He was a character. He fancied himself a designer and pretty much did what he wanted.
Also he was heavily involved in writing the constitution of post war Japan.
When he was born wars were fought against native americans who used stone age technology, and he lived to see the use of nuclear weapons.
American Caesar by William Manchester. It’s a biography on General MacArthur. It’s really good read, Manchester is a great writer.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Caesar-Douglas-MacArthur-1880/dp/0316024740
I usually don't like to block-quote with multiple point replies, hope you don't mind.
> Even after the war, the West still would have liked for the USSR to collapse and disappear.
Agreed. I mention Truman in one of my posts without a huge amount of elaboration, but he was definitely "Europe first" and pushed hard for the Marshall Plan. Perhaps more importantly there was the Berlin Blockade/Airlift that really shows the kind of animosity in existence post-war. Manchester's American Caesar actually touches a bit on this. On the other hand, Lowe's Savage Continent shows why Truman's decisions were likely for the best.
> Another thing is, that the USSR actually had interests in joining the Axis even after the invasion of Poland, but it made different demands. The thing is, that Hitler approaching the Finns just shows that, had Stalin had a competent army invading Finland, Hitler would have reconsidered the Red Army's strength and would have regarded the USSR as a potential ally.
Negotiations between the Axis powers and the USSR definitely began to break down in late 1940, particularly over the Balkans. I agree completely that the USSR's showing in the Winter War (which I mention somewhere in this thread) caused Hitler to underestimate the Russians. Nevertheless, reading what Hitler said himself and knowing how he felt about Slavic peoples (I source Evans's Third Reich trilogy as support for that in another reply) I think he would never have seen the Russians as anything but inferior. Now if you're suggesting German leaders would consider an alliance if Hitler was out of the way, that is more likely, but that's a different discussion.
> The first, meant an alliance with Hitler. Stalin would have had a lot to gain with a bigger risk, however with a better chance in, essenetially, "conquering the world". Even though in the end a war between Germany and Russia would have been very likely, it would have also meant that the problem of the West would have been resolved with Stalin's victory over Europe, or Hitler's final victory against Bolshevism.
That matter is complicated by the fact that on the one hand you have Stalin's "socialism in one country" while Trotsky and his ilk wanted world revolution. We can speculate a lot about what would have happened if the Great Purge was bypassed, if Trotsky was re-integrated or even replaced Stalin, etc. I mean for example the Winter War went badly at least partially due to the Great Purge which as you suggested led Hitler to underestimate Russia. In any case, my point is that Stalin was at the time less an internationalist and his troubles with China/Mao bear out the difficulty of his position long-term. I won't speculate on Hitler's side as we can only know he wanted Lebensraum in theory. Evans is again useful there...
> The other outcome was the world we have today. That is picking the Allies and being a more "safe" decision with a lot less to gain, and that is because the US and the UK wanted to contain the USSR and would not have allowed them to have Iran/Turkey and what not. In fact one of the talks with Hitler included the influence over Iran and Turkey for the USSR's entrance into the Axis.
The Axis would likely have given up some areas of Turkey for the USSR but they never intended to give them a strong foothold beyond that. The Middle East is a different and very difficult subject - I have read numerous books about that aspect of the war - but as the Soviets learned later in Afghanistan and certainly what we're still suffering with today, it was a mess down there. Also of importance is the fact Saudi Arabia got oil with the assistance of the U.S. starting in '38 through '41; the idea that the U.S. could be kept out of the war if there was a serious Middle Eastern offensive is debatable. A lot of "what ifs" to ponder here but Iran was a linchpin in many ways because of the supply route, it's difficult to analyze how that would have worked out with an Axis-USSR alliance. In my other replies I basically insinuate that Hitler's overwhelming respect for Mussolini, coupled with Mussolini's massive desires for Italy, would have caused tons of problems in any alliance with the USSR when dealing with the Middle East. I do agree with the assertion that the UK avoided war with the USSR due to those fears, of course, in fact I say in my other reply that conflict with Russia was put off with Germany being the more immediate threat (similar to ETO vs. PTO, and I also talk about Truman's stances).
> I don't think an alliance between Hitler and Stalin was impossible, at all.
I agree, I don't think an "unholy alliance" between the two was impossible, just very unlikely given the situation. To avoid writing a ton more about why I think that, consider the case of Francisco Franco (I mention Beevor's book in another one of my replies) and Nationalist Spain. Reading through all of the negotiations there with the Axis, such as the future state of Gibraltor, shows that even when things were going well (Fall of France) a lot of people didn't want to take risks. Portugal and Brazil are also amazing examples of WW2 diplomacy. I suppose my main argument is, then, beyond the powerful persons in charge being at odds (Mao also is interesting for that later, for example), the entire systems of government (as opposed to the democratic nations) were inherently less prone to unilateral cooperation (not that they didn't try, a la German-Japan). I do think if some things have gone different prior to that time, and even leading up into '41, an alliance was possible, but these events did not happen in a vacuum. I stand by my assertion that the US influenced the UK and Allies strongly on the Russian decision and a large part of that was a "deal with it down the road."
As a side note, I mention the book American Caesar above, and in it we see as I mention the US and Truman's focus on Europe first; MacArthur laments that the lack of Asian focus would lead to perpetual conflict in Korea (he believed it would become a split for a century!) This underlines how powerful U.S. influence had gotten in the world after World War I and shows that the U.S. with FDR (Truman would carry on his legacy) were the brokers of cooperation with Russia rather than war.
lol. Good point.
The origin, if anyone cares: https://www.amazon.com/American-Caesar-Douglas-MacArthur-1880/dp/0316024740