Doolittle's

Tour War-Torn Europe by Tramp Steamer: Review of Dark Voyage

2011-10-17T13:04:00.001Z

I generally enjoy the heck out of Alan Furst's novels. The atmosphere he creates is very immersive, and even when the main character is a bit inscrutable, supporting characters can just send your brain spinning off into the possibilities of their backgrounds and futures.

This volume is one of the most disjointed of Furst's novels I've read. The narrative can jump several days, then backtracking as our PoV character thinks back to how they survived the last cliffhanger. The role of S. Kolb feels a bit like a red-herring, never truly panning out. The ship-board setting feels a bit thinner than wartime Paris common in other volumes.

For all those complaints, I still recommend the book. It was a fun read and a nice break between denser fare.

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Can Bomber Command Get Any Respect? Review of Bomber Boys

2011-09-26T01:52:00.002Z

Bomber Boys: Fighting Back 1940-1945 by Patrick Bishop

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes it is amazing to see the differences between how different people (or peoples) see the same events. Like his earlier book Fighter Boys Patrick Bishop tells Bomber Boys from a British perspective and for a British audience. However, I was well aware of the great stories and mythos of Fighter Command and the Battle of Britain. That quintessentially British story had been transported across the pond with only changes to vocabulary.

I didn't even realize how unfamiliar I was with the story of RAF Bomber Command. I had assumed that the RAF's strategic bombing campaign was held in the same generally high esteem in the UK as the strategic efforts of the Eighth Air Force are held in the US. Apparently, this was a very false assumption.

While the public in the US debated the efficacy and ethics of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the British public debated (or ignored) the ethics and efficacy of the entire area-bombing effort against Germany.

I don't think this is the book to truly explore these issues. It is a history of the people who flew the planes, not an operational history or philosophical treatise. Bishop assumes the audience has been following these discussions and avoids making a ruling on either ethics or ultimate cost/benefit analysis.

The ultimate difference in how the US and the UK welcomed their Bomber Boys home rests on the fact that the British had suffered under a bombardment of their own. People don't like being bombed, ergo people who have been bombed, don't like bombers.

I think I just added another month or so until I can face the volume on my shelf addressing the campaign from the German pespective.

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Blimps Over Blighty: Review of British Airships 1905-30

2011-09-20T19:10:00.002Z

British Airships 1905-30 by Ian Castle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a deal book I found prowling through the local Borders that was in its final death throws. I thuink I have found that I like the Osprey Publishing books and may breakdown and buy more in the future. They seems a little "lite" and are therefore more likely to get you a querolous look from a guest who sees it on your bookshelf than the latest Ian Kershaw.

I enjoyed the coverage of all the military airship models, complete with contemporay photos and color plates of most classes. It was only mildly dissapointing not to something more deep-steampunk.

So many people have tried to populate a world with airships, blaming the Hindenberg for destroying such an elegant way of flying. But reading about the crash of the R101 reminded me that Hindenburg was just the last of the air behemoths to die a fiery death, not the only one.

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When the Pulp Age Meets the Stone Age: Review of Lost in Shangri-La

2011-07-27T13:13:00.002Z

Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More unbelievable stories from WWII.

Upon reading the subtitle, I thought "Most Incredible Rescue Mission"? Those are fighting words, especially if you have read Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission. But that book's author, Hampton Sides was willing to write a blurb for the back cover. The difference between these two missions does focus on the "incredible" aspect. The Alamo Scouts' rescue mission in the Phillipines was amazingly well executed and very lucky. The accident and airlift from Shagri-La in New Guniea was a matter of "really, who writes this stuff?"

So well before Gilligan's Island every aired, the Army Air Corps ran a "three-hour tour" sight-seeing flight over an isolated stone-age valley deep in the mountains. This wasn't the first fly-by, but this flight was mainly a morale-builder for WACs based in Hollandia. Mistake number one? Picking a plane called the 'Gremlin Special' - really!

After the inevitable crash, we have a set-up from a bad Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp novel. Two men and one woman trapped in a land time forgot - with cannibals! The survivors even knew the tropes and joked about having to swing on vines to cross streams and debating which of the men would inevitably have to marry Maggie the WAC once they were rescued.

Oh, no, that's not good enough. We have to meet the young-go-getting officer of the rescue party, an Anglo officer of a unit of Fillino-American guerilla-trained paratroopers. He aso has MAJOR daddy-issues as his father is stayed in the Phillipines to run a partisan movement and has asked the Army brass to bench his son's unit since his son can't possibly measure up. Serious guy-shit!

And the rescue? Gathering a rag-tag band of experts and equipment from across the Pacific to try and land a glider and then snatch it back into the air. All this while reporters circle the valley conducting interviews by radio and a former actor/jewel thief/sailor parachutes in (drunk) to catch the whole thing on film for the propaganda value.

OK, so this is all very American pulpy. But this is not the real strength of the book. Mitchell Zuckoff has travelled to Shangri-La to interview the locals who remember the crash and rescue effort. Seeing the whole first-contact aspects through the locals eyes really does help show how strong the pulp-stories were in the minds of the Americans and colored everything they saw around them.

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When Truth is Pulpier Than Fiction: Operation Mincemeat

2011-06-21T18:03:00.001Z

Operation Mincemeat by Ben MacIntyre

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

All throughout this book I kept thinking "where do they find these people!" At times WWII feels like it was a play populated with the most absurd, and yet stock, characters from all the bad pulp stories. Of course our British Intelligence hero is jewish - ah, but not just jewish, a second son from a prominent banking family - the Montagus! And don't forget that his younger brother renounces the family fortune to pursue his twin loves for communism and ping-pong (with his wife - nicknamed Hell).

But wait, that's not British enough, we need a real stiff-upper-lip type - we'll call him Charles Chemondeley and make sure he has one of thos crazy handle-bar moustaces. He'll be Montagu's partner. And hey, didn't Ian Fleming work from British Intelligence in the war? Lets bring him in too - oh heck, bring in every hack spy novelist you can find!

Ooh! And make the Nazi spy master in Spain be "cadaverous" and his boss in Madrid is secretly 1/4 jewish and so feeding bad intel to Berlin to pump-up his reputation to avoid the concentration camps. And we need a Good German too! The intelligence analyst in Berlin! We'll make him be an anti-Hitler conspirator who is lying about Allied troop levels to try and get German to lose faster!

Any thing else? Yeah, the sub that delivers the body, it isn't just some random sub. It also smugged Gen, Mark Clark into Algeria, smuggled a French general out of France (while pretending to be an American sub) and gets to be a pathfinder/beacon for the actual Husky invasion forces!

If this was a novel, any reviewer worth their salt would go nuts at the stereotypes and coincidences. And just think, this is the more heavily researched, less censored and propagandized version!

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Role-Playing in War - GURPS Mass Combat

2011-05-25T19:55:00.002Z

GURPS Mass Combat by David L. Pulver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Now here's the book we needed for that WWII Supers campaign. It would have been much better to play-out the Battle of Kasserine Pass (with the odds sufficiently stacked to ensure a historical US defeat) or had our super-soldier enhanced Polish Parachute Brigade fight a battle in Dresden against Nazi werewolves than sort-of hand-wave those fights as window-dressing.

