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A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War

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This excellent book continues the approach to warfare taken by the authors in their outstanding three-volume edited series: "Military Effectiveness" published about a decade ago. That book looked at the First World War and the Second World War (including the interwar period) from the standpoint of each participating nation. It set up the standard of "military effectiveness", taken at the levels of grand strategy/national policy (to include industrial and economic preparation) strategy (operational war plans) and battlefield performance (operational or theater level of war and tactics of divisions to brigades). They have applied this thorough and enlightening analysis to the present volume. This focus makes for an excellent "operational history" of the war. The emphasis is on the work of armies, corps and divisions in theater-level operations, as opposed to the tales of derring-do at the company or platoon level. However, one gets a good sense of the plight of the men at the point of contact. The field commanders are thoroughly and fairly assessed. Montgomery, for example, is given his due as a great planner and a great leader of men, but a testy martinet when it came to inter-allied coordination. I would say that our British cousins would not find any Monty-bashing here. Rommel likewise is fairly handled. Guderian's halo is removed;his role as a "good Nazi" does not detract from his reputation as a hard-charger, but his brashness in dealing with his colleagues in other units is brought out.

Throughout, there is a constant interplay between the pre-war plans and preparations with the results of each operation. National temperament and command styles are neatly summarized.

There is no waste of words. The text is gripping, concise and lively. There are no anecdotal asides --- one gets the impression that these two are writing from accumulated expertise over a long period rather than from note cards with colorful "filler" spliced in-- a fault of too many World War II books of late.

Appendices on military organization, weapons systems, the art of war and the documentary sources are mini-encyclopedia in themselves.

This book is indeed the definitive book on how the "war to be won" was, in fact, won by the allies and lost by the Axis.

Highly recommended for both the knowledgeable buff and the novice.

This is an amazing product by two of this country's most prolific military historians. Millett and Murray have teamed together before as teachers, lecturers and authors, but this is their finest hour. More than 600 pages, a dozen well crafted maps and 64 photographs are employed to produce a stunning operational narrative of this century's bloodiest and most deadly conflict. From the early days of the war in Europe to the final blasts in Japan, this duo combines their 50 years of teaching experience and punchy prose into a highly readable, entertaining and educating package. Nowhere will the reader find a better combination of sweeping coverage and sharp conclusions about all the Second World War's major campaigns and operations. Furthermore, nowhere will the reader find the striking and damning conclusions the author's lay at the feet of Generals Bradley and Clark, as well as the pithy and well earned barbs directed at Field Marshal Montgomery. This tightly composed volume is now and will be the best single volume operational history ever written on WWII. It will quickly displace the work of John Keegan and Gerhard Weinberg, and rightfully so. It will be enjoyed by veterans of the war, students of history, and all military professionals. Recent books by great historians like Stephen Ambrose have highlighted the human dimension of what the Greatest Generation was like and how they faced daunting demands of martial combat. In A War To Be Won you will find exactly what they faced and how it was done. Very few historians have the experience, breadth and tenacity to take on such a monumental history. This pair has done it and done it admirably. Their scholarship and insights will not be easily surpassed.

I enjoyed reading this book, which is a bit off-putting due to its size and breadth. As long as one has a bit of time on his or her hands, this is a useful and entertaining way to spend some quality time with yourself in the company of two excellent history writers. The book has an amazing scope, and like Gerhard Weinberg's "A World At Arms" has a mammoth and daunting job at hand to describe the total scope and kaleidoscope of activities contained under the rubric of the second world war.

The authors here are much more forthcoming than was Weinhard in discussing specific battlefield details of particular engagements, and this adds to the book's considerable value and readability to history buffs like myself. I enjoy their liberal employment of relevant economic, technological, geographical and other factors in describing the whos, hows, whens, wheres and whys of specific struggles as well as in describing the nature of the overall socio-political aspects of the war. So, when they subsequently launch into discussing their uniquely constructed "standards of military effectiveness", they add to its value by buttressing their findings with a wealth of different kinds of supporting data, information, and background that makes the total overview of the war much more understandable than it would be otherwise.

The book does suffer from some minor drawbacks, such as the authors' obvious quarrel with the contributions and strategies of Douglas MacArthur, yet they are also suitably fastidious in pointing out his many contributions and effective tactics as well. This drawback is counterbalanced by an outstanding treatment covering the Nazi campaign against Russia, and the day to day details crammed into describing the ill-fated and terribly over-extended German occupation and troubles in Operation Barbarossa and in the subsequent crushing defeats at the hands of the Russian armies is worth the price of the book alone.

