, disgraceful acts and mistakes were not made, but good and heroic ones were too and where it involves American efforts, Hastings waxes at length on the former and passes quickly over the former.

Hence my mixed emotions, and my middle of the road rating. Definitely worth reading, but could have been better....

[Porter Broyles · Rating 2 out of 5]

The audio version of this book really does not age well.

While I'm certain the narrator didn't mean it when the audio was made in 1997, his stereotypes of what Chinese and Koreans sounded like absolutely grated on my nerves.

The book itself probably deserved 4-5 stars, but the narration... too stereotyped.

[Ozymandias · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book as I wanted to learn a bit about the Korean War before my visit to the country this summer and recognized Max Hastings as the author of some rather good books on the world wars (see below). I have to admit to being somewhat let down on this front. I hadn’t realized when I bought it that this book massively predates any of the ones I’ve read, and unfortunately it shows. He hasn’t quite worked out how to combine his journalistic gifts as a foreign correspondent with the necessary skills of a historian. Actually, he may be leaning too far in the latter direction – while anecdote and interviews appear, the overall narrative is a little bland. He’s still trying to find his style. In later books that will be a mixture of high level political/military decision-making with an anecdotal approach to how those decisions play out on the ground. And that’s all there, it’s just not cohering correctly. The line between cause and effect doesn’t always hold up.

The result is an unfortunately humdrum account that does its job but provides little in the way of engaging storytelling. Maybe that’s the nature of the war but I don’t think it has to be. Halberstam’s account manages to be both engaging and personal. There is also a somewhat surprising tendency to focus on Britain’s involvement in the war. I get that Hastings is British, but at times the focus on the very small Commonwealth contingent distracts from larger matters going on around them. I think the repeated turn towards the British leadership’s concerns about the war makes more sense – outside pressure and views does have an impact on both American policy and global perceptions – but at times the book reads like an outsider’s account when it doesn’t have to. This is not his first book to leave behind British affairs, so I’m not quite sure where this comes from other than a desire (which is probably a good one) to see some of the non-American allied experiences told for the first time. It might well make for a good book, though I think a different one.

While it is not up to the standard of Hastings’ later books, it is fine for what it is. It provides a solid account of the Korean War. The geopolitical background to the war is solid – although internal Korean affairs and Japanese colonial behavior never seems to get enough attention – and the narrative of the major encounters in the war places everything in its proper context. The war can be divided up into roughly four stages – the precipitous American retreat in the face of North Korea, the UN landing at Incheon and advance across the 36th Parallel, the second precipitous American retreat in the face of China, and the American recovery and final stalemate. The majority of the book focuses on the first three stages, although the final two years of the war are covered in thematic chapters on the air war, POWs, and intelligence operations. The gulf between the focus on command decisions and ordinary experiences can be a little broad. I was not always clear what was happening in these sections. That is, to some degree, the idea. The chaos of the Korean War is quite infamous. But readers probably want something a little more.

One area where the book could have used a much stronger focus is on the Korean background. Syngman Rhee is introduced as rather a bastard and you get an occasional refugee story or extracts from a general’s memoir, but aside from that the sole information you are given about the Koreans comes from outside views. And it’s not good. Not at all. Brutal, corrupt, and completely incompetent. I suspect that’s not too far from the truth so far as it goes – South Korea’s memory of the time is filled with nasty behavior from their unelected leaders – but what exactly were they thinking and how did they regard the war fought on their own homes. Not really much of an idea.

Despite its reputation as the forgotten war there are other books on the Korean War which may be better places to turn. David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter is the easiest to recommend, although it should be noted that it really only covers the first year, from the North Korean invasion to MacArthur’s dismissal. That is, of course, the only period in the war which has any narrative interest, the remainder being just one long story of WW1-style stalemate and occasional useless endeavors. There may be a good use for the current book as a supplement for that one – the last third of the book does cover the final two years of the war, admittedly in thematic rather than narrative form. Another journalist, Halberstam had much longer (and more access to native Korean sources) to get his style right.

