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Cambridge Military Histories
How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II
World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than land supremacy. He shows how the Allies developed a predominance of air and sea power which put unbearable pressure on Germany and Japan's entire war-fighting machine from Europe and the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Air and sea power dramatically expanded the area of battle and allowed the Allies to destroy over half the Axis' equipment before it had even reached the traditional 'battlefield'. Battles such as El Alamein, Stalingrad and Kursk did not win World War II; air and sea power did.
640 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2015
108 people are currently reading
1504 people want to read
About the author
Phillips Payson O'Brien
12 books72 followersPhillips Payson O’Brien is a Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland, where he has taught since 2016. A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, O'Brien earned a PhD in British and American politics and naval policy before being selected as Cambridge University’s Mellon Research Fellow in American History, and a Drapers Research Fellow at Pembroke College.
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April 28, 2025
“One of the main purposes of this book is to discuss how the British and Americans came to engage and destroy the greater part of German and Japanese production through the application of air and sea power, and thereby win World War II. It is also to show how air and sea power combined to keep the results of production away from the battlefield as well as determining the course of battles…By de-emphasizing the importance of land battles, it will pull the focus of the war away from the Eastern Front (as well as the fighting in North Africa and Italy). This is in no way an attempt to denigrate the enormous sacrifices that the USSR made in the fight against Nazi Germany. It is instead an attempt to move away from the traditional notion of the land battle as the greatest focus of national effort or commitment…”
- Phillips Payson O’Brien, How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II
When we think of victory in the Second World War, we are probably imagining a battle. If you’re an American, the first thing that comes to mind is the Normandy landings in June 1944. If you’re everyone else, you are probably conjuring the titanic clashes at places like Stalingrad and Kursk.
In How the War was Won, Phillips Payson O’Brien wants you to know that both notions are wrong. Instead, he argues that air and sea power – and not colliding armies – decided the outcome of mankind’s greatest conflict.
***
At a certain level, the thesis of How the War was Won might seem so obvious that it would not support a short article, much less a book nearly five-hundred pages in length. The importance of sea power has been known for thousands of years, while the impact of airpower – though more recent – is undeniable.
Here’s the thing, though. O’Brien isn’t here to talk about importance. He is here to prove that air-sea power was the deciding factor, and that the battles filling the books that crowd the libraries were but bloody sideshows.
If this argument seems overstated, let me tell you: It is! Still, How the War was Won is passionately argued, has a marvelous contrarian streak, and is full of insights. It might not be entirely convincing, but that hardly matters. This is an academic exercise, one that is quite entertaining if you are one of those people who will be reading about the Second World War till the day you die.
***
How the War was Won is not a general history of the Second World War. Indeed, it presupposes you already know everything important about how the war unfolded. Though it follows a rough overarching chronology, its chapters are thematic and geographical, rather than narrative. For example, separate chapters cover the air war in Europe, and the air-sea war against Japan. There are also standalone chapters that discuss grand strategy, including intriguing questions such as the potential success of an earlier cross-Channel invasion.
In terms of writing style, this is more argumentative than elegant. O’Brien has points to make, which he often repeats for emphasis,. Still, he does a good job of enlivening things by using concrete examples to support a proposition. For instance, O’Brien uses the notorious slaughter of convoy SC 42 in September 1941 to explain that merchant ships within a convoy were actually highly likely to survive unscathed.
Alongside the words, there are numbers. A lot of numbers. O’Brien has a great affinity for statistics, and he deploys them unrestrainedly. Included within the book are numerous charts, graphs, and tables, just in case you want a visual representation of German weapons production distribution by armed service and quarter, from 1942-44.
***
By and large, I found myself agreeing with O’Brien.
With regard to the air war, O’Brien is extremely bullish on America’s daylight strategic bombing campaign in Europe. Early on, he gives credit to Franklin Roosevelt for pushing aircraft production over armored fighting vehicles. As is well known, American tanks – such as the Sherman – were grossly inferior to German models. This doesn’t matter to O’Brien, because the United States was producing the airplanes that bombed the German factories that kept the Germans from having enough tanks to make a difference.
No element of the Second World War is more controversial than the effectiveness of Allied bombing of German cities. The issue has been forever muddied by pot-stirrers like Reich Armaments Minister Albert Speer, who suggested that Allied bombing failed because he increased productivity throughout the war. O’Brien ably points out the many flaws in this logic, including the most obvious: that it didn’t rise as much as it could have. Bombing forced Germany to disperse manufacturing, build factories in odd shapes, and go underground. All this slowed things down. American output was not simply a function of can-do spirit, but made possible because U.S. factories ran day-and-night, without having to pause for a rain of incendiary devices. Furthermore, even when Speer’s factories generated output, Allied transportation campaigns kept these finished products from ever reaching the battlefield.
***
In Europe, O’Brien believes the bombing efforts to be paramount. It kept Germany from building things; it kept the Germans from transporting things; it hampered troop movements; it forced the Germans to shift men and artillery from the Eastern Front; and it destroyed the Luftwaffe.
In Japan, by contrast, O’Brien focuses on naval efforts, which strangled production at its source. More particularly, Japan’s early-war successes secured access to vast supplies of raw materials. However, America’s submarine offensives and mining activities kept those materials from ever reaching the home islands. To that end, O’Brien finds America’s firebombing of Japanese cities to arguably be unnecessary.
***
O’Brien can sometimes come across as a bit of an accountant, forgetting the human lives beyond his spreadsheets. With that said, he does not entirely neglect the moral aspect of Allied air-sea operations. He makes some allowance for Britain’s Bomber Command early in the war, because in the act of razing cities, they did tend to disrupt the industrial process by killing or unhousing factory workers. At a certain point, though, area bombing crossed the line into pure murder, with Dresden being Exhibit A.
Concerning the atomic bomb, O’Brien suggests that Japan could’ve been defeated via a sea blockade, which is likely correct. Nevertheless, this still would’ve killed a huge number of Japanese civilians, just through starvation and disease, rather than the flash-boom of split atoms. In the meantime, the longer the war dragged on, the more deaths accumulated in places such as China, Indochina, and the Philippines.
Ultimately, killing to save lives presents an impossible ethical dilemma, because it necessarily treats the deaths of individuals as means to an end.
***
Perhaps unsurprisingly, O’Brien totally oversells his position. Despite his contention to the contrary, the occupation of real estate via the mechanism of head-to-head combat meant a great deal. To O’Brien, the Battle of Kursk – to take one example – does not matter because the Germans could have made up their losses, but for the destruction of their factories by air. Yet one can simply turn that argument on its head, and propose that the decrease in productivity matters only to the extent it affected performance on the battlefield. In other words, it was going to take more than a compelling bar graph of average German aircraft deployment in July-November 1943 to get them to leave the Soviet Union.
By deprecating battles, O’Brien is like a sabermetrically-inclined baseball fan, surprised that his team lost despite all the computer-derived probabilities. At the end of the day, the matter still has to be settled on the field.
- Phillips Payson O’Brien, How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II
When we think of victory in the Second World War, we are probably imagining a battle. If you’re an American, the first thing that comes to mind is the Normandy landings in June 1944. If you’re everyone else, you are probably conjuring the titanic clashes at places like Stalingrad and Kursk.
In How the War was Won, Phillips Payson O’Brien wants you to know that both notions are wrong. Instead, he argues that air and sea power – and not colliding armies – decided the outcome of mankind’s greatest conflict.
***
At a certain level, the thesis of How the War was Won might seem so obvious that it would not support a short article, much less a book nearly five-hundred pages in length. The importance of sea power has been known for thousands of years, while the impact of airpower – though more recent – is undeniable.
Here’s the thing, though. O’Brien isn’t here to talk about importance. He is here to prove that air-sea power was the deciding factor, and that the battles filling the books that crowd the libraries were but bloody sideshows.
If this argument seems overstated, let me tell you: It is! Still, How the War was Won is passionately argued, has a marvelous contrarian streak, and is full of insights. It might not be entirely convincing, but that hardly matters. This is an academic exercise, one that is quite entertaining if you are one of those people who will be reading about the Second World War till the day you die.
***
How the War was Won is not a general history of the Second World War. Indeed, it presupposes you already know everything important about how the war unfolded. Though it follows a rough overarching chronology, its chapters are thematic and geographical, rather than narrative. For example, separate chapters cover the air war in Europe, and the air-sea war against Japan. There are also standalone chapters that discuss grand strategy, including intriguing questions such as the potential success of an earlier cross-Channel invasion.
In terms of writing style, this is more argumentative than elegant. O’Brien has points to make, which he often repeats for emphasis,. Still, he does a good job of enlivening things by using concrete examples to support a proposition. For instance, O’Brien uses the notorious slaughter of convoy SC 42 in September 1941 to explain that merchant ships within a convoy were actually highly likely to survive unscathed.
Alongside the words, there are numbers. A lot of numbers. O’Brien has a great affinity for statistics, and he deploys them unrestrainedly. Included within the book are numerous charts, graphs, and tables, just in case you want a visual representation of German weapons production distribution by armed service and quarter, from 1942-44.
***
By and large, I found myself agreeing with O’Brien.
With regard to the air war, O’Brien is extremely bullish on America’s daylight strategic bombing campaign in Europe. Early on, he gives credit to Franklin Roosevelt for pushing aircraft production over armored fighting vehicles. As is well known, American tanks – such as the Sherman – were grossly inferior to German models. This doesn’t matter to O’Brien, because the United States was producing the airplanes that bombed the German factories that kept the Germans from having enough tanks to make a difference.
No element of the Second World War is more controversial than the effectiveness of Allied bombing of German cities. The issue has been forever muddied by pot-stirrers like Reich Armaments Minister Albert Speer, who suggested that Allied bombing failed because he increased productivity throughout the war. O’Brien ably points out the many flaws in this logic, including the most obvious: that it didn’t rise as much as it could have. Bombing forced Germany to disperse manufacturing, build factories in odd shapes, and go underground. All this slowed things down. American output was not simply a function of can-do spirit, but made possible because U.S. factories ran day-and-night, without having to pause for a rain of incendiary devices. Furthermore, even when Speer’s factories generated output, Allied transportation campaigns kept these finished products from ever reaching the battlefield.
***
In Europe, O’Brien believes the bombing efforts to be paramount. It kept Germany from building things; it kept the Germans from transporting things; it hampered troop movements; it forced the Germans to shift men and artillery from the Eastern Front; and it destroyed the Luftwaffe.
In Japan, by contrast, O’Brien focuses on naval efforts, which strangled production at its source. More particularly, Japan’s early-war successes secured access to vast supplies of raw materials. However, America’s submarine offensives and mining activities kept those materials from ever reaching the home islands. To that end, O’Brien finds America’s firebombing of Japanese cities to arguably be unnecessary.
***
O’Brien can sometimes come across as a bit of an accountant, forgetting the human lives beyond his spreadsheets. With that said, he does not entirely neglect the moral aspect of Allied air-sea operations. He makes some allowance for Britain’s Bomber Command early in the war, because in the act of razing cities, they did tend to disrupt the industrial process by killing or unhousing factory workers. At a certain point, though, area bombing crossed the line into pure murder, with Dresden being Exhibit A.
Concerning the atomic bomb, O’Brien suggests that Japan could’ve been defeated via a sea blockade, which is likely correct. Nevertheless, this still would’ve killed a huge number of Japanese civilians, just through starvation and disease, rather than the flash-boom of split atoms. In the meantime, the longer the war dragged on, the more deaths accumulated in places such as China, Indochina, and the Philippines.
Ultimately, killing to save lives presents an impossible ethical dilemma, because it necessarily treats the deaths of individuals as means to an end.
***
Perhaps unsurprisingly, O’Brien totally oversells his position. Despite his contention to the contrary, the occupation of real estate via the mechanism of head-to-head combat meant a great deal. To O’Brien, the Battle of Kursk – to take one example – does not matter because the Germans could have made up their losses, but for the destruction of their factories by air. Yet one can simply turn that argument on its head, and propose that the decrease in productivity matters only to the extent it affected performance on the battlefield. In other words, it was going to take more than a compelling bar graph of average German aircraft deployment in July-November 1943 to get them to leave the Soviet Union.
By deprecating battles, O’Brien is like a sabermetrically-inclined baseball fan, surprised that his team lost despite all the computer-derived probabilities. At the end of the day, the matter still has to be settled on the field.
April 21, 2022
I'm not a World War II buff. While I have fond memories of watching The World at War each week as a kid in the early 1970s, and more recently I read Liddle Hart's conventional history, military history is not my thing, though as a specialist in Eastern Europe I read a fair amount about Eastern Europe in WW II. In any case, I would likely never have learned about this book had it not been for Professor O'Brien's posts about the war and Ukraine, where he has highlighted the importance of logistics and the desirability of preventing weapons from getting deployed. This would have been a pity, because this book is important and has gotten me to think about World War II quite differently than I did even a few days ago.
Coming of age in an era when strategic bombing during World War II was seen as a needlessly destructive failure, I was a bit apprehensive when I started that this book might be a rah-rah take on US production capacity and a vindication of "Bomber" Harris and Curtis LeMay's worst excesses. It is not. Early on in book we learn that US industrial capacity was far more limited than is generally understood. We also see that no less than FDR grasped the importance of "air superiority" at a time when that had not become a commonplace idea. O'Brien also highlights the importance of Admiral Leahy, whose name I had never heard before, but is convincingly presented here as the most influential strategist for the allies by emphasizing the importance of reducing the mobility of the Axis powers as the key aim and means to bring about victory.
Along the way, O'Brien carefully explains why early decisions relating to air power and bombing were made that in retrospect were not as useful to winning the war as they might have been, while also showing how and why even as late as 1943 the winning strategy was difficult to implement in both the European and Asian theaters. Along the way, Churchill's vision is criticized, though not in the hit job kind of way he has more than once provoked. O'Brien just shows that like a number of other figures like General George Marshall, Stalin, Hitler, MacArthur, and the Japanese leadership we see Churchill remained wed to what O'Brien calls battle-centric understanding of war focused on territory rather than utility, that belonged to the nineteenth century more than the twentieth. In so doing he demonstrates both the weakness of Churchill's beloved idea of focusing on a Mediterranean front and MacArthur's emphasis on the Philippines. Regarding the latter, O'Brien goes so far as to posit that the battle on Peleliu was utterly unnecessary and actually helped insure that the battle for Iwo Jima was much bloodier than it might have been.
