Customer Reviews

The Will to Win: The Life of General James A. Van Fleet

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Very interesting with plenty of background military history. A little sparse in the area of General Van Fleet the man - but lots of information on his military exploits and leadership. Unlike other famous and successful WW2 leaders, Van Fleet's career has been a bit overlooked by biographers.

Like most comparable books, the maps are poor. They are largely reproduced from official, contemporary, U.S. Army documents. They are too small and many of the locations referred to in the text are not shown on the corresponding maps. Some have no scale key. Why can't publishers or authors arrange for better maps, specifically designed to illustrate what the book's text describes?

The photos are fine.

Nothing wrong with an uncritical biography, but one should be cautious about using this rather one-sided volume in understand events where Van Fleet held a leadership role.

The example of the Greek Civil War cited by a prior review is instructive. In fact Van Fleet serious misunderstood the conflict in Greece and current historians argue he probably prolonged the time it took to defeat the Greek communists. It is most likly that without US military aid, especially in the form of Van Fleet's absolute control of military strategy there, the conservative Greek govenrment would have defeeated the communist forces earlier and with much less bloodshed.

This is especially important as the understanding, or misunderstanding, of events in Greece deeply informed U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine at strategic and tactical level. As many military historians attest, this lead to serious mistakes in the first few years of the war in Vietnam when the "Greek model" drove doctrine.

There have been a number and conferences and publications through the US Army War College, especially following the opening of Soviet records, and the view now is that Van Fleet's consistent countermanding of the recommendations by the General Staff of Greece gave the communists constant reprieve. As Yugoslav and Soviet records now show the Greek Civil was more about Yugoslav involvement, and the bases in Yugoslavia are where all the serious Greek (and as it turns out Yugoslav) forces of merit maintained sanctuary. Van Fleet's failure to heed this on a strategic level was a serious blunder and is the root of the tactical failures and massive loss of civilian life that followed.

Almost every counterinsurgency tactic saw a false depiction of success by his staff, and the (dis)informing doctrine that followed resulted in the exact same failures of in Vietnam.

Van Fleet was a brave soldier, and deserves credit on many levels, but he also lies at the heart of a fallacies in counterinsurgency doctrine that dogged and hampered our efforts long for decades.

General Patton said that Van Fleet was a fighting fool. Van Fleet led one of the assault regiments on D-Day at Utah Beach. He was such an outstanding leader he was promoted 3 more times before the end of the war. First to assistant division commander, then to division commander and finally to command of a corps. It has been rumoured that Van Fleet wasn't promoted sooner because George C. Marshall confused his name with another officer who was an alcoholic. General Van Fleet was primarily responsible for the defeat of the communists in Greece , where he led the US mission. Van Fleet later commanded the 8th army in Korea and retired due to the lack of the will by our government.

Van Fleet is also the best head football coach in the history of the University of Florida, which he coached for several years while serving as the Rotc instructor.