72 WORLD WAR II
JUST FOUR U.S. NAV Y MEN have worn the
five-star insignia of a full admiral. Among
their ranks, William D. Leahy is the least well-
known—and, as Phillips Payson O’Brien
argues in a new biography, the most under-
appreciated. Leahy did not command the U.S.
Navy like Ernest J. King, direct naval opera-
tions in the Pacific like Chester Nimitz, or win
battles at sea like William F. “Bull” Halsey.
His behind-the-scenes contributions were
evident mostly in the inf luence he had on
American and Allied strategy as chief of staff
to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and in pre-
siding over the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In these
roles, O’Brien argues, Leahy had an outsized
influence on both American policy and Allied
strategy. Indeed, he asserts that by 1944, when
Roosevelt ’s health declined precipitously,
Leahy had assumed many of the burdens of
the presidency itself—becoming, as the book’s
title asserts, “the second most powerful man
in the world.”
O’Brien’s is a full biography that covers
Leahy’s youth, his active-duty naval career,
and his challenging role as American ambas-
sador to Vichy France in 1940-41. But it is in
describing Leahy’s wartime role in the Roos-
evelt White House that O’Brien makes his
strongest statement. His book challenges
Henry H. Adams’s 1985 biography of Leahy,Witness to Power, which implies, at least, that
Leahy’s significance was mainly that he hap-
pened to be present when important events
unfolded. By contrast, O’Brien’s Leahy is a
backstairs Machiavelli who “used the trust of
the president...to guarantee that the United
States followed his strategic ideas.”
O’Brien emphasizes how many days Leahy
spent with the president, often alone, espe-
cially after 1943. He says that FDR found
Leahy “efficient and thorough,” “calming and
sensible,” “loyal and direct.” Indeed, Leahy’s
loyalty may have been his most salient charac-
teristic, one that allowed him, in O’Brien’s
words, to assume “a special role in Roosevelt ’s
life” as both a trusted adviser and close per-
sonal friend. Readers can decide for them-
selves if O’Brien overreaches when, in
consecutive chapter titles, he asserts that
Leahy became the “Acting President” and that
World War II became “Leahy’s War.”
In the process of elevating Leahy, O’Brien
challenges the dominant view that FDR confi-
dant Harry Hopkins was the preeminent
member of the president ’s official family. He
notes that Hopkins began to fail physically at
about the same time Roosevelt did, thus creat-
ing a void that Leahy filled. O’Brien also
actively denigrates U.S. Army Chief of Staff
George C. Marshall, portraying him as a rela-
tively minor figure who was driven by “a sense
of his own grandeur,” and full of “insecure
puffery.” O’Brien goes so far as to argue that
without Leahy’s leadership, all of the Joint
Chiefs were pretty much helpless. “Roosevelt,
Marshall, King, Arnold, and Hopkins,” he
writes, “left to their own devices, were a mess.”
Leahy’s tendency to remain in the shadows
sometimes forces O’Brien to rely on circum-
stantial evidence. More than once, he notes
that FDR announced one or another policy
decision after being closeted with Leahy; he
concludes that the latter “probably,” “must
have,” or “very likely” played a critical role in
the president’s decision. He very may well
have, but Leahy’s own diffidence and loyalty
to his boss prevented him from emerging from
the shadows to claim a place in history. With
this book, O’Brien does it for him. —Craig L.
Symonds is the author of the 2018 book World
War II at Sea: A Global History.THE SECOND
MOST POWERFUL
MAN IN THE
WORLD
The Life of
Admiral William D.
Leahy, Roosevelt’s
Chief of Staff
By Phillips Payson
O’Brien. 544 pp.
Dutton, 2019. $30.Admiral William D. Leahy, traveling here
with FDR in 1943, gained the president’s
respect as an adviser and friend.TO
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