Books in Brief: From Apes to Warlords

From Apes to Warlords, by Solly Zuckermann (Harper & Row, 447 pp., $20.95). Clemenceau, cribbing from Talleyrand, once observed that war was too important to be left to the generals; his epigram has been understandably popular with politicians ever since. Nor is it surprising that Solly Zuckermann—the only working scientist apart from Lord Cherwell, Churchill’s scientific advisor, who was admitted into the inner councils of the Second World War—should agree with this proposition. And yet the controversies described by Zuckermann in this fascinating memoir suggest that scientists are just as capable as generals and politicians of allowing their prejudices to dictate their attitude to evidence, scientific or otherwise. Zuckermann, though he subsequently became Science Advisor to Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, was before the war a zoologist by training and a social butterfly by inclination. With the onset of war, both his life and the tone of this book change completely. Early in the war, he became involved in studying bombing operations through his work on the effects of bomb blasts on animals. In 1943, he was responsible for the planning and analysis of air operations which led to the capture of the island of Pantelleria in the Mediterranean and the breakdown of enemy communications in Sicily and in southern Italy. His success here led to his involvement in the formulation of bombing strategy at the time of the Normandy invasion. Zuckermann’s strategy, as he readily acknowledges, seems quite obvious now. In modern societies, nothing is selfcontained. Factories can be protected, but components have to be transferred. Movement is always the vulnerable area. Key railroad junctions, marshaling yards, and railroad stock were to be the targets. However, there were powerful forces opposed to this strategy. One of the most formidable was Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris (“Bomber” Harris), who continued until the end of the war to hold the belief that Bomber Command could defeat Germany by laying waste her cities through night attacks. The implacable Harris was supported by Churchill and by Lord Cherwell, who dismissed Zuckermann’s plan as “the brainchild of a biologist who happened to be passing through the Mediterranean.” The U.S. Air Force generals were equally skeptical: they favored attacks on ball-bearing factories and chemical and oil installations, rather than on the transportation system. Both factions tended to think of the Normandy invasion as just a sort of boating expedition. They thought that air power, alone and unaided, could end the war; the strategic air forces were, says Zuckermann, almost sovereign powers fighting personal wars. Nonetheless, and despite the approval of Eisenhower and Tedder—among the few military leaders whom Zuckermann found to have the courage to insist on policies their top staffs openly opposed—the emphasis on bombing the transportation system was relaxed. This undoubtedly lengthened the war; it cost billions of additional dollars and thousands of lives; and it even affected the political shape of postwar Europe.