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If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War: an Analysis of World War II Naval Naval War College Review Volume 62 Article 19 Number 4 Autumn 2009 If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific aW r: An Analysis of World War II Naval Strategy Michael Pearlman John A. Adams Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation Pearlman, Michael and Adams, John A. (2009) "If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific aW r: An Analysis of World War II Naval Strategy," Naval War College Review: Vol. 62 : No. 4 , Article 19. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol62/iss4/19 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Pearlman and Adams: If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War: An Analysis of World War II N 170 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW invasion. The swiftness with which Ger- counterfactual history, one that deals many implemented a scorched-earth both with what occurred and what policy designed to eliminate all traces of might have occurred had the high com- Polish society is truly breathtaking. Ev- mandsofbothnaviesbeenmoretrueto ans convincingly argues that the “final what one might call “the revealed solution” was well under way by the Word.” time the notorious Wannsee Confer- Counterfactual history is suspect to ence convened in January 1942. many historians, who feel they have Wannsee was merely an attempt to enough problems figuring out what ac- eliminate bureaucratic infighting and tually happened, let alone considering reinforce the authority of Hitler’s point what could have happened. However, man, Reinhard Heydrich, for the the Strategy and Policy course at the Holocaust. Naval War College thinks differently, Evans has written the kind of book to seeking a host of alternatives. Adams es- which all scholars aspire. It is a volume sentially agrees, possibly because he is a in which a lifetime of research and writ- business executive and not a profes- ing comes together in a powerful, and sional historian; he has written this ex- at times moving, manner. It is a book cellent book as an avocation (more that is sure to become a classic. power to him). “War is too important to be left to the generals,” said Clemen- STEPHEN KNOTT Naval War College ceau in World War I. History is too im- portanttobelefttohistorians,ifthey will not write about counterfactual contingencies. My reservations about this book are Adams, John A. If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific slight but do exist. Excuse my sacrilege, War: An Analysis of World War II Naval Strategy. but having taught for twenty years at Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2008. 472pp. the U.S. Army Staff College, I cannot $34.95 help thinking that there might be occa- It is said of Secretary of War Henry sions when Mahan’s precepts could be Stimson that in World War II he “fre- insufficient. Take his well known in- quently seemed to retire from the realm junction, “Don’t divide the fleet.” of logic into a dim religious world in Admiral William F. Halsey took this to which Neptune was God, Mahan his heart when he was in command of the prophet, and the United States Navy Third Fleet at the largest naval battle in was the only true Church.” Now we can human history—Leyte Gulf, in late Oc- judge the validity of that comment, tober 1944. As all readers of this journal thanks to John Adams’s If Mahan Ran know, Halsey took his entire force with the Great Pacific War. Adams grades him to chase down a decoy rather than both the U.S. force and its opponent, divide it and provide a blocking force of the Imperial Japanese Navy (another battleships and escort carriers to pre- service professing Mahanian ortho- vent a Japanese exit from the San doxy), according to their respective ad- Bernardino Strait. Since Mahan, pre- herence to the sacred text. The result is sumably, cannot be wrong, the blame a lively, interesting exercise in must fall to Halsey, for not realizing Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2009 1 Naval War College Review, Vol. 62 [2009], No. 4, Art. 19 BOOK REVIEWS 171 that his fleet was so powerful that he Office files at the National Archives, could divide it and still sustain local su- Kew, and the private papers of Lord periority. However, because Mahan Salisbury, Britain’s prime minister in never considered a situation such as 1885, 1886–92, 1895–1902, at Hatfield this, one must judge him inadequate as House. a guide in the last year of the great Parkinson’scentralfocusisonthe Pacific War. background and the effect of Britain’s “No plan survives first major contact Naval Defence Act of 1889 in the period with the enemy,” wrote Helmut von that has come to be called––and even Moltke the Elder, chief of the German dismissed as––the “pre-Dreadnought” General Staff in the mid-nineteenth era. He is reported to be preparing a century. If this be true of plans, which follow-up work that will focus on the are far less abstract than theories, era of HMS Dreadnought from 1906 on- should one expect that Mahan provides ward. In the volume at hand, Parkinson adequate direction through all the con- argues that most historians of the pe- tingencies that a warrior might face? riod have accepted too easily Arthur Marder’s picture of Britain’s relative MICHAEL PEARLMAN U.S. Army Command and General Staff College naval weakness in comparison with (Retired) other European naval powers. In partic- ular, Parkinson shows that Britain was not by any means a weak naval power and that W. T. Stead’s famous articles in the Pall Mall Gazette of 1884 were Parkinson, Roger. The Late Victorian Navy: The based on a gross exaggeration of the ac- Pre-dreadnought Era and the Origins of the First tual state of affairs. The key consider- World War. New York: Boydell, 2008. 323pp. ation, he points out, was maintaining a $145 naval force that was equal to that of the Roger Parkinson’s study of the Royal next two largest naval powers, France Navy from 1878 to the 1890s provides a and Russia. The effort to maintain that useful overview of a period in British margin of supremacy in terms of naval naval history that is sometimes seen as a expenditures, tonnage, and warship neglected “Dark Age.” He takes issue numbers resulted in the Naval Defense with the standard work of the period, Act in 1889. Parkinson maintains this Arthur Marder’s first book, British Na- was the spark that ignited the naval race val Policy, 1880–1905: The Anatomy of that lasted until the Washington naval British Sea-Power (1940). In this pub- arms-limitation treaty of 1922. As a re- lished version of his University of sult, Britain’s strategic situation Exeter doctoral thesis completed under changed from one that was a relatively Dr. Michael Duffy, Parkinson expands stable balance between Britain facing on the insights of Oscar Parkes, Bryan France and Russia up to the 1880s to Ranft, Donald M. Schurman, Paul M. one of the late 1890s and early twenti- Kennedy,N.A.M.Rodger,JonT. eth century that became a “strategic Sumida, and John Beeler with his own meltingpotwithnotthreebuteight detailed research work in parliamentary major naval powers––Britain, France, papers, the Admiralty and Cabinet Russia, America, Germany, Japan, Italy, https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol62/iss4/19 2.
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