In summary, I also believe their well-argued and documented take on the importance and lasting influence of the second world war is crucial in understanding all that followed in the balance of the 20th century to be well taken, and to be beyond reasonable dispute. In some respects (Such as level of detail regarding specific engagements) this is a better book than Weinberg's, and on other levels it falls short of his monumental work. Combined, the two books offer one an astounding and quite rich look at a war that we are just starting to appreciate in all of its amazing scope, ferocity, and consequence. This book should be required reading for anyone considering a career in 20th century history, or for all of us history nuts who just can't get enough of a great thing. Enjoy!

From the first, the reader is treated to a newness in WWII historical narrative and interpretation -- how combatants planned, prepared, and delivered their military campaigns across the globe. The authors have superbly managed the complexities of modern warfare on a global scale, and they manage to include theaters and personalities that often are ignored -- such as the Austrialian campaign in the Dutch East Indies, the Indian-British campaign in the China-Burma-India theater and the never talked about plight of the First Panzer Army from the South Caucasus to Romania. Guderian, Rommel, Zhukov, Montgomery, and Patton of course get thorough treatment, as do MacArthur, Clark, Nimitz, and King. The focus is on the men who implemented (and in some cases developed on their own) national stratgy to fight the war.

There are however, some drawbacks that may thwart the lay reader. On a few occasions, the double-authorship assumes a "Jeckle and Hyde" character with seemingly contradictory statements in the same chapter. Unless familiar with modern military lexicon, the reader might not understand the distinction between "best battlefield commander" (Rommel) and "best operational commander" (Zhukov). Likewise, the Battles of the Atlantic and the Airspace over the Reich are said to have "been won" in mid 1942, yet in 1943 in both cases the authors state the issues were in doubt, and on occasion, the Germans getting the upperhand. Again, if the reader misses the distinction between victory in a campaign, and the remaining tactical engagements, he may be confused.

Most annoying to me were editorial errors such as the "four cruisers sunk at Midway (should be carriers), that Patton's Third Army was to the left of First Army (it was on the right, from the Allied perspective), and that General James Gain commanded the 82nd Airborne (ouch. James Gavin).

Finally, on the minus side, there is an extreme dearth of citations for a 600 page work. Only direct quotes are annotated, and often the authors fail to back up controversial points with evidence in the narrative or by scholastic citation. This gives the work a "journalistic" flavor, which may appeal to those intent on reading, but for the researcher who wants to verify statements on atrocities or Nazi-Wehrmacht complicities, be prepared for disappointment.

If nothing else, buy it for the pictures: over 100 famous and not so famous photos found in one volume (overlook the "British sniper" with a .45 Thompson). The appendices can stand alone. The trenchent analysis of the total cost of war can't be found anywhere else.

In a single volume, no better value for the money.

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.

Dr. Murray and I appreciate the favorable readers' commentary on our history of World War II, and we often benefit from readers' suggestions for correction and improvement as the book moves into additional printings. I am distressed, however, that Mr. Shahid Zaki has misrepresented to you, and in personal correspondence to me, my analysis of the national composition of General Slim's Fourteenth Army in Burma, 1944-45 (pp. 489-92). First of all, I characterize Slim's army as "non-European" and credit it with the defeat of "the finest Asian army to take the field in modern times." I identify seven of Slim's twelve infantry divisions as part of the Indian Army, the force Mr. Zaki claims I slight. Mr. Zaki makes two errors in his commentary: (1) I do not say that the majority of Indian Army units were cavalry or armored regiments, but that among such mobile units in Slim's army, Indian Army units provided the majority. For the entire Indian Army, infantry predominated; (2) Mr. Zaki misses my other point, which was that Slim created a multi-national, multi-ethnic army that came to depend more and more on its Indian Army infantry battalions as the 1945 campaign developed. Initially, however, Slim created mixed infantry brigades that included one British battalion, one Gurkha battalion, and one Indian battalion. Unless one counts all the Gurkha battalions as Indian Army - which they were not - Indian Army infantry battalions were not in the majority when Slim's 1945 offensive began. Slim's two British divisions had sixteen European infantry battalions and three of other nationalities. His seven Indian Army divisions had nineteen British battalions, seventeen Gurkha Rifles battalions, and twenty-seven Indian Army battalions. One should add that Slim's most unappreciated force was two African divisions and an independent brigade, which provided twenty-one more non-European, but also non-Indian battalions. This calculation excludes General Orde Wingate's six-brigade (reinforced) Long Range Penetration Group, which included Gurkha but not Indian Army infantry battalions. Over the course of the 1945 campaign, General Slim placed increasing responsibility on his Indian Army infantry battalions as their combined arms, offensive capabilities improved. He could also draw Indian replacements or new battalions for his army, but not more British, Gurkhas, and Africans. Counting individual infantrymen (not battalions), I suspect Indians became the majority infantry nationality in Fourteenth Army by war's end. Nevertheless, Mr. Zaki is simply wrong when he claims "that the Fourteenth Army in Burma was comprised mostly of combat units of the Indian Army." Mr. Zaki makes a common error of military history non-professionals, which is accepting commercial publications as infallible sources of statistical and order-of-battle data. You may be sure that Dr. Murray and I have learned this lesson the hard way, but we learned it -- or are still learning it. Even the official histories of World War II (every belligerent) should be read with care. In this case, my source of order-of-battle data was taken from Maj. Gen. S. Woodburn Kirby et al., _The War Against Japan_ (5 vols., Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1957-1969), Vols. IV and V, which I highly recommend. Any general history of as complex a human event as World War II is bound to have controversial interpretations and factual errors. My characterization of the Fourteenth Army may be one of the former, but it is certainly not one of the latter.

