While not a book about World War II, Ike’s Bluff is a very interesting biography of Eisenhower as president of the US after the war. I was too young to have any opinion about Ike as president, and I grew up thinking about him as a genial old geezer if I thought about him at all.
However, with all the reading I’ve done in the past few years about WWII, I had come to realize that genial old geezers don’t generally get into West Point and don’t generally end up coordinating Allied forces in a world war. That is where the bluff comes in.
According to Thomas, Ike was a skilled, insightful, and brilliant bluffer. He was able to size up the enemy (in this case, the Soviet Union), and accurately discern what was empty Soviet rhetoric and what was truth. Of course, the U2 flights helped too, although the author reports that Eisenhower was uncomfortable with that program.
Also interesting, I found, was that his tenure in office seems to be when the CIA decided to become an ungovernable entity.
I can’t say how accurate this biography is because I haven’t read anything else about Eisenhower, but I would recommend this book as a well-written interesting read.