. . .a national disgrace occurred when President Hoover sent in military forces to oust WWI veterans from their “Hooverville” camps in WDC. This “Bonus Army” had arrived by the thousands, begging to be paid the bonuses they had been promised. Instead, they were gassed, beaten and stabbed as the military (under MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower) burned and bulldozed their camps.
Yeah, I remember learning about that.
~Max
History repeats itself . . .
First as tragedy, then as farce.
-- Karl Marx (paraphrased).
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
Quote from Marx as quoted in Wikipedia:
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.
For what it is worth, Ike & Patton were only Majors. Leave the blame with MacArthur where it belonged. MacArthur was the Army Chief of Staff and ordered this disgrace.
I do believe Patton especially could have done more to minimize the order, but it is 95% on MacArthur and 4% on Patton and 1% on the rest of the army that participated.
I agree for the most part, although Patton encouraged his men to stab them in the ass to move them along faster, and also treated the man who saved his life like shit. MacArthur was just a fascist asshole who should have been cashiered before Truman had to relieve him.
Absolutely. Thus why I was willing to assign Patton 4%. He was actually against the move but as a gung ho Major did as ordered and then did it with too much zeal. But it could have actually have been worse, a lot worse.
Ike it appears advised against the whole thing but was only a Major as I said. He did convince MacArthur not to go in person, which may have saved lives. I did say it could have been worse.
There were actually several other officer as culpable as Patton, but he is the big name that was there and gets uneven blame for his part.
The story as Iearned it had MacArthur there in person leading the rout.
MacArthur later similarly disobeyed orders in the Philippines, and then … was removed from Korea because they didn’t want to start a nuclear war with China, and knew he had a track record of disobeying orders like that stretching right back to 1932.
I’d dearly love to see a list of disciplinary actions he ordered hroughout his career for soldiers who disobeyed orders. I’d like to see the specifications and the punishment he ordered.