The problem with many books about WWII is that they tackle far more than could ever be effectively covered in one volume. WWII was more than just battles, it turned the global politcal/economic system on it's ear; it sparked drives for independence in dozens of countries while ripping empires apart; and it redefined the culture of practically every nation involved. As I have stated, when an author tries to tackle all these topics, they inevitably give many short shrift.

The beauty of this work is that Murray and Millet focus solely on the military aspect of the war. In so doing they shed much needed light on some of the pivotal moments of the war, and the people involved. They have an obvious mastery of modern tactics, but the reader is never buried in an onslaught of military jargon. Furthermore, popular mythology surrounding the various personalities making the critical decisions of the war never colors their commentary. They go out of their way to judge each person on their merits, and their contribution to the war effort.

They also do an excellent job of outlining the logistical battle waged by the allies. As a result of WWII, logistics is frequently referred to as an American military artform, and the authors do a superb job of explaining why that is the case.

If you are looking for a broad history of WWII this isn't your book. But if you are a serious student of military history who wants to understand the strategy, tactics and personalities that determined the outcome of WWII, "A War to Be Won" is truly outstanding.

As a faculty member at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College, I got to tell you I love this book. It provides a tight, well-written global account of the fighting in this global war. Military professionals will find the book informed and useful, but Murray and Millett's smooth but brisk writing is also accessible to the general reader. Hitting this balance is no easy thing. The book is "joint" or "purple" in that it looks at air, land, and sea operations. The authors provide coverage of both axis and allies, but they are clearly more familiar with and better informed on operations in Europe than they are in Asia and the Pacific. The focus on the operational level, but they pay a good deal of attention to strategy and spend time looking at how decisions played out at the tactical level.

They begin their account with a general history of military developments during the interwar period. Weapons rarely come with instruction books and the major powers pursued different types of weapon systems and had different ideas on how to use them, which reflected the political and cultural values of their societies. These peacetime decisions played a large role in wartime performance.

A major shortcoming of all the axis powers was that their strategic planning was horrible. What made the Germans so successful early on was that they were good at combined arms operations (the coordinated use of infantry, artillery, engineers and air units that provided close air ground support) which allowed them to move faster than their opponents. Their early success came as much because of allied mistakes and contained and caused them to overlook serious problems like logistics, which became much more serious as the war went on.

The Battle of the Atlantic was one of the most key campaigns of the war. If the Germans had won then it would have been impossible for the allies to invade Europe. The battle though was never that close, the German Navy was overly centralized, had a weak logistical structure, failed to concentrate their focus, and was not ready to challenge the global nature of Britain's naval power. In the east, support facilities and logistics came into play. They understand that little things could have enormous ramifications. For example, the German Air Force did not have enclosed hangers for their planes on the eastern front, so ground crews had to work out in the bitter cold of a Russian winter. They did their maintenance work as quickly as possible and sometimes it was not as thorough as it should have been. These shortcuts often resulted in poor performance in the skies. German shortcomings gave the Soviets enough time to reform their army and become a much more effective fighting force than the Germans.

The authors pursue their account in a topically focused narrative fashion. In essence, they address the Battle of France, and then move to the Balkans in another chapter, and then look at the invasion of the Soviet Union, and then the Battle of the Atlantic, and then the war in the Pacific and so forth. Many times this results in chapters starting six months before the conclusion of the previous chapter. This approach, though, is best. It allows the reader to follow events to their logical conclusions. Of course, at the time, people had to deal with the air war at the same time they had to deal with the u-boats, and events in Europe had at the same time they happened in Asia. The alternative to this structure is the heavy chronological focus that Sir Martin Gilbert uses in "The Second World War" where one chapter can be on Europe and the next on the Pacific, and then the next on a vote in the British Parliament that affected the lend-lease. Only one chapter--an examination of the various home fronts--which comes for some odd reason at the end of the book breaks out of this mold.

