Book Description

“[The World War II campaign] of the Mediterranean Theatre - the ‘soft underbelly of the Axis’ as Churchill so wrongly called it - was compounded of elements reminiscent of the heyday of the Foreign Legion - intrigue, suspense, a secret mission to a secret seaside villa in Algeria... the strange but necessary alliance with Darlan, and then the bloody, muddy and most unexpectedly long and difficult Italian campaign where the roster of troops sounded like the roll-call of the allied nations. These are elements to make any book interesting, and, if past history, still exciting, and General Clark has capitalized fully on them. There are sketches of Churchill, of Eisenhower in his difficult coordinating position, of the war’s lesser known heroes, the officers and enlisted men of the battle command Clark wanted and finally received. And there is the series of almost fatal blunders which followed the taking of Rome when the Western Allies seemed almost determined to play into the hands of the Russians. Tito might have left the Kremlin’s orbit sooner, and the present list of satellite nations might have been smaller. And when Clark was made American high commissioner of Austria he experienced more of the same lack of foresight and he concludes with a political sophistication not common to the military – ‘We celebrated a victory when in reality we had not won the War’. Honest, forceful, colorful, this is one of the best books to come from World War II’s top brass.” — Kirkus “Calculated Risk deals in large part with events and situations in which General Clark and I were not only close associates but friends and comrades. But even if I am, therefore, a prejudiced witness, I cheerfully and unhesitatingly prophesy that thousands will find the book as accurate and as completely absorbing as I did.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower “[F]orthright, hard-hitting stuff... This book [...] should be widely read... A high-powered, high-tempered man [...] afraid of nothing and no man, [Clark] was consistently given tough assignments. His superiors always seem to have had complete confidence in his ability to carry out these assignments and always gave him their full moral support... The whole Mediterranean Campaign, he says, was a calculated risk. The North African Campaign was an extremely perilous military adventure. Aside from possible French and probable German resistance in North Africa, there was always the threat of Spanish or German attack via Spanish Morocco on our extended lines of communication, an attack which might well have been fatal... a fascinating book.” — Richard E. Danielson, The Atlantic