How the War Was Won

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Feb 12, 2015 - History - 626 pages
World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than of land supremacy. He shows how the Allies developed a predominance of air and sea power which put unbearable pressure on Germany and Japan's entire war-fighting machine from Europe and the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Air and sea power dramatically expanded the area of battle and allowed the Allies to destroy over half of the Axis' equipment before it had even reached the traditional 'battlefield'. Battles such as El Alamein, Stalingrad and Kursk did not win World War II; air and sea power did.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
strategic bombing and the land
8
The dominance of air and sea production
17
The air and sea war and the phases of equipment
67
The air and sea war to November 1940
95
Grand strategists and the air and sea
131
Understanding the air and sea war from December 1940
169
prioritizing the air and sea war
196
war
266
The war in Europe in 1944
316
The air and sea war against Japan 19424
374
The end of the
430
the supremacy of air and sea power and
479
Notes
489
Select bibliography
578
Index
601

Winning the shipping
228

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About the author (2015)

Phillips Payson O'Brien gained a Ph.D. in History after two years working on Wall Street. Since then, he has published a range of works on British and American strategic and political history during the first half of the twentieth century. More recently, he has taken a leading role as a commentator on defence issues and the debate over Scottish Independence. He has testified in front of UK parliamentary committees, and advised major European governments on the course of the campaign. Through this work he has gained media experience, appearing as a regular commentator for the BBC and STV, and publishing opinion pieces in the Scotsman and the Scottish Herald. He has received awards or research fellowships from the Carnegie Foundation, the US Naval History and Heritage Command, and the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt Presidential libraries. He has also been invited to Japan twice to speak on World War II at the National Institute of Defence Studies (Tokyo).

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