D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by ANTONY BEEVOR; Normandy: The Landings to theLiberation of Paris by OLIVIER WIEVIORKA; M. B. DEBEVOISEReview by: LAWRENCE D. FREEDMANForeign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 6 (November/December 2009), pp. 157-158Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20699735 .

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Recent Books

Military, Scientific, and Technological

LAWRENCE D. FREEDMAN

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schrieverand the Ultimate Weapon. by Neil sheehan. Random House,

2009,560 pp. $32.00. Bernard Schriever, who died in 2005 at the

age of 94, was instrumental in bringing the United States into the missile age.

He had the right qualifications: a back

ground as an engineer with an aptitude for bureaucratic politics, a respect for

scientists, and some enviable patrons

early in his career. He also now turns out

to have been fortunate with his biographer. Sheehan last chose a formidable individual to illuminate a big story when he used Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann to criticize the conduct of the Vietnam War.

Although his descriptions of the develop ing Cold War have a decidedly revisionist

tinge, Sheehan has been drawn into Schriever s world, and he effectively cheers him on in his determination to construct

operational long-range missiles before

the Soviet Union does. Schriever hacked

away at arcane review procedures and

regulations before they added years to the project and led it to collapse, cajoled disparate groups into working together, and circumvented the obstacles put in his

way by the acerbic and myopic General Curtis LeMay, who saw value only in

long-range bombers. The books rich cast

of characters includes the hard-drinking official Trevor Gardner, the technological entrepreneur Stephen Ramo, and the brilliant scientist John von Neumann. It

is a welcome and compelling portrayal not

only of Schriever but also of the bureau cratic tussles and engineering challenges behind the missile and space programs of the 1950s and 1960s.

D-D ay: The Battle for Normandy. by Antony beevor. Viking, 2009, 608 pp. $32.95.

Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation

of Paris, by olivier wieviorka.

translated by m. b. debevoise.

Belknap Press, 2009, 464 pp. $29.95. One might think that there would be little new for historians in the big events of World War II, but the books keep on

coming. Perhaps this is because of the war s extraordinary scale, the enduring

respect for those who fought, or the belief that, despite all the revisionism and the Allies' faults, this was a good

war, fought for a just cause. Or maybe it is because the conflict occurred within

living memory yet sufficiently long ago to be assessed dispassionately and with the benefit of better records from more countries. Historical fashions have also

changed: there is now an expectation that war will be described not solely from the viewpoint of the politician and the

general but from that of the soldier, too.

Beevor, who last cast a fresh eye on

the Battle of Stalingrad, in Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943, now does the same with D-day, the Normandy landings of June 1944. He can deplore General Bernard Montgomery's egotism and give due marks to General Dwight Eisenhower's

diplomatic skills; he can acknowledge the tenacity of the German troops, keep the chaos of Omaha Beach in perspective, record the routine murder of burdensome

prisoners on both sides, and worry about

FOREIGN AFFAIRS - November/December2009 [ 15 J]

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Recent Booh

the suffering of French civilians, especially in the name of questionable strategic

necessity, as with the bombing of Caen. But where the book really scores is in its eye for the operational detail and in its vivid reconstructions of the experience of battle, as unavoidable courage mixes

with arbitrary tragedy. Beevor s book concludes with the dra

matic and successful rush by the French Second Armored Division to be the first to liberate Paris. Wieviorkas account,

originally published in French, naturally explores the French dimension: the activism of the Resistance, the civilian casualties,

and, most of all, the determination of Charles de Gaulle to speak for France and be heard, however much he irritated his allies. All this is part of a full, some what more traditional top-down account

of the preparations for the landing and their aftermath.

In fact, he was prime minister?until

the results of the general election were

announced, at which point he left the conference and his successor, Clement

Attlee, took over. Fortunately, Gordin

shows a surer touch with the material more

central to his thesis, and his book is an

interesting contribution to the literature

on the origins of the nuclear arms race.

The United States WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

Transforming Americas Israel Lobby: The Limits of Its Power and the Potentialfor Change, by dan fleshler. Potomac

Books, 2009, 272 pp. $24.95.

Many polls show that the generally hard line positions of a number of mainstream

U.S. Jewish organizations, such the

American Israel Public Affairs Committee, do not reflect the views of a large pro portion of American Jews on Middle East issues. Fleshier wants to change this situation, and Transforming America s

Israel Lobby is an effort to analyze the

current situation and to show how and

why it should change. Fleshler provides a moderate and nuanced view of the cen

trist and center-right organizations that

dominate Jewish advocacy on Middle East issues, and his descriptions of their smaller but scrappy rivals on the left are

useful, too. As for building an effective center-left Jewish lobby, Fleshier is better at explaining why this would be useful than at showing how it can be done. The

complexities of the Middle East; the

presence of real anti-Semitism in some

(although not all) of the pro-Palestinian, conspiracy-minded grouplets; and the

Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and

the End ofthe Atomic Monopoly. by Michael D. GORDiN. Farrar,

Straus ?cGiroux, 2009, 416 pp. $28.00.

Pointing to the way the Soviet nuclear

program was structured, Gordin questions whether Soviet spies and captured German

scientists made as much of a difference

to the timing of the Soviet atomic bomb

project as is often assumed. He focuses

on the background to the first Soviet nuclear test, in August 1949, and how it was that the Americans were able to

detect the test and then announce it before

Moscow did. But Gordin undermines his research with a basic error on the second

page, when he suggests that Winston Churchill was present at the Potsdam

Conference in only an advisory capacity because he was no longer prime minister.

[158] FOREIGN AFFAIRS ? Volume 88 No. 6

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