Due to a confluence of factors best discussed elsewhere, I’ve recently experienced a surge of interest in the history of the Korean War. While digging around looking for books on the topic, I heard a recommendation for David Halberstam’s book on the podcast Wargames to Go. Luckily my local library had it, so I picked it up, not fully realizing that it is nearly 700 pages long. This is a pretty dense book with a lot of terminology and specific military information but Halberstam’s background in journalism shows as he breaks down complex information well and keeps the story engaging without being too overwhelming. Overall, The Coldest Winter is a very good book, but I also think it is a book with some very clear limitations.
I love it when history books don’t limit themselves to just their stated topic but instead actively engage in providing key context that readers really need to know. My default example for this is Peter Wilson’s book on the Thirty Years War which has something like 150 pages of context before the war even begins. The Coldest Winter opens in medias res with a chapter on the Chinese intervention and attack on Unsan in late 1950 before going back to explain how things reached that point. Interspersed among chapters covering the main narrative are other chapters that give key background on the Chinese Civil War, American politics in the late 1940s, and the lives of many of the key figures that defined the Korean War. This helps provide readers with a wider understanding of the context in America and East Asia as well as ensuring that the book doesn’t provide easy answers to hard questions. You are made eminently aware of the many factors that converged on each key moment in the war.
I also appreciated how Halberstam isn’t afraid to zoom in close and get personal in his narrative. Often the descriptions of key battles don’t focus so much on large troop movements or the big picture strategy, but instead pick one platoon or commander and focus in detail on how they experienced the battle. To a degree this makes it harder to understand the flow of these battles – I would have a hard time describing the various troop movements of key military engagements were I quizzed on them now – but it also humanizes them and reminds you of the cost of war. It also allows Halberstam to really lean in on a key emphasis in his book which is the fundamental breakdowns in the United States military and the way that its dysfunction often led to tragedy and disaster. By focusing on key individuals at various points in the command structure he can really show the ways in which it wasn’t working and the pressures that a dysfunctional upper command caused on lower echelons.
While I really enjoyed The Coldest Winter and I am very impressed with it as a work of history, I have two minor criticisms, both of which have to do with the book’s scope. The first is that while this is labelled a history of the Korean War, it is really only a history of the first year or so of the war. It is concerned almost entirely with the portion of the war defined by large scale troop movements and the conflict between McArthur and basically everyone outside of his Tokyo staff. Of its nearly 700 pages, only about 50 are devoted to the years 1952 and 1953. You will learn very little about the peace process that ultimately brought about the truce that ended the war and defined the new border between north and south. This is hardly a problem unique to The Coldest Winter, many people find the war’s opening year for more interesting than it’s final two, but it is a bit of a failing for a book which is supposed to be on the war to only really cover 1/3rd of it in any detail.
The second nitpick I have is tied to the book’s subtitle “America and the Korean War”. I admit that this is kind of complaining about a book for what it is not, but I would underline the “America” in that subtitle. This is a book about the American experience of the Korean War, its impact on American politics, and how America related to it. While some UN Forces are mentioned, particularly the French Foreign Legion, very little information is given about the UN participants in the war and basically no information is provided on their experience of the war. Similarly, the Republic of Korea forces are rarely touched upon, and we learn very little about how they operated or what role the South Korean government played in the war. A bit more information is provided on North Korea and Mao’s China, but even still this is a book with a clear American perspective and so the protagonists in every conflict are the Americans. This is through and through an American perspective of the Korean War and while I think that is understandable, I wish it provided more information on how other people experienced the war.
Overall, I enjoyed The Coldest Winter. I don’t know if I would rush out to recommend it to people. It asks a lot of you in terms of time investment for what is in effect a history of how America experienced the opening year of the Korean War, but within that context I found it very satisfying.