By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle and is the Norris Research Fellow at the Eisenhower Institute and a senior fellow at the Center for Building Community.
Bernard Montgomery, George S. Patton and Erwin Rommel fought epic battles in North Africa and Europe in World War II. Entire libraries of books have been written about each commander. But now, these leaders are presented in a book the way they fought in the war: against each other.
Author Terry Brighton, curator of the Queen’s Royal Lancers Museum, follows the familiar terrain of scholarship on each man. He also digs deeper to show how the men thought and fought.
He invokes Clausewitz’s principle that battles are won by the ration of “means” and “will to fight.” Thus, though the Allies had an advantage in number of troops and weapons, the Germans won battles early in the war due to willpower. Hitler factored this in as part of his strategy: “It would not be the first time in history that willpower has triumphed over the stronger battalions.”
This Nietzschen on view was personified by Rommel. The Desert Fox used willpower and strategy to overcome the Allies’ numerical advantages. Brighton quotes English scholar and soldier Liddell Hart as saying of Rommel: “His successes were achieved with inferiority of resources and without any command of the air. No other generals on either side won battles under these handicaps.”
Indeed, Hitler’s strategy may have succeeded had it not been for the arrival of Monty and Patton.
The turning point of the North African campaign – and perhaps the entire war – was the Battle of El Alamein. There, on the Egyptian coast, Montgomery’s superior numbers faced Rommel’s willpower. But unlike his predecessors, Monty was ready to go the distance with the Desert Fox. “Montgomery’s superior will to fight – and it was his alone, all of his commanders being willing to pull back – brought the British a victory that otherwise (despite their numerical and supply superiority) might not have been won.”
And then there is Patton, relentless and ruthless. After Monty helped plan the D-Day invasion, the Englishman watched in horror as Patton’s Third Army swept across Europe ahead of him.
Only with these two leaders, Brighton argues, were the Allies able to defeat Hitler. Montgomery proved more capable of managing resources and more possessing of the perseverance needed in a battle of willpowers. Patton proved more capable of conducting a blitzkrieg campaign and more possessing of the audaciousness needed in a warrior’s will to fight. This combination of perseverance and audaciousness finally destroyed the Nazis.
The book also details the demise of each man. Brighton poignantly re-creates the moment when Hitler’s henchmen came to offer Rommel the choice of a trial or a suicide. Patton, marginalized at war’s end by his remarks about confronting the Soviets, was paralyzed in a freak car accident and died not long after.
Only Monty survived. The postwar years were not kind. The field marshal was enraged by Eisenhower’s memoirs (and perhaps by Eisenhower’s fame) and struck back with his own book, which Ike called “a waste of time to read.” In promoting his book, Monty appeared on American television and suggested President Eisenhower was not well: “Your president has had a heart attack and a stroke.” These episodes only served to diminish Monty.
Still, for a few years in the early 1940s, Patton, Montgomery and Rommel made history together. Terry Brighton’s book provides a brisk, compelling account of that history.
Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle and is the Norris Research Fellow at the Eisenhower Institute and a senior fellow at the Center for Building Community.
By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle and is the Norris Research Fellow at the Eisenhower Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Building Community.
In 1946, a 17-year-old British student met Winston Churchill and asked the once and future prime minister how he had achieved so much.
“Conservation of energy,” the great man replied. “Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.”
That teenager was Paul Johnson, and he later emerged as one of the world’s greatest historians. Now, in his twilight years, Johnson has turned his formidable powers on the 20th-century figure he calls “the most valuable to humanity, and also the most likable.”
In Churchill, Johnson chronicles his subject’s life and career, with special attention to how he paced himself through a 90-year journey of soaring vistas and dark valleys.
Johnson begins the book by arguing that Churchill was his mother’s son. His American mother instilled in him American characteristics: emotion, passion, perseverance and, above all, ambition. “She believed the sky was the limit,” the author writes, “that everything was possible … .” This philosophy would guide Churchill throughout his career.
And what a career. From soldier to statesman, Churchill served the British Empire for six decades. Though he often sought to preserve tradition, his unconventional leadership typically led him to promote change. In one striking example that Johnson highlights, Churchill used his first tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty to preserve the Royal Navy as the greatest sea-fighting force in the world while transforming the way it fought.
“He began the historic shift from coal to oil,” Johnson notes, “and in the process laid down a new class, the Queen Elizabeth, of huge, oil-burning battleship. He created the naval air service, and begged his ship architects to design him aircraft carriers.” Churchill loved history, but he could see the future and spent his career trying to build it.
