Samuel Eliot Morison '08, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, emeritus, has used an Oxford University lecture and a book review in yesterday's New York Times to criticize the World War II strategy of Sir Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke.
In his lecture, Morison asserted that Churchill was "peripheral-minded" during the war. He criticized Sir Winston's planned landing between Norway and Dakar, stating that "from most of his favorite targets you could not go anywhere."
"As Lord Alanbrooke has recently indiscreetly revealed," Morison added, "Mr. Churchill was very often difficult to dissuade from some favorite objective."
The chief American contribution to tactics, Morison claimed, was Operation Overlord, which Churchill opposed. In support of the Operation, the University historian said, "I believe that, but for the insistent, often rude pressure by Roosevelt, Marshall and Eisenhower ... to cross the Channel in 1944 ... London would certainly have been laid flat by the V-1 bombs and V-2 rockets. The war with Germany would not have ended until 1946."
Attacks Bryant
In setting forth the American tactical claims, Morison attacked the assertion in Sir Arthur Bryant's newly-published book, The Turn of the Tide, that "all strategy issued from the massive brain of Sir Alan Brooke." He wrote that Bryant's book reflects "an abysmal ignorance of the war on his part ... while his remarks on the war in the Pacific are fantastic."
Read more in News
Students Riot at 'Cliffe Quad; Five Undergraduates ArrestedRecommended Articles
-
S.E. Morison: A Monument to the ManWalking along the Commonwealth Avenue pedestrian mall heading westward from the Boston Common and Ritz Hotel street corner, one encounters
-
Remembering Greatness in FullPedestrian lists of the "Century's Greatest" are all the rage these days, but yesterday we celebrated truly the greatest man
-
Social Sciences Hold Key to Control Of Technology, M.I.T. Professor Says"Our modern universities have been too busy with new frontiers in technical knowledge and have not worried enough about the
-
Lodge Terms Harvard 'Decisive' In Theodore Roosevelt's CareerHenry Cabot Lodge Jr. '24, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., told a Sanders Theater audience last night that "Harvard was
-
GIFT FOR THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLBy the will of the late Robert S. Morison '69, of Cambridge, $50,000 is left to the Harvard Theological School
-
TRACK MASS MEETING.A mass meeting for all men in the University interested in any kind of track athletics will be held in