In February 1942, General Douglas MacArthur (shown left) (who formerly served as Army Chief of Staff and then after retirement, as Field Marshal of the Philippine Army) scampered away from the Philippine Islands and headed toward Australia, thereby avoiding capture by a massive Japanese invasion of the Philippines. He did this at the direction of the President of the United States (Franklin D. Roosevelt). When he departed aboard U. S. Navy patrol/torpedo boats and seaplanes, MacArthur took with him his family, his personal staff, and his intelligence officer —Colonel Charles Willoughby, Army of the United States (AUS)[1]. Willoughby continued to serve on MacArthur’s staff until that fateful day on 10 April 1951 when President Harry S. Truman relieved MacArthur of his position as Supreme Allied Commander, Far East and sent him into retirement.
Charles Andrew Willoughby (depicted right), born on March 8, 1892, died October 25, 1972, eventually served as a Major General in the United States Army. He was born in Heidelberg, Germany as Adolph Karl Weidenbach, the son of Baron T. Tscheppe-Weidenbach—but this was disputed by a New York Journal reporter in 1952[2]. Some uncertainty remains about who this man was, as well as his family lineage. What we are certain about is that Willoughby migrated from Germany to the United States in 1910.
In October 1910, Willoughby enlisted in the U. S. Army, and over the next three years he served with the US Fifth Infantry Division, rising to the rank of sergeant. In 1913, he was honorably discharged from the U. S. Army and attended college at Gettysburg College. Having already attended three years at the University of Heidelberg and the Sorbonne (Paris), Willoughby enrolled as a senior, graduating in 1914. Actually, we do not know for certain that he actually did attend Heidelberg University, or the Sorbonne. In any case, Willoughby received a commission to second lieutenant in in the officer’s volunteer reserve, U. S. Army, in 1914. At this juncture, his name was Adolph Charles Weidenbach[3]. He spent three years teaching German and military studies at various prep-schools in the United States, and then on 27 July 1916 he accepted a regular Army commission as a second lieutenant; he was advanced to the rank of first lieutenant on the same day. He rose to the rank of captain in 1917 and served in World War I as part of the American Expeditionary Forces.
Willoughby later transferred from the infantry to the US Army Air Corps; his training as a pilot was conducted by the French military. After some involvement with a French female by the name of Elyse Raimonde DeRoche, who was later shot as a spy, Weidenbach was recalled to Washington and asked to account for his pro-German sentiments. He was eventually cleared of suspicions in this regard.
Following World War I, Willoughby/Weidenbach was assigned to the 24th Infantry in New Mexico from 1919 to 1921, and was then posted to San Juan, Puerto Rico where he served in military intelligence. He subsequently served as a Military Attaché in Ecuador and for unclear reasons, Willoughby received the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus from Benito Mussolini’s Fascist government (shown right). Beginning in the 1920s, Willoughby became an ardent admirer of Spanish General Francisco Franco, whom he referred to as the greatest general in the world[4].
In 1929, Willoughby/Weidenbach received orders to the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He became an instructor there in 1936, and received his promotion to lieutenant colonel.
Throughout World War II, the occupation of Japan, and the Korean War, Willoughby served as MacArthur’s chief of intelligence. MacArthur is said to have jokingly referred to Willoughby as “My pet fascist”. He is also quoted as having said of Willoughby, “There have been three great intelligence officers in history: mine is not one of them.”
Author John Robert Ferris (Intelligence and Strategy: selected essays) stated that MacArthur’s pronouncement could be a gross understatement. He described Willoughby as a candidate for the worst intelligence officer in the Second World War. As an example, in early 1944, in the largest landing of the Pacific war to that date, four infantry divisions were employed in the taking of Hallandia, Dutch New Guinea. Willoughby had reported sizable Japanese forces there. Accordingly, the entire Pacific Fleet stood out to sea to screen the landing. Surrendering to this mighty force were two thousand frightened Japanese warehouse and supply troops. The operation was completely in line with MacArthur’s policy of “hitting them where they ain’t,” and so Willoughby’s misappraisal was conveniently filed and forgotten.
Willoughby was temporarily promoted to major general on 12 April 1945.
After the war, Willoughby was instrumental in arranging the exoneration of a Japanese war criminal by the name of Lieutenant General (Medical) Shirõ Ishii[5] (Unit 731) in exchange for information about biological warfare. This was not his only debacle:
Willoughby (apparently with the approval of MacArthur) made a weak grab for the US counterintelligence effort. Counterintelligence was not under Willoughby’s umbrella, but he and MacArthur had been stonewalling the OSS since the beginning of World War II. What we can say with certitude, however, is that the inadequacy of US counterintelligence in Japan can be attributed to either Willoughby’s (or MacArthur’s) incompetence or his professional negligence. When US forces occupied Japan, there was no counterintelligence effort. One news reporter discovered the Japanese Foreign Office, Radio Tokyo, and various military offices openly burning classified documents in the middle of the street, denying this information to the occupying force. There were no counterintelligence officers present in Japan to stop them.
Commanding the 8th US Army, General Robert Eichelberger lacked the benefit of counterintelligence advice when he welcomed the commander of the Japanese Army in Yokohama. General Kenji Doihara was also Japan’s top intelligence officer; it was he who had engineered in 1931 the incident leading to Japan taking over Manchuria. Eicrhelberger thought that Doihara was a “splendid little fellow.” It was only the next day after Eicrhelberger this meeting was reported through intelligence channels to Washington DC that MacArthur ordered Doihara’s arrest.
