International Chair for the History of the Second World War 2024 - How to win a war

Phillips Payson O'Brien teaches history and international relations at the University of Saint Andrews. In 2015, he published a major monograph with Cambridge University Press How the War Was Won, focusing on the logistical side of modern warfare during WWII. It seemed appropriate for the eleventh edition of the Chair to change the focus for once from the political, social and cultural aspects of warfare to military hardware, especially since Phillips Payson O’Brien has distinguished himself as a sharp analyst and commentator of the current war in Ukraine, among others through a series of articles in The Atlantic. He has done so with caution and with force, showing that historians can add to our understanding of the present and that, while history might not have straightforward lessons to teach to the present, it can offer a source of inspiration and a set of elements of comparison.
The arguments made in How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II (Cambridge, 2015) were outside of the norm when it came to the military history of the conflict. In moving away from the focus on battles and generals, to look at production, logistics and attrition, the book made some pointed comments about how the process of defeating Germany and Japan worked. This lecture will re-examine many of those claims, about equipment, complex systems, and mobility, and offer some ways that we might look at them in the present war.
Chaire organisée pour la onzième fois par la Faculté de Philosophie et Sciences sociales de l’ULB, grâce à la générosité de feu le Baron Jean-Charles VELGE, décédé le 29 mai 2010, qui tenait à honorer la mémoire de Jean Vanwelkenhuyzen, historien de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale.
Lundi 18 mars 2024, à l’Université libre de Bruxelles.