I am pleased to say that a peer-reviewed article I wrote for the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies has just been published online. The print version should come out in a few months. Until then, here is the publisher's online link at Taylor & Francis. 

Here is the abstract:

"This article argues for the importance of the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946 in two key aspects of the transition towards Indian independence: civilian control over the Indian military, and a competition for power between Congress and communists that undermined Indian workers and their student allies.

​"The article begins with an investigation of the mutiny drawing on three sources: a first-person account from a lead mutineer, a communist history of the mutiny, and the papers published in the Towards Freedom collection.

​"In 1946 a handful of low-ranking sailors sparked a naval mutiny that ultimately involved upwards of 20,000 sailors, and then crashed into the streets of Bombay with revolutionary fervour. The Communist Party in Bombay seized upon the mutiny as an opportunity to rally the working class against the British raj, with the hope of ending British rule through revolution rather than negotiation.

​"Yet the mutiny proved less of a harbinger of what was ending and more of a bellwether for what was to come. Congress, sensing the danger of the moment, snuffed out support for the mutiny, and insisted on a negotiated transfer of power. Congress’s action thereby set a precedent for civilian dominance over the military in postindependence India. At the same time, however, Congress betrayed the effectiveness of some of organised labour’s strongest advocates, namely the Communist Party, Bombay students and Bombay labour, thereby undermining their costly mass protest, and hobbling them in future conflicts against Indian capitalists."

​While my author's agreement does not allow me to place the polished, published version of the article on this website just yet, I am able to provide readers with the rough draft of the article I submitted to the editors. Here is the link to the rough draft:         
http://jmmeyer.weebly.com/royal_indian_navy_mutiny_1946.html

​If you would like to read the published version, simply contact me and I can e-mail it directly to you.

Latimer, J. (2004). Burma: The forgotten war. London: John Murray. 610 pages.

The longest land campaign of the Second World War took place from 1942 to 1945 in the villages, cities, plains, jungles, wetlands, rice paddies, and mountains of Burma, a British colonial holding crushed in its turn after the Japanese ripped Singapore from Britain's tired imperial hands. Jon Latimer recounts the story of that campaign in Burma: The forgotten war. The British soldiers fighting in the campaign rightly felt overshadowed by the exploits of the Allies in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. History gives little attention to the campaign. The Allies won the war against Japan in the Pacific. And they won the war against Germany and Italy in Europe. Perhaps more accurately, they dominated the Axis powers with superior industrial capacity and manpower. In Burma, resources remained limited for all involved, though the Americans sent a relative fortune over 'the hump' of mountains between Burma and China to reinforce the static army of Chang Kai-Shek; but all that wealth never encouraged his active participation in the war against Japan; instead, he harbored his resources for the slow-burning fight against domestic communist forces. Meanwhile, the British and Japanese scrapped together whatever forces they could muster and uselessly grappled for control over a country that wanted nothing to do with them. Though the Japanese conquered Burma, they never gained a significant foothold along the east Indian frontier.

Yet Latimer's reuse of the phrase 'forgotten war' seems a misnomer. His book makes use of characters that captured the popular imagination for years. Mountbatten, Aulincheck, Wavell, and Slim were the last great generals of the British Empire. American general 'Vinegar' Joe Stilwell spat at the 'limeys' and hacked at the 'Japs' in a largely fruitless attempt to stir the Chinese forces into action. Orde Wingate made enemies with nearly every other British officer in the Indian Army, but while fighting deep behind the Japanese lines with his 'Chindit' guerrilla forces; after his death, Stilwell gained command of the Chindits and threw them against some of the strongest Japanese defenses. And the Japanese Lieutenant General Mutaguchi drove his 65,000 strong force so incessantly against the Indian frontier that 50,000 of his soldiers died, mostly of starvation and disease. The remnants of the Japanese forces dug in throughout Burma but put up little effective resistance. These characters do not speak softly. Nor are they easily forgotten. Yet the horror and meaninglessness of the campaign speaks to a nihilism so aware and so sharp that it must be human, and so incessant that it trivializes the heroics of its participants.

In the opening pages, Latimer explicitly ties himself to the theme of budding Burmese nationalism, but the subsequent chapters only lightly pursue that topic. In the main, the book examines the four year land and air campaign waged across the Burmese landscape, principally by British and Japanese forces. Without a doubt, Latimer shows that the multi-ethnic citizens of Burma suffered tremendously during the course of the war, but Latimer's gaze usually focuses on colorfully rendered wartime experiences of soldiers, usually at their most dramatic moments of their lives. Thus, Latimer fills page after page with farewells to dying friends and rapid-fire character sketches gleaned from diaries, reports, and published memoirs of the war. He also conveys the multi-ethnic nature of the British forces, and the hardships faced by the poorly equipped Chinese forces that Stilwell dragged into Burma. Yet contrary to the author's stated theme, the Burmese people make almost no appearance.

The book contains no maps. The absence of maps proves a boon for spurring the reader to imagine the terrain from the ground, rather than like a god. But maps helpfully express the relationship between martial forces, as well as political, social, and geographic variations. When properly prepared, maps can also dispel any notion of a linear battlefield narrative, which certainly did not occur in Burma. So the decision seems puzzling. [The BBC, however, has produced a useful series of animated maps about the campaign.]

While not quite a comprehensive study of the Burma campaign, Latimer's volume proves both able and useful for any scholar interested in the 'feel' of the fighting. He strongly depicts the horrors of close combat, as well as the wild emotional swings between defeat and victory that each side faced in turn. He deserves credit for his depictions of Japanese soldiers; he never shies away from their brutality, but also reveals their humanity. His explicit theme--the Burmese struggle for independence--hides too much in the corners of the book, but the hefty remainder proves worthwhile.

In the critique above, I did not integrate some of the most engaging ideas I found in Latimer's volume. I will list a few of them here in the form of quotations. 

"While what is presented here is fundamentally a military history, the war in Burma does not lend itself well to a single treatment. Nevertheless, a single theme runs through it: the struggle of the Burmese people for independence after sixty years of occupation" (1).

"Some time after the war a memorial was unveiled near Rangoon dedicated to the '27,000 men of the Commonwealth forces who died in Assam and Burma in the defence of freedom ...'. Given the terrible regime in Burma for most of the time since, one might question whether the war fought between 1941 and 1945 was for 'freedom.'" (1-2).

"By 1941, with 1 1/4 million men in China and 1 million in Formosa, Korea and the home islands, Japan lacked large manpower reserves and to provide five armies (corps) to strike south meant scraping the sides of the barrel, with age limits widened in both directions and student deferments cancelled. Brutality in training became yet more harsh and standards of discipline diluted, resulting in an attitude that crime against superiors was far more serious than crimes against natives. Despite its modernity, much Japanese equipment compared unfavourably with Western models ... funnelling of manpower into the infantry and their ability to live off the land meant the Japanese appeared far more numerous than Allied forces ... Plainly the Imperial Japanese Army was not on a par with that of 1905, or even 1937" (39). 

"Although overshadowed by the fall of Singapore, the battle of the Sittang on 22/23 February ranks as a defining moment in the decline and fall of the British Empire" (58).
[While it's true that Slim called the defeat at Sittang bridge the 'decisive battle of the first campaign,' Latimer's rhetoric overstates the case. The importance of Sittang bridge cannot measure up to Singapore, the largest capitulation in British military history.]

*This isn't a quote, but it seems like an important point of emphasis in Latimer's book. Churchill swapped Auchinleck and Wavell in 1941. Auchinleck won a fresh round of North African victories shortly thereafter. Back in Burma, the Japanese declaration of war forced Wavell into a fighting retreat while at the head of soldiers he barely knew. Wavell insisted that his forces maintain an aggressive posture, and that they counter-attack at every opportunity. Latimer finds Wavell out of touch with the situation on the ground, as offensive action was virtually impossible for the poorly prepared British Indian Army; to some extent, Latimer sneers at what he considers Wavell's foolish refusal to organize a more effective retreat. But the British Indian Army was a totally different force that that on the shores up North Africa, whatever the similarities on paper. Both commands featured imperial forces of mixed ethnicity. Both were motorized. The language barriers might be the same, and pose similar problems of command, but the appropriateness of the training, equipment, and logistics for the particular environment differed completely. AJP Taylor suggested in Warlords that Churchill's sacking of commanders helped spur action and relieve exhaustion. True. But Churchill's action also inspired massive confusion. 