One of the interesting by-products of O'Brien's account is it become clearer how German and Japanese leaders could imagine the war remained winnable even after losing what are now conventionally understood as the "turning-points of the war," the battles of Midway and Stalingrad. In both cases, war production remained quite strong, and in the German case would not actually reach peak production until 1944, and in 1943 both Germans and Japanese military leaders could hold their own so long as the allies did not adapt, which of course they did. Indeed, in the Japanese case Allied actions were already beginning to create conditions that would snowball in 1943, in particular the diminished quality of the training afforded pilots. In the European theater it was the P-51 Mustang modified with the more powerful Merlin engine that was key, and allowed Allied air superiority to take hold as bombers now got much longer escorts. Attacks on aircraft manufacturing became key, along side the effort to cut off German fuel supplies. Nonetheless in the end O'Brien makes the argument that even more important was the shift to destroying German transport systems that came late in the war, suggesting that had this been begun even earlier the German war machine would have been crippled earlier. He is the strategic studies specialist, so he is likely right, but I do wonder if the real point is that by 1944 allied advantages of production and strategic vision simply came together and were further amplified by poor German and Japanese decisions. In the process, O'Brien also highlights the importance of Allied countermeasures taken against the V1 and V2 programs, which he shows was far more extensive than is generally appreciated
As I already noted above, it would have been easy to present an argument emphasizing air and sea power that apologized for massive targeting of civilians associated with "Bomber" Harris in Europe and LeMay in Japan. Both men were convinced that their actions were correct and so could be written off as part of the general destruction of war. O'Brien, however, takes a different tack. He notes what worked -- strategic bombing focused on targets that made war production -- but minces no words regarding the senselessness of targeting civilians as a means to undermine the war effort. He does not trumpet the technology of precision bombing as an alternative, and he recognizes that civilians will be killed in a war, but he is clear that it brought no advantage. Most interestingly he offers a third way in the on-going debate about the value of dropping the A-Bomb on Japan, by lifting up Leahy's own take that control of the Marianas was sufficient to grind Japan down without further invasions. That doesn't resolve the issue, and in my middle age I have come to believe that politics insured that the bomb was dropped, but we are not likely to be in a situation where such a huge technological leap will be made in war time any time soon. Still, in our world Leahy's readiness to checkmate Japan from the Marianas seems easier to sell as an alternative to nuclear war.
In closing a fine book. As a non-specialist I was able to follow it pretty well without necessarily reading every word sentence by sentence. It will definitely get you to think about World War II differently.
Coming of age in an era when strategic bombing during World War II was seen as a needlessly destructive failure, I was a bit apprehensive when I started that this book might be a rah-rah take on US production capacity and a vindication of "Bomber" Harris and Curtis LeMay's worst excesses. It is not. Early on in book we learn that US industrial capacity was far more limited than is generally understood. We also see that no less than FDR grasped the importance of "air superiority" at a time when that had not become a commonplace idea. O'Brien also highlights the importance of Admiral Leahy, whose name I had never heard before, but is convincingly presented here as the most influential strategist for the allies by emphasizing the importance of reducing the mobility of the Axis powers as the key aim and means to bring about victory.
Along the way, O'Brien carefully explains why early decisions relating to air power and bombing were made that in retrospect were not as useful to winning the war as they might have been, while also showing how and why even as late as 1943 the winning strategy was difficult to implement in both the European and Asian theaters. Along the way, Churchill's vision is criticized, though not in the hit job kind of way he has more than once provoked. O'Brien just shows that like a number of other figures like General George Marshall, Stalin, Hitler, MacArthur, and the Japanese leadership we see Churchill remained wed to what O'Brien calls battle-centric understanding of war focused on territory rather than utility, that belonged to the nineteenth century more than the twentieth. In so doing he demonstrates both the weakness of Churchill's beloved idea of focusing on a Mediterranean front and MacArthur's emphasis on the Philippines. Regarding the latter, O'Brien goes so far as to posit that the battle on Peleliu was utterly unnecessary and actually helped insure that the battle for Iwo Jima was much bloodier than it might have been.
One of the interesting by-products of O'Brien's account is it become clearer how German and Japanese leaders could imagine the war remained winnable even after losing what are now conventionally understood as the "turning-points of the war," the battles of Midway and Stalingrad. In both cases, war production remained quite strong, and in the German case would not actually reach peak production until 1944, and in 1943 both Germans and Japanese military leaders could hold their own so long as the allies did not adapt, which of course they did. Indeed, in the Japanese case Allied actions were already beginning to create conditions that would snowball in 1943, in particular the diminished quality of the training afforded pilots. In the European theater it was the P-51 Mustang modified with the more powerful Merlin engine that was key, and allowed Allied air superiority to take hold as bombers now got much longer escorts. Attacks on aircraft manufacturing became key, along side the effort to cut off German fuel supplies. Nonetheless in the end O'Brien makes the argument that even more important was the shift to destroying German transport systems that came late in the war, suggesting that had this been begun even earlier the German war machine would have been crippled earlier. He is the strategic studies specialist, so he is likely right, but I do wonder if the real point is that by 1944 allied advantages of production and strategic vision simply came together and were further amplified by poor German and Japanese decisions. In the process, O'Brien also highlights the importance of Allied countermeasures taken against the V1 and V2 programs, which he shows was far more extensive than is generally appreciated
As I already noted above, it would have been easy to present an argument emphasizing air and sea power that apologized for massive targeting of civilians associated with "Bomber" Harris in Europe and LeMay in Japan. Both men were convinced that their actions were correct and so could be written off as part of the general destruction of war. O'Brien, however, takes a different tack. He notes what worked -- strategic bombing focused on targets that made war production -- but minces no words regarding the senselessness of targeting civilians as a means to undermine the war effort. He does not trumpet the technology of precision bombing as an alternative, and he recognizes that civilians will be killed in a war, but he is clear that it brought no advantage. Most interestingly he offers a third way in the on-going debate about the value of dropping the A-Bomb on Japan, by lifting up Leahy's own take that control of the Marianas was sufficient to grind Japan down without further invasions. That doesn't resolve the issue, and in my middle age I have come to believe that politics insured that the bomb was dropped, but we are not likely to be in a situation where such a huge technological leap will be made in war time any time soon. Still, in our world Leahy's readiness to checkmate Japan from the Marianas seems easier to sell as an alternative to nuclear war.
In closing a fine book. As a non-specialist I was able to follow it pretty well without necessarily reading every word sentence by sentence. It will definitely get you to think about World War II differently.
December 6, 2024
Когато стане дума за война, повечето хора, вкл. и особено военните и военните историци, си представят, че става дума за армии, оръжия и велики сражения, обърнали хода на историята. А трябва да си представят пари.
Да се води война е изключително, невероятно, потресаващо скъпо начинание, а да се води тотална война като Втората световна е тотално скъпо начинание. До степен, смята авторът, самите сражения и техният резултат да нямат особено голямо значение. Кой е спечелил битката при Едикоеси Село в Русия и дали САЩ е трябвало да подгонят Япония из островите, и да й праснат 2 атомни бомби според него не е предопределило изхода на войната.
Той е бил решен още на ниво производствени мощности, логистика и световна стратегия на разполагане на морски, авиационни и по-малко на сухопътни сили.
Дали ще вярвате на това си е ваша работа, но Phillips Payson O'Brien за около 700 стр. почти успя да ме убеди, че това е така. Но пък тийнейджърът в мен който тръпне да чете за сражения, в които спокойно и уютно знае, че никога няма да участва, и който е основата на всеки добър и интересен за четене историк, силно се възпротивява на идеята.
Да се води война е изключително, невероятно, потресаващо скъпо начинание, а да се води тотална война като Втората световна е тотално скъпо начинание. До степен, смята авторът, самите сражения и техният резултат да нямат особено голямо значение. Кой е спечелил битката при Едикоеси Село в Русия и дали САЩ е трябвало да подгонят Япония из островите, и да й праснат 2 атомни бомби според него не е предопределило изхода на войната.
Той е бил решен още на ниво производствени мощности, логистика и световна стратегия на разполагане на морски, авиационни и по-малко на сухопътни сили.
Дали ще вярвате на това си е ваша работа, но Phillips Payson O'Brien за около 700 стр. почти успя да ме убеди, че това е така. Но пък тийнейджърът в мен който тръпне да чете за сражения, в които спокойно и уютно знае, че никога няма да участва, и който е основата на всеки добър и интересен за четене историк, силно се възпротивява на идеята.
March 8, 2018
Well researched, meticulously analyzed and entertainingly written, Dr O'Brien has produced a very valuable and much needed evaluation of the importance of air and sea power to the outcome of the Second World War, how victory was actually achieved, and that it was not all on the battlefield. He produces the numbers and examines the implications in a very detailed manner that clearly demonstrates the overwhelming influence air and sea power had on the war effort. Covering the strategic bombing campaign in Europe, the battle against the U-boats in the Atlantic and the air and sea campaign against Japan, Dr O'Brien establishes that the vast majority of the war effort went into the production of the most technologically advanced and expensive weapons systems and the "best-trained warriors" who destroyed the vast majority of the war making ability of the Axis powers.
The most important overall contribution this book makes is to clearly demonstrate that the air and sea effort, of the US and Great Britain, dwarfed the effort of the land battles of all combatants and led directly to the defeat of the Axis powers. Dr O'Brien does not say the land battles were unnecessary but shows how the success of the air and sea war contributed to the success of the Allies on land. He shows how the inability of Germany and Japan to compete in the air and sea war left them vulnerable to the systematic destruction of their ability to wage war.
What was new for me was learning that half as many Luftwaffe planes were available for Barbarossa as were available for the invasion of France. A clear indication of how difficult it was for Germany to replace losses sustained prior to June 1941 and how the added need to defend the conquered territories in the west was already overtaxing Germany's ability to achieve its goals. Dr O'Brien also demonstrates the importance of taking the Marianas abundantly clear, and not just for the strategic bombing of Japan. With the Marianas in hand the fast carrier task force could attack merchant shipping and add to the pressure put on the Japanese war economy by the US submarine offensive. Another surprise is that the aerial mining of Japanese harbors late in the war sank as many or perhaps more merchant shipping than submarines.
For me the most enjoyable parts of the book were the discussions of Allied Grand Strategy; the relationship between Roosevelt, Churchill and the members of their military staffs; Admiral Leahy's importance to Roosevelt, the operation of the JCS and grand strategy. The author analyzes the Lend Lease commitments to the Soviets, Great Britain and China and how they were vitally necessary for victory. I also enjoyed his examination of several controversial issues that persist to this day, especially the massive effort to establish and maintain B-29s in China, whether it was really necessary to invade the Philippines prior to Iwo Jima and the targeting of cities in the strategic bombing campaign of both Germany and Japan.
I am very enthusiastic about Dr O'Brien's book and that is why I gave it 5 stars. I think it should be read by every student of World War II. Just an outstanding piece of work.
I do have a quibble, a troubling disagreement with a very small part of the story Dr O'Brien is telling. Dr O'Brien writes, "When Roosevelt began pushing for money for the USN to construct new vessels, the navy continued to opt for a battleship-centric fleet until Pearl Harbor...Once the war in Europe started and before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the USN was given authorization to build a further eleven battleships, six of the Iowa Class and five of the mammoth Montana Class [the note he lists here does not give a source for this and only describes the Montana class] As it was, only four of the Iowa Class were ever completed and the rest cancelled when it became clear during the war that the aircraft carrier was now the decisive weapon. If only the USN had known this before it would have started more than the two aircraft carriers it laid down between 1937 and November 1941, the Hornet in 1939 and the Essex in April 1941. It was still thinking in terms of a capital ship duel in the Pacific." (p 111)
In the summer of 1940 the chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, Carl Vinson, gave a press conference. The House had just passed a massive spending bill to expand the Navy and he had been asked why so much of the bill was devoted to carriers and naval aircraft. Carl Vinson said, "The modern development of aircraft has demonstrated conclusively that the backbone of the Navy today is the aircraft carrier. The carrier, with destroyers, cruisers and submarines grouped around it[,] is the spearhead of all modern naval task forces."
Carl Vinson was the force behind the construction of the North Carolina class and the South Dakota class battleships that Dr O'Brien mentions just prior to the above quote, as Vinson tried to modernize the navy, but in 1940 he got a bill through Congress that called for 18 Essex class aircraft carriers along with the 6 or 7 Iowa and Montana class battleships. This happened in 1940. It was not something that happened after Pearl Harbor. It happened a year earlier and Congress called for not just one carrier but 18. Actually 5 Essex class hulls were laid down in 1941, all before Pearl Harbor. I don't think that House Representative Carl Vinson, Democrat from Georgia, came up with the notion that the fast carrier task force would be the "backbone of the Navy" all by himself. The bill came about from a request from Admiral Stark, CNO, and his staff. It would have been nice if Dr O'Brien could have researched that development. I am a little disappointed that he took the standard line of many historians that it was after Pearl Harbor that the navy came to the conclusion that carriers would be the primary combat ship in a modern navy. Seven of those carriers would be commissioned by the end of 1943 with the commissioning of USS Essex on 31 December 1942. Only 4 Iowa class battleships would be completed and none of the massive Montana class ships ordered in the bill, passed by the House on 18 June 1940 and signed into law in July 1940, would be built. Those developments and the eventual construction of 14 Essex class aircraft carriers, that would see action in the war, I do think are the result of the navy's experience in the first year of the war but the notion that the aircraft carrier would "spearhead" modern naval warfare had to have been envisioned by top navy brass sometime earlier than the summer of 1940, way before the dynamic operations of the Kido Butai.
Stark asked for 4 billion dollars to increase the existing fleet by 70%. The House Naval Affairs Committee increased it to more than 8 billion dollars emphasizing aircraft and called for 15,000 aircraft for the navy. The bill also called for 27 cruisers and an additional 6 Alaska class cruisers that mounted 12" guns. The Alaska class was the US Navy's answer to the battlecruiser. The Navy did still want big guns. Only 2 Alaska class cruisers would see service in WW II. It seems clear that the navy wanted a powerful surface force that included battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers as well as a very powerful fleet of carriers. It is clear that Dr O'Brien's statement of the preference for battleships and the laying down of a single Essex class carrier prior to November 1941 is not accurate. Actually three Essex class carriers were laid down before November 1941 and two more before 7 December 1941. I'm not sure if Admiral Stark would have agreed exactly with Vinson's statement but Vinson and Stark made it possible for 4 fleet carriers to join operations by the end of 1943.
