President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur April. Bradley informed the President of the views of the Joint Chiefs, and Marshall added that he agreed with them. Truman wrote in his diary that "it is of unanimous opinion of all that MacArthur be relieved. All four so advise." Later, before Congress, the Joint Chiefs would insist that they had only "concurred" with the relief, not "recommended" it. On 11 April 1951, President Truman drafted an order to MacArthur, which was issued under Bradley's signature: In a 3 December 1973 article in "Time" magazine, Truman was quoted as saying in the early 1960s: Although Truman and Acheson accused
President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur was no requirement to do so. This began to change after the Spanish–American War, when American military forces started to be deployed overseas in the Pacific, Asia and the Caribbean for extended periods of time. The concept of the theater of war developed during World War II. At such a senior level of command, military and political issues tended to merge. As theater commander in the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur had been accountable to the Australian government as well as his own, making him, in President Roosevelt's words to him, "an ambassador as well as Supreme Commander." MacArthur's less than wholehearted