Johnson’s story arc is written in fluid prose that beautifully reveals the tension and achievement in Churchill’s life. In one paragraph, the historian summarizes the length, width and depth of his subject’s career as a politician, warrior and artist:
“In his ninety years, Churchill had spent fifty-five years as a member of Parliament, thirty-one years as a minister, and nearly nine years as prime minister. He had been present at or fought in fifteen battles, and had been awarded fourteen campaign medals, some with multiple clasps. He had been a prominent figure in the First World War, and a dominant one in the Second. He had published nearly 10 million words, more than most professional writers in their lifetime, and painted over five hundred canvases, more than most professional painters.”
Still, Johnson’s book seems incomplete. Its 168 pages equal not quite two pages for each year of Churchill’s life.
At times, Johnson teases the reader with revealing and penetrating insight into the great man’s career. The author describes his subject’s engaged leadership style as the result of having been a prisoner during the Boer War. “All his life he refused to be confined to a desk,” Johnson writes, and then explains why. “His imprisonment by the Boers had given him a horror of confinement … .”
This type of insight raises the question of what might have been if Johnson had written a full-volume biography. Perhaps the author, like his subject, decided to conserve his energy.
Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle and is the Norris Research Fellow at the Eisenhower Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Building Community.
‘The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall’ by Michael Meyer
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, September 13, 2009
By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle and is the Norris Research Fellow at the Eisenhower Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Building Community. This fall marks the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s collapse and the beginning of the Cold War’s end. Symbolically, Berlin always represented ground zero in the fight against communism. So when the wall finally came down in 1989, many wondered how it happened and who deserved credit.
In The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Michael Meyer offers an important insider’s account of the wall’s crumbling. Some people write about history; Meyer lived it. He served as Newsweek’s bureau chief for Germany and Eastern Europe in 1989. His first-person narrative takes readers back to his experiences in that historic year.
If storytelling comprises both content and context, Meyer deserves high praise for the former. His on-the-ground reporting of those momentous events is filled with new information and is told with a brisk, smooth style.
What ended with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Meyer argues, began when Hungarian soldiers cut down part of the electric fence between Hungary and Austria earlier in 1989. This first tear in the Iron Curtain led many East Germans to head south and escape. The hero who put things in motion, Meyer says, was Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, who knew that communism could not work.
But according to Meyer, Nemeth was made possible only by Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet leader is portrayed as something of a patron saint of the revolution. Meyer details a tense Warsaw Pact meeting in July 1989, where other communist leaders pressured Nemeth to repent. But each time Nemeth looked over at the Soviet leader, he noticed that Gorbachev winked at him. Meyer quotes Nemeth’s recollection of that meeting: “It was as if Gorbachev were saying, ‘Don’t worry. These people are idiots. Pay no attention.’ ”
Later that year at a news conference, an East German government spokesman mistakenly implied that East Germans would be allowed to cross over into West Berlin. This announcement led countless people to flock to the wall, where the guards were so overwhelmed and so unsure what to do that they let the people cross. The Berlin Wall, it seems, came down by almost by accident.
When zooming in with a narrow-lens camera, Meyer creates a fascinating picture filled with vivid images and bold colors. But when he tries his hand at the wider shot, his view is sometimes clouded with ideological revisionism. Meyer goes out of his way to mock American conservatives who revere Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” And he points to Reagan’s “political evolution” and argues that the president became a diplomat in his second term and worked with Gorbachev. Thus, Meyer essentially argues, conservatives should be careful to claim America won the Cold War.
At times, this makes Meyer’s book look more like a work of polemics than a work of history. Most conservatives don’t argue that Reagan’s speech won the Cold War, but that his policies played a key role: He deployed Pershing missiles to Western Europe, supported Solidarity in Poland and forced concessions from Gorbachev.
And did Reagan’s negotiating posture change in the second term? Sure it did, after Gorbachev accepted Reagan’s terms at the negotiating table. Most notably, when Reagan and Gorbachev signed the treaty eliminating intermediate- range missiles in Europe, they did not ban missile defense, something Gorbachev desired desperately. Reagan changed because he got what he wanted. And this pressure from the American president almost certainly was an important part of the context that led Gorbachev to wink and allow reform to move forward in Eastern Europe.
Still, Meyer’s book represents a major contribution to Cold War history. And his central thesis rings true: The people in Eastern Europe did the most to win the Cold War. Yet it takes nothing away from their victory to acknowledge that they had help from their friends in America.
Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle and is the Norris Research Fellow at the Eisenhower Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Building Community.
As the president fought for his economic recovery agenda, the Republicans launched a fierce counterattack. The president’s plan, according to Newt Gingrich, would “kill jobs” and “actually increase the deficit.”
This was not Gingrich criticizing the Obama stimulus program in 2009. It was Gingrich attacking then-President Bill Clinton’s economic plan in 1993.
This week, as President Barack Obama promises to spend more of the stimulus money to improve the economy, Republicans — including some of the same spokesmen — are on the attack again. “Bureaucrats managing companies does not work,” Gingrich said recently. “Politicians dominating the economy does not work.”
To be fair, Republicans should fight for free markets and free trade. History shows that the invisible hand of the marketplace works more effectively than the heavy hand of government. And much of Obama’s economic agenda appears to be all motion and little action.
But when Republicans paint a dark picture of economic doom, they also paint themselves into a political corner.
The lessons of the 1990s should give Republicans pause. After Clinton increased both spending and taxes in 1993, the economy began a steady ascent. Sure, when Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, they reduced taxes and balanced the budget, undoubtedly helping this growth and prosperity. But in 1996, voters instead remembered the overheated GOP rhetoric of the early ’90s, considered the country’s economic strength and voted Clinton into a second term.
Republicans should reflect on this past. As they oppose the Obama agenda, they need to do it the right way, and they need to do it in a way that doesn’t contradict their core economic message.
The American economy is stronger than the policies of any one administration. The creativity of America’s entrepreneurs can overcome any of the federal government’s policies. In fact, throughout American history, economic downturns have often led entrepreneurs to create new products and services that have led to new economic growth. Any Republican message needs to begin by acknowledging that the economy will bounce back. It always has; it always will.
Perhaps no one possessed a better grasp of America’s economic power than Ronald Reagan. Yet when Reagan addressed excessive government, he often spoke in measured, philosophical terms. “They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy,” Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech supporting Barry Goldwater. In other words, big government won’t destroy the economy — it just won’t help it very much. That’s a much firmer terrain from which to fight the Obama administration.
In his 1981 inaugural address, Reagan posed a simple question: “But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” These were not the words of an ideologue but, rather, the wisdom of a populist who put his faith in the people — not the government — to restore the economy.
For today’s Republicans, rather than oversimplified characterizations of economic decline, why not bet on the American entrepreneur? Instead of saying Obama will kill jobs or ruin the economy, why not argue the larger principle that businesses can resurrect the economy better and faster than the government can?
We know the economy will recover. We also know that, when it does, it will be in spite of Obama’s spending, not because of it.
But Republicans are setting the stage for an Obama encore by insisting that his policies will fail. When the economy inevitably returns to growth, Obama will be well-positioned for reelection. And if he is, perhaps he’ll quote the governor of Alaska and say, “I told you so.”
Kasey S. Pipes authored “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality” and wrote speeches for then-President George W. Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
look at the life of America’s first corporate titan
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 17, 2009
By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.On Jan. 27, 1870, the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad convened its first stockholders’ meeting. The merger of the previously separate rail companies marked a watershed moment in American history: the beginning of the giant corporation in American economic life. And it was made possible by one man: Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Long before Gates, Walton or Perot, there was Vanderbilt. The first great corporate titan in American history, the Commodore’s reputation has largely evolved into a caricature. It started with Mark Twain, a contemporary whose satire suggested the Commodore had no soul. But it was sealed by Matthew Josephson, whose 1934 book, The Robber Barons, cast Vanderbilt as a leading villain in a cast of rogues who stormed the economic stage in the late 1800s.
In recent years, Ron Chernow has reassessed J.D. Rockefeller and Jean Strouse has re-examined J.P. Morgan. Now, T.J. Stiles recasts Vanderbilt not as a villain, but as a visionary whose surreal life was matched only by his stunning legacy.
In The First Tycoon Stiles does more than trace the journey of a man; he tracks the evolution of a country. The Commodore’s career began in steamboats when America still operated as a largely agrarian society. Later, as the railroad titan, he literally helped transport America into the industrial age. Above all, the king of the railroads was an agent of change.
First, he changed the way America conducts business by creating the giant corporation. As Stiles writes:
“By consolidating two companies of great size and financial health, it created a single behemoth on an unprecedented scale. This new entity, the giant corporation, would spread into manufacturing, as seen first in Standard Oil and later in other industries, beginning with a great wave of mergers from 1895 to 1904; eventually it would dominate every other sector of the economy as well.”
