THE TURN OF THE TIDE (624 pp.)—Arthur Bryant—Doubleday ($6.95).
Who was the architect of victory in World War II? Churchill? Roosevelt? General Marshall? Eisenhower? None of those guesses hit the mark, according to British Historian Sir Arthur Bryant. His choice is a stooped, round-shouldered retired British officer who looks not unlike a solemn parrot, is addicted to bird watching, and lives quietly with his wife in the gardener's cottage of his estate in Hampshire. Most U.S. readers would stare blankly if asked to identify Field Marshal Alan Brooke, now Lord Alanbrooke. But Bryant's The Turn of the Tide, based on Alanbrooke's wartime diaries, has already sold 70,000 copies in England and has whipped up strong resentment among military men both in Britain and the U.S. The book makes its hero seem to have been by all odds the war's greatest soldier —though he was mostly a desk soldier. The work may irritate more than it illuminates, but it is clearly one of the important books about World War II.
Special Pleading. When Lieut. General Alan Brooke went to the Continent as a corps commander in 1939, he began to keep a diary for his wife. Standing alone, his notes would have been interesting and not very readable. But Viscount Alanbrooke has been lucky in having the help of Co-Author Bryant, one of the most readable historians now living (Unfinished Victory, The Age of Elegance). Bryant has written what is, in effect, a narrative account of the war that adroitly interpolates his hero's diaries and notes. But unlike Bryant's objective histories, The Turn of the Tide has an air of special pleading, works too hard at the job of building up Alanbrooke and low-rating those who, like General Marshall and Admiral King, were often in disagreement with him.
As Churchill's Chief of the Imperial General Staff (from 1941 to 1946), Brooke worked more closely with the Prime Minister than anyone else, and much of the book is designed to make it plain that, without Alan Brooke, Winnie would certainly have gone off the rails with catastrophic frequency. Most of Bryant's story will be old hat to those who have read Churchill's history. Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe and Robert Sherwood's Roosevelt and Hopkins. What gives it immediacy and historical stature is the day-by-day evidence of the reticent professional soldier who made his plan, stuck to it throughout and often persuaded seemingly stronger men that he was right.