Korean War massacres revisited

H. Kim #24:

“Ambassador Muccio’s contention that “Such [civilian]infiltrations had a considerable part in the defeat of the 24th Division at Taejon”, is laughable…”

No, it’s not. US ground forces defense of central-southern portion of the ROK in July-Aug-early Sep, 1950, was a near-run thing; the NorK’s almost broke through to force the evacuation of Pusan and the consequent demise of the ROK.

Kim Il-Sung must have brooded daily over how close he came to being the master of all Korea — up until the day he died.

I’m sure DPRK forces were coached by experienced Soviet WWII combat officers, ones who had seen the problems the Germans had had in trying to evacuate their own civilians from Third Reich territory during the final Soviet offensives of 1945. The documents that you are NOT demanding to be produced here would prove much more illuminating — I mean of course ones from DPRK archives.

These would be DPRK Army orders (or more likely, testimony from survivors about verbal orders) directing the use of deliberate ground and air attacks by DPRK against ROK civilians.

To terrorize them and force them to flee, with consequent jamming of the road networks and creation of an overwhelming refugee control problem for the opposing ROK forces (and even more so a little later, against the newly intervening US forces).

I’m sure the DPRK forces and their Soviet advisors didn’t expect US ground forces to intervene; when the US did, the Communists would have been even more inclined to intensify their use of such tactics, stepping them up after the battle of Taejon as the DPRK tried to accelerate the offensive to defeat remaining UN forces after the defeat of 24th Div at Taejon and the handoff of the delaying action to the 1st Cavalry Division.

All but two divisions of the existing ROK Army had been cut off and destroyed north of the Han in the intial week of the invasion, so these American units committed initially to fight a delaying action undoubtedly had little or no ROK liasion to assist them.

US Army units in Japan were seriously understrength and manned mostly by non-combat experienced soldiers. MacArthur was forced to commit them piecemeal into Korea to try to stabilize some kind of a front, as the ROK Army was basically gone, while he labored to assemble a strategic reserve force for an eventual landing in the rear of the advancing DPRK forces (something that he had immediately foreseen would be required when he flew to Korea in the first week of the invasion to observe the situation for himself).

I’ve seen various references in different printed military histories to the deliberate DPRK use of refugee columns in this period, as either screens for their own forces, and/or the mixing in of their own troops with the columns. It wasn’t just American “paranoia” that the North was making use of infiltrators. Sorry, I can’t provide a link, though I have looked; will have to keep on looking.

From the first commitment of US forces until the Pusan perimeter was stabilized, the DPRK forces were able to regularly achieve local superiority against US Army attempts to hold delaying lines.

They were doing this in the battle of Taejon (referred to above by H Kim), in the two weeks preceding the 25 July 1950 memo (the one linked above in the post of H.Kim). In fact, on 25 July, the commander of the US 24th Division, General Dean, was wandering alone in the countryside outside Taejon, after being separated from his command party at night, and after days of personally trying to lead some of his men in fighting with 3.5 inch bazooka teams against the T-34 NorK tanks.

The fact that a US major general was cut off from his unit, and that almost simultaneously with this event a USAF staff officer could write a memo to tell his superiors that the Army was requesting the Air Force to strafe civilian columns (!) ought to imply to us (at this distance in time) just how desperate the battle to save Korea was.

For the official US Army history account of Taejon, see http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/boo.....1/sn11.htm

Pages 145-181 give the details of the battle for Taejon, approx 15 July 50 through 22 July; pp 176-78 give the specifics on the events leading up to the isolation (and eventual capture) of General Dean, along with his 24tH Division’s efforts to defend the territorial integrity of the ROK — for which Gen Dean was eventually awarded the MOH.

Recommended reading if anyone here is interested in something other than indulgence in visceral anti-Americanism.

Madne0 #20:

I think the issue of why the Allies didn’t do something more about the camps has been explored in some detail in some recent historical scholarship; in the last 10-20 years, I recall seeing some detailed newspaper/magazine articles on the subject, and I think some of these must have been book reviews.

The use of strategic bombing raids to destroy the Nazi death camps, even as late as latter 1944 to early 1945, would in fact have been an excellent idea. Yes, the current Jewish “residents” of the camps would have been killed, but the idea would have been to take the camps (and their associated rail networks) out of operation, in order to prevent the industrial-scale level of killing at a later time — ie, for all those endless trainloads of Jews who had not yet been shipped to said camps from their various European locales.

Concentrated strategic bombingk to destroy the gas chambers and the ovens for the disposal of bodies on a mass scale, might have saved a million or even two. The Germans didn’t get going on really “rolling up the numbers” until late in the war.

The question as to why this bombing didn’t happen is an interesting subject for speculation, as I don’t believe that the issue was ever considered in one coherent “sit-down” meeting of major Allied leaders/commanders (a meeting that would have been similar, though opposite in intent, to the infamous German Wannsee conference of 1942).

I think it likely that the Allied military commanders were just “narrowly focused” (ie wrapped up in the day-to day details and planning of how to use their combat power assets (to include the strategic bombers) in the best possible way to defeat the Third Reich “militarily”.

They were focused on military targets; remember, every attack of strategic bombers agasinst a Third Reich target meant the inevitable death of dozens, maybe even hundreds of Allied airmen, so it was up to the generals to grimly decide on what objectives these lives could best be expended.

