An Imperial Presidency’s ‘Prerogative’

Review by Bill Doughty

Some of America’s greatest presidents have assumed emergency powers during crises. Jefferson took the law into his own hands when he ordered the arrest of Aaron Burr for treason. Lincoln blockaded ships of the Confederacy and employed exceptional powers in the Civil War. FDR assumed extraordinary powers as Commander in Chief Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt

They acted on “presidential prerogative,” a right to act temporarily outside of the Constitution as justified in times of emergency or extraordinary imminent threat to the nation.

But, like George Washington before them, they worked with Congress and followed constraints of the courts. In his farewell address, Washington rejected “change by usurpation; for through this, in one instance, may the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Washington famously turned down calls to serve as president beyond his two terms.

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. examines the history of the tension between the executive and the other co-equal branches of government in “The Imperial Presidency” (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973). Despite being written more than half a century ago, this remarkable book is relevant in 2026 in the era of “No Kings” protests. In fact, as we show, Schlesinger predicted what the United States is now experiencing –– 50 years after his book was published.

President John F. Kennedy and historian/advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Schlesinger, an advisor to JFK, was an advocate for a strong forward-thinking executive as essential to a healthy democracy. But in The Imperial Presidency –– published near the end of the Vietnam War, the Nixon presidency, and Watergate scandal –– he warns of the expansion of presidential power leading to dangerous abuse of the office.

His book and conclusions especially resonate in a topsy-turvy week –– as the current president and his administration go after a former FBI director for posting a picture of seashells, attack a comedian for telling a joke, justify tearing down part of the White House to build a ballroom, and try to manage a war of choice that is causing massive damage to the world's economy..

Years later Schlesinger also criticized George Bush’s ill-conceived “needless war” in Iraq, calling Bush an “imperial president.”

Marines marching prisoners in Iraq in 2003.

Commitment to the Constitution

Key to the success of American democracy, Schlesinger contends, is respect for and commitment to separation of powers as outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

“The American Constitution was established, for better or worse, on an idea new to the world in the eighteenth century and still uncommon in the twentieth century –– the idea of the separation of powers. This forbidding phrase represented a distinctive American contribution to the art of government. There had been no such doctrine in medieval times. Before the eighteenth century, everyone assumed that government required the unification of authority. But the Founding Fathers, who saw conflict as the guarantee of freedom, grandly defied the inherited wisdom. Instead of concentrating authority in a single institution, they chose to disperse authority among three independent branches of government, equipping the leaders of each, in the words of the 51st Federalist Paper, with the ‘necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.’ These branches, as every schoolchild used to know, were the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. The Constitution thus institutionalized conflict in the very heart of the American polity.

The question has always remained –– and has provided a central theme of American political history –– how a government based on the separation of powers could be made to work.”

Using events in American history, Schlesinger examines how a balance of power without checks on that power can create “inertia” that allows a president to become a corrupt autocrat. He shows how the executive branch can then manipulate fear, hate, religion, and emergencies such as war to breach the Constitution.

Schlesinger writes this:

“This book consequently devotes special attention to the history of the war-making power. The assumption of that power by the Presidency was gradual and usually under the demand or pretext of emergency. It was as much a matter of congressional abdication as of presidential usurpation. As it took place, there dwindled away checks, both written and unwritten, that had long held the Presidency under control. The written checks were in the Constitution. The unwritten checks were in the forces and institutions a President once had to take into practical account before he made decisions of war and peace –– the cabinet and the executive branch itself, the Congress, the judiciary, the press, public opinion at home and the opinion of the world. By the early 1970s the American President had become on issues of war and peace the most absolute monarch (with the possible exception of Mao Tse-tung of China) among the great powers of the world.

The Indochina War placed this problem high on the national consciousness. But the end of American military involvement in Southeast Asia would not extinguish the problem. The assertions of sweeping and unilateral presidential authority remained official doctrine in foreign affairs. And, if the President were conceded these life-and-death decisions abroad, how could he be restrained from gathering unto himself the less fateful powers of the national polity? For the claims of unilateral authority in foreign policy soon began to pervade and embolden the domestic Presidency. ‘Perhaps it is a universal truth,’ Madison had written Jefferson, ‘that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.’ The all-purpose invocation of 'national security,' the insistence on executive secrecy, the withholding of information from Congress, the refusal to spend funds appropriated by congress, the attempted intimidation of the press, the use of the White House itself as a base for espionage and sabotage directed against the political opposition –– all signified the extension of the imperial Presidency from foreign to domestic affairs. Underneath such developments there could be discerned a revolutionary challenge to the separation of powers itself.”