It's always been interesting to me that RPGs have traditionally had trouble in handling army-on-army combat. The ancestor of all RPGs is after all a miniatures wargame - Chainmail. But I've seen lots of systems proposed that just didn't work right. I haven't played Pulver's rules here, but this volume really looks like it strikes a nice balance, not getting bogged in details and still allowing for pauses in action for character-level fights and heroic action. I've always been a fan of giving my characters skill ranks in Administration, Strategy, and Intelligence Analysis even when I know the GM prefers to have players role-play these skills (yes, it is a bit method-actor-y of me). With this book, your stargetic-genius space-merc can really shine by turning the tide with a rag-tag band, and you won't be stuck arguing with the GM about how good your tactical ideas are.

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May Dancing at the Boston Food Fest

2010-10-02T19:36:00.000Z

Fascism in America - the View from 1930s Vermont: Review of "It Can't Happen Here"

2010-09-06T15:44:00.002Z

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the 1930s, the world was becoming increasingly dominated by totalitarian states, and these were not just the banana republics that we have grown accustomed to seeing in Africa, Latin America or the Middle East. Totalitarianism, whether in the form of fascism or communism, seemed to have a monopoly on new thinking and revolution. It was far from unthinkable that this was the new way of the world.

It was into this world thatSinclair Lewis injected It Can't Happen Here. The fictional rise of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip is rapid and shocking, showing just how fragile America's constitutional balance of power is. I found that rise to be a bit precipitous (vs. similar fictional American fascist movements laid out in The Plot Against America or The Center Cannot Hold and [The Victorious Opposition]. Sinclair is a better author than either Roth or Turtledove, but the later books take things slower. Those feel more plausible, but Sinclair's history is amazingly possible.

Another place where Sinclair seems to skip a cylinder is in the brutality of the Windrip Corpo regime. The repression is brutal and torture is always awful, but Sinclair did not have a conception of the mechanized murder and evil that was to come in the Holocaust. Turtledove does not flinch from a proposed Confederate Holocaust and the threat of the Holocaust is ever-present in Roth's book. But I can in no way blame Lewis for failing to foresee the twists that the mind of Adolf Hitler would take (even if Japanese behavior in Nanking and other Chinese cities had given a taste of what was to come).

And don't rest on your laurels America, thinking that the age of totalitarianism is past and so is the threat that Lewis wrote of. I worry about the claims made by an imperial presidency, regardless of party. Always question those who have all the answers.

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Fascism in America - the View from 1930s Vermont: Review of "It Can'y Happen Here"

2010-09-06T15:44:00.001Z

2010-08-01T19:36:00.000Z

Defenders of the Air: Review of "Fighter Boys"

2010-07-23T00:20:00.001Z

Fighter Boys: The Battle of Britain, 1940 by Patrick Bishop

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ah, the Brits.

Normally, while I'm reading a book, I find myself pulled to a theme in my thoughts. For some reason, this book didn't get me on a single thought, so please excuse my disordered ramblings.

It is always amazing to me how very different the American and British views of the same events can be. This book is so much broader and yet seems much more genuine that Kershaw's The Few. I know Kershaw was focusing on a much smaller selection of pilots - the dozen or so Americans to participate in the Battle of Britain - but when his story is slotted in next to Bishop's broader (and yet shorter) history, it just feels pale in comparison.

The other part of reading a British author is the differing and increased vocabulary. The interviewed pilots casually mention "debagging" their squadron lead - I had just come across the term "debag" in Reading the OED where the (American) author had been surprised that the term and practice (better know in the Colonies as pantsing) was still in use in the early 20th century. It was only near the end of the book that a discovered that one pilot's constant "lurcher" companion was a dog, not his batman as I had thought (bad enough that I knew what a batman does - not chase criminals in Gotham City).

Finally, I must say it was a it disorienting to be reading about the Battle of Britain at the same time as reading The Hobbit to my daughter. To have the heroic Bard the bowman leading the archers of Laketown in a desperate rushed (and ultimately triumphant) defense against the depredations of the fire-breathing Smaug just seemed to echo the RAF too well. And remember, Tolkien published The Hobbit only two years after the Luftwaffe was even established.

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Adventures of a Female PI in 1940 SanFran: Review of City of Dragons

2010-05-16T18:48:00.002Z

City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm a sucker for pulp sometimes.

Miranda Corbie, PI in 1940 San Francisco, a detective in the mold of Sam Spade, but trading on her face, her legs, and her knowledge of the club and escort scene to handle divorce cases. She's a former escort, former Spanish Civil War nurse, and owes a lot to connections to burlesque dancer Sally Rand.

Most importantly in my mind, she's nobody's damsel in distress. Miranda is a self-destructive, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, emotionally isolated heroine. But she is very adamant that these are her choices, and any of the (several) romantic interests in the book will have to accept that. She will not be rescued, from her own choices, or the mechanations of mob bosses, smugglers, murderers or thieves. I couldn't help but to compare this PI to Janet Evanovich's bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum, who bounces between paramours to rescue her.

There's also a point to be made in how a female PI sees people and information where police homicide detectives see only window-dressing and cardboard cut-outs. I'm still not sure where the title came from and I wish the publisher had found a 1940 picture of Chinatown for the cover instead of an obvious '50's shot. What can you do?

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Birth of Middle-Earth in the Fields of France: Review of Tolkien and the Great War

2010-04-20T00:08:00.001Z

Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth by John Garth

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was something quite different from what I expected. Going in I expected a book focused on J.R.R. Tolkien almost exclusively, with discussions of the hells of the Western Front in WWI and then a deeper discussion of the themes of loss or nature and industrialization play out in The Lord of the Rings. I was looking forward to that analysis of the 'coming of the machine age' that Peter Jackson had played up so beautifully in the movie version of The Two Towers.

Instead, Garth treats us to a view into a group of Victorian friends with discursions on the philological and poetic world/myth building that Tolkien was working on at the time. The group of friends are the four self-appointed members of the 'Tea Club and Barrovian Society" (shortened to TCBS for most purposes). The grand name concealed what was no more than a high-school clique. I'm reminded of my own high-school poseur-gang dubbed "the D-Men" although in practice, the TCBS was closer to Tufts University's Film Series club.

Each of the four members of the TCBS saw themselves and the group as having the potential to change the world and bring forth works of immortal quality. Garth asserts that the TCBS was purely middle-class, but there is a strong strain of upper-class Victorian exceptionalism in Tolkien's peers views of their world. After being split apart to attend Cambridge and Oxford, the four friends still exchanged letters, poems, writings, and music and periodically met in what were referred to as ‘Councils.’

It’s all very idyllic and the reader can’t quite say whether these young men were destined to be the next Algonquin Round Table or just a group of high-school alumni pen-pals. And then Tolkien’s generation of young academics was swept-up in the Great War. Three of the four TCBS members were young officers leading patrols and assaults in the Battle of the Somme, the fourth was on a battlecruiser in the Battle of Jutland. Only one of the three sent to France came back. Tolkien was infected with lice-borne “trench-fever” and spent second half of the war on home guard duty and medical convalescence.

Garth makes a good argument for the power of Tolkien’s experience in the Somme for shaping much of his mythic background for Middle-Earth, particularly the stories that went into his Book of Lost Tales and The Silmarillion. I was pleasantly surprised to learn of the conceptual links between Tolkien’s mythology and books of H. Rider Haggard.

