#reviewposting

A review of "The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler -- How War Made Them and How They Made War" by Philips Payson O'Brien

1. Introduction

Philips Payson O'Brien seems to be a fan of giving long titles to his books. His "How the War Was Won: Air Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War 2" was the best book I read, uh, listened to while painting Warhammer models all year. Even his shortest book title still fits a semicolon and a dash. But after reading listening to How the War Was Won, I decided it had earned its lengthy title and gave The Strategists a listen. 

The premise of The Strategists is to analyze the lives of the Big Five leaders in the European war and see how these explain their strategy-making conduct in World War 2, with an emphasis on their prior experiences of war. For all but Stalin this means World War 1; he only got going in the Russian Civil War. Churchill also gets up to some wacky adventures in India, Cuba, and South Africa.

O'Brien's other work has highlighted the divergence in production choices between the combatant states. Britain and America prioritized aircraft and naval construction over tanks; Russia the opposite; Germany does little naval construction but a whole ton of flak and aircraft, and Italy didn't make a whole lot of anything. Can the roots of these choices be found in the leaders' lives?

2. The Gimmick

Not really, I think. America and Britain are two vastly rich industrialized democracies which aren't seeking territorial aggrandizement, but want to limit their casualties to the absolute minimum and have to transport their stuff overseas if they want to fight at all. Germany was being bombed by the former two. The Soviet Union was fighting for survival in a land war with Germany. Italy was broke. Explanation complete. 

O'Brien goes some way in explaining the peculiar strategic choices made by each, but not perfectly. His explanation of Mussolini's choices make sense. As much as it can, anyways. He highlights Stalin's odd combination of extreme self-sabotaging paranoia when things are going decently, and capacity for flexibility and adaptation when things start going badly, which is a helpful trait to track. 

Sections on Churchill, Hitler, and Roosevelt are less satisfying. He points out Churchill was fighting to maintain the British empire, which he knew was over-stretched, and as such was up for any wacky idea which might work, or bringing in any other powers to do the heavy fighting. He doesn't do enough to explain why Churchill thought the Mediterranean might work as the primary decisive theater (opportunities, struggles, etc), how feasible it was to get Turkey into the war, or why he was so obsessed with amphibious landings. Unsatisfying. Roosevelt's stances on most strategy topics largely make sense, apart from his bizarre turn against Churchill towards favoring Stalin in 1944-45. He says how FDR was exhausted and dying at this point, and possibly a bit delusional after three solid terms in the presidency, but why he thought he could make Stalin his friend is bizarre and unclear. This deserved more explanation.

Hitler's coverage is worse. O'Brien largely dismisses him as an insane evil psychopath (fair!) obsessed with the army standing to the last man in every defensive action, who didn't listen to his generals, and was obsessed with heavy armor and big guns owing to... his experience of being a messenger getting shelled in World War 1. Notions of Hitler stupidly ignoring his generals should get alarm bells ringing for anyone familiar with the current WW2 historiography; Hitler's generals were often obsessed with tactical victories and missed the importance of economic targets. Specifically in the 1941-42 winter campaign, when Hitler ordered his troops to hold to the last man instead of withdrawing, it's because there was no secondary line to fall back upon! 

The "armor and firepower over speed" section is particularly odd. Yes, German AFV production increasingly prioritized armor and firepower over mobility, but this comes when the Eastern front advance slows, then stops, and turns to a defensive grind for the rest of the war; armor and firepower are probably better than speed when you're not doing lightning breakthroughs anymore. Suggesting this was because of Hitler's experience as a message runner in WW1, threatened mostly by heavy artillery, is practically a non sequitur. 

As well, Germany did have fairly light, fast tanks at the start of the war; this was the army Hitler built in German rearmament. With that in mind, the "heavy and slow" skewed perspective he ascribes to Hitler makes even less sense.

3. Another Long Title in the Gimmick History Genre

When I was in college, I think I read "Road to Disaster: A New History of America's Descent into Vietnam – The Landmark Cognitive Science Study of Why the Best and Brightest Failed". [1] 

The book's premise is examining the Kennedy and Johnson administrations' decision-making during the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, and the gradual escalation of US involvement in the Vietnam War; specifically, using cognitive science. You know, the Kahneman gimmicks with a mixed replication record. 

I learned a decent amount about the history of said events. But the argument that the cognitive science things mattered much fell flat. Cold War tensions were high and the US public had a strongly hawkish consensus. Kennedy and Johnson could both remember that the last Democratic administration was humiliated by the loss of China to communism, and could hardly want to see another major Asian country go. The fear that one country going communist would strengthen the Soviet Union and give it a springboard to influence others makes perfect sense on its face. The expert advisors assure the president that villagers in funny hats with kalashnikovs can't possibly stand up to the US Army. Once you're in and the US is taking casualties, how can you convince the electorate it was a mistake and you should cut and run?

