Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945 (Inscribed First U.S. Edition, First Printing)

Roberts, Andrew

ISBN 10: 0061228575 / ISBN 13: 9780061228575

Published by Harper (HarperCollins), 2009

About this Item

Inscribed First U.S. Edition, U.S. First Printing of this joint biography of the two tandems of political and military figures that the eminent historian sees as the principals figures in the defeat of the Axis in the West in World War II: President Franklin Roosevelt; General George C. Marshall; Prime Minister Winston Churchill; and General Alan Brooke. Inscribed by Andrew Roberts to a previous owner on the title page. 673 pages, illustrated. Has some tanning of the page edges. Has a tear on the back cover of the dust jacket at the spine edge.

Seller Inventory # 016663

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945 (Inscribed First U.S. Edition, First Printing)
• Publisher: Harper (HarperCollins)
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061228575
• ISBN 13: 9780061228575
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

A joint profile of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and their armed forces commanders Alan Brooke and George C. Marshall evaluates the pivotal ways in which they determined the strategies of allied forces during World War II, in an account that reveals their divergent agendas and tense efforts to collaborate or outmaneuver each other.

From the Back Cover

An epic joint biography, Masters and Commanders explores the degree to which the course of the Second World War turned on the relationships and temperaments of four of the strongest personalities of the twentieth century: political masters Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt and the commanders of their armed forces, General Sir Alan Brooke and General George C. Marshall. Each was exceptionally tough willed and strong minded, and each was certain that he knew best how to win the war. Yet each knew that he had to win at least two of the others if he was to have his strategy adopted. Andrew Roberts, whom The Economist calls "Britain's finest contemporary military historian," traces the mutual suspicion and admiration, the rebuffs and the charm, the often-explosive disagreements and wary reconciliations, and he helps us to appreciate the motives and imperatives acting upon these key leaders struggling to destroy Nazism.

Drawing on newly discovered verbatim accounts of Churchill's war-cabinet meetings and on the private papers of nearly seventy contemporaries, Roberts reconstructs the lively debates of the four principals and other leading figures, and attempts to answer some of the key questions of Allied strategy. Why, when the most direct route from Germany to Britain was through north-western France, did the Western Allies launch attacks via North Africa, Sicily, and Rome? Why, if Operation Overlord in June 1944 was intended to be the start of the Allies' great thrust into Germany, did four hundred thousand men land five hundred miles to the south, in southern France, two months later? Why did the Allies not take Berlin, Vienna, or Prague and allow the Iron Curtain to descend where it did?

Masters and Commanders dramatically re-creates the atmosphere, debates, and maneuverings through which Allied grand strategy was forged and reveals the profound impact of personality upon history.