It is clear that the US Navy did not have a detailed doctrine of carrier operations developed before the US entered the war and they surely did still envision battleship duels but the 1940 bill shows they wanted a preponderance of carriers. Is this misrepresentation a fatal flaw in Dr O'Brien's narrative? No, I don't think so. It is a wide miss of the actual history of the US Navy, the development of the US war effort and how it was possible for 7 new Essex class carriers to be commissioned by the end of 1943. It makes me wonder what happened in his research to make such an error and why November 1941 is his cut off for carrier construction and not 7 December, but it is not a fatal flaw and does not influence the rest of his narrative. Actually 1940 was the important year for the Essex class. Only 2 that were ordered after 1940 saw action in the war. Vinson's bill made it possible for 4 replacement carriers to be ready for operations by the end of 1943 and another 3 before the middle of 1944. What did happen after Pearl Harbor was the acceleration of the construction of the Essex class ships and the conversion of 9 Cleveland class cruisers to Independence class light carriers. I just think that overlooking the importance of the Vinson-Walsh Act is a very curious mistake but does not take away from what is obviously Dr O'Brien's main line of research and the narrative he wanted to present.
In most histories Carl Vinson is never mentioned, unless they are examining why Admiral Spruance did not get promoted to Fleet Admiral. I think it is a great shame to ignore Vinson's important work to modernize the US Navy prior to Pearl Harbor and how it was possible for the Navy to lead the way to victory in the Pacific. Vinson served in Congress from 1914 until 1965 and is known as the Father of the Two Ocean Navy. The Nimitz class carrier Carl Vinson, CVN-70, was named in his honor while he was still alive.
The most important overall contribution this book makes is to clearly demonstrate that the air and sea effort, of the US and Great Britain, dwarfed the effort of the land battles of all combatants and led directly to the defeat of the Axis powers. Dr O'Brien does not say the land battles were unnecessary but shows how the success of the air and sea war contributed to the success of the Allies on land. He shows how the inability of Germany and Japan to compete in the air and sea war left them vulnerable to the systematic destruction of their ability to wage war.
What was new for me was learning that half as many Luftwaffe planes were available for Barbarossa as were available for the invasion of France. A clear indication of how difficult it was for Germany to replace losses sustained prior to June 1941 and how the added need to defend the conquered territories in the west was already overtaxing Germany's ability to achieve its goals. Dr O'Brien also demonstrates the importance of taking the Marianas abundantly clear, and not just for the strategic bombing of Japan. With the Marianas in hand the fast carrier task force could attack merchant shipping and add to the pressure put on the Japanese war economy by the US submarine offensive. Another surprise is that the aerial mining of Japanese harbors late in the war sank as many or perhaps more merchant shipping than submarines.
For me the most enjoyable parts of the book were the discussions of Allied Grand Strategy; the relationship between Roosevelt, Churchill and the members of their military staffs; Admiral Leahy's importance to Roosevelt, the operation of the JCS and grand strategy. The author analyzes the Lend Lease commitments to the Soviets, Great Britain and China and how they were vitally necessary for victory. I also enjoyed his examination of several controversial issues that persist to this day, especially the massive effort to establish and maintain B-29s in China, whether it was really necessary to invade the Philippines prior to Iwo Jima and the targeting of cities in the strategic bombing campaign of both Germany and Japan.
I am very enthusiastic about Dr O'Brien's book and that is why I gave it 5 stars. I think it should be read by every student of World War II. Just an outstanding piece of work.
I do have a quibble, a troubling disagreement with a very small part of the story Dr O'Brien is telling. Dr O'Brien writes, "When Roosevelt began pushing for money for the USN to construct new vessels, the navy continued to opt for a battleship-centric fleet until Pearl Harbor...Once the war in Europe started and before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the USN was given authorization to build a further eleven battleships, six of the Iowa Class and five of the mammoth Montana Class [the note he lists here does not give a source for this and only describes the Montana class] As it was, only four of the Iowa Class were ever completed and the rest cancelled when it became clear during the war that the aircraft carrier was now the decisive weapon. If only the USN had known this before it would have started more than the two aircraft carriers it laid down between 1937 and November 1941, the Hornet in 1939 and the Essex in April 1941. It was still thinking in terms of a capital ship duel in the Pacific." (p 111)
In the summer of 1940 the chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, Carl Vinson, gave a press conference. The House had just passed a massive spending bill to expand the Navy and he had been asked why so much of the bill was devoted to carriers and naval aircraft. Carl Vinson said, "The modern development of aircraft has demonstrated conclusively that the backbone of the Navy today is the aircraft carrier. The carrier, with destroyers, cruisers and submarines grouped around it[,] is the spearhead of all modern naval task forces."
Carl Vinson was the force behind the construction of the North Carolina class and the South Dakota class battleships that Dr O'Brien mentions just prior to the above quote, as Vinson tried to modernize the navy, but in 1940 he got a bill through Congress that called for 18 Essex class aircraft carriers along with the 6 or 7 Iowa and Montana class battleships. This happened in 1940. It was not something that happened after Pearl Harbor. It happened a year earlier and Congress called for not just one carrier but 18. Actually 5 Essex class hulls were laid down in 1941, all before Pearl Harbor. I don't think that House Representative Carl Vinson, Democrat from Georgia, came up with the notion that the fast carrier task force would be the "backbone of the Navy" all by himself. The bill came about from a request from Admiral Stark, CNO, and his staff. It would have been nice if Dr O'Brien could have researched that development. I am a little disappointed that he took the standard line of many historians that it was after Pearl Harbor that the navy came to the conclusion that carriers would be the primary combat ship in a modern navy. Seven of those carriers would be commissioned by the end of 1943 with the commissioning of USS Essex on 31 December 1942. Only 4 Iowa class battleships would be completed and none of the massive Montana class ships ordered in the bill, passed by the House on 18 June 1940 and signed into law in July 1940, would be built. Those developments and the eventual construction of 14 Essex class aircraft carriers, that would see action in the war, I do think are the result of the navy's experience in the first year of the war but the notion that the aircraft carrier would "spearhead" modern naval warfare had to have been envisioned by top navy brass sometime earlier than the summer of 1940, way before the dynamic operations of the Kido Butai.
Stark asked for 4 billion dollars to increase the existing fleet by 70%. The House Naval Affairs Committee increased it to more than 8 billion dollars emphasizing aircraft and called for 15,000 aircraft for the navy. The bill also called for 27 cruisers and an additional 6 Alaska class cruisers that mounted 12" guns. The Alaska class was the US Navy's answer to the battlecruiser. The Navy did still want big guns. Only 2 Alaska class cruisers would see service in WW II. It seems clear that the navy wanted a powerful surface force that included battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers as well as a very powerful fleet of carriers. It is clear that Dr O'Brien's statement of the preference for battleships and the laying down of a single Essex class carrier prior to November 1941 is not accurate. Actually three Essex class carriers were laid down before November 1941 and two more before 7 December 1941. I'm not sure if Admiral Stark would have agreed exactly with Vinson's statement but Vinson and Stark made it possible for 4 fleet carriers to join operations by the end of 1943.
It is clear that the US Navy did not have a detailed doctrine of carrier operations developed before the US entered the war and they surely did still envision battleship duels but the 1940 bill shows they wanted a preponderance of carriers. Is this misrepresentation a fatal flaw in Dr O'Brien's narrative? No, I don't think so. It is a wide miss of the actual history of the US Navy, the development of the US war effort and how it was possible for 7 new Essex class carriers to be commissioned by the end of 1943. It makes me wonder what happened in his research to make such an error and why November 1941 is his cut off for carrier construction and not 7 December, but it is not a fatal flaw and does not influence the rest of his narrative. Actually 1940 was the important year for the Essex class. Only 2 that were ordered after 1940 saw action in the war. Vinson's bill made it possible for 4 replacement carriers to be ready for operations by the end of 1943 and another 3 before the middle of 1944. What did happen after Pearl Harbor was the acceleration of the construction of the Essex class ships and the conversion of 9 Cleveland class cruisers to Independence class light carriers. I just think that overlooking the importance of the Vinson-Walsh Act is a very curious mistake but does not take away from what is obviously Dr O'Brien's main line of research and the narrative he wanted to present.
In most histories Carl Vinson is never mentioned, unless they are examining why Admiral Spruance did not get promoted to Fleet Admiral. I think it is a great shame to ignore Vinson's important work to modernize the US Navy prior to Pearl Harbor and how it was possible for the Navy to lead the way to victory in the Pacific. Vinson served in Congress from 1914 until 1965 and is known as the Father of the Two Ocean Navy. The Nimitz class carrier Carl Vinson, CVN-70, was named in his honor while he was still alive.
May 12, 2022
Recently there was another fight on Talk:World War II over the order of the leaders of the Big Four. (They've been getting ornery lately. Let's hope that things return to normal now that their political season is over.) In the course of this, someone recommended this book. I hadn't read it, but it sounded interesting, so I picked up a copy.
The thesis of this book is that the air and sea power of the Western Allies played the decisive role in World War II because they "kept the Germans and Japanese from moving". From the Wikipedia point of view, one need read no further than page 13 to find that the author concedes that this is not the consensus among historians by any means, and that the author is an unabashed revisionist and a WP:FRINGE dweller.
The notion that the war was won by superior technology and industrial capacity is not a new one. In fact, it was the orthodox position for a quarter of a century after the war. It fell into disfavour in the 1970s. The reason for this is simple: if wars are inevitably won by the side with greater resources, more advanced technology, and superiority at sea and in the air, then what the Hell happened in Vietnam? This led to a reappraisal of the role of the Soviet Union, and with the opening of archives in Russia, historians have been paying increasing attention to that aspect of the war.
There's a lot of interesting material on German production, and the relative amounts devoted to different weapons. The author notes how even during the most intense battles of 1943, the Germans and Japanese were able to replace material losses from new production. The book notes the debates at the time and since over the effectiveness of strategic bombing, and the correct means of employing it. What I'd find more interesting to read about is just where the concept of wars being won by equipment and technology came from, and how it propagated through the English-speaking world. It pre-dated the war, and in many ways became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This book tries to cover too much ground, and despite its size, there is nowhere new enough space to cover the issues adequately. The issue of industrial mobilisation was one that confronted every country, and the problem of determining what was best allocation of manpower and resources was an intractable one. In the end, most generals had to fight with what was on hand, adapting strategy to the available resources because the lead time for production was so much longer than the timespan of global strategy. Rarely was the best allocation arrived at; what was the best is still debated to this day.
A great deal of space is wasted on matters that are not germane to the author's argument. Moreover, when he moves into the realm of strategy, much of it is wrong. This is especially true of the discussion of the Pacific War. The reasons for the advance into the Mariana and Caroline islands are jumbled. I'm also getting really tired of the allegation that General MacArthur pushed for the invasion of Palau, which he did not. The claim that the 1st Marine Division was too badly damaged to participate in operations for months is incorrect: it returned to Guadalcanal to stage for the Battle of Okinawa, but this was delayed for a couple of months; the reasons why there was a delay between each campaign in the Pacific is not explained (probably because it was not understood). The assertion that the campaign in New Guinea only appeared less expensive than the ones in the Central Pacific because the Australians were taking most of the casualties so they were not counted is absurd, and does not add up. The idea that basing the B-29s in the Mariana islands obviated the capture of the Philippines and cutting off the sea lanes to Japan makes no sense. And there's a whole lot more but you get the idea.
In the end, that is the problem with writing about the Second World War: the technology and the issues are so complex. This book has a case to make, but the one to buy it is weak.
The thesis of this book is that the air and sea power of the Western Allies played the decisive role in World War II because they "kept the Germans and Japanese from moving". From the Wikipedia point of view, one need read no further than page 13 to find that the author concedes that this is not the consensus among historians by any means, and that the author is an unabashed revisionist and a WP:FRINGE dweller.
The notion that the war was won by superior technology and industrial capacity is not a new one. In fact, it was the orthodox position for a quarter of a century after the war. It fell into disfavour in the 1970s. The reason for this is simple: if wars are inevitably won by the side with greater resources, more advanced technology, and superiority at sea and in the air, then what the Hell happened in Vietnam? This led to a reappraisal of the role of the Soviet Union, and with the opening of archives in Russia, historians have been paying increasing attention to that aspect of the war.
There's a lot of interesting material on German production, and the relative amounts devoted to different weapons. The author notes how even during the most intense battles of 1943, the Germans and Japanese were able to replace material losses from new production. The book notes the debates at the time and since over the effectiveness of strategic bombing, and the correct means of employing it. What I'd find more interesting to read about is just where the concept of wars being won by equipment and technology came from, and how it propagated through the English-speaking world. It pre-dated the war, and in many ways became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This book tries to cover too much ground, and despite its size, there is nowhere new enough space to cover the issues adequately. The issue of industrial mobilisation was one that confronted every country, and the problem of determining what was best allocation of manpower and resources was an intractable one. In the end, most generals had to fight with what was on hand, adapting strategy to the available resources because the lead time for production was so much longer than the timespan of global strategy. Rarely was the best allocation arrived at; what was the best is still debated to this day.
A great deal of space is wasted on matters that are not germane to the author's argument. Moreover, when he moves into the realm of strategy, much of it is wrong. This is especially true of the discussion of the Pacific War. The reasons for the advance into the Mariana and Caroline islands are jumbled. I'm also getting really tired of the allegation that General MacArthur pushed for the invasion of Palau, which he did not. The claim that the 1st Marine Division was too badly damaged to participate in operations for months is incorrect: it returned to Guadalcanal to stage for the Battle of Okinawa, but this was delayed for a couple of months; the reasons why there was a delay between each campaign in the Pacific is not explained (probably because it was not understood). The assertion that the campaign in New Guinea only appeared less expensive than the ones in the Central Pacific because the Australians were taking most of the casualties so they were not counted is absurd, and does not add up. The idea that basing the B-29s in the Mariana islands obviated the capture of the Philippines and cutting off the sea lanes to Japan makes no sense. And there's a whole lot more but you get the idea.
In the end, that is the problem with writing about the Second World War: the technology and the issues are so complex. This book has a case to make, but the one to buy it is weak.
February 1, 2025
Buddy read with my dad.
