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GRAND STRATEGY, Volume II, is concerned with the central direction of the war, at the highest level, from its outbreak in September 1939 to the invasion of Russia by Germany in June 1941.
The author, J. R. M. Butler, late Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, is the Editor of the series of which the present volume forms part, namely the Official United Kingdom History of the Second World War on the military side. He has had access to all official sources, in the Cabinet Office and elsewhere, and has been able to consult many of the principal personalities and their papers, including the pre-eminently important papers of Sir Winston Churchill. He has also exchanged information and ideas with the official war historians in the Commonwealth countries and the United States.
The book begins by describing the high level organisation for war in the United Kingdom, the pre-war strategy as concerted with French, the inadequate forces existing, and the early plans for their expansion. It recounts the failure of the Allies, after the fall of Poland, to regain the initiative in Norway, and describes how the new British Government under Mr. Churchill's leadership, reacting to Hitler's offensive in the West, took crucial strategic decisions, such as those to preserve our fighter squadrons for the supreme ordeal and to keep the French fleet out of enemy hands.
After showing from official records how our leaders parried the threats to our vital interests all over the world resulting from the French collapse, the latter and larger part of the volume is concerned with the direction of the war from London when the Commonwealth fought almost alone; its chiefs are seen defending the British Isles, striking the Italians in Libya and East Africa and at sea, resisting the Germans in the Near East, seeking to deter or defeat Japanese aggression and conducting economic warfare and the strategic air offensive against the enemy.
Professor Butler writes from the standpoint of the high command: the War Cabinet, the Chiefs of Staff and Mr. Churchill, Prime Minister and Minister of Defence. He attempts to assess the parts played by them severally in the conduct of the war.
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