The War Lords

Michael Carver

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military Classics
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781844153084
• eBook ISBN: 9781473819740
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

Detailed profiles of forty-three military commanders of the twentieth century, from Patton to Rommel, Yamamoto, and Zhukov, written by top historians.
 
In  The War Lords, Field Marshal Lord Carver has assembled an engrossing series of short, detailed biographies of forty-three of the dominant military commanders on the twentieth-century world stage, written by such prominent historians as Alistair Horne, Norman Stone, Stephen Ambrose, Lord Kinross, and Martin Middlebrook. Included are:
 
Field-Marshal the Earl Alexander, E.H.H. Allenby, Claude Auchinleck, Field-Marshal Sir, Omar N. Bradley, General of the Army, Andrew Browne Cunningham, Admiral of the Fleet the Viscount, Karl Doenitz, Admiral, Hugh C.T. Dowding, Air Chief Marshal, Dwight D. Eisenhower, General of the Army, Ferdinand Foch, Bernard Freyberg, Lieutenant-General Lord, Heinz Guderian, General, Douglas Haig, William F. Halsey, Fleet Admiral, Ian Hamilton, Arthur Harris, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir, Paul von Hindenburg, John Rushworth Jellicoe, Joseph Joffre, Alphonse Juin, Marshal, Mustafa Kemal, Ivan Koniev, Marshal, Erich Ludendorff, Douglas C. MacArthur, General of the Army, John Monash, Bernard L. Montgomery, of Alamein, Louis Mountbatten, Earl of Burma, Chester W. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral, George S. Patton, General, John J. Pershing, Philippe Petain, Erwin Rommel, Field-Marshal, William Joseph Slim, Field-Marshal the Viscount, Carl A. Spaatz, General, Raymond A. Spruance, Admiral, Joseph W. Stilwell, General, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, Hugh Trenchard, Erich Von Falkenhayn, Erich Von Manstein, Field Marshal, Gerd Von Rundstedt, Field-Marshal, Archibald Wavell, Field-Marshal Earl, Isoroku Yamamoto, Admiral & Georgii Zhukov, Marshal.

CONTENTS

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
Field-Marshal Sir Michael Carver

JELLICOE
A. Temple-Patterson

JOFFRE
General André Beaufre

HAIG
John Terraine

HINDENBURG
Norman Stone

PETAIN
Alistair Horne

LUDENDORFF
Norman Stone

HAMILTON
Robert Rhodes James

KEMAL
Lord Kinross

VON FALKENHAYN
Alistair Horne

FOCH
General André Beaufre

MONASH
Malcolm Falkus

ALLENBY
Major General Anthony Farrar-Hockley

PERSHING
Donald Smythe

TRENCHARD
Gavin Lyall

VON RUNDSTEDT
Andreas Hillgruber

DOWDING
Gavin Lyall

WAVELL
Bernard Fergusson

VON MANSTEIN
Albert Seaton

ZHUKOV
John Erickson

AUCHINLECK
Correlli Barnett

ROMMEL
Charles Douglas-Home

KONIEV
John Erickson

GUDERIAN
John Strawson

HARRIS
Martin Middlebrook

ALEXANDER
Nigel Nicolson

STILWELL
Riley Sunderland

MOUNTBATTEN
Vice Admiral Sir Ronald Brockman

SLIM
Lieutenant General Sir Geoffrey Evans

YAMAMOTO
Captain Roger Pineau

NIMITZ
Henry H. Adams

MACARTHUR
Stephen E. Ambrose

HALSEY
James Bassett

SPRUANCE
Henry H. Adams

CUNNINGHAM
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Kemp

DOENITZ
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Kemp

TEDDER
Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley Norris

MONTGOMERY
Ronald Lewin

EISENHOWER
Don Cook

BRADLEY
Forrest C. Pogue

PATTON
Martin Blumenson

SPAATZ
Alfred Goldberg

FREYBERG
Dan Davin

JUIN
Colonel Adolphe Goutard

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

Field-Marshal Sir Michael Carver,
General Editor

The twentieth century has brought new dimensions to war. This book sets out to show how the major military figures in the two world wars of the first half of the century attempted to direct war in conditions which, certainly as far as the First World War was concerned, were unfamiliar. The pace of change was fast and the military profession tends to be conservative between wars for lack of opportunity to test itself in changing conditions. In war change is so rapid that it is difficult for anybody to adapt himself to it; but adapt themselves the participants must and do.