Made it about halfway and I think I'm going to leave it there. SO much detail. I guess at this point literally everything about World War 2 has been written about so you'd better be hyper specific if you want to write anything. This guy wanted to be specific about numbers. SO MANY NUMBERS. You could say almost 1300 planes were sent to a front - but he would never, ever do that. It was exactly 1,268 planes that were sent. No number is rounded, ever. It's a book written by a quartermaster. Which is great for some people! Just not me.
Made it about halfway and I think I'm going to leave it there. SO much detail. I guess at this point literally everything about World War 2 has been written about so you'd better be hyper specific if you want to write anything. This guy wanted to be specific about numbers. SO MANY NUMBERS. You could say almost 1300 planes were sent to a front - but he would never, ever do that. It was exactly 1,268 planes that were sent. No number is rounded, ever. It's a book written by a quartermaster. Which is great for some people! Just not me.
August 20, 2024
Having finally gotten around to reading this book, I can admit regretting that I didn't get around to it sooner. This is very much the spreadsheet view of World War II, as O'Brien is looking at where the money was spent, on what systems, and how those systems contributed to maximum impact. The reality is that in total war, there are very few battles that can be said to be decisive, and, in the course of waging total war, the best ways to erode a given enemy's military effectiveness often turned out to be inflicted by naval and air power. This might be what you would conclude that a historian with a specialty in 20th Century naval warfare would come to, but O'Brien gives one the most convincing examination of why the strategic air war, and the great naval campaigns involving logistics, should get maximum credit for enabling victory I've ever seen.
The other side of the coin here is that this somewhat minimizes the impact of the various great land campaigns, particularly those of Soviet Russia. I get some unease from this myself, particularly since it's arguable that there's nothing that brings a shock to the system like a breakthrough battle that actually works. However, for every France in 1940, or Manchuria in 1945, where one can point to profound political affects, there are three or four exercises in attrition that are only incremental in impact. That is the logic of total war; can you erode an enemy from the inside out at the same time you're hammering them on the front lines.
O'Brien does include a fair amount of thought on the civilian toll in all this, and the overall sense he projects is one of queasiness. It's hard not to regard that the Allied strategic bomber campaigns that O'Brien mostly defends eventually devolved into something best regarded as campaigns of extermination for the sake of extermination, particularly the "area bombing" conducted by RAF Bomber Command, which was controversial at the time, and has not ceased to be so. Regarding the morality of the use of atomic weapons, yes, they inspire almost cosmic horror, but O'Brien does admit that the preferred strategy of his exemplar, U.S. Admiral William Leahy, the reduction of the Japanese home islands by conventional air and naval power, probably would have resulted in more death and misery. If one must wage war, fast is better than slow.
So, in the end, if you've read a great deal about the Second World War, and still have questions about what mattered and what didn't, this is a very valuable work to read. Even if you don't care for some of O'Brien's conclusions.
Rounding up from 4.5.
The other side of the coin here is that this somewhat minimizes the impact of the various great land campaigns, particularly those of Soviet Russia. I get some unease from this myself, particularly since it's arguable that there's nothing that brings a shock to the system like a breakthrough battle that actually works. However, for every France in 1940, or Manchuria in 1945, where one can point to profound political affects, there are three or four exercises in attrition that are only incremental in impact. That is the logic of total war; can you erode an enemy from the inside out at the same time you're hammering them on the front lines.
O'Brien does include a fair amount of thought on the civilian toll in all this, and the overall sense he projects is one of queasiness. It's hard not to regard that the Allied strategic bomber campaigns that O'Brien mostly defends eventually devolved into something best regarded as campaigns of extermination for the sake of extermination, particularly the "area bombing" conducted by RAF Bomber Command, which was controversial at the time, and has not ceased to be so. Regarding the morality of the use of atomic weapons, yes, they inspire almost cosmic horror, but O'Brien does admit that the preferred strategy of his exemplar, U.S. Admiral William Leahy, the reduction of the Japanese home islands by conventional air and naval power, probably would have resulted in more death and misery. If one must wage war, fast is better than slow.
So, in the end, if you've read a great deal about the Second World War, and still have questions about what mattered and what didn't, this is a very valuable work to read. Even if you don't care for some of O'Brien's conclusions.
Rounding up from 4.5.
January 22, 2025
There are many an entry into the sweepstakes of "I've figured out how the good guys won the war" book. This is no more convincing than the others I've read though there are several good points along the way in what is arguably too long a dissection of that topic. Focusing as so many do primarily on the ETO he flat out eliminates the Soviets as having any impact on the ability of Germany to wage war, arguing that they are battlefield only participants and as such did not really impact the outcome of the war. Startling, eh? Italy's not even an afterthought.
He is strongest in analyzing the air war in Europe and devotes a lot of time to the topic, weakest in discussing the war against trade Germany engaged in at sea and bogs down into the time honored debate about MacArthur vs. King in the Pacific. In all this, his contention is that the battlefield itself, who won or lost a particular fight or campaign, is peanuts compared to the battle over production and denying production and transportation to the enemy. He seems to think victory is a foregone conclusion to whoever has command of the air. No other aspects need apply.
This goes too far. Any general might have made a major gaff at a crucial moment, denying victory on the field at a crucial moment. O'Brien is going for that Aha! explanation as a solvent for all, thus displaying his awesome brainiac abilities. It's too much, too neat, too tidy, though it is a valuable look at the path of the war through industrial eyes.
He is strongest in analyzing the air war in Europe and devotes a lot of time to the topic, weakest in discussing the war against trade Germany engaged in at sea and bogs down into the time honored debate about MacArthur vs. King in the Pacific. In all this, his contention is that the battlefield itself, who won or lost a particular fight or campaign, is peanuts compared to the battle over production and denying production and transportation to the enemy. He seems to think victory is a foregone conclusion to whoever has command of the air. No other aspects need apply.
This goes too far. Any general might have made a major gaff at a crucial moment, denying victory on the field at a crucial moment. O'Brien is going for that Aha! explanation as a solvent for all, thus displaying his awesome brainiac abilities. It's too much, too neat, too tidy, though it is a valuable look at the path of the war through industrial eyes.
Read
January 26, 2025[If you want a condensed version of this book, read this review and not mine].
This book is exactly what it claims to be in its goodreads description, and the author argues persuasively for his views.
The thing that I found most interesting, is that it gives one quite a different impression of WW2 than a typical textbook might. The way it’s written makes it almost seem like the Allied victory was basically a “water flowing downhill” phenomenon.
The result of the war seems nigh overdetermined by circa 1943, but, obviously, this is not something that could have been easily predicted at the time (by most). I mean, both in terms of territorial gains and land warfare, the Germans and the Japanese were still doing rather well, Germany especially would have seemed like an invincible behemoth. But in the chapters detailing the war from the axis’ perspective, they seem to be unable to deal with the most basic issues — being chronically short on fuel, not being able to move equipment around, said equipment being destroyed by bombing, or just breaking down. While the Allies’ POV seems to be centered around debates about the most efficient ways of ending the war, like: “Maybe we should focus on invading France in 1943.”, “How much effort percentage-wise should we put into defeating Germany vs Japan”, “Whether a naval invasion of Italy would be beneficial”, “How much resources and manpower should be diverted to the navy/airforce/army ”. This is not to say that the Allied high command was infallible, on the contrary, O’Brien lists quite a lot of suboptimal decisions, it’s just that it usually doesn’t seem to matter all that much. After making the right strategic choice by prioritizing airforce production, they proceeded to choose wrong targets for strategic bombing campaigns (like U-boat pens) and pursue area bombing of German cities throughout the war. On the US side, during the early stages of the Battle of the Atlantic the American navy (more specifically — Ernest King) didn’t divert anti-submarine vessels from the Pacific theatre. And yet, the author convincingly argues that, after the grand strategic decisions were made, the Allied victory was mostly a done deal.
Some quotes regarding the Allied mistakes:
Some quotes regarding Japan and Germany:
Japan:
Japan:
This seems so crazy, I am picturing a Japanese officer saying – “Pilot, your first mission is a routine redeployment – I hope you had your last meal”.
Germany:
I wonder whether “nobody knew where they were” is just a turn of phrase. I mean, presumably there were some bureaucrats that were scheduled to receive the trains and send them farther on, but didn’t. Unless, due to infrastructure damage, trains full of military equipment were regularly showing up unannounced in random places on their way to the front.
And that’s not even getting into how much equipment wasn’t built in the first place (due to damaged railroads, factories, etc.). This was detailed as well, but I don’t have any excerpts on hand.
This book is exactly what it claims to be in its goodreads description, and the author argues persuasively for his views.
The thing that I found most interesting, is that it gives one quite a different impression of WW2 than a typical textbook might. The way it’s written makes it almost seem like the Allied victory was basically a “water flowing downhill” phenomenon.
The result of the war seems nigh overdetermined by circa 1943, but, obviously, this is not something that could have been easily predicted at the time (by most). I mean, both in terms of territorial gains and land warfare, the Germans and the Japanese were still doing rather well, Germany especially would have seemed like an invincible behemoth. But in the chapters detailing the war from the axis’ perspective, they seem to be unable to deal with the most basic issues — being chronically short on fuel, not being able to move equipment around, said equipment being destroyed by bombing, or just breaking down. While the Allies’ POV seems to be centered around debates about the most efficient ways of ending the war, like: “Maybe we should focus on invading France in 1943.”, “How much effort percentage-wise should we put into defeating Germany vs Japan”, “Whether a naval invasion of Italy would be beneficial”, “How much resources and manpower should be diverted to the navy/airforce/army ”. This is not to say that the Allied high command was infallible, on the contrary, O’Brien lists quite a lot of suboptimal decisions, it’s just that it usually doesn’t seem to matter all that much. After making the right strategic choice by prioritizing airforce production, they proceeded to choose wrong targets for strategic bombing campaigns (like U-boat pens) and pursue area bombing of German cities throughout the war. On the US side, during the early stages of the Battle of the Atlantic the American navy (more specifically — Ernest King) didn’t divert anti-submarine vessels from the Pacific theatre. And yet, the author convincingly argues that, after the grand strategic decisions were made, the Allied victory was mostly a done deal.
Some quotes regarding the Allied mistakes:
It helps summarize the story of the greatest British (and Canadian) victory of the air and sea war: the victory over German submarines which became almost total by June 1943. In many ways this marked the end of any possibility for Germany to win the war. The Battle of the Atlantic, as both Hitler and Doenitz realized, was one of the most important offensive actions Germany could undertake.
It will be discussed in greater detail later, but a quick overview would show that, in terms of denying the Germans war production, this campaign, which was very expensive for the United Kingdom to undertake, had at best modest effects. Almost all of the Germans with a knowledge of war production claimed after the war that area bombing was the least effective strategic bombing campaign that they faced.
Churchill pressed Roosevelt directly to order King to transfer ten American destroyers to the Atlantic for convoy duties. To aid the Americans in this switch, he even offered to send British escorts to help them set up a proper convoy system in US coastal waters. [...]. Nor was this the only time the British assumed the United States would agree to take escort vessels from the Pacific to the Atlantic to support the strategic policy it agreed to at this moment in the war. The British Admiralty in early 1942 acted under the assumption that the United States was about switch some of its invaluable destroyers from the Pacific to the Atlantic. What the British completely underestimated was the tenacious resistance to any such move by Ernest King. In purely logical terms, King should have seen the acute need to protect trade in the Atlantic. His earlier experience had made it clear how vital escort vessels would be in that theater. For much of 1941, he had been in command of the Atlantic Fleet, and was responsible for planning American convoy operations.
By the summer of 1943, it was clear that a drastic over-production of escort vessels had been undertaken. In September 1943, the United States Navy informed the President that they were planning on cancelling the construction of a whopping 405 different destroyer escort vessels, the loss of which would not imperil seaborne trade in any way.
Some quotes regarding Japan and Germany:
Japan:
[I]n the latter part of 1942, plans were made to concentrate production on anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition at the expense of tanks . . . and artillery. Hence in ’43, ’44, and ’45 very few tanks were produced. The divisions were adversely affected through the shortage of divisional artillery weapons. In the summer of 1943 a plan was put into effect to withdraw the artillery weapons from Manchuria to equip and maintain divisions fighting in the Pacific. It took quite a while to accomplish this. The bulk of these weapons were finally destined for Okinawa, Philippines, Iwo Jima and Japan. However, due to submarines and airplanes much of this equipment was lost or not delivered to proper destination.
For instance, only one-fourth of that destined for Iwo Jima ever arrived, most of the balance being sunk.
Japan:
These pilots had to fly themselves over distances many times larger than that from Berlin to Stalingrad. (See Map 7.) For instance, to deploy an aircraft to Rabaul on the island of New Britain, Japanese army pilots had to fly from Kyushu to Formosa and then to the Philippines and from there to Rabaul.58Many of the new pilots, who were not used to long flights over the open ocean, disappeared before reaching Formosa.
Major C. Takahash of the Japanese army’s aircraft supply section and Captain T. Takeuchi who was in charge of the department that kept statistics for the section, both stated that from early on in the war, 50 percent of Japanese army aircraft were not reaching their deployment points. As the Japanese empire contracted, the situation if anything seemed to get worse.
This seems so crazy, I am picturing a Japanese officer saying – “Pilot, your first mission is a routine redeployment – I hope you had your last meal”.
Germany:
Due to the large destruction of our transportation needs, the [sic] whole train of tanks were often “lost”; nobody knew where they were and, consequently, they did not reach the front. In the east, we were able to move the tank on the railroad to within twenty miles of the front
I wonder whether “nobody knew where they were” is just a turn of phrase. I mean, presumably there were some bureaucrats that were scheduled to receive the trains and send them farther on, but didn’t. Unless, due to infrastructure damage, trains full of military equipment were regularly showing up unannounced in random places on their way to the front.
However, being cautious, it seems that in 1943 at least a quarter of Japanese and German potential and actual construction was destroyed before battle, and by 1944 this figure would have been well over 50 percent.
And that’s not even getting into how much equipment wasn’t built in the first place (due to damaged railroads, factories, etc.). This was detailed as well, but I don’t have any excerpts on hand.
December 13, 2020
This book takes a very different, and enlightening, view on WW2.
