Military Memoirs
Neumann, William L.
Military Memoirs The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Ala-mein. World. 508 pp. $6. Wedemeyer Reports! by General Albert C. Wedemeyer. Henry Holt, 497 pp. $6. Reviewed...
...Montgomery fled with the British Expeditionary forces at Dunkirk and only came into his own when he was appointed commander of the Eighth Army in August of 1942...
...Wedemeyer was graduated in 1918 and spent much of the intra-war period in China and the Philippines...
...Emphasizes the pattern of attitudes and behavior which the Soviet regime sought to impose upon youth...
...After a year under Admiral Louis Mountbatten in the Southeast Asian Command he was shifted to China when Chiang Kai-shek finally forced the withdrawal of General Joseph Stilwell...
...Both Wedemeyer and Montgomery deal roughly with this venture, the latter because of lack of overall planning and the administrative muddling...
...The battle terrain in Europe and Asia has been well mapped, and more statesmen, military men, and scholars can be expected to enter the fray...
...Montgomery ascribes to the Americans a blindness to the need of political decisions overriding military strategy, but Wedemeyer makes a good case for showing that Churchill was at times as much of a blunderer as Roosevelt...
...Reviewed by William L. Neumann The literary battle of the Generals is now being waged on a broad front...
...5.00 Soviet Policy and the Chinese Communists 1931-1946 Charles B. McLane Explores Soviet Russian policy toward the Communist movement in China during the vital years up to Moscow's eventual support of Mao Tse-tung's forces...
...Sandhurst and West Point, and both men spent the 20 years between the two World Wars in the peacetime army...
...It may even be that achieving a sound peace or winning a political victory through global war is now beyond the capacity of man...
...Six groups in the New World are studied...
...Wedemeyer and Montgomery suggest that directing a military effort to win the peace was too much for civilian leaders as well...
...With the opening of the second front, Montgomery, in charge of the British Army, began his clashes with his friend and commander, Eisenhower...
...Wedemeyer promises another book on the China question alone, but his viewpoint is clearly that of one who believes Chiang's China was salvageable if the United States had put enough men and money into the effort...
...He not only argued this point in vain with Eisenhower, but he was unable to press the importance of beating the Russians to Berlin because of this city's political significance...
...Marshall and the American planners won British acceptance of this principle only to watch helplessly while Churchill won Roosevelt over to a series of peripheral campaigns which postponed the invasion until mid-1944...
...5.00 Soviet Marxism Herbert Marcuse A critical analysis of Communist theory within the Soviet system...
...The British Army, he charges, entered Wcrld War II "admirably organized and equipped to fight the 1914 war" but "totally unfit to fight a first class war" in 1939...
...Wedemeyer's evaluation of his predecessor will bring anguished cries from the supporters of "Vinegar Joe," while his discussion of the treatment of the Chinese Communists reopens that heated controversy...
...But once the United States was in the war he believes that the main strategy should have been to launch the second front in 1942 in order to have a strong political position in Europe when Germany was defeated...
...Montgomery fought as a lieutenant in World War I and served in India and Palestine before going to France in 1939 in command of a division...
...The American strategy of attacking Germany on a broad front was a slow and costly approach, Montgomery claims, and the war could have been ended more quickly by a spearhead attack on the Ruhr to cripple Germany economically...
...For more than a decade after the end of the war the military memoirs, like Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe, consisted of little more than amplifications of the official battle communiques...
...Identifies and explains these abuses, and argues that control lies in looking to a single solution for each problem...
...The publication of the first volume of Lord Alan-brooke's diaries followed by the outspoken memoirs of Viscount Montgomery and General Wedemeyer has brought into the open the major conflicts on the London-Washington front during World War II...
...Neither kept in mind the dictum of Clausewitz that war is not a policy in itself, but only a means to a political end...
...Wedemeyer points out that the invasion disregarded the fact that Italy under Mussolini was more of a liability to Hitler than an asset...
...Churchill said that winning a war was too serious a business to leave to the military...
...In 1941 he became a member of the War Plans Division under General Gerow...
...Wedemeyer attacks the broader questions of global strategy and the political ends of the war itself...
...Wedemeyer's basic position is an even more radical one...
...Churchill's support of Tito as the most effective German-killer, the unconditional surrender proclamation, and the delay in launching a second front in Europe are also cited as examples of this political failure...
...Wedemeyer thinks his opposition to British strategy led to his being "eased out to Asia" in October of 1943...
...6.00 * Columbia UNIVERSITY PRESS 2960 Broadway New York 27, N.Y...
...A study of the Soviet youth organization Komsomol from 1918 to 1954...
...This is a point which the historians as specialists in post mortems can debate endlessly...
...It was this mission which produced the report which the State Department suppressed temporarily because of its conflict with official policy...
...Victory over Rommel's Africa Korps made him a famous figure, and he was transferred north to take part in the Italian invasion...
...The war behind the war, the conflicts of national interests and strategies, the clash of personalities, and the possibility that even the victors committed blunders were largely ignored...
...Montgomery and Wedemeyer are both products of military academies, Democracy and the Challenge of Power David Spitz A revealing appraisal of the abuses of power in a democracy...
...6.75 Minorities in the New World Charles Wagley • Marvin Harris Looks at the problems of minority groups from the historical and comparative point of view of cultural anthropology...
...New Leader $4.50 Culture and Society Raymond Williams An original thesis that follows the idea of culture—in both social and artistic senses—from its origins during the Industrial Revolution to the present...
...Montgomery commanded fighting forces throughout the war while Wedemeyer served mainly as a planner...
...Has the important virtues of taking Soviet ideology seriously and explaining particular points with soundness and clarity...
...In the eight months of the sitzkrieg while Hitler prepared to launch his grand sweep into France of May 1940, the British forces did little to close the 20-year gap...
...Accepting the thesis that Roosevelt deliberately pulled the United States into war, he argues that it would have been wiser to have remained neutral or at least postponed entry until Russia and Germany had fought each other to exhaustion...
...In 1936 he was assigned to the German War College for two years where his horizon was opened to questions of global strategy...
...Montgomery consequently directs his fire at blunders in tactics and in strategy in Europe...
...5.50 Pattern for Soviet Youth Ralph Talcott Fisher, Jr...
...In the battle between London and Washington, Wedemeyer supported Admiral King, who would have countered the British by shifting a far larger amount of American strength to the Pacific and at least speeded the end of the war against Japan...
...In 1947 Wedemeyer returned to China on an investigating mission at the request of Secretary of State Marshall...
...The Hero of Alamein deals briefly but devastatingly with British military leadership in World War I and the 20 years of peace...
Vol. 23 • January 1959 • No. 1
