“Great Battles of World War II”, by John MacDonald, forward by General Sir John Hackett

 

192 pages, Chartwell Books, ISBN-13: 978-0785830979

 

Great Battles of World War II was first published in 1986 and was designed to take advantage of the then-novel advances in computer graphics, especially in regard to topography used in military-style games; indeed, as General Sir John Hackett points out in his introduction, a flat, two-dimensional map never tells the whole story when it comes to the challenges faced in particular battles. To this end, this book features illustrations that recreate these challenging environments, such as the steep, angular mountain of Monte Cassino, Italy, that Allied forces fought to capture for months in 1944. At Kursk, we see how German tanks went into battle in an axe-shaped Panzerkeil formation that maximized firing power instead of the speed favored in their earlier, better-known Blitzkrieg attacks. At Kohima, near the India-Myanmar border, British troops found their hilly redoubt shrinking against repeated Japanese attack, yet managed to hold on despite losing the highest ground, a fact clearly seen in the topographical map in this book. But the most notable technological devices employed in Great Battles may well be watercolors and paintbrush, as each battle comes with at least one, sometimes two, splashy illustrations of this kind showing forces in action at key moments. While no doubt compressed and somewhat romanticized (they look as exciting as they do brutal), the depictions (by Harry Clow, going by the credits) are the book’s key takeaway and do give you a sense for how the battles might have went down.

The narratives, meanwhile, are a bit lacking when it comes to nuances. We learn something about the friction among the British high command during the Battle of Britain, though its only glanced upon. The chapter on Arnhem concentrates almost exclusively on that battle between British paratroopers and German panzer forces, rather than the surrounding campaign, Operation Market-Garden. The book has a clear English focus (being a British publication), which I found tedious after a while: while the British did fight through more of the war than the Americans or even the Russians, and should be given all due credit for hanging on by their fingernails, it was the influx of millions of American troops and the overwhelming industrial might of the Americans which turned the tide in the West (in the East, the Russian steamroller – which slaughtered just as many Russians as it did Germans – was the true decisive factor). There is an impressive range of conflict contained in this book, everything from convoy attacks in the North Atlantic to the defense of Malta to the battle in the skies over England, not to mention land battles around Moscow, Guadalcanal, and El Alamein. Each chapter (some of which detail more than one battle) includes a solid textual overview explaining what happened and why it was important. Also, there are sidebars on key leaders; on the tanks, planes, or ships involved; and such fascinating secondary subjects, such as the layout of Hitler’s bunker during the final battle for Berlin, or how a British biplane managed to sink Germany’s greatest battleship.