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(More customer reviews)What an interesting work this is! It is very much an academic work with all the strengths that implies, as well as a weakness to be disucussed. The subtitle A Reapprasial of Rearmament is appropriate and is the heart of the work. There are several themes covered in this treatment of the interwar years.
The first theme is the contention between visions of a unified Ministry of Supply to manage all British defence procurement and the determination of the Admiralty to keep the highly specialized field of naval ship design construction and equipment entirely in their own hands. The author recounts all the bureaucratic manuvering carried out for 20 years to keep the Admiralty position intact and makes a fascinating and sensible story of it that rings entirely true to anyone with experience in how large organizations actually work. The position of the author is that the structure of coordinating committees set up in the late 20s was in fact the correct instrument to assure the best possible military readiness for rearmament and that postion is skillfully and convincingly argued.
The second theme is that the Admiralty continually skirted the edge of accounting legality in committing government finances to the the redevelopment of naval-industrial infrastructure in the 30s. Gordon also argues with some success that the Treasury bureaucracy to some extent turned a blind eye to these practices.
The third theme is that the industrial side of naval rearmament was considerably complicated by the revolution in military technology wrought by aircraft development in the 1929-1939 era. This is seen as a revolution fully appreciated by the Admiralty and leading to signficant changes in ship armament and protection that needed to be retrofitted as well as hastily incorporated in new designs. The author points out very specific problems this created in capacity for the thin armor plating needed for deck protection and the mountings needed for dual purpose medium calibre guns.
The fourth theme of the book is the wisdom of the political leadership (MacDonald, Baldwin, and Chamberlain) in keeping British industry as much as possible on a peace time basis up until the point of war but having an elaborate, comprehensive, and calculated plan to switch over that economy to a war basis quickly and seamlessly - a plan that was by and large executed with great sucess.
Overall, Gordon argues the Royal Navy prepared for and executed a rearmament plan in the 1930s that was the best possible under the geopolitical circumstances and that credit should be given to the professional heads of the civil service and the navy, especially Adm Sir Ernle Chatfield, who is cast as something of a hero, or at least as much as that can be done in an academic work.
This brief outline of the main themes of the book does scant justice to all the fruits of primary, archival research combined with extensive interviews of surviving participants in the history of the events. For example this would make an excellent companion to D.K. Brown's book on warship development from 1923 to 1945 Nelson to Vanguard. A different and less favorable perspective on British rearmament in the 1930s is found in the chapter by Bond and Murray in Volume 2 of Military Effectiveness ed by Millet and Murray.
The flaw in the work that prevented it from getting five stars is Gordon's apparent preoccupation with some sort of British academic debate with proponents of the view that Baldwin and Chamberlain were at best fools and only Churchill had the right answer. Perhaps in 1988 that was what the Brits were arguing about but I would think we all have a more nuanced view now. This leads the author to claim more for the policy of appeasement, which he describes as a policy of conciliation and rearmament, than it can bear. Surely we all agree that if Great Britain had been dealing with conservative, assertive, and nationalist German leaders the policy of appeasment could well have prevented war. But Hitler and his gang were not that and appeasement did not prevent war. What Gordon shows rather convincingly is that the rearmament side of the policy was executed in a calculated, cold-blooded, and determined way that is a credit to ability of the political and military leadership of the day. Their inability to understand the true nature of the National Socialist movement, it's goals and objectives, was shared by most of the rest of the world.
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