I read once an interview with a Luftwaffe officer from WW2 where he pointed out that it was a lot of effort and risk to destroy a tank on the battlefield, but taking out a rail line transporting tanks to the front was a more efficient means of keeping tanks from a battlefield (i.e., you could stop an entire train load of tanks). It's that sort of thinking that is driving this book - there are dramatic moments in WW2, but if you analyze it from a broader perspective, how did one side destroy/engage the most material from another. One of them is O'Brien's look at spending on weapons systems. His analysis shows that the proportion of defense spending by the US, UK, Germany, and Japan is shockingly light for tanks and AFVs - showing that aircraft and naval units are very expensive, and that the US, UK, Germany, and Japan emphasized air power in particular. O'Brien then looks to how some of the dramatic battles of WW2 compared from a destruction of material standpoint. The Battle of Kursk, regarded by many as the largest tank battle in history, resulted in a relatively small amount of destruction if one is looking at the number of the tanks and AFVs destroyed and their relative cost.
O'Brien turns to a view of the different theaters, looking at the different strategies that resulted in large destruction of war material. His analysis takes a cost benefit analysis view on a number of strategies - how much material is expended, and how much material of the enemy is destroyed. Naval combat has a significant impact, but the real central arena for determining WW2 in O'Brien's view is air power. His analysis shows the powers using an inordinate amount of their resources on air power, and in the narrative section, he points to air power's ability to eliminate productive capacity as well as reduce the effectiveness of opponent's air power and naval and land power through aspects such as constrained mobility. There are also discussions on which were the most effective aspects of the use of strategic air power, moral questions, and the use of the atomic bomb.
This is one of the more original, thought provoking books I've read on WW2. You may find minor errors and areas for disagreement, but O'Brien provides a nice overarching analysis that leads one to look at WW2 differently and possibly rethink assumptions.
A very worthy read.
I read once an interview with a Luftwaffe officer from WW2 where he pointed out that it was a lot of effort and risk to destroy a tank on the battlefield, but taking out a rail line transporting tanks to the front was a more efficient means of keeping tanks from a battlefield (i.e., you could stop an entire train load of tanks). It's that sort of thinking that is driving this book - there are dramatic moments in WW2, but if you analyze it from a broader perspective, how did one side destroy/engage the most material from another. One of them is O'Brien's look at spending on weapons systems. His analysis shows that the proportion of defense spending by the US, UK, Germany, and Japan is shockingly light for tanks and AFVs - showing that aircraft and naval units are very expensive, and that the US, UK, Germany, and Japan emphasized air power in particular. O'Brien then looks to how some of the dramatic battles of WW2 compared from a destruction of material standpoint. The Battle of Kursk, regarded by many as the largest tank battle in history, resulted in a relatively small amount of destruction if one is looking at the number of the tanks and AFVs destroyed and their relative cost.
O'Brien turns to a view of the different theaters, looking at the different strategies that resulted in large destruction of war material. His analysis takes a cost benefit analysis view on a number of strategies - how much material is expended, and how much material of the enemy is destroyed. Naval combat has a significant impact, but the real central arena for determining WW2 in O'Brien's view is air power. His analysis shows the powers using an inordinate amount of their resources on air power, and in the narrative section, he points to air power's ability to eliminate productive capacity as well as reduce the effectiveness of opponent's air power and naval and land power through aspects such as constrained mobility. There are also discussions on which were the most effective aspects of the use of strategic air power, moral questions, and the use of the atomic bomb.
This is one of the more original, thought provoking books I've read on WW2. You may find minor errors and areas for disagreement, but O'Brien provides a nice overarching analysis that leads one to look at WW2 differently and possibly rethink assumptions.
A very worthy read.
January 19, 2016
An intriguing approach to the subject. He makes some rather provocative observations that I’m not sure are well-founded. Still, it was not without its merits. I enjoyed the book, don’t get me wrong. I just question comments he made that dismiss individual soldiers’ bravery or most of the German-Russian War on the Eastern Front as of relatively minor importance. Call me old-fashioned but unlike Professor O'Brien, I still think the Battles of Stalingrad, Midway, and El Alamein were kind of important. Had they gone the other way what would have happened? I suppose the Allies still probably would have won the war but it would’ve taken longer – perhaps significantly longer. Also certain little things in the book - like his suggestion that Admiral Leahy was possibly more important and insightful than General George Marshall -- seem a little far-fetched. His Leahy conclusion seems based mostly on the observation that Leahy spent more time with FDR than the others. But FDR was a peculiar person himself in terms of his personal relationships and may have enjoyed Leahy’s company simply because they enjoyed the same cocktails and jokes rather than spending their time together plotting global strategy.
Then too: I wonder about the author’s methodology. This may be excessively simplistic for me to say, but could it be that planes and ships just COST more on a per unit basis than tanks or M-1 carbines or ammo? The fact that nations spent more money on planes and ships than on infantry resources does not necessarily to my mind mean that there was some unspoken agreement among all parties that WW2 was going to be primarily an air-sea war and that is where the decisive outcome would be determined. For example, my own organization has a Marketing Budget. We pursue marketing through print ads in industry magazines, sponsorship or exhibits at trade shows, phone sales calls, and social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. If you looked at how much we spend on these things in the manner of Professor O’Brien, you might conclude that our strategic focus is on magazine ads and trade show exhibits since that’s where most of marketing budget is going. But that is not true. Those things are simply more expensive. We feel we have to do them, but less expensive things like phone calls and social media are just as important if not more so.
Then too: I wonder about the author’s methodology. This may be excessively simplistic for me to say, but could it be that planes and ships just COST more on a per unit basis than tanks or M-1 carbines or ammo? The fact that nations spent more money on planes and ships than on infantry resources does not necessarily to my mind mean that there was some unspoken agreement among all parties that WW2 was going to be primarily an air-sea war and that is where the decisive outcome would be determined. For example, my own organization has a Marketing Budget. We pursue marketing through print ads in industry magazines, sponsorship or exhibits at trade shows, phone sales calls, and social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. If you looked at how much we spend on these things in the manner of Professor O’Brien, you might conclude that our strategic focus is on magazine ads and trade show exhibits since that’s where most of marketing budget is going. But that is not true. Those things are simply more expensive. We feel we have to do them, but less expensive things like phone calls and social media are just as important if not more so.
May 2, 2022
Came across the author de-mystifying logistics in the Ukarianian war on Twitter.
He did recommend not reading his WW2 history, and I may have done better to follow his advice. It is one of the worse written books I have completed reading - infuriatingly repetitive, jumpy in tone, overlong - in need of a good editor.
That said, it is an interesting and convincing argument: without diminishing the great loss of life on the Eastern Front, the mass of Axis resources were committed to fighting the Western Allies.
The great mass of industrial production, Allied and Axis, was dedicated to air power and sea power, much less to land power.
Only a fraction of resources were destroyed on the battlefield: much more by forestalling production or preventing deployment.
Germany's last chance to win was the Battle of the Atlantic.
The bombing campaigns over Germany were decisive.
Despite the US "Germany first" policy, Admiral King ensured that a great weight of US resources went to the Pacific.
Japan succeeded as an industrial power, similar in capacity to USSR.
The V1 and V2 campaigns and the Allies' Operation Crossbow bombing against them, consumed resources on an enormous scale, comparable to land campaigns of the time.
When the Axis lost mobility, to move resources to and around their factories and the battlefront, they lost the war.
He did recommend not reading his WW2 history, and I may have done better to follow his advice. It is one of the worse written books I have completed reading - infuriatingly repetitive, jumpy in tone, overlong - in need of a good editor.
That said, it is an interesting and convincing argument: without diminishing the great loss of life on the Eastern Front, the mass of Axis resources were committed to fighting the Western Allies.
The great mass of industrial production, Allied and Axis, was dedicated to air power and sea power, much less to land power.
Only a fraction of resources were destroyed on the battlefield: much more by forestalling production or preventing deployment.
Germany's last chance to win was the Battle of the Atlantic.
The bombing campaigns over Germany were decisive.
Despite the US "Germany first" policy, Admiral King ensured that a great weight of US resources went to the Pacific.
Japan succeeded as an industrial power, similar in capacity to USSR.
The V1 and V2 campaigns and the Allies' Operation Crossbow bombing against them, consumed resources on an enormous scale, comparable to land campaigns of the time.
When the Axis lost mobility, to move resources to and around their factories and the battlefront, they lost the war.
December 20, 2023
I’m not an expert in WW2 (or anything really) so please take this review with a grain of salt. This study is an excellent revisionist account of the war, but I believe it indulges in the sorts of exaggerations excellent revisionist accounts tend to partake in.
The thrust of the argument is that while most accounts identify the land battles (especially on the Eastern Front) as playing the decisive role in winning the war, air-sea power had a much more important part in eliminating Axis ability to resist. In service of this argument the author provides a great variety of evidence including quality statistics, declassified documents from both sides of the war, and post-war memoirs and interrogation transcripts.
All in all, I believe the author convincingly shows that air sea-power played *a* crucial role in winning the war. If the author had contented himself at stopping here, I believe the study would have been an unqualified success. However, the author unfortunately takes the extra step of marginalizing, even trivializing the major land engagements.
Take his account of the Battle of Stalingrad. He rightly points out the issues with fetishizing this battle as “the decisive” turning point of the war. But if the cardinal sin of mainstream accounts is to take infantry strength to be the sole metric of importance, the author slips into the same error by placing an overriding influence on the rate of production, at times to the exclusion of other relevant favorites. Here are some key quotes from the author’s account of Stalingrad:
- “Both quantitatively and, maybe more importantly, qualitatively, the German army would have had a considerably more powerful armored force on February 1 1943 than on July 1 1942.”
- “When it came to overall German munitions production, the value of the AFV losses on the entire Eastern Front during July and August 1943 was less than 1 percent.”
The implication behind these quotes, as well as the author’s accounts of large WW2 land battles in general, is that because these battles didn’t impact the rate of Axis production, they ultimately did not matter all that much, or at least played a merely secondary or tertiary role in Allied success.
But hold on a minute: don’t large land battles have much more at stake than merely equipment destroyed? What about the loss of quality human capital, the seizure of territory, the effect on morale that a crushing battlefield defeat could result in, and more?
The author repeatedly underscores the key importance that imperial possessions played in supplying raw materials to power the Axis war machine. Is it not the case that land power played a critical role in the acquisition of these territories to begin with? And is it not also the case that had battles like Stalingrad, Kursk, and others gone the other way, the Axis powers would have been in possession of more raw materials with which to power their war machines?
My last nitpick is minor. In the beginning of his study the author bemoans the fact that it’s “commonplace for many European historians to reduce the war against Japan to a sideshow when compared with the great war against Germany,” pointing out that some studies only devote 15-20% to the war in the East.
But this study basically maintains the same ratio. The study does include an extended account of top level Allied debates about how forces should be balanced between Western and Eastern theaters. However, sustained discussion of the Eastern Front is really only confined to one long (and quite good chapter) and half of the final chapter and conclusion.
My issues with the study lies not in its core argument but in its emphasis. I am glad to have read this study and would heartily recommend it to anyone who has any interest in the fascinating question of how the war was won.
The thrust of the argument is that while most accounts identify the land battles (especially on the Eastern Front) as playing the decisive role in winning the war, air-sea power had a much more important part in eliminating Axis ability to resist. In service of this argument the author provides a great variety of evidence including quality statistics, declassified documents from both sides of the war, and post-war memoirs and interrogation transcripts.
All in all, I believe the author convincingly shows that air sea-power played *a* crucial role in winning the war. If the author had contented himself at stopping here, I believe the study would have been an unqualified success. However, the author unfortunately takes the extra step of marginalizing, even trivializing the major land engagements.
Take his account of the Battle of Stalingrad. He rightly points out the issues with fetishizing this battle as “the decisive” turning point of the war. But if the cardinal sin of mainstream accounts is to take infantry strength to be the sole metric of importance, the author slips into the same error by placing an overriding influence on the rate of production, at times to the exclusion of other relevant favorites. Here are some key quotes from the author’s account of Stalingrad:
- “Both quantitatively and, maybe more importantly, qualitatively, the German army would have had a considerably more powerful armored force on February 1 1943 than on July 1 1942.”
- “When it came to overall German munitions production, the value of the AFV losses on the entire Eastern Front during July and August 1943 was less than 1 percent.”
The implication behind these quotes, as well as the author’s accounts of large WW2 land battles in general, is that because these battles didn’t impact the rate of Axis production, they ultimately did not matter all that much, or at least played a merely secondary or tertiary role in Allied success.
But hold on a minute: don’t large land battles have much more at stake than merely equipment destroyed? What about the loss of quality human capital, the seizure of territory, the effect on morale that a crushing battlefield defeat could result in, and more?
The author repeatedly underscores the key importance that imperial possessions played in supplying raw materials to power the Axis war machine. Is it not the case that land power played a critical role in the acquisition of these territories to begin with? And is it not also the case that had battles like Stalingrad, Kursk, and others gone the other way, the Axis powers would have been in possession of more raw materials with which to power their war machines?
My last nitpick is minor. In the beginning of his study the author bemoans the fact that it’s “commonplace for many European historians to reduce the war against Japan to a sideshow when compared with the great war against Germany,” pointing out that some studies only devote 15-20% to the war in the East.
But this study basically maintains the same ratio. The study does include an extended account of top level Allied debates about how forces should be balanced between Western and Eastern theaters. However, sustained discussion of the Eastern Front is really only confined to one long (and quite good chapter) and half of the final chapter and conclusion.
My issues with the study lies not in its core argument but in its emphasis. I am glad to have read this study and would heartily recommend it to anyone who has any interest in the fascinating question of how the war was won.
November 30, 2024
Highly commended and still underrated - particularly on the economics side.
July 17, 2023
Thorough Analysis of the Factors of Victory with Some Shortcomings
Author Phillips O’Brien argues that the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II was much more a result of U.S. and British achievement of air and sea supremacy than of victory in land battles including those on the Russian front. A subtext of this argument is that in western histories of the war written in the immediate postwar period, the Soviet contribution to victory against Nazi Germany was downplayed. But this may have then led to overcompensation exaggerating the importance of land battles generally and the Soviet role specifically.
This book is a volume in the “Cambridge [University] Military Histories.” O’Brien is a Director of the Scottish Centre for War Studies and a Reader in History at the University of Glasgow.
There is no question that O’Brien has assembled a reference source that will be useful to future historians writing about the war. With a text that runs 488 pages supplemented by footnotes and bibliography that add another 112 pages, the author has assembled many tables showing war production by each of the belligerents as the war progressed.
