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I have been reading the Great Generals series and added this book along with them and enjoyed it a lot. I have even used statements from the book in my office environment to encourage my fellow workers and also used it in a program that we have in the office.
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It is a lively and interesting book, however, it is almost impossible to agree with the author on the conclusions - he is way too lightweight in my view.
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This is the first book I read on war strategies. It is really a fascinating read, and in a way reads like a thriller. The battlefield is like a chess game, with opponents trying to outsmart and deceive each other. The book offers the reader a fascinating journey through the minds of some of the most famous generals in history. Readers will be introduced to the strategies of Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, William Tecumesh Sherman, T. E. Lawrence, Sir Edmund Allenby, Mao Zedong, Heinz Guderian, Erich von Manstein, Erwin Rommel, and Douglas MacArthur.
The author points out the exceptional as well as the bad choices that generals make. The reader will learn many war strategies which are fascinating to say the very least. For example, when fighting armies with elephants, the Romans shook bells, scarring the elephants and making them useless for battle.
Generals can succeed in one war but utterly fail in another. MacArthur is referred to by the author as the Jekyll and Hyde. In the Pacific theatre, MacArthur gained fame as an invincible general. However, during the Korean War, he made one mistake after another, and exposed his armies to unnecessary danger. Despite his tactical disasters during the Korean War, his fame and legend led the Truman administration to approve his disastrous strategies (as a footnote, many historians note that the United States has not won a single war since World War II!).
Deception is the main key to victory. Hannibal took his army through the formidable swamps of the Arnus River in Tuscany in 217 B.C. rather than face the Roman army directly. Not expecting such a move, the Romans left the route open, permitting Hannibal to emerge behind the Roman army with a clear road to Rome. This forced the Romans to abandon their strong position and rush after the Carthaginians. Hannibal ambushed the dislocated Romans at Lake Trasimene and destroyed nearly their entire army. Almost 70 thousand Romans dies that day!
The Carthaginians in Spain believed Scipio Africanus would strike at their armies and left unguarded their capital and principal port, New Carthage. But Scipio had deceived his enemies. He seized New Carthage in 209 B.C., cut off the main sea connection with Carthage, caused several Spanish tribes to come over to the Romans, and abruptly threw the Carthaginians on the strategic defensive.
Genghis Khan was another master of deception. He focused the attention of the Khwarezmian army by fierce attacks on cities along the Syr Darya in Turkestan in 1220. He then led a Mongol army across the supposedly impassable Kyzyl Kum to seize Bokhara, far in the enemy rear, isolating the Khwarezmian capital of Samarkand and blocking reinforcements from the south. In a single quick campaign, the Mongols captured Samarkand and destroyed the Khwarezmian Empire.
By demonstrating with part of his army at Valenza on the Po River in northern Italy in 1796, Napoleon convinced the Austrian commander this was the sole French target, drawing Austrian defenders to that point. Napoleon then marched the majority of his forces downstream to Piacanza, thereby turning all possible enemy lines of defense, and forcing the Austrians to abandon all of northern Italy except the fortress of Mantua.
When strong German forces attacked Holland and Belgium in 1940, British and French mobile forces rushed northward to block the advance. Erich von Manstein, knowing this would happen, sent his panzers through the supposedly impassable Ardennes to seize Sedan, which was defended only by second-rate troops. When this occurred, the German panzers had a clear path westward to the English Channel, trapping the Allied armies that had rushed into Belgium and ensuring the defeat of France.
The last chapter of this book covers the lessons learned in the war campaigns of the last 2,000 years. The author points out that war remains an art rather than a science, despite the immense amount of invention, industry, and technology lavished on war since the beginning of organized society. He further adds that although the principles of war are simple and can be learned by anyone, the application of each principle requires much care, skill, and caution.
I personally enjoyed the chapters on Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, and Genghis Khan the most. But let us not forget that war is a dirty business, and people die! It would be better to compete at chess games or at the Olympic Games. There are many none aggressive and none destructive ways to show one's talents for strategy. Hitler should have spent his days playing war games on his PlayStation 3 when he was not earning a decent living. I am against glamorizing war. The irony of life is that one is sent to the electric chair for killing another in cold blood in a dark alley while one is glamorized and hailed for bombing an entire city, killing thousands (the allied bombings of German and Japanese cities during World War II).
One minor issue I have is that I did not like the cover of this book. I read the July 1995 Avon Books edition. The cover portrayed the generals in a cartoonish manner. For the scope and seriousness of the book the cover did not do justice to the book.
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Why do some generals do better than others? Bevin Alexander takes some of the great generals out of history and examines why they did so well. The author tries to point out the common traits and tactics each general shared. The selection of generals is interesting - Jackson and Sherman are picked over Lee and Grant.
But Mr. Alexander is also willing to point out some of the bad choices that these good generals sometimes made. Napoleon, for example, did great in Italy but in latter battles used frontal attacks instead of mobility and misdirection. He let the size of his army get in the way of good generalship.
The final chapter tries to tie it all together, listing simple ideas or rules, that all great generals followed.
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Alexander has written a nice overview of some of military history's best generals. His overall thesis was certainly proven well, and he chose those generals who best proved his point. I particularly liked the chapters on Hannibal/Scipio, Genghis Khan, Sherman, and Rommel. This work could have been a five star book; however, his chapter on MacArthur was where the book lost me. Militarily speaking Alexander continued as he had throughout the book, but his political overview of the Communist threat was almost as ridiculous as was Toland's in 'In Mortal Combat', which dealt with Korea. Hence I do concur with one of the other individuals who reviewed this work that his objectivity is lacking in his more modern chapters. Nonetheless, save for the last chapter, this was a good overview for someone starting to learn about miliraty history and strategy, or it is a nice refresher.
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