A more interesting account of the war may be Bruce Cummings’ inventively titled The Korean War. Unlike the other authors here, Cummings is a Korean specialist and looks at the war through the lens of Korea’s struggles. I find his kneejerk anti-Americanism quite tedious at times, particularly when he ultimately decides that the general consensus is right but doesn’t want to say it, yet he really opens up a radically different perspective of the war: the one gradually developed in South Korea. There are a lot of shocking facts that genuinely do upset the views of books by outsiders like Hastings (in whose defense I should note that most of these conclusions didn’t appear in Korean or English until after the rise of democracy in the same year his book was published). For example, South Korea’s atrocities are massively worse than Hastings suggests: almost certainly far worse than those committed by the North. Reactionary and callous beyond all belief, South Korea’s leaders routinely executed ordinary citizens for pretty much no reason and punished thought crimes with unfathomable brutality. The book also lays bare the preexisting problem: that North Korea’s leaders were native Korean anticolonial rebels while almost all of South Korea’s leaders were Japanese collaborators.

As for better books by Max Hastings, his two books on the end of WW2 are fantastic: Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 and Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. He also has a decent one--volume history of the war as well, Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945, although there are better purely military accounts by Martin Gilbert and John Keegan that I prefer (as well as Rick Atkinson’s phenomenal and unrivaled Liberation Trilogy for America’s role in the war). Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War is a solid military account of the initial months of the First World War, although it is best supplemented by in-depth examinations of the underlying causes of the war by true specialists like Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers or Margaret MacMillan’s The War That Ended Peace.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent accounting of an overlooked conflict! The Korean War is one that I think many Americans tend to brush aside in favor of WWII or Vietnam, but this bloody war and those who fought within it deserve to be remembered and this book does an excellent job relaying the tales and bringing them to life.

[Kristi Thielen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My father served in Korea from 1951 to 1953; he was a U.S. Marine and a mortarman. He fought in one of the battles at the Hook, was wounded and received a Purple Heart. Over the years, he related several isolated experiences to me, but we never talked about the war in general; the global and national political atmosphere in which it took place.

I have read several other books about the Korean War, but never felt those books helped me grasp the whole. This book did.

Hastings has a very thoughtful but uncluttered writing style. You feel you are reading a scholar, but without the dry scholarly verbiage. He moves smoothly from chapters about the war on the ground, the war in the air and the Douglas McArthur saga; to chapters on the failings of the South Korean government, the fading support for the war among Americans; the conflicted military response among nations and what the U.S. assumed about the Soviet and Chinese roles in the war – as opposed to what we know about those roles now.

Most illuminating – and most heartbreaking – is Hastings examination of the many mistakes made in Korea and his assessment that little was learned by them; they were repeated in Vietnam.

The author ultimately caps his work with strong statements about the fact that, despite the many mistakes and failings, going to war in Korea was the right thing to do. He makes the reader reach the same conclusion.

[AnnaG · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful and comprehensive guide to the Korean War. This book mixes close narratives of some key battles with the strategic viewpoint from HQ and the personal narratives of POW and civilians.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I freely admit that I probably wouldn’t have read ‘The Korean War’ if it hadn’t been lent to me. Moreover, it took me a little while to get into. I'm very glad to have given it a chance, though, and 80 pages in I was hooked. The Korean War is an often overlooked conflict; I knew practically nothing about it before reading this book. It is overshadowed by WWII on one side and Vietnam on the other, yet was of immense global significance. Hastings tells the story in a clear, readable, and informative style, without getting too journalistic. The book was originally published in 1987, which dates the conclusions at the end interestingly. When the USSR and communism were still considered global superpowers and threats to the West, it must have been easier to see the Korean war as a just conflict that merited its cost in lives and money. These days, it is notable that the only insular communist dictatorship still to exist is North Korea with, as I understand it, the same boundaries as were agreed in the 1953 armistice. This is hardly a positive legacy for the Korean War. In the 21st century, we can ask with hindsight why it was worth fighting proxy wars against communism when its superpowers would peacefully collapse (USSR) or smoothly shift into a state capitalist oligarchy (China) a few decades later. At the time of the Cold War, such developments could hardly be foreseen. Hastings ends by saying that the war saved South Korea from an awful fate. On the other hand, who’s to say that it hasn’t prolonged the terrible fate of the North? Since 1987 American has stacked up several more catastrophic military interventions, tempting the rest of the world to suppose that they only ever make things worse.

