Annual Booklist 2019 : Prof. Douglas Delaney
Professor Douglas E. Delaney holds the Canada Research Chair (CRC) in War Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC). He is the author of The Soldiers’ General: Bert Hoffmeister at War (2005), which won the 2007 C.P. Stacey Prize for Canadian Military History, and Corps Commanders: Five British and Canadian Generals at War, 1939-1945 (2011). He is also co-editor Capturing Hill 70: Canada’s Forgotten Battle of the First World War (2016), Turning Point 1917: The British Empire at War (2017), and Military Education and the British Empire, 1815-1949 (2018) . His latest monograph Imperial Armies: Britain and the Land Forces of the Dominions and India, 1902-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2017), was Runner-up for the 2019 Templer Medal. Dr. Delaney is a retired lieutenant-colonel who served with the First and Third Battalions, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI), as well as the Canadian Airborne Regiment.
No list of books on the British Army could be complete without something by David French, whose work is invariably based on exhaustive research, guided by sound analysis, and presented in crystal-clear prose. Any one of his many fine monographs could be on this list, but, if forced to choose one, I would have to pick Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against Germany, 1919-1945 (Oxford, 2000)—for entirely selfish reasons. More than any other work, this gold-standard intuitional history is the one that inspired and guided my writing of the Imperial Army Project: Britain and the Land Forces of the Dominions and India, 1902-1945 (Oxford, 2017). Raising Churchill’s Army is a magisterial analysis of how the British Army prepared to fight, and then fought, the German Army of the Second World War. Its examination of doctrine, training, manpower, armaments and equipment, and strategic imperatives helped dispel many long-held tropes about how and why the British Army fought the way it did. I wanted to write something as good for the British, Indian, and dominion armies. I tried.
I am encouraged that a number of very talented scholars have taken up the daunting challenge of writing military history form an imperial/commonwealth perspective. John C. Mitcham’s Race and Imperial Defence in the British World, 1870-1914 (Cambridge, 2016) is a masterful examination of the cultural and racial underpinnings of imperial defence that draws on sources from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. It reads wonderfully as well. Jonathan Fennell’s equally ambitious Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge, 2019), which looks at the experiences and expectations of British, Indian, and dominion soldiers of the Second World War, is sure to be a seminal work. It argues convincingly that the morale of British Commonwealth soldiers and the performance of their citizen-soldier armies were affected by what rank-and-file soldiers expected as recompense for their service. It also explores how their political beliefs, many of which were forged in war, shaped the post-war order in their respective countries.
Aimée Fox’s examination of how the British Army learned, innovated, and adapted to the industrial battlefields of the First World War is a brilliant and rewarding read. Learning to Fight: Military Innovation and Change in the British Army, 1914-1918 (Cambridge, 2018), which won the 2019 Templer First Book Prize, looks at British Army networks, connections with allies and civilian agencies, and methods of dissemination to broaden our understanding of how the army learned from mistakes, developed new ways of doing things, and integrated new technologies. This is an exceptional work from an exceptional young scholar.
Finally, I have a soft spot for military biography and one of my favourites remains David Fraser’s Alanbrooke (Atheneum, 1982). It’s not just that this book about the life of a wartime Chief of the Imperial General Staff is written by distinguished soldier-scholar who understands war as well as he understands Whitehall; it’s also that the prose is magnificent. It never fails to inspire.
What book(s) would I like to see written? I would love to see something on how the British and dominion armies selected, trained, and developed their non-commissioned officers (NCOs) during the era of the two World Wars. Officer training and development have been the subjects of several scholarly inquiries, but we still do not know much about how the armies of the empire made and managed their NCOs, which is unfortunate because the armies could not have functioned without them. I would also like to make a plea that we give the business of memory and commemoration a bit of a rest. The field has produced some truly brilliant and inspiring work, but I fear we may be reaching a tipping point at which memories of war (however incorrect or skewed) are more important than what actually happened. I also have trouble imagining that much good can come from graduate students running off to write about war memory when they have no idea what a battalion is or what artillery does.