Not long after the US occupation began, military police arrived at the Marunouchi Hotel looking for black-market operators. What they found was Major General Willoughby having dinner with the stranded Italian Fascist Ambassador to Japan and members of his staff[6]. Naturally, Willoughby vented his anger at the military police, who were only doing their jobs.
Willoughby’s service in Japan lacks clarity unless it also reveals his vendetta against critics, or those guilty of lèse-majesté toward MacArthur. Consequently, Willoughby spent as much time and energy to his dossiers on newsmen and military heretics as he did to reports on enemy dispositions. William Costello from CBS decided that he much preferred digging up his own material about the Japanese rather than using handouts supplied by MacArthur’s headquarters. How did Willoughby deal with this situation? He sent people around to discuss with Costello what might happen if his communist membership card from the 1930s became public knowledge. Costello was underwhelmed; he had never been a communist. Digging in, Costello became a one-man anti-Willoughby campaigner, telling anyone and everyone who would listen what a creep Willoughby was. By 1948, Costello was winning this war; so much so, in fact, that MacArthur invited him to a stag party. If Costello ever attended the party, let’s hope he kept his clothes on.
Leopards never change their spots. During the Korean War, Willoughby intentionally distorted, if not suppressed intelligence estimates that resulted in the death, injury, or captivity of thousands of American military personnel. He did this, it is argued, to better support MacArthur’s horribly negligent (or grossly incompetent) assertion that the Chinese Army would never cross the Yalu River … and in doing so, allow MacArthur a much freer hand in his prosecution of the Korean campaign —by keeping the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington DC (and the President) in the dark.
As writer/historian David Halberstam[7] reminded us, “Control intelligence, you control decision making.” Halberstam argues that Willoughby was appointed head of intelligence for Korea due to his sycophancy toward MacArthur and points out that many veterans of the Korean War, enlisted and officer, believed that the lack of proper intelligence led field commanders to develop inadequate employment plans such that they could not provide combat support to one another. Entire Chinese infantry divisions passed through the gaps that existed between forward deployed American units.
In late 1950, Lieutenant Colonel John Chiles served in the operations section of the US 10th Corps. He later stated that because MacArthur did not want the Chinese to enter the war, Willoughby falsified intelligence reports so that they wouldn’t enter the war. “He should have gone to jail,” Chiles said.
Willoughby never went to jail, however. He retired from the Army in grade of major general on August 31, 1951. In retirement, he lobbied for Generalissimo Francisco Franco … true colors.
True to form, Willoughby launched a broadside in Cosmopolitan after his retirement against certain correspondents and commentators critical of MacArthur’s strategy. His targets included Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, one of the most able war correspondents and a Pulitzer Prize winner; Hal Boyle, front-line correspondent for the Associated Press; Hanson Baldwin, military specialist of the New York Times; Joseph Alsop, syndicated columnist; and Drew Pearson, columnist and radio commentator.
There was nothing diplomatic in Willoughby’s handling of MacArthur’s critics. He called them rag-pickers of American literature, men who were addicted to yellow journalism, sensationalists, men whose reporting provided aid and comfort to the enemy. The newsmen replied to Willoughby with equal vigor, but the mildest reply was offered by Hanson Baldwin: “As an intelligence officer, General Willoughby was widely and justly criticized by Pentagon officials as well as in the papers. His . . . article is as misleading and inaccurate as were some of his intelligence reports.” Gordon Walker, correspondent and later an assistant foreign editor of the Christian Science Monitor, said: “There is strong evidence . . . that General MacArthur’s staff withheld intelligence information on Chinese intervention —from the President and from front-line corps and division commanders— Frontline commanders who ordered their troops into battle without prior knowledge that they faced overwhelming odds…”
Willoughby reminds us of several things: first, more important than what a man says is what he does. We cannot claim that integrity is one of Willoughby’s virtues. Neither does a man become a saint simply because he wears an American military uniform. Willoughby died on 25 October 1972 —just in time for dia del diablo. To our everlasting shame as a nation, we buried him in Arlington National Cemetery.
Notes:
[1] The Army of the United States is the legal name of the “land forces of the United States” (United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 and United States Code, Title 10, Subtitle B, Chapter 301, Section 3001) and has been used in this context since at least 1841, as in the title: General Regulations for the Army of the United States. The Army, or Armies of the United States includes the Regular Army, Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve (as well as any volunteer or conscripted forces). Someone receiving an officer’s commission into the Army of the United States holds a temporary appointment and serves at the pleasure of the President of the United States.
[2] The Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Briefadeligen, a standard catalogue of German gentry, does not help to clear up this matter. According to this document, General Franz Erich Theodor Tülff von Tschepe und Weidenbach lacked the title “Freiherr” and never received letters of patent from Emperor Wilhelm II entitling him to use the surname “von Tschepe und Weidenbach” until 1913. By this time, he had five children; none of them were born in 1892.
[3] At some point before 1930, Weidenbach changed his name to Charles Andrew Willoughby, which is a loose translation of Weidenbach, German meaning Willow-brook. In any case, Willoughby was fluent in English, Spanish, German, French, and Japanese.
[4] I can only imagine what MacArthur later thought about such intense feelings toward some other general.
[5] Responsible for the death and suffering of more than 10,000 allied military personnel during World War II.
[6] Willoughby received the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus from Benito Mussolini’s Fascist government in the 1930s.
[7] The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
Fix Bayonets! 