The actual narrative of the war, by contrast, has not dated discernibly. The inevitable temptation to compare wars to each other led me to consider the similarities of the Korean War and the trenches of WWI. The former began with unprovoked invasion of South Korea by the North, which the South Korean army could do little to repulse. The USA, which was occupying Japan at the time, mustered up a vaguely worded UN resolution to resist North Korea’s aggression, partly from the belief that it was backed by the USSR. American forces, with fairly tokenistic allied support, proceeded to repulse the North Korean army and drive it back close to the Northern border with China. Whereupon Chinese forces entered the war and threw back the American troops into South Korea, nearly creating a rout. After the initial shock had worn off and General MacArthur had been replaced, the Americans pulled themselves together and turned back the Chinese advance. All this occurred within the first year of the war, which then dragged on for a further three or so years, during which time both sides dug in and the lines moved very little. Any small gains were achieved at the cost of heavy casualties. That certainly seems to me a lot more like WWI’s Western Front than any particular phase of WWII. I don’t know much about the Vietnam War, but Hastings certainly confirmed my impression that the US completely failed to apply any useful lessons from Korea to that later, similar conflict.

In fact, my strongest impression of the whole war is that it was a tragic fiasco and narrowly escaped becoming a nuclear one. The US forces were by all accounts in a terrible state when the war began, their technological superiority barely making up for failures of leadership, training, and morale. The South Korean regime was a corrupt dictatorship with a totally ineffectual army. The North Korean communist regime was ruthlessly oppressive. Bad decisions were made on all sides, millions of lives were thrown away, and both North and South Korea were devastated. China’s military made perhaps the most creditable showing, as they were able to use very recent experience of guerrilla conflict in the Chinese civil war to compensate for a severe lack of equipment. On the other hand, the surprising success of the Chinese forces was premised on a complete disregard for the value of human life. Hastings is only able to provide vague estimates for Chinese and Korean casualties, which run to the millions: an order of magnitude greater than US losses.

The loss of life in the Korean War would nonetheless have been much greater if nuclear weapons had been used. Hastings suggests that the US came disturbingly close to this. In the early 1950s, only the US had the bomb and MacArthur argued both before and after his removal from command that tactical nuclear strikes on China were necessary to contain communism. All America’s allies were opposed to this, on the totally reasonable grounds of not wanting another world war. It appears, though, that at the time nuclear weapons did not have the doomsday aura they later acquired and the American military viewed them as only quantitatively different from conventional arms. Hastings puts it like this:

How close did the United States come, in the winter of 1950, to employing nuclear bombs against the Chinese? Much closer, the answer must be, than her allies cared to believe at the time. If Truman and the fellow-members of his Administration recoiled from bearing the responsibility for so terrible an act, America’s leading military men, from the Joint Chiefs downwards, were far more equivocal, and seemed far less disturbed by the prospect. [...] Had the Chinese proved able to convert the defeat of the UN forces into their destruction, had Eighth Army been unable to check its retreat, and been driven headlong into the coastal ports with massive casualties, it is impossible to declare with certainty that Truman would have resisted demands for an atomic demonstration against China.

All very chilling. Not surprisingly, most of the voices in the narrative are American or others on the UN side, but Hastings does take care to include Korean and Chinese accounts. He also makes no secret of the atrocities on all sides and the pervasive racism of the US soldiers. In addition to following the front lines, the book includes chapters on intelligence (scant and badly organised), the war in the air (US-dominated), prisoners of war, and how peace was negotiated. The latter includes extraordinary accounts of how the island of Koje-do, where the UN forces kept their POWs, became in effect a second front in the war. North Korean and Chinese POWs took control of the camps where they were imprisoned, thanks to deliberate communist infiltration and remarkably slapdash US management. In May 1952, one camp of North Koreans actually took their American commandant hostage, precipitating a siege.

Overall, I recommend Hastings’ account as an eye-opening account of the Korean War that neatly balances military details with wider analysis. 29 years after its publication, it would be fascinating to read a complementary account drawing on USSR and Chinese archives that may have subsequently become available. What has not changed, sadly, in the apparent inability of the US to learn foreign policy lessons. Hastings quotes Colonel John Michaelis as follows:

“I don’t think that, as an army or a nation, we ever learn from our mistakes, from history. We didn’t learn from the Civil War, we didn’t learn from World War I. The US Army has still not accepted the simple fact that its performance in Korea was lousy.”

