by Paul Kennedy
Acknowledgments
I first conceived of this book in 2007, a year after the publication of my study of the United Nations, The Parliament of Man. With the backing of Random House in New York and Penguin UK in London, I moved into the serious writing of chapters 1, 2, and 4 during six months of research leave in Cambridge in 2008. My return to full-time teaching, advising, and fund-raising at Yale left me little opportunity for further drafting, but I was able to take another stint of research leave at Cambridge in 2010, where I drafted the remaining chapters, 3 and 5. The introduction and conclusion were drafted in the fall of 2010, after my return to Yale. In the period following I sought to incorporate, or at least mull over, the comments and criticisms of many academic colleagues and my chief editors.
There is no way that senior, overcommitted academics these days can engage in major scholarly research and writing without the assistance of enlightened universities and foundations who are willing to support such endeavours. My thanks must therefore go in the first place to my home university, Yale, which not only provided an intellectual base, scholarly resources, and remarkable, sustaining collegiality but also freed me from time to time for serious research and writing abroad. In that latter regard, the welcome and hospitality I received from academic colleagues and colleges at Cambridge were both moving and essential. Above all, I am indebted to the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, who provided me with assistance and accommodation for three lengthy stays; without the college’s generosity, I doubt that this book could have been written. I am also obliged to the IDEAS department of the London School of Economics and Political Science, which made me their first Philippe Roman Visiting Professor in 2008, thus allowing me the chance both to teach and to continue my research and writing. The generosity of Roger Hertog permitted me to put all those pieces together.
My colleagues at Yale, above all John Gaddis and Charles Hill, have tolerated my discourses on the nuts and bolts of war for many years now, and permitted me to inflict some of the ideas present in this book upon our co-taught class in grand strategy. The same tolerance and encouragement was shown by the genial Arne Westad and Michael Cox at the London School of Economics. As to the encouragement given by Cambridge scholars and officers, well, I don’t know where to start, and I feel sure I will have missed a name or two: Zara Steiner, Christopher Andrew, David Reynolds, Jonathan Haslam, Richard Drayton (now at London), Adam Tooze (now at Yale), and Brendan Sims all made me think and think again. Allan Packwood at the Churchill College Archive was an immense help. At St. John’s College, two successive masters, Richard Perham and Christopher Dobson, along with presidents Jane Heal and Mark Nicholls and, perhaps especially, that naval connoisseur cum domestic bursar John Harris, were always supportive.
As the sheer size of the published and unpublished materials for this project grew and grew, I in turn became indebted to a small group of wonderful research assistants: Will Chou, Will Owen, Evan Wilson, Joyce Arnold, Elisabeth Leake, Gabriel Perlman, Isabel Marin, and Daniel Hornung have helped me in gathering library materials, searching out obscure sources, and reading draft sections. Elisabeth was a particularly cruel and effective copy editor as well. Elizabeth Ralph nudged me into a rescrutiny of chapter 2 on the air war, and Igor Biryukov’s researches on chapter 3 (Eastern Front) were invaluable. During the academic year 2011-12, Daniel Hornung joined Igor in weekly support of this project. In the intensive work stages of last summer, Isabel Marin and Sigrid von Wendel joined Igor and myself in the final “push.” Checking texts for the last time, and assembling, under pressure, the most suitable maps, tables, and illustrations is no easy task. This was perfect teamwork, and accomplished everything that was required. It gave me great pleasure to work with all of the above and learn from them, something that constantly reminded me of my own role as Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s research assistant a mere forty-plus years ago, where my task was to prepare first drafts for the chapters on the Pacific War, the Battle of the Atlantic, the strategic bombing campaign, and the latter half of the fighting in Italy.
A number of academic colleagues were kind enough to put aside their own work to read and critique various chapters, or, as a local alternative, to join me in the Granta pub in Cambridge for sustained discussions about where this work was going. Among them were Kathy Barbier, Tami Biddle, Michael Coles, John Harris, Jonathan Haslam, John Hattendorf, Milan Hauner, David Kahn, Rich Muller, Geoffrey Parker, Andrew Preston, John Reeve, Nicholas Rodger, and John Thompson. I am sure that I have inadvertently missed a name or two.
I was also lucky enough to be able to present some early ideas about this book in various stimulating academic environments: Yale itself, Cambridge, the Ohio State University, King’s College London (the Annual War Studies Lecture), the Naval War College, Duke University, the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Defense University, and many other places over the past three years. The Society for Military History invited me to present my ideas in its January 2009 lecture at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, under the title of “History from the Middle,” which was later published in their flagship journal, the Journal of Military History. Those ideas were also presented, in a variant form organized by the enterprising Martin Lawrence, as the first Lady Lucy Houston Lecture at Cambridge in March 2010, a nice tribute to the formidable lady whose largesse rescued the future Spitfire from oblivion.
