Stephen R. TaaffeReseñas

A whirlwind of an overview of the events starting with the American defeat in New York through the daring American attack against the Crowned Forces at Monmouth Courthouse.
The author does a good job of moving the timeline forward while informing the reader of the broad strokes of three years of the war. Descriptions and brief back stories of the important people are paired with the key battles in which they participated or plans they made. This includes those in Parliament. Although the descriptions of the battles are brief, there are many included, which gives a comprehensive summary of the many events from 1776 to 1778. All of this taken together makes for an excellent guide to the campaign centered on the British occupation of Philadelphia.

Having previously written a campaign history of the fighting around Philadelphia in the American Revolution, and dealt with the command politics of the U.S. Army in World War II and Korea, Taaffe melds the two themes in this accounting of how the cadre of flag-grade officers in the American Revolution came to be, beginning with the appointment of George Washington by the Continental Congress, and then examining the processes by which Washington's immediate subordinates came by their positions. As might be expected, this was an intensely political process, to the point that Congress preferred to avoid the whole issue unless they absolutely had to; it being much harder to strip a man of his commission than to award it in the first place. Also, it will come as no surprise to even the most casual reader of American history that it came down to Washington to make the system work, and he generally did so, further justifying his reputation as the indispensable man of the war.

If one wants to point to a prime factor that determined success or failure among these men, it often seems to boil down to just being young enough to have the energy to do the job, and be adaptable enough to learn from one's mistakes (which were numerous!). The older men picked because of their experience in the Seven Years War often just did not have either the health, energy, nerves, or flexibility to grow into their positions.

Highly recommended.

When I grabbed this book off the "new" shelf at library I wasn't paying that close attention to what I was actually getting, apart from having a fair amount of respect for Taaffe. My expectation was that this was going to be a series of capsule biographies, but Taaffe had more ambitious plans, and provides an in-depth examination of how the USMC stable of flag-grade officers evolved through the course of the war; pretty much warts and all. One thing is for sure, Arch Vandegrift, commander of the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal, and eventually Commandant of the Marine Corps, was an indispensable man. Despite having embraced amphibious warfare as their mission there was no guarantee that the Marines would become a paragon of achievement had they not made their doctrine work, and Vandegrift was a man who made things work, with as little organizational conflict as could be avoided.

One irony that stands out to me is that the Marine emphasis on speed of execution perhaps came to tell against them as the war progressed, and battles in the Pacific became the case of prolonged sieges, not smash and grab operations to snare a port or an airfield. The more methodical approach of the U.S. Army was probably more appropriate. It is telling that Holland "Howling Mad" Smith, the senior USMC operational commander for much of the war, looked at Iwo Jima and Okinawa as bad deals from the perspective of casualties, even before the battles commenced, but that's why the U.S. Navy liked the Marines; they'd follow orders whether or not it made sense.

Very recommended.

I have read other accounts of the New Guinea campaign; what I found useful in this one was its emphasis on the role of the engineers, in getting the infantry ashore, and then creating useful facilities on the ground the infantry took. The author doesn't say so in his (repetitive) concluding section, but it looks to me like the engineers won the war.

American Rev-War, military history*****

Disclaimers: I am not a military historian nor an academic. Our family used to be Rev War Re-enactors with the Northwest Territory Alliance.
As a Publish or Perish tome it makes for a long but very interesting lecture. It demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of each of these generals as well as their achievements and failures. There is a slant to the political choices made by the congress with a nod to cronyism and a kind of praise for MOST of Washington's choices. All in all I learned much and feel that this book should probably be on reading lists for historians of several varieties.
John Burlinson, narrator, does improve the lecture and keeps away the possibility of snoozing.
I won this audiobook in a giveaway and my sons cannot snatch it from me (LOL).

Unlike certain books I've read lately, this monograph actually does work like something of a general introduction to a larger event, but Taaffe's main focus is the personal politics of MacArthur's Far East command, and how the toxic elements of MacArthur's command style were a liability in the conduct of the war. Apart from "Dugout Doug," the most problematic characters here are "Johnny" Walker (commander of U.S. Eighth Army) and Ed Almond (commander of U.S. X Corps); hard-driving officers of some competence, but arguably not leaders of the first rank.