A quote from Wavell: "It is lack of this knowledge of the principles and practice of military movement and administration--the 'logistics' of war, some people call it--which puts what we call amateur strategists wrong, not the principles of strategy themselves, which can be apprehended in a very short time by any reasonable intelligence." (121 in Latimer; also in Wavell's 'The Good Soldier).

"The Japanese did not penetrate as far as Tamu, even with patrols ... In reality no more than a village, it was strewn with hundreds of abandoned vehicles ... filled with grisly emaciated figures who had reached the village after the monsoon had broken" (121).

"Japanese victory was devastatingly complete: British prestige had suffered another hammer blow, discrediting their concept of protecting, civilizing and supervising in Asia" (121).

"[Wavell] was experiencing difficulties with Stilwell, who planned operations without reference to Wavell, 'and I think, without much reference to his staff here who seem to know little ... His senior staff officers here gives me the impression of being overawed by Stilwell and afraid of representing the true administrative picture.' Wavell felt he was effectively communicating with Stilwell through Washington. Certainly Stilwell never showed any interest in administration or logistics, realities that constantly exercised Wavell's mind ..." (131).

"... Orde Charles Wingate's character was a blend of mysticism, passion and complete self-confidence tinged with darkest depression; he was obsessive rude and overbearing. But as things stood, the scheme proposed by this 'broad-shouldered, uncouth, almost simian officer', as Major Bernard Fergusson noted, offered the only prospect of action. In 1946 Fergusson wrote: 'Wingate would do any evil that good might come. He saw his object very clearly in front of him, and to achieve it he would spare no friend or enemy; he would lie; he would intrigue; he would bully, cajole and deceive. He was a hell of a great man and few people liked him.'" (Latimer 155-156; Fergusson, Beyond the Chindwin, pp.20-21). 

"It was Burma's misfortune to have been used as a base for the Japanese 'March on Delhi' and to have suffered from concentrated Allied air attacks against railways and other transportation facilities from 1943 onwards. All the cities along the main north-south axis suffered partial demolition, and the countryside was strewn with ordnance left by both sides ... the Burmese who sought to lead their country to the sunny uplands of Independence found they had to take over a ruined country" (431).

Sometimes Latimer's historical opinion lacks a clear perspective. When writing about allied victories at Mandalay and Meiktila, for example, he notes that the Japanese defenders "had orders to resist to the last--orders that were largely futile since, as Kimura admitted later, 'the only reason it was held at all was for its prestige value'" (392). In what sense is prestige ever futile? He seems to imply 'prestige' lacks strategic value. But it seems to me that prestige is a fundamental spur to war-like action. His writing seems strange, or possibly meaningless in the wider context of the Burma campaign. 

Jalal, Ayesha. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan. CUP, 1985 (1994).  

The founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, perhaps accrues more condemnation than any other leading figure of Indian nationalism. Ayesha Jalal challenges the orthodox British and Indian interpretations of Jinnah with The Sole Spokesman, a book that examines Jinnah within the context of the All-India Muslim League and the Gordian knot of Indian politics. One of the most successful lawyers in the British empire, Jinnah began his political life as an Indian nationalist, not a Pakistani separatist. But Gandhi's religious revivalism offended Jinnah's taste for secular legalism; in response, Jinnah drifted out of the Indian National Congress as Gandhi rose to power in the 1920s. Jinnah began pursuing a policy of protected electoral rights for Muslims. Opponents found Jinnah unwilling to break even after substantial electoral defeats that revealed the tenuous grip he held over typical Muslim interests. Despite the odds, he "stayed in the saddle" and relentlessly pursued his objective of securing Muslim political rights throughout the subcontinent (and not just in the eventual regions of Pakistan). He played a dangerous game, and though he never got what he wanted--constitutional protections in a united India--he did not quite lose. His political positions sometimes appeared foolish (even dangerous), but not from the slim purchase that served as his foothold for power--he created a perceived need for a strong Muslim center.

            The British empire, throughout the early twentieth century, enhanced the power and status of India's provincial governments in order to undermine the drive for nationalist politics under the banner of Indian National Congress or the Muslim League. Strong provincial politics, the British thought, could prevent a national revolution. But in response, the Muslim League began to whisper communalist fears into the ear of Muslim majority provinces such as Punjab and Bengal; the Muslim League hinted that only a strong nationalist Muslim movement at the center could protect Muslim interests in the periphery. The Muslim League consolidated their gains during the Second World War, when the Congress National Party rallied behind Gandhi's 'Quit India' movement, which quickly led the British to arrest all the major figures of Congress. The League, on the other hand, offered wider support for the war effort. As the war concluded in Allied victory, the raj freed the leaders of Congress and pursued further negotiations for a transfer of power, thus ending the Muslim League's brief dominance in the politics of domestic India.

            At the close of the war, the Muslim League's siren call of 'Hindu India' exacerbated communal tensions (and led to real bloodshed), but gave Jinnah an increasingly powerful stake in the politics of self-rule vis a vis the British raj and Congress. Interestingly, Jinnah did not speak the same language as the Muslims in Punjab and Bengal--the very Muslims he tried to cater to ensure they supported his drive for a strong center. Ensuring the capitulation of Punjab and Bengal into the house of the Muslim League required some manipulation on the part of Jinnah, for he gambled with their money. "The Punjab and Bengal would never vote to partition their provinces," Jalal writes, "and if they realised that a vote for Pakistan was a vote for partition, they would reject Pakistan." Thanks to Jinnah's party operatives, voters on the periphery never quite gathered that this would be the eventual outcome of a Pakistan's independence. Indeed, Jinnah did not want such an outcome, but he came to accept it when Mountbatten and Nehru rushed the process along in the spring and summer of 1947.

            As the hour sounded on Indian independence, Jinnah found himself at the head of a Pakistan that poorly suited the interests of most Muslims--a 'mutilated and moth-eaten Pakistan' that perpetuated communal and inter-state violence well into the twenty-first century. Jinnah fought for Muslim rights in India, but instead he received Pakistan. Viceroy Mountbatten, the last leader of the British raj, receives a poor score from Jalal for failing to understand Jinnah's complex political position, and instead ripping apart Pujab and Bengal in the drive towards Indian independence. The penultimate viceroy, Archibald Wavell, receives a compassionate and high score for his astute understanding of Jinnah's political position as well as the federalist structure required to ensure maximum Muslim League cooperation. In Jalal's argument, the partition of India was a horrible mistake, not a political necessity.

            The book's arguments require its author to justify Jinnah's action ex post facto; Jalal's detective work makes use of her sources to paint an overwhelmingly vivid portrait of Muslim politics (though Jinnah himself could use a little more color). In Jalal's book, Jinnah stands as a preference-reading politician facing exceptional circumstances--a depiction that stands somewhat odds with more compassionate sketches of him, such as found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. At her best, Jalal reveals the political limitations of Jinnah, and the personal limitations of figures like Gandhi, Nehru, and Mountbatten when confronting Jinnah's complex legal mind. The book represents an important corrective to the popular depictions of Jinnah as an uncompromising man hell-bent on creating 'Pakistan' in a search for political power. Jinnah, rather, attempted a practical and legal approach to Indian independence, but found that Hindu and Muslim revivalism created a slick slope that he could not easily slalom. Many thousands perished upon the birth of an independent India and Pakistan, but Jinnah--the 'sole spokesman'--cannot bear the sole blame for the complex realities of the region's post-colonial politics. From village, to province, to nation, and from Congress, to Raj, to League, Ayesha Jalal's study traces a witheringly difficult path through India's colonial history.

Gopal, Sarvepalli. Jawaharlal Nehru: a biography, Vol. 1.  HUP (1976).     
 
In the final years of the British raj, Jawaharlal Nehru emerged as India's preeminent statesman and as a model of pragmatic leadership. The journey to that position led Nehru though the lecture halls of Harrow and Cambridge, but also a discipleship under Mahatma Gandhi, and nearly ten years imprisonment in British gaols. He emerged, in the end, as India's first prime minister and one of the longest tenured statesmen of the last century. 