Schlesinger continues:

“This book is written out of a double concern. The first concern is that the pivotal institution of the American government, the Presidency, has got out of control and badly needs new definition and restraint. The second concern is that revulsion against inordinate theories of presidential power may produce an inordinate swing against the Presidency and thereby do essential damage to our national capacity to handle the problems of the future. The answer to the runaway Presidency is not the messenger-boy Presidency. The American democracy must discover a middle ground between making the President a czar and making him a puppet. The problem is to devise means of reconciling a strong and purposeful Presidency with equally strong and purposeful forms of democratic control. Or, to put it succinctly, we need a strong Presidency — but a strong Presidency within the Constitution.”

The solution is to find a balance between a strong executive and strong guardrails of, by, and for the people. Schlesinger examines the yin-yang relationship between the executive and legislative branches within the context of the War Powers Act and how the military is used or abused.

[Of note, England’s King Charles spoke to a joint session of Congress yesterday in this “No Kings” era and 250th commemoration of the birth of the United States. Charles praised the prowess of the American military. And he gently rebuked those who are against NATO, who oppose support for Ukraine, who only look "inward," who refuse to recognize climate change, and who want an imbalance of power without checks and balances. He did not mention directly the hundreds of women who were victims of Epstein, Maxwell and friends (including Charles’s brother Andrew).]

Corruption and Tyranny

Near the end of The Imperial Presidency, Schlesinger makes the provocative statement that “Watergate was potentially the best thing to have happened to the Presidency in a long time.”

Facing certain impeachment, Nixon was forced to resign the presidency. His associates were jailed and humiliated. But accountability and lessons-learned sometimes do not last forever.

Here’s Schlesinger's astounding prediction from 50 years ago:

“We have noted that corruption appears to visit the White House in fifty-year cycles. This suggests that exposure and retribution inoculate the Presidency against its latent criminal impulses for about half a century. Around the year 2023 the American people would be well advised to go on the alert and start nailing down everything in sight.

A constitutional Presidency, as the great Presidents had shown, could be a very strong Presidency indeed. But what kept a strong President constitutional, in addition to checks and balances incorporated within his own breast, was the vigilance of the nation. Neither impeachment nor repentance would make much difference if the people themselves had come to an unconscious acceptance of the imperial Presidency. The Constitution could not hold the nation to ideals it was determined to betray. The reinvigoration of the written checks in the American Constitution depended on the reinvigoration of the unwritten checks in American society. The great institutions — Congress, the courts, the executive establishment, the press, the universities, public opinion — had to reclaim their own dignity and meet their own responsibilities. As Madison said long ago, the country could not trust to "parchment barriers" to halt the encroaching spirit of power. In the end, the Constitution would live only if it embodied the spirit of the American people.”

The presidency has some prerogatives in times of crisis. But in the American democracy, Congress has the prerogative to impeach the president, fund the government, and declare war. Under the Constitution, the media (and comedians) have the prerogative and right to free expression. And the people have the ultimate prerogative through their voice and vote –– as long as voting is not corrupted by an imperial presidency.

“Unless the American democracy figures out how to control the Presidency in war and peace without enfeebling the Presidency across the board, then our system of government will face grave troubles,” Schlesinger warns.

The Imperial Presidency concludes with a quote from Walt Whitman:

“"There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, –– and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance –– Tyranny may always enter –– there is no charm, no bar against it –– the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men [and women].”

Military Role in Fascism ‘Prequel’

Review by Bill Doughty––

It wasn’t until Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the United States in December 1945, that the burning embers of fascism dimmed and hot coals of active antisemitism, Christian nationalism, and Nazi support –– even in the U.S. Congress –– lost their glow.

But the fire never completely went cold.

Prior to World War II and even after, brave Americans sought to root out the supporters of fascism who went so far as to try to recruit members of the military as well as military veterans to their cause. One fighter of domestic fascism was a WWI veteran named Leon Lewis. 

Lewis sought to uncover a conspiracy of violent extremism targeting Jewish Americans and institutions. It’s one of the stories recounted in “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” by Rachel Maddow (Crow, Penguin Random House, 2023).

“What Leon Lewis decided to do was something incredible. And incredibly dangerous. He went out and recruited a small group of men, picked from the exact same pool the Nazis were after –– disgruntled non-Jewish American veterans of the recent war [World War I],” Maddow writes.