Any of these are stronger explanations of the US putting troops into Vietnam and then staying there than Sunk Cost Fallacy. And is it really Sunk Cost Fallacy if you will incur new, immediate political costs by pulling out? 

I would therefore like to coin the genre of "gimmick history," which is when you use a new paper-thin analysis on familiar topics to justify writing a new book on it. 

4. One Cheer for Gimmick History

I have spent most of this post complaining, but I'd give one thumbs up to the book. If you want concise biographies of the political careers of Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler, The Strategists will get you exactly what you want. It's reasonably insightful in its own areas, like pointing out the 60% wartime fatality rate of the leaders covered; all of them aged rapidly over the course of the war, and you'll probably learn something new about each of them, like teenage Mussolini's habit of stabbing other students in the buttocks, or Stalin's sexual fondness for very young girls. 

Just take the gimmicks with a pinch of salt.

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I usually stick to the line that Warhammer 40k books are really shitty, but Saturnine, by Dan Abnett sort of bucks this trend. More properly you might title it, "Warhammer 40,000: Warhammer 30,000: The Horus Heresy: The Siege of Terra: Saturnine" so you don't get it confused with the "Warhammer 30,000: The Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness: Third Edition Starter Box: Saturnine" which will currently dominate your search results.

One of many recurring problems with Horus Heresy novels is that they are:

Trying to set up the Warhammer 40,000 era universe, giving backstory to characters who we know survive and are active later.

Trying to be a completely realized setting and story in and of itself.

These conflict when we have duels between characters who we know survive to the later period, of which there are several, particularly in the early Heresy books. They seem to "slide" off of one another in an extremely awkward manner without anyone getting injured.

Saturnine veers far in the other direction, with a very large number of named characters with models and/or playable 30k datasheets getting ingloriously and rapidly killed in the novel's climax. Off the top of my head I count three characters with models and datasheets, and two with datasheets but no model, getting No Cap Killed frfr. I respect it simply for the willingness to kill people off.

The novel's climax is decent and at times the book's prose is quite gripping. For dumb idiot bolterporn it's pretty OK.

Ending with some No Context Spoilers.

I'm enjoying Warriors for the Working Day so far - it's a WW2 memoir of the "thinly fictionalized story about events which haunt me to this day" genre, written by a British army Sherman tank commander about the Normandy campaign. Quite similar to Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.

One interesting point is that it subjectively shows the experience of allied troops feeling that their tanks and guns are vastly inferior to German equivalents. German tanks are almost always reported as Tigers, occasionally Panthers. German antitank guns are always 88s. They're quite aware the Germans are getting hit by tactical strike planes all day and artillery all night, but still feel blind terror in every action.

The comparative merits of the Sherman, being highly reliable and mass producable, is effectively a downside from the perspective of a crewman. Oh, your tank got knocked out yesterday and you baled out in a blind panic? Don't worry, the battalion got plenty of replacements and you're going back in tomorrow.

Another bit is the way that when tank crew get injured or killed, it is almost always gruesome. A Sherman gets hit and burns, one of the turret crew almost climbs out but his leg bones are sticking out through his flesh and catch on the turret, he falls back in as the ammunition goes off. Yeugh.

I'm trying to force myself to get into horror movies because I went on a date with an old highschool classmate, and she's cute and likes horror movies. So when some friends invited me to watch Backrooms tonight I said yes.

Very scary and good for the first 80%, but the climax was underwhelming. Definitely scarier than any other movie I've watched, even Alien.

The audience was notably all teenagers, and the theater even made an announcement that there was to be no funny business. That only baited people into doing funny business. Normally I hate when people talk in the movies, but the vibe was just right, and the people heckling the screen definitely enhanced the experience even though a few got kicked out. And about a dozen people left because it was too scary.

Bought the Chainsaw Man Buddy Stories book assuming it was manga, turned out to be novellas. Sure.

- the Power/Denji story was fairly weak. Their bumbling physical comedy works much better in visual media than in text

- the Kishibe/Quanxi story was actually very good. Quite like their dynamic and the OC character thrown in added a nice touch.

Next stories are an Aki/Himeno one and then a Denji/Power/Aki one. I have higher expectations for the former.

It is interesting seeing an official-ish adaptation of characters between very different mediums. Characters need much more interiority in text.