A War to Be Won
Murray and Millett
For obvious reasons, World War II has been a topic of great and enduring interest, and one might think that every aspect of the war has been scrutinized thrice over by now. Yet books on the war keep coming out. I think this is largely due to two related realities.
First, the veterans of the war are disappearing from among us. The last senior commander (Doolittle) died in 1993. The youngest Marines who fought at Okinawa, the last battle of the war, would be the wrong side of 80 now. Very few of the junior officers remain alive; Dick Winters, a major when the war ended, has become something of a cultural icon at age 90. (Deservedly so.) Over the last two decades, this led to a flowering of oral history of the war, driven by the desire to capture the reminiscences of these men before they pass on. Much of the resulting history is of high quality. For example, I was deeply impressed by the technical quality of the recent Battle 360 series on The History Channel.
Second, the opening of archives in Russia and elsewhere, and the slow digestion of ULTRA archives opened over three decades ago, has forced some important reassessments of our picture of the war. This has been encouraged by the passing of all the senior commanders: Historians can be more candid than ever. Morison and his generation of historians, who wrote the official histories of the various services in the late 1940s and early 1950s, had an immediacy to their writings that will make them of enduring value, and they did a remarkably good job of recording events. However, their evaluations of personalities and strategies, and their descriptions of the decision processes sanitized of any mention of Ultra, are increasingly of metahistorical value only.
Murray and Millett came out with their one-volume history of the war in 2000, focusing largely on operations in light of new archival material, but bringing in some elements of politics and personalities. I probably would not have bothered with the book at full price, out of skepticism that a one-volume work of such scope would have any details of interest to me, but I could not resist getting the book for half price at the local used bookstore. (Local being relative; Albuquerque is 90 miles away.) It has turned out to be one of my better purchases.
Although this is in certain respects a revisionist work, the authors clearly have no use for the David Irvings, James Bacques, and Pat Buchanans of the world: The Axis were a great evil that had to be destroyed, by whatever means were necessary. I found this attitude refreshing. This is not to say the authors celebrate Hiroshima or ignore other brutal realities of the war. Quite the contrary. But they seem to have a clear sense of perspective. For one thing, they point out that total Axis casualties, civilian and military, were about a third of the number of persons killed by the Germans in the Holocaust, in POW camps, or as slave laborers.
The authors obviously feel that enough time has passed to be candid in reassessing wartime leadership. There are more surprises here than you might expect. It is no longer great news to any serious student of military history that MacArthur was incompetent, but it is not yet common to hear Bradley described as incompetent. Perhaps more surprising is the author’s assessment of the German military leadership: The higher up the command chain, the greater the level of incompetence. The Germans were unexcelled at the tactical level. They were unexcelled except by the Russian generals of 1944, and possibly Patton and Slim, at the operational level. They were hopeless at the strategic level, particularly in connection with the plans for Barbarossa, which the authors regard as strategic nonsense from the start. The authors contend that Russia was essentially unconquerable in 1941, particularly given Nazi ideology that prevented any important accomodation with Soviet minority groups.
Some readers will be surprised by the conclusion that the Polish campaign of 1939 was rather poorly fought by the Germans. Contrary to Goebbels-inspired myth, tactical air ground support was almost completely ineffective and the tank spearheads were very poorly coordinated with the infantry, who really won the campaign. It’s just that the campaign was even more poorly fought by the Poles. The authors conclude that the Germans made every conceivable tactical mistake in Poland, and then spent the next six months digesting the lessons and vigorously retraining their army accordingly. Meanwhile, the French looked for no lessons to be learned, and they had their troops building fortifications and manning them rather than engaging in any serious training. One gets the sense the authors have absolutely no use for the French officer corps of 1940, with the possible exception of de Gaulle (who otherwise receives remarkably little attention in this book.)
The authors quote Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, on the deficiencies of British generalship, then noisily agree. They admire Slim, and regard Montgomery, with some reservations, as a great general; just not in the operational art. They regard Eisenhower as a great general for the largely political role he played, and they believe the broad front strategy was the correct one. After having praised Montgomery for the African campaign, they chew on him a bit for misrepresenting the purpose and outcome of British operations in Normandy, and become downright scathing over the failure to open Antwerp — they are naturally no fans of Market-Garden.
Clark is dismissed as an egomaniac with no grasp of the operational art. Bradley is portrayed as an incompetent: Dour, unimaginative, and fiercely jealous of more talented subordinates (can you say “Patton?”) They regard Patton as the most talented operational commander the western Allies had, while not ignoring his lack of self-control. Lightning Joe Collins comes in for some praise, but Troy Middleton is treated scathingly. The Hurtgen Forest battle is dismissed as utterly pointless. The performance of the average GI at the Bulge is described in the most hagiographic terms you’ll find in this book. And, in the author’s opinion, Varsity was the first American operation that showed real understanding of the operational art, even more so than the Cobra breakout.