Each country spent far more on aircraft, ships, and submarines than on on tanks and other land weapons. The exception was the Soviet Union, which never had a navy or air force that was comparable in size to America, Britain, Germany or Japan. But ships and aircraft are far more expensive than infantry equipment or armored fighting vehicles. Thus higher spending on these items seems a common sense observation, not a myth-shattering revelation.
In an analysis that emphasizes relative production capability, O’Brien points out that the largest tank battle in history, Kurkst on the Russian steppes in the summer of 1943, was “not a great German defeat in production terms.” Both the Germans and the Soviets were able easily to replace the tanks that were lost, and indeed by more modern armor that was then coming off production lines.
As the war proceeded, the U.S. and Britain were able to slowly strangle supply lines for oil and other raw materials necessary for the German and Japanese war effort. Japan’s supplies, which had to be shipped great distances by sea, were particularly vulnerable to interdiction. War production could be cut without the destruction of factory capacity.
O’Brien offers assessments of strategy, especially from the perspective of the sea and air war.
Perhaps best known is the argument over bombing strategy. Area bombing of the enemy’s large cities was promoted by Arthur “Bomber” Harris, head of Britain’s Bomber Command. By contrast, “strategic” bombing, to take out factories producing critical war materials, was advocated by U.S. Army Air Force General Carl Spaatz. In both cases, bombing forced the Germans and later the Japanese to disperse factories that came under air attack, thereby adversely affecting productivity. As the invasion of Europe approached, O’Brien argues, an even more effective use of air power was the destruction of railways and bridges, making it hard to supply factories with raw materials and difficult to supply troops at the front.
O’Brien provides detailed analysis of the extent to which Germany had to divert resources to protect its cities. The bulk of the Luftwaffe was devoted to efforts to shoot down British and U.S. bombers. Anti-aircraft artillery and the munitions for air defense received high priority. These air and artillery resources might otherwise have gone to support the land forces defending Germany.
Hitler miscalculated by investing so much in V-1 and V-2 rocket production rather than producing conventional aircraft or armored fighting vehicles, the author notes. In the late stages of the war, the allies did devote enormous effort to identifying and destroying from the air the sites from which the V weapons were launched. By then, however, they had the air resources to do this while continuing ground support and bombing German cities and supply lines.
Deteriorating pilot training due to scarcity of fuel led to soaring German and Japanese combat losses, observes O’Brien. When German and Japanese pilots met American pilots in combat, they were outclassed by their better-trained adversaries. Additionally, the Japanese suffered grave “deployment losses” as inexperienced pilots were asked to fly vast distances over open ocean to get to a place where they could engage U.S. forces. Many never arrived.
O’Brien is at his best when he discusses Admiral Ernest King. As operational head of the U.S. Navy, King wanted to ensure early engagement of the Japanese, even though President Roosevelt and General George Marshall insisted upon prioritizing “Germany First.” King engaged in subterfuge to ensure that the Pacific theater got most of the Navy’s resources — one result being severe loss of unescorted merchant shipping along the U.S. Gulf and Eastern seaboard in the early months of the war.
But O’Brien praises King and is highly critical of General Douglas MacArthur as the two argued about how to conduct the war in the Pacific. King’s strategy of taking the war to Japan through the capture of key islands in the Central Pacific was what ultimately led to Japan’s defeat less than four years after Pearl Harbor. The capture of Saipan allowed bases from which the newly-developed B-29 could bomb Japan, supplementing the submarine war that was interdicting the supply of raw materials to the Japanese war industry.
By contrast, the author argues that it was unnecessary to wrest the Philippines from the Japanese and delayed victory. O’Brien speculates that President Roosevelt may have acceded to MacArthur’s Philippines demand to prevent the general from becoming a candidate for president in 1944.
There are many insights in this book, but in arguing for a reassessment of the Soviet role in the defeat of Germany O’Brien seems to discount too fully the land battles of World War II. As important as winning the air and sea battles were in Europe, it still took occupying troops to force Nazi surrender. Even without the dropping of the atomic bomb, the author argues that Japan would never have had to be invaded by land forces due to its strangulation by sea and the effect of conventional bombing on the civilian population. This of course is speculative.
There is much to be said for the fresh analysis and perspective that this book brings regarding the factors contributing to victory in World War II. If there is a criticism, O’Brien overemphasizes the importance of air and sea productivity alone.
Author Phillips O’Brien argues that the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II was much more a result of U.S. and British achievement of air and sea supremacy than of victory in land battles including those on the Russian front. A subtext of this argument is that in western histories of the war written in the immediate postwar period, the Soviet contribution to victory against Nazi Germany was downplayed. But this may have then led to overcompensation exaggerating the importance of land battles generally and the Soviet role specifically.
This book is a volume in the “Cambridge [University] Military Histories.” O’Brien is a Director of the Scottish Centre for War Studies and a Reader in History at the University of Glasgow.
There is no question that O’Brien has assembled a reference source that will be useful to future historians writing about the war. With a text that runs 488 pages supplemented by footnotes and bibliography that add another 112 pages, the author has assembled many tables showing war production by each of the belligerents as the war progressed.
Each country spent far more on aircraft, ships, and submarines than on on tanks and other land weapons. The exception was the Soviet Union, which never had a navy or air force that was comparable in size to America, Britain, Germany or Japan. But ships and aircraft are far more expensive than infantry equipment or armored fighting vehicles. Thus higher spending on these items seems a common sense observation, not a myth-shattering revelation.
In an analysis that emphasizes relative production capability, O’Brien points out that the largest tank battle in history, Kurkst on the Russian steppes in the summer of 1943, was “not a great German defeat in production terms.” Both the Germans and the Soviets were able easily to replace the tanks that were lost, and indeed by more modern armor that was then coming off production lines.
As the war proceeded, the U.S. and Britain were able to slowly strangle supply lines for oil and other raw materials necessary for the German and Japanese war effort. Japan’s supplies, which had to be shipped great distances by sea, were particularly vulnerable to interdiction. War production could be cut without the destruction of factory capacity.
O’Brien offers assessments of strategy, especially from the perspective of the sea and air war.
Perhaps best known is the argument over bombing strategy. Area bombing of the enemy’s large cities was promoted by Arthur “Bomber” Harris, head of Britain’s Bomber Command. By contrast, “strategic” bombing, to take out factories producing critical war materials, was advocated by U.S. Army Air Force General Carl Spaatz. In both cases, bombing forced the Germans and later the Japanese to disperse factories that came under air attack, thereby adversely affecting productivity. As the invasion of Europe approached, O’Brien argues, an even more effective use of air power was the destruction of railways and bridges, making it hard to supply factories with raw materials and difficult to supply troops at the front.
O’Brien provides detailed analysis of the extent to which Germany had to divert resources to protect its cities. The bulk of the Luftwaffe was devoted to efforts to shoot down British and U.S. bombers. Anti-aircraft artillery and the munitions for air defense received high priority. These air and artillery resources might otherwise have gone to support the land forces defending Germany.
Hitler miscalculated by investing so much in V-1 and V-2 rocket production rather than producing conventional aircraft or armored fighting vehicles, the author notes. In the late stages of the war, the allies did devote enormous effort to identifying and destroying from the air the sites from which the V weapons were launched. By then, however, they had the air resources to do this while continuing ground support and bombing German cities and supply lines.
Deteriorating pilot training due to scarcity of fuel led to soaring German and Japanese combat losses, observes O’Brien. When German and Japanese pilots met American pilots in combat, they were outclassed by their better-trained adversaries. Additionally, the Japanese suffered grave “deployment losses” as inexperienced pilots were asked to fly vast distances over open ocean to get to a place where they could engage U.S. forces. Many never arrived.
O’Brien is at his best when he discusses Admiral Ernest King. As operational head of the U.S. Navy, King wanted to ensure early engagement of the Japanese, even though President Roosevelt and General George Marshall insisted upon prioritizing “Germany First.” King engaged in subterfuge to ensure that the Pacific theater got most of the Navy’s resources — one result being severe loss of unescorted merchant shipping along the U.S. Gulf and Eastern seaboard in the early months of the war.
But O’Brien praises King and is highly critical of General Douglas MacArthur as the two argued about how to conduct the war in the Pacific. King’s strategy of taking the war to Japan through the capture of key islands in the Central Pacific was what ultimately led to Japan’s defeat less than four years after Pearl Harbor. The capture of Saipan allowed bases from which the newly-developed B-29 could bomb Japan, supplementing the submarine war that was interdicting the supply of raw materials to the Japanese war industry.
By contrast, the author argues that it was unnecessary to wrest the Philippines from the Japanese and delayed victory. O’Brien speculates that President Roosevelt may have acceded to MacArthur’s Philippines demand to prevent the general from becoming a candidate for president in 1944.
There are many insights in this book, but in arguing for a reassessment of the Soviet role in the defeat of Germany O’Brien seems to discount too fully the land battles of World War II. As important as winning the air and sea battles were in Europe, it still took occupying troops to force Nazi surrender. Even without the dropping of the atomic bomb, the author argues that Japan would never have had to be invaded by land forces due to its strangulation by sea and the effect of conventional bombing on the civilian population. This of course is speculative.
There is much to be said for the fresh analysis and perspective that this book brings regarding the factors contributing to victory in World War II. If there is a criticism, O’Brien overemphasizes the importance of air and sea productivity alone.
November 13, 2021
A great book, providing a detailed analysis of the allied path to victory in World War II. The author, historian Phillips Payson O’Brian, dives deep into a study of the participants’ strategy, the resulting resourcing decisions, and the effect of material attrition on the war’s course. O’Brian proposes Strategic Mobility as the deciding factor of WWII, rather than Operational/Tactical Maneuver. He sees the Allied ability to “out-build” the Axis, especially in airplane and ship production, as essential to their controlling the pace of attrition and thus the course of the conflict. O’Brian downplays the affect of individual battles (Midway, Kursk, The Bulge, etc.), instead concentrating on the cumulative material destruction over the course of months and years. I appreciate the insights the author has on the way individual leaders approached this material-centric conflict. The book portrays Churchill and Marshall in a negative light, unable to adapt like Leahy, Arnold, and FDR to the changed nature of modern warfare. A great book for anyone wanting to understand WWII as a resource-centric conflict. Highly recommended for those interested in the ways Seapower and AirPower combine to win wars.
August 29, 2015
The author poses that the conventional view of the reason why the Allies were able to win WOII, namely that the was was decided in the traditional land battles such as El Alamein, Stalingrad and Kursk did not win World War II, but that the Allied path to victory was far more a contest of air and see supremacy.
January 4, 2022
This book is an astonishing piece of scholarship. It is a heavy read with an enormous store of data and analysis. I have found it more approachable by skipping around to different topics followed up by a final straight through read. If you are serious about trying to grasp the nearly ungraspable story of WWII, you must engage with this book.
July 7, 2022
“There were no decisive battles in World War II.” It is with this revisionist and even iconoclastic statement that Phillips Payson O'Brien opens his well-researched and closely argued “How the War Was Won” (2015). As to the broad outlines of O'Brien's argument, it is difficult to better the dust-cover copy: “World War II is usually seen as a titantic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. … O'Brien argues that in terms of production, technology and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than land supremacy. … Air and sea power dramatically expanded the area of battle and allowed the Allies to destroy over half of the Axis' equipment before it had even reached the traditional 'battlefield.' Battles such as El Alamein, Stalingard and Kursk did not win World War II; air and sea power did.”
Briefly, and at the risk of over-simplifying, O'Brien posits that it was the relative ability of the major combatants to deliver functioning weapons to the battlefield that won battles. Consequently, he views three – and only three – campaigns as being decisive. First is the U-Boat campaign against Allied merchant shipping in the North Atlantic, which failed after first the Royal Navy in 1940 realized that ships not in convoy were at far higher risk than those in convoy, even with inadequate escorts, and began to fail utterly after mid-1942, when US Navy head Admiral King finally agreed to convoy American shipping off the East Coast (and Caribbean). As such, O'Brien places the critical decisions earlier than most historians, who point to the withdrawal of U-Boats from the Atlantic after the massive battles in April and May 1943. The second key campaign was the Combined Bomber Offensive, most notably the USAAF 8th Air Force's attacks on German production and especially transportation, which O'Brien concludes began to constrain German production as early as 1943 – again, a year earlier than most analysts. The third was the US submarine and, after mid-1944, airplane attacks on Japanese merchant shipping, which cut Japan off from its consquests of oil and bauxite (aluminum) in the Dutch East Indies [Indonesia]. O'Brien credits Admiral King with identifying the Marianas as the final cork needed to stop shipments, while providing a far more useful base for B-29 heavy bomber strikes against Japanese industry.
At the risk of confirmation bias, I note my appreciation for O'Brien's criticisms of RAF Bomber Command Arthur “Butch(er)” Harris and US General Douglas MacArthur. He sees both leaders as persisting in unproductive and counterproductive strategies that led to thousands of unneccessary deaths among their own personnel and even more among civilians. (Harris and area bombing; MacArthur and pursuing a fruitless expedition to “return” to the Phillipines.)
How the War is Won is extensively documented (Chapter 9 on the war in Europe in 1944 has 269 footnotes over 58 pages of text, for example). While the argument is persuasive in the context of World War II, O'Brien does undervalue the need for strong armed forces, especially land forces, to halt Axis ground (and naval) offensives and give time for sea and air forces to choke off production.
Two asides: O'Brien almosts throws a fit in criticizing the 1965 Henry Fonda film “Battle of the Bulge:” “Another terrible movie … riddled with errors … Robert Shaw's astonishingly bleached-blond Colonel Hessler … after a few days of running around in circles ...” O'Brien laments “Almost all the books on the Battle of the Bulge concentrate overwhelmingly on the period from December 16 to 24, when the weather was overcast and air power could not be effectively used on the battlefield. It is as though once the reality of what the war had become reasserted itself, it becomes less interesting.” I note that is a lament that applies equally to not a few wargames on the subject, and the players themselves.
And the author's conclusion and accusation: “Thus, German and Japanese capitulation in May and August of 1945 occurred long after each had “lost” World War II. That their leaders, trying to prolong their political authority, would not take the honorable step that the leaders of imperial Germany took in 1918 speaks volumes about both the horrible and yet grotesquely petty nature of both regimes.” Not that that reminds me of any other, more recent, situations.
