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:
Comments
So THAT is why it felt "off" to me. All those sparks from all those axes (including the authors) were distracting
I have to agree.
There were a couple places where the discordance was blatant enough that I actually had to stop reading and think for a few moments. Hoover's disarmament was one of them.
Another was where he claimed that no ships were laid down for a long period of time (I don't have it in front of me at the moment, and will have to revise my remarks later). He strongly implies that ALL shipbuilding ceased, because the statement comes after some discussion of cruisers, destroyers and smaller craft, but I think its mainly meant to be battleships he's talking about.
More to come later.
Oh, and a huge thank you to Bean for enabling me to take part in this discussion.
From a modern perspective Morison is weirdly high on Wilson, too. He leans very much into the "visionary genius who should have achieved so much more if only he hadn't been surrounded by spiteful mutants" perspective that was, admittedly, the default position for a long time.
Not much to say from me, as I'm nowhere near as well-read or schooled in naval history as others here. It's great to get perspectives on this, rather than just reading and taking Morison at face value because I have no other input.
@Philistine
I decided not to bring up the Wilson stuff because I figured that a majority of people here would already have some idea of Wilson's problems, and I couldn't do justice for the balance.
@Lee
No problem there. That's half the reason to do this.
Ah; I was wondering where the earthshattering kaboom was (not). I was expecting one of those after reading about the awesomeness of Woodrow Wilson.
I should probably put the case against Wilson in the comments in case anyone wanders in and needs a quick guide to the worst president of the 20th century.
The Earl Ellis foul play suggestion was probably the thing that stood out the most to me as being suspect. So much so that I went looking for a more modern take. Just sounded a little too conspiratorial for something nearly 2 decades before the outbreak of hostilities.
Really enjoying the comments. Lots of takes that had not occurred to me.
It sounded like it was straight out of a pulp novel. And for all I know it was used by whotever the 1940s equivalent of Robert Ludlum was.
Actually... It sounds like the sort of plot device Ludlum himself might have used. Or Clive Cussler
You would happen to do this series when I'm cleaning my basement and have all 800 of my books packed up, wouldn't you bean?
(I'll see if I can get a copy from my library)
Re: admiration for Wilson. "Boston Brahmin academic likes fellow Ivy League academic, despises bumpkin from Iowa who graduated from fake Western university" goes a long way in explaining this admiration, IMHO.
Re: Oete Ellis. I have no doubt that he drank himself to death; I also don't expect a guy who got done with the war to believe that no matter what.
I am uncertain if you need to repost the opinion against Wilson. I strongly suspect that most people here are well enough read that they're aware of it and have their own opinion of it.
However, it would be good for a post, and after all, that's what the point is, right? CONTENT!!!!! grin
Just kidding. This is one of the few places on the internet that doesn't post just to keep the numbers up. Kind of like Schlock Mercenary back in the day.
BTW, if you have a block of several hours, https://www.schlockmercenary.com/ is a wonderful place to spend it. 20 years of webcomics, spanning the distance from the early, early days of the web to the end of the story. I am proud to say that I discovered it less than three months into the saga.
Belushi TD
It was an interesting first chapter.
It was interesting to me that Morison actually lived through the era, enlisted as a private in the Army in WWI and a LtCmr in the Navy in WWII.
I am not knowledgeable about the treaties and the good/bad parts, but it seems that at the least there were some cruiser and battleship designs from the early/mid 1930's that served well, and the just pre-war designs of Fletcher's and Essex's turned out to be excellent.
In a bit of "history not repeating but rhyming" the parts in Chpt 1.4, paragraphs p2,p3,p4 about the small size of the workforce and unpreparedness of the industrial base sound familiar to people watching the news today.
I remind people that not everyone on the internet is a USAian. What I know about Woodrow Wilson starts with Bart Simpson using him as a name source for catfishing his teacher, and ends with some comments about 14 points for the end of WW1.
I am however proud to say that I provided some of the technical review on the mathematics used in Schlock Mercenary.
Yes, but Woodrow Wilson screwed things up for the whole world. Insofar as so much of the world enjoys blaming Americans for screwing things up, it's strange that they'd miss that one.