One need only change Korea to Iraq or Afghanistan. Back then the stated aim was to create bulwarks against communism, now apparently it's to create bulwarks against Islamic fundamentalism. I'm no expert, but the tactics seem equally counterproductive in each case. Same shit, different century.

[Vishy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to start this month by reading some history. So I read Max Hastings' book on the Korean War.

The Korean War was probably the first war in the Cold War era when Western and communist forces clashed on the battlefield. It is not as famous as the Vietnam War, and it is mostly forgotten today. But though the Vietnam War has passed on to history and legend today, with the country filled with bustling cities with tall skyscrapers like any other East Asian city, the fires of the Korean War are still smoldering today, with North Korea and South Korea being two separate, distinct countries, with tension brewing in between. So I thought it will be a good idea to read this book and find out how it all started.

One of the problems I had while choosing to read a particular history of the Korean War was this. Most history books which are available in English today are written by American or British historians. Occasionally, we might find a French or German book in English translation, but otherwise this is it. (There are lots of books on Indian history in English by Indian historians and writers, but that is a unique case, and so I'm going to ignore that for the purposes of our discussion.) So, because of this, a typical history book in English is going to have a British or American bias. Of course, historians try to be neutral, and try to provide the relevant facts, with objective analysis, but the bias always creeps in. For example, a typical British or American version of the Korean War could go like this – "The army of the evil Chinese empire, joined together with the North Koreans and tried to take over the whole of Korea. The heroic American army intervened with the help of friends and helped the South Korean people. In a furious war waged between the armies of the free world and of the communist totalitarians, the noble armies of the free world triumphed. That is why we have a democratic, free South Korea today, which is one of the biggest Asian economies, while totalitarian North Korea is poor and primitive." This is the kind of history which is peddled by the international press, and media, and this is the history which most of us are aware of. So I was worried that a history of the war by an American or British historian would be a version of this. Maybe a sophisticated version, but still very similar to this.

So, what about Max Hastings' book? How good is it? There is good news and bad news.

The good news first. I thought that the context that Hastings gave to the war with the background into Korean history of that period and how the Japanese occupied Korea and how the division of Korea into the North and the South happened – this is very well done. I learnt a lot while reading this. The actual war is described from a Western perspective, but to be fair to Hastings, he doesn't hesitate to criticize the decisions by American leaders and military personnel. (He mostly treats British leaders and army personnel softly with kid gloves, which is very interesting 😊) Occasionally he also describes things from a Chinese perspective, based on his interviews with Chinese veterans. There are many stories of heroism and valour and sacrifice during the war, mostly of the American and British and other UN soldiers, and occasionally of the Chinese soldiers which are very inspiring and moving to read. There is considerable space given to the American General Douglas MacArthur and his role in the war and how his decisions impacted events. It made me want to read more about MacArthur. The only things I know about him are that he was famous, he was featured in an American postage stamp, and he was suddenly dismissed by his President Truman. MacArthur looks like a fascinating, larger-than-life character, whom people loved or hated, but couldn't ignore. I hope to read more about him. This is the good news.

Now the bad news 😊 The North Koreans are mostly treated as a mass of homogeneous, evil people, who are ruthless and barbaric. Though there is a lot of description of individual American or British soldiers, there is no mention of an individual North Korean by name. Except for Kim Il Sung. The North Koreans are regarded as a primitive, evil horde who are uncivilized and the author probably feels that they deserved what was coming to them. The Chinese soldiers are also mostly depicted this way – as an evil horde who keep on coming and fighting in the night. The Chinese get slightly better treatment though – individual Chinese soldiers are sometimes mentioned and the author is able to interview them and we learn their stories. One of the reasons for this could be that North Korean veterans of the war would have been inaccessible to Western correspondents, as their country was closed and continues to be closed to outsiders today. The same would have been true with respect to Chinese veterans, but there was a thaw between the Chinese and the West in the 1970s, which continued into the 1980s, when Hastings wrote this book, and so he would have been able to speak to some of the Chinese veterans of the war. But, inspite of this small silver lining, it is hard to ignore the fact that the North Koreans and the Chinese are treated as barbaric, primitive, evil hordes, who are out to destroy the beautiful freedom created by Western countries.

