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American Warlords: How Roosevelt's High Command Led America to Victory in World War II
by Jonathan W. Jordan
American Warlords is an attempt at a World War II version of the classic Team of Rivals, focusing on the work of FDR, Secretary of War Stimson, Army Chief of Staff Marshall, and Chief of Naval Operations King. It's an engaging enough story, but Jordan gets caught in the details and fails to come to a truly important understanding of American strategy.
B-24's under construction at Willow Run
By far the most important person was President Roosevelt. Roosevelt was the consummate politician, a man adept at finding consensus among the most ardent foes. This skill would be sorely tested, balancing the interests of Churchill and Stalin, the American homefront, and his senior commanders. Roosevelt gets a lot of pages, but we don't much insight into his thinking. It's somewhat counter-intuitive that a man allergic to clear lines of command and Clausewitzian concentration would preside over the greatest American victory.
Of the other three men, King is drawn the most clearly. A staunch naval chauvinist, and advocate of offensives against Japan when the stated policy was 'Germany first', he fought for his vision of the war. Some wag (elsewhere, not in this book), said that "Admiral King was the most even-tempered man in high command. He was always furious." Marshall is a self-effacing, trying to reign in Churchillian sideshows, while letting Eisenhower serve as the liberator of Europe. Stimson disappears almost entirely.
The focus on strategy and personalities is reasonable enough, but what I find most interesting about America in World War II was that it fought a New Deal War. America in 1940, as the clouds of war loomed, was at best a second rate power. Even before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt and Marshall turned millions of civilians into soldiers, sailors, and airmen. They set factories churning out weapons, a tide of material warfare that buried the Axis power under tens of thousands of warplanes per year, M1 rifles, carbines, and tanks, dozens of aircraft carriers, and 2710 Liberty ships to bring the war to Europe and Japan. They harnessed science and technology to create advanced wonder weapons, including the B-29, the proximity fuse, the ULTRA codebreaking program, and above all else, the atomic bomb. This transformation of America into the arsenal of democracy was the real battle of the war, and Jordan only discusses it in passing.
B-24's under construction at Willow Run
By far the most important person was President Roosevelt. Roosevelt was the consummate politician, a man adept at finding consensus among the most ardent foes. This skill would be sorely tested, balancing the interests of Churchill and Stalin, the American homefront, and his senior commanders. Roosevelt gets a lot of pages, but we don't much insight into his thinking. It's somewhat counter-intuitive that a man allergic to clear lines of command and Clausewitzian concentration would preside over the greatest American victory.
Of the other three men, King is drawn the most clearly. A staunch naval chauvinist, and advocate of offensives against Japan when the stated policy was 'Germany first', he fought for his vision of the war. Some wag (elsewhere, not in this book), said that "Admiral King was the most even-tempered man in high command. He was always furious." Marshall is a self-effacing, trying to reign in Churchillian sideshows, while letting Eisenhower serve as the liberator of Europe. Stimson disappears almost entirely.
The focus on strategy and personalities is reasonable enough, but what I find most interesting about America in World War II was that it fought a New Deal War. America in 1940, as the clouds of war loomed, was at best a second rate power. Even before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt and Marshall turned millions of civilians into soldiers, sailors, and airmen. They set factories churning out weapons, a tide of material warfare that buried the Axis power under tens of thousands of warplanes per year, M1 rifles, carbines, and tanks, dozens of aircraft carriers, and 2710 Liberty ships to bring the war to Europe and Japan. They harnessed science and technology to create advanced wonder weapons, including the B-29, the proximity fuse, the ULTRA codebreaking program, and above all else, the atomic bomb. This transformation of America into the arsenal of democracy was the real battle of the war, and Jordan only discusses it in passing.