Thus the Allied military leaders would have naturally had a bent for purely military/industrial targets; it would have been necessary for the personal intervention of the highest civlian leaders (Churchill/Roosevelt) to overrule them, for political/moral considerations.

I think both Churchill and Roosevelt were reluctant to do this unless it was absolutely necessary; there’s only so many times you can “go to the well”, so to speak, and they would have been very conscious of the other times they had had to override bitter military opposition to their strategic directives.

Also I think neither they nor their subordinate military leaders could really bring themselves to fully credit that the Germans were actually capable of doing such a thing (in spite of the ample intelligence about the death camps that has been shown to have been brought to their attention).

Aside from the moral nihilism involved, it was utterly irrational (on a strictly military basis) of the Germans to conduct such an enormous death camp effort in the middle of a world war — one in which practically the whole world was united against the Germans.

The enormous resources expended by Hitler and the SS to conduct the death camps, at a time when they were waging massive wars on two fronts, must have been an enormous frustration to “rational” German military logisticians, ones who daily had to contemplate the prospect of finding the resources to stop (and overcome the effects of) the attacks of hundreds of Soviet and Allied divisions, as well as the daily air raids over Reich-controlled territory of thousands of Allied strategic bombers and fighters.

H. Kim: I suggest you take some time to check out Lirelou’s reference book, the one he cited above. And I haven’t read it, so I don’t know what it says about my assertion of NorK tactics of using civilians as screens.

It’s eerie that he gave such a reference, as I was about to ask if anyone had a specific book on NorK/ROK Communist sympathizer guerrilla tactics. The subject doesn’t get much coverage in standard military history of the Korean war, because (unlike Vietnam) the unconventional aspect of the war was not the decisive factor.

I know I have read about this tactic elsewhere, though I’ve been unable to find a reference to it in the on-line official US military history that I like to link to here (hard reading and a lot of it, so maybe it’s in there somewhere and I just can’t find it).

Whether or not it occurred at No-gun-ri — you’re missing my point. (Though if you read GI Korea’s detailed postings at his site, you’ll see he presents some forensic evidence that there was an enemy presence there, one with Russian and Japanese WWII weapons, mixed among the civilians).

It seems quite clear to me that US combat regiments on the defensive in July-Aug-early Sep 1950 had insufficient manpower to both man defensive positions — ones sufficient to stop an attack of approaching enemy conventional forces — and also go out in front of their positions, to stop, screen, and then supervise the care and evacuation of large numbers of civilians.

This would have been the logical task for any ROK battalions defending in place with them –except there weren’t any, as almost all the ROK divisions had been destroyed at this time.

The UN command was working desperately to get enough combat power ashore at Pusan to hold a remnant of what was left of the ROK. The word to the forward commanders of the US units committed initially to hold delaying positions was that if they couldn’t buy enough time, then Korea would be lost. It would have abundantly clear to all the troops there that if this happened, they were unlikely to be able to evacuate.

I don’t think you’re fully crediting just how short-handed and under-equipped the US forces at this time were. Not to mention almost certainly nobody down at rifle company level spoke any Korean, or even had any interpreters assigned.

I’m amazed you can’t imagine that, since you clearly have US Army experience. The massive US Army of 91 divisions that had existed in the summer of 1945 had been disbanded almost completely — the difference of 5 years might as well have been 50, as far as available US combat power was concerned.

There was no airlift available (in the way it is now) to move massive quantities of US troops around the world in days. To bring troops from the strategic reserve in CONUS, shipping had to be organized, and this took some time — many weeks, and the attacking NorK divisions weren’t going to wait around for this to occur.

H.Kim: “..It was clearly the responsibility and the fault of their commmanders for issuing orders that violated the Geneva Convention and throwing them into battle in the condition they were in….”

There wasn’t anybody else available to be thrown into the battle, H. Kim.

The alternative was to concede the loss of ROK to the Communists; Truman wasn’t willing to do that, especially since the properly constituted ROK government of Syngman Rhee had formally requested US assistance.

Even the very best trained current US infantry battalion is probably not going to be able to apply individual civilian-police team SWAT-type discrimination between the “bad guys” and “hostages” in a major firefight; that seems to be the standard you are expecting.

(For that matter, even the SWATs can’t always do it; for an example, see one of the History channel “Shootout” episodes, the one they aired yesterday (Sun) here in CONUS, about a major hostage episode in a Sacramento area “Good Guys” electronics store. A lunatic group of 4 “oriental bad-boy” gang-bangers took about 40 plus hostages; they ended up killing three and wounding about a dozen more, when the SWAT team assault following unsucessful negotiation was not completely successful).

Maybe the ROK Army can do it though, in a future combat situation; that’s why I say that the sooner we can get our US ground forces out of there, the sooner worried ROK civilians can breathe easy.

And congratulations, you managed to get in a ad hominum reference to “assholes”. I suppose that will get another one of your responses deleted; too bad, as I think it deserves to remain “on the board” here, as an indication you sense some of the weakness of your argument.

Your arrogance makes you assert your invincibity to rational argument, but of course nobody ever concedes anything in one of these internet debates anyway. I think it’s important to respond as though it could, though, for the sake of any “bystanders” who might be here reading and wondering.

Especially since our current US administration does such a poor job in standing up for our position in the world.
if I could have my way in the matter, the US President/Secy of State/Secy of Defense would hold a major news conference to lay out a comprehensive case in defense of these Korean war “massacre” allegations.