So, the book describes the Western perspective of the Korean War. It is detailed from that perspective. We get the occasional Chinese perspective. But the perspective from the opposite side is mostly simplistic or missing. But we can read the book against the grain, look at the author's conclusions and try to see things from the opposite side. It is lots of hardwork, but it is interesting and rewarding. I do agree with the overall conclusion of the author though – that the American and UN intervention in Korea was good and South Korea is a thriving country today with a booming economy and it is a global leader in popular culture because of that. (Though why the Chinese didn't take North Korea under their wing, make investments there and make it into a thriving economy, the way the Americans helped South Korea – why this didn't happen, we'll never know. What is the purpose of keeping North Korea closed and stuck in a Cold War era time warp? It doesn't help anyone, including the North Koreans and the Chinese.)

I found Max Hastings' book on the Korean War very informative and insightful, inspite of its limitations. I loved what Max Hastings said in his introduction to the book – "It is properly the business of a new generation of historians to correct the errors which have inevitably emerged over the past three decades, in light of updated statistics and declassified material. Authors addressing the subject anew must review and challenge my judgements as they see fit." That is what a good historian says – that history is open to new interpretations as new facts emerge in the future, and his version is neither definite nor final. This made me like Max Hastings.

I'll leave you with two of my favourite passages from the book.

#FavouriteQuote1

This story made me cry.

"Suk Bun Yoon, the fourteen-year-old schoolboy who had twice escaped from Seoul under communist occupation, was living with the remains of his family as suppliants upon the charity of a village south of the capital in the spring of 1951. A government mobilisation decree was suddenly thrust upon the village: twenty able-bodied men were required for military service. Suk’s family was offered a simple proposal by the villagers: if the boy would go to the army in place of one of their own, they would continue to feed his parents.

An American army truck bore him and the other bewildered young men first to Seoul, and then on up the dusty road towards the front. They spent a night in an old station warehouse, where they were given chocolate and a can of corned beef. It was the first meat the boy had tasted for six months, and was impossibly rich. He was sick at once. Next morning, after five hours on the road, he and a cluster of others were deposited at the camp of the Royal Ulster Rifles. He was not to be a soldier, but a porter under military discipline. He found himself joining a unit of some forty porters attached to the battalion. His first job was to carry a coil of barbed wire up to the forward positions. It was hopeless. He was too young, and too weak. The corporal in charge took pity on him. He was assigned to become a sweeper and odd-job boy at the rear echelon. Yet life remained desperately hard. Each night, the porters were confined to their hut, yet they were sometimes awakened amid the sound of the gunfire to carry ammunition or equipment forward. One day, they found themselves hastily ordered back to a new position. Suk scarcely understood what was happening, beyond the confusion of retreat. Gradually, he and the others understood that there had been a battle, and heavy casualties. Around half the porters had disappeared, captured or killed.

After the battle, the porters’ conditions seemed to improve. Suk became more accustomed to the life, and determined to educate himself. As he learned a little English, he questioned the soldiers incessantly: What was the longest river in the world? Which was the highest mountain? How was England governed? Since in later life he became a professor of economics, this experiment cannot be considered a complete failure. The soldiers called him ‘Spaniard’, because he had a reputation for hot temper. Yet when the Ulsters were relieved and he found himself attached to the Royal Norfolks, conditions deteriorated again. He was caught scavenging for food, roughly handled, and sent for a spell in a barbed-wire cage. He was then sacked from his job as a porter at battalion headquarters, and sent to the pioneer platoon, where he spent several more months.

‘I was very homesick,’ he said. ‘By February 1952, I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. The only letter I had sent to my family was returned undelivered. I was missing them desperately.’ That month, he was given leave to Seoul. He reached the capital determined not to go back to the front. He contacted some of his old schoolmates, and in April was able to arrange to return to school – a school without books or desks. His only asset was a strong command of the English language which he had acquired on the hills behind the Imjin."

#FavouriteQuote2

This happened hours after the war ended and the armistice was signed. It made me smile 😊 It also made me sad at the meaningless futility of war.