“But the Lewis operation did more than simply investigate and report. Before long, Lewis and his team scuttled a plot by U.S. Marines to sell guns and ammunition to the American fascists. Lewis and his underground team could not be credited in public for their part in this operation, but it did earn them the enduring and crucial admiration of high-ranking naval intelligence officers. They also exposed an elaborate inside-job scheme to take control of U.S. military armories on the West Coast. That plan was run by Dietrich Gefken, a German national who had been one of the early organizers of Hitler’s Brownshirts in Munich. After joining the California National Guard and inventorying the cache of rifles, machine guns, and coastal artillery pieces on hand at the San Francisco armory, Gefken had drawn up ‘the Armory plans, floor plans, location of ammunition and lockers and rifles, the list of addresses of the officers and all that was needed to take over the Armory on a given notice.’ Lewis’s spies handed over their evidence of Gefken’s plot to military intelligence officials, who shut it down.”

How Naval intelligence officers at the Navy base in San Diego helped bring the wider plot to light is almost an aside, but the story should be of great interest to military readers.

On the East Coast, more than 20,000 people attended an antisemitic pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. One of the banners visible in the above photo reads, "Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America." The rally was dubbed a patriotic pro-American event tied, without irony, to George Washington’s birthday. [General/President Washington rejected calls from supporters to become dictator of the young United States.]

How could the rising flames of fascism in the United States in the 1930s be forgotten in time? In interviews promoting “Prequel,” Maddow notes how the bigger story of the war in Europe (and the Pacific) eclipsed the story of homegrown fascism and Nazism and the quiet patriots who battled the threat to democracy here.

Brave and truly patriotic men such as Lewis, O. John Rogge, Dillard Stokes, Henry Hoke, Eric Sevareid, Drew Pearson, and William Power Maloney stood up and spoke out against antisemitism and against indifference and obstruction by the Truman Administration, as demonstrated by Attorney General Francis Biddle and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Federal prosecutor Rogge

“The plain truth is that the FBI was missing in action as fascism and Nazism took root and grew  in the United States in the mid-1930s,” Maddow notes.

Despite having the rug pulled out from under them in their prosecution of the fascists, both Maloney and Rogge continued with honor, courage, and commitment to uncover and report domestic enemies and violent extremists.

“Maloney and his investigators had discovered the double helix of the violent, Nazi-supporting, and Nazi-supported threat in the United States; it was part foreign and part domestic, part propaganda and part armed paramilitary movement.” He had led the investigation into Nazi propagandists using frank privileges at taxpayers’ expense. After federal service, he continued a career as a colorful and successful prosecutor.

“Rogge’s new charging document, like Maloney’s, alleged violations of the Smith Act –– an effort to demoralize America’s armed forces. But Rogge had sharpened the case, alleging targeted effort by the defendants to recruit National Guardsmen, reservists, and even active-duty U.S. troops into these ultra-right groups, where they could use their military skills, connections, and access to weapons to help arm and train paramilitary fascists for the overthrow of the U.S. government.”

Rogge uncovered evidence against American fascists and Nazi-supporters when he provided support to the Nuremberg trials after the war.

Men of character like Lewis, Rogge, Stokes, Hoke and others were seemingly outnumbered by questionable characters –– men (and some women) who placed greed, power, and religion above the Constitution, people like:

