From Hot War to Cold: The U.S. Navy and National Security Affairs, 1945–1955 by Jeffrey G. Barlow (review)

At the end of the Second World War the U.S. Navy’s “power ... surpassed that of any navy the world had yet seen” (p. 10), and the major concern of its commanders was how it was going to adjust to the postwar world of cutbacks and, more significant, of the national defense reorganization. The latter would entail a review of the roles and missions of the services (including that of a newly independent and highly regarded Air Force) against the backdrop of U.S. global leadership responsibilities, Soviet and Chinese Communist challenges, and the revolutionary significance of nuclear weapons. This volume addresses how the Navy adapted to its changing environment from 1945 to 1955 and specifically how it maneuvered to promote and defend its preferences, how it fared, and, in a very general sense, what the consequences were for U.S. national security. The perspective is that of the Navy’s uniformed leadership as embodied by the Chiefs of Naval Operations (CNO) and their immediate staffs (OPNAV).

Barlow is an award-winning naval specialist employed by the Contemporary History Branch of the Naval Historical Center. Fully one third of his 700-page volume is set aside for endnotes and bibliography, and his historian colleagues will be impressed by the thoroughness of the documentation, including extensive reliance on primary written sources and interviews with key individuals. Naval aficionados will be impressed by the book’s level of detail, particularly as concerns the broader context of international events and bureaucratic politics within which the Navy’s leadership operated. Finally, general readers will be impressed that a professional historian can write such a readable volume—no small feat.

Many authors have already addressed the post–World War Two reorganization of the U.S. defense establishment. Much has also been written about the bureaucratic political battles between a self-confident U.S. Air Force—touting the benefits of strategic bombing with nuclear weapons—and the other services, most especially the U.S. Navy. In short, the tale told by Barlow has been told before, but few authors have pulled together as ably the many naval pieces of the puzzle. Central to his story is the determination of the Navy’s uniformed command to maintain its independence. Admirals came and went—retiring voluntarily, being forced out (as was CNO Robert Carney), or dying in harness (CNO William Fechteler)—but the service’s position was constant. As the Secretary of War Robert Patterson noted during the negotiations that led to the 1947 National Security Act, “ ‘There does not seem to be much of a chance of coming to agreement with the Navy. . . . The Navy does not want to give up its independence’ ” (p. 92). The personal intervention of the commander-in-chief, President Harry Truman, was needed to move the issue forward. Navy determination to remain independent did not lessen with the next commander-in-chief, Dwight Eisenhower. When Secretary of the Navy Charles Thomas fired CNO Admiral Robert “Mick” Carney for refusing to keep him fully informed (Thomas once wrote in a fit of pique, “ ‘Mick never tells me anything’ ”; p. 398), Eisenhower firmly supported Thomas. In written correspondence the president addressed the “ ‘very distinct difference in philosophies affecting naval direction and authority’ ” (p. 399) held by Carney and Thomas, and proffered that for a CNO to keep the navy secretary, the president’s representative to the service, in the dark was reason enough to relieve him immediately.

Barlow ends his volume with the Carney incident, and he is careful in his assessment of the admiral, more matter-of-fact than fawning or critical. Yet throughout, Barlow’s admiration for the Navy and its uniformed leadership is clear. As he sees it, the nation was “fortunate” (p. 404) to have the Navy it did, and the Navy was fortunate to have the leadership it had. The words “competence” and...