Quote:
Originally Posted by Devilsadvocate
Marshall might have been able to supply a lot of things to MacArthur, but well trained Philippine troops was not one of them. MacArthur claimed he would have those troops before the next Spring, yet he had to know that was impossible, he had to know that he was lying to Marshall because he didn't even have a training program in place after five years of being responsible for training the Philippine Army. Hell, there were generals in Washington, including Eisenhower, who knew he was lying.
MacArthur wasn't a novice general, he knew it would take time to train troops. If he hadn't been able to do it in the previous five years, how the hell did he expect to do it in less than a year? Mac just bought into the false hope, along with Roosevelt and Marshall, that the B-17's would be able to bluff the Japanese and that he actually wouldn't have to produce those 200,000 well trained Filipino troops. Turned out he was dead wrong.
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MacArthur gave the go-ahead to begin the complete mobilization of Filippino Troops on 1 September, 1941. Before that time, there were only plans and little else put forth towards a training program for the Philippine Army, mainly because there was no money forthcoming to finance the construction of military camps, barracks and etc. There was also little to no equipment available before this time to support and equip an expanded Filippino Army of 10 Divisions. At that time too, the only trained, reliable division available to MacArthur was the Philippine Division that consisted of over a third US servicemen.
I wouldn't be so tough on MacArthur. He did the best that he could with what he had at his disposal. I think his greatest failure was not being aggressive enough during the long, double retrograde manuver into Bataan after WPOIII was put into effect. A few major counterattacks utilizing his armor and combined arms could have thrown the Japanese off their game plan and forced them temporarily onto the defensive. That alone could have bought him some valuable time with which to stock Bataan full of munitions and food supplies.