• George Deatherage: “He saw himself a red-blooded, real-American patriot, a dedicated Christian, a fierce protector of (white) Western civilization.”
• Huey Long: This Louisiana politician was an early version of the charismatic narcissistic populist and would-be dictator who formed his own militia and embraced violence against his detractors.
• Father Charles Coughlin: The Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones of his generation, he was a Catholic priest with a wildly popular radio show who called for violence against “tyrants” after naming FDR and jews as tyrants.
• John Cassidy: He was a self-described "Christian martyr" who wanted to become the "American Fuhrer."
• Senator Ernest Lundeen (R) of Minnesota: Was as corrupt as they come, even taking payroll kickbacks from his own staff, instrumental in promoting support for Hitler in America. Maddow’s description of his death in a suspicious plane crash is as graphic and horrible as can be imagined. Readers may want to look away.
• George Sylvester Viereck: The Nazi agent. He was convicted in June 1943 for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. While he was in jail, Viereck's eldest son and namesake, a corporal in the U.S. Army, fought and died for the Allies in Italy.
• Major General George Van Horn Moseley: He was pro-gun but against FDR and anti-redistribution of wealth; he called for the sterilization of any jews who immigrated to the United States.
• Senator Robert Rice Reynolds (D) of North Carolina: He wanted to build a wall around the entire United States, in part to keep out Jews.
• Representative Hamilton Fish (R) of New York: He supported Hitler’s Germany and “was hopeful that tensions over Germany’s designs on Poland could be resolved peacefully, and that Germany’s claims were ‘just.’” His calls: “AWAKE CHRISTIAN AMERICA” and “LET’S SAVE U.S. FOR US.”
• Senator William “Wild Bill” Langer (R) of North Dakota: As governor he was charged, convicted, and sentenced to 18 months in prison, but who declared martial law and tried to declare North Dakota’s independence from the United States. As senator, he sabotaged the investigation of rising fascism.
• Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D) of Montana: an isolationist and propagandist for Germany who was eventually accused of treason. He attempted to use his position in Congress to influence the military, especially the Lend-Lease Act, and prevent America’s support to Britain in WWII.
• Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh: Both were champions of Adolf Hitler and vice versa. Lindbergh zeig heiled at an America First rally with Wheeler. Ford was lauded by Adolf Hitler, who kept a photo of the white Christian nationalist CEO in his office.

America Firsters Wheeler and Lindbergh

There were many more who sought to weaken the Constitution and democracy in favor of autocracy and theocracy.

Expressions of outright antisemitism and fascism by elected officials led to plots of violence on the home front.

Groups such as the “Christian Front” and “Country Gentlemen” planned an armed insurrection, including bombings of Jewish and Leftist establishments as well as newspaper offices. Their hope was similar to Timothy McVeigh’s goal –– to start a race war that would bring down the federal government.

“It was what we’d call today an ‘accelerationist’ strategy,” Maddow explains.

“Much as white supremacists hope terroristic, spectacular, cruel acts toward racial minorities will provoke retaliation and reprisal to touch off a wholesale race war that they are sure they will win, the Christian Fronters believed American could easily be tipped into a war against Jews and communists in which they themselves not only would end up on the winning side, but would be hailed as a heroic vanguard.

“George Van Horn Moseley’s name kept coming up in planning meetings for the attack, because they were still counting on the general to take the reins as America’s new military dictator after the coup was complete.”

There are numerous parallels from the 1930s and ‘40s that continue to smolder: the coup attempt of January 6, other acts of violent extremism in the name of the former President (who calls opponents “vermin” that poison the “blood” of America), and Trump’s desire to call for the Insurrection Act in order to use the military against U.S. citizens in violation of posse comitatus.

Germany justified war in Europe based on grievances and a Big Lie about Jews. Putin did the same thing. And Trump builds his power and funding on perceived grievances and the Big Lie of a stolen election. It is no accident that Trump launched his current presidential campaign at Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian tragedy, which was the basis for Timothy McVeigh's grievances.

There are other parallels and similarities linking past and present. Accusers and their two dozen or more sympathizers in Congress chose to investigate the investigators. They called for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s impeachment based on conspiracies and conjecture without evidence. They used various tactics to disrupt and delay justice in the courts. And they attacked the free press.

The propagandists supported Germany’s efforts to divide American citizens: “A partisan, bickering, demoralized America, the Nazis believed, would be incapable of mounting a successful war effort in Europe.”

Fascists and fundamentalists –– past and present –– tried to recruit military service members and veterans. Eighty and ninety years ago a disproportionate number of law enforcement (“law and ORDER”) personnel supported fascists. Meanwhile, Hollywood –– led by MGM –– and the mainstream media –– led by the Washington Post –– shined a light on the lawbreakers and seditionists. When caught up in the scandal, perpetrators tried to burn evidence, (albeit not in a White House fireplace).

In 1942, federal prosecutors indicted 28 people and charged them (almost RICO-style) with sedition with “intent to interfere with, impair, and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States.” Prosecutors received hate mail and death threats.

Greedy and self-serving politicians stoked conspiracies and fears to hold on to power, especially fear of immigrants, communists, socialists, and Jewish people. Father Coughlin and others attempted to form a third party of Christian nationalists to compete against President Roosevelt, claiming FDR was a Jew.

