The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph, 1942-45 (Yale Library of Military History) Paperback – Illustrated, August 28, 2012

If a student of history read no other work on the campaigns of World War II, he would be left wondering why he was not now speaking German or Japanese. Burma was the bottom of the strategic barrel for the U.S. and Britain. Lack of men, lack of supplies, impossible logistics, but most of all a dearth of leadership plagued the Allies. America was supporting a brazenly corrupt and craven ally in Chiang Kai-shek, while Britain was defending a crumbling empire, to which it could deploy neither sufficient arms nor men. Burma became the dumping ground of unwanted military leaders; the discredited, the effete, the misanthropic and the down-right bazaar. McLynn's focus on the odd parade of leaders, who wandered onto the stage and then wandered off again, suggests that Burma was one campaign too far for the Allies. But Roosevelt's determination to save Chiang as our ace-in-the-hole for our anticipated invasion of Japan, and Britain's desire to save India at all costs kept the arms coming and the men dieing.McLynn examines the parade of fools with both fairness and wit, for Burma was an awful place to fight. There was the lost Wavell, the manic-depressive Orde Wingate, the misogynistic, Anglo-phobe "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell and finally the Royal fop, Mountbaten, who vowed to take the battle to the Japanese, while moving his headquarters farther away.McGlynn does consider the plight of the common soldiers, British, American, colonial and Chinese. They were a heroic bunch. One is left wondering what measure of courage is required to perform heroically in such a distant land, inadequately supplied and led.In the end, however, a hero emerges; a British general, named William Slim. You will search in vain for mention of his name in most histories of World War II. Slim, however, may have been the best fighting general to fight a major campaign in World War II, British or American. McGlynn dissects his final, glorious victory over the Japanese in Burma with the strategic & tactical insights of a Liddell Hart.This eminently well written book will leave you cheering at Slim's great triumph, yet weeping for those, who fought there.

I just completed reading this little know part of the much larger history of WWII. Part of the intent of the book was to just tell about that part of WWII and how it played out in Burma, India and China. I give it four and a half stars for that. It could have been a five if the maps were better. I knew next to nothing about what went on and who the players were. Now I know far more about it. Almost the best part of the book is the profile of the people involved from top to bottom. Some times I am left wondering how any thing ever got done with the infighting going on at the top. It boggles the mind how wrong we were about Chiang Kai-shek and the princelings. When I read the news today I can see that not much has improved in China. There is enough "Back-stabbing" to fill the book alone. There is good detail and plenty of facts and figures to paint a good word picture of this little known part of history.Anyone interested in history and world events will enjoy and learn from this well done book.

A well written book and a story well told. This covers the the disaster that Chiang Kaishek caused in the China-Burma-India theater of war during World War II. His corruption and unwillingness to fight the Japanese caused immeasurable harm to the defeat of the enemy in China and Burma. It tells of the frustrations of General Joseph Stillwell who had to deal with the Chinese and the triumph of General William "Bill" Slim over the Japanese in Burma.One significant criticism of the book is the lack of maps in order to follow the campaign, particularly in Burma, as well as elsewhere. There are a few maps widely dispersed but they hardly tell the story being related.

This book is a must read for those who might want to know more about one of the Unforgotten battles of the US Army involving the conflicts in India, China & Burma- The CBI Campaign. This is about the four Allied Commanders( Gen Wm Slim of the British Army, Cmdr Orde Wingate British Cmdr of the Chindiits, British Cmdr of the SE Asia command- Louis Mountbatten and US Gen Joseph " Vinegar Joe" Stilwell), whose personalities made it difficult for them to agree on a great many strategies of battle. Out of this Campaign many groups were amassed and fought together in some of the most dangerous and bloody conflicts ever fought; The Chindits, The British, USA 475th, 5307th Provisional Unit, Merrill's Marauders, Galahad Task Force, Mars Task Force, The Chinese Army and of course many many more. The story was a great account of a very long conflict that few people know much about and the main Commanders who were in charge of each of the various battle areas..

First, I enjoyed the book. It was a subject of which I knew little about and it was a good overview told through the lives of four major players in the theater. However, the overarching goal of the book seemed to be to prove the William Slim was the greatest general of World War 2.Annoying point #1 - The author's predilection of inserting foreign language phrases throughout the book. Not sure the point of that, but it breaks up the narrative and at least for me just leaves me feeling dumb and a little frustrated.Annoying point #2 - His seeming obsession with Chairman Mao and favoring the Communists over the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-Shek. I'm well aware that Chiang Kai-Shek was no angel and corrupt and a generally horrid person., but to favor Chairman Mao in the light of all that we know of his reign over China seems naive at best and disingenuous at worst. Oftentimes countries are burdened with the lesser of two evils. I'd have to say that Chiang Kai-Shek would be the lesser of two evils. I'm hard-pressed to come up with a Communist regime that ruled in a more humane way than even the most corrupt non-Communist alternative.Neither of these annoyances were enough to make me regret reading the book, but the second point in particular left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

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Not just the war scenes, the writer also beautifully narrates the incidents back in the headquarters and the personal motives of the Allied commanders during wartime. Analysis of the strategical mistakes made by both Allies and Japanese are worth remembering!The only drawback was the lengthy biographical descriptions on the lives of the major figures.