The first volume of Sarvepalli Gopal's three volume biography emphasizes Nehru's steadfast development from a romantic nationalist into a courageous pragmatist. In the process, Nehru navigated four tense decades as a leading member of the Indian National Congress, the nationalist organization which used the tools of non-violence and non-cooperation to pry India away from an exhausted British empire. 

The independence of India was not an historical inevitability. Nationalist aspirations lacked shape and spirit prior to Mahatma Gandhi's entrance on the scene in 1915. In the shadow of Gandhi's lean, ascetic frame and his unyielding emphasis on social reform, Nehru and Congress overcame their association with British privilege and gave Indian nationalism a distinct, powerful, and popular voice. Their campaigns of non-cooperation and non-violence ebbed and flowed the like a tide throughout the interwar years. They rallied the uneducated masses, and rattled the nerves of the British raj. 

After years of struggle, the world-wide political conflicts surrounding the Second World War served as a catalyst to the fall of the British raj. The war opened the final chapter in Nehru's struggle for independence. The United Kingdom relied upon India as the second pillar of its military efforts; Britain brought India--a fifth of the world's population--into the war unasked. The war also depleted the resources of the Indian civil service, and required the British to hand increasing portions of power to domestic Indian interests and domestic Indian bureaucrats. Winston Churchill, Britain's war-time leader, nevertheless attempted to hold on to India with the mass arrest of Congress leaders and offers of post-dated settlements for independence. But the war strained the British to the breaking point and made a rapid compromise towards independence the only honorable political recourse. 

Nehru's Congress led the negotiations. Against Gandhi's wishes, Nehru accepted Muhammad Ali Jinnah's demands for a separate Pakistan. In the face of rising communal violence, Nehru firmly held the reins of Congress, and prevented the emergence of a strong ethnic Hindu party. Nehru merged social reform into Indian independence, and thus paved the way for a more liberal, democratic India even as Congress rejected further British intervention. He channeled the forces of nationalism, revivalism, and modernization as he and his allies established one of the largest countries on Earth. Gopal's first volume concludes at the dawn of an independent India on 14 August 1947; Nehru served India as prime minister until 1964. His premiership eventually wrestled with the creation of Pakistan, violent tensions with communist China, and all the challenges of the Cold War.

Gopal's biography expertly evokes the political environment surrounding Nehru's development, but the author also soberly demonstrates how personal attachment moderated Jawaharlal Nehru's political life. With touching devotion, Nehru's father and mother abandoned bourgeois comforts to follow their son into the dangerous politics of swaraj. Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal's father, emerges as a moderate and patient hero in the first half of the book; he openly acknowledges his relentless pride in his son's efforts, yet helps to curb Jawaharlal's radical, youthful tendencies. With the backing of his parents, Jawaharlal devoted himself to the cause of an independent India, and began disciplining his political ideas with a cautious ear towards Gandhi's sympathy for the Indian poor. Gopal also rises to the occasion when depicting the troubled but deeply felt marriage between Jawaharlal and Kamala Nehru. Nehru's personal relationships with his father, mother, wife and mentors conditioned his political involvement with touches of humanity and sudden bursts of patient compromise. 

Gopal is somewhat less successful in explaining Nehru's early rise to power in the United Provinces. Nehru's appeal as a well-travelled, well-educated, mid-career nationalist emerges clearly, but why did Gandhi and Annie Besant devote so much attention to the young man as early as 1914?  These connections remain somewhat mysterious in Gopal's present volume. Ostensibly, Motilal's connections as a powerful and wealthy lawyer played a decisive role helping his son meet these individuals, but the nature of the connections stands uncertain to a reader (such as myself) less familiar with the early years of the Indian nationalist movement.

Despite that one difficulty, Gopal presents the story of Nehru's development with candor and confidence. 

Many statesmen marshaled nationalist sentiment in the twentieth century: Churchill, Hitler, and Roosevelt; Stalin, Mussolini and Mao. Among them all, Gopal's Nehru emerges as the most effectively peaceful and virtuous in his rise to power, and the most magnanimous in his use of authority.

Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. Freedom at Midnight. Simon and Schuster, 1975.

In Freedom at Midnight, Collins and Lapierre unveil the story of how thoughtful, intelligent, and willful men brought a negotiated end to an empire, yet unleashed the most massive migration in human history. 

Upon arriving in India in 1947, Viceroy Mountbatten sought a consensus solution for the emplacement of Indian self-rule. "I had to force the pace," he remembered, "[for] we were sitting... on a fused bomb and we didn't know when the bomb would go off." The fuse moved towards an explosive packed with sectarian resentments that might engulf over a fifth of the world's population. Mountbatten sought to leave the subcontinent with all the imperial dignity he could muster. He therefore charmed Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and other Indian political elite into finding a swift solution. As the clock struck midnight on August 15, 1947, those leaders celebrated a historic accomplishment: a bartered transfer of power after hundreds of irrevocable years of colonial experience. The Indian elite smothered the bomb of sectarian strife, but it still went off. Hundreds of thousands perished. 

The book draws to a close after Hindu extremists murder Mahatma Gandhi. Rather than celebrating Gandhi's pious nature, the murderous zealots despised Gandhi as the purveyor of "a coward's philosophy that had vitiated the force and character of the Hindu people." But in the violent season that surrounded Indian independence, it took no courage for the strong to slaughter the weak and helpless. "India was ever a land of extravagant dimensions, and the horror of the Punjab's killings, the abundance of human anguish and suffering that they would produce would not fail that ancient tradition."

Collins and Lapierre present a thoughtful and heartfelt rendering of India's tragic salvation. Their largely successful work contains two irritations. First, the authors suggest the Indian political elite might have better managed the transition to Indian independence. But they present little evidence that historic contingency allowed for any serious alteration of the outcome. Second, they show little empathy for the Eastern concepts of reverence that locked the various factions into cycles of bloodshed; they consider sectarian rivalry as a mere cultural cover for self-interested gain. While that thesis holds a truth, it fails to grapple with the complete complexity of religious psychology. Yet the sweeping power of their epic narrative renders such complaints a marginal matter for academic debate; their biases in no way impede enjoyment of the book. Collins and Lapierre tell a critically important story of power and persuasion, religious faith and political jealousy--and they tell it well.

                                                                      * * * * * *
My task, I suppose, as a writer is to reflect upon how the readings I undertake illuminate or complicate my primary interest as a social scientist--namely, the British use of special operations in the Second World War. 

A few key points emerge from my reading of Freedom at Midnight. First, while I remain an unrepentant admirer of Wavell, the penultimate Viceroy of India, he needed to make way for someone with Mountbatten's charm and energy. Given Wavell's previous use of unorthodox measures in campaigns in the Middle East and Burma, why did he not attempt to attempt unorthodox political maneuvers? His journals make clear that he suffered under a tremendous workload, with little time to think matters over. Further, the Indian civil service, at the time, lacked the ambitious strivers found throughout the British military at the time of the Second World War. If a Wavell does not flag down your car, you never hear about his ideas for Special Night Squads. 

The Second World War eviscerated the Raj's competency as an instrument of British power. It became more and more beholden to domestic Indian industry and wealth. And none of these individuals attempted to intervene with Wavell with particularly bold plans? Prospect theory suggests that I should see Wavell taking risks--but I am of course assuming a domain of losses, when in fact the Viceroyalty represented the highest point of his career from the standpoint of status. It is very difficult to determine whether an individual is in a domain of gains or losses sans highly controlled experimentation. We know how propsect theory works and that it proves useful in many contexts, but it takes a lot of hard work to establish the proper domain in a 'real world' situation. Kurt Weyland and Rose McDermott for example, have established instances in which political leaders opted for risky policy options while stumbling within a the context of a losing situation. Weyland cites examples of this during periods of hyper-inflation in 1990s Latin America [also see his 2004 article]; with the economy spiraling out of control, economists throughout the region pulled the plug on their state-centered economic policies and introduced market liberalization despite a heavy cost to their traditional interests and political networks. In McDermott's case, she established that Jimmy Carter succumbed to risk-taking when attempting to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis; despite slim odds of success, he allowed the military to undertake a risky rescue operation that ended in catastrophe and embarrassment. 