This book makes no singular claim to arguing the importance of the nuts and bolts of war; it is certainly not the first to do so. Like other works with an ambitious theme, it stands on the shoulders of redoubtable scholars who have previously explored the same ground: more generally and distantly, Martin van Creveld and the incomparable Geoffrey Parker; and, with respect to World War II specifically, Rick Atkinson, Bruce Ellis, David Glantz, Richard Overy, Allan Millett and Williamson Murray, Marc Milner, Ronald Spector, Paddy Willmott, and the late and remarkable John Erickson, an engineer turned historian. Likewise, I owe a huge debt to the scholars who contributed to the American, British, Canadian, and West German official histories of the war; many of those volumes are fifty or sixty years old, yet their quality remains undimmed.
The marine paintings included among the photographs in this volume were all done by the incomparable artist Ian Marshall. They represent a prelude to his future illustrated book Fighting Warships of World War II. I am indebted to Ian for his great generosity here.
It has been almost forty years since I was introduced to Bruce Hunter, my literary agent, whose wise judgment and integrity have guided me on so many matters, and whose role has now been taken over by the able Andrew Gordon. Phyllis Westberg (Harold Ober) steered me through the New York side of things, and Ania Corless through all international contracts. Mika Kasuga of Random House really helped us in the final months. My editors Will Murphy (Random House, New York) and Stuart Proffitt (Penguin, United Kingdom) have been exemplary guides: supportive, firm, and very, very patient. Stuart sent me back to the writing board many times; I hope it shows. My debt to all these is not measurable.
Nor is my debt to my family, whose greatest virtue has been to be even more patient. I refer especially to Jim, John, and Matthew; to Sophia; to Cinnamon, Catherine, and Olivia; and to my grandson, Charlie Parker Kennedy, who was not even around to make life interesting when this work was begun.
My greatest debt is to the partner who has marched, laughed, and cried with me for well over a decade now, and to whom this book is dedicated.
Paul Kennedy
New Haven, 2012
Photo Insert
THE PLANNING BEGINS
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill seated in the garden of the villa where the Casablanca Conference was held in January 1943. Grouped behind them are the British and American chiefs of staff.
EARLY ALLIED REVERSALS
Despite being in close convoy, a British merchant ship sinks quickly after being torpedoed in the North Atlantic, with an Allied destroyer nearby.
&nbs
p; A pall of smoke hanging over the harbor in Suda Bay where two Royal Navy ships, hit by German bombers, are burning on June 25, 1941. British Naval and military forces were smashed by the German blitzkrieg assault on Crete.
German Panzers advancing unopposed in Ukraine, September 1941.
An American B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crashing out of the sky during a daytime raid over Germany—a typical fate for many such aircraft in 1943 and 1944.
This scene on the beach after the Dieppe raid in August 1942 shows the many dead Canadians and their broken vehicles.
The waterfront at Betio in Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands, in 1947, showing how the sea wall foiled the advance of American tracked amphibious vehicles.
THE TIDE BEGINS TO TURN
An artist’s impression of the battle of Midway, June 1942.
An iconic image of British infantry advancing through the dust and smoke of the battle of El Alamein, September 1942.
The SS Ohio entering the Grand Harbor at Valletta in Malta on August 15, 1942, following Operation Pedestal; one of the hardest-fought convoy operations of the war. Hit by an Axis bomb, the U.S. oil tanker could only be saved by two Royal Navy destroyers “linking arms” and towing her slowly for the rest of the journey. She was so badly damaged that she had to be scuttled in order to offload her absolutely vital cargo. Malta’s fuel stocks were assured and were never again in such threat.
Newly trained American troops resting after their unopposed landings in Casablanca, Morocco, November 1942.
THE T00LS OF VICTORY
The Cavity Magnetron: This miniaturized radar device gave a huge advantage to British and American forces because it could be placed in aircrafts and smaller warships.
By mid-1943, an aircraft like this Vickers Wellington bomber had been transformed into an acoustical machine with enormous weaponry for the destruction of U-boats.
The sloop HMS Mermaid, which possessed all of its high-angle armament and detection equipment by 1944.
The Hedgehog, a 24-barreled mortar, was mounted on the forecastle of the British escort vessel HMS Westcott.
USS Bogue: This cheaply produced warship provided additional air cover not only for the critical North Atlantic battles of 1943, but also for escorting the massive U.S. troop flows to North Africa and the Mediterranean. Many Bogue-class ships were transferred to the Royal Navy under the provisions of the Lend-Lease program.
Captain. F. J. Walker was the most successful anti–U-boat commander in the battle of the Atlantic, seen here directing a sister warship in its attack on a German submarine.
The Leigh Light, used for exposing U-boats on the water’s surface at night. Here it is fitted onto an RAF Coastal Command Liberator aircraft.
The role of long-range American, British, and Canadian patrol aircraft over the Atlantic waters was absolutely critical to the Allied victory in the West. Allied aircraft actually sank more U-boats than did warships. The PBY Catalina above is returning to its base in Gibraltar, crossing Europa Point on the north shore of Morrocco.
COMMAND OF THE SEA
USS Wasp loading Spitfires in the Clyde, April 1942.
