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.

Author: Phillips Payson O'Brien
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton
Published: 08/27/2024
Pages: 544
Weight: 1.75lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.40w x 1.90d
ISBN: 9781524746483


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2024
Publishers Weekly 06/17/2024
Shelf Awareness 09/12/2024

About the Author
Phillips Payson O'Brien is a Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland. Born and raised in Boston, he graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, before working on Wall Street for two years. He earned a PhD in British and American politics and naval policy before being selected as Cambridge University's Mellon Research Fellow in American History, and a Drapers Research Fellow at Pembroke College. Formerly at the University of Glasgow, he moved to St. Andrews in 2016. O'Brien is the author of The Second Most Powerful Man in the World and How the War Was Won.