From that point forward, the American economy would feature economies of scale that helped reduce prices and increase productivity. It also helped create a managerial middle class as more Americans began to work for the new giant corporations.
Vanderbilt also changed American finance. When he first ascended to the presidency of the New York Central, he decided to do more than build railroads, according to Stiles. Instead, “he would be a creator of the invisible world, a conjurer in the financial ether.” In March 1867, his plan to essentially create stock splits (increasing the amount of stock by issuing new shares) was approved to much outrage in the financial world. In the 20th century, it became a common Wall Street practice.
And Vanderbilt changed American law. Earlier in his career, his steamboat operation was so successful that the owners of a rival company sued. In the Supreme Court case, Gibbons vs. Ogden, the court upheld the federal government’s right to regulate commerce and overturned a state law that gave Vanderbilt’s competitors a virtual monopoly.
Stiles writes vividly of the Commodore’s life and times, showing his personal failings but focusing on his professional successes. His book is blessed with timing, as the recent market collapse might create interest in a man who laid the foundation for so much of corporate America. And this thorough and thoughtful book serves as an important corrective that unmasks the Vanderbilt caricature and reveals a more nuanced, complex and interesting portrait.
Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.
by Richard Beeman: a dramatic account of the debates that forged the U.S. Constitution
DALLAS MORNING NEWS 12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, March 29, 2009
By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality. Historians have long argued over the intentions of the men who gathered in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia. As the world’s oldest living constitution, the document has triggered several waves of revision.
In the early 20th century, Charles Beard wrote that the Constitution was created as a business arrangement by men of commerce and privilege. In the Cold War, Carl Van Doren argued that the Philadelphia agreement provided an example for how nations could unite just as the colonies had united years before.
But in the 1960s, Catherine Drinker Bowen produced perhaps the greatest book on the Constitutional Convention, The Miracle at Philadelphia. To her, the document produced by the 55 men from 12 states (Rhode Island did not participate) after five months represented a miracle. And though she labeled its authors as great men, not gods, to many Americans the event seems almost biblical, with the founding fathers descending like Moses from Mount Sinai with the great document for their people.
Richard Beeman tells a very different story in Plain, Honest Men. His account shows very human leaders struggling with the difficult political challenges and offers more drama and less divinity.
The challenge facing the men at Philadelphia was at once simple and profound: how to improve upon the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation without overly empowering the government.
On more than one occasion after the revolution, the Colonies had almost destroyed their new nation. George Washington had to face down a mutiny from his own soldiers when Congress would not pay them. Massachusetts received little help when farmers’ anger over debt and taxes erupted into Shay’s Rebellion. The new nation could not tax its citizens nor defend itself. Clearly, the Articles of Confederation were not working.
As Beeman writes, “something drastic needed to be done to save their experiment in liberty and union.”
And so what began in Philadelphia as an effort to improve the Articles of Confederation evolved into a conference to draft a new Constitution. Beeman painstakingly re-creates the debates in the Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House. The debates produced monumental achievements such as the creation of a three-branch government, including a bicameral legislature. There were failures, as well, the continuation of slavery among them.
Skillfully, Beeman uses character development to drive his narrative. Specifically, he focuses on James Madison, Ben Franklin and George Washington as the three men who helped “make the revolution of 1787 possible.” Madison offered ideas, plans and creativity; Franklin facilitated key compromises; and Washington’s presence and prestige gave the proceedings immediate legitimacy.
The result was a Constitution that still works and inspires today. Far from a miracle, Beeman argues that founding father Robert Morris correctly judged it as something else:
“While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain, honest men.”
Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.
In an Ideas piece, Pipes says in politics, it’s not just what the president says about the issues, it’s what the issues say about the president. After all, anyone can confront an enemy, but it takes a leader to confront a friend.
Photo: AP
Two months into Barack Obama’s presidency, the country has seen a man with immense political talent. Calm and calculating, the new president possesses a natural ability to lead and a remarkable degree of emotional intelligence. He’s in control of himself; but is he in control of his party?
Like a swan on water, Obama glides gracefully along the surface while below his kicking never stops. So far, the kicking has hit only Republicans. Not long after assuming office, the president waved and smiled as he entered a Capitol Hill meeting with congressional Republicans. Once the doors were closed, he taunted them that “I won” and then mocked them for listening to Rush Limbaugh. This was power politics; but it was also easy posturing. Who isn’t beating up on congressional Republicans these days?