In April 1942 the U.S. Navy loaned their carrier, USS Wasp, to assist the British in their desperate need to fly Spitfires to the beleagured island of Malta. In early 1943, the British Admiralty loaned the new fast carrier HMS Victorious to Admiral Halsey’s Southwest Pacific Fleet as a partner to the USS Saratoga. At that time, the Saratoga was the only American carrier operating in the Pacific. This illustration shows the Victorious joining its American partner in Noumea Bay, New Caledonia, Southwest Pacific, May 1943.
USS Essex leaving Norfolk, Virginia, laden with aircraft for the Pacific War, May 1943.
HMS Anson: Another brand-new British battleship steams out to join the fray. By 1943, only the American and British Navies were launching heavy warships.
THE EASTERN FRONT
The spring thaw made the going tough for both sides on the Eastern front, in this case for a German motorcycle unit.
The armored struggles during this conflict were the largest and most confused of the entire war. Here German Tiger tanks are getting ready to strike at Kursk. The Wehrmacht still relied, however, on a vast number of horse-drawn wagons, which were painfully slow in dragging their way through the boggy paths and dirt roads of the country.
The early T-34 tank had extremely confined space for its three-man crew. The tank commander not only had to shout course changes to the driver, and aim and fire the gun, but also assist in loading the shells.
The advanced T-34/85 tank had a bigger turret and a more powerful gun, much transformed from the earlier prototype.
THE AERIAL IMBALANCE BETWEEN THE AXIS AND THE ALLIES
German two-engine bomber: Heinkel 111s
Japanese two-engine bomber: Mitsubishi G4M known as the Betty
RAF Lancaster bomber: This massive four-engine bomber, like its American equivalents, the B-17s, B-24s, and B-29s, carried a much larger bomb-load than eight to ten Axis medium bombers.
Once the pride of the German fleet, the battleship Tirpitz lies silhouetted against the snow-capped mountains of Norway after being destroyed in November 1944. In the foreground is a crater left by one of the six-ton Tallboy bombs dropped by a Lancaster during the same raid in the Sanne Strait.
B-17s flying toward Germany with long-range fighter cover overhead, at last.
The American B-29 Superfortress in squadron flight toward Japanese cities. Their main base in the Pacific theater was the island of Tinian in the Marianas, captured in June–July 1944.
ENGINEERS OF VICTORY AND THEIR PRODUCTS
Ronnie Harker
It was Harker, the British test pilot, who suggested that putting the new Rolls-Royce Packard Merlin engine into the American-built P-51 fighter would transform its range, speed, and overall performance. Here, a Merlin engine is lowered into the legendary Mustang chassis.
Captain Pete Ellis
American marines landing from barges on a beach at Guadalcanal, beginning an attack on the Japanese on September 7, 1942. It was Captain Pete Ellis who first conceived, as early as 1919, the strategy of amphibious landings on small islands across the Pacific.
Major General Sir Percy Hobart was responsible for many of the specialized armored vehicles, known as Hobart’s Funnies, that were deployed in North Africa, the invasion of Normandy, and later actions.
One of Hobart’s “flail tanks” in action. The turret is temporarily reversed; the flails are driving forward.
Admiral Ben Moreell (1892–1978) was a brilliant engineer and a distinguished naval officer who persuaded Franklin D. Roosevelt to allow him to create the new Construction Battalions (CBs or SeaBees) shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Mulberry harbor at Arromanches, with lorries rolling ashore loaded with supplies in June 1944. The Mulberry harbors were built by the SeaBees in Pembroke Harbor, towed to the Normandy beaches in sections, then reassembled to aid the invasion armies.
Germany also possessed brilliant wartime engineers. The above image shows the Messerschmitt Me-262, the first jet fighter of the war, which was far faster than the most advanced Spitfires or Mustangs.
The modified version, however, with bombs attached underneath, seriously impaired the plane’s speed and stability in flight. Hitler’s obsessiveness about bombing thus overcame Willy Messerschmitt’s engineering genius.
VICTORY HAS COME
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery leaves the Brandenburg Gate after a ceremony to decorate Soviet Generals in Berlin, July 12, 1945. With him are marshals of the Soviet Union: Georgy Zhukov (second from left), Vasily Sokolovsky (center right, background) and Konstantin Rokossovski (right foreground). Montgomery and Zhukov were perhaps the two most successful “positional generals” of the war.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. After our UN report group initially suggested major constitutional changes at the very top of the world organization—that is, amending the
United Nations Charter to admit new permanent veto members to the Security Council—and discovered the great political roadblocks to proposals of that magnitude, it became obvious that the best way the UN could help itself was by ensuring that it was effective in the middle, in on-the-ground peacekeeping, development, and human rights work. Compare the larger agenda suggested in P. Kennedy and B. Russett, “Reforming the United Nations,” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1995): 56–71, with the more cautious formulations in P. Kennedy, The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present and Future of the United Nations (New York: Random House, 2006), ch. 8.