by Williamson Murray, Allan R. Millett
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Product Description
In the course of the twentieth century, no war looms as profoundly transformative or as destructive as World War II. Its global scope and human toll reveal the true face of modern, industrialized warfare. Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive, single-volume account of how and why this global conflict evolved as it did. A War To Be Won is a unique and powerful operational history of the Second World War that tells the full story of battle on land, on sea, and in the air. Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett analyze the operations and tactics that defined the conduct of the war in both the European and Pacific Theaters. Moving between the war room and the battlefield, we see how strategies were crafted and revised, and how the multitudes of combat troops struggled to discharge their orders. The authors present incisive portraits of the military leaders, on both sides of the struggle, demonstrating the ambiguities they faced, the opportunities they took, and those they missed. Throughout, we see the relationship between the actual operations of the war and their political and moral implications. A War To Be Won is the culmination of decades of research by two of America's premier military historians. It avoids a celebratory view of the war but preserves a profound respect for the problems the Allies faced and overcame as well as a realistic assessment of the Axis accomplishments and failures. It is the essential military history of World War II--from the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to the surrender of Japan in 1945--for students, scholars, and general readers alike. (20001201)
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Not an expert, great single volume, 2008-09-10
I thought this was the best single volume book on WWII I have read. I am not an immersed expert but a casual reader with some interest in WWII. I have read dozens of WWII books over the years.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Good Starter, 2007-06-22
This is a good start for those that are reading about WWII for the first time. The book is user friendly for an introduction to World War II. The authors speak very clearly and it is easy to follow.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
 History at the Pointy End of the Stick, 2007-06-03
As a faculty member at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College, I got to tell you I love this book. It provides a tight, well-written global account of the fighting in this global war. Military professionals will find the book informed and useful, but Murray and Millett's smooth but brisk writing is also accessible to the general reader. Hitting this balance is no easy thing. The book is "joint" or "purple" in that it looks at air, land, and sea operations. The authors provide coverage of both axis and allies, but they are clearly more familiar with and better informed on operations in Europe than they are in Asia and the Pacific. The focus on the operational level, but they pay a good deal of attention to strategy and spend time looking at how decisions played out at the tactical level.
They begin their account with a general history of military developments during the interwar period. Weapons rarely come with instruction books and the major powers pursued different types of weapon systems and had different ideas on how to use them, which reflected the political and cultural values of their societies. These peacetime decisions played a large role in wartime performance.
A major shortcoming of all the axis powers was that their strategic planning was horrible. What made the Germans so successful early on was that they were good at combined arms operations (the coordinated use of infantry, artillery, engineers and air units that provided close air ground support) which allowed them to move faster than their opponents. Their early success came as much because of allied mistakes and contained and caused them to overlook serious problems like logistics, which became much more serious as the war went on.
The Battle of the Atlantic was one of the most key campaigns of the war. If the Germans had won then it would have been impossible for the allies to invade Europe. The battle though was never that close, the German Navy was overly centralized, had a weak logistical structure, failed to concentrate their focus, and was not ready to challenge the global nature of Britain's naval power. In the east, support facilities and logistics came into play. They understand that little things could have enormous ramifications. For example, the German Air Force did not have enclosed hangers for their planes on the eastern front, so ground crews had to work out in the bitter cold of a Russian winter. They did their maintenance work as quickly as possible and sometimes it was not as thorough as it should have been. These shortcuts often resulted in poor performance in the skies. German shortcomings gave the Soviets enough time to reform their army and become a much more effective fighting force than the Germans.
The authors pursue their account in a topically focused narrative fashion. In essence, they address the Battle of France, and then move to the Balkans in another chapter, and then look at the invasion of the Soviet Union, and then the Battle of the Atlantic, and then the war in the Pacific and so forth. Many times this results in chapters starting six months before the conclusion of the previous chapter. This approach, though, is best. It allows the reader to follow events to their logical conclusions. Of course, at the time, people had to deal with the air war at the same time they had to deal with the u-boats, and events in Europe had at the same time they happened in Asia. The alternative to this structure is the heavy chronological focus that Sir Martin Gilbert uses in "The Second World War" where one chapter can be on Europe and the next on the Pacific, and then the next on a vote in the British Parliament that affected the lend-lease. Only one chapter--an examination of the various home fronts--which comes for some odd reason at the end of the book breaks out of this mold.
