Military Errors of World War Two (Cassell Military Paperbacks) [Paperback]

Kenneth Macksey (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cassell Military Paperbacks | Publication Date: April 2007

Delay, failure, and, ultimately, defeat: those were the results of these 16 crucial mistakes by military and political leaders. From Hitler's postponement of the invasion of Britain, to ineptitude in the Western desert, from errors in the Battle of the Atlantic to the Japanese mistakes in the Pacific, see how an entire army's downfall can hinge on one momentous decision. A telling account of poor judgment--and of greed, arrogance, complacency, and misused manpower, even by those who tasted victory elsewhere.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kenneth Macksey was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment during the Second World War and has enjoyed a long and successful career as a miitary historian. Cassell Military Paperbacks include his THE MILITARY ERRORS OF WORLD WAR TWO.

Product Details

• Paperback: 262 pages
• Publisher: Cassell (April 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0304350834
• ISBN-13: 978-0304350834
• Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #81 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > History > Military > World War II > General

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strategic Overview - Well Done, March 12, 2002

By 

Alan Dale Daniel (Carson City, Nevada, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Military Errors of World War Two (Cassell Military Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This is an excellent book that covers the major errors of military operations in WW II. Mr. Macksey does a good job of seeing the strategic errors of all sides in the war. He goes far beyond the tactical evaluations and points out the principal thinking errors that resulted in key outcomes in the various campaigns. The author is not shy about saying someone was a dunderhead. On the other hand he is objective about why that person was making tremendous errors. "Bomber" Harris, for example, is castigated for his handling of air operations and his misguided belief in how the bomber forces were to be used. He (Harris) did not value scientific evidence as to how to achieve the best results at the least cost. Harris was apparently motivated by the desire to expand the air force and make it the decisive factor in the war.

Macksey does not point out often enough how correct action on one side lead to errors on the other. He does discuss this factor at length, but he often omits it in the analysis of key events. The battle of Midway for example, which he covers very well, omits any discussion of the risk taken by Nimitz in committing his entire carrier force to one battle in one area against a clearly superior enemy force. It should also be remembered that Nimitz did this after the US Navy and its allies had been taking a terrible beating for six months. The Japanese had blasted the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, destroyed the allied fleet at the Java Sea, hammered Port Darwin and embarrassed the US Navy in the Philippine landings and other places. After this unending spate of disasters Nimitz still remained confident he could beat the Japanese at Midway. And he put all his resources into one attack. Macksey correctly points out that if the US has lost big at Midway (which it well could have) the result would be Japanese hegemony over the Pacific for at least another year with all the attendant problems that would bring.

So the outcome at Midway went far beyond the Japanese doing things wrong, it also meant the US Navy had to do a lot of things right even after the series of defeats and setback of all kinds that it suffered.

One other matter should be noted. Mr. Macksey's writing style is hard to follow. His book is not an easy read. His sentence structure is very complex and his serpentine prose makes his conclusions hard to follow.

Still, it is an excellent book with a good deal of stretegic thought analyzed and compellingly set forth.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good place to start, April 30, 2000

By 

Simon Andrews - See all my reviews

This review is from: Military Errors of World War Two (Cassell Military Paperbacks) (Paperback)

Whilst other reviews might criticise this book for not going into enough detail, it does work out as either a good foundation for further study, or simply as an interesting insight. It covers most aspects of the war, providing unbiased and clear points, with summaries to help simplify the arguments. It demonstrates the sudden changes and shocks that this new, technological world war presented each of the powers, particularly the stubborn Japanese Imperial code, and how the ordinary soldier was affected, often fatally. The book presents a range of careful individual personal profiles, mirroring the events, that so-often suffered from similar flaws, and in turns leads to an intriguing summary of the simple problems that were magnified into major flaws in planning and procedure. This is a good textbook, or a good read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Dated Review of Errors for the General Reader (as opposed to the Specialist), July 18, 2010

By 

Yoda (Hadera, Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Military Errors Of World War Two (Paperback)

This provides a number of chapters, each on a variety of military campaigns and issues, and examines them from the errors made from each side. Chapters, for example, include the Battle of Britain, Barbarossa, Stalingrad, the U-Boat campaigns, Leyte Gulf and the early Japanese Campaigns in the Pacific. The chapters are quite rudimentary and hence, more geared to the general reader as opposed to the specialist. Many of the chapters basic but they are quite dated in terms of the research and information contained therein. For the chapter on Barbarossa, for example, there is no mention of the key factor contributing to German defeat (at least in research of the past 10-15 years) - that was the fact that the German logistical machine simply could not keep its armies supplied on the Eastern Front. Any decent wargame performed by the German High Command would have been able to determine this, it was not a deep and profound issue (for more details see Professor David Glantz's recent books on the early German campaigns on the Eastern Front or, more succinctly, Robert Forczyk's "Moscow 1941: Hitler's First Defeat" ).
In addition to this weakness, there are a few more in the book. The most important is the lack of any coverage of the German army's errors on the Eastern Front after Stalingrad. A minor one involves the chapter on Operation Sealion and England's "weakness" immediately following Dunkirk. In his chapter on this aspect of the war Macksey posits that England, because of its seriously depleted army, could have been relatively easily been invaded and defeated immediately after Dunkirk. This argument seriously overlooks a number of facts that would have made this a very difficult undertaking. One was that the English air force was still a force to be dealt with after Dunkirk vis-à-vis the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe, by this time, had lost almost a third of its aircraft. This would have made achieving air superiority quite difficult. In addition, there was the problem of England's naval superiority even if air superiority could have been achieved. A fourth problem is that Macksey overlooked the lack of cooperation between the German army, air force and navy (particularly the latter two). There was also the lack of German experience in mounting large scale amphibious invasions along with the accompanying lack of experience in the logistics necessary to supply such an undertaking. Last but not least, the topology of the areas of England where German air coverage could have most felt, does not lend itself to amphibious invasions (i.e., cliffs of Straights of Dover). Areas that could have facilitated amphibious invasion were quite narrow. Even Hitler, explicitly, stated that throwing troops into such narrow areas would have been tantamount to throwing them into a meat grinder.