Military Effectiveness

This book is disappointing. It lacks factual data. It almost does not contain any tables. The content of this book does not match the title of the book. I cannot recommend to buy this book.

This is the second volume of a work commissioned by the DOD to determine if a systematic historical study could provide accurate relative evaluation of military effectiveness. Millett and Murry established a conceptual frame work for evaluating political, strategic, operational and tactical military effectiveness for the armed forces of France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the United States and set out on a project to track these seven nations through the first half of the 20th century. The first volume covered the performance of the these armed forces in World War I and the systematic conceptual framework gave a much better than normal view of relative effectiveness despite the different authorship of each study. I think this came to be the case because each of these armed forces was locked in a mortal embrace with one or more of the others so there were common experiences being explained. In this volume the problem is more complex and perhaps dealt with less well. Each of these armies in the interwar period was in a very different political, economic, social, and cultural environment and each has some special issues that did not directly relate to the armed forces of other nations. That being said, the essays are nontheless interesting though some have arguable elements. For example, the essay on the United States gives no mention or credit for the Rainbow strategic war planning undertaken by the rather maligned officer corps of the US armed forces. On the other hand the essay on the German armed forces addresses the question of why the German army did so well preparing tactically and operationally and so poorly preparing strategically. The answer is complex and nuanced but explained with great clarity. In some respects, this volume cannot help but be overshadowed by the ones that cover the more dramatic events of the two wars themselves. The final essay that should sum things up doesn't really seem to do so. Yet for all that, this is a valuable work that tries to put in perspective how all three services in each country tried to prepare themselves for events some feared and some wished for. Any real student of World War II would benefit by understanding the background revealed in these studies.

Interesting and thorough assessment of how the seven principal armed forces developed during the 1920s and 1930s and how they dealt with issues such as budgets, new military technologies, and political limitations. There is also much assessment of how they adapted (or failed to adapt) their tactics and operations to these new technologies such as tanks, air power, and mechanization. The emphasis is on what the various armies did, but there is also,much discussion on how the various navies and air forces responded to these issues. An especially interesting aspect, I thought, was how some armies such as the British, French, and American failed to properly interpret what was happening and consequently suffered disastrous defeats at the hands of the German army for the first three years of WW II. It wasn't just a result of tight budgets imposed by the political governments -- there was plenty of ineptitude on the parts of the military leaderships.