''Phillips Payson O''Brien is one of our finest historical thinkers'' James Holland
Churchill. Hitler. Stalin. Mussolini. Roosevelt. Five of the most impactful leaders of WW2
each with their own individualistic and idiosyncratic approach to warfare. But if we want to
understand their military strategy we must first understand the strategist. In THE
STRATEGISTS Professor Phillips Payson O''Brien shows how the views these five leaders forged
in WW1 are crucial to understanding how they fought WW2. For example Churchill''s experiences
of facing the German Army in France in 1916 made him unwilling to send masses of British
soldiers back there in the 1940s while Hitler''s mistakes on the Eastern Front were influenced
by his reluctance to accept that conditions had changed since his own time fighting. The
implications of the power of leaders remain with us to this day: to truly understand what is
happening in Ukraine for example requires us to know what has influenced the leaders
involved. This is a history in which leaders - and their choices - matter. For better or
worse.
