Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 152

WAVELL IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1939–1941: A
Study in Generalship
Harold E. Raugh Jr., University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, Oklahoma, 2013, 364 pages

T

he study of Field Marshall Archibald Percival
Wavell’s career is part of the ongoing debate
over British military performance during the
Second World War. This book deals with Wavell’s
performance as the British commander-in-chief in the
Middle East from 1939 to 1941. Despite his charisma,
his brilliant use of unorthodox tactics, and his successes
during World War II, Wavell has languished in historical obscurity, overshadowed by those who came later
and benefited from the foundations he laid.
After a brief sketch of his pre-1939 career, Raugh
begins with Wavell’s appointment as Middle East
Commander-in-Chief in August 1939, weeks before
the start of the World War II. When he arrived, his
area of responsibility encompassed the region stretching from Egypt to the Persian Gulf, from Iraq to
Somaliland. After France fell and Italy declared war,
he was surrounded by hostile and potentially hostile
neighbors. He had few trained troops and practically
no logistical infrastructure, but he had capable air force
and navy peers. He also received reinforcements from
Britain, India, New Zealand, and Australia.
By spring 1941, he was conducting five simultaneous campaigns with little more than three divisions of
ground troops; he won three and lost two. Of the latter,
the British campaign in Greece still excites the greatest
controversy, and Raugh devotes a chapter explaining
how Wavell changed his mind as to its efficacy. He
intersperses his narrative account with analyses of
Wavell’s choices and decisions while explaining the
political and strategic constraints placed upon him by
geography and politics. His descriptions and analysis of
Wavell’s first great victory, Operation Compass, which
destroyed the Italian position in Libya, is a model
of narrative clarity. He explains how the operation
unfolded and shows how its initial success turned into
failure as troops were siphoned off to other tasks at
London’s direction.
He shows Wavell as a reluctant participant in operations in Greece and Syria but carrying out his orders
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as best he could because he understood the political
stakes involved. Raugh explains the supposed diversion
of resources to an East African campaign as political in
nature, crucial to British attempts to sway U.S. public
opinion by opening the Red Sea to neutral shipping.
Politics was also the primary motivator behind the
Greek and Syrian operations.
Through these campaigns and Wavell’s relationship
with Churchill, Raugh demonstrates the ways in which
military operations interact with strategy. Politicalmilitary strategic considerations must always dominate
military operations; if war is a continuation of politics by other means, then military operations do not
determine strategic goals. His description of Wavell’s
troubled relationship with Churchill as a fundamental
clash of personality and temperament illustrates the
importance of mutual confidence in personal relationships at the highest level.
His final assessment of Wavell’s generalship
leads one to conclude that, although Wavell had
the loyalty of his staff and his army, he was fatally
handicapped by Churchill’s inability to understand
his difficulties and his own inability to convey them
to the prime minister. In the end, Wavell’s resources
were always less than adequate to meet his myriad
responsibilities on many fronts, but Wavell would
have responded that war is always an option of difficulties. This book is recommended not simply for its
clarity but because it shows the interplay of policy
and operations and the role personal relationships
play at the highest levels, where politics, strategy, and
mi