Customer Reviews

Military Errors of World War Two (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

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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.

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.

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.

Military Errors of World War Two, is a fine addition to anyones book collection, detailing many of the main battles and events which took place during WW2.

The accounts of the Russian conflict are excellent, pointing out many of the flaws which are evident today, but were missed by the Germans over confidence.

My main gripe is the lack of depth for each area covered. The book should have contained maybe 3 key battles during the war and explained the errors with these in some depth.

Aside from this, a recommended book.

The only trouble with writing a book on the errors made in WW II, is deciding which ones to throw out. The amazing thing is that after all was over, we won.

The book is well organized and tries to apply some structure to the errors, but it could easily be twice its size. For instance where is Kasserine Pass, the Hurtgen Forest, the whole strategic bomber campaign (well, part of that is covered here), Operation Cobra (where the highest ranking American officer, Lt. Gen. McNair, was killed by our own Air Corps).

I read the book in Hungarian translation (ed. by Alexandra, Pécs, Hungary) and have found it interesting and informative. However:

1. the vacillating behaviour of Adms Inouje&Takagi in Coral Sea Battle is compared with that of Nagumo in Pearl Harbor action and this all is said to be well beyond to the example set at Tsushima by late short-sighted Adm. Togo. Well, everybody has the right to like or dislike Japanese of near or late past, I were, however, grateful to the author for giving even a piece of evidence of vacillating or short-sightedness of Togo(Last but not least: a good one-third of enemy ships succeeded in taking the leeway at Trafalgar, while at Tsushima no capital Russian ship remained afloat. What about Nelson, then?)

2. The picture presented here as VAdm Fukudome, had been published elsewhere (in an excellent overview on Great Sea Battles of XX. Century)as VAdm Kurita.

Sure, they could be consequences of translation, but such a valuable book is worth to a closer look. Just this is I tried to do. Sincerely: KF.

Macksey gives a good overall summary of some of the major errors of the war.....the only problem I have with him is that he seems to think that German defeat of soviet Russia may have been a good thing. I consider this to be a little worrying as bad as Stalin was he did not deserve to have his people slaughtered on mass