Naval Gazing Book Club - Two-Ocean War Ch1

Today is the first chapter of our book club for Samuel Eliot Morison's The Two-Ocean War, a history of the USN in WWII. The first chapter, The Twenty Years' Peace, covers the interwar years, and as usual, I'll kick off by sharing my thoughts on the chapter:

This is a chapter that has not held up very well to the last 60 years of naval history, probably because it is a very different type of history from the rest of this book. Understanding the broad sweep of events in peacetime is very different and more difficult than describing a battle in war, and Morison was still writing in an era when many of the players were still alive and grinding axes. In particular, views on the naval treaties have shifted radically, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a serious historian today who doesn't think that they were on the whole probably a good thing for all involved, because they kept a major naval race from kicking off in the early 20s and gave navies a target to build to during the Depression. There's also a general downplaying of the interwar USN that doesn't seem particularly coherent or match more recent works I've read. It's probably easier to see flaws when you're still that close to events, and bitter that the Navy didn't get more money in the 1930s. I suspect this is based on the introduction, written by Dudley Knox, to Vol 1 of History of US Naval Operations, and it suffers from a lot of the same flaws. Also, it's pretty clear that Morison is allowing his friendship with Roosevelt to color his evaluation of FDR's presidency. (That's how he got the job writing the history of the USN, for anyone who doesn't know.) For one thing, Roosevelt didn't really begin a serious naval buildup until after the Fall of France, 5 years after the Japanese withdrew from the treaty structure. His policy before that was far less clear than is often painted in retrospect, and Morison isn't alone in this.

A couple of technical fact-checks: The 1930 London Treaty did impose tonnage limits on smaller ships, contrary to what Morison claims, and it appears that Earl Ellis died of alcoholism, not Japanese perfidy. And Anglo-American relations were nowhere near as calm and certain in the 10s and 20s as Morison makes out. Also, I spent a few minutes looking into his comments on Hoover, which are true as far as they go, but seem to have been more because Hoover was vaguely interested in disarmament and very distracted by domestic affairs than by the sort of specific animus Morison ascribes to him.

All that said, I expect things to improve as we get deeper into the book. Next week is Chapter 2, Short of War, covering the period before America's entry into WWII.

Relevant Naval Gazing posts:

• The Washington Naval Treaty
• Interwar Naval Diplomacy
• Billy Mitchell and the Ostfriesland