But there could be signs of hope: The election of Nov. 7, 1944 proved the strength of democracy over the glowing coals of fascism, when FDR won a landslide victory. “The president who had been leading the country in the war against the Nazis, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, won an unprecedented fourth term, with 432 electoral votes to Thomas E. Dewey’s 99,” Maddow writes. “Roosevelt’s Democrats gained twenty-two seats in the House and protected their whopping nineteen-vote cushion in the Senate.”

Rachel Maddow speaks with Lt. Col. Andy Gerlach of the South Dakota Army National Guard in Afghanistan in July 2010. (Sgt. Rebecca Linder)

Maddow is also author of “Bagman” and “Drift.” She is a big supporter of military service members, veterans, and the Constitution. She bemoans the gap between civilians and their military, and she calls for accountability, transparency, and maximal diplomacy before American men and women are sent into war.

Both the Prequel book and preceding Ultra podcast feature Maddow’s storytelling at its best, but the book may better. While the serialized Prequel podcast broke ground on the compelling story of the threat to democracy from within, the book really fleshes out the story as only a book can, complete with extensive notes, a helpful index, compelling photos, and detail we can read and will want to re-read. This is a book that can help every American understand the threat of the fires of antisemitism, fascism, and authoritarianism.

In 2023 and 2024 the embers are glowing brighter.

The Nimitz We Need Now

Review by Bill Doughty––

Historian Ian Toll calls Clyde Symonds’s new book “The greatest biography yet written about the greatest admiral in American history.” The book is “Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay” (Oxford University Press, 2022).

This book compiles well-known Nimitz information during the war in the Pacific and spices the narrative with new flavors: what Nimitz was saying to colleagues, writing in letters to family, and doing in his limited spare time with friends in Hawaii during the war. Symonds seems to get into the mind of the great admiral “behind those cool blue eyes, impassive expression, and enigmatic demeanor.”

Nimitz was serious but did not take himself too seriously. He was known for storytelling, and he enjoyed 

a good ribald joke, which Symonds relays in “Nimitz at War.” Readers will smile at Nimitz’s hotel joke, what he said to his daughter about praying in church, how he joked about his missing half ring finger, and how he labeled his toilet paper at his Makalapa home.

This biography is bracketed almost entirely to the war years, starting with Nimitz’s arrival to a devastated Pearl Harbor. It’s divided into four parts: Taking Command, The South Pacific, The Central Pacific Drive, and Dénouement. Using excellent sources, including contemporaneous correspondence and messages, oral histories, and especially the Nimitz Graybook, Symonds takes readers to Nimitz’s side during battles and campaigns in the Marshall Islands, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Aleutians, Philippine Sea, Saipan, Leyte Gulf, Okinawa, and more.

Marines at Betio during Battle of Tarawa

We get a gripping recounting of the intelligence preparations, training challenges, command tensions, and communications frustrations in the early 1940s. We read about Nimitz’s quiet “anxiety” in the lead-up to the Battle of Midway, for example, where Nimitz decided to trust Rochefort’s intelligence and ambush the then-powerful Imperial Japanese Navy. “It is difficult in hindsight to appreciation the boldness of that decision,” Symonds writes.

Nimitz had high regard for the Sailors and Marines he sent in harm’s way, including the heroic Marines who assaulted Betio and the fearless Marines who stormed Iwo Jima. Nimitz famously reported, “Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

The lives of Sailors, Marines, and Soldiers lost in combat weighed heavily on him, yet he was able to “compartmentalize” thanks to words of wisdom from his grandfather: “never to worry about things that were beyond his control.”

We read about Nimitz’s love for hiking and long walks, swimming in the ocean, playing horseshoes, and shooting at a pistol range at Makalapa.

Toll may be right that this is the best Nimitz biography considering the depth of the analysis, the plethora of photos, and the 15 fantastic maps and charts by Jeffrey L. Ward. What makes this book extra special is the way Symonds weaves relationships between Nimitz and other contemporary leaders: How E.J. King underestimated Nimitz, how Spruance and Halsey could be as different as ice and fire yet still be friends, and how MacArthur could be so obstinate and belligerent but still fail to steamroll Nimitz and the Navy despite continual efforts to challenge command authority.

Nimitz was in firm control of strategy during the U.S. Navy’s advancement across the Pacific. We see how he trusted and was supported by Spruance, Lockwood, Layton, Mitscher and others –– and how he met the challenges of dealing with Towers, Holland “Mad” Smith, Halsey, and especially MacArthur.