Briefly, and at the risk of over-simplifying, O'Brien posits that it was the relative ability of the major combatants to deliver functioning weapons to the battlefield that won battles. Consequently, he views three – and only three – campaigns as being decisive. First is the U-Boat campaign against Allied merchant shipping in the North Atlantic, which failed after first the Royal Navy in 1940 realized that ships not in convoy were at far higher risk than those in convoy, even with inadequate escorts, and began to fail utterly after mid-1942, when US Navy head Admiral King finally agreed to convoy American shipping off the East Coast (and Caribbean). As such, O'Brien places the critical decisions earlier than most historians, who point to the withdrawal of U-Boats from the Atlantic after the massive battles in April and May 1943. The second key campaign was the Combined Bomber Offensive, most notably the USAAF 8th Air Force's attacks on German production and especially transportation, which O'Brien concludes began to constrain German production as early as 1943 – again, a year earlier than most analysts. The third was the US submarine and, after mid-1944, airplane attacks on Japanese merchant shipping, which cut Japan off from its consquests of oil and bauxite (aluminum) in the Dutch East Indies [Indonesia]. O'Brien credits Admiral King with identifying the Marianas as the final cork needed to stop shipments, while providing a far more useful base for B-29 heavy bomber strikes against Japanese industry.
At the risk of confirmation bias, I note my appreciation for O'Brien's criticisms of RAF Bomber Command Arthur “Butch(er)” Harris and US General Douglas MacArthur. He sees both leaders as persisting in unproductive and counterproductive strategies that led to thousands of unneccessary deaths among their own personnel and even more among civilians. (Harris and area bombing; MacArthur and pursuing a fruitless expedition to “return” to the Phillipines.)
How the War is Won is extensively documented (Chapter 9 on the war in Europe in 1944 has 269 footnotes over 58 pages of text, for example). While the argument is persuasive in the context of World War II, O'Brien does undervalue the need for strong armed forces, especially land forces, to halt Axis ground (and naval) offensives and give time for sea and air forces to choke off production.
Two asides: O'Brien almosts throws a fit in criticizing the 1965 Henry Fonda film “Battle of the Bulge:” “Another terrible movie … riddled with errors … Robert Shaw's astonishingly bleached-blond Colonel Hessler … after a few days of running around in circles ...” O'Brien laments “Almost all the books on the Battle of the Bulge concentrate overwhelmingly on the period from December 16 to 24, when the weather was overcast and air power could not be effectively used on the battlefield. It is as though once the reality of what the war had become reasserted itself, it becomes less interesting.” I note that is a lament that applies equally to not a few wargames on the subject, and the players themselves.
And the author's conclusion and accusation: “Thus, German and Japanese capitulation in May and August of 1945 occurred long after each had “lost” World War II. That their leaders, trying to prolong their political authority, would not take the honorable step that the leaders of imperial Germany took in 1918 speaks volumes about both the horrible and yet grotesquely petty nature of both regimes.” Not that that reminds me of any other, more recent, situations.
March 18, 2025
As a student of WWII, both history and literature, since I was old enough to read this was a ‘natural’ addition to my ‘to be read’ list. O’Brien is American by birth, a Professor of Strategic Studies and a military historian at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. His thesis is that it was air and sea supremacy that allowed the Allies to prevail in WWII. He uses a lot of production data and other statistics regarding what was lost on the battlefield plus how much equipment never reached the battlefield due (mostly) to strategic bombing and submarine warfare to make his point.
O’Brien’s overall conclusion is that, to destroy an enemy’s Armed Forces in a war, first destroy the industrial base that equips and maintains that military force. Then battlefield losses will eventually render that enemy unable to fight. The Allies, he says, did that in WWII using primarily Strategic Bombing in Europe and submarines in the Pacific. The result was, with production and transportation crippled, conventional land and sea warfare resulted in battlefield losses in equipment and manpower that could not be replaced, eventually resulting in the defeat of Germany and Japan, even though both fought on after defeat was inevitable due to fanatical leadership.
There is a lot more nuance and analysis (see below) in this book which makes some interesting claims about what affected the outcome of the War and when. While a good understanding of the causes, course, and aftermath of the War helps greatly in understanding it, I highly recommend this book to serious students of WWII.
To expand this review. O’Brien makes some interesting points in detail. For instance, he says even the 1943 strategic bombing campaign against Germany, commonly considered somewhere between a failure and a disaster, was instrumental in reducing the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe and was thus a major contribution to Germany’s ultimate defeat. O’Brien uses the afore-mentioned statistics to conclude that the cumulative effect of the Strategic Bombing Campaign in 1943 and 1944, particularly the damage done to fuel production, aircraft production, and transportation (mostly railroad) facilities coupled with Allied improvements in aircraft (e.g., P-51 Mustang) and pilot training, destroyed the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe to the point that by the time of the December 1944 Battle of the Bulge, land warfare was essentially irrelevant to the outcome of the War in Europe as Germany had already lost the war. As O’Brien points out, once the poor weather conditions that hampered Allied air-cover at the start of the Battle lifted, the German advance was stopped in its tracks as the USAAF and RAF destroyed German forces at will.
O’Brien makes a similar argument regarding the War in the Pacific starting with a very interesting critique (sympathetic to Ernie King, highly critical of Douglas MacArthur) of the overall strategic approach. He then goes on to point out that U.S. submarines had choked off raw material supplies from the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) to Japan by mid-1944 to the point there wasn’t enough fuel left to train new pilots for anything other than one-way suicide (Kamikaze) missions. The battle for the Marianas (Guam, Saipan, Tinian) in June 1944 resulted in airbases close enough to allow a Strategic Bomber Campaign against Japan, negating Hap Arnold’s pet project of using China as the base for bombing Japan. And the associated Naval action known as The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot wiped out what remained of Japanese Naval air power.
O’Brien notes that the result of the loss of the Marianas and associated Naval disaster caused Japanese politicians to recognize that the War was lost. That resulted in the “kill as many Americans as possible” strategy that resulted in the outrageous U.S. casualty rates on Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. He also contends that MacArthur’s instance on retaking the Philippines by force resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths since there was no military need to hold those islands in order to defeat Japan. That the B-29s operating from the Marianas obliterated most Japanese cities in 1945 only hardened the Japanese Military’s resolve to fight to the last man, woman, and child if Japan was invaded. Whether it was the Atomic Bombs or simply cooler heads prevailing that resulted in Japan’s surrender is still being debated and may never be resolved.
O’Brien’s overall conclusion is that, to destroy an enemy’s Armed Forces in a war, first destroy the industrial base that equips and maintains that military force. Then battlefield losses will eventually render that enemy unable to fight. The Allies, he says, did that in WWII using primarily Strategic Bombing in Europe and submarines in the Pacific. The result was, with production and transportation crippled, conventional land and sea warfare resulted in battlefield losses in equipment and manpower that could not be replaced, eventually resulting in the defeat of Germany and Japan, even though both fought on after defeat was inevitable due to fanatical leadership.
There is a lot more nuance and analysis (see below) in this book which makes some interesting claims about what affected the outcome of the War and when. While a good understanding of the causes, course, and aftermath of the War helps greatly in understanding it, I highly recommend this book to serious students of WWII.
To expand this review. O’Brien makes some interesting points in detail. For instance, he says even the 1943 strategic bombing campaign against Germany, commonly considered somewhere between a failure and a disaster, was instrumental in reducing the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe and was thus a major contribution to Germany’s ultimate defeat. O’Brien uses the afore-mentioned statistics to conclude that the cumulative effect of the Strategic Bombing Campaign in 1943 and 1944, particularly the damage done to fuel production, aircraft production, and transportation (mostly railroad) facilities coupled with Allied improvements in aircraft (e.g., P-51 Mustang) and pilot training, destroyed the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe to the point that by the time of the December 1944 Battle of the Bulge, land warfare was essentially irrelevant to the outcome of the War in Europe as Germany had already lost the war. As O’Brien points out, once the poor weather conditions that hampered Allied air-cover at the start of the Battle lifted, the German advance was stopped in its tracks as the USAAF and RAF destroyed German forces at will.
O’Brien makes a similar argument regarding the War in the Pacific starting with a very interesting critique (sympathetic to Ernie King, highly critical of Douglas MacArthur) of the overall strategic approach. He then goes on to point out that U.S. submarines had choked off raw material supplies from the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) to Japan by mid-1944 to the point there wasn’t enough fuel left to train new pilots for anything other than one-way suicide (Kamikaze) missions. The battle for the Marianas (Guam, Saipan, Tinian) in June 1944 resulted in airbases close enough to allow a Strategic Bomber Campaign against Japan, negating Hap Arnold’s pet project of using China as the base for bombing Japan. And the associated Naval action known as The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot wiped out what remained of Japanese Naval air power.
O’Brien notes that the result of the loss of the Marianas and associated Naval disaster caused Japanese politicians to recognize that the War was lost. That resulted in the “kill as many Americans as possible” strategy that resulted in the outrageous U.S. casualty rates on Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. He also contends that MacArthur’s instance on retaking the Philippines by force resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths since there was no military need to hold those islands in order to defeat Japan. That the B-29s operating from the Marianas obliterated most Japanese cities in 1945 only hardened the Japanese Military’s resolve to fight to the last man, woman, and child if Japan was invaded. Whether it was the Atomic Bombs or simply cooler heads prevailing that resulted in Japan’s surrender is still being debated and may never be resolved.
March 3, 2025
When you think about the decisive moments of World War Two, you are perhaps like I am — battles like the second El Alamein, the Siege of Leningrad, the Battle of Midway, Iwo Jima, even D-Day itself. However, according to Philips Payson O’Brien, you would be wrong. The reason the Allies won WWII is because they outproduced the Axis in … well, just about everything. And because of this advantage, the Axis couldn’t win WWII. This was exacerbated by American and some British commanders who focused on destroying German and Japanese war production before it reached the field of battle — prior to production in raw materials, in production itself, and post production in transportation to the battlefields. In this area, the Axis essentially failed utterly — America was never effectively attacked, and Britain sat across the channel, where their means of production were far easier to defend than the German’s ability to attack. This is why the American strategy for its strategic bombing on the continent was decisive — while the British attacked cities, the Americans attacked factories, raw material sites and transportation, thus ensuring that the Germans were at a disadvantage in every engagement. In fact, in the battles that are generally cited as being decisive, such as the Siege of Leningrad, the Germans could fairly easily replace both the men and the materiel they lost. But strategically, they had no chance. Also, and just as important, America dominated the most important areas — sea power and air power — which were decisive because they prevented the Axis from using their production to full effect. Germany had basically no functional navy other than U-boats and once the Americans figured out how to thwart U-boat attacks, it controlled the sea. In the air, the Allies industrial might was stronger than the Germans AND the Germans were forced to use a high percentage of what they did possess to protect the fatherland. As a result, the Allies had vastly more aircraft and better fliers, as more survived (they also had enough fuel to properly train their pilots, something America denied to Japan, which led to things like Kamikaze fliers, who were too poorly trained to be effective as traditional pilots). Overall, the Americans defeated the Japanese by isolating the raw materials Japan required for its war machine by dominating the Pacific in the air and on the sea. It’s a powerful argument that, while it lacks the drama of this battle or that commander, really illuminates how modern wars and won and lost. It also adds more luster (as if any more were needed) to the genius of FDR, who recognized the critical nature of air power particularly and instructed his minions to focus on aircraft production, while giving very, very little to the armies on the ground. Like all deep histories, there is perhaps a bit too much detail and supporting facts to make for the most compelling read, but the concept is fascinating, the reporting deep and persuasive and the book is a masterpiece of historical revisionism. Highly recommended if you are a WWII aficionado.
Grade: A
Grade: A
July 3, 2022
Best WWII book I've read
This is an excellent book which lays out major mistakes of all combatants and makes clear that the US and UK won by massively damagingthe economies of their enemies. No, the European war was not won on the Eastern front. It was mainly won by defeating the Luftwaffe and demobilizing and destroying the German economy from the air.
Churchill, Bomber Harris, Douglas MacArthur, and Curtis LeMay are among those who suffer reputation damage in these pages. Admiral Ernest King is rightfully criticized for failing to allocate destroyers to the Atlantic in 1942. But that is a small mistake compared to his correctly choosing the Mariana islands as key for cutting off Japan from bauxite and oil while also putting B29 bombers on excellent barse for attacking Japan. He did this against opposition.
Douglas MacArthur didn't just needlessly throw away hundreds of thousands of Filipino, Japanese, and American lives invading the Philippines (bad enough). By doing this he also delayed the invasion of Iwo Jima, giving the Japanese time to fortify the island and making it far more costly to invade.
RAF Bomber commander Arthur Harris' city area bombing was a wrong use of resources in 1944. The evidence was clear. Germany had more AA protection for synthetic oil facilities than for cities. Harris didn't want to acknowledge that he was wrong. Fortunately the USAAF was better led. Harris should have been fired by his superior who strongly disagreed with him. Was Harris protected by political popularity? Certainly MacArthur was and he used this to his advantage and against the US national interest.
Movies give you the wrong idea that land battles mattered the most. Wrong. The war was won in sea and air. Cutting off supplies, demobilizing the enemy, destroying production won the war. The P51 fighter was far more important than superior German tanks. The P51 let the bombers destroy German war output while also doing their own damage.
The arguments are made with lots of numbers. I find the book's arguments highly persuasive.
This is an excellent book which lays out major mistakes of all combatants and makes clear that the US and UK won by massively damagingthe economies of their enemies. No, the European war was not won on the Eastern front. It was mainly won by defeating the Luftwaffe and demobilizing and destroying the German economy from the air.
Churchill, Bomber Harris, Douglas MacArthur, and Curtis LeMay are among those who suffer reputation damage in these pages. Admiral Ernest King is rightfully criticized for failing to allocate destroyers to the Atlantic in 1942. But that is a small mistake compared to his correctly choosing the Mariana islands as key for cutting off Japan from bauxite and oil while also putting B29 bombers on excellent barse for attacking Japan. He did this against opposition.
Douglas MacArthur didn't just needlessly throw away hundreds of thousands of Filipino, Japanese, and American lives invading the Philippines (bad enough). By doing this he also delayed the invasion of Iwo Jima, giving the Japanese time to fortify the island and making it far more costly to invade.
