How the War Was Won, Phillips Payson OBrien
How the War Was Won, Phillips Payson OBrien
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How the War Was Won
Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II

Author: Phillips Payson O'Brien

Narrator: Peter Noble

Unabridged: 22 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/18/2023

Synopsis

World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology, and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than of land supremacy. He shows how the Allies developed a predominance of air and sea power which put unbearable pressure on Germany and Japan's entire war-fighting machine from Europe and the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Air and sea power dramatically expanded the area of battle and allowed the Allies to destroy over half of the Axis's equipment before it had even reached the traditional 'battlefield'. Battles such as El Alamein, Stalingrad, and Kursk did not win World War II; air and sea power did.

About Phillips Payson O'Brien

Phillips Payson O'Brien gained a PhD in history after two years working on Wall Street. Since then, he has published a range of works on British and American strategic and political history during the first half of the twentieth century. More recently, he has taken a leading role as a commentator on defense issues and the debate over Scottish Independence. He has testified in front of UK parliamentary committees, and advised major European governments on the course of the campaign. Through this work he has gained media experience, appearing as a regular commentator for the BBC and STV, and publishing opinion pieces in the Scotsman and the Scottish Herald. He has received awards or research fellowships from the Carnegie Foundation, the US Naval History and Heritage Command, and the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt Presidential libraries. He has also been invited to Japan twice to speak on World War II at the National Institute of Defense Studies (Tokyo).

Reviews

Goodreads review by Hugolane on April 21, 2022

I'm not a World War II buff. While I have fond memories of watching The World at War each week as a kid in the early 1970s, and more recently I read Liddle Hart's conventional history, military history is not my thing, though as a specialist in Eastern Europe I read a fair amount about Eastern Europ......more

Goodreads review by M on March 08, 2018

Well researched, meticulously analyzed and entertainingly written, Dr O'Brien has produced a very valuable and much needed evaluation of the importance of air and sea power to the outcome of the Second World War, how victory was actually achieved, and that it was not all on the battlefield. He produ......more

Goodreads review by Ross on May 11, 2022

Recently there was another fight on Talk:World War II over the order of the leaders of the Big Four. (They've been getting ornery lately. Let's hope that things return to normal now that their political season is over.) In the course of this, someone recommended this book. I hadn't read it, but it s......more

Goodreads review by Kaila on February 01, 2025

Buddy read with my dad. Made it about halfway and I think I'm going to leave it there. SO much detail. I guess at this point literally everything about World War 2 has been written about so you'd better be hyper specific if you want to write anything. This guy wanted to be specific about numbers. SO......more

Goodreads review by Shrike58 on August 20, 2024

Having finally gotten around to reading this book, I can admit regretting that I didn't get around to it sooner. This is very much the spreadsheet view of World War II, as O'Brien is looking at where the money was spent, on what systems, and how those systems contributed to maximum impact. The reali......more

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