A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War

Rating:
Summary: Simply Indispensable: A Military History of World War II
Review: Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, two veteran American academic historians, are to be commended for producing this authoritative, one-volume military history of World War II. It is a wonderful achievement! Their book is nearly 600 pages long, and it would be impossible to address every issue in a brief, 1000-word review. I will, therefore, confine myself to the authors' treatment of the effectiveness of the United States' military operations, with the understanding that this is representative of the authors' approach to the broader issues and topics.

According to the authors, "World War II was a conflict of resources as well as ideologies." Virtually every reader is familiar with the ideological dimension, but Murray and Millett focus much attention on the war's political economy. One of the Americans' greatest contributions to the Allied effort was, when possible, to address military problems "through their legendary productivity." The authors emphasize: "So vast was American war production that the United States not only armed itself but shared its output with the other Allies." Murray and Millett write: "Logistical superiority was crucial to the Allies' victory, and America's role as the 'Arsenal of Democracy' made a crucial difference. Not only did the United States carry the burden of most of the naval campaign in the Pacific and an increasing load of the combat in Europe as the war progressed, but its Lend-Lease program was essential to the military operations of its allies and to the functioning of their wartime economies." There are numerous examples of the wartime application of American productivity. For instance, in 1940, over a year before the U.S. entered the war, it "recognized that the German assault on world shipping posed a significant threat to its own strategic position," and the Americans' development of the Liberty ship - which was constructed in sections and then welded together - proved to be a mass-production concept that revolutionized shipbuilding." Similarly, in April 1942, when, the "Navy was unprepared to handle the U-boat onslaught...for many reasons, including the fact that it had too few escorts," the United States embarked on a program to produce 60 escort vessels in 60 days, and when it achieved that goal, it announced another such program." According to Murray and Millett: "A major dimension of the industrialization of warfare was the commitment to develop and deploy new weapons that would give one's armed forces distinct operational and tactical advantages over the enemy," and, of course, the design and construction of the atomic bomb by an international team of scientists remains one of the most remarkable scientific and technological achievements of all time. Examining the war with Japan is the best way to assess American military performance during World War II because only in the Pacific did the United States fully deploy every element of its air, ground, and naval forces. The Navy had years to plan for the virtually-inevitable war with Japan. According to the authors, however, it was not until after Pearl Harbor that the U. S. finally began preparing in earnest. Murray and Millet write that "FDR simply stated the obvious" when he declared that "only American air-naval power could eventually roll back the Japanese from their Pacific outposts and liberate the conquered states of Southeast Asia and China." Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall "worried about the diversion of army resources from Europe to the Pacific war," but even after the disaster at Pearl Harbor, according to the authors, the United States' "Pacific Fleet retained much of its combat power, which would surge in 1943 with the arrival of battleships, carriers, and cruisers already being built, ships that would not be needed in the campaign against German submarines." Murray and Millett quote Admiral William F. Halsey's "simple South Pacific guidance:" "Kill Japs! Then kill more Japs." The war against Japan was won with significant contributions from each of the services. The tide of the surface naval conflict began to turn in the late-spring 1942 with the Battle of Midway, which Murray and Millett characterize "as not quite a Trafalgar but far from an indecisive Jutland." In addition, American submarines forced Japan's economic collapse by devastating its merchant marine. The army and marines dug out tenacious Japanese defenders from islands across the Pacific from late 1942 through the spring of 1945. And the air force's campaign against Japanese cities culminated in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Notwithstanding the success of American arms, Murray and Millet are not reluctant to criticize, and their vignettes of some American commanders are brutal in their succinct candor: On General Douglas MacArthur: "MacArthur's paranoia, lust for personal publicity, political ambition, structured and comfortable lifestyle, and hypochondria were well known in the army;" General Mark Clark: "Many of Clark's contemporaries believed he possessed one of the best minds in the U.S. Army. Others believed his character consisted of equal parts vanity and slipperiness;" and General Omar Bradley: "dour, unimaginative, and deeply jealous."