RAF Bomber commander Arthur Harris' city area bombing was a wrong use of resources in 1944. The evidence was clear. Germany had more AA protection for synthetic oil facilities than for cities. Harris didn't want to acknowledge that he was wrong. Fortunately the USAAF was better led. Harris should have been fired by his superior who strongly disagreed with him. Was Harris protected by political popularity? Certainly MacArthur was and he used this to his advantage and against the US national interest.
Movies give you the wrong idea that land battles mattered the most. Wrong. The war was won in sea and air. Cutting off supplies, demobilizing the enemy, destroying production won the war. The P51 fighter was far more important than superior German tanks. The P51 let the bombers destroy German war output while also doing their own damage.
The arguments are made with lots of numbers. I find the book's arguments highly persuasive.
April 7, 2023
After enjoying Overy's Why the allies won, this book was something that I was definitely looking forward to.
PPO makes the point that the UK and the USA were fighting a more efficient form of war than the axis powers (and USSR), with air (in particular) and sea power allied to technological innovation taking the place of mass land armies. An especially important point is made concerning the disparity between equipment losses on the battlefield and before they got there. Even at Kursk, the largest ever tank battle, the numbers lost on both sides were but a small percentage of production. This isn't something I've seen articulated elsewhere. PPO show that by deploying air and naval power, enemy material losses were greatly exacerbated. Losses in the pre-production, production and prior to delivery phases were much more severe than battlefield losses. There was an escalator effect, with bombing:
forcing factories to be dispersed, which lowered production, led to inferior build quality,
destroying fuel production, which made the training of pilots perfunctory and so lowered skill and ability,
destroying transport, which stopped factories from producing weapons.
This all had a cumulative effect and by the midst of 1944 the war was lost for the axis. They could defend tenaciously, but any form of mobile warfare was beyond them. Air and sea power won the war. Land battles still needed to be fought, but the opponents were denuded of equipment and support. This made victory so much easier.
There were a couple of things I took slight issue with. When disparaging the KGV class battleships in comparison to those being produced by the Axis or the later American models, I feel that PPO somewhat overlooks the fact that the KGVs were bound by the Washington Treaty, which the Axis ignored and the American ships were wartime builds, when no one cared about treaty limitations. Also, the tables are all pretty tiny and not easy to make out.
This is a fascinating book and well worth reading.
PPO makes the point that the UK and the USA were fighting a more efficient form of war than the axis powers (and USSR), with air (in particular) and sea power allied to technological innovation taking the place of mass land armies. An especially important point is made concerning the disparity between equipment losses on the battlefield and before they got there. Even at Kursk, the largest ever tank battle, the numbers lost on both sides were but a small percentage of production. This isn't something I've seen articulated elsewhere. PPO show that by deploying air and naval power, enemy material losses were greatly exacerbated. Losses in the pre-production, production and prior to delivery phases were much more severe than battlefield losses. There was an escalator effect, with bombing:
forcing factories to be dispersed, which lowered production, led to inferior build quality,
destroying fuel production, which made the training of pilots perfunctory and so lowered skill and ability,
destroying transport, which stopped factories from producing weapons.
This all had a cumulative effect and by the midst of 1944 the war was lost for the axis. They could defend tenaciously, but any form of mobile warfare was beyond them. Air and sea power won the war. Land battles still needed to be fought, but the opponents were denuded of equipment and support. This made victory so much easier.
There were a couple of things I took slight issue with. When disparaging the KGV class battleships in comparison to those being produced by the Axis or the later American models, I feel that PPO somewhat overlooks the fact that the KGVs were bound by the Washington Treaty, which the Axis ignored and the American ships were wartime builds, when no one cared about treaty limitations. Also, the tables are all pretty tiny and not easy to make out.
This is a fascinating book and well worth reading.
October 4, 2023
I thought this was a great book that changed my mind on a few things. The research he did is extensive, and he builds a very persuasive case. In his view, World War II was about air and sea supremacy, and that the achievement of this supremacy by the Allies made the outcome inevitable. One area where he changed my mind was on the subject of strategic bombing. I have always considered it a waste of time and resources. After all, German output kept rising even as the bombs fell, or in the case of Britain, the Battle of Britain, and then the Vengeance weapons, never affected morale on the home front. And of course in Vietnam the US dropped more bombs than they dropped in both theaters of WWII combined without stopping the Vietnamese. But O'Brien makes a persuasive case that what matters is the strategy behind the bombing. I think he has a very low view of Arthur Harris for pursuing a bad strategy of bombing German cities, but I think he finds that bombing aimed at really strategic targets like aircraft and fuel production was quite helpful. and in the Pacific he seems to find MacArthur lacking in strategic insight, but is very admiring of Ernest King for seeing the main point of using air power to cut the lifeline of Japan to the colonies in the Dutch East Indies.
Another area where I think I got a slightly different view after reading this book was the significance of the Western Front. We all know that the largest armies were in the East, and with that the largest numbers of casualties. But virtually all of the Luftwaffe was deployed towards the West, which says something about the way Germany saw the war going. And of course that gave the Soviets air superiority on their front, which made their drive to Berlin a whole lot easier. If you are a WWII buff, this should be essential reading in my view.
Another area where I think I got a slightly different view after reading this book was the significance of the Western Front. We all know that the largest armies were in the East, and with that the largest numbers of casualties. But virtually all of the Luftwaffe was deployed towards the West, which says something about the way Germany saw the war going. And of course that gave the Soviets air superiority on their front, which made their drive to Berlin a whole lot easier. If you are a WWII buff, this should be essential reading in my view.
July 16, 2024
Very detailed analysis of what played a major role in the final Allied victory in WW2.
On the one hand, the theory (about the role of air superiority, disruption of trade/supply roots, heavy hits on military production, etc.) is very interesting, and the facts collected here are more than convincing, but there were few things here I have a problem with:
1. The book feels extremely repetitive; even with its structure with clearly scoped chapters, I couldn't help the feeling that the same thing is being repeated over and over w/o adding some new value - it seems like the book could have been 1/3 of the size w/o affecting its credibility/insight value.
2. What's actually worse - I find it annoying that the author leaves very little space to challenge/discuss/consider alternative factors (human potential, motivation/morale/social factors, doctrine differences, etc.). There are clear proof that some of them had a major impact in certain phases of the war (take the initial phase of Op. Barbarossa).
3. I've also expected identifying and diving deep into so-called "pivotal" moments of war. Were there any? How close was there to moving the pointer of the scale to the other side's advantage? Yes, there were a few bits of analysis like this (e.g., reg: Battle of Bulge), but far too few, far too shallow.
It's definitely a good book and a very useful one - e.g., in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But as the appetite grows with eating, I've expected better ;)
On the one hand, the theory (about the role of air superiority, disruption of trade/supply roots, heavy hits on military production, etc.) is very interesting, and the facts collected here are more than convincing, but there were few things here I have a problem with:
1. The book feels extremely repetitive; even with its structure with clearly scoped chapters, I couldn't help the feeling that the same thing is being repeated over and over w/o adding some new value - it seems like the book could have been 1/3 of the size w/o affecting its credibility/insight value.
2. What's actually worse - I find it annoying that the author leaves very little space to challenge/discuss/consider alternative factors (human potential, motivation/morale/social factors, doctrine differences, etc.). There are clear proof that some of them had a major impact in certain phases of the war (take the initial phase of Op. Barbarossa).
3. I've also expected identifying and diving deep into so-called "pivotal" moments of war. Were there any? How close was there to moving the pointer of the scale to the other side's advantage? Yes, there were a few bits of analysis like this (e.g., reg: Battle of Bulge), but far too few, far too shallow.
It's definitely a good book and a very useful one - e.g., in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But as the appetite grows with eating, I've expected better ;)
December 10, 2024
Eye opening information about the importance of the air/sea war. I had been of the opinion that the bombing campaign was fairly useless, taking early war reports (less than half the bombs struck within five miles of the target) as indicative of effectiveness throughout the war.
This book shows how Japan and Germany were crushed from the air, with ground combat almost an afterthought.
Some things not explored: Were the heavy bombers as effective per cost as the fighter-bombers? Was the reason American ground forces stalled out near the French borders and reported the Germans had so much ammunition was that they had run to the limits of the effective range of the fighter bombers who were doing log strikes (interdiction) from airbases in Great Britain, effectively cutting off front line German units from supply and reinforcements?
Food for thought for me: that was a ballsy move going all in on air power when early reports and the blitz experience had shown the brits it wasn't effective. What about the counterfactual where the USA built 200 divisions - earlier landings, landings in North Italy or Norway?
This book shows how Japan and Germany were crushed from the air, with ground combat almost an afterthought.
Some things not explored: Were the heavy bombers as effective per cost as the fighter-bombers? Was the reason American ground forces stalled out near the French borders and reported the Germans had so much ammunition was that they had run to the limits of the effective range of the fighter bombers who were doing log strikes (interdiction) from airbases in Great Britain, effectively cutting off front line German units from supply and reinforcements?
Food for thought for me: that was a ballsy move going all in on air power when early reports and the blitz experience had shown the brits it wasn't effective. What about the counterfactual where the USA built 200 divisions - earlier landings, landings in North Italy or Norway?
December 30, 2022
Given just the vast the literature on the Second World War, O'Brien has made a remarkable achievement in presenting both a new insight into the course of the war, and in doing so in a way that combines meticulous research and a readable text, despite the massive weight of the book.
I won't attempt to summarise the book - other reviewers, and the blurb on the book itself do this better than I could. What is remarkable about O'Brien's thesis is that, given the data he presents, it seems self-evident that airpower and seapower were where all of the major combatant nations placed their main effort, notwithstanding the massive land battles that tend to dominate our perception, yet this has remained hidden in plain sight. Not only did most of the senior leaders at the time not realise how the war had shifted in its focus, but they have been followed in this by most subsequent historians. O'Brien's central insight is that an enemy who cannot move their equipment to the front, and who cannot move their forces at the front, cannot fight, no matter the quality of their troops or equipment. In the Second World War, Germany attempted to stop the Allies from moving raw materials, equipment and men from around the world to Europe, and failed. The Allies sought to use airpower to destroy German manufacturing, transport, and fuel, and largely succeeded. They did much the same in the Pacific, and again succeeded in undermining Japanese military power. Yet most commanders focused on land battles or area bombing.
The book is long and detailed, but completely worth the effort. In some respects, O'Brien brings out the critical difference between generalship and statemanship - generals can win battles, but the statesman needs to work out how to win the war. Unfortunately, both tend to focus on the battles rather than the war.
I won't attempt to summarise the book - other reviewers, and the blurb on the book itself do this better than I could. What is remarkable about O'Brien's thesis is that, given the data he presents, it seems self-evident that airpower and seapower were where all of the major combatant nations placed their main effort, notwithstanding the massive land battles that tend to dominate our perception, yet this has remained hidden in plain sight. Not only did most of the senior leaders at the time not realise how the war had shifted in its focus, but they have been followed in this by most subsequent historians. O'Brien's central insight is that an enemy who cannot move their equipment to the front, and who cannot move their forces at the front, cannot fight, no matter the quality of their troops or equipment. In the Second World War, Germany attempted to stop the Allies from moving raw materials, equipment and men from around the world to Europe, and failed. The Allies sought to use airpower to destroy German manufacturing, transport, and fuel, and largely succeeded. They did much the same in the Pacific, and again succeeded in undermining Japanese military power. Yet most commanders focused on land battles or area bombing.
The book is long and detailed, but completely worth the effort. In some respects, O'Brien brings out the critical difference between generalship and statemanship - generals can win battles, but the statesman needs to work out how to win the war. Unfortunately, both tend to focus on the battles rather than the war.
February 29, 2024
I love very accessible war books and this one is great. The main theses are
- the right way to measure what part of the war was most important is by total effort and expenditures rather than by number of deployed humans.
- the air and to a lesser extent sea war were thus much more important than the land battles.
- the allies (especially US/UK) not only won because they had better air and sea power but also because they were extremely effective at destroying Axis air and sea forces before those forces reached the battlefield
- controlling and/or impacting the enemy’s access to materials, production and mobility were the crucial aspects of destroying their capabilities before they reached the battlefield.
Lots of other interesting stuff in here including a bunch on Lehey (the author has a whole biography that I intend on reading too) and King and Hopkins.
Overall pretty interesting
- the right way to measure what part of the war was most important is by total effort and expenditures rather than by number of deployed humans.
- the air and to a lesser extent sea war were thus much more important than the land battles.
- the allies (especially US/UK) not only won because they had better air and sea power but also because they were extremely effective at destroying Axis air and sea forces before those forces reached the battlefield
- controlling and/or impacting the enemy’s access to materials, production and mobility were the crucial aspects of destroying their capabilities before they reached the battlefield.
Lots of other interesting stuff in here including a bunch on Lehey (the author has a whole biography that I intend on reading too) and King and Hopkins.
Overall pretty interesting
November 20, 2023
A powerful revisionist take on WWII that argues the war was not really won in the great land battles of the Eastern Front by Russia but instead in the air and sea battle fought by the US and UK against Germany. O'Brien bases this thesis off the argument that while 80-85% of the Nazis losses in terms of men, tanks and land gear was on the Eastern Front, that is not where Germany spent the majority of its economic output. Instead it was in the construction of air and sea resources that Germany spent the vast majority of its economic resources and those resources. Those much more important resources were defeated by the US & UK air force and navies. That German and Japanese economic and military output only started decreasing and being terminally degraded once the US and UK had won the air and sea wars and could systematically destroy Germany and Japan's economic infrastructures
March 30, 2023
O'brien makes an argument that Anglo-American sea and, espiecially, air power were decisive in bringing about the allied Victory, moreso than the conventionally understood decisive battles of the Eastern Front.
I found the argument convincing, particularly by looking at German allocation of war resources - as it was Germany who was at the receiving end of both the Western allies' air campaigns and the Soviet Union's large ground offensives, and nonetheless chose to spend a majority of its resources on the former.
The book is easy to read and presents its argument in a clear manner. Even if you disagree - and I myself am open to counter-arguments - it's clear how the author constructs his simple, but persuasive and well documented, thesis.
I found the argument convincing, particularly by looking at German allocation of war resources - as it was Germany who was at the receiving end of both the Western allies' air campaigns and the Soviet Union's large ground offensives, and nonetheless chose to spend a majority of its resources on the former.
The book is easy to read and presents its argument in a clear manner. Even if you disagree - and I myself am open to counter-arguments - it's clear how the author constructs his simple, but persuasive and well documented, thesis.
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