The subject of military history in our colleges and universities is in a sad state, as Victor Davis Hanson recently demonstrated in these pages (“Uses & abuses of military history,” The New Criterion of January 2023). But the writing of military history, particularly that of America’s role in World War II, has attracted some of the best scholars and also some lively books in recent years. To mention just a few of the luminaries: Carlo d’Este, Craig Symonds, Martin Blumenson, and Rick Atkinson. Joining them is Robert L. O’Connell, who has recently produced an outstanding group biography, Team America—his sobriquet for the four men who led America to victory in the Second World War: George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall, and Dwight Eisenhower.
This is not a bad grouping, although unfair to the U.S. Navy. Any analysis of America’s role in defeating the Axis should include the contributions of Ernest King, William Halsey, and especially Chester Nimitz. The strategy that they hammered out was a major factor in the Allied victory, especially the defeat of Japan in the Pacific.
He kept their names in his famous black book of military talent.
The four protagonists of O’Connell’s study—two West Pointers and two Virginia Military Institute graduates—knew each other and had interacted before World War II. Eisenhower and Patton’s friendship dated back to the end of World War I. Marshall followed the careers of Patton and Eisenhower in the 1920s and 1930s. He kept their