In the long Postscript, Garth makes an effort to place the writings of Tolkien in a literary universe defined by post-Great War writing. He makes a case that Tolkien was writing about his wartime experience without falling into the two major camps of war-writing of the period. Tales of Middle-Earth are neither the ‘high diction’ propaganda created by imperial powers in the image of Haggard and [William Morris} to impress their people and drive in recruits nor the studied, modernist, or gritty writings of Robert Graves or Sigfried Sassoon. Instead, Tolkien sought to create a new style. In the process, he created a whole new genre of popular literature.

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Jewsh Fighters of the Belorussian Forests: Review of Defiance

2010-04-09T01:11:00.003Z

Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Once again, I'm back with the Polish partisans in WWII. I swear, I have no ulterior motive, I've just been getting pulled back to these same people and lands for the past few years, I'm not sure why.

Then again, maybe this book doesn't count. It depends on who you ask if the land is eastern Poland or western Belorussian (now Belarus, in between part of the Soviet Union). It depends on who you ask what the nationality of the Bielskis was - Polish Jews, Belorussian Jews, Russian partisans, Soviet guerrillas, just Jews?

The story of Tuvia Bielski and his band is harrowing. What else can you expect of a place invaded three times in five years? A place where the choice of language for greeting a stranger could mean the difference between a free meal and a shoot-out? (Incidentally, those language options include Belorussian, Russian, German, Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian).

Part of me was expecting more adventure tales of brave raids and crazy stunts, like a history of the SAS - but Tuvia and company didn't have the luxury of bravery. Instead, the Bielski brothers kept a sanctuary for any and all Jews with just enough violence to keep everyone fed and Soviet authorities off their backs.

The other part of me wanted a primer on building a Robin Hood citadel in the forest. In this I was also denied, but educated on how being mobile in a crisis and preserving people over things or places should be the true priority.

You'll have to excuse me now. I really should be checking the contents of the family's bug-out bags.

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Winning the Peace with Hershey's Bars: Review of The Candy Bombers

2010-02-28T18:10:00.001Z

The Candy Bombers by Andrei Cherny

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
OK, so I know this isn't technically a WWII book. But I am counting it anyway.

I enjoyed this history quite a bit. I have a few complaints though. First, I'm a bit annoyed at how relentlessly American the sources are. With the exception of sources from West Berliners themselves, this book focuses almost exclusively on the American perspective on the Airlift. Since it was published 60 years after the events it describes, the author had a good 17 years after the fall of the Soviet Union to interview people and access archives to get into what the Russians were really thinking.

I understand that an author has to choose his point-of-view and focus, but I feel like the book could have been written 10 or 20 years after the fact just as well. It's a missed opportunity (especially since Putin has closed so many of the former Soviet archives).

My second complaint is more with the facts than the author. There was one scene where General Clay, commander of all American forces in Germany is about to take off from Templehof Airport, just after Lt. Gail Halvorsen has made his first (against regulations) candy drop. I found myself saying "No! It can't have worked like that!" as the book described Clay seeing the German children waving their handkerchief parachutes at the plane. If that scene were in an alt-history novel, I'd ding the novel fro absurd coincidence.

Speaking of alt-history, I find this book to be a rebuttal to many of the suppositions in Turtledove's The Man with the Iron Heart. In my review of that book I asked "Why did Nazi Germany accept Allied occupation when so many other countries have fought long guerrilla wars against occupying forces?" No, the German's didn't rise up against the Americans, but in 1948, before the Airlift, it really didn't look like Germany was likely to be an effective democracy let alone a staunch US ally. Lt. Gail Halvorsen and the other men of the Airlift changes that and really won the peace.

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What If It Happened Here - Review of "The Plot Against America"

2010-01-27T01:47:00.003Z

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I went into this book expecting to dislike it. I'm not certain why. Maybe it was the fact that I remember gushing reviews talking about how Roth had created a 'whole new literary genre'.

The genre exists. It's called alternate history. It sells millions of books.

As alt-history goes, this isn't too bad. The memoir aspect is a little different, but does fit well with the focus on day-to-day life of ordinary people instead of movers-and-shakers. As for alt-history tropes, we h=get the seemingly ever-present Jews (nothing against Judaism, it just that Jews are way over-represented in nearly all alt-history series for reasons that I have yet to ascertain), we have a roughly defined point-of-departure (why did Lindy suddenly decide to run for president?), but a real failing on what Terry Pratchett has termed the 'trousers of time' problem. Basically, Roth gives us two years of alternate history, but then has the world snap back into the same basic shape as before (victory in Europe a little late, RFK still assassinated in the 60's). I don't buy it. Once history comes off the rails of what we have been taught, it cannot be forced back on. Would RFK have run for president if JFK hadn't been killed? Would JFK have been president if his big brother Joe Jr. hadn't died in a B-25 bomber/drone accident? Would the US Air Corps have used the same plan to take out V1 sites if they had 2 extra years of aviation development under Lindy before entering the war? Everything goes all quantum on you.

Outside of the discussion of alt-history tropes, well, I'm not sure if I see what makes Roth so admired. Some scenes were very effective. Many others felt like bad filler. The main character, Philip Roth at age 9 or so, comes off as a self-absorbed little snot.

Maybe I'm not cultured enough to understand.

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Al-Qaida in Nazi Germany: Review of Man With The Iron Heart

2009-10-18T00:44:00.002Z

The Man with the Iron Heart by Harry Turtledove

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

From Goodreads:
"What if V-E Day didn’t end World War II in Europe? What if, instead, the Allies had to face a potent, even fanatical, postwar Nazi resistance? Such a movement, based in the fabled Alpine Redoubt, was in fact a real threat, ultimately neutralized by Germany’s flagging resources and squabbling officials. But had SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the notorious Man with the Iron Heart, not been assassinated in 1942, fate might have taken a different turn. We might likely have seen a German guerrilla war launched against the conquerors, presaging by more than half a century the protracted conflict with an unrelenting enemy that now engulfs the United States and its allies in Iraq. How might today’s clash of troops versus terrorists have played out in 1945?"

This not one of Turtledove's better works.

The initial idea is interesting. Why did Nazi Germany accept Allied occupation when so many other countries have fought long guerrilla wars against occupying forces? How is 1946 Germany different than 1979 Afghanistan or 1960s Vietnam? How is it like the former Confederate States in the 1860s?

These are important and valid questions that I feel were swept under the rug. Instead, the narrative seems strongly linked to the US experience in Iraq circa 2006 (before the Sunni Awakening and troop surge). However, if this book is a veiled commentary on Iraq, then Turtledove missed a perfect opportunity to weigh-in on one of the major debates in policy regarding the War on Terror - namely the use of extralegal force (torture, detention without rights, rendition, etc.). The division of post-war Germany into Western Allied and Soviet zones creates a opportunity to contrast the effectiveness of different tactics in counter-insurgency - between a buy 'em off/win hearts and minds plan used by the Americans and unbridled force used by the Russians. In our own history, these are the tactics that those two regimes did use. Instead, Turtledove shows us that the Soviet NKVD is certainly ruthless, but he never even mentions the Marshall Plan (which, in his defense was discussed but not yet implemented within the time-frame of the book.

