The Armchair General (book)

The blog rarely covers books, interest and taste being an individual thing, but this is such an unusual and interesting approach that I thought it worth sharing.

The Armchair General by John Buckley and published by Century, covers eight major decision points across World War II and invites the reader to choose the historical path or an alternative path of any one of the given points.

Basically, a chapter with its main theme is laid out with some historical background and then you are posed with a decision to take. 

Choose your path and turn to the appropriate part of the chapter (i.e. you are told to go to page 47 etc), where a viable and soundly given consequence to your decision is given.

There may then be further alternatives. If you have chosen an alternative path, you can of course return to the historical outcome, read that and then compare the two, so as to fully explore the nature of that moment in time.

Taking the example from the rear of the book, our theme here is 7th May 1940. Britain’s Darkest Hour. We will have been given all of the background and are then faced with this;

You are a key power broker in parliament. Britain’s situation in the war against Hitler’s Germany is unravelling rapidly after a disastrous campaign in Norway that has left thousands of Allied troops dead and the Third Reich in the ascendancy.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain will be unseated in a matter of days and his government replaced by a national coalition. But the dilemma facing you, one of the kingmakers in the House of Commons is: who is best suited to lead Britain and its Empire through the rest of the war?

DECISION:

Should you put your support behind Lord Halifax, the popular politician revered by the King?

Or should you back the maverick Winston Churchill, a wild card responsible for the disaster at Gallipoli?

Go to page 34 for Halifax.

Go to page 24 for Churchill.

The inside sleeve says “Written by John Buckley, professor of military history and expert on strategy and war gaming, this book revisits the past in forensic and fascinating detail so that you can learn how every small action (or inaction) can create a whole different history. Will your decisions follow the same course as World War II? Or will you create a new future?”

Each decision part of the book is written in isolation, so for example in the above case, if you chose Halifax as leader, the outcomes would only relate to narrative in that chapter. In a later chapter, discussing a later part of the war, the background information will have returned to true history i.e. Churchill in the next chapter (The Mediterranean Gamble 1941 -42) is Prime Minister, regardless of what you decided in 1940, in effect each decision point gets a historical refresh, so that there isn’t any contamination of the facts from earlier decisions.

I have just completed the first theme, Britain’s Darkest Hour (held in 54 pages) and was immediately stuck by the first decision …. Pick Churchill or Halifax as leader! 

With some pre-knowledge, I knew that Churchill made a success of the job and was generally considered the right man for the moment (or so my pre-conceived bias told me), but when I read the background on both men, I was actually not keen on either - but with no other alternatives, one has to be chosen.

I enjoyed the various sections that I was given to read, each one complete enough to be credible and informative. I found it interesting in this chapter to see the politics of the moment rather fractured along the lines of both appeasement and personality and I could relate it directly to UK politics of very recent years in which this nation has seen similar political fracture along the lines of Brexit (Departure from the European Union) and issue of personality and the shenanigans and rivalry that have fallen from that. 

Anyway, it is all seems rather good, quite different from other approaches and very engaging. I have actually gone back and forth throughout the first chapter to explore all of the alternatives and the real history. 

There are eight major decision point in the book.

What would you do at Midway?

What would you do about ‘the’ bomb? 

435 pages, paperback at £12.99 UK.

Resource Section.

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’ is being re-configured to showcase various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current projects are up to. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com