Phillips Payson O'Brien

Rarely does a book reorient one's thinking on a subject of long-standing familiarity. But this one did for me. I have been an avid reader of WWII history since I was a boy. My dad fought in the war and spoke of it often. By 10 years of age I had already read every book in my elementary school library about the subject, and I continued well into adulthood. Battles, strategy and tactics, generals and weaponry have all been part of my reading. This work has thrown all of that history into a new light. With a copious use of numbers and charts the author makes the argument that new technology, primarily air power, transformed the nature of war as it had been understood. The great land battles that had, up until then, been the decisive events of most wars were no longer the crucial events that determined the victor. Whoever controlled the air not only controlled the battlefield but all of the means for even waging war. A remarkable work that I highly recommend.… (mere)

While I've been aware of Adm. William Leahy for a long time, the reality that he's gone down in history as one of those classic grey eminences who had their fingers in every pie, but whose direct influence was not obvious, meant that it was hard to judge what he was really about. Phillips O'Brien is on a mission to change that perception, as the title of this book makes clear, to argue that Leahy was the predominant strategist in FDR's White House, and someone who generally made good choices. To a large degree this work is a parable of international relations and security policy, as O'Brien is determined to present Leahy as an exemplar of the responsible realist, as compared to idealists who talked a good line, but were not prepared to provide the foundations of power to back up their stands, or the practitioners of the "American way of war," with their obsession of closing with the enemy in the most direct way possible, to gain a main force victory (whether it made sense or not). It's clear to me that O'Brien is using the past to criticize the way U.S. governments have been pursuing policy in the post-1945 period.

So, do I think that O'Brien succeeded in his mission? To a large degree, yes. However, I have issues here that prevent me from being a whole-hearted enthusiast for this biography. First off, I tripped over a couple of dumb mistakes in this work, such as O'Brien's claim that only three examples of the "Iowa" class battleships were completed, or that FDR's presidential yacht "Potomac" had side-wheel propulsion. Two, while one can never overlook that the office politics in FDR's White House are really weird from a contemporary perspective, I do get the impression that O'Brien is playing up these matters too much, so as to appeal to a popular audience; I don't really care whether Princess Martha of Norway was FDR's mistress or not. Three, and probably most importantly, O'Brien does swing a big ax, and seems to really have it in for General George Marshall to a degree that almost seems personal; this is keeping in mind that Marshall's reputation probably could stand to be revisited.

All that being said, would I recommend this book? With reservations, as a good biography of Leahy, yes. As a critique of American security policy and diplomacy? Well, there are some good points here, but O'Brien is too polemical for his own good. I would read another work by the man though.… (mere)