Category: World War II

When Patrick Beesly published “Very Special Intelligence: The Story of the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Centre 1939-1945” (1977), he lifted the veil on one of World War II’s most closely guarded secrets. Writing from the unique perspective of an insider who served in the Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) from 1940 to 1945, Beesly provided the first…

Few figures in twentieth century American history cast a longer shadow than Douglas MacArthur. Fewer still have seen their legacy sink so inexorably over the years. But there was more to the man than the pompous, dangerous, ego maniacal insubordinate, as he has become known to history, as the late William Manchester demonstrates in this…

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “No Ordinary Time, Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II” is a slow, methodical, chronological but undeniably brilliant narrative of the most momentous half-decade in American history since 1860-1865. Even if you’ve read a lot about the Second World War and FDR, you’ll likely learn something from this…

Erich von Manstein was considered by his peers as the most talented general officer in the German army. His celebrated Second World War memoir, “Lost Victories,” chronicles his exploits, frustrations, victories and defeats as a chief of staff in Poland in 1939, commander of 38th Corps in France in 1940, 56th Panzer Corps during the…

The final installment in Alistair Horne’s epic trilogy on the Franco-German military rivalry, “To Lose a Battle: France 1940” is by far the longest and most tactically detailed of the three. The book is broken into two parts. The first, covering about a third of the book, chronicles the political turmoil and military missteps in…

Somebody (but definitely not Mark Twain) once said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” It seems to me this is what Malcolm Gladwell’s latest bestseller, “The Bomber Mafia: A Tale of Innovation and Obsession” (2021), is really all about, although the author doesn’t frame it that way.…

Erik Larson knows how to tell a good story. Perhaps even more importantly, he knows how to find them. Over the years I’ve read my fair share of books on the interwar period and the rise of Nazi Germany, but I don’t recall ever reading about the American ambassador to Berlin in the first few…