Book Review: Engineers of Victory, by Paul Kennedy

February 9, 2013

War Machines

'Engineers of Victory,' by Paul Kennedy

By Michael Beschloss
Published: Feb 8, 2013

The historian Daniel Boorstin once complained to me about the Smithsonian Institution's decision in 1980 to undo the last two words from the name of the Museum of History as good as Technology. Boorstin had the point.

Scholars of alternative fields do often tend to underestimate the change of technology. Although many of us know which World War II brought us radar, the literature of which titanic dispute is by no equates to free from this phenomenon. For instance, the biographer Joseph P. Lash subtitled his 1976 wartime account of Franklin Roosevelt as good as Winston Churchill "The Partnership That Saved the West," in reply to which we once heard the British academician carp, "If Lash is right, afterwards why did all those scientists as good as intelligence officers as good as bureau workers worry operative so hard?"

With this uninformed as good as discursive brand brand new work, the Yale historian Paul Kennedy, many appropriate known for his during large debated "Rise as good as Fall of the Great Powers," published in 1987, calls courtesy to the approach "small groups of people as good as institutions" surmounted clearly indomitable operational obstacles to enable Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill as good as Stalin ultimately to grasp the laurels for an Allied triumph.

"Engineers of Victory" achieves the difficult charge of being the consistently original book about the single o! f the ma ny in cold blood examined episodes in tellurian history. Unlike many studies of the war, this the single is not primarily about politics, generalship or battlefield glories. References to the Big Three have been few. Instead, similar to an operative who pries open the pocket watch to reveal the middle mechanics, Kennedy tells how little-known group as good as women during lower levels helped win the war.

Kennedy concentrates mainly upon the European drama as good as upon Allied progress during the period from early 1943, when Hitler's Admiral Doenitz sank 108 Allied vessels in the single month, provoking fears which England would be starved of essential fort fuel, to the almost illusory summer of 1944, when British as good as American troops scrambled onto Festung Europa. By Kennedy's telling, the series of point accomplishments spelled the disproportion in between feat and, if not defeat, then, during least, the struggle which competence have dragged upon past 1945, with large one some-more casualties.

The first was ensuring which Allied convoys could cranky the Atlantic without being sunk by Germans. As Kennedy acknowledges, this was the first fight in which sea power's success was decided by air power, so part of the resolution was cranking out airplanes (especially long-range bombers). But vital too were innovations similar to the Hedgehog, the forward-firing ship-mounted mortar (devised by an sold British unit called "Wheezers as good as Dodgers"), as good as the Leigh Light, which exposed German U-boats which were surfacing during night to recharge batteries so which British bombers could do their lethal work. In contrast with the cadre of renouned as good as scholarly authors who given the 1970s have written, often breathlessly, about glamorous code breakers, Kenn! edy is d oubtful of Bletchley Park's importance, because the intelligence operation known as Ultra "could do only so much."

Command of the air over Germany was seized only when American squadrons arrived to augment the Royal Air Force, upend the existing British doctrine of restricting attacks to night as good as demand pinpoint bombing of specifically identified German troops as good as industrial targets. The zenith of Allied accomplishment in the air, of course, was D-Day 1944, when the formerly unimaginable 11,590 planes were sent aloft. "There had been nothing similar to it in world history,"

Kennedy writes, "nor has there been since. . . . There was no possibility for the completely diminished Luftwaffe to do anything solely remove some-more as good as some-more of the planes as good as pilots whenever they rose in to the air." Kennedy goes upon to describe how the Allies stopped the ferocious blitzkrieg assaults of 1939 to 1942 by deploying "stronger, tougher as good as better-equipped forces (with panzers, bazookas, mines, improved tactical aircraft)" in concert with the horse opera bearing of the Soviet Army, aided by their T-34-85, which Kennedy calls the "most all-round conflict tank" of the war.

Victory in Europe prior to the summer of 1945 additionally required the Allies to make hasty swell in perfecting the art of amphibious warfare. After World War I, Kennedy notes, with "a really bad degraded as good as much-reduced Germany, in the really bad damaged as good as scarcely winning France as good as Italy, as good as in an infant Soviet Union, there were many thoughts of war, though none of them involved the projection of force opposite the oceans." The humiliating debac! le of th e one-day Allied hearing effort in August 1942 to crack the Atlantic Wall with the raid opposite the medium German garrison during Dieppe, France, provided consequential lessons which led directly to the world-important success upon D-Day two years later.

Kennedy shows how wise the Allies were to restrain themselves from invading France until their commanders as good as troops had gained some-more experience in amphibious landings as good as until control of the Atlantic had been secured. He insists which D-Day could have been the rout though for the actuality which by mid-1944, British, American as good as Canadian warriors from the tip down had remade their classification in to the smoothly functioning apparatus, polished their equates to of entertainment intelligence as good as designed the now-famous "bodyguard of lies" which misled the Nazis about when as good as how the Allies would wage fight Europe.

Succinctly covering the Pacific theater, Kennedy illuminates some of the main collection which enabled United States forces to make their delayed swell opposite the sea in order to explosve Japan brand brand new fast conduit groups, brand brand new fighters similar to the F6F as good as bombers similar to the B-29, as good as the American submarine service as good as the 325,000 enlisted members of the Navy's building the whole battalions, the "Seabees," which by the finish of the fight had erected $ 10 billion value of troops infrastructure around the world.

While Kennedy rightly elevates the significance of record as good as those much-too-unheralded bands of Allied innovators, upon the grander scale he fully appreciates which "the winning of good wars always requires superior organization," which "will allow outsiders to feed uninfo! rmed ide as in to the office of victory."

An part really bad blank from the centralized systems of majestic Japan as good as Nazi Germany was the willingness, demonstrated again as good as again by tip Anglo-American troops as good as political leaders, to share energy with those of some-more medium arrange who had greater expertise in tackling the sold problem as good as who were closer to the action. Kennedy records which even the dictatorial Stalin "began to relax his iron grasp once he accepted which he had the group of first-class generals operative for him."

Although spasmodic loquacious as good as repetitive, Kennedy's volume is an important contribution to the bargain of World War II, as good as it sets the tall customary for historians writing about alternative conflicts by reminding us to keep the tighten eye upon technology. The curious reader might good finish this book as good as instruct which scholars would compensate some-more courtesy to how much American setbacks in obtuse wars similar to Korea as good as Vietnam competence have been influenced by gaps in the technological mastery.

Michael Beschloss, the author, many recently, of "Presidential Courage," is writing the history of American presidential care in wartime.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/books/review/engineers-of-victory-by-paul-kennedy.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&ref=books

A chronicle of this examination appeared in print upon Feb 10, 2013, upon page BR15 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: War Machines.

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