The only gripe I have about this magnificent book is its boring title: it simply does not do justice to what McLynn has achieved. The title is correct at one level: it certainly is a book about the Burma Campaign, that vast sweep of action ranging from China to India between 1942 and 1945, with Burma sandwiched between the two (and only seeing land warfare for three months in 1942 and eight months in 1945). But the book is actually much, much more than this. Indeed, it is a closely woven, tightly argued and beautifully written account of the clutch of extraordinary (or 'extrawdinary', to use Stilwell's parody of Alexander's refined accent when the two met for the first time in March 1942) men and women (if we include Madame Chiang kai-Shek) who were responsible for the higher direction of the war against the Japanese on land in Asia during this period. The title had led me to expect yet another start-to-finish account of the war. In over twenty years of studying the Burma Campaign I think I have read most of these books, and they range from the superb (Louis Allen and Jon Latimer have provided the best overall accounts to date) to the very bad. To be fair, McLynn does lay out his approach in the first few pages - it is to analyse the war in the Far East through the medium of four of its most extraordinary characters, Slim, Stilwell, Wingate and Mountbatten - but I had to get past the unpalatable outer crust of my own perception, fuelled by the lacklustre title, before I found the juicy delights within.More importantly, and it is this which holds the book together so well and gives it such satisfying depth, McLynn's marvellous account is the story of the relationships between these four characters, together with an extensive supporting cast of bit-part players. It is a wonder that the Allies managed to prevail at all in 1944 and 1945 when so much of the higher direction of the war was dominated by the absurd excess of strutting ego that this theatre of war seemed to produce in such abundance. McLynn reminds us brilliantly that in war only a proportion of one's battles are against the enemy: the remainder - perhaps the most painful - are with one's friends.This book delights, page after page. McLynn managed to hold me spellbound with the energy of his account of the rampaging personalities (some of whom were certifiably mad at the same time) that stormed across the battlefields of Asia and made the struggle for the higher command of the campaigns in North Africa, Italy and north-west Europe boring, pathetic even, by comparison. McLynn doesn't shilly-shally over his judgements about people, coming to them quickly and coherently, sharply recording their stories with pace and verve. He is an astute interpreter of the human condition, succeeding brilliantly in finding his way through sometimes competing and tendentious personal accounts to arrive at his own forthright position. I certainly cannot fault any of his judgements about his four principal characters, and indeed with those who played significant but subsidiary roles in the Far Eastern story: Churchill, Alan Brooke, Roosevelt, Chiang kai-Shek, and a raft of supporting British and American battlefield commanders. He follows David Rooney in getting Stilwell right, the frustratingly Anglophobic straight talking American patriot undone in the end by the unprincipled Machiavellianism of both Washington and Chungking, a man whose heart was always in the right place but whose simple prejudices did for him in the end. But he comes to an entirely different conclusion to Rooney with regard to Wingate, and rightly in my view. Wingate was a dangerous madman, whose strategic pretensions did little to advance the Allied cause in the Far East and in fact did much to retard it. It was the hard living, hard fighting Chindits who had to bear the brunt of his unhinged, relentless egomania. McLynn also gets Mountbatten right - 'ABC' (Admiral Cunningham) beautifully described the 'Supremo' at one of the wartime Allied conferences as 'all at sea') - and in his treatment of Bill Slim McLynn is spot on. His description of the Kohima/Imphal battles is good, but it is in his account of Slim's mastery at Mandalay/Meiktila in 1945 that McLynn is at his heart-thumping best. He concludes: 'Montgomery was a military talent; Slim was a military genius.'This fantastic book is a joy to read and is without doubt the finest book yet published on the higher command of the war in the Far East.

This book is up-to the mark, clear printing, also having two Book mark.

This is a fascinating account of the war in Burma from the initial defeat and withdrawal of the British forces to Slim's brilliant encirclement of the Japanese army near Mandalay in early 1945. If you are looking for the sort of account which describes the experiences of soldiers in the front line then this is not really for you. Instead it would be better to read the memoirs of those involved such as George Macdonald Fraser's "Quartered Safe Out Here". McLynn concentrates his attention on those in high command, especially the four big characters, Mountbatten (vain and ambitious), "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell (irascible but a fighting general), Wingate (totally mad) and his real hero, Bill Slim. possibly the greatest British general of the twentieth century. The other main character is Chiang Kai-shek, who used every ploy imaginable to avoid committing his army while constantly demanding more Lend-Lease aid from the Americans. The war is portrayed as largely futile. The real defeat of Japan took place in the Pacific and Burma was a sideshow, but Churchill was determined that Britain should reconquer at least one territory lost to the Japanese to show that the British Empire was not completely washed up. However, despite the heroics of Slim and his soldiers, both Burma and India were given independence within a few years. The maps provided are sketchy, and many of the places mentioned in the text are not shown so the narrative can be difficult to follow. There are also a few factual inconsistencies in the text which raises the question of whether there are other, less obvious errors. More careful editing might have helped to eliminate these. Despite these minor quibbles, this is an engrossing read.