Instead of answering deep military/historical questions or addressing the policy and moral arguments of the war he is modeling off of, Turtledove instead gives huge benefits of the doubt to the Nazi partisans. Heydrich's organization is presented as monolithic, with no internal power struggles. While their tactics are often taken from the al-Qaida playbook, Heydrich's men also succeed in multiple truck bombings of national monuments (proposed but only rarely completed by al-Qaida) and a dirty bomb attack. Competence at this level is not seen now and was not seen in 1940s Germany (Just read up on the many attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler to see just how large the logistical and pure luck challenges of such campaigns can be). The most annoying benefit given to Heydrich though is in the surprising backbone given to Republican opposition to Truman's prosecution of the war in Germany. Although Congress does control the purse-strings, and progressives did argue strongly for cutting-off funding for the Iraq War after the 2006 mid-term elections, a successful recall of troops from an overseas war due to Congressional budget-writing never saw a chance of happening. In Turtledove's world it sailed through entirely too easily.

In all, I feel like this book was forced. Ideas were not well thought-out and our heroes were hamstrung by an author who failed to properly research their options.

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The Royal Navy's Home Port: Review of Scapa Flow

2009-09-26T11:48:00.002Z

Scapa Flow in War and Peace by W.S. Hewison

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This an abridged version of Hewiston's larger work, This Great Harbour: Scapa Flow. It's a slim little volume of history of the sheltered anchorage in the middle of the Orkney Islands off the northern shore of Scotland.

The body of the book covers the First and Second World Wars when the relatively isolated harbor served as the primary port for Great Britain's main fleet (the Grand Fleet in WWI and the Home Fleet in WWII). The position of Scapa Flow gave the fleet the best staging ground for intercepting any German warships attempting to break out into the Atlantic or shipping attempting to break the British naval blockade applied in both wars.

The book does not cover the various missions and encounters that the Royal Navy engaged in with much detail. Instead, the focus is on activities in the harbor itself. The two most dramatic incidents both involved German warships in the Flow. First, Scapa Flow hosted the German High Seas Fleet when it was interred after the end of WWI. On the summer solstice in 1919, two days before the Versailles Treaty would have ordered the ships of the German fleet distributed to the various victorious allies, the German admiral in charge ordered the whole fleet scuttled.

The next dramatic moment came in the early days of WWII when a German U-Boat penetrated the insufficient defenses of the harbor to sink the British battleship Royal Oak. This incident lead to a major build-up of defenses and forces in the Orkneys, and listing these defenses and emplacements is where this little volume shows its greatest value.

Hewison assumes that his reader already knows a fair deal about the two world wars, the Royal Navy, and the general geography of Great Britain and the Orkneys. The strength of the volume is in the details and the point of view of a native Orkadian.

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Surviving the Purges: Review of "Dark Star"

2009-09-19T22:49:00.004Z

Dark Star by Alan Furst

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am beginning to become a serious fan of Furst's work. Dark Star is definitely a darker work than the last Furst I read The Polish Officer, and that really is saying something. I'm really not sure how accurately Furst portrays the thinking of a Soviet citizen living through Stalin's purges, but it is certainly believable. Furst proposes several theories for the purges as his main character, Andre Szara, tries to navigate the pitfalls of pre-war Europe. I wish I could measure the believability of these theories that Furst puts in the mouths of his characters. Unfortunately, when I tried to read the the seminal history of the Purges, Robert Conquest's The Great Terror, I just couldn't drag myself through it.

The most interesting contrast in the book was between the terror regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. In both countries, a knock on the door in the middle of the night usually meant a visit from the secret police and the disappearance of at least one family member, usually forever. However, in Germany, you had a pretty good idea of why you being arrested and on whose authority that arrest was happening. In Russia, the Terror was much less predictable. The state apparatus turned on minorities, dissidents, rivals, and even itself. Sometimes it seems clear that Stalin was targeting those he felt were a threat to him; at other times he seemed to be terrorizing the whole country into submission. Furst surmises that some portions of the purge were factional infighting within the government, with no clear hand from above.

All of this is buffered in the book by having Szara, spend most of his time in Paris, Berlin, or Poland, working as a semi-reluctant spy-master for the NKVD under the cover of his previous life as a journalist from Pravda. This plethora of settings hurts the pacing a bit. Dark Star is over twice as long as The Polish Officer, and it certainly felt it. Still, this novel felt a bit more solid than the very impressionistic and almost ethereal detachment of The Polish Officer. View all my reviews >>

Pulp Lives On: Review of Havana Nocturne

2009-08-29T13:40:00.003Z

I'm a fan of Pulp. Not hugely the original Pulp stories, but of the larger genre and time period.

So when is the Pulp Era?

Some folks have it pegged to the Roaring Twenties with Prohibition, gangsters, barnstorming pilots, and Lovecraftian horrors. I'm more of a fan of the 1930s, with nefarious Nazis, flying boats, and a touch of desperation.

However, I was pretty sure when the Pulp Era ended, August 6, 1945. In one moment, the world of super-science became very real, the mysteries of magic were surpassed, something of the raw adventure of the world passed away.

Except it didn't.

T.J. English makes a very good case for the survival of Pulp in the streets of 1950s Havana. Fabulous show-girls, mobsters, corrupt politicians, partisans in the hills, con-men...it's all still there, without the freeze of the Cold War insinuating itself. The place feels like it would've been a perfect setting for a 'two-fisted' adventurer to continue his adventuring ways after a stint with the OSS.

More Heroic Poles: Review of The Polish Officer

2009-08-09T17:51:00.001Z

The Polish Officer by Alan Furst

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had read one Furst novel before, The Foreign Correspondent. I was happy to find this volume as good as that one.

Furst's style is the most noticeable part of his work. Many scenes feel more like an impressionist painting than a photograph of historical events. A times this works very well, as in a scene describing a duel between a British Beaufighter and German anti-aircraft gunners over a Belgian port. At other times it feels a bit overly lyrical, like the repeated invocation of the blue-painted streetlights of wartime Paris. On at least on occasion, I found myself completely lost as to the meaning of a scene because of Furst's elliptical prose.

I've always been interested in WWII, but for the past few years, I've found myself increasingly drawn to the plight of Poland and her soldiers in the war. This has even gone so far as portraying one such character in a role-playing game. I'm not sure what this says about me, but I now wish I had read about Furst's Captain DeMilja before I had tried to portray a character with much the same background.

Interestingly enough, both my 'Captain Poland' and Furst's Captain DeMilja faced the same literary threat. What end can a hero have when facing such unsurmountable odds as Poland faced throughout WWII? Furst leaves the question unanswered, leaving his character adrift in a hostile world on the borders of Poland, Ukraine, and Byelorussia still fighting what we can only hope is the good fight.

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The Size of the Fight in the Dog - Review of Tin Can Soldiers

2009-05-11T19:13:00.001Z

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour by James D. Hornfischer

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I've written before that I am easily annoyed by Tom Brokaw's assertion of the GI Generation as "The Greatest Generation" especially when applied selectively to only Americans. I in no way mean to demean WWII vets (quite the opposite), but I feel like today's young men and women would make the same sacrafices if called upon.

Usually.

The story of Taffy Three is the first time in a WWII history that I have found myself this amazed at the courage under fire of American servicemen. The courage of Army Rangers at Cabanatuan isn't to be questioned. Neither are the sacrifices of Polish patisans in Warsaw or British paratroops at Arnhem. But either this is what they trained for, or they really had no choice but to fight.

For the pilots from Taffy 3's escort carriers and the sailors on the destroyers and escort carriers, it was a bit different. Yes, they trained to fight, but no one trained them to go after the the main battle line of the Imperial Japanese Navy. They were supposed to be support, ground support, sub chasing, nothing glamorous. Yes, it was their duty to attack...the first time. But once your bombs or torpedos are gone, most folks would turn around and high-tail it for safety. This was clearly an option for the pilots and probably an option for the DDs and DEs too.