The extremity and uniqueness of these examples suggest how difficult it can be to establish with certainty that a particular cognitive heuristic (or perhaps psychological mechanism) played a role in an individual's decision making at a particular point in time. It's difficult--but not impossible. With practiced discretion, a researcher can apply qualitative methods to establish causal inference so long as the researcher pays close attention to the psychological theory upon which they draw, and rigorously tests the applicability of the theory to a particular case through the objective observation of causal process, juxtaposed against alternative hypotheses. 

A.J.P. Taylor. The War Lords. Published by Hamish Hamilton (1977) and Penguin (1978).

I am including this entry in my 'book review' series, but it differs in nature. Rather than judging A.J.P. Taylor's The War Lords as a history book, I merely attempt to capture his argument.  I also try to emulate his clipped prose, when appropriate.

The War Lords stemmed from a lecture series that Taylor presented on the BBC. In the series, Taylor spoke completely off-the-cuff and without notes, as was his custom. For the book, he merely adapted and edited the type-written transcript of his lectures. The War Lords touches upon themes that Taylor explores with greater detail in other books; thus, readers familiar with A.J.P. Taylor will find much of the material redundant.  But he also turns his gaze in directions that he otherwise ignored--especially at the power and personality of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It seems impossible to connect Taylor's use of the term 'war lord' to any other era, even periods as recent as the First World War. Taylor himself states "In the First World War, curiously enough, there were no war lords." The only other war lords he names are Attila the Hun and Napoleon. The criteria remain unclear for the title 'war lord.' In Taylor's opinion, the five individuals under review arose from very particular circumstances. They share characteristics with the demagogues of Athens, for they each made exceptional use of boldness and public charisma to define a path up to and through the Second World War.

Taylor begins the book with a breathless preface that offers a window into his powers of analysis. A full quote better demonstrates the effect than any summary:

"Five of the lectures are biographical studies of the men who exercised supreme power during the Second World War; the sixth explains why there was no such man in Japan nor indeed any supreme direction at all. There is a deeper theme. Most wars in modern times have been run by a confusion of committees and rival authorities. The Second World War was uniquely different. In September 1939 the British and French governments declared war on Germany. Otherwise virtually every great decision of the Second World War was made by one of these five men except when the chaotic anarchy of Japan intervened. Each of the five was unmistakably a war lord, determining the fate of mankind. Yet each had an individual character and method that makes generalisation difficult.

          "Three were avowedly dictators; two exercised their dictatorship with an outward respect for constitutional forms. One, Mussolini, was lazy. Three ran the operations of war from day to day, Stalin almost from hour to hour. Roosevelt observed the war with casual detachment until the moment for decision arrived. All had served in the First World War, though Roosevelt served only in a civilian office. Four were prolific writers; Roosevelt never wrote anything, not even his own speeches. Four were masters of the radio; only Stalin owed his power entirely to other means. Two were amateur painters; one was an amateur violinist. One was the grandson of a duke. One came from a rich professional family. One was the son of a customs official. Two were the sons of humble workers. Only one received a university education. One was happily married. One ran after every woman who came in sight. One was unhappily married. One was a widower. The fifth married only the day before he died.

          "This was a bewildering variety. But the five had some things in common. Each of them dominated the service chiefs. Each determined his policy of his country. All five were set on victory, though of course not all could achieve it. They provided the springs of action throughout the years of war. This was an astonishing assertion of the Individual in what is often known as the age of the masses."

Taylor concentrates on the wartime decisions and personal characteristics of the major figures of the Second World War. He sketches rapidly, and without great detail. He adds a bit of background, and concentrates on the eyes--he wants to know where his 'war lords' are looking, and why.

Taylor argues more persuasively and more consistently in another of his popular history books, The Illustrated History of the Second World War. But here his task is entertainment, rather than serious learning. As with his Illustrated History series, Taylor fills the book with captioned photos that prove as informative as his text; yet here the photos are much more narrow in scope, for they center around his 'war lords.' And, despite the term 'war lord,' political leaders rarely engage in anything visually striking. For the most part, the leaders stand or sit in the company of mentors, peers, and ministers, and smile or grimace at the camera.

The photos of Mussolini make an exception--Taylor expertly captures the way the "Western world" saw Mussolini during the height of his power: the able sportsman and the every-man, the courageous warrior and the elite politician. And so we see how a man who looks like a clownish fraud in the present resembled a charming futurist in the past.

MUSSOLINI

Taylor begins the book with Mussolini. In a way, the entire era of the Second World War began with Mussolini's rise to power, for he initiated the conservative world's love affair with the illusions of a fascist modernity. Mussolini projected an image of constancy in a time of doubt and strife, yet a constancy perfectly in tune with ever-increasing wealth and power and technological advancement; the image appeared seductive enough that many individuals fell into the grip. He represented a self-confident alternative to socialism.

Like Hitler, Mussolini "served in the trenches--and the Italian trenches were perhaps the worst trenches in Europe, with the harshest conditions, where nothing was done for the ordinary men." The harshness of the trenches distilled his early socialist leanings into an entirely new form of politics--20th century fascism.  He fed off of popular discontent. He organized ex-servicemen and formed task forces to resist the working-class socialist movements. Mussolini and his 'Black Shirt' party began to march throughout the country. When the army refused to intervene against Mussolini, the king of Italy made him prime minister. Mussolini's party concentrated power around him with tools of coercion, including murder.

While other countries felt buffeted from winds of distress and open political conflict, Italy projected an image of unity and modernity.

Mussolini built an image of Italy as a powerful military leader; the image proved far too successful for his own good. The shows of force deluded Mussolini, and led him astray. "As he looked at these masses of marching troops shown to him on the screen, he really believed that Italy had an army of five million. The actual figure was not much more than a million when it came to the point." He played the role of the every-man, he played the role of peace-maker (at Munich), and eventually he played the role of war lord. But in the role of war lord (as with the role of peace-maker) he could only play and project--he could not execute, nor achieve success.

He entered the war against Britain just before the collapse of France. He hoped for a share in German glory. But Britain failed to negotiate a peace, and instead won the Battle of Britain; unable to strike at Germany, Britain turned on Italy in both the Mediterranean and Africa. Thus Mussolini finally swung a sword he had shined for twenty years, only to find that it shattered when actually put to use against another European power. Such delusions are the cost of dictatorship; the dictator mitigates the risk of lost power, but maximizes the risk of bad information. When no one gains for creating their own interpretation of events, they quickly learn to keep their mouths shut.

The Italians began to look for a way out of the war, but the Germans did not allow Mussolini to capitulate at a reasonable hour. So Mussolini carried on as his power evaporated. Eventually, a partisan communist gunned him down. The partisans hung Mussolini upside down beside his mistress, Clara Petacci.

The image of the defeated Duce resonated strongly--even theatrically-- back in Britain. Laurence Olivier made use of it at the Old Vic to represent the conclusion of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, and Kevin Spacey recreated the image a few years ago for the conclusion of Richard III.

HITLER

A.J.P. Taylor interprets Adolf Hitler as an exceptional propagandist with the typical interests of a world leader: respect, security, and economic growth; Taylor's interpretation thus widely differs from the popular idea of Hitler as a madman and ruthless xenophobic, solely responsible for the ills of the Second World War. I am not interested in making a determination one way or the other, though I would say that his behavior--even his cruel xenophobia--fits well within the framework of human behavior during wartime, even if it sits outside of the Geneva convention. This does not make it morally excusable whatsoever. But it does suggest that 21st century moral conventions cannot help understand the psychological processes that governed his actions.

Hitler--like many Germans--despised the peace settlement that concluded the First World War. The economic depression and period of hyper-inflation afforded him the opportunity to rise to power on a wave of bourgeois discontent. Unable to effect a political revolt in 1923, he learned to pervert the constitutional process of the Weimar Republic and eventually assumed the chancellorship. He succeeded Hindenburg in the presidency, and also assumed the mantle of war minister in 1938, thus securing all the major positions of political power in Germany. He further consolidated power using the methods of Mussolini and Stalin though, in comparison with Stalin, he killed fewer people in the process (but left a far greater scar on the Western psyche).

Hitler's forces invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. This brought France and Britain into the war. He personally made the strategic decision to invade France, as he wanted to confront 'the greatest army in Europe' on his terms rather than theirs. He defeated them with unexpected swiftness, but then failed to completely defeat Britain.

