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Synopsis

Masters and Commanders describes how four titanic figures shaped the grand strategy of the West during the Second World War.

Why, when the most direct route from Britain to Germany was through north-western France, did the western allies first launch assaults on North Africa, Sicily and Rome? Why, if D-Day was intended to be the start of the Allies’ great thrust into Germany, did four hundred thousand men land five hundred miles to the south, in southern France, two months later? Why did the Allies not take Berlin, Vienna or Prague, and allow the Iron Curtain to descend where it did?

One of the aims of the book is to show the degree to which the answers to these and many other key riddles of the Second World War turned on the personalities and relationships between two political masters – Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt – and the military commanders of their armed forces – the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke, and the US Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. In reconstructing the debates between these four principals and many of the other leading senior Allied figures, Roberts draws upon the private papers of nearly seventy contemporaries and on verbatim accounts of Churchill’s War Cabinet meetings never before reproduced in book form.

The result is a strikingly intimate and enjoyable account, which recreates with dramatic immediacy the atmosphere, debates and manoeuvrings through which Allied grand strategy was forged, and shows clearly the impact of personality upon history.

Reviews

Customer Review: 12 February 2009

Reviewer: Pedro

'A great insight into the minds and actions of the key "managers" of the war!! Another great book is the History of English Speaking People....Brilliant!!'

Critic Review:

"a gripping read......his finest book yet" - Saul David, Telegraph

"a masterpiece" - Christopher Silvester, Daily Express

"This is an important book which … sees Mr Roberts lay claim to the title of Britain’s finest contemporary military historian" Economist

Interview

Why do you think people should read this book? What’s new and different about it?
It offers a different perspective on how the Second World War was won, seen through the prism of the personal interaction between Franklin Roosvelt, Winston Churchill, George Marshall and Lord Alanbrooke, the two political Masters and two military Commanders, who each dominated their own sphere. It contains the verbatim records of Churchill's War Cabinet, which I discovered while researching the book and which have never been quoted from before.

What motivated you to write specifically about Churchill, Roosevelt, Alanbrooke and Marshall?
My first book which I began researching 20 years ago was about Churchill's foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, and I have been entranced by the period and personalities ever since. The way the relationships between the four men interacted and changed as a result of each other, like the four edges of a Rubik's Cube, is fascinating.

Did your initial opinion of any of these men change dramatically during your research?
Yes; previously I had thought Lord Alanbrooke was pretty much the straightforward soldier that emerges from his ghosted autobiography and diaries, but he turns out to have been a far more complex figure than that.

Of Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke, who charmed you the most?
Surprisingly enough, George C Marshall was the man who - as I learnt much more about him, emerged as the most approachable of this formidable quartet of power. Today best known for the European Recovery Plan named after him, he was America's top soldier from the day the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 until after final victory over Japan in 1945.

During the process of researching, what surprises did you discover?
That decisions upon which tens of thousands of men rest can be made as a result of horse-trading and hard-fought compromises, rather than simply going with the best, boldest plan as it appears at the time. There are so many instances of this in my book as to make this the rule rather than the exception.

How did you tackle such an enormous subject? Do you have a set routine in the way you work?
I am at my desk at 6am or earlier every day, because no-one phones up at that hour, thank God.
For this book, I went to my aunt's farmhouse in the Dordogne for four weeks, stocked up the fridge, and at one point did not see a single human being for ten consecutive days

Is there a particular book or author that has had a significant influence on you as a writer?
Kenneth Rose's biographies of Lord Curzon and King George V are for me the model biographies from all aspects of the craft.

Why are you particularly passionate about history?
Because of Mr Christopher Perry, my prep school history master, who instilled in me aged ten a profound love of the past, often by acting the most dramatic bits out of it for the class. He also insisted that we learn 100 dates from British history by heart, appreciating how important chronology is in the writing of historical narrative

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