It wasn't an option for the escort carriers (or jeep carriers as Hornfischer refers to them). Nobody would blame those pilots or sailors for getting out of Dodge. WWII Army Air Corps pilots used to say they were flying for Uncle Sam until they dropped their bombs; then they were flying for themselves. Not these men. They went back, again and again, flying dry runs at Japanese battleships in the hopes that the big ships would swerve and give the carriers another few minutes. One pilot figured he made more than 19 torpedo runs in a plane that only carries one torpedo. The destroyers did the same, running in against heavy cruisers with their 5-inch guns blazing away. It never should have made a bit of difference.

But it did. The Japanese commander, already spooked by having one ship shot out from under him the day before, became convinced he was casing fast carriers he could never hope to catch, and facing elite pilots in great numbers, and reciving fire from enemy cruisers instead of tin cans with pop-guns. Kurita retreated.

On one of the carriers, a 19-year-old look-out saw the largest battleship ever afloat turn away and said "They're getting away!"

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Japan Didn't Know When to Quit - Review of 1945: A Novel

2009-04-06T16:07:00.002Z

1945:_A_Novel by Robert Conroy

My review rating: 2 of 5 stars

*Sigh*

My wife mocks my reading of Harry Turtledove because it's so far from literature. To her, the flat characters and forced plots pull her out of the story to often to enjoy the ideas or just the ride. Conroy shows me much more of what that must feel like for her.

In a lot of ways, I don't blame the othor for most of the problems in this book - I blame the editor. It's the editor's job to point out when the author swaps point-of-view in the middle of a conversation. It's the editor's job to put in this extra line breaks between shifts of focus and to try and balance the chapters to some form of consistency. It's the editor's job to cut unneccassary referrence to future events (a bomber called "the Polish Pope"?). I really feel like the editor said "It's alt-history, who cares if it's badly edited, these morons will read anything."

So am I a moron for reading it?

The idea that Japan would fail to surrender after the triple-blow of two nuclear bombs and a declaration of war from the Soviet Union seemed like a stretch to me when I first picked up this book. I was not aware of the Kyujo Incident, an attempted coup to prevent Emperor Hirohito's surrender to the Allies. With a successful Kyujo Incident as his point of departure, Conroy spins a believeable history right up until his characters become a bit too involved. Then we get a deus ex-machina (or emperor ex-helicopter, as the case may be) ending that leaves reader scrathing their heads feeling a bit as if they've been robbed.

Nope, Conroy is not my new Turtledove. More's the pity.

Monty's Folly: Review of "A Bridge Too Far"

2009-04-01T23:31:00.001Z

A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This account of Operation Market-Garden is considered a classic for a reason. This a pretty comprehensive take on what probably the most complex combined-arms operation of the Second World War. The narrative is well organized, covering all three airborne divisions' actions, leading armored units of Montgomery's 2nd Army, the German forces that opposed them, and the Dutch civilians caught in-between. Even with all this information, the writing is very accessible.

Operation Market-Garden itself was an amazingly complex and ambitious undertaking. German High Command initially discounted reports of massive airborne landings on the Nijmegen-Arnhem corridor because they never expected such an audacious move from the otherwise conservative Montgomery. "A Bridge Too Far" makes the argument that the operation was doomed from the start, mostly due to its complexity and lack of proper intelligence.

Beyond the complexity and intel problems, the communications breakdown, especially with the British First Airborne in Arnhem, ensured that this division would not be able fulfill its objectives. The final collapse in that area including the delayed drop of the Polish Parachute Brigade was a particularly harrowing read.

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Looking for Churchill's "Sunlit Uplands" - Review of "The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire"

2009-02-19T16:59:00.003Z

The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana by Peter Clarke

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Clarke writes a quite effective summary of Anglo-American relations from the Quebec Octagon Conference in September 1944 through the end of the Raj in India and the referral of the Palestinian Mandate to the UN in August 1947. The author relies heavily on primary source materials - mainly diaries of major political players and their courtiers as well as extensive mining of contemporary newspaper articles and opinion polls. The war in Europe dominates the narrative, not reaching V-E Day and the Potsdam conference until three quarters of the way through the book. The Pacific Theater and Far East (beyond India) receive surprisingly little attention in my mind (although Canada does get more attention than I'd expect).

The main focus of this book however is on what Winston Churchill called "the most unsordid act in the history of any nation," the Lend-Lease Act. By shipping supplies from America's "Arsenal of Democracy" to the front lines in Britain, this act served to keep the British war effort afloat, especially through the years before the U.S. entered the war.

I'm a little bit of two minds about this book. First, I was clearly not the intended audience. Clarke is clearly a Brit writing for a British audience. This is seen in both the vocabulary and especially in references to British political figures with the clear assumption that the reader would know of their reputation during and after the period of time being examined. While I'm an amateur WWII history buff, I'm not an Oxford historian versed in the academic debates and various theories why the British Empire dissolved. Therefore the Introduction and Epilogue especially seemed to be defending the book against attacks that I have never truly seen.

The most interesting, and at times frustrating, facet of this book is the economics. I'd heard plenty about how Lend-Lease saved Britain (and even propped-up the Soviet Union in her hour of need), but I hadn't thought much about how (if at all) the US got those loans back. I'd thought even less about how such a massive flow of aid and armaments would distort the British economy to the point that peace would bring almost the same level of economic hardship as the Blitz. The problem is that I'm just not well enough versed in Keynesian macroeconomics to understand the difference between hard and soft currencies and how the advent of convertability of British pound sterling to US dollars would hurt Britain. Maybe this is a failing in my education, but it is also a red flag for those readers not in academia.

Overall, I was happy to read a book covering this period that wasn't shackled to the story of the Crusade in Europe and the inevitable Cold War to follow. Here is a story (or rather the epilogue to a story) that easily straddles those two narratives and gives some vital insight into two conflicts (Israeli-Palestinian and India-Pakistan) that are currently dominating the narrative of the twenty-first century.

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Churchill in Four Colors - Review of 'The Happy Warrior'

2009-01-19T22:15:00.002Z

The Happy Warrior: The Life Story of Sir Winston Churchill, as told through Great Britain's Eagle comic of the 1950s by Clifford Makins

This book is an interesting primary source material, but I'm having some trouble understanding exactly who the target audience is. The volume is primarily a compilation of comic-book style pages from the British boys magazine 'Eagle' from the 1950s. Pulled together into a single binding, 'The Happy Warrior' becomes a graphic-novel biography of Winston Churchill. This collection runs from his boyhood through adventures in India, Egypt, South Africa, the Western Front in WWI France, and British politics before spending the second half on his WWII leadership (leaving off his Cold War influences).

This graphical section is quite effective in showing how Churchill was viewed, especially in Britain, before more critical histories of his life and leadership were published. The problem with the volume falls in other sections. An overly long introduction gives the reader an history of the 'Eagle' magazine and a blow-by-blow description of what aspects of Sir Winston's life made it into the biography and what sections were omitted at the time, and perhaps why. From the tone, the author of this section doesn't seem to know whether he is speaking to the children (now grown) who read the 'Eagle' pages in their original form, speaking to those who had never heard of the 'Eagle' before (including me), or defending Churchill (and Churchill hero-worship) before some kind of historical jury. At the end is appended the entire Wordsworth poem "Character of the Happy Warrior" -- which I have to admit I couldn't bring myself to read. The net effect is a bit jarring.