Now Hitler faced a dilemma. He had an army, well-trained and tested, but no continental battles to fight. He lacked the naval power to seriously contest the British Isles. "By 1941, he was absolutely convinced that unless he struck a  blow against Russian first and knocked the Russians out, they would, one day, when perhaps his conflict with Britain had got more acute, turn against him; they would betray him." But the strike at Russia did not appear desperate or paranoid at the time. Most expected Russia's quick capitulation. Perhaps they thought Stalin's tyranny left him atop a house of cards, much like Mussolini.

This proved the gravest strategic error of the war. Within the year, the German army halted within sight of Moscow. "This was the turning-point of the Second World War," Taylor averred. "In June 1941, Germany was the acknowledge victor, dominant over the whole of Europe. In December 1941, the German forces halted in front of Moscow. They were never to take it... and from that moment, Hitler appreciated that total victory could not be achieved."

Hitler appears never to have attempted a compromise peace--he never even seems to have entertained it. He found Japan's attack on the United States inspiring, and "for this and for no other reason, he plunged, at the end of 1941, the very time of his Moscow disasters, into the Japanese War."

As he declared war on America, "he made at this time the most extraordinary remark: 'We have chosen the wrong side; we ought to be the allies of the Anglo-Saxon powers. But providence has imposed on us this world-historical mistake.'" It should, perhaps, sober the self-righteous 'Anglo-Saxon powers' that Hitler felt more kinship with the United Kingdom and the United States than with any other nation; this was not delusional; he recognized the seeds of his own sources of power in these advanced industrial nations. Rising working-class discontent and xenophobia struck fear into the electorates of both the United Kingdom and the United States.

Hitler envisioned a collapse of the Soviet-British-American alliance. It never occurred. Their differing ideologies and regime-types did not result in open conflict. The more Hitler held together his own regime, the more the Allies had to lean together to destroy him. He became the centrifugal axis of the alliance.

The responsibility eventually broke him, and caused more damage than the assassination attempt that left him crippled. He weakened, physically and mentally. He indulged in fantasy.

Taylor places the 'inspiration' for the horrors of the Holocaust more on the shoulders of Himmler, rather than Hitler, "though Hitler took it up." Taylor does not explore Hitler's xenophobia any deeper than that.

Taylor ends his discussion of Hitler on a strange and sympathetic note. "With his death and disappearance, Hitler performed a final service to the German people--he carried with him into obscurity the responsibility for the world war and the guilt for the crimes and atrocities with which it had been accompanied. As a result, the German people were left innocent."

No other 'war lord' intervened more effectively in strategy, and with greater success. His initial successes left his generals and civilian ministers in a poor position to seize the reigns as Hitler's abilities broke down.

CHURCHILL

The war ruined the image of Mussolini; the war saved the image of Churchill. He served in high public office for most of the 20th century, and experienced war as a young soldier, a journalist, and a politician. In the First World War, Churchill's career nearly died on the shores of Gallipoli; he recovered, and towards the end of the war he followed in Lloyd George's footsteps as the Minister of Munitions, and then Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air. In between the loss at Gallipoli and his return to power, he served briefly in the trenches as an artillery officer.

Taylor however skips much of this, and the interwar years, and instead begins in May, 1940, "after the unsuccessful British campaign in Norway--a campaign, ironically, for which Churchill was mainly responsible and the failures of which were due  more to him than to Chamberlain, the prime minister who was actually discredited." Nevertheless, Churchill became prime minister.

Taylor remembers Churchill's assumption of the premiership as a contentious and uncertain moment; the confidence and glory only came in hindsight. But Churchill possessed gifts that suited him to the task. He could look back into history and draw useful lessons; he could look into the present and demand the most of modern technology. And he could put his ideas together coherently, even if some of those ideas deserved less attention than they received. Roosevelt once said of him, "Winston has a hundred ideas every day. One of them is bound to be right."

Perhaps most importantly, Churchill determined the direction of the conflict: it would go on, even after the fall of France in 1940. He ensured that the British Empire would not sue for peace, though the British could not defeat Germany on its own. Ultimately, Hitler was probably destined to lose the war to Stalin, but Churchill's insistence on continuing the fight ensured a prominent place for capitalist-democratic governance at the war's conclusion.

During the prosecution of the war, Churchill loathed open opposition. As a consequence he sacked Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the victor of the Battle of Britain. He sacked Auchinleck. He sacked Wavell. Each general won major victories; each suffered relatively minor defeats, and often made do with minimal resources due to Churchill's incessant striving on ineffective campaigns. But a certain amount of 'sacking' proved useful, as generals tire during the course of a war; furthermore, a general well-suited to defense may prove incapable of forming an effective offense. So Churchill's habit of sacking generals on a regular basis proved a boon, rather than a burden, even if he acted unjustly to the individual officers involved.

After the Dunkirk evacuation of May-June 1940, a pall settled over the forests of northern Europe; the war shifted to the Mediterranean. "If you ask what the Mediterranean campaign was about, why the British were ever in the Mediterranean, one can give the simple answer of the Second World War, as of the First on some occasions: they were there because they were there--because they were there. And being there, then they had better stay there and fight." The British did not return to the continent until 1944. They had colonial and territorial holdings in the Middle East, and they had armies in place. They used these armies, for there was no other way to prosecute the war.

Churchill worked with relentless energy. He wore out those who could not keep up. He spoke with "a mixture of high rhetoric and humor. His speeches sound better now perhaps than they did at the time, when they did not always come across very well, though they were undoubtedly inspiring. The fact that he was always so lively also brought inspiration to others..."

"He made many mistakes. All war lords make mistakes. Churchill's mistakes were the mistakes of hurrying too much, of wanting victory too soon and wanting it with inadequate means... when he could not do something effective, he would do something ineffective... Nevertheless, on most of the great issues, though not on all, he was restrained."

Interestingly, the last great imperialist sacrificed much of the Britain's credit in the eastern empire to defend the Mediterranean. The fall of Singapore signified the end of Britain's ability to safeguard its colonial interests.

But on the other hand he did not hesitate to work with Stalin, despite having previously run the wars of intervention. He shared in the glory with the United States and the Soviet Union, and mitigated the shallow bickering that took place among the allies in the First World War.

"At a time when his physical powers were waning, Churchill still continued to survey the whole field of war, and even the most critical would hesitate to say that anyone could have taken his place... there was in Churchill, a combination of the profound strategist, the experienced man and the actor. Not always the tragic actor; there was a rich comedy about him as well. No other war leader, I think, had the same  depth of personal fascination as Churchill... he combined, to the end, imperial greatness with human simplicity."

STALIN

"Most people, I suppose, regard Stalin as a monster." Yet at the time of the Bolshevik revolution he seemed 'a grey blur.' No one anticipated that he would become the most powerful leader of the Second World War, nor that he would have the greatest longevity in office.

He fought as a Bolshevik general in the wars of intervention; during that conflict, he ignored Trostky's instructions with an impunity that he never accepted from his own subordinates.  

Stalin seized power after the death of Lenin. First, he attacked the enemies of his friends, and then he killed off the friends that disagreed with him, or that offered palatable alternatives to his own ruthless approach. "So in 1939, when the Second World War began, Stalin stood alone, puzzled, suspicious, with nobody whom he respected, nobody whose opinions he accepted, and hardly aware of the world outside the Soviet Union." Hitler and the British suspected Stalin's isolation would be his downfall. Stalin may have agreed with them to extent, for he did everything in his power to avoid war with Germany. Hitler invaded anyway. The Germans crossed the Russian frontier on 22 June 1941.

But Stalin overcame his isolation, and under his authority the Russians withstood the assault of up to four-fifths of the German army, and all of its best divisions.

Russia did not accomplish this easily. In the early days of the war, Stalin had under-performing generals shot under the auspices of a court martial. No other 'war lord' had his generals shot for failure in the field.

Stalin managed the war on three vast fronts, and remained absolutely involved in raising, equipping, and fielding his forces. He managed the war to an even greater degree than Hitler, who trusted an extensive professional staff.