The authors note that Mars, which is practically an unknown operation in the West (it occurred west of Moscow in spring 1942 and was overshadowed by the Stalingrad-Caucasus campaign to the south), was the most disastrously failed offensive the Russians staged during the war. It was led by Zhukov himself; I wonder how Zhukov survived politically afterwards? In the author’s assessment, Bagration (the destruction of Army Group Center in 1944) was the finest display of mastery of the operational art in the entire war — one wonders whether our hypothetical mental picture of World War III as masses of Russian tanks and infantry steamrolling forward into the killing zone of west Germany may have been wildly off.
In the Pacific, the authors bluntly state the same conclusion that most recent authors are coming around to: MacArthur was an incompetent whose grandstanding seriously hurt the war effort. The authors are rather cool towards Spruance and Nimitz, portraying them as overly cautious and the latter as being under the thumb, first of King, then of MacArthur — a rather curious take I’m not sure I buy. Halsey is treated somewhat with kid gloves; I don’t think it was ever made clear what the authors really thought of him. Yamamoto is accepted uncritically as a great admiral, an assessment someone at odds with that of most recent historians of the Pacific War. In general, the authors seem to be much more in their element in the land war in Europe than in naval war or the war in the Pacific.
A specific example of the latter is the treatment of Spruance, who the authors conclude was probably overly cautious at Philippine Sea. They are apparently unaware that Spruance had been briefed on the contents of a briefcase seized from Japanese Navy chief of staff Fukudome by Filipino guerrillas. (The guerrillas were intimidated by the Japanese Army into giving Fukudome back, but not his baggage.) Fukudome’s documents described proposals to stage an “end-run” around Spruance to get at the American amphibious force, as actually took place at Leyte Gulf, and this is probably all the explanation that is needed for Spruance’s stubborn insistence on keeping 5 Fleet close to the Marianas.
There are occasional moments of tongue-in-cheek humor, as when the authors describe the wartime shortage of vodka in Russia as “a national crisis,” but they are not Dunnigan. It’s a serious history. Discussions of interesting but peripheral issues are restricted to a couple of appendix-like chapters following the chapter on the end of the war in Asia, and include discussions of military technology and organization, economies at war, peoples at war, and the war’s aftermath. One learns that the Allies had a real problem feeding Europe after the war, with real danger of mass starvation. The transportation infrastructure was smashed, and the Germans had stolen most of Europe’s farm machinery and eaten most of its livestock in order to keep the food ration of “pure Aryans” above 2000 calories per day clear into 1945.
The authors have absolutely no use for the apologetics of the German generals. In one of the better snarks of the book, they state that “The struggle on the banks of the Meuse between 13 and 15 May was a close run thing. Even Guderian, that eternal booster of German military prowess, as well as his own, characterized the success as ‘almost a miracle.’” (My emphasis.) Having waded through Guderians’ memoirs once, I’d say they hit the nail on the head. As far as the authors are concerned, the historical record shows that the Wehrmacht and its generals were perfectly happy to serve Nazi ideology until things went wrong. Then Hitler became the scapegoat for their utter lack of any grasp of grand strategy or of the military art above the operational level. (Grand strategy is where the authors think the Allies were at their best.) Nor do the authors feel any inclination at all to excuse the atrocities of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front — or on the Western Front, where the SS was murdering disarmed prisoners in 1940, and the Wehrmacht proper has a less clean record than is realized.
The authors are not fond of area bombing. However, they consider it a reality of the war (the Axis sowed the wind and were entitled to reap the whirlwind), and they regard the Combined Bombing Offensive as a major contribution to Allied victory. They regard the nuclear bombings as a necessary part of forcing the Japanese to surrender, while not neglecting the effects of fire bombing, the blockade, and the Russian invasion of Manchuria.
Overall, there are no great surprises in the facts presented in this book; just in some of the interpretations. I think these fresh interpretations deserve to be taken seriously. The one serious flaw in the book — I consider it very serious — is extremely poor citations. There appear to be just the bare minimum number of footnotes necessary to avoid a charge of academic misconduct. Some of the most interesting assertions and conclusions have no corresponding footnotes at all that would allow a serious student like myself to go to a primary or secondary source.
The poor citations are enough to bump this book down to four stars rather than five. It’s still a fascinating read and to be recommended.
(Cross-posted to , Trolling in Shallow Waters, and The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia Discussion Forums)