As I've said before, I am a sucker for pulp, and Sir Winston's life sometimes reads like 'Alan Quartermain and the End of the Empire!' If you were trying to create a leader to lead a Britain who stands alone before Nazi Germany in the Fall of 1940, you really couldn't think of a better background than Churchill's.

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Hiding in the House Under a Crazy Star - Review of "The Zookeeper's Wife"

2009-01-13T18:41:00.003Z

Would you take someone into your home to save their life? What if getting caught meant you'd be killed, and so would your whole family?

Anyone who answeres with a quick 'Yes' to this question is a fool.

OK, there are two kinds of fools here. There are those who will would get everyone killed by their quick decsion. Then there are those fools who will do the right thing becasue it is the right thing, and then rearrange their lives to fit that decision.

The Zookeeper's Wife is a harrowing (non-fiction) tale of the an intellectual Polish family who risk everything to hide enemies of Nazi Germany (mostly Jews, but others as well) in Warsaw under occupation. The amazing thing about the book is how light-hearted it comes across. Ackerman has a real skill for conjuring the presence of her title character, Antonina. Even with all the stresses of daily Polish life under German rule, we can feel Antonina's effusive personality flowing through her crazy household.

I think that this story would make a particularly good match to more scholarly histories of the occupation of Warsaw, such as Norman Davies' Rising '44. Neither one is going to make you feel good about humanity (or maybe it will if you see defiance and perseverence as outweighing atrocity), but together they paint a deep picture of the Polish capital under seige, both physical and personal.

WWII Reading Challenge from 'War Through the Generations'

2008-12-30T18:00:00.004Z

'War Through the Generations' has posted a reading challenge for 2009 focusing on WWII related books. Having just recieved a good-sized stack of new reading for Christmas and having a bunch of "backlog" books to get to, I'm signing up.

I think I'll go on the conservative side and commit to 8 WWII-themed books this year. That will match my 2008 total at least. Stay tuned for updates!

Before Valkyrie: Review of "The Oster Conspiracy of 1936"

2008-12-23T21:32:00.004Z

From GoodReads:
"September 1938. In power more than five years, Hitler unilaterally dismantled the Treaty of Versailles, provision by provision, daring Britain and France to stand up to him. Earlier that year, he forced Austria into his Third Reich without firing a single shot. Now his sights were set on Czechoslovakia.

It was in this dangerous climate that the first anti-Nazi coup was born. The plot was spearheaded by Lieutenant-Colonel Hans Oster, and its members included top German military leaders, the Berlin police, local troop commanders, civil authorities, religious leaders, and a group of resisters whose names have been wiped from the pages of history. Their mission was to kill Hitler and to overthrow the Nazi regime."

I knew something of this conspiracy from Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" but had no clue how close to pulling the trigger they came.

Whether the coup would have succeeded is a counter-factual that we can never know. That said, from this book it seems that the conspirators had a better shot at not just killing Hitler but also overthrowing the whole Nazi regime in 1938 than Count Stauffenberg (played by Tom Cruise in Valkyrie) and other later plotters ever had.

Reading about Chamberlain's appeasement policy is always frustrating, especially with Churchill sitting in the wings acting as if he had received a message from the future laying all of WWII out before him. But if you can get your mind into the limited view that these men actually had, you can see the heart-wrenching choices they had to make.

Knowing what WWII would become, the decision is easy. Without that knowledge it is much harder to commit to marching to war or commit to supporting a coup. The amazing thing about the 1938 coup was that this was quite possibly the last moment at which WWII (in Europe) could have been prevented. The Valkyrie plot was seeking to end the war, just to remove an increasingly unstable leader and maybe secure a separate peace with the Western Allies (a peace that was vanishly unlikely in light of Roosevelt's unconditional surrender policy).

Phillipine Prison Break -- Review of 'Ghost Soldiers'

2008-12-17T00:44:00.003Z

Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission by Hampton Sides

From Goodreads:
"On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty rugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp, among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. A recent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in the Philippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time to plan the complex operation."

As WWII non-fiction goes, this book went by pretty quickly. I had read some in passing about the Cabanatuan camp rescue, but I had the relative roles of the Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and partisans a bit muddled in my head. I'm glad the Fillipino guerillas got enough billing in here, such indigenous forces have a tendency to be forgotten by later story-tellers. I was a little surprised to come across the Alamo Scouts in the middle of the book with little earlier discussion of the unit or the massively important recon work they had already done.

The structure of alternating chapters between the Ranger's mission and the travails of the "Bastards of Bataan" works better than I would have thought. The details of life in Cabanatuan and other camps are pretty harrowing. That said, parts of me kept comparing these accounts to accounts from other camp complexes of the time...the life of an American in a Japanese POW camp was a vacation next to the Holocaust, or the Gulag. For the Chinese of cities like Nanking, the mere idea that the Japanese took prisoners would seem absurd.

Am I belittling these men their their travails? I don't mean to. I'm just trying to remind myself that Americans aren't anything astoundingly special that we should face this sort of abuse less than anyone else.

The single best aspect of Sides story is how well he captures the voices of the men involved. Especially when the prisoners speak, I can feel many of the same cadences and turns of phrase that my maternal grandfather used in some of his more unguarded and effusive moments. I can very much imagine him there among Bob Body and Dr. Hibbs and the other men instead of (relatively) safe as crew on a troopship out at sea.

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Absurd Super-weapons of WWII -- Review of "My Tank Is Fight!"

2008-12-10T13:54:00.004Z

From Goodreads:
"My Tank is Fight! is a humorous look at more than 20 unusual or insane inventions of the Second World War. Each chapter features a detailed examination of the real history and technology behind each invention. All 19 chapters are linked by a fictional narrative that explores what might have happened had the inventions been put to use during the War. The book is also lavishly illustrated, with 18 full-color illustrations and more than two dozen detailed black and white illustrations. My Tank is Fight! is not a dry analysis of the forgotten weapons of war, it brings those weapons to life."

30 foot high super-tanks.
U-boats that crawl out of the water on treads.
Backpack helicopters.
Aircraft carriers made out of ice.
Spaceplane bombers
Flying tanks

They actually built 2 of those in at least prototype form.

Funny stuff, well-organized, and aimed at the fan of WWII as a pulp-adventure. I wish the author had kept going. Yes, I know the Germans had a real knack for the absurd weapons, but he couldn't find anything in the Pacific Theatre? Weren't the Japanese going to bomb the Panama Canal with submarine-launched bombers? Where are they?

I need a sequel.

Pulpy Seaplane Adventures - Review of "Night Over Water"

2008-12-05T14:25:00.005Z

Night Over Water by Ken Follett

review rating: 3 of 5 stars

From GoodReads:

"September 1939. England is at war with Nazi Germany. In Southampton, the world's most luxurious airliner-the legendary Pan Am clipper-takes off for its final flight to neutral America. Aboard are the cream of society and the dregs of humanity, all fleeing the war for reasons of their own...shadowed by a danger they do not know exists...and heading straight into a storm of violence, intrigue, and betrayal..."