The costs of World War II were staggering. Millions died in combat, and millions of civilians also perished. In financial terms, "the United States spent almost $350 billion on its war effort." Nevertheless, according to Murray and Millett, World War II "remains 'the good war' in American historical imagination." There are many reasons for this. One is that the United States and its Allies fought and defeated enemies whose despicable ideology threatened every freedom that Americans enjoy. Another is that "the United States emerged from World War II stronger in both absolute and relative terms than it was when it entered the war." Murray and Millett's concise and perceptive treatment of American operations during World War II is indicative of the consistent excellence of this book. I am certain that it will rapidly prove to be simply indispensable to professional historians and students, but I also recommend it without qualification to general readers who want to know more about military operations in the global conflict which established the United States as the world's greatest power.

Rating:
Summary: The Best One Volume Military History of World War II
Review: Without a doubt, "A War To Be Won" is an impressive achievement from a historian's perspective. It is quite simply the best one volume military history of World War II that I've come across, and one which will be regarded as the benchmark to be measured against by others in the future. Authors Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett offer succinct, insightful analyses of the major land campaigns. Their analysis of naval battles is splendid too, though not covered in as much depth as those on land. I greatly appreciate their assessment of major Allied and Axis military commanders; US General Omar Bradley is shown in a rather unflattering light as a cautious commander who wasted his troops' lives on the battlefield; US General Douglas MacArthur is portrayed accurately as an egotistical prima donna whose leadership qualities were vastly inferior to those shown by Generals Eisenhower and Patton. This book benefits from much recent scholarship from hitherto unknown primary sources in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Those in search of a splendid one volume military history of World War II need look no further.

Rating:
Summary: What does it take to win a war?
Review: `In the course of the twentieth century, no war looms as profoundly transformative or as destructive as World War II. Its global scope and human toll reveal the true face of modern, industrialized warfare.'

Thus begins the volume `A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War' by Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett. Murray, a fellow at the Institute for Defense Analysis, and Millett, professor of Military History at Ohio State University, has collaborated to produce a volume that looks at the World War II in almost exclusively military terms, with detailed (if not always precisely accurate) analysis of battlefield plans and progresses, logistical situations and problems, and (to a lesser extent) political and economic considerations behind the military decisions. Murray and Millett are very direct in this focus:

`In this book, we have concentrated on the conduct of operations by the military organizations that waged the war. We have not ignored the strategic and political decisions that drove the war, but what interests us most are the issues of military effectiveness.'

Perhaps more true than anywhere else, on the battlefield those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, and, in fact, are most likely doomed to failure because the enemy most likely has consulted history.

This book looks at the origins of the war (chapter 1 and chapter 7), follows the military progress through the European, African, Atlantic, and Asia-Pacific theatres of warfare, and concludes with two broader chapters, one entitled `Peoples at War', which examines civilian efforts toward the war in areas of industry, labor, civil defence, and basic food-production; and a second entitled `The Aftermath of War', which looks very briefly at issues of resettlement, reparations, war crimes, and the political state of affairs after the war.

The opening chapters are very telling regarding preparedness in the face of a potential adversary -- the state of British and French forces at the outset of the war, even in the face of an only-somewhat rearmed Germany made their position difficult, and indeed they were thoroughly routed in short order. However, the fault was not merely technical or logistical, but also involved poor planning and preparation on the part of officials who could or would not grow beyond then-traditional methods of warfare, most having derived from the experience of World War I.

Despite its attention to all theatres of war, this remains a very Euro-centric book. The true starting date of World War II in increasingly under debate -- not all scholars subscribe to the September 1939 invasion of Poland as the beginning of the war, but rather the beginning of the European theatre of events. Japanese forces had been at work in Asia prior to this -- indeed, one could say that the first and last shots of World War II were fired in the Manchurian plains.

This is a relatively minor point, however, and one that will most likely not occur to most Western readers who are accustomed to the portrayal of World War II in this manner.

The chapter on the conclusion of the Asia-Pacific war addresses, but not in detail, the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan; more detail in the proposed invasion planning of Japan would have been helping here -- the recent book `Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire' by Richard Frank does an excellent job at showing the difficulties that faced the Americans and other Allied forces as they contemplated a full-scale invasion of Japan, including the misperceptions of Japanese strength on the island that would have made the battle the most costly in human terms in all of history.

This book, however, is a good survey of the military aspects of World War II, and fills in many gaps for those of us who have concentrated primarily on the political issues and only peripherally on the military engagements.