In War of Supply: World War II Allied Logistics in the Mediterranean, David Dworak presents a concise and path-breaking narrative of the march of allied logistics from the beaches of North Africa, to Sicily and mainland Italy, through southern France, and finally to the banks of the Rhine River in Germany. The author deftly tells the stories of how planning, operations, and logistics improved in the Mediterranean with each experience. Initially, logistics appeared to be a significant weakness, as seen in the almost farcical landings of Operation Torch. Many units landed on the wrong beaches and 242 of 378 landing craft were damaged or destroyed “despite having the calmest sea conditions of the past sixty-eight years, and limited enemy activity.”[1] But then Allied logistics grew into a behemoth that supported almost one million soldiers by 1944. By late fall of that year, the US Army had built a system of supply that made the invasion of Germany “logistically supportable.”[2] No rarer words have been said about any logistics operation in the annals of warfare. Dworak puts primary scholarship to the task and dives into the how of logistics—how it works, how it fails, and how operations and logistics work together, sometimes in counterintuitive ways.
In the historiography of the Second World War, scholars marvel at the wonders of Normandy and D-Day, followed by the famed Red Ball Express on the drive to Paris. Dworak makes the compelling case that the real support and logistics operation came from wartime experience further south. As a reader, it is delightful to see a simple and straightforward narrative play out. Dworak digs into all facets of logistics and stays on task. The author keeps his chapters fast-paced, focused on the big operations of Torch, Husky, Avalanche, Shingle, and Dragoon, while also describing fascinating tidbits along the way.
Dworak’s focus on logistics adds more support to the argument that the Mediterranean theater was of vital importance in teaching the Americans how to fight and how to supply their army, reinforcing Churchill’s insistence on fighting in North Africa and Italy before attacking into Northern Europe and Germany.
Dworak also gives a great account of the losing side, which avoids the trap of assuming that allied success in supply guaranteed German failure in the theater. For example, the author describes how the Germans managed to move more than 100,000 soldiers off the island of Sicily through the Straits of Messina, an operation that mirrored the Japanese sailing 20,000 soldiers off of Guadalcanal at almost the same time in 1943. Those successes in transportation stand in marked contrast to the failures of the Axis in most other campaigns. Dworak illustrates how panic, such as German units scuttling their own fuel supplies and improper allocation of resources during various landings, stymied efforts to stop the Allied advances in Italy and France. The descriptions of the German success in leaving Sicily and their failures in providing the logistics necessary to defend the beaches in Southern France lead to all sorts of counterfactual questions: How could the Germans do so poorly in logistics writ large but pull off the Sicily evacuations? What if the local German commander had not scuttled fuel at Salerno?
As Dworak weaves his narrative into Southern France, he unearths a trove of information pointing to how much Operation Dragoon—and the eventual line of communication that the allies established from the port of Marseille through France to the Rhine river in Germany—helped win the war. Dworak makes the fascinating conclusion that the logistics command that ran operations in the Mediterranean and into France had far more experience and knowledge than the one that ran the D-Day invasion in Northern France. As logisticians for the Normandy invasion were planning, the Mediterranean team was building a line of communication from the south of France to the Rhine.
This lack of experience became evident in Normandy. For example, planners for the Normandy invasion directed ships to only unload supplies deemed critical first, then move out to sea to keep the beaches at Normandy from being overwhelmed. Only later would the ships return to unload less critical cargo. Once the staff of experienced logisticians from the Mediterranean saw this loading practice, they ended it. This greatly increased the cargo moved across the beaches, which was more important than any logjams on the beaches in the initial movements. Logisticians from the Mediterranean understood that logistics was a long game and that all of the cargo would be needed forward at some point even if that risked initial overcrowding.
In highlighting the importance of the Mediterranean theater for allied logistics, Dworak masterfully addresses larger questions of allied strategy in Europe. He details the historical controversy surrounding Eisenhower’s decision to hold back the 6th Army at the banks of the Rhine in late 1944 to consolidate logistics before making a full push into Germany in 1945. Dworak avers that there were good reasons for Eisenhower to stop while making the case that the plan had the logistics to support a much earlier invasion from France into Germany. This is an amazing admission and one that leaves the reader wanting more. Had the 6th Army gone to Germany earlier, might that have shaped the balance of the post-war alignment? Could the war have ended sooner? Hopefully Dvorak’s next book addresses these questions and uses the same logistical lens to finish the narrative of the final push to German surrender.
Successful logistics requires as much leadership as it does mass. Much like combat, proper logistics requires proper leaders.
Dworak also drives home a critical point about logistics being a human versus a technical endeavor. Successful logistics requires as much leadership as it does mass. Much like combat, proper logistics requires proper leaders. In one of many examples, Dworak shows how Major General Thomas Larkin had the ability to work with Patton, Eisenhower, Bradley and many other allied operational commanders in the Mediterranean with great success. By contrast, Lieutenant General John Lee, the overall logistics commander for the effort at Normandy, lacked interpersonal skills, allowing his view of which staff should control the flow of logistics to clash with front-line commanders’ opinions. The author’s balanced approach and experience give him great insight into those leaders who were great logisticians and those who were not.