This was a hand-me-down tag-sale purchase from my father. I think he picked it up since he is an aviation buff, and on that score the book comes through - plenty of loving descriptions of the Clipper and of a Tiger Moth used in an early chapter.

For plot and characterization, I kept feeling like I was more watching a local theatre play or even more like a LARP. A lot of time is spent in an enclosed space (the Clipper) exploring how the different characters interact with several different plot lines interweaving.

They don't interweave all that well. In addition, I felt I saw the few plot twists coming a mile away.

My biggest gripe was with our POV characters. Of the 5 POV characters, three are female. All three female characters are played up for their sexiness and seem to have major problems coming to and sticking to decisions. Nancy Leneham (the oldest of the female characters) starts as very self-assured, but has it all messed up by love and Daddy-issues by the end. The other two women, Diana Lovesey and Margaret Oxenford, show themselves to be indicisive, easily led, and rather incompetant.

Our two male POV characters are manly, decisive, and (especially in the case of Harry Marks) improbably successful. Their only weaknesses? Their love for their respective women.

*sigh*

I know it's pulp. I like pulp. I'll even give historical pulp a pass for reflecting the morals of it's time.

But this felt sometimes like the author was coming off a bad relationship and wanted to punish his ex.

That said, a part of me still wants to rent a hotel ballroom for a weekend, decorate it in Pan-Am colors and stick two-dozen LARPers in there with characters swiped from this book and see how it goes. Assuming I knew how to run a LARP.

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Secret Underground Tunnel Base in Central London -- FOR SALE!

2008-12-02T13:29:00.006Z

How cool would this be for my WWII-themed bookstore!

For a mere five million pounds, Doolittle's could by 77,00 sq. ft of tunnel in central London. The tunnels were built in WWII to serve as air-raid shelters and later housed MI6, a Cold War communications center, and a public records center.

I can totally see the business flyers:

Doolittle's Books
Everything for the WWII Afficianado
Under High Holborn
London, UK

Who's willing to donate?

Review: Agent Zigzag

2008-11-24T17:28:00.003Z

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben MacIntyre

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
On my way to work, a co-worker asked me what I was reading so avidly. I replied "Agent ZigZag. It's about a British bank robber who is stuck in WWII occupied Europe, volunteers to be a spy for the Germans, parachutes into Britain and immediately calls MI5 to volunteer to work for them instead."

"So fiction then." my co-worker replied.

"No way, they can't write fiction this absurd. It'd never get published." (in a later chapter, an MI5 interrogator wrote almost that same line into Eddie Chapman's files).

The thing is, I was only half-way into the book. I still hadn't gotten to Eddie Chapman's adventures in Lisbon, Oslo, Berlin, or his second parachute jump into the British countryside.

This is one of two books about Eddie Chapman's wartime exploits as a double (or is it triple or quad or something) agent. I haven't gotten my hands on the other one, entitled just Zigzag. According to the NYT review, this is the "more graceful(ly)" written of the two books, and importantly, the more skeptical. Chapman himself had a habit of retelling his story in a way that best fit the wants of the listener. So there is a need for the author to corroborate the cleaims of meeting both Churchill and Hitler.

I have to wonder when the movie version is coming. There was a 1966 movie Triple Cross, but from all accounts it was so censored by the Official Secrets Act and rewritten as to be merely "inspired by," history and truly owes more to James Bond than Eddie Chapman (though both Ian Fleming and the inspiration for his fictional tech-geek "Q" do appear in the book).

More evidence that large chunks of WWII seem to have been cast and written by pulp-fiction writers!

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End of a Fascist Confederate States -- Review of "In At the Death"

2008-11-20T16:37:00.002Z

Settling Accounts: In at the Death by Harry Turtledove

review rating: 2 of 5 stars
Not bad...not the best in the series. I spent the second half of the book wondering what Turtledove was waiting for to end the book. As it turns out, not much...it just kind of ends.

Maybe someone else can confirm, but I'm pretty sure that this is the end of the rather massive Timeline-191 series. From "How Few Remain" we've had eleven volumes in total.

The whole series was rather good I thought, but things become more and more forced once Turtledove had committed himself to a Second World War. The parrallels became too forced, a common problem with the alt-history genre in general. Sometimes I get the feeling the author just wanted this series to go away.

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Erskine Childers' Riddle of the Sands - Review

2008-10-12T15:59:00.002Z

The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm not sailor, though my best friend who gifted this book to me is. I admit to being a little lost at times in the sailing terminology and minutiae. I also wish my Penguin edition had better maps and charts...the text often refers back to the 4 maps at the beginning of he story, but the size and quality is so small at to be nearly useless. Maybe these are the maps included with the original texts, but a clearer (hell I'll take color) version would be appreciated.

As for the story, I knew where it was going before I even picked-up the book. This meant I kept on waiting for the main characters to 'get it.' Realization and suspenseful action doesn't come until late in the book (even then it is much more sedate than what we've come to expect in the intervening 100+ years since this was written).

I do find Childers' concept interesting. Nobody is ever going to know if Imperial Germany could have launched an invasion of Britain with a fleet of tugs and barges. Perhaps Childers' book ensured it would never happen. As to how plausible it was, the German High Command was using basically the same idea for Operation Sealion for a cross-channel invasion in WWII - almost forty years later. Personally I think both plans would have been a slaughter, but it was a less absurd plan than many others proposed (and executed) in the history of war.

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A Japanese POW's Pictoral Diary

2008-02-07T00:25:00.001Z

A friend alerted me to this little treasure trove. It is very well presented collection of drawings made by a Japanese Air Corps soldier during his time as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union at the end of WWII.

It amazed me how positive this artist seemed to remain throughout the time he spent in Russia. The drawings feel more like those of the American Bill Mauldin than a soldier from a defeated empire.

Harvest of Bombs

2008-01-09T20:45:00.000Z

Police in the Solomon Islands are reminding residents that digging-up and selling WWII era ordinance to scrap metal dealers is dangerous. You would think that this would be a no-brainer, but the in a country that has been dubbed a "failed state" and "environmental tragedy", finding someway to feed your family is worth some risk.

The Battle of Guadalcanal and other fights in the Pacific archipelago left these islands with crops of unexploded ordinance (UXO) to be pulled from the ground along side cocoa and copra. Scuba diving tourists also help the economy of the archipelago, mostly to view the wrecks of Iron Bottom Sound, which had seem sever ships sunk as early as WWI.

From 1936 to 2008 Olympics - China Hires the Son of Nazi Architect

2007-12-03T15:00:00.000Z

Back when Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1999, a friend and I tried to imagine where to imagine where the world was heading and if we would see another WWII-type on conflict in our lifetime. The comparisons aren't perfect, but we did feel that China is an up-and-coming power who will be chaffing at the status quo at some point in the near future. This seemed pretty analogous to the position of Imperial Germany in the late 1800s.

After WWI, Hitler wanted to show that Germany's claim on a place in the sun had not gone away. To highlight this, he chose to make the 1936 Berlin Olympics a grand gesture of German power. A large part of that message was crafted in stone in Berlin's Olympic Stadium, designed by Albert Speer.

I should clarify, Albert Speer, Sr. The favored architect of Hitler died in 1981, but his son, Albert Speer, Jr. is also architect, with the German team AS&P. Can you see where I'm going? Yes, Albert Speer, Jr. is helping to design Olympic venues for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Speer Jr. is by all accounts a talented architect and has a very different philosophy of building than the grand gestures of his father. That said, I do not believe that this is the last, or even the greatest comparison between the 1936 and 2008 games. The 2008 Olympics will be seen in the future as the new China's debutante ball.