In particular, Walker probably could not be as forceful as he should have been with MacArthur, because it would seem that he really enjoyed no confidence in any quarter (with the possible exception of U.S. Army Chief of Staff "Lightning Joe" Collins). For all his faults though, Walker is owed a debt of gratitude because it was because of his hard work that U.S. troops in the Far East were even a little bit prepared for the trials to come in 1950.

As for Almond, while he tends to get pilloried for his racism in most accounts, his biggest flaws as a general were unthinking aggression and a thirst for military glory. However, his will to win made him appreciated in the company of U.S. flag-grade commanders who were mostly past their prime.

The range of this book is actually a bit wider than the title suggests, as it does consider Matt Ridgway's period of command after the sacking of MacArthur, but before the long period of stalemate until 1953. This leads to an examination of how the time-serving generals who had happened to be in command when North Korean assault came were replaced. As opposed to the world wars, these men were eased out of command more than being unceremoniously sacked, showing the way to the future command politics of the U.S. military. In the wake of the results of Washington's subsequent wars one can wonder whether this is a good thing.

Instructors seeking to provide their charges with useful and relevant material still can find much of proven utility among the events and personalities of the American Civil War (ACW). At times the parallels to the very modern age are disquieting. The ominous rise of new weapons technologies posed much the same anxious concerns to Federal Navy commanders watching C.S.S. Virginia (nee U.S.S. Merrimac) taking ironclad shape in Norfolk as do the latest announcements from Beijing media about the threats hypersonic missiles or orbitally-launched kinetic energy weapons pose to U.S. Naval supremacy. New forms of media raise issues of popular support for warfare, be it in the form of Matthew Brady and other photographers’ grisly daguerreotypes of battlefield carnage or body-cam footage live-streamed from the field of combat into world-reaching social media. High-speed communication and transports, telegraphs and railroads, were concerns for 19th Century planners whose responses beneath the beards and brass buttons provide useful case studies for corresponding contemporary concerns.

One too-often forgotten such issue is the vital one of the need for any given senior commander to cooperate smoothly with at times mercurial sovereign civilian leadership. Stephen Taaffe’s fascinating and vital treatment of this exact subject in Commanding Lincoln’s Navy provides ‘all results in’ analysis of that vital and potentially-explosive relationship of much use to military thinkers of the 21st Century.

Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s only Secretary of the Navy, had no naval experience, but as a fiercely loyal cabinet member and a former newspaper editor, he combined a priceless understanding of media realities with a grinding determination to win the war. Taaffe ably chronicles Welles’s maturation as a manager of his human resources and obstacles, looming high among which were the Navy’s ossified seniority system and its tremendously powerful bureaux. Taaffe makes excellent use of Welles’s own assessment of his challenges, lucidly preserved in Welles’s multi-volume Diary, which combines priceless insight into the ‘team of rivals’ and the individuals who Welles felt helped or hindered the war effort and Welles’s efforts to complete and sustain the blockade that eventually strangled the Confederacy.

Taaffe chronicles how Welles had often-undesired input from all motives and all sides on nearly every one of his decisions, whether it was the support or replacement of a particular commander or the employment of a given weapons system or tactic. Welles’s navy was far less tolerant of hesitation or even suspected disloyalty to the Federal cause among his officers than were those initially in charge of the Union’s armies. Lincoln, other cabinet officials and Gustavus Vasa Fox, his competent and assertive Assistant Secretary, all put pressures on Welles in addition to those posed by the ghastly condition of admirals, ships, and Welles’s frantic need to find good replacements for them all in frantic haste. Unsurprisingly, Welles never managed perfection under such strains, but by the end of Taaffe’s narrative one shares Lincoln’s high opinion of Welles’s execution of his office.