There are numerous strengths to this book. Murray and Millett cover all the major fronts and give lesser lights, like Australia, their moment. They focus on less than sexy topics like logistics Despite what many people think, the United States faced profound logistical shortcomings before and during this war that significantly shaped the decisions that U.S. leaders had to make. The U.S. Navy turned to carrier and submarines because they lacked the logistical support to go toe-to-toe with the Imperial Japanese Navy in a surface fleet engagement. Nor do they see the war as a simple conflict of mobilized economies. Intangibles like military leadership and motivation were also important in determining the outcome of battles.
There are shortcomings with this book. While the coverage is broad, it is a bit shallow. Specialists will be disappointed in important battles getting only a paragraph of coverage. To some degree this type of problem is inherent in the format of the book--how do you cover all of World War II and get into every part in depth without writing a book that weighs 200 pounds? They are less familiar with naval operations than they are with air and land battles. They dismiss the Norway campaign as a strategic draw, but fail to note that the Germans drove the Danish and Norwegian merchant fleets into British hands, offsetting all the work u-boats had done during the previous two years. This omission is all the more surprising give the importance they attribute to the Battle of the Atlantic. They misidentify the Italian battleship "Giulo Cesare" as just "Cesare." They attribute the sinking of HMS "Hood" to a 15 inch shell from "Bismarck." This claim might be true, but most naval historians believe it was an eight inch shell from "Prinz Eugen" that hit the torpedo room or an anti-aircraft magazine. The authors attribute the Liberty ships to Henry J. Kaiser when it was actually the British that developed the ship. They blame the Tenth Fleet for failing to introduce convoys in 1942, which allowed the u-boats to score a lot of easy victories up and down the east coast. The Tenth Fleet was not established until 1943. When it comes to matters in the Pacific, they also make a number of errors. They put the "Enterprise" and "Lexington" in the wrong location on December 7, 1941. At Midway, the U.S. sank four Japanese carriers, not cruisers. At Leyte Gulf, they say the "Enterprise" and "Saratoga" were present when it was only the "Enterprise." They also under report the fire power of the Brooklyn-class cruisers which could fire six inch shells not five inches as they report. A lot of these mistakes are minor and could easily come from hitting the wrong keys on their keyboards, but they all come in naval affairs, which is no accident.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Best Comprehensive Piece on WWII Available, 2007-05-08
This book is a must read for those who want to know about WWII. The book is a gem for anyone, no matter their background. I think the high school student or the PHd candidate will find something in this book that will enhance them. The book flows almost like a novel. It is almost like reading the old series "world at war". The authors also make it interesting and present a deep perspective on the war. They do an excellent job blending the story from the strategic to the operational phase without missing a beat. The book also covers all sides of the war, the air war, the sea war, and the land war from the point of view of the nations involved. It doesn't touch the individual side, but that is unrealistic in a comprehensive story. The book is very well documented. It is a good first start for any research project.
The book doesn't just gloss over the big parts of the war. The book does an excellent job of covering the forgotten parts of WWII like china Burma theater, the home front, and little covered parts of the eastern front like the Germans in the Caucus Mtns. They also cover the things like the plight of the jews, politics of the event and other such things. The authors also do a good job of incorporating statistics to tell the story that enhances things, not distort or distract from the main points. The authors does a good job of both presenting the facts and sliding in his opinion on things. They do that in a way which enhances the story, not detracting from it. This book does slant to the American side but that isn't all bad. It does touch on the other side of the story from time to time. Overall it is a treat to read this book.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Amazing, 2006-12-15
Plain and simple, this is an amazing book, surely the best one-volume military history of World War II out there. Murray and Millett nimbly and ably cover all the war's theaters on land, at sea, and in the sky. The research is solid; the analysis is top-notch; and the writing is crisp and clear. I can say this of few books published by university presses, but A War to Be Won was a pleasure to read from start to finish. Even when chapters aren't as tightly written as the rest, they are interesting and insightful; this is true, for example, of the material on the Pacific Theater. Where the book really shines -- in both its argument and its prose -- is the Eastern Front. The authors engagingly describe what for many American readers is an (unjustly) unknown front that involved millions of German and Russian troops in some of the war's largest, most brutal battles. Specialists might debate their assessment of the Soviets' operational excellence, but Murray and Millett present a solid case. In any event, it surely whet my appetite for more specialized reading on the Eastern Front. Such is the case throughout the book, where the authors' presentation encourages further and deeper exploration.
With its explicit focus on operations, the book doesn't fully explore strategy, diplomacy, tactics, or the experiences of individual soldiers and sailors. So if you're looking for those perspectives, you might want to turn elsewhere. But for an account of World War II at the operational level or simply for a solid overview of the war, you can do no better than A War to Be Won.
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