"When dawn came, men on the UN line peered out across the silent valleys between themselves and the Chinese. In many places, little clusters of bold spirits slipped forward through the wire and the minefields, searching with intense curiosity for their former enemies. What did they look like, these strange creatures who had been glimpsed only momentarily through binoculars, or as screaming shadows in the darkness of an attack? The same curiosity possessed their enemies. On the low ground between positions, there were stilted little encounters. The Chinese passed over beer and bottles of rice wine. UN troops offered chocolate and cigarettes. Some Chinese made it apparent that they were as delighted that the war was ended as the Westerners. But these meetings could scarcely be called fraternisation. They were impelled not by fellow-feeling for the enemy, but by the same impulses that would provoke any earthman to inspect visiting aliens."

Have you read Max Hastings' book on the Korean War or any other book on the Korean War?

[Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eurgh. I picked this up mainly to read about the Korean perspective in the war, which was naive given the title of the book. When we finally got there I was disgusted to read of lost and orphaned children being described as a 'legion' and compared to flies. From then on after China entered the arena words such as 'scuttled,' 'mass', 'swarm' and 'infested' were frequently employed to describe them and North Korean forces.

It was an easy read that strangely emphasised the British perspective when more time could have been spent on Korean recollections or more spread out amongst UN nations.

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

establishment account of the conflict. candid to the extent it explains the political maneuvers and crimes of each side prior to the opening of hostilities, and noteworthy that, though the north is often thought to be the aggressor, text here suggests that there was plenty of water under the bridge by the time the north invaded.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic study of the Korean War, takes you from the high level strategy to the unit level tactical actions. One of the best overviews of the entire conflict.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very fine history of the Korean War, how could it not be when written by as astute a historian as Max Hastings. Anyone interested in particular post WWII and cold war history should read about the Korean War. It is accurately described as a forgotten war - and it is and was - but more honestly it was the last pre-television war. That is, simplistically, difference between it and Vietnam. Korea was 'a far away place' that no one knew anything about before, during or after the war. Vietnam was someplace no one could forget no matter how much they wanted to.

I am not going to rehash the war in my review. I think Hastings does a fine job in trying to bring to life its manifold complexities but I can't help feeling that he loses interest once the dramatic back and forth of the early year of the war was over. Afterwards it was largely attrition as the long painful ceasefire negotiations took place. He looks at air power, intelligence, etc. but there is a sense that it is filling in space and time until it can all be wrapped up. Hastings writes about war but he is not a military historian going into the nitty-gritty of the campaign for every map reference. His eye is as much on politics as generals - but he never forgets the ordinary soldiers and he never forgets to pay tribute the to often forgotten actions of those whose lives and youth, particularly in the days of conscript armies, were so casual thrown away.

My reservations have to do with the age of the book - published in 1987 it is a work informed by the monolithic, and apparently permanent, cold war divisions into East and West. Yet within years they would pass into history and be as vanished as Tyre and Nineveh. Reading his conclusion at the end of the book it is impossible not to reflect on how much his views were to deepen by the time he came to write on Vietnam in 2007. Clearly I can't help wondering how much more information has emerged from former Soviet, Chinese and even Korean archives - though not North Korean ones.

If there is one thing I do not think anyone would disagree with Max Hastin g's on is that despite everything the people of South Korea are happier for not having been conquered by North Korea in 1950. That in 2025 the shabby, tawdry, vulgar, charade of the Kim Il Sung dynasty is still in power and creating misery on a scale no pre-twentieth century monarch or dynasty could imagine is shocking. That we all to often treat this as a joke rather than a human tragedy is something we should all be ashamed of.

[Jurij Fedorov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prologue: Task Force Smith

1 » Origins of a Tragedy
9/10

Good intro to how Korea was split in two after WW2 like Germany. Here Soviet put in a strong leader in Kim Il-sung and gave them a ton of weapons and support making them a powerful nation. Of course Kim Il-sung wanted to conquer South Korea that the Western powers had left poor and defenseless.

2 » Invasion
8/10

The North Korean army smashes the puny and poor South Korean defense. They beg USA to help out. In USA there is a huge anti-Communist fear so they are actually not unwilling to help.

