ABSTRACT
Before Soviet documents became available, the issue Korean War scholars debated most fiercely was when and how the conflict began. U.S. officials never doubted for a moment that Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin ordered the invasion as the first step in his pursuit of world domination through military means. On June 27, 1950, just two days after the North Korean conventional attack on South Korea, President Harry S. Truman put in place the foundation for initial historical analysis of the conflict when he declared that “communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war.” 1 The ensuing accounts of Generals Mark W. Clark, Matthew B. Ridgway and J. Lawton Collins (Clark 1954, Ridgway 1967, Collins 1969) proceeded from this basic perspective. George F. Kennan, the father of the containment strategy, disagreed. Stalin wanted to conquer Korea to weaken the U.S. position in Japan, a view his colleagues shared, but Kennan denied that this was part of a global expansionist plan (Kennan 1967). Surprisingly, some writers challenged the Truman administration’s stated position during the war. For example, Wilbur W. Hitchcock (1951) claimed that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) “jumped the gun” and attacked South Korea before the Soviet Union was ready for the invasion. For proof, he pointed to the Soviet boycott of the UN Security Council that prevented Moscow from vetoing the resolutions justifying UN military action to defend the Republic of Korea (ROK). According to I.F. Stone (1952), South Korean President Syngman Rhee purposely had initiated border clashes to provoke North Korea’s retaliatory attack. He then portrayed the orderly retreat of ROK forces as a military debacle to secure U.S. intervention to save his corrupt regime.
