Land Power Library - General Walter Krueger

Unsung Hero of the Pacific War

by Kevin C Holzimmer

University Press of Kansas, 2007 (paperback reprint 2022), 330 pages

Paperback ISBN: 978070064040

Reviewed By: Dayton McCarthy, CSC

Hailing from the University Press of Kansas – a long-standing publisher of high-quality military history – Kevin C Holzimmer’s book on General Walter Krueger book joins a growing body of work that (re)examines the role of the United States Army in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) during the Second World War. These titles have generally had two main analytical thrusts. The first is that the US Army’s role in this theatre has been generally obscured in popular memory by the actions of the United States Marine Corps (USMC), despite dwarfing it by an order of magnitude and conducting significantly more amphibious operations. As such, these works wish to place the US Army’s substantial contribution in its proper context.^[1] The second is a reassessment of General Douglas Macarthur’s role as the operational-strategic commander in the SWPA. Heretofore, Macarthur’s legacy – a legacy that Macarthur himself worked assiduously to ensure was in place – was that of the ‘American Caesar’.^[2] In this school, MacArthur was a great war captain of singular talent, vision and force who almost singlehandedly delivered victory in the Pacific. His subordinate commanders, and the units they led, remained in the shadow of the great man.^[3] 

In this tome, Holzimmer, a lecturer at the United States Air University’s Air Command and Staff College, combines these two perspectives by using the military career of General Walter Krueger as the narrative vehicle. And so this is no simple biography of the officer who commanded the powerful (and by the end of the war, widely victorious) US Sixth Army. Rather it is an examination of his military career, how he approached operations and the decisions he made. In this regard, Holzimmer’s work is in the same vein as Peter Pederson’s Monash as Military Commander.^[4] But unlike Monash, whose appeal to an Australian military professional is self-evident, what does a biography of Walter Krueger offer the readership of the Australian Army Research Centre’s Land Power Forum?

The answer to that question is, in fact, ‘quite a lot’. Certainly, Krueger’s early life was interesting in itself. He was born in Germany, never attended the US Military Academy or a college commissioning scheme, and he served as an enlisted soldier (fighting in the Spanish-American War) prior to becoming an officer. As Holzimmer observes, in the small, professional but insular interwar US Army, most officers spoke with a Midwestern accent or a Southern drawl; Krueger had neither. The first four chapters cover Krueger’s limited involvement in the First World War and the grind of peacetime staff, training and planning roles between the wars. For a man of limited formal education but of natural intellect, Krueger was afforded three key opportunities that helped develop the warfighting philosophy that he later implemented in the Second World War. These included a challenging year as a student at the US Army War College (where he would later return as an instructor) and as a strategic and operational planner designing contingency plans on the Joint Army and Navy Planning Committee (JPC).  Here he worked on the Army’s contribution to ‘War Plan Orange’ that proposed response options for any future war with Japan. Next, he attended – by his own request – the US Naval War College. This posting – almost two decades before Krueger would plan and execute several divisional and corps-sized amphibious operations – was a most fortuitous one. Understatedly, Holzimmer notes that the year at the Naval War College ‘exposed Krueger to the specific issues involved in naval operations as well as the nature of joint operations.’^[5]

These early chapters are informative, but it is the Part II, appropriately titled, Operational Leadership in the Southwest Pacific Area: 1943-1945, that holds the most interest for the Australian reader, especially with the renewed focus on littoral and amphibious operations. Brought into the SWPA by MacArthur due to his competence and low-key demeanour (he was unlikely to seek his own limelight and thereby challenge MacArthur’s publicity machine), Krueger took command of the Sixth Army in early 1943. By this time the bloody defensive battles of 1942 had been fought and sufficient breathing space achieved for MacArthur to plan for his own offensives. These would comprise a series of sequenced landings and assaults along the northern coast of New Guinea and nearby islands as part of the wider operation named ‘Cartwheel’. Krueger’s first operation was the amphibious landing at Kiriwina and Woodlark Island, which required him to work closely with Vice Admiral Dan Barbey’s VII Amphibious Force, the US Navy component which commanded all amphibious shipping in the SWPA. Although this initial operation was small and uncontested, it provided Krueger and his staff many lessons on the nature of amphibious operations in the SWPA. The most salient of these was that the availability of amphibious shipping was a key (if not the key) planning consideration. This landing also reinforced the importance of loading stores and personnel onto ships correctly so that they could be discharged in the correct sequence in support of the landing plan. It also highlighted the importance of a trained and resourced beach organisation that could efficiently unload and manage stores and personnel on the beachhead.

