History from the Middle: The Case of the Second World War

Writing on modern warfare lately has tended to focus upon two vital but divergent trends, which might be termed the War from Above and War from Below schools of analysis. This essay concentrates instead upon the middle levels of warfare, drawing examples from mid-World War Two, where the chief operational objectives of the Allies were clearly established (at Casablanca, January 1943), but had yet to be realized. The realization of such military goals as defeat of the U-boat threat, or gaining domination of the air over Europe, in turn required breakthroughs that could only come from what one might term “the mid-level managers of war” – inventors, scientists, civil servants, captains of naval squadrons, and commanders of air groups. Scholars of these campaigns have long recognized the importance of the changes that occurred at the operational level of war between 1943 and 1944; this essay offers a larger synthetic analysis of their argument.