Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War (60 page)

As the sheer size of the published and unpublished materials for this project grew and grew, I in turn became indebted to a small group of wonderful research assistants: Will Chou, Will Owen, Evan Wilson, Joyce Arnold, Elisabeth Leake, Gabriel Perlman, Isabel Marin, and Daniel Hornung have helped me in gathering library materials, searching out obscure sources, and reading draft sections. Elisabeth was a particularly cruel and effective copy editor as well. Elizabeth Ralph nudged me into a rescrutiny of
chapter 2
on the air war, and Igor Biryukov’s researches on
chapter 3
(Eastern Front) were invaluable. During the academic year 2011-12, Daniel Hornung joined Igor in weekly support of this project. In the intensive work stages of last summer, Isabel Marin and Sigrid von Wendel joined Igor and myself in the final “push.” Checking texts for the last time, and assembling, under pressure, the most suitable maps, tables, and illustrations is no easy task. This was perfect teamwork, and accomplished everything that was required.
It gave me great pleasure to work with all of the above and learn from them, something that constantly reminded me of my own role as Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s research assistant a mere forty-plus years ago, where my task was to prepare first drafts for the chapters on the Pacific War, the Battle of the Atlantic, the strategic bombing campaign, and the latter half of the fighting in Italy.

A number of academic colleagues were kind enough to put aside their own work to read and critique various chapters, or, as a local alternative, to join me in the Granta pub in Cambridge for sustained discussions about where this work was going. Among them were Kathy Barbier, Tami Biddle, Michael Coles, John Harris, Jonathan Haslam, John Hattendorf, Milan Hauner, David Kahn, Rich Muller, Geoffrey Parker, Andrew Preston, John Reeve, Nicholas Rodger, and John Thompson. I am sure that I have inadvertently missed a name or two.

I was also lucky enough to be able to present some early ideas about this book in various stimulating academic environments: Yale itself, Cambridge, the Ohio State University, King’s College London (the Annual War Studies Lecture), the Naval War College, Duke University, the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Defense University, and many other places over the past three years. The Society for Military History invited me to present my ideas in its January 2009 lecture at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, under the title of “History from the Middle,” which was later published in their flagship journal, the
Journal of Military History
. Those ideas were also presented, in a variant form organized by the enterprising Martin Lawrence, as the first Lady Lucy Houston Lecture at Cambridge in March 2010, a nice tribute to the formidable lady whose largesse rescued the future Spitfire from oblivion.

This book makes no singular claim to arguing the importance of the nuts and bolts of war; it is certainly not the first to do so. Like other works with an ambitious theme, it stands on the shoulders of redoubtable scholars who have previously explored the same ground: more generally and distantly, Martin van Creveld and the incomparable Geoffrey Parker; and, with respect to World War II specifically, Rick Atkinson, Bruce Ellis, David Glantz, Richard Overy, Allan Millett and Williamson Murray, Marc Milner, Ronald Spector, Paddy Willmott, and the late and remarkable John Erickson, an engineer turned historian. Likewise,
I owe a huge debt to the scholars who contributed to the American, British, Canadian, and West German official histories of the war; many of those volumes are fifty or sixty years old, yet their quality remains undimmed.

The marine paintings included among the photographs in this volume were all done by the incomparable artist Ian Marshall. They represent a prelude to his future illustrated book
Fighting Warships of World War II
. I am indebted to Ian for his great generosity here.

It has been almost forty years since I was introduced to Bruce Hunter, my literary agent, whose wise judgment and integrity have guided me on so many matters, and whose role has now been taken over by the able Andrew Gordon. Phyllis Westberg (Harold Ober) steered me through the New York side of things, and Ania Corless through all international contracts. Mika Kasuga of Random House really helped us in the final months. My editors Will Murphy (Random House, New York) and Stuart Proffitt (Penguin, United Kingdom) have been exemplary guides: supportive, firm, and very, very patient. Stuart sent me back to the writing board many times; I hope it shows. My debt to all these is not measurable.

Nor is my debt to my family, whose greatest virtue has been to be even more patient. I refer especially to Jim, John, and Matthew; to Sophia; to Cinnamon, Catherine, and Olivia; and to my grandson, Charlie Parker Kennedy, who was not even around to make life interesting when this work was begun.

My greatest debt is to the partner who has marched, laughed, and cried with me for well over a decade now, and to whom this book is dedicated.

Paul Kennedy
New Haven, 2012