Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 100
coalitions. In Allied Master Strategists, author David
Rigby adds to the exhaustive field of World War II
scholarship by tackling the complex inter-workings of arguably the most successful multinational
coalition in modern history, the Anglo-American
Alliance during World War II. Rigby focuses on the
organization, structure, effectiveness, and personalities involved in the Combined Chiefs of Staff.
Established in January 1942, the Combined Chiefs
of Staff, serving as “the supreme uniformed military
command for the Western Allies,” had the daunting
task of formulating strategy to quickly and decisively
defeat the Axis powers.
Rigby sets the foundation by providing brief biographical sketches of key members of the Combined
Chiefs of Staff. This not only provides essential background information, but also allows a better understanding of the biases—national, service, and individual—which shaped the staff ’s overall contributions
to the committee. Rigby outlines the structure and
intra-workings of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and provides insight into the function of the respective national
feeder organizations, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the British chief of staff. When explaining the success
of the Western Alliance, Rigby is not short on his praise
for Field Marshall Sir John Dill and the British joint staff
mission in Washington, which the author rightly argues
is instrumental in the close cooperation enjoyed by the
military leadership of the Western Allies. By comparison
the alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet
Union did not enjoy such a fruitful relationship and was
often rife with suspicion and bureaucratic inefficiencies.
Much of the overt tension within the alliance concerned two major strategic decisions—the Germanyfirst strategy that relegated the defeat of Japan to a
secondary effort and the desire of the United States to
open a second front on the western European continent in 1942 or 1943. The reader gets a feel for the
challenges facing the Combined Chiefs of Staff as Rigby
lays out the skillful diplomacy required when addressing these two issues. The Americans, full of emotion
after the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, sought
approval of an offensive campaign plan in the central and western Pacific, while the British feared that
vital resources would be diverted from the European
Theater of Operation. Likewise, the U.S. delegation
was continually suspect of British reluctance to invade
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the continent, instead favoring operations in the
Mediterranean as well as operations the United States
felt were guided more by the restoration of colonial
influence rather than strategic necessities. Rigby records the gradual shift in power as the might of the U.S.
military industrial complex begins to overshadow the
equality of the Allies, and the United States moves to
a position of dominance in influencing the Combined
Chiefs of Staff and overall strategic objectives adopted
by the Allies. In the chapter “Delegation versus Control
for the Center,” Rigby describes an early version of mission command as the Combined Chiefs of Staff sought
to empower the theater commanders to achieve their
broadly outlined strategic objectives without becoming
entangled in the operations of each theater.
The final portion of the book is devoted to explaining
the role the Combined Chiefs of Staff played in shaping
wartime production in both Britain and the United
States. One quickly grasps the enormity of global warfare
by the examination of the production of wartime materials and munitions, the allocation and transportation of
those resources, and the force generation and apportionment to each theater. The Combined Chiefs of Staff, by
influencing such organizations as the War Production
Board in the United States and Ministry of Aircraft
Production in Britain, ݕɔ