Wars greatly accelerate the pace of technical development, but new weapons and developments are usually superimposed on the old, leading to a considerable period of overlap. A new weapon produces its own counter-weapon and the older ones continue to exist side by side with it. The motor vehicle and the aeroplane were both in use in 1914; but even at the end of the Second World War the bulk of transport of both the German and Russian armies was horsed. Even in the age of the nuclear weapon, the rifle and the bayonet, derivative of the pike, are still in service and the former at least in many ways more relevant to the conflicts of the second half of the century than almost all the other weapons that have been added to the soldier’s armoury in the three-quarters of the twentieth century that have passed.

The figures described here are the commanders: not, with some exceptions, the high staff officers who from their desks and in constant struggle with their political masters directed policy. Not that these Chiefs of Staff are not worthy of study, but their actions and reactions were so intimately entwined with the political history of the wars that it is unreal to attempt to deal with them as characters in isolation, fascinating as some of them and their relations with the politicians were. Some of them appear in these pages, having started as commanders in the field or at sea and progressed from there to the council table.

As late as the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, kings and princes took the field as commanders and the direction of land operations at least was still regarded, except in Britain and America, as a field in which royalty could properly exercise its authority. When Winston Churchill was at his lowest ebb in July 1942, it was seriously suggested in a motion in the House of Commons that the Duke of Gloucester should assume supreme command. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, who was in command of a German army group in 1918, was the last relic of a system of command which had been accepted for centuries. Mountbatten in the Second World War gained his place purely on his professional ability, not on account of his royal connection.

The optimum balance between political direction and military command of operations can hardly be said to have been satisfactorily found in the First World War at any stage. Accepting a misinterpretation of Clausewitz, which implied that once war had been declared the soldiers and sailors took over direction, and the politicians took a back seat until victory (or defeat) was achieved, the tendency for the first few years was for the politicians meekly to accept that the demands of the military men must be met and all shoulders put to the wheel to achieve them. When things went badly they muttered and fussed, but took no real political initiative and sought no other way out of the apparent impasse into which the military machine had ground itself, like a driver continuing to spin his wheels deeper and deeper into the bog.

Only when the sacrifices were becoming intolerable, and no end appeared to be in sight, did men like Clemenceau and Lloyd George begin to take a real grip of affairs. Even then they did it in a roundabout way. By 1914 governments were only just beginning to concern themselves with the direction of industrial, commercial and financial affairs. The volume and the detail of work which the direction of a major war involved, and the short time scale within which it had to be tackled, were totally unfamiliar to the political and governmental machines of 1914. It is little wonder that in all the participating nations the direction of a war involving such vast resources was haphazard and inefficient. The attempt to solve the myriad problems greatly increased the degree of governmental involvement in national life, and had a profound effect on events both during and after the war in all countries.

Railways and the telegraph had affected the American Civil War and Bismarck’s Prussian wars of the late nineteenth century. The Russo-Japanese War in the first years of the twentieth century had given significant pointers to the influence of the industrial processes of the rapidly developing engineering industry based on steel; but the full impact of the Industrial Revolution on warfare was not to be seen until the First World War. Tactics, and strategy too, were still in 1914 based on Napoleonic concepts, which in the event it was found impossible to apply. The result on land was the development of a mutual mass mincing-machine into which bodies, weapons and ammunition were poured in the hope that the other side would be exhausted first, as in the end it was; but at a cost to European civilisation far outweighing the trivial causes for which the opponents had plunged into war.

Although the military figures of the First World War loomed large in the public eye at the time, and have been the subject of much controversy since, their positive contribution either to the actual outcome of operations or to the art of war was small. Even Allenby, who seemed to restore mobility and sense to war in Palestine towards the end, served in retrospect only to preserve for several decades the existence of horsed cavalry long after its ability to influence events on the battlefield had been rendered nugatory by modern weapons combined with man-made obstacles. Foch, perhaps the most intellectual and theoretical of all those described here, made his mark as much by sheer enthusiasm and the knowledge that he had the powerful political backing of both Clemenceau and Lloyd George as by the acuteness of his perception or the originality of his decisions.

That the conditions of warfare in the First World War overwhelmed the participants is not surprising. The means of transport available, and the short distance between base and front line, permitted the deployment of hordes of men and mountains of material. Not only was the latter available in large quantities (although never enough to satisfy the consumers), but it included entirely novel developments: the motor car and all its variants up to and including the tank; the aeroplane; radio-telephony; the submarine – all in use for the first time in Europe. The machine gun, the mine, gas, greatly improved explosives: all these added complications not only to the direction of operations, but also to their logistic support and to the problems of industrial production and the labour required for it.

Little wonder therefore that the senior military figures did not immediately grasp the correct potentialities of these new weapons, not always as great as their inventors or enthusiastic supporters claimed.