3 » The West’s Riposte

1. Washington
2. Tokyo
3. London
4. Seoul
8/10

China and Soviet wanted to spread Communism, but there was no direct support for the war. Soviet did give North Korea a go ahead, but kept low. But as Soviet refused to go to UN meetings because the West saw Taiwan as the real China UN could now vote for the defense of South Korea. For the first and last time Western powers had this control in UN. Truman also wanted to defend them somewhat. Douglas MacArthur, the dictator of Japan, was put in charge. MacArthur was a crazy man. He hated Europe and wanted USA to fully focus on the Pacific. So he really wanted this war and imagined that Communism would need to be defeated anyhow. He pushed for the army to help out with full force.

Britain still wanted to feel big at this point and still had a big army to help out with. They were eager to help USA too. Both the left and right in Britain largely supported South Korea. Though plenty on the left were against helping them.

4 » Walker’s War

1. Retreat to the Naktong
2. Dressing Ranks
3. The Pusan Perimeter
8,5/10

Initial war. Lots of focus on South Korean citizens and the butchery of Communists and how much violence they were causing. Even towards people who hate the South Korean dictatorship and initially wanted the Communists to come. They kill people if their family owned land or industry.

5 » Inchon
8/10

Military landing in Korea. Working with the Japanese and Koreans and various initial plans. Initially the Communists walked over the South Koreans. But once USA joins it very fast becomes clear that the Communist tactics are horrible and causes the North Korean army to fall apart as they just attack everywhere without being careful. So Americans are extremely fearful as they think the attacks will continue. In reality the attacks actually show that South Korea is winning. They take Seoul with a full on attack and MacArthur celebrates it in glory even though USA's government doesn't want this as they see the South Korean dictator as evil too.

6 » To the Brink: MacArthur Crosses the Parallel
8/10

MacArthur attacks full force and forces North Koreans back even though it's not in the US government plans. He figures China won't respond.

7 » The Coming of the Chinese
8/10

China is angry about some American pro-Taiwan statements and wants to push back against this. So they attack the American army even though Americans thought China would never attack without the Soviet go ahead and Soviet is now against this North Korean war as they didn't want USA to join in. The China experts in USA knew this would happen. But the military is lead by arrogant power-hungry fanatics who want victories and ignored all these experts.

8 » Chosin: The Road from the Reservoir
8/10

Battles with China. Chinese forces are decimating American forces and Americans can't even run away fast enough during this cold winter. Everything is a giant chaos and nothing works out. You need luck to survive and get away.

9 » The Winter of Crisis

1. The Big Bug-Out
2. Washington and Tokyo
3. The Arrival of Ridgway
8/10

USA losing badly. The army gets a new commander who knows his stuff and he starts turning things around.

10 » Nemesis: The Dismissal of MacArthur
8/10

McArthur fired for being incompetent even though he is a hero. He wants a full war with China so he lies about how huge the American defeats are to get more weapons and a bigger war. In reality the other commander is already turning things around.

11 » The Struggle on the Imjin
7/10

British battles. A bit small stories.

12 » The Stony Road

1. Towards Stalemate
2. Panmunjom
3. The Cause
7,5/10

Suing for peace. UN bring white flags to the meeting. The communists all take this is as a sign of surrender. The communists also just use the meetings to get a cease fire to dig tunnels to make sure Americans can never take North Korea.

South Korea's dictator is brutal and ruthless. Stealing everything he can and massacring people. South Koreans execute communists and prisoners. The president even says that the British are not welcome there any longer. They lose morale by this. South Korean troops are terrible. Corrupt murderers and can't fight well.

13 » The Intelligence War
7/10

CIA has its beginning. They do a lot of low-tier operations. Mostly people desert them or are killed. The operations are rushed and overly optimistic. Still they keep getting more money. The Koreans themselves make for terrible agents.

14 » The Battle in the Air
7/10

Successful air battles vs. Chinese and Soviet pilots. The Soviet pilots are better, but not as good as the Americans. And the MIG is not as good as the American planes.

15 » The Prisoners
8,5/10

Prison camps. Largely Chinese prisons as North Koreans just killed prisoners. The prisons were extremely poor and many Westerners died. But later China tried to improve their image by giving the prisoners a bit basic healthcare. They tried to make the prisoners communists, but they used terrible tactics.