More impressive would be a show of force against his own base. History teaches that leaders have to fight battles with their own people. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan ignited a conservative explosion when he nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. Yet his unwavering support for her helped convince many Americans who hadn’t voted for him that Reagan was his own man. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton elevated this craft to an art form. Faced with a Democratic Party in Congress that leaned left, Clinton regularly looked for ways to show his independence. His work with Republicans produced welfare reform, NAFTA, a balanced budget and even a capital gains tax cut.
Obama could learn from these two presidents. But the learning curve appears steep. Little in his background suggests a willingness to confront his own party. His voting record in the Senate consisted of mainly party line votes. And his presidential campaign mostly hid fairly stale Democratic ideas behind fresh new packaging.
Since taking office, scant evidence has emerged that Obama wants to defy congressional Democrats. This strategy has hurt him. Take the stimulus, for example. When Speaker Nancy Pelosi inserted pet projects like funding for condoms (and then embarrassed herself trying to defend the idea), Obama’s brand suffered. This episode should have warned the president: Congressional Democrats possess their own agenda. At some point, he needs to acknowledge that and confront them.
Fortunately, one example does exist of Obama finally, grudgingly confronting an ally: his speech on Jeremiah Wright. No, not the vaunted Philadelphia speech. But the speech a month later in North Carolina. In Philadelphia, Obama skillfully wove an elaborate rhetorical argument to clothe and conceal an embarrassing relationship. But then the Wright shenanigans continued. A month later in North Carolina, Obama was forced to finally denounce his mentor. “I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people,” Obama said, contrasting himself with Wright, “That’s in my DNA.” This perfect metaphor gave him the moral authority to separate himself from Wright’s divisive words and ways. Delivering this rebuke of his longtime pastor must have pained Obama. But it was necessary; and he did it effectively.
Where can the president confront his party today? The Congressional Democrats’ desire to pass card check legislation presents a potential opportunity. Card check would effectively eliminate the secret ballot when employees vote on whether to unionize. In opposing this, the president could say: “I support labor. But right now, my job is to help create jobs. Let’s get the economy moving again. We can discuss labor reforms later.” This would show the president is committed to improving the economy and willing to confront his own base to do it.
In politics, it’s not just what the president says about the issues, it’s what the issues say about the president. After all, anyone can confront an enemy, but it takes a leader to confront a friend.
Kasey S. Pipes (www.kaseyspipes.com) wrote speeches for President George W. Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and authored “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.”
Michael Korda: A fresh look at the Battle of Britain
12:00 AM CST on Sunday, January 11, 2009
By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
books@dallasnews.com Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.
In the summer and fall of 1940, the world’s fate hinged on the Battle of Britain. Had the Nazi Luftwaffe prevailed in its air assault on England, the war might have ended. But the British victory ensured the war would continue until the United States joined and tipped the power balance.
That story has been told before. Now, Michael Korda provides a fresh, new account of the man most responsible for victory in With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain.
Korda, a former editor-in-chief at Simon and Schuster and a Royal Air Force veteran, takes a personal interest in the story. His uncle, Sir Alexander Korda, was listed by the Gestapo as a person to be arrested once the invasion of England was complete. But that invasion was stopped by the RAF.
Often, accounts of this battle focus on Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This is no accident. When he was asked how history would remember him, Churchill famously answered that it would remember him well since he intended to write it. He did, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his World War II memoir. But in With Wings Like Eagles, the author manages to move the prime minister into a supporting role – no easy task.
Instead, Korda shines the spotlight on Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding. He led the RAF Fighter Command from its creation in 1936. In those days, the fighter plane was the weak stepchild to the proud, muscular bomber. “The bomber will always get through,” theorized military planners before World War II. Dowding disagreed. He foresaw the fighter plane’s importance.
“Dowding had a good picture in his mind of the battle to come,” Korda writes, “and what it would take to win.” He began planning for dogfights in the air, and meticulously oversaw the implementation of radar and radio control of aircraft, as well as the creation of new single-engine monoplanes, such as the eight-gun Spitfire.
When the Nazi air assault came in 1940, the RAF pilots were ready. By September, the battle ended in Hitler’s first defeat. Mr. Korda writes, “Perhaps without even realizing it, Hitler lost the war, defeated by the efforts of perhaps 1,000 young men.”
Ironically, perhaps Dowding’s greatest battle occurred not with his enemy but with his prime minister. As the Battle of France had ended and the Battle of Britain was beginning, Churchill favored sending fighter planes to France to help repel the Nazis. Dowding saw that France was lost and that any planes sent across the channel would be lost, as well. His refusal saved many fighter planes for the English and helped win the Battle of Britain.
