Military Effectiveness The Second World War

This three-volume study examines the questions raised by the performance of the military institutions of France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy in the period from 1914 to 1945. Leading military historians deal with the different national approaches to war and military power at the tactical, operational, strategic, and political levels. They form the basis for a fundamental re-examination of how military organizations have performed in the first half of the twentieth century. Volume 3 covers World War II. Volumes 1 and 2 address address World War I and the interwar period, respectively. Now in a new edition, with a new introduction by the editors, these classic volumes will remain invaluable for military historians and social scientists in their examination of national security and military issues. They will also be essential reading for future military leaders at Staff and War Colleges.

Introduction: military effectiveness twenty years after Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett; 1. The effectiveness of the Japanese military establishment in the Second World War Alvin D. Coox; 2. The United States armed forces in the Second World War Allan R. Millett; 3. British military effectiveness in the Second World War Williamson Murray; 4. The Italian armed forces, 1940–3 MacGregor Knox; 5. The dynamics of volksgemeinschaft: the effectiveness of the German military establishment in the Second World War Jürgen E. Förster; 6. Bitter victory: French military effectiveness during the Second World War Ronald Chalmers Hood III; 7. The Soviet armed forces in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–5 John E. Jessup; 8. Military effectiveness in the Second World War Earl F. Ziemke; 9. Challenge and response at the operational and tactical levels, 1914–45 Lieutenant General John H. Cushman; 10. The political and strategic dimensions of military effectiveness Russell F. Weigley.

Volume 3 in a three-volume study, which examines the questions raised by the performance of the military institutions of France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan and Italy between 1914 and 1945.

Allan R. Millett is a specialist in the history of American military policy and twentieth-century wars. He is the founder of the internationally renowned military history program at the Ohio State University, where he is Mason Professor of History Emeritus. Millett currently directs the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, where he is the Ambrose Professor of History and serves as the Senior Military Advisor for the National World War II Museum. He is the author or co-author of eight books and co-editor of five others.
Williamson Murray is Professor Emeritus of History at the Ohio State University. At present he is a defense consultant and commentator on historical and military subjects in Washington. He is co-editor of The Making of Peace (with Jim Lacey), The Past as Prologue (with Richard Hart Sinnreich), The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 (with MacGregor Knox), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (with Allan R. Millett), and The Making of Strategy (with Alvin Bernstein and MacGregor Knox). He has edited, along with Richard Sinnreich and Jim Lacey, a volume entitled The Shaping of Grand Strategy (Cambridge University Press, 2011).