16 » Attrition: The War on the Hills
7/10

More battles. UN forces have huge loses. Of course communists have greater loses, but they don't care much about this.

17 » The Pursuit of Peace
1. Koje-do
2. ‘I shall go to Korea’
3. The Last Act
0/10

A prison in South Korea. The communists let some of their own get imprisoned to control the prison. And they constantly attack American guards, make weapons, and strike.

The UN prisoners have horrible conditions too.

18 » Hindsight
9/10

A very tiny bit about the post war opinions. Just a few American soldiers talking about the war and such. Mostly the war was ignored. It was the first American war without a win. But some did feel like they beat communists in some way. Chinese soldiers feel it was a win for them as they kicked out the Americans.

My final opinion on the book

It's good of course, very good. But quite rambling too with a ton of mini stories and mini points. So many small points. I think the reader of the audiobook made it a bit worse. He reads single sentences at a time without trying to tell a coherent story. And he shouts a bit. Overall it's a bunch of stories from the Korean war and a good intro. But it's not an amazing war book.

[Robert Jeens · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strong if somewhat dated outline of the main events of the Korean War from the perspective of the United Nations forces. Hastings is an effective writer. He knows when to take the long view and when to zoom in to individual perspectives for maximum effect. Sometimes he is a little over the top, but that is what it takes to sell books. General MacArthur doesn’t go alone in his room to think about something, he “broods in majestic solitude.” Overall, this is an effective popular history of the war.
The main problem with the book is that it was written in 1987, and so we know more about the Russian and Chinese perspectives now, after some Russian archives were opened in the 1990s, and because of the work of people like Andrei Lankov, who interviewed former officials from the Soviet Union. That makes some parts of the book, for example, the causes of the war, less accurate than a modern work would be.
The other problem is that the English language has evolved into a more politically correct manner. . Things that used to be considered factual are now considered insults. We don’t call people “Asiatics” any more, or “little” Koreans. But he also features stereotypes that we know are untrue, such as that Asian people are just sort of unsuited for democracy.
He is particularly good at conveying the brutality of the war, the tensions between the UN troops and local Koreans, and for offering vignettes of individuals based upon his personal interviews. If you want a readable, solid narrative of what happened when, this is not a bad choice.

[David Canford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the forgotten war, coming between WW2 and the Vietnam war. I knew little about it. North Korea invaded South Korea and nearly succeeded in forcing America to abandon it. America then recovered the lost territory and pushed through North Korea towards the Chinese border which caused China to join in and push back the Allies. This account is very readable, although I skipped through some of it as at times there was more detail than I could absorb. One fascinating question we will never know the answer to is what would have happened if the US government had followed General Mac Arthur’s preference and bombed China and gone back over the 39 th parallel. Would it have started WW3 or would North Korea now be a free and prosperous country like South Korea? The author points out that the West didn’t understand that you can’t beat a peasant army with modern warfare, a lesson which wasn’t heeded later in either Vietnam or Afghanistan.

[Tariq Mahmood · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Max Hastings, I have discovered a war-history master. It is the first history book on war genre which has managed to keep me engaged in the Korean conflict soon after the end of the Second Great War. I loved his style of juxtaposing very personal individual accounts, of ordinary soldiers with might generals. I was looking for a book which could explain South Korea's meteoritic economic rise and looks like I have made a great choice with this one. I found Hastings account to be very subjective with quite a few references to the Communists side as well. He has definitely become my number one choice in war correspondents/historian.

[Rebecca Crunden]

⤑ research tag: in an effort to organise my shelves, I’m going to be labelling the books I’m using for study purposes as I tend to dip in and out of these.

Listened to the audiobook.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Missed a lot of points.

In my native tongue we call it "বালের বই ল্যাওড়া" -- a weak book

[Sergio Caredda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un ottimo libro che racconta non solo la storia ufficiale, ma anche i retroscena e la vita vissuta durante una delle guerre per me più misteriose. Lo stile dell’autore è particolare, perché mescola storia documentale con tante interviste a chi la guerra l’ha combattuta (da ambo le parti). Ne esce un libro dalla narrazione fluida, che non parla solo delle decisioni dei generali, ma di quello che in prima persona si viveva sul campo.

[Casper Veen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best written history books I have read over the last few years. Very interesting and throrough!