The strategists
Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler - how war made them, and how they made war
- ISBN: 9781405966597
- Editorial: Penguin Books
- Fecha de la edición: 2025
- Lugar de la edición: London. Reino Unido
- Encuadernación: Rústica
- Medidas: 21 cm
- Nº Pág.: 544
- Idiomas: Inglés
Churchill. Hitler. Stalin. Mussolini. Roosevelt. Five of the most impactful leaders of WW2, each with their own individualistic and idiosyncratic approach to warfare. But if we want to understand their military strategy, we must first understand the strategist.
In THE STRATEGISTS, Professor Phillips Payson O'Brien shows how the views these five leaders forged in WW1 are crucial to understanding how they fought WW2. For example, Churchill's experiences of facing the German Army in France in 1916 made him unwilling to send masses of British soldiers back there in the 1940s, while Hitler's mistakes on the Eastern Front were influenced by his reluctance to accept that conditions had changed since his own time fighting.
The implications of the power of leaders remain with us to this day: to truly understand what is happening in Ukraine, for example, requires us to know what has influenced the leaders involved.
This is a history in which leaders - and their choices - matter. For better or worse.
Introduction: Strategy, war and personality
Winston Churchill: the making of an imperial strategist
Joseph Stalin: the making of an ideological strategist
Franklin Roosevelt: the young maritime strategist
Benito Mussolini: the birth of a nationalist strategist
Adolf Hitler: art and war
Winston Churchill: learning strategic restraint
Joseph Stalin and the strategy of practicality
Franklin Roosevelt and the domestic policy of strategy
Benito Mussolini and bluffing as strategy
Adolf Hitler: victory and defeat
Interlude: The interwar years
Hitler, Stalin, and the Nazi-Soviet pact
Churchill, Hitler and the Battle of Britain
Mussolini, Churchill and Greece, 1940-41
Stalin, Hitler and Barbarossa
Roosevelt, Hitler and the road to war
Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler and the air-sea-super-battlefield
Mussolini, Churchill, Roosevelt and empire in the Mediterranean
Hitler, Stalin and the Eastern front
Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and the cross-channel invasion
Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill and the post-war world
Epilogue: The strategists' war
