A lesson learned from THE STRATEGISTS, by Phillips O'Brien

 In a great crisis, flexibility and being able to accept reality are everything.

            In our tech-oriented world where people believe whatever story has been liked and shared the most, there seems to be a growing belief that reality really can be whatever we wish it to be. This is a dangerous ignoring of the longstanding historical record, which suggests that eventually actual reality will always come crashing in around you, often in a sudden and destructive fashion. The most spectacular global crisis in history was full of such examples, and these are chronicled in Phillips O’Brien’s excellent new book The Strategists, which chronicles the background and military strategies of World War II’s titans—FDR, Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. All of these men, to one degree or another, were shaped by the trauma of World War I, and all took away very different lessons from their experiences—some of which helped them to glory in World War II, and others would lead their societies on a path toward total destruction.

            O’Brien relates the stories of “The Strategists”’s World War I experiences. Hitler and Mussolini actually served their nations as soldiers, Stalin fought to consolidate the new Soviet government as the war wound down, and FDR and Churchill served as government officials taking on a wider view of the war. Ironically, military experience in World War I generally left poor lessons to those who would later fight World War II; Hitler and Mussolini took away from their service that war was all about the movement of grand armies and weapons, and the two walked away from that war convinced they could avenge their nations’ shortcomings through pure will and grandeur. By contrast, FDR and Churchill’s government offices during the war gave them a wider view, as they recognized the importance of global military and economic forces, such as bolstering navies and airplanes with the latest strategies and technologies. Stalin’s service in the Russian Civil War proved he was a violent thug with paranoid tendencies, but it also gave him the cynical, understandable view that all people were fighting for their own goals, and could be manipulated and worked with should Stalin decide he needed their help.

            O’Brien’s book is fascinating and a relatively quick read for its size (over 400 pages), with maybe the biggest frustration for this History Teacher being that it is not long enough (he breezes over the experiences of the Strategists between the world wars, likely for length reasons). Those looking for an in-depth study of the Holocaust or Stalin’s Great Purges will also need to look elsewhere. However, O’Brien takes away fascinating lessons from the grand successes and failures of the Strategists.

Hitler launched a great land war against the nations of Western Europe early in the war, a surprise assault that was a massive success, and that convinced him of his own strategic brilliance over any of the other German military commanders. For the rest of the war, Hitler believed that some grand weapons project or the pure willpower of nonstop attack would eventually lead him to avenge World War I and win the “Final Victory” for Germany. He clung to that belief even as the world’s other major powers started to outmaneuver and out-produce him, and ordered his increasingly despondent soldiers to fight to the last and die for him even as he brought ruin upon the very people he had sworn to lead into glory (and to the moment he put a bullet in his head as his empire lay in ruins, Hitler always insisted he had been right about everything and it was his people who had failed him). Mussolini for much of his career got by on pure confidence, boasting, and the belief that if he lied about something for long enough, he could will it into reality. Those traits got him by long enough until he faced an actual global crisis, when his fateful decision to buddy up to Hitler lead to the exposure of his total delusion that he had built a grand Italian Empire, one whose foundations were laid upon quicksand. Both men hated constructive criticism, and in their final years surrounded themselves with lackeys who told them only what they wanted to hear; in the end, whether it takes years or decades, no one can escape the realities of the world.

By contrast, flexibility and a willingness to learn from their mistakes was what made FDR, Churchill, and Stalin the ultimate victors of World War II. Stalin shared with his fellow dictators a murderous hatred of constructive criticism, and a need to surround himself with toadies; however, he was genuinely humbled for a period by the Soviet Union’s military disasters in the early years of the war, and empowered more brilliant generals to conduct the ultimate victorious campaign against Nazi Germany. Stalin also learned to play nice and go out of his way to cultivate friendships with FDR and Churchill—in contrast to the alienating militancy of Hitler and Mussolini—and thus convinced them to provide the Soviet Union with the economic and military aid it desperately needed to continue the war. Churchill obsessed above all with preserving the British Empire, but he also saw Hitler a unique monster who had to be destroyed, and he was willing to set aside his lifelong hatred of Communism in order to work with others to do so. FDR was a lifelong critic of global empires in general, but he also saw the need for the Allies to put aside all differences until the war was won. Churchill and FDR also took a global view of the importance of economic and naval supremacy, on a level that Hitler never really appreciated. All three men left the details of the war to their more qualified military leaders, and were willing to set aside personal glory to ensure success.

The Allied leaders were not universally likable. Stalin was a paranoid monster whose worst impulses quickly asserted themselves as the war ended, leading to renewed hostility with the West and a new wave of murders and oppression against his opponents. Churchill’s love of the British Empire certainly did not lend itself to any sympathy for the oppressed colonies of Asia and Africa, and FDR himself expressed disgust at the degraded condition that the British Empire kept those people under. Even FDR, understandably seen as the most heroic of the Allied leaders, made a foolish and cocky decision to run for a fourth term in 1944, even as he was clearly too ill and worn down to continue as president much longer (a mistake no president today would surely ever make…), as he had become convinced that no other American could see the war to the end and figure out the peace—a mistake the world dearly paid for when FDR quickly died after that fourth term began, and thrust a completely unprepared Harry Truman into office. Nonetheless, all three had come to understand the importance of abandoning preconceived notions as they got new information, and surrounding themselves with people more competent and qualified than themselves, and in the end they won the most terrible of all the wars and helped to build decades of relative global growth and progress. As a modern society, we will never get better until we all try to learn a little bit of these old lessons as well.