Stalin's army failed to take advantage of its superiority in men and resources early in the war. He simply lacked the patience to withstand German offensives without immediately counter-attacking. He lost many of his forces due to his rashness. But at Stalingrad and Kursk he learned patience, and shattered the German armies as they exhausted their energy on his entrenched forces.

Taylor argues that Stalin did not seriously think of political conquest during the Second World War. His sole aim was to beat Hitler. In this way, he closely mirrored the mindset of Churchill: 'I have only one aim in life--that is to beat Hitler. This makes everything simple for me.'

The Soviets lost twenty million people in the war. "The Russians, and Stalin personally, were set on total defeat [of Germany], on exacting the unconditional surrender of the Germans, long before Roosevelt formulated this."

"A number of those who were at the conferences remarked on the fact that both Churchill and Roosevelt brought with them a whole host of advisers... [but] Stalin could do all the negotiating, he could discuss all the military problems, he could discuss all the political problems and had an absolutely tight grasp of them. Whatever he had been in earlier years, he grew up into being a statesman; one who, without doubt, was totally devoted to the interests of his own country, but also of very great gifts and, in some ways, of considerable sentiment and responsiveness."

He possessed a savage sense of humor. He joked about shooting diplomats, generals, and friends; it's hard to see the humor in this, especially since he really did shoot diplomats, generals  and friends. But still, he had, like the other leaders of the Second World War, a sense of humor.

"Stalin I think, assumed, as so many people do, that the relations based on war would go on when the war was over: that there will be the same feeling of 'Well, we must agree because we're allies in a great war.' But, of course, what happened is that, when the war was over there was no longer the same intensity of need to agree. And Stalin was very quick to respond suspiciously."

"We know comparatively little about his last years. He became increasingly suspicious and the gifts and brilliance which he had shown appeared to vanish. Indeed, many people think, in the end, he became mad with suspicion, and was proposing a vast new liquidation.

"When he died, he was treated as one of the greatest heroes Soviet Russia had ever known, but thereafter he was lowered and degraded. At first, his remains were placed beside those of Lenin; nowadays, though, they have a more modest position under the Kremlin wall.

"The last word, perhaps, goes to Averell Harriman, who was American ambassador to Moscow during the Second World War. He found Stalin better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than Churchill--perhaps the most effective of the war lords."

ROOSEVELT

A.J.P. Taylor distrusts Roosevelt; had Taylor written more on him, we might have learned that Taylor distrusts the American Presidency as an institution. Americans hold their presidents accountable for perceived economic performance. Interestingly, presidents have little control over the economy. So the sort of person who assumes the office--weirdly--posses incredible powers over the conduct of warfare, but little over that with which he most concerns himself, namely the economy. The individuals who occupy the office look distinct (and odd) when contrasted with totalitarian or parliamentarian leaders.

Unlike the other 'war lords' of the Second World War, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not see uniformed military service during the First World War. Instead, he held a political post, the assistant secrataryship of the American navy.

"Roosevelt was also the odd man out in another way; he was totally political. If you look at the others, you will see that they had other interests. All of them wrote books, though of different kinds. Roosevelt never wrote anything, except rather casual private letters... However, some of the finest phrases [of his speeches], such as 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,' were inserted by Roosevelt at the last moment."

"His background did not prepare him at all to be a war lord," Taylor wrote. He came to power facing 'perhaps the worst crisis that any modern country has ever faced" though America was perhaps uniquely suited to overcoming the Great Depression, with its vast natural resources, potential for advanced industrialization, cheap labor, and population growth.

"Roosevelt had no preconceived ideas about economics or, for that matter, about war... I am tempted to say that he had no principles. I do not mean by that that he was wicked, but that he operated only in response to a situation, and decided only at the very last minute." In that way he fundamentally differed from Woodrow Wilson, the American president that entered the First World War, and idealistically sought to end all wars altogether. Roosevelt did have hopes, however, and those hopes centered around economic prosperity and the American economic system. And though the American economy performed well during the war, it worked best during times of peace. So he looked forward to the construction of the United Nations as an "essential way forward for mankind, and that it would work." In other words, that it could prevent another world war. And the United Nations certainly proved a useful instrument for keeping the Cold War from getting any hotter than it did.

Roosevelt let the war come to him. Though some of his opponents and naysayers look for conspiratorial evidence that he sought to drag the U.S. into the war, this seems not only absurd but contrary to his character. He waited for situations to develop and chose political solutions to economic, moral, and social situations. Of the 'war lords,' he most carefully managed his country's economic prowess. While the other nations bent their economic power solely towards the immediate conflict, the United States profited tremendously from the war. "Although the Americans supplied the weapons of war, they also squeezed Great Britain dry economically; and that was Roosevelt's deliberate policy."

Roosevelt did not place Great Britain unequivocally on the side of good. He (and many other Americans) distrusted European imperialism intensely.

Roosevelt imposed an economic embargo on Japan, which Taylor refers to as "a delayed declaration of war." Yet if it was a declaration of war, the United States made little effort to anticipate any attack. And prior to 7 December 1941, a series of absurd bureaucratic military blunders in Washington led to complete surprise during the attack at Pearl Harbor. Both Admiral Stark and General Marshall failed to act efficiently when intelligence officers relayed fears of an impending assault.

Before America ever engaged in actual combat operations, the embargo began strangling the Japanese economy, while the lend-lease program upheld the British economy. War was clearly on the way. "Pearl Harbor solved Roosevelt's problem, for he would have had great difficulty bringing the American people in to the war if it had not been for the Japanese attack on it and the German ultimatum that followed... From that time, Roosevelt was commander-in-chief of the American armed forces in practice as well as in theory." In other words, he did not involve himself in military affairs until the war actually began; he became a 'war lord,' but he was not a warmonger. In this way he differed significantly from Hitler and Mussolini, Churchill and Stalin.

Upon entering the war, Roosevelt made a number of decisive, non-obvious choices. First, he determined to defeat Germany before going after Japan. Second, he sent the American army to fight in North Africa and Italy prior opening a second front in continental Europe. He wanted to start fighting immediately (or at least as soon as possible), but the invasion of Europe required a greater build-up of arms than the Americans could manage in 1942. Taylor cynically states that Americans fighting in battle (or at least clearly on the way to fighting in a battle) would help ensure victory in the 1942 congressional elections; Taylor is probably right.

When it came to strategy, Roosevelt took an economic approach, both simple and wise: he felt that the way to win a modern war was to have absolutely more of everything than your opponent. And though it took awhile to get going, eventually he did.

"By 1944, Great Britain had become much overshadowed by this American power, which Roosevelt had developed by always setting the targets higher than any American industrialist thought would be possible, and these being achieved."

Roosevelt worked hard to establish and maintain a close working relationship with the allies. Unlike many Americans, he did not regard the Russians as totally divided from them by a barrier of principle. "Relations between West and East were warmer in Roosevelt's time, not because, as people say, he made unreasonable concessions, but because he was the only Western statesman of that period who really treated the Soviet Union as an equal." This represented a wise political move, for the Soviet Union possessed far more raw military power than any other country during the Second World War. But Roosevelt did not realize this at the time; rather, his political approach to diplomacy simply rested on the assumed courtesy of equal treatment; for the same reason, the Chinese dictator Chiang Kai-Shek received far more serious attention from Roosevelt than Churchill or Stalin.

Roosevelt set the United States on track for becoming the greatest power of the 20th century, for he found a sustainable path towards maintaining a balance of economic and military might. Counting soldiers represents a reasonable way of assessing military strength during a battle, but the easy (and unburdeonsome) buttressing of those soldiers over a period of many years signals the country's strength in the long run. And Roosevelt established a precedent for balancing economic development and military power such that the maintenance of his military arms never sank his country into an endless pool of debt, nor crippled its industry with centralized micromanagement.

JAPAN: WAR LORDS ANONYMOUS

"The Japanese have some claim, I suppose, to the original war lords. Their country, for some hundreds of years, was under the control of war lords--the samurai. And yet, in the Second World War, the Japanese diverged entirely from the pattern which I have been presenting in previous lectures: there was no Japanese war lord--no single figure who led Japan into war, who directed the war, who made the decisions, and so on."

 Tojo is often mistaken for a war lord. But in Taylor's view he merely represented a wide class of generals and admirals and politicians who contributed towards Japanese policy-making.

