Odd Man Out: Truman, Stalin, Mao, and the Origins of the Korean War

by Richard C. Thornton

Odd Man Out is a novel assessment of the motives and strategies of Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong as they struggled to maneuver their countries into positions of advantage in the postwar world. Their successes and failures resulted in the catastrophic event that globalized the Cold War ---the Korean War. Based on recently released secret documents, Richard Thornton puts the reader inside the American, Soviet and Chinese decision-making processes during these earth-shaking events, events that have been misinterpreted for decades.

Genres: History

384 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2001

Reviews

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough and scholarly examination of the decision-making by Truman, Stalin, and Mao that resulted in the Korean War - long, meticulous, and thought-provoking. Notably absent from the title is Kim Il Sung, which should give you a quick sense of significant string-pulling behind the scenes.

This work is billed as a "challenge to the accepted wisdom" and a "startling reinterpretation of the events that led to the Korean War." Important caveat here is that I'm no scholar of the "accepted wisdom" and had to run the arguments by my dad to see if they were indeed "startling". Tentative yes?

Basically, the author suggests that

-- Stalin feared rapprochement between the US and the People's Republic of China (PRC), which ultimately led him to encourage fighting in Korea that both the US and China would join in opposition. He did this by (1) seriously bolstering Kim Il Sung's military forces and resources, (2) promising - but not delivering on - help to China to defeat Chiang Kai-Shek on the island of Formosa (Taiwan) so that the USSR could make sure conflict in Korea erupted first, (3) handling the attack planning to make sure that North Korea did NOT win outright, and (4) cornering China into bailing out a struggling North Korean Army while removing the USSR's own support simultaneously, among much other maneuvering.

-- Truman initially hoped to open relations with the PRC (thus abandoning Chiang Kai-Shek) in an attempt to forestall a Sino-Soviet alliance. When that failed, a new strategy emerged in the form of NSC-68: containment! and rearmament! which would also require drawing China into the Korean conflict so that the global threat of communism would be graphically demonstrated, thus justifying that serious rearmament (including our nuclear program). Essentially, this meant treating the Republic of Korea as a goat tethered to trap a tiger (i.e., NK and China). This strategy was notably not shared with MacArthur.

-- Mao hoped to play a sort of Middle Kingdom role between the US and the USSR, but was backed into a corner by both and wound up with little choice but to join the fight - hoping that any victory would at least turn Kim Il Sung's regime from pro-Soviet to pro-Chinese.

These conclusions are reached tiny tiny tiny step by tiny tiny tiny step, examining all kinds of cable traffic and other official records, much of which are quoted at length, so it seems there'd be plenty of material here to examine for yourself to weigh the merit of the author's conclusions. I find them pretty compelling.

[David]

3/5/19: One of several now reading concurrently on political situation leading up to Korean War
3/25/19: This is excruciatingly slow. Will move to-start-and-park for now; who knows, may get back or may abandon
7/27/19: moving along in the Marshall bio; will reassess this book as I get further in the Marshall. For now, back to behind-the-wall