If there is one characteristic which stands out in the battles of 1914–18, it is the almost total lack of control once the battle had started. Communication invariably broke down. Very few commanders at any level had the faintest idea about what had happened or what was happening on their own side, let alone ‘on the other side of the hill’. Even if they had reserves which could physically be moved in time to influence the battle, they hardly ever had good enough information on which to do so. The result often was just to pour more meat into the mincing-machine, reinforcing loss, there being no success to exploit.

All these melancholy facts of life were well known to the generals and admirals of the Second World War, all of whom had had direct experience of the first. Only the air marshals were operating in an almost totally new environment, so great had been the developments in aircraft and air warfare between 1918 and 1939. Nevertheless there were factors that made the Second World War very different from its predecessor. The most significant differences were in the field of radio communications, notably the development of radar; of automotive vehicles, especially the tank and many other forms of tracked and wheeled cross-country vehicle; and above all of air power, which had a far more revolutionary effect on naval warfare than it did on land or as a form of warfare in its own right. Nevertheless its effect on land warfare, although often exaggerated, had continually to be taken into account and particularly on movement to the battlefield by sea, land and air. As a very rough generalisation it can be said that the Germans had adapted themselves best to these new developments in land warfare, the British in air warfare and the United States in naval warfare.

In the Second World War, political control of military operations was exercised much more closely and directly, in spite of the fact that the battlefields were farther-flung. Churchill, Hitler and Stalin were supreme war lords and intervened (generals, admirals and air marshals would say interfered) in considerable detail. Chiang Kai-shek exercised the same direct control, although not very effectively. Roosevelt, although titular Commander-in-Chief, was less inclined to involve himself in the detail of military operations or to override the advice of his Chiefs of Staff; Admiral Leahy playing as significant a role with him as paramilitary éminence grise, as General Ismay did with Churchill.

The First World War was not truly a world war. It was really a European war, although its ripples spread widely. In contrast number two was, when Japan entered the lists at the end of 1941, truly a world war. However, if one is to bring it into focus and study it objectively, one must divide it into separate campaigns. First the western European land war: 1940 saw it break fitfully into full development and then die, until revived in 1944 with the invasion of Normandy. Second, the Mediterranean land-air-sea war: this began with entry of Italy into the lists as France fell; saw the ebb and flow of the war in Greece and North Africa; and finished with the slogging match in Italy. Third, the submarine war in the Atlantic. Fourth, the air war over western Europe. Fifth, the Russo-German conflict. Sixth, the China-Japan-South-East-Asia land-air-sea war; and finally the Americo-Japanese sea-air-island war.

These were basically separate wars, but inevitably interrelated, the connecting link being the resources with which they were fought: the men, the material and the means of moving both about. The war in the Mediterranean did not assume any great importance to the Germans until it threatened, and then led to, the collapse of the Italians. From 1941 onwards the Russian front was far and away the greatest German commitment, and it remained so to the end, even after the Anglo-American entry into France added a coup de grâce.

The war against Japan was in essence a continuation and development of Japan’s invasion of China, following on that of Manchuria in the 1930s. After Pearl Harbor the Pacific war became a major preoccupation of the United States, and involved them in support of Chiang Kai-shek, with implications that have lasted well into the second half of the century. The Japanese advance into South-East Asia had dramatic short- and long-term effects on the British Empire east of Suez, and on the whole concept of imperial defence that had been enshrined in British military textbooks since the formation of the Committee of Imperial Defence early in the century. This man was totally unrelated, as far as the Japanese were concerned, to the war being fought by the other members of the Axis west of Suez, although this had very significant effects on the resources which their opponents could deploy.

So much for the wars which included all three elements. In addition to these, there were two single-service wars waged almost independently of the others: the submarine war, fought principally in the Atlantic between the German and British and later also the American navies with air force participation; and the air-bombing war, first the Germans against Britain, parried by RAF Fighter Command and the army’s Anti-Aircraft Command; and then, in retaliation, Bomber Command, later joined by their USAF colleagues, against Germany, with other targets rather reluctantly added.

The submarine war was a matter of life and death. It was Germany’s one hope of bringing the British war effort to an end before America could develop and deploy its strength in Europe. No other campaign had such a direct importance to Britain and its war effort. In contrast the air-bombing war, although highly unpleasant to those who lived where the bombs fell, had only a marginal effect. Airmen and others will argue for ever about its value: whether or not, if differently conducted, it could have been more effective; the amount of war effort it involved or diverted. It was not able, as its most fervent advocates had predicted, to repl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents