The Strategists

Starred review from June 17, 2024
In this captivating study, historian O’Brien (The Second Most Powerful Man in the World) probes the formative experiences of Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler for insight into the decisions they made during WWII. He focuses on their wartime exploits or childhood ideas about military conflict that, according to O’Brien, had ramifications for their strategic thinking. They include FDR’s schoolboy fascination with naval history, which led to a career in the navy and his later certainty as president that a powerful navy would “determine the outcome” of any war; Hitler’s stint in the infantry during WWI, which resulted in his “constant focus on heavy artillery” as dictator, ensuring that, even as tactics and technology rapidly modernized, “his understanding of war stuck in the trenches”; and Stalin’s hard-won adaptability—painstakingly cultivated during his years fighting in the Russian revolution—which allowed him to maneuver the Soviet Union from the Axis to the Allied side. O’Brien’s fluid prose makes for enchanting reading; there’s never a dull moment (while working as a substitute teacher, Mussolini “could be seen walking angrily around town wearing a large black hat and a black tie, scaring the locals”; elsewhere, O’Brien notes it’s a good thing “Churchill was not born into a meritocracy, or else he would have achieved little”). For military history buffs, this is a must-read.