Churchill and His Generals (Modern War Studies) |
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Churchill and His Generals (Modern War Studies)
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by Raymond Callahan
Sales Rank: 547280
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List Price: $34.95
$25.51
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on 6-16-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 310 pages
Published by: University Press of Kansas May 19, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0700615121
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0700615124
Book Dimensions:
9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
Weighs: 1.4 pounds
Book Description
On the eve of World War II, the British army was more an international police force than a true combat-ready fighting machine. Raymond Callahan chronicles its trial-by-fire transformation in a new and unflinching look at Great Britain's top commanders in the field.
Callahan reexamines the much-maligned performance of the British army in that war by reevaluating its commanders' victories and defeats, their leadership abilities and flaws, and their often rocky relationships with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, whose powerful presence looms over every page. Revisiting wartime theaters stretching from Southeast Asia across India through the Middle East, into North Africa, and across Europe, Callahan revises and expands our understanding of how British commanders-both the best and worst-led their troops and executed their strategies.
Callahan explores the way Churchill, with his own ideas about the army's goals and concerned about the precariousness of his political fortunes, dealt with his generals, who often held views different from his own. He probes the relationship between Churchill's political goals and war aims, the army's capabilities, and its generals' battlefield performance, while assessing the roles of such leaders as Alan Brooke, Bernard Montgomery, Archibald Wavell, Claude Auchinleck, and Harold Alexander. He also reveals why William Slim should be regarded as the outstanding British commander of the war and Britain's best field commander since Wellington-and how other generals such as Neil Richie, Henry Wilson, and Oliver Leese exemplify the role of chance in history.
Past criticism has tended to ignore both the obstacles confronting the army and its dramatic improvement by war's end. Callahan sets that record straight while offering insight into the evolution of the British wartime army within the contexts of coalition warfare, the constraints of a far-flung Empire, and Churchill's political concerns and desire to retain a British presence on the world stage. He considers problems posed by manpower, training, doctrine, equipment, and new military technologies and strategies as the army faced a multifront global war that pushed an already overextended fighting force nearly to the breaking point.
Churchill and His Generals is the most comprehensive analysis of this wartime relationship, an account of institutional transformation under extreme stress that balances Churchill's own self-serving memoirs. It clearly demonstrates that what political leaders demand from their armies is less important than what those armies are designed to do-and that this oft-recurring disconnect lies at the root of much wartime civil-military tension.
This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.
Back Cover Copy
"Incisive and informed, yet highly readable, this great book will surprise and provoke even those who think they really know the Second World War. It puts Churchill in his place, firmly yet fairly. Ranging across North Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Callahan turns Britain's 'Forgotten Army' in Burma into the memorable centerpiece of this vivid story."-David Reynolds, author of In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War
"A very fine and compelling work by a seasoned scholar and superior to John Keegan's Churchill's Generals. It's a pleasure to read."-Harold R. Winton, author of To Change an Army: General Sir John Burnett-Stuart and British Armored Doctrine, 1927-1938
Reader Reviews
The British Army of World War II began the war deficient in leadership, doctrine, equipment, and training, leading to a series of military debacles in Europe and the Pacific between 1940 and 1942 that overshadowed the army and its commanders for the remainder of the war. By 1945, however, it had evolved into an effective fighting force, despite manpower shortages that forced British generals to adopt caution in their operations and eventually led to the disbanding of some seven divisions. In "Churchill and His Generals" author Raymond Callahan focuses on Great Britains key military leaders and formations: the Eighth Army, which fought in North Africa and Italy; the Second Army, which fought in Northwestern Europe from D-Day to the end of the war; and the Fourteenth Army, which fought in Burma. It was the Fourteenth Army which emerged as the greatest fighting force of the war. It's commander, General William Slim, is described by Callahan as "the finest British general since Wellington" for it was he that built and transformed that army it into the best of Great Britiain's World War II formations. Unfortunately, for Slim and his veterans, the Fourteenth received little recognition from Winston Churchill for their tremendous contributions to the defeat of the Japanese in Burma. Despite his reputation as one of the greatest British leaders of World War II, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery emerges as a commander who had not advanced beyond 1918 tactically and the legitimate descendant of the generals of World War I. After the years of defeats, retreats and evacuations, the ascendency of the Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke - Field Marshal Mongomery team, meant a return to tactical and operational caution (reinforced by manpower concerns). Victory through firepower at an acceptable cost in lives became the aim - and the British Army delivered those victories. Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, consistently denigrated and undervalued by both Montgomery and Brooke, emerges as a capable soldier as well as the closest thing the British Army had to an Eisenhower-style coalition commander. The major shortcoming of this work is that it is a synthesis of secondary sources and relies heavily on the postwar memoirs of most of the British commanders of the Second World War. Unfortunately, in those memoirs, Great Britiain's World War II military leaders spend a great deal of energy disparaging each other. The attentive reader is left wondering if Callahan has not presented Great Britian's World War II Army and its commanders too negatively.
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