The Second World War: An Illustrated History
Levine, Alan J.
Book Review/Alan J. Levine The Strange World of A.J.P. Taylor • In his preface A.J.P. Taylor tells us that he has been composing this book for more than thirty years. He has wasted a great deal...
...Taylor's explanation of the war's aftermath can be imagined...
...Taylor's book is liberally sprinkled with similar errors: the German force in Tunisia was "never more than four divi-, sions strong" (page 172), "the buildup of Tito was a purely British venture" (page 178), "German morale was unaffected by strategic bombing" (page 189), "The Western Allies ignored the French Resistance" (page 203), and many others...
...Taylor finds the Soviet failure to help the Polish uprising in Warsaw blameless (pages 206-207...
...In describing the Anglo-American strategic controversy of 1942, Taylor writes that "The Americans were gradually persuaded that a large-scale landing in Northern France was impossible in 1942" (page 150...
...But such an evaluation would be more appropriate from a truthful and accurate writer, and it might sound more convincing coming from someone who regards tyranny and conquest as evils even when they are perpetrated by peoples other than the Germans and the Japanese...
...The Second World War is scarred by several prejudices: against Winston Churchill, against Douglas MacArthur, against strategic bombing as a method of waging war, but most of all by a relentless anti-American and pro-Soviet bias...
...There were strategic disputes at Teheran, but they The Second World War: An Illustrated History by A.J.P...
...In fact the Germans kept 54 German divisions in the West, and 7 in the Balkans—and 22 of these were first-class...
...De Gaulle, having no supplies at all, could go his own way" (page 193...
...The Germans used second-class divisions on the Eastern Front, too...
...Taylor alleges that the only military assistance the British gave to Russia in 1941 was to tie down "some forty German divisions" in Western Europe, "second-class divisions that were of no use to Hitler" on the Russian Front (pages 105-106...
...As usual in Taylor's books, a strict delineation of the facts is never allowed to get in the way of a wisecrack or a ham-handed search for irony...
...Seaton, the leading Western expert on the Eastern Front, considers that the Soviet Union would have been defeated had the Germans been allowed to concentrate fully against her (The Russo-German War, pages 215, 588-590...
...According to Taylor, the Anzio invasion was plotted by Churchill as "a maneuver against the Second Front rather than against the Germans" and was responsible for delaying the invasion of Southern France from May to August 1944 (pages 190-192...
...The Communists, in fact, were "De Gaulle's most assiduous supporters" (page 205), an opinion not shared by the General himself...
...Churchill, being dependent on American supplies, had to take a more subservient line...
...Discussing the Teheran Conference, Taylor gives the reader the impression that the decision to invade France was made there and was forced through by Stalin against Churchill's wishes (page 186...
...I know of no evidence for the charge against Churchill, and the delay was caused by Eisenhower's desire to increase the strength of the Normandy invasion...
...Here, Hitler seeks at least to establish Germany as a "World Power" and Taylor expresses considerable moral indignation against the Nazis' crimes...
...Moreover, the "Greek Resistance," which Taylor implies was united against the British, was "far from being Communist" (page 213...
...Though the "cold war" was a clash of unfounded mutual suspicions, the "charge of American aggressiveness had more substance" than the "view that Soviet Russia was set on the worldwide establishment of Communism...
...But only the British followed the German example [my emphasis] and took armed action against a popular national movement while the war was actually on...
...Taylor maintains his usual level of accuracy to the end with his statement that "Truman conveniently forgot the promises of a reconstruction loan to Russia that Roosevelt had made...
...Actually, Churchill and Roosevelt had already agreed between themselves to invade France in 1944 at the Washington Conference of May 1943...
...Taylor G.P...
...There are many errors of fairly important military detail...
...They never imagined it was...
...For example, Taylor tells his readers that at the time of the Battle of Britain the Germans did not use radar to detect aircraft and that in fighter planes the R.A.F...
...For this work, aimed at the general public, Taylor has toned down the theory he expressed in The Origins of the Second World War, that Hitler's foreign policy was a rather traditional one of limited aims...
...He does not mention that the Moscow radio had urged the Poles to rise...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975...
...According to Albert Seaton's The Russo-German War the Germans also kept forty percent of their first-line combat aircraft in the West...
...The Americans aimed at launching a major invasion of France in 1943...
...It is fairly well illustrated, with good photographs, fine reproductions of paintings and posters, and excellent maps...
...Note, for example, Taylor's claim that "Russia's title to the Baltic States and Eastern Poland was a good deal better than that of the United States to New Mexico" (page 106...
...This is quite true...
...and the Luftwaffe "were about equal" (page 69...
...In point of fact the Germans used aircraft-detection radars and their fighters outnumbered the British about 4:3 (Dempster and Wood, The Battle of Britain...
...The reader of The Second World War will not receive an accurate account of how the great strategic decisions of the war were reached...
...Nor did Stalin's promise to enter the war against Japan come as a surprise, as Taylor claims...
...But it is marred by numerous flaws...
...There is little to be said for Roosevelt's unfriendly attitude toward De Gaulle, but this lecture loses its point when it is realized that De Gaulle's forces were entirely equipped by American lend-lease...
...The establishment of Communist rule in the states bordering on Russia was a consequence of the Cold War and did not cause it" (page 234...
...the British simply refused to take part in such an operation...
...Stalin was really a conservative statesman who restrained his French followers: it was "he rather than the Americans who preserved Western Europe for capitalist democracy" (page 205), though elsewhere Taylor implies that the British and Americans were eager to crush the Communists—a more plausible explanation of their alleged moderation...
...A more distorted account can hardly be imagined...
...The American military was not "persuaded" against this...
...Putnam's Sons $17.50 concerned lesser, secondary operations...
...For 1942 they at most contemplated obtaining a limited, perhaps temporary,bridgehead to divert the Germans from crushing the Soviet Union...
...He had already stated this intention twice before...
...In describing the British intervention in the Greek Civil War, Taylor writes that "Soviet oppression in Eastern Europe has been often condemned...
...Explaining the American attitude to De Gaulle in 1944, Taylor writes that "His offense, like that of the Russians later, was simply to be independent...
...The Second World War is written in Taylor's usual readable, if flippant, style...
...He has wasted a great deal of time, unless his purpose was to misinform the unwary nonspecialist reader...
...At the end, Taylor asserts that "Despite all the killing and destruction that accompanies it, the Second World War was a good war...
...Even a man with a photographic memory would have been hard put to recall a promise that Roosevelt never gave...
...Taylor constantly twists the facts to present the Soviet Union and the European Communist parties as the unfortunate objects of Western hostility...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