When Nimitz received his fifth star as Fleet Admiral he wanted Spruance to also receive a fifth star, but Washington instead awarded it to Halsey, whose brash and bombastic style caught the media’s attention much more so than Spruance’s quiet, diplomatic, and cerebral way. Symonds makes the case that Spruance deserves his more respected place in history.

Of course, like all humans, Nimitz was not a perfect person. Symonds calls the Texas hill country admiral “a product of his time and his culture” in that he avoided African American service members (with the notable exception of Messman Doris “Dorie” Miller, to whom Nimitz presented the Navy Cross for December 7 heroism). In 1943 there were no black officers in the Navy. And Nimitz also wanted no part in having women service members on his staff, disallowing WAVES from serving in the Pacific.

Relocating Americans of Japanese Ancestry (AJAs) to concentration camps.

Still, Nimitz resisted persecution of Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJAs).

At the outset of the war, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Army General John DeWitt pushed for relocation of AJAs.

DeWitt “instituted a program that eventually relocated some 120,000 Japanese Americans from California and other western states, miles inland.

In March of 1942 FDR approved a recommendation to remove 158,000 AJAs from Hawaii as well.

Although some relocation camps were set up in Hawaii, Nimitz thought the idea of removing AJAs from Hawaii was “neither necessary nor desirable.” Symonds writes: “It was not out of an enlightened concern for the civil rights of Japanese Americans; he simply recognized the practical limitations of such a policy.” Nimitz realized AJAs played a critical role in the local Hawaii economy.

Symonds shows how Nimitz dealt with many respected high-profile visitors, first in Hawaii and later in Guam. One of the guests who visited Pearl Harbor was first-lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who also toured Bora Bora, Aitutaki, Tutuila, and even Guadalcanal, helping raise the morale of fighting men there.

At the end of the war, Nimitz took a statesmanlike stance in ordering his officers enlisted Sailors and Marines to utter no more insults or epithets and to treat the defeated people of Japan with dignity: “Neither familiarity and open forgiveness nor abuse and vituperation should be permitted,” he ordered. 

Nimitz ended his career as Chief of Naval Operations, working for prickly Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. As CNO, Nimitz successfully fought for Navy independence during efforts to downsize and consolidate the military services after the war. “As strong a champion as he was of joint service and joint command, he fought hard to prevent the Navy from being subsumed altogether … His calm, non-confrontational manner acted as a balm to the fierce and sometimes better inter-service rivalries concerning unification, budgets, and national policy.”

Nimitz’s priorities, plans, and abilities –– especially his skill in dealing with challenging colleagues, subordinates, and senior leaders –– were the mark of brilliance. Though Ian Toll calls “Nimitz at War” a biography, Symonds claims it’s not:

“This is not a biography of Chester Nimitz. It is, instead, a close examination of his leadership during his three and a half years directing World War II in the Pacific Theater when his actions and decisions guided the course of the war and helped determine its outcome, the legacy of which we still live with today. In many ways, it is remarkable that he assumed such a role. National trauma –– social, political, economic, and military –– produces a cultural tension that can challenge democratic norms. In such circumstances, the loudest, most aggressive voices often assume leadership roles. During World War II, military and naval leaders such as Admiral Ernest J. King, General Douglas MacArthur, Admiral “Bull” Halsey, and General George Patton all rose to prominence. All were talented and competent. All were also larger-than-life figures whose temperament, stubbornness, self-assurance, and impatience characterized their leadership. They were, and are, polarizing figures.

“Nimitz, like Generals George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, exemplified another leadership style, a quieter one that depended on intelligent listening, humility, and patience. Nimitz did not shrink from hard decisions –– he was, at critical moments, as bold as any commander in the war. Yet he believed that ultimate success depended on accommodation as well as determination, on humility as well as aggressiveness, on nurturing available human resources as well as asserting his authority. Rather than impose orders, he elicited solutions; he sought achievement, not attention. He unified. His was a quiet, calm, yet firm hand on the tiller during an existential crisis, and his leadership style reinforced rather than challenged democratic norms. It is a leadership template more relevant than ever.”

Symonds says his “focus and purpose” is to “re-create and evaluate” what Nimitz experienced and achieved in the 1,341 days of the war in the Pacific as he “commanded, directed, and supervised the largest naval force ever assembled in the largest naval war ever fought.”

As a result of his excellent presentation, Symonds also succeeds in profiling the type of leader we need not only in the Navy, but also for the United States itself: indeed, “a leadership template more relevant than ever.”