海角大神

Conventional wisdom about World War II holds that by early 1943, the Allies had turned the tide of battle and that it was largely a matter of time before the Axis Powers were defeated.聽聽The reasoning is simple: by this time the Russians had decisively defeated the Germans at Stalingrad, the British had beaten them at El Alamein and the Allies had successfully landed in North Africa.聽聽Moreover, things were looking up in the Pacific theater where the United States had crushed the Japanese Navy at Midway and was about to secure Guadalcanal after months of hard fighting.聽

In Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War, Yale historian Paul Kennedy disagrees. According to Kennedy, the most critical period of the war was much later 鈥� from January 1943 to July 1944 鈥� than is generally realized.聽Moreover, he attributes victory not to any single battle or major turning point but rather to the ability of the Allies to solve a handful of problems that, if unaddressed, would have prolonged the war significantly or even altered the outcome. These challenges were not addressed by grand strategists or military commanders but rather by a large number of engineers, scientists, technicians, and logistical experts whose ability to solve problems proved decisive in several key areas.聽

Consider, for example, the absolute necessity of getting men and supplies across the Atlantic Ocean.聽聽Absent this, it would have been impossible to supply the Russians and to accumulate the men and materiel that were necessary for the D-Day invasion.聽聽By early 1943, the U-Boats were enjoying their greatest success of the war in sinking Allied shipping. So great was the crisis that, according to Kennedy, British imports that year were less than they had been in 1939.聽聽But by that summer, the Allies had made a number of strategic and tactical changes that gave them a decisive edge in the North Atlantic.聽

The advances themselves 鈥� long-range and better equipped bombers to provide adequate air cover for the convoys; improved radar developed by university scientists in England and the United States; a new mortar that began as a 鈥渜uirky schoolboy鈥檚 dream鈥� but became an effective anti-submarine weapon; and the creation of far more effective naval escorts to combat the German U-boats 鈥� seem to be little more than incremental changes.聽聽But they stemmed from experience and the application of analysis to problems that needed to be solved.聽聽And taken together they became the key factors in winning the Battle of the Atlantic. 聽聽聽

Kennedy analyzes several other problems in the same way: gaining control of the skies over Europe and Japan, blunting the speed and power of the German blitzkrieg, successfully invading enemy held territory, and fighting wars over vast distances.聽聽In every case the specific strategies and tactics differed but the common thread is the ability of Allied engineers, technicians and scientists to devise solutions that directly affected the field of battle.聽

The book introduces the reader to little-remembered men (and they are all men) whose ingenuity and innovations were critical.聽聽For example, the American inventor J. Walter Christie developed a suspension and chassis that was the basis for the best tank of the war, the Soviet T-34.聽聽Major Earl 鈥淧ete鈥� Ellis laid out the basic doctrine of amphibious warfare for the U.S. Marines that became the basis for the 鈥渋sland hopping鈥� campaign in the Pacific.聽聽British Major General Percy Hobart developed an array of innovative equipment 鈥� known as 鈥淗obart鈥檚 Funnies鈥� 鈥� to clear battlefield obstacles.聽聽British test pilot Ronnie Harker and Polish mathematician Witold Challier urged installing a Rolls Royce Merlin engine into an underperforming American plane and, by doing so, created the P-51 Mustang, arguably the best fighter plane of the war.聽

So unlike most histories of the Second World War, this is not a study of grand strategy, leadership, a breakthrough weapon, or a single campaign.聽聽Nor is it an encyclopedic history of the conflict.聽聽Instead, it examines the war as a series of difficult problems that the Allies solved with 鈥渉uman ingenuity and sympathetic initiative.鈥澛�

Ultimately, this is a marvelous synthesis of a vast range material that offers a new and important way of understanding the largest conflict in human history.聽 Superbly written and carefully documented, this book offers fresh and creative insights about the conflict to even the most expert readers.聽聽And it will become indispensable reading for anyone who seeks to understand how and why the Allies won.聽聽聽聽聽聽聽

Terry Hartle is senior vice president of government relations for the American Council on Education.