Strategy and the Second World War: How the War was Won, and Lost

As the introduction to the book says, Blacks aim is to write a good accessible introduction to strategy in the Second World War. And this aim is achieved perfectly. It is ideal for students or those wanting a general overview of the strategy of the different major combatants, for, as well as summarising recent scholarship, covers why they adopted (or were forced to) these strategies and also the impact they had in the Post-war world.To summarise, it highlights the incoherence (a word Black uses alot to describe it) of German strategy and the influence of Hitler. For Japan, it was the inability of its leaders to adapt to the reality and a poor long term statergy collapsed into a non existent strategy beyond dying for the emperor. Lastly, for the very disjointed Axis, the Italian strategy is barely mentioned (which speaks volumes). The Western Allies in contrast, was often 'joined-up' and Global in scale. The divergences in opinion were due to both historical and recent experience but compromises were often found. The Americans wanted the quickest route whereas Britain adopted the cautious approach that it had used in most conflicts through Great Power history. This is with the notable exception of the Great War and this recent experience (coupled with the realites of 1940-41 when fighting alone) informed their strategic thinking. Lastly, the Russians had their own landcentric strategy, often with one eye on the post-war make up of Europe.As with any books, there are criticisms and the most important ones to me where that it seemed light on sources and some sentences and conclusions were very vague (I'd imagine Professor Black marking down any student who put forward such conclusions in university essays!). That said, in strategy terms, this book was definitely more in the camp of the Allies; it had an aim and it achieves it. Well worth a read.