The Japanese withdrew from the world until forced open by American gunboats in 1867. Within an astonishingly short period of time, they adopted 'all the lessons of Europe' on constitutionalism, industrialism, and parliamentarianism. They elevated their religious figure, the emperor, into the position of head of state. They adopted modern military practices. "Modern Japan grew out of European history, and the Japanese view was that if they loyally, carefully, pedantically followed the European patterns, they would be transformed into an acceptable member of the great power family." In the early 20th century, Japan fought against the Russians and emerged victorious. In the First World War, they joined the allied cause, and suggested that the League of Nations adopt a clause laying down racial equality as a principle; they assumed it would be accepted.

But it was defeated by none other than President Wilson. And then the Americans placed a total ban on the migration of Japanese into the United States. "The Japanese learnt a lesson: the rules which applied to white men did not apply to what Churchill used to call 'those funny little yellow folk.' Racial equality was far from being achieved. This, among other things, no doubt made the Japanese more sensitive and more aggressive."

Japans political structure bore some unique characteristics. To prevent the emperor from the embarrassment of ever being wrong, the ministers and generals had to arrive at complete consensus before presenting a matter for his opinion. In the face of absolute consensus and zero information, the emperor could only nod his head and agree with the supposedly obvious course of action. Just as crucially, military leaders were responsible for making all military decisions--not just of strategy, but of overall action. And the Japanese established the convention of an 'autonomous supreme command,' so that military leaders worked entirely independently of civilian leaders subsequent an initial engagement. Once the country stepped on the accelerator and towards war, they effectively cut the brakes.

Officers both young and old wanted Japan recognized as a great power. Patriotism fueled this desire. And war seemed the way forward. So when any minister seemed incapable of pushing the country further towards greatness, an individual took it upon themselves to assassinate that minister. The internal political violence of Japan thus differed greatly from the more centralized party violence of Nazi Germany. "In a short space of time, two prime ministers were assassinated, one after the other, [and] also a number of generals and leading officers. From then on, all those who followed a cautious, sane policy did so with great stealth. If they appeared to be too cautious, they would be certain to be assassinated. Not that the Japanese ministers and officers feared assassination in itself; it was that their assassination made their policies ineffective. Therefore, far from the leaders conspiring to bring about war... they conspired to bring about peace or, at any rate, to slow things down."

The greatest impulse for a Japanese war of conquest stemmed from Great Depression. The Japanese had embraced free trade. But at the onset of the Great Depression the United States and Great Britain raised enormous tariffs; while the Anglo powers maintained a lock on their own overseas holdings, Japan faced a strangle-hold. They turned to the rest of the Far East, most of which fell under a disorganized Chinese federalist state. They encouraged revolt in one part of China, and invaded in another. This received international rebuke, but no action.

The tension increased dramatically with the fall of France and the heavy fighting over the skies in Britain. Both Japan and the United States thought they might avert war by ratcheting up the tension even further, and thus threatening their Pacific rival into relative silence.

The United States placed an oil embargo on Japan in 1941. Japan had no oil of its own. "It was clear to the Japanese that, within not more than 19 months, Japanese oil would run out and Japan would collapse as a great power."

And so they attacked Pearl Harbor, seized the Pacific islands, annihilated British resistance in Singapore and slashed through Burma.

They did not expect American and British capitulation, but rather hoped America would tire and agree to a compromise solution. This did not occur.

"The Japanese owed their ultimate defeat to two things. One was the incredible economic strength of the United States, which enabled it, by 1943, to conduct both the war in Europe and the war in the Pacific. Against all Japanese calculations, the Americans were clearing up both at the same time. The other thing which led to Japan's defeat was its terrible mistake of neglecting to provide itself with anti-submarine devices. By 1943, Japans mercantile marine had lost three-quarters of its strength... By the beginning of 1945, most of the Japanese civilians and some of the more cautious generals recognised that the war was lost."

With the dropping of the first atomic bomb, the emperor finally intervened. He said: 'We have resolved to endure the unendurable and suffer what is insufferable." Shortly after he made the decision, the Americans dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

MacArthur accepted Japan's unconditional surrender on 2 September 1945. The subsequent war tribunals spared the emperor of charges, but hung most of the high command, including Tojo.

So ended the Second World War.

                                                                          * * * * * *

A brief assessment:

While The War Lords lacks the incisive insight of A.J.P. Taylor's other books, it still suggests an interesting and thought provoking argument: Each of the 'war lords' of the Second World War wielded vast powers with surprising autonomy vis a vis the leaders involved in other major conflicts in the 20th century; yet despite this similarity, each of the war lords came to power in remarkably different ways. Two fascists, a totalitarian socialist, a parliamentarian, and a president all conducted the Second World War with autonomy and independence.

Taylor does not probe into the causes of these similarities. He simply acknowledges them. He also makes little effort to demonstrate the autonomy of each of the 'war lords,' though he does the show the steps which prevented the emergence of a war lord in Japan.

Did the war lords truly act with autonomy during the Second World War? Why were they able to act freely without reference to constituents? In other words, was the brief era of autonomous war lords just a mirage?

One can imagine, for example, that because each of the leaders rose to power with a commitment to non-negotiable peace, they therefore had to sustain a commitment to war to prevent their hitherto allies and henchmen from turning on them. That would seem like a powerful constraint on behavior. Yet it remains plausible that someone like Churchill or Hitler simply refuses to acknowledge the plausibility of compromise. In such a situation, their own mind offers the greatest constraint upon their actions.

David Rooney, Wingate and the Chindits: Redressing the Balance. Arms and Armour Press, 1994.

Orde Wingate served in the British military as a determined battlefield commander, but he found himself drawn to the uneven virtues of his Old Testament heroes: David and Saul, Job and Moses. He lived a life close to the earth. He chose tactics and strategies that ensured his own body would drip sweat and blood—along with those of his men. Despite the unequivocal support of Winston Churchill, Wingate remains one of the most controversial generals of the Second World War, and David Rooney directs his squarely at the center of Wingate’s historical reputation.

Rooney argues that Wingate’s memory suffered a posthumous attack from jealous officers in the Indian Army. The chief offender, Major-General Stanley Woodburn Kirby, wrote the Official History of the war against Japan, shaped Field Marshal Slim’s autobiography, and marked and altered Christopher Sykes’ biography of Wingate; in brief, he held exceptional influence and dramatically effected the memory of Wingate’s strategic and tactical prowess, as well as his psychological fitness. Rooney aims to correct the record, and show that a smear campaign did in fact take place.

Rooney’s book begins with a conventional biography of Wingate. The story opens with the trauma of Wingate's birth in India, which very nearly killed his mother when she suffered a dangerous hemorrhage. She recovered, and they moved to England. Wingate’s family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, where he and his brothers and sisters received love and encouragement from their parents even as the Bible threatened them with eternal damnation. 

Wingate attended Charterhouse as a young man, and later the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Rooney then passes through the many distinct phases of Wingate’s life, and usually agrees with Christopher Sykes and other Wingate biographers in his interpretations. As a young officer, Wingate's first loves were hunting, horses, and brashness. He loaned money freely, especially to his own soldiers. He developed his best male friendship to David Tulloch, who later served under him in the Chindits in Burma. Wingate dragged one young woman, Peggy Jolly, through a multi-year engagement, before bashfully abandoning her to marry a much younger woman. With the help of family connections, he escaped the doldrums of artillery camp life through a course in Arabic and a trip to Sudan. There he gained valuable leadership experience directing patrols against poachers.

Wingate eventually posted to Palestine as an intelligence officer, and this is where his life accelerated into violence at a drastic pace. Upon reaching Palestine in 1936, he found the country in the midst of an Arab revolt against British governance and Jewish settlements. Unlike the British establishment, his sympathies stood with the Jews, rather than the Arabs. He began actively campaigning for the Zionist cause. With the support of General Archibald Wavell he formed tactical units known as Special Night Squads to protect Jewish settlements. The Special Night Squads consisted of British officers, British non-commissioned officers, and Jewish soldiers. They met with some success, at least tactically, and represented one of the first serious uses of force on the part of Jewish settlers. He proved an outstanding battlefield leader.

