Book report "Nimitz" by E. B. Potter
The book Nimitz by potter is a great book worthy of a great man. It was first published in the year 1976 and entails the definitive biography of one of the commander in chief in the Pacific fleet in the Second World War. This book has high respects from both the civilian and naval communities due to its rich content in naval heritage. The author of this book focuses on the story of one of the most prominent, respected and remembered navy officer in the history of the Second World War. After the capture of the American forces by the Japanese army at the Pearl Harbor in 1941, the admiral in command of the US navy by then was removed from his position, as a result, the incident and was replaced by Chester Nimitz (Potter 12).
President Roosevelt was said to have made instructed Nimitz to stay in the harbor until the war over. In the Second World War, he served as both as the CINCPOA (Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas) and CINCPAC (Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet). He did all this from his headquarters at Pearl Harbor. Nimitz was in control over one of the largest naval force to be assembled by the government of the United States. These forces comprised of a number of hundred troops in the ground, thousands of ships, and numerous aircrafts from services as the US Army Air Force, US Marine Corps and the US Navy. Such a big force needed an immense logistical support, which was provided by the leader of the group, Nimitz (Potter 122).
Nimitz was a leader admired a lot by his colleagues and other people due to the way the run things. There were only two people in the United State of America who had high command than Nimitz. They were Admiral Ernest King, CNO and also the COMINCH). Ernest was the only US admiral in history to hold both of those commands in the same duration. The President of the United States by then was Franklin D. Roosevelt and he had entrusted the post to him. According to the author of this book, it is very hard to discover human aspect behind the personality of a great leader like Nimitz. He was among the greatest captains in the Second World War despite the fact that, in more than one occasion, he was unsure how to deal with some delicate issues but at the end, he always found his way out the problem. One of the main pressures on Nimitz was to win the war in the Pacific that he was assigned, with clear instructions that failure was not an option. (Potter 242).
In the book, the history of Nimitz is self-explanatory on why the president appointed him to run the operations in the pacific war where someone else had previously failed. Nimitz grew up in hard conditions in a small town in Texas; he went through the Naval Academy. He had early duty stations in the Naval War College and the Far East to mission as chief of the Bureau of Navigation, which is now referred to as the Bureau of Naval Personnel, in Washington just before the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. However, I personally feel that the author should have covered more on how Nimitz reached where he was, and his credentials as an admiral or as a general for the reader to be enlightened on his previous life as a leader. Instead, this biography on Nimitz tends to revolve around his appointment in the pacific war and all that he did in that time (Potter 315).
The author of this book knew Nimitz and the Nimitz family. Potter’s rich background on the history of this family helped him in wring this book. His is due to the fact that, after the end of the pacific war, Fleet Admiral Nimitz himself declined to write his autobiography and stated “historians in decades hence would be a far better judge of what he had done than he could be”. His wife also destroyed most of their connections to from years of the pacific war. After the death of Nimitz, Mrs. Nimitz requested E.B. Potter to write the biography of Nimitz and so in many perspectives, this is termed by many as the official biography of Fleet Admiral (Potter 345).
Finally, it is vital to note that in the history of the United States, regardless of more vibrant and more politically judicious contemporaries about the Pacific War, it was Nimitz, a boy from Fredericksburg in Texas, who led the country and its associates to triumph the Japanese in the Pacific in World War II. The author of this book, therefore, tells the reader how it was done. If one is interested in having the first hand information the story of the pacific war and the contributions of Nimitz in it in a more detailed manner, this book is for you.
Works Cited.
Elmer Potter. Nimitz. London: Wiley Publishers, 1976. Print.