Not a lot more to say than wow that is a relentlessly negative take on interwar years and even WW1 performance that I don't think has a leg to stand on in the modern understanding. Appreciated that he got the chance to dunk on Mitchell as a patsy for peacniks trying to restrict navy funding, which usually gets left out of the why Mitchell is problematic story (I'm not sure it's right, but it is a different dimension to think about Mitchell)
The whole chapter reads as a mix of peacenik conspirators at home did their best to ensure the US was unready at home, they're the real enemy so support the new Atlantacist consensus around NATO and rebuilding Japan. One gets the impression that he probably thinks the post WW2 fleet drawdown is likely full of similar missteps but he's holding those thoughts for a different book after getting out of USN patronage, let alone how he would interpret the 90s
The point of discordance that caught me was the discussion of training: Goes from "Competition and battle practice were useful in discovering defects" directly into a letter complaining that "Glaring defects went unnoticed so long as competition rules made due allowances". Presumably this is to make the point about the problems with the Battle-Efficiency-Competitions, but then it goes on afterwards about the new training still failing to improve the torpedoes.
Re: the naval treaties, I do not see how postponing a naval arms race from the early 20s (when the US economy was strong) to the mid 30s (the depths of the Depression) is much of a win. I do not see how giving Japan a head start on resuming said naval arms race is a win at all. And I absolutely do not see how insulting Japan, while restricting the USN and RN to something close to parity* with the IJN, was anything but a major own goal - it not only made a war inevitable eventually, it also made that war longer and more destructive (because Lanchester) than it otherwise might have been.
@Philistine
Re: treaties
I think, in a free-for-all, the ratio would have wound up being 10:5:4.
That's obviously bad for Britain.
The USA did get the colapse of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which is something.
The USA got Japan down from 3.5 to partially by agreeing not to fortify Guam or the Philipenes.
I have wondered if that was a bad trade. Maybe the secure Far East bases would have let the USN build more efficently in the run up to war ... or maybe the larger fleet would have let Japanese set up shop in China and the East Indies quickly then dig in.
Big picture: remember that all five powers in the treaty system were on the same side at the end of the First War. That the US was vastly stronger than her rivals in the '20s and could have pre-emptivly put an end to British and Japanese threat for all imaginable time - is ture, but unrealistic.
@Philistine
A couple things. First, it wasn't just a race between the US and Japan. It would have been a three-way race, and the impact on Anglo-American relations might have been quite messy. Stopping that was well worthwhile. Second, the comparison in the economies demands a degree of prescience that isn't even remotely fair to the people involved. That said, it's an entirely fair point that the US was really late to respond to Japan's leaving of the treaty structure, and didn't really start taking naval rearmament seriously until France fell. I did mention this, but probably should have been more strident in my criticism of FDR there. (I personally very much dislike FDR, and was trying not to get carried away.)
I will grant that there is some degree to which modern naval historians looking at the treaties are reacting against the sort of "we could have had everything if not for those meddling diplomats" stuff we see here, and thus tend to push "the treaties were good, actually" pretty hard. (And, uhh, I'm guilty of this here.) I think on net that's still the right view to take, because there's no way that the navies would have gotten everything without the treaties and the Anglo-American tensions in the 20s were a real thing, but it does mean that some serious downsides tend to get downplayed. The biggest is probably the industrial impacts, which were quite serious, particularly for Britain.
A big part of the problem I have is that the 5:5:3 ratio falls between two stools. It's the kind of thing that Machivalli disparaged as a small injury - one that fosters enmity in a potential rival without significantly weakening them. If you think you can buy Japan off (and keep them bought), then let them go for true parity: 5:5:5, and if they blow up their own economy trying to keep up with the Anglos that's nobody's problem but theirs. If you don't think you can keep Japan peaceable, then 5:5:3 is too high: it's just barely below the threshold to fight the USN to a draw in a hypothetical Pacific war, which means it inflates the expected casualty counts on both sides if fighting does break out. (And that doesn't require hindsight, because it was explicitly the basis for Japan trying so hard to get to 5:5:3.5, and for the US and UK refusal to agree to that.) Also, 5:5:3 is so perilously close to effective parity that one or two years of unanswered building could shift the balance of power dangerously. Either gut their allocation or let them build freely; half measures are a good way to get the negatives of both approaches and the positives of neither.