To MacArthur, these operations were merely a series of preliminary actions – a sequence of stepping stones – to get him closer to his ultimate objective: the invasion and reclamation of the Philippines. Since his ejection from the country in 1942, MacArthur developed a singular focus on returning to the Philippines, not only for a sense of redemption but also to push his preferred axis for the ultimate assault on Japan. Here he competed with US Navy in the Central Pacific theatre which proposed the best means to attack Japan was a maritime/carrier air thrust via ‘island hopping’ from the south-east. For subordinate commanders - most notably Krueger – this meant that MacArthur enforced an aggressive operational schedule, often requiring not only the concurrent planning but also the execution of successive amphibious operations while the final stages of the preceding operation were still in train. This situation placed a massive burden on Krueger and his headquarters; a burden often exacerbated by the creation of bespoke ‘task forces’ for an operation, requiring the Sixth Army headquarters to manage the ‘business as usual’ administration of the formation in addition to the inter-service planning and operational matters of the ‘task force.’  Holzimmer devotes considerable space to an often-overlooked aspect of military operations: the pivotal role of a professional and well-oiled headquarters and the importance of sound planning and staff work principles. Partly by his natural inclination, and partly by sheer operational necessity, Krueger had to practise mission command. Holzimmer quotes Krueger who wrote:

After studying the directive of [MacArthur] covering a particular operation and weighing available information, I usually indicated in a general way what I desired my troops to do, and then left the staff free to work out the details in collaboration with the staff representatives of the naval and air forces involved, but was kept constantly informed of the progress made in planning…the commander should remain aloof from the detailed planning as far as practicable, keep an open mind, and be ready to make decisions if and when required.^[6]

In the same vein, Kruger had to practise mission command with his subordinate formation commanders. This was a by-product of the enforced tempo of operations with units - either preparing for, conducting or consolidating after a landing - flung across several islands or coastlines. By the end of 1944, Krueger had forces ‘scattered all the way from Milne Bay to Biak, some 1,400 air miles, as well as on New Britain and the Admiralties.’^[7] 

By September 1944, Krueger and his Sixth Army were ready to execute MacArthur’s plan to invade the Philippines, which for several reasons, became the US Joint Chiefs of Staffs’ preferred springboard to attack Japan. Presaging the two chapters on the grinding Philippines campaign, Holzimmer writes that:

Although MacArthur had finally succeeded in making his pledge to return to the Philippine Islands official Allied strategy, he continued to pressure Kreuger to speed up military operations at the operational and tactical levels. In fact, the closer MacArthur got to Luzon, specifically Manilla, the more he pushed Krueger. Throughout the fall of 1944, the SWPA commander sensed victory and became increasingly impatient. From October 1944 until March 1945, MacArthur stressed the necessity of speed in Krueger’s military operations more than at any other time during the war.^[8]

Krueger, Holzimmer notes, was able to balance MacArthur’s entreaties (including playing Krueger’s rival, General Robert Eichelberger, off against him) with his own professional outlook. By now, the Sixth Army was depleted by battle and increasingly, non-battle casualties such as malaria and combat stress. To counter this deficiency as well as achieve his (and MacArthur’s) aim, Krueger ensured his infantry was well supported by armour, artillery and air support. The Philippines fell at great cost and Krueger prepared for the invasion of Japan, before the Japanese sued for peace after the two atomic bombs. His post-war life was not a happy one, suffering several family tragedies. Interestingly, despite MacArthur’s wartime machinations, Krueger remained a MacArthur loyalist. This respect was mutual. On Krueger’s death, MacArthur wrote that ‘history has not given him due credit for his greatness…swift and sure in attack, tenacious and determined in defence, modest and restrained in victory I do not know what he would have been in defeat, because he was never defeated.’^[9]

Holzimmer’s book gives the Australian reader a wider perspective of the SWPA beyond the well-known touchpoints of Buna, Lae/Finschafen and Borneo. It also highlights the difficulties in, and prerequisites needed, to conduct the sweeping archipelagic manoeuvres planned by MacArthur. Distances, terrain, sound intelligence, sufficient amphibious shipping, in-range air support, logistics, manpower: these factors and concerns played on Krueger, his headquarters and subordinates as they executed operations in 1943 to 1945. One suspects that future Australian commanders conducting littoral operations in the near region will think about these same factors and concerns. For this reason, Holzimmer’s book is highly recommended to the Land Power Forum’s readership.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Lieutenant Colonel Dayton McCarthy CSC is currently the Staff Officer Grade 1 Special Projects, in the G5 Cell, Headquarters 2nd (Australian) Division. He served in the Australian Regular Army from 2005 to 2013 in a number of regimental, training and staff appointments. Transferring to the Army Reserves in 2014, he was the Commanding Officer of the 9th Battalion, Royal Queensland Regiment from 2021 to 2022. A defence analyst in his civilian career, LTCOL McCarthy is the author of several books and numerous conference papers, articles and book reviews. He has a Doctor of Philosophy and a Graduate Diploma in Science (Operations Research and Systems) from the University of New South Wales.

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