Taaffe’s prime emphasis is, aptly, on Welles’s management of his senior commanders, among whom were heroes such as Charles Stewart, proven in battle—fifty-one years previously. Taaffe notes how Welles empowered and supported the best of his proved professionals, but Andrew Foote and even David Glasgow Farragut eventually collapsed under the burdens Welles and the war heaped upon them. Other men such as Samuel F. DuPont and John Dahlgren managed new technologies and their relationship with Welles in ways that ended or greatly hampered their utility to the war effort. Welles considered his drastic reactions necessarily ruthless. Many powerful people did not agree, but Lincoln, with his eye for talent, usually backed Welles.

Such trust was not without vindication. Franklin Buchanan had displayed excellence as a ship commander and the first superintendent of the United States Naval Academy. Welles nonetheless angrily refused to allow Buchanan to rescind his resignation when Buchanan’s belief that his native slave state of Maryland would secede failed in the event. Even modern authorities have faulted Welles’s inflexibility. It is worth noting that Buchanan would later command the Confederacy’s two most powerful ironclads—badly. He would be gravely wounded while watching outside the casemate of Merrimac/Virginia as his gunners burned the stricken U.S.S. Congress—and her wounded—with heated shot. His headlong charge with C.S.S. Tennessee against the Union fleet in Mobile Bay prompted a loyal Southern officer—Farragut—to remark, ‘I didn’t think Old Buck was such a fool.’ Farragut’s monitors, also supported by Welles, remorselessly pounded Tennessee to pieces.

Taaffe’s eminently readable and vivid narrative details dozens of similar stories, not all of them to Welles’s credit, but to the reader’s definite enlightenment. The most central, vital, and useful lesson from this volume is that, in an era when the Obama administration went through no less than seven senior commanders in Afghanistan, the modern leader must take a lesson from Welles and his war on that person’s vital need to manage civilian oversight at least as ably as the demands of the battlefield.

Rob S. Rice
American Military University

Besides working as a "tour d'horizon" of the conduct of the American ground war in World War II, one receives a good sense of just how the U.S. soldiers who held the higher command positions in World War II received those positions and, on occasion, lost them. Beyond professional achievement, much of this boiled down to a man's relationship with George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower or Douglas MacArthur. This is the only thing that explains the survival of Courtney Hodges as the commander of the U.S. 1st Army in the ETO, as the evidence seems clear that he should have been withdrawn after the Huertgen Woods campaign (if for no other reason but ill-health) but his friendships with Marshall, Eisenhower and Omar Bradley kept the man in the saddle. Besides that Taaffe also deals with the now unheralded influence of Lesley McNair who, for all his genius in creating the combat structure of the U.S. Army's ground forces, seemed to over-esteem organizational ability over character and force of will, and whose recommendations for operational command (such as Lloyd Fredendall and John Lucas) are justly regarded as failures. It's the collection of these personal relationships, for good or ill, that make this book valuable.

If there is a particular revelation for me in this book it is that of the career of Jacob Devers, who eventually parleyed a staff slot in the backwater of Italy into command of the U.S. 6th Army Group; much to the annoyance of Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton. Besides demonstrating a certain mastery of bureaucratic politics, Devers' fine performance also brings into question just how essential some of the standard heroes of the U.S. war effort in ETO were; as they say, the graveyards are filled with indispensable men.

I have very little to mark this book down for, but two points come to mind. One is that it's not clear Taaffe really appreciates the concept of operational warfare, or at least he doesn't explicitly makes judgements of achievement on that basis. Two, Taaffe also doesn't spend much time talking about what a limited base that the U.S. Army had to draw from in terms of its field commanders, which would be part of the explanation of why some individuals who deserved relief, if only for health reasons, were allowed to remain in combat positions. Then again, Taaffe does remind readers of why this was less of a concern than it might be, as the U.S. Army was not depending on individual virtuosity on the field of battle to win the war.

I read, "Marshall and His Generals" as a compliment to my other military biographies I own. It was an interesting read.

Each section of the book started with an overview of each of the major campaigns and theatres of operations of the war, then focused on the perspective of performance of and relationships between senior general (corps commanders and above) in those campaigns and theatres. There were 38 senior commanding generals reviewed in this book. Some were well known names. Other less so.

Seeing how a major campaign unfolded and appreciating the roles of the senior generals in it was illuminating. While past performance and future potential were important considerations in wartime careers and promotions, the personalities of the generals themselves and those around and above them were also major factors in professional advancement.