@ike: Building up Guam and Manila Bay would likely have gone about as well for the US as building up Singapore did for Britain, or as building up Rabaul and Truk did for Japan. Fortresses are all well and good until you can't supply or support them. But if the Japanese were really that bothered by the prospect of Fortresses Guam and Manila, the negotiators should have parlayed that into a bigger cut.
On the other hand, industrial productivity growth actually accelerated through the Great Depression, especially with regards to steel production, so postponing the naval arms race by a decade allowed the US to reap the rewards of a decade's worth of technological advancement.
Thanks for getting this started.... it's a book I'd meant to pick up for a while, and just hadn't. My copy arrived yesterday afternoon, so Chapter 1.
Overall... I agree with the comments here that it sounds more propaganda/axe-grinding than good history.
Treaties... probably on net good if only because it made sure we and the Brits were still on speaking terms in the 1930s. Imagine how ugly (and likely impossible) the Battle of the Atlantic would have been without US lend-lease destroyers, and if the UK hadn't trusted the US enough to base our ASW assets in Newfoundland, Bermuda or the Bahamas?
Lol at spiking on Mitchell. I'm a born and raised "airplane guy", but Mitchell was pretty flawed. My favorite pic of the Ostreisland tests is what looks like a white phosphorus bomb exploding a hundred feet or so above the ship... ya don't sink ships with Willy Pete. But enough HE near-misses, on a stationary ship with no damage control... yeah, you eventually get there.
My biggest takeaway from the chapter though is how closely the US preparedness in the late 30s mimics what we see today. Smaller Navy than what it needs to be, lack of political will (ie... $$$) to do something useful* about it, a rising competitor that DOES have the will, and massive problems in shipbuilding.. both in physical shipyard size/volume, and in terms of having enough staff/manpower of sufficient expertise. Those who don't learn from history......
*: no, the agglomeration of graphics, ego, and marketing that was announced in December is not the answer...
Technically, that's from a later test on Alabama, not on Ostfriesland.
Having finally read this chapter, I'm pondering how much benefit it would've been for the US to fortify advance bases in the Pacific. Would they have withstood the Japanese onslaught significantly more than they did in reality? Enough to be useful?
Morison's suggestion of moving the Pacific Fleet to the Philippines naively seems to me more like it'd be putting it in a trap at the end of tenuous supply lines. But I don't know the Japanese plans well enough to really judge; what do you think?
I don't think that would have worked. The British fortified Singapore pretty heavily, or tried to, and it still fell pretty quickly. No real reason to assume that it was just lack of forces that kept MacArthur from doing a better job, or that the fleet would have been better off if it was out there, given how exposed the supply line would have been to attacks from Japanese possessions.
I am reminded of Mahan's observation on the French fortress of Louisborg at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, that if you have a fleet to control the seas, the base is not particularly necessary, and that if you don't have a fleet you can't prevent the enemy from taking the base, so what for did you build the base in the first place?
Also, Singapore's fortifications were primarily directed against a landing from the sea. The British had evaluated the situation and decided that an overland approach was not really practical given the relatively undeveloped state of Malaya and the distance from Japan. But the Japanese seizure of French Indochina in the fall of 1940 broke that by providing relatively nearby ports and airfields from whence the Japanese could land directly on Malaya's northeast coast and then advance overland down the (relatively new) British roads and railroads. A direct amphibious assault from the sea probably would have failed; a short strait crossing from Johore supported by Japanese artillery and airpower was a very different matter.
The general experience of the Pacific War was that islands could not be fortified in sufficient strength to stop someone with a fleet from landing a Much Bigger Force on the island. (There were a very few exceptions, like the Japanese repulse on the first landing on Wake.) And if one didn't like the odds on a fortified area (say, Truk), well, there were plenty of other islands in the Pacific (say, Ulithi). Which takes us back to needing a navy and air force to meet the other side's navy and air force.
Malta? It seems like there is some value haveing a very hard nut on the enemy's supply lines.