“You have a lot to learn,” Wingate told his soldiers, “and a lot to forget, but I shall give you a basis for your study of the art of war. Do not take notes—just listen and digest. Great soldiers are serious, diligent and of outstanding moral character. In war personal qualities are the most important—a coarse and savage man makes a bad soldier.”

Wingate stressed surprise, economy of force, and security as the principles of SNS warfare—in fact, he would insist on these three elements throughout his remaining campaigns. Of course, nearly all battlefield commanders say something to similar effect. But Wingate met his principles with a disciplined set of operating procedures that personally showed his men how to conduct such warfare with modern weapons. He loved the details of map-reading and the employment of machine guns, but he could also step back and offer an appreciation of the wider strategic picture.

From there on out, a short-lived pattern emerged: Wavell posted to a new assignment, and tasked Wingate with finding a way to take the fight to the enemy. Shortly after deploying Wingate, Wavell would find himself reassigned, and Wingate’s support from GHQ would slowly evaporate.

As the Second World War began to grip the world, Wingate aggressively took the fight to the enemy during a time when the much of the world found itself back on its heels. He possessed uncanny powers of imagination that allowed him to see the enemy’s blind spots, as well as Britain’s own untested strengths. He did so with the SNS in Palestine, and then Gideon Force in Ethiopia.

His most famous battles came with the units he formed in India and took into the jungles of Burma—the “Chindits.” After his first Chindit campaign, his fame exploded and Churchill took Wingate to Quebec to meet the American military leaders as an example of a British officer eager to fight the Japanese. The Americans (at least in Quebec) loved Wingate, and offered him tremendous support via aircraft; the Americans also formed a unit later known as ‘Merrill’s Marauders’ as their own version of Wingate’s “long range penetration” columns.

Wingate returned to Burma and led an expanded Chindit force back into the jungles. The forces at his disposal reached their height—he began executing the largest Allied airborne operation prior to D-Day, and disrupted Japanese operations throughout the area.

His battlefield opportunities as a commander, however, met with a sudden end. Travelling back and forth over the jungles of Burma, his transport aircraft crashed into a mountainside. The impact killed all aboard. Command of Wingate's Chindit forces fell into the hands of detractors and ineffective military leaders; many died in the subsequent battles. Time and again, outsiders such as General Joseph Stillwell ordered the Chindits into battlefield actions that defied Wingate’s strict procedures of engagement, which he designed to minimize exposure and maximize concentration of firepower. Curiously, Wingate’s best friend, Brigadier Tulloch, foolishly recommended one General Lentaigne as Wingate’s successor. Lentaigne despised Chindit tactics. Morale plummeted as Lentaigne repeatedly denigrated the Chindit approach and grew ‘windy’ to the tempestuous orders that inevitably fall from above during any battle.

While the bulk of Rooney’s book simply recounts the story of Wingate’s biography, his critical contribution manifests itself at the end of the book, as he shows the influence Kirby had on British history. For Rooney, Kirby stands as the most obvious example of jealousy within British forces for the fame and success of Orde Wingate, a man who rose in ranks from captain to major general in less than eight years. Kirby and the Indian army military establishment accused Wingate of forming a ‘private army.’ Kirby also discounted Wingate’s strategic and tactical innovations, and undermined his reputation through a series of sleight-of-hand psychological portrayals of Wingate as a madman and loose cannon, a man with poor grip on strategic possibility. Rooney shows that Kirby’s version of Wingate appears not only in the official history, but also in General Slim’s autobiography, and—most importantly—in the Christopher Sykes biography of Orde Wingate, perhaps the most thorough and detailed record of Wingate’s life. If Rooney is right, then Sykes’ biography—which appears objective at first glance—actually misleads. Rooney found, among other items of evidence, record of Sykes thanking Kirby for his careful reading of a draft of the Wingate biography, and his numerous corrections.

Rooney won the match with Kirby. Wingate was not a loose cannon. He worked hard to work with others, though not to get along well or be liked. It remains a little less clear if Wingate had quite the positive impact on modern strategy that his supporters insist upon. Rooney notes that Wingate’s strategies served as forerunners to the strategies used extensively in Vietnam. Vietnam, of course, was no more successful than the Chindit campaigns. Wingate's strategies also make an appearance in the modern firebases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet again, one cannot call these operations victories without outrageous equivocation. Such operations work best when used in conjunction with standard, sweeping campaigns of organized political violence designed to uproot and annihilate opposing political positions by any means necessary, but that’s not what happened in Burma (not while Wingate lived), and did not happen in Vietnam nor Iraq nor Afghanistan. In each case, scattered patrols supported with air power and good logistics failed to destroy the political opposition. I am not arguing that Wingate anticipated any of these campaigns—he kept his eyes on the battle in front of him, so much so that he did not have a plan ready in case of his own death, much less any serious shift in the strategic outlook in Burma (or world politics). I argue that Wingate introduced tactics that seem effective only within a hopeless strategic environment. His methods buy time, and bring out courage and willfulness in the troops involved. But clear political victory must remain elusive without stronger methods involving greater material resources. Wingate’s tactics tempt political leaders into initiating conflicts they lack the strategic vision to win.

Hence it is possible that Wingate was a good commander, and yet that his military innovations did not actually contribute to winning any war. Wingate’s battlefield maneuvers, however, represent an instance of aggressive action at the height of British difficulties in the Middle East and Far East. Churchill was not mistaken about that, and that is why Churchill found Wingate such an attractive figure, one worth taking to Quebec and granting personal support. If an interesting brand of madness effected Wingate’s mind, it did not lessen the psychological usefulness of Wingate’s actions. Men and material (and mostly material) win wars, but human beings need leaders with confidence and verve who possess the guts to say that victory remains possible. Courage invents confidence, and confidence begets courage; the two characteristics loop together among the minds of the many.

Rooney’s book provides a welcome correction to the history of Orde Wingate. Rooney’s most important contribution probably rests in showing the extent of the smear campaign that discredits Wingate as a human being and effective leader. It represents a tragedy of written record that such distortions influenced the Sykes’ biography of Orde Wingate. (Even with the distortions, Sykes' biography probably remains the best available). Wingate stands as one of the most interesting soldiers of the Second World War, one who died in action for his country and earned the respect of both his commanders and his men. He deserved better than he got.

Archibald Wavell, The Viceroy's Journal, ed. by Penderel Moon. 1973, OUP. 528 pp    

The Viceroy's Journal records the first-person impressions, calculations, and musings of Archibald Wavell, a great man given the shoddy task of serving as the second-to-last viceroy of India, 1943-1947. Just prior to the book's opening moments, Wavell led the defense of British Middle East and British Asia, always with limited resources and virtually no proper support from Churchill's cabinet. Churchill thrusts Wavell, a one-eyed soldier with no active political experience, into the civilian appointment of Viceroy of India to avoid giving the popular general further military commands. Instead of riding out the war in comparative luxury (as Churchill expected), Wavell immediately sets to work with intelligence and enthusiasm, helping to end the famine in Bengal, release Gandhi from prison, and lobby His Majesty's Government (H.M.G.) to transfer Indian political power before the end of the war. Wavell records the government’s callow responses with frank and adroit perception. In the viceroy's account, Indian politicians do not fare any better. Gandhi and Jinnah appear as political demagogues, each clumsily manipulating the respective Hindu and Muslim masses. They seem more devoted to party approval than to the competent dissolution of the Raj. "They do not understand how the machinery of Government works in practice," Wavell avers, "and think entirely on the lines of all questions being decided by party votes."

Wavell addresses his readers with roughly three types of journal entries: amusing anecdotes of political machinations, annoyed dismissals of pomp and ceremonial lunches, and engaged analysis of India's economic and political problems. He writes with a calm voice and courageous enthusiasm, even when the task assumes a difficulty of quixotic proportions. Editor Penderel Moon, a former colonial administrator, provides footnotes and appendices that offer an approving assessment of Wavell's influence and understanding of Indian politics. Wavell, a career soldier, also demonstrates an apt mind for interpreting the dialectical highs and lows of British parliamentary politics. Inexpert readers might find Wavell's frequent use of acronyms and titles a little difficult to follow, and updated footnotes would help preserve the book's usefulness for future generations. That said, Wavell evinces a remarkably calm sense of duty and self-understanding, which allows the book to serve as a profound guide to the closing days of the British Raj.