Twilight of the Gods

Starred review from April 20, 2020
Historian Toll (The Conquering Tide) brings his Pacific War trilogy to a dramatic conclusion in this expertly told account of the final year of WWII. After an intriguing examination of how FDR directed the efforts of U.S. military commanders Douglas MacArthur, Chester Nimitz, and William “Bull” Halsey to roll back earlier Japanese advances, Toll switches from grand strategy to harrowing, first-person accounts of Pacific Theater battles. At Leyte, the Japanese turned kamikaze attacks into both a propaganda tool and an integral element of their defense against America’s carrier fleet. Fulfilling his promise to return to the Philippines, General MacArthur liberated POWs held since 1942 and declared victory at Manila in February 1945, only to face a month of “some of the most vicious urban fighting of the entire Second World War.” Controversy raged among military generals and the American public about whether the appalling casualties at Iwo Jima were justified, but the island’s airfields were needed to launch aerial bombing campaigns against mainland Japan, including the March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo. Toll describes the invasion of Okinawa as a “Pacific Verdun,” documents Allied efforts to negotiate peace, details the error-prone mission to bomb Nagasaki, and paints a poignant picture of the surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri. Written with flair and chock-full of stories both familiar and fresh, this monumental history fires on all cylinders. WWII aficionados will be enthralled.

August 1, 2020

It took nine years from publishing volume one to this volume, but Toll's trilogy of the Pacific Theater during World War II is complete. After Pacific Crucible (2011) and The Conquering Tide (2015), Toll begins this tale of 1944-45 at a crucial meeting in Honolulu between President Roosevelt and the major players of the military: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur. It was here they decided the final push toward victory against Japan. Toll uses this as the jumping-off point to cover the entirety of the remainder of American actions in the Pacific, from Allied troops withstanding kamikazes to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The author can get bogged down in minute details and his own dislike of MacArthur, but he effectively uses primary documents, official reports, journals, and autobiographies to cover events from multiple viewpoints. This is helpful as it provides a personal take on harsh battles and horrific conditions for the combatants. VERDICT Fans of Toll's previous volumes will enjoy this book. World War II experts may find this work redundant, since it uses previously published materials. However, casual enthusiasts will appreciate as it compiles those works thoroughly.--Jason L. Steagall, Arapahoe Libs., Centennial, Colorado

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2020
The final volume in Toll's fine Pacific War Trilogy. The author begins with the July 1944 Honolulu meeting of the key American figures. He rocks no boats in his evaluations of Franklin Roosevelt (canny if slippery politico), Adm. Chester Nimitz (brilliant but colorless technocrat), and Gen. Douglas MacArthur (military genius with a massive ego). At the meeting, American officials reached a decision to invade Japan by way of the Philippines rather than Formosa. By 1944, Japanese leaders knew that victory was impossible but also believed that they were unconquerable. Once Americans, whom they considered technically advanced but soft, realized that every Japanese soldier, civilian, and child would fight to the death, they would lose heart and agree to a compromise peace. "There was a difference between defeat and surrender," writes the author, a meticulous historian, "between losing an overseas empire and seeing the homeland overrun by a barbarian army." Ironically, the first part of the Japanese strategy worked. Convinced that the Japanese preferred death to surrender, American military leaders did not quail but simply proceeded with that in mind. There is no shortage of accounts of the brutal island-hopping invasions (Peleliu in September, the Philippines in October, Iwo Jima in February 1945, Okinawa in April), but Toll's take second place to none. Accompanying the Philippine invasion was the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in world history. The most effective submarines of the war were not Hitler's but America's, which crippled Japan's economy and sank a torrent of warships. Toll's account of the coup de grace, the atomic bomb, barely mentions the debate over its use because that began after the war. At the time, a few administration figures protested but did not make a big fuss, and it turned out to require two bombs and the Soviet invasion before Japan decided to surrender. A conventional but richly rewarding history of the last war that turned out well for the U.S. (32 photos; 20 maps)

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