Stephen Taffe does a respectable job putting together the book. There are 65 pages of notes or references that, to me, indicates some comprehensive research.

Other reviewers note Taffe sometimes expounds needlessly on gossipy details or personal opinions of various generals. Yes, I noted that. With the exception of a couple entries, it seemed relatively under control. I did think, however, that he spent a lot of time harping on the poor relationship between Eisenhower and Devers. Almost to a level of distraction. It is one thing to quote someone else's description of a general as a "prima dona". It is another for the author to use the descriptive term in dolling out his own judgments.

Clearly the book focuses on senior American generals. How they were promoted, past and wartime performances, strengths and weaknesses. One thing that I think the author could have improved upon is identification of general officer ranks. 99% of the descriptions of the rank of each man just read, "General... ". Not the specific general rank such as Major General, Lieutenant General or General. I think that with regular full rank identification in the book, it would have enhanced the initial introduction of the general, better illustrated rank relations between generals during the war, and when they were promoted. Just calling all the men, "General" everywhere in the book grew confusing. Maybe the regular use of rank abbreviations might have been a good alternative (i.e. BG, MG, LTG).

Less the above exceptions, overall this was an excellent book. I learned a lot about many generals. Prior to reading this book, I had perhaps only heard of various names in passing. I found it also indirectly provided some good additional understanding of the leadership, personalities and decisions of the war's primary US generals, Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur and Bradley.

As I read this book, I had another book available to cross reference: Webster's American Military Biographies: The Stories of 1000 Military Figures. Webster's provided more complete biography profiles of generals and details of past rank promotions and assignments. Many (but not all) generals were found in Webster's.

I look forward to additional biography reading with the leads provided in this book.½

Dr Taafe has produced a highly readable quick study of the US Army in WWI with thumbnail sketches and analyses of many of the US Army's general officers. The nine core chapters focus on particular campaigns taking the reader back and forth from the European and Pacific theaters. As each campaign unfolds in clear, understandable prose; the author examines the American leaders in quick, objective, analytic snapshots As usual with the Univ. Press of Kansas' series of Modern War Studies, a well done volume which I recommend. Goes well with Perrett's "There's a War to Be Won: The United States Army in World War II" and Millett & Murray's "A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War."

I also recommend Taafe's "MacArthur's Jungle War." Please see my review of same.

Well written account. One of the more balanced looks at MacArthur and his camaign. Better maps would have been a real plus. Recommend this book.

Well written. Needed better maps, especially the one of New Guinea was difficult to read. Would have been nice to have some photos of the terrain and the troops.½

An excellent military history book - clear, concise, coherent overview of an unfortunately overlooked campaign of WWII. Covers the operations at Hollandia, Wadke, Biak, et. al. Explains how the campaign grew out of the larger geostrategic questions (invade Formosa,or liberate the Philippines). Mentions the logistics required to launch such a successful drive and devotes a lot of space to Mac's subordinates - who deserved a lot more credit then they got (or more than Mac was willing to give them!) Taafte's book is a must-read for anyone interested in the ground war in the Pacific

Good solid, cleanly written account of MacArthur's New Guinea campaign (mius Buna). The author notes the contributions of combat support organizations throughout, emphasizing the work of engineers, medics, and cryptanalysts. He finds fault with MacArthur the out of touch tactician but respects him as a strategist. This is a good single volume account of the campaign minus decent maps and order of battle information (ok, I'm a wargamer!).. Well-written and researched with a good bibliography. The author did have "Mahanian" stuck in his head, using it six times that I counted!

On the whole I found this to be a useful book, so that even if you can't say that Taaffe greatly advances the state of our knowledge of the Revolutionary War, he does provide an excellant summation of that knowledge in regards to the campaign in question. If nothing else, I think that Taaffe does a fine job of examining the interaction between the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of war, while in the context of the logistical, geographic, and political obstacles Howe and Washington faced. I also come away from this book with the thought that Piers Mackesy's "The War for America" hasn't been superceded as the best strategic and operational study of the war, and after about forty-plus years you would have thought it would have been.