There are numerous strengths to this book. Murray and Millett cover all the major fronts and give lesser lights, like Australia, their moment. They focus on less than sexy topics like logistics Despite what many people think, the United States faced profound logistical shortcomings before and during this war that significantly shaped the decisions that U.S. leaders had to make. The U.S. Navy turned to carrier and submarines because they lacked the logistical support to go toe-to-toe with the Imperial Japanese Navy in a surface fleet engagement. Nor do they see the war as a simple conflict of mobilized economies. Intangibles like military leadership and motivation were also important in determining the outcome of battles.

There are shortcomings with this book. While the coverage is broad, it is a bit shallow. Specialists will be disappointed in important battles getting only a paragraph of coverage. To some degree this type of problem is inherent in the format of the book--how do you cover all of World War II and get into every part in depth without writing a book that weighs 200 pounds? They are less familiar with naval operations than they are with air and land battles. They dismiss the Norway campaign as a strategic draw, but fail to note that the Germans drove the Danish and Norwegian merchant fleets into British hands, offsetting all the work u-boats had done during the previous two years. This omission is all the more surprising give the importance they attribute to the Battle of the Atlantic. They misidentify the Italian battleship "Giulo Cesare" as just "Cesare." They attribute the sinking of HMS "Hood" to a 15 inch shell from "Bismarck." This claim might be true, but most naval historians believe it was an eight inch shell from "Prinz Eugen" that hit the torpedo room or an anti-aircraft magazine. The authors attribute the Liberty ships to Henry J. Kaiser when it was actually the British that developed the ship. They blame the Tenth Fleet for failing to introduce convoys in 1942, which allowed the u-boats to score a lot of easy victories up and down the east coast. The Tenth Fleet was not established until 1943. When it comes to matters in the Pacific, they also make a number of errors. They put the "Enterprise" and "Lexington" in the wrong location on December 7, 1941. At Midway, the U.S. sank four Japanese carriers, not cruisers. At Leyte Gulf, they say the "Enterprise" and "Saratoga" were present when it was only the "Enterprise." They also under report the fire power of the Brooklyn-class cruisers which could fire six inch shells not five inches as they report. A lot of these mistakes are minor and could easily come from hitting the wrong keys on their keyboards, but they all come in naval affairs, which is no accident.

A superb one volume operational history of the Second World War, this book carries you into the evolution of every major military. You learn what their assumptions were, why they designed the military they did, what their strengths and weaknesses were and how those interacted in the campaigns that decided whether Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan would dominate the world. This remarkable work reflects years of thought on the topic by Murray and Millett.

They begin with this definitive description of the scale of the contest. "World War II was the deadliest conflict in modern history. It continued World War I's slaughter of soldiers but then added direct attacks against civilians on a scale not seen in Europe since the 'Thirty Years' War three centuries earlier." (page vii)

Murray and Millett render judgment on some very interesting topics. They are vehement about the culpability of the senior British officers in refusing to promote armored specialists to command armored divisions and blame Alan Brooke and his colleagues for refusing to learn the lessons of the first years of the war and refusing to open their senior ranks to people who were capable of the speed and complexity of modern warfare but not part of the inner clique. Murray and Millett admire Eisenhower and Patton but are the harshest critics of Bradley that I have encountered.

The harshest condemnation comes for the German inability to believe their codes could be compromised or their intelligence service could be fooled. Murray and Millett note that the Soviet use of Maskirova (denial and deception) was consistently successful throughout the war once the fronts had been stabilized in December 1941. Again and again and yet again the Germans were surprised by Soviet offensives.

This is an impressive overview that any serious student of warfare should carefully read. For the interested citizen this is as good a one-volume introduction to the military side of the Second World War as you will find.

Fighting a war that lasts a decade or more, as World War II did, means work in every sense of the word. This book clearly outlines the managerial decisions of the 1930s, the weapons development snafus, the strategic waffling and incoherence, and the moments of brilliant and sustained innovation... the work of men and women in making and fighting a war.

Told in an engaging manner, the book is opinionated. Bradley is a jealous and dour man; MacArthur is a hypochondriac who is disengaged from his troops and whose indecision cost America any chance to defend the Phiilipines at the beginning of the War; Patton is the only American general who prepared himself for World War II through study. Montgomery is a great general... the British were poor at promoting good men who had done well in lesser posts.

The book breaks down the war into strategic decisions, and operational decisions. This book provides an amazingly clear story of what the nations thought they were up to.... the authors do not shy away from showing managerial incompetence. Along the way, it becomes clear that a war this big is in fact a work in progress, a sustained effort that involves as much human error as it does genius, as much simple management as it does courage and bravery.

In this era of "quick wars", it is fascinating to consider World War II as almost a way of life for the world, and as this book makes clear, as a way of work. On a pure military level, this book provides the clarity and overview that is lacking in a book such as Keegan's World War II.... The work is informative not only about history and the war, but about how men and women work over time to accomplish great goals.

If you are only going to read one military history this decade, this is the one to read.