But Dowding possessed vices as well as virtues. A difficult man, his sharp elbows had bruised many egos throughout his military career. As the Battle of Britain wound down, the Luftwaffe began nighttime raids that were strategically less important but still frightening. When the RAF Fighter Command proved less effective in combating these attacks, Dowding’s critics conspired to blame him and remove him from command.
But Dowding’s achievement in the Battle of Britain remains undiminished. “Few prophets have ever had a clearer picture of what was to come,” Korda eulogizes, “or what to do about it.”
Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.
By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
books@dallasnews.com Kasey S. Pipes is the author of “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.” Even though the Lincoln landscape already is populated with many books, several authors have found new ground to cover ahead of the 200th anniversary of his birth in February. Here are some highlights:
Lincoln: The Biography
of a Writer
Fred Kaplan
(Harper, $27.95)
Available Oct. 28
Abraham Lincoln clearly belongs in the pantheon of political giants. According to literary historian Fred Kaplan, he also belongs among literary giants.
Mr. Kaplan explains that Lincoln wrote well because he read widely. He read, memorized and quoted poetry from Burns to Byron to Shakespeare. And like all good writers, he could take an idea he read elsewhere and re-phrase it in his own voice: In his schoolbook reader, Dillworth Speller, young Lincoln read that since Eden, man found himself enclosed by “the Angels above … and the Angels below.” Years later, this sentiment re-emerged and made history as Lincoln appealed to the “better angels of our nature.”
This gift for describing “linguistic tensions” allowed Lincoln to speak powerfully to a divided nation. He famously demonstrated this when he borrowed from another book he knew well, the Bible, to argue that a “house divided” couldn’t stand.
Tried by War
Abraham Lincoln as
Commander-in-Chief
James M. McPherson
(Penguin, $35)
Lincoln essentially created the commander-in-chief role, argues Civil War historian James M. McPherson. Setting aside James Madison’s forgettable performance during the War of 1812 and the relatively small-scale U.S.-Mexico War, Lincoln was the first president to serve as commander-in-chief during an all-encompassing conflict. He quickly realized that the war had many fronts, including the battlefield, the press and the public.
Lincoln’s counterpart, Jefferson Davis, possessed a stellar military background yet proved no match for Lincoln. The Illinoisan learned military strategy on the go and soon surpassed his generals in seeing the road to victory. When Gen. George Meade bragged about driving the enemy “from our soil,” Lincoln fumed: “The whole country is our soil.”
Thanks to his generals’ inability to see clearly, Lincoln made perhaps his most important strategic choice. He decided that war “was too important to be left to the generals,” writes Mr. McPherson.
Lincoln and
His Admirals
Craig L. Symonds
(Oxford, $27.95)
Available Friday
Craig L. Symonds, a naval historian at the United States Naval Academy, presents a commander-in-chief with little naval knowledge who nonetheless grew into an effective naval strategist. Long before Alfred Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt placed naval power in the heart of American military strategy in the 20th century, Lincoln came to see that even 19th-century warfare required a strong navy equipped with innovations that he personally pushed for, including armored warships and heavy guns.
As with his army generals, Lincoln leaned on his admirals and often prodded them. During Gen. George McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign, Lincoln directly intervened and overruled Adm. Louis Goldsborough, who hesitated to send ships up the James River. The ships helped capture Norfolk, a major turning point in the war. Not bad for a president who claimed he knew “but little about ships.”
Our Lincoln
New Perspectives on
Lincoln and His World
Edited by Eric Foner
(Norton, $27.95)
Available Monday
Our Lincoln provides a series of essays from noted Lincoln scholars, analyzing his legacy on everything from civil liberties to religion. Each portrait serves as a reminder that Lincoln’s warm glow in history was a raging fire of controversy during his lifetime.
Mark Neely describes Lincoln’s legal arguments in defense of suspending the writ of habeas corpus and his willingness to restore this writ later in the war. Eric Foner writes of Lincoln’s desire to see freed slaves transported out of America. (He supported colonization even after signing the Emancipation Proclamation but reconsidered after he began sending black soldiers into battle.)
And Richard Carwardine examines Lincoln’s skeptical faith and concludes the Civil War “encouraged an increasing profundity of faith.”
The essays show Lincoln just as many others have found him: complicated, conflicted and compelling.
Kasey S. Pipes is the author of “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.”