Lightning Buried on a Welsh Beach

2007-11-15T19:06:00.000Z

Unusual weather in Wales has revealed a treasure from WWII. A P-38 Lockheed Lightning has been found buried in tidal sands on a Welsh beach. The plane was abandoned in September 1942 after its pilot had to ditch due to a malfunction with its fuel system. If recovered, it will be the oldest Lightning to survive the war.

I have special fondness for the P-38. My grandfather was a mechanic in the European theatre working on Lightnings and Thunderbolts (a regular Hephaestus). The twin-boom design was the work of 'Kelly' Johnson, who's famous Skunk Works would later create the U2 and SR-71 spy planes, as well as the first stealth fighter.

The P-38 is also notorious as the weapon used to assassinate Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. American 'Magic' code-breaking was used to determine Yamamoto's flight schedule to Solomon Islands. The Lightning was the only plane with the range to intercept the Admiral.

America's ace of aces (having the most kills of any American flier) was Richard Bong who shot down 40 Japanese enemies why flying a Lightning named Marge during WWII.

Pilot of Enola Gay Dies at Age 92

2007-11-02T13:05:00.000Z

Paul Tibbets has died.

Then Col. Tibbets was the pilot of the Enola Gay when the world's first nuclear bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Tibbets never worried whether the use of the Bomb was the right thing or the wrong thing. He always felt that it was worth the lives saved in preventing a bloody invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. He said he never lost a night's sleep over it because it saved more lives than it took.

But that does not mean that Tibbets wasn't aware of the
controversy surrounding his most famous mission. He has stated that he does not want a funeral or headstone because he did not want to attract protestors

Postcard from WWII Battlefront Delivered 64 Years Later

2007-10-22T17:25:00.001Z

A postcard mailed by a Japanese soldier 64 years ago from a Southeast Asian battlefront during World War II was delivered to its recipient in Japan on Friday.

The card was intercepted by Allied soldiers and kept in the US as a souvenir for nearly 60 years. The son of the US soldier gave it to a Japanese exchange student in the hopes that it would find its way to the intended recipient. The search took several years, but the message was finally delivered.

read more digg story

WWII Manual for Iraq is Surprise Bestseller

2007-10-17T12:02:00.000Z

When your current orders aren't clear, and you don't know how to deal with the locals, it is good to know that the University of Chicago Press is there for you. The academic publisher has just completed a rush order of 5,000 copies of Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II.

The manual was originally created for US servicemen being sent to Iraq to assist the British troop contingent already in the country. Although Iraq was nominally independent since 1932, the country was largely a British protectorate. When the government of Arab nationalist Rashid Ali began to be a little too friendly with Nazi Germany in 1941, British troops landed in Basra to take formal control of the country, and stayed until 1947.

The manual for American troops has several passages that still apply just as well sixty years later:

"Don't be boastful or arrogant when talking to Iraqis."

"Never stare at or try to talk to Iraqi women."

"Learn a few Arabic phrases."

"Remember that Arabs are some of the most relentless guerrilla fighters in the world."

"Use your best manners."

The one that I wish Donald Rumsfeld et. al. had read is "American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not. It may not be quite that simple. But then again it could."

P.O. Box 1142, WWII Interrogators Speak

2007-10-11T18:32:00.000Z

There was a very nice little article in the Washington Post this past weekend about a group of veterans sharing their war-time stories with the American public. There have been many such articles, especially since Ken Burns turned such reminiscences into a 14-hour documentary.

But this group of men was a little different. These 80-90 year-olds were the US Army's professional interrogators in WWII. They worked at a facility known only by its mailing address, P.O. Box 1142, and tucked into Virginia's Fort Hunt, along the Potomac River near Washington, DC. Here, the interrogators questioned Nazi scientists, U-boat men, officers, and leaders. Holding cells were bugged, and, in violation of the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross was not told of their location until they were transferred to a normal POW camp.

However, these veterans never committed the sort of physical and mental abuse now being meted out at Gitmo and CIA "black sites". Instead they often found that games of chess or even steak dinners did more to loosen the lips of their German captives. Many of these veterans made clear while they were being honored by the Army and the National Park Service for their war-time service, they did not approve of the move that America has made towards the new 'harsh interrogation' techniques that in the 1940's were more often found in the hands of the Gestapo than in the US Army.

Pocket Battleship to Fit in Your Gararge

2007-10-02T17:35:00.000Z

At the start of WWII in Europe, Britain faced the task of bottling-up small, but heavily-armed German Kreigsmarine in order to protect her sea lanes from raiders. However, some of the German Navy was already at sea, notably the Graf Spee. Alternately called a "armored cruiser" or "pocket battleship", she occupied a role that was fast enough to evade any ship that could outfight her and powerful enough to outfight any ship who could catch her (a description that was also applied to American frigates of the late 1700s). The Graf Spee was cornered off the coast of South America by three British cruisers in the Battle of the River Plate. After docking in Montevideo, the ship's captain fell for a British ruse, assuming that a massive naval flotilla awaited him at sea, and scuttled the ship on December 17, 1939.

But now the Graf Spee sails again! A gentleman in Maine, William Terra, has rebuilt the ship at 1:20 scale, finishing a six-year project. The 30-foot model has a crew of two and 15 horsepower engine giving her a cruising speed of 15 mph. Terra plans to arm his ship with paintballs, and is looking for challengers.

Liberty Ship in Combat

2007-09-27T17:58:00.000Z

Trivia question: What was the first US ship to sink a German surface combatant in WWII? OK, I'll make it easier, what class of ship was it?

The surprising answer in the SS Stephen Hopkins, a Liberty Ship! The crew of this mass-produced, under-powered freighter found themselves in foggy conditions on their maiden voyage and stumbled into the German merchant raider Stier. When the more heavily armed German ship ordered the Hopkins to surrender, the crew refused. Volunteers replaced members of the 4-inch gun-crew as they were wounded in the ensuing fire-fight. The merchant marine crew managed to fatally damage the raider, though their own ship was lost as well.

Fifteen members of the crew of the Hopkins survived the ensuing 31-day trip in open life-boats to the coast of Brazil. For his part, captain Horst Gerlach of the Stier wrote in his report back to Germany that he had lost his ship to a "heavily armed cruiser."

Not bad for a ship designed to be built in 42 days!

Ken Burns Documentary to start this weekend

2007-09-18T12:49:00.000Z

Ken Burns' documentary "The War" is set to be broadcast starting this Sunday (9/23) and run throughOctober 2nd. At 14 hours, this documentary is shorter that than his earlier "Jazz" or "Baseball". Even so, the focus is distinctly limited to American involvement, focusing on the residents of four towns, Luverne, Minnesota; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; and Sacramento, California.

Having grown up just outside of Waterbury, I'm interested to see how this local focus will work in the larger framework. Burns is a talented artist, but it is not as if we haven't all seen our share of WWII documentaries. Early reviews are positive, but the film has also already had one controversy over the lack of Latino and Native American representation.

The real question for me is 'will my TiVo have enough memory space?"

Titanic II -- This Time the Iceberg IS the Ship

2007-09-06T19:07:00.000Z

Habbakuk.

A funny-sounding name for a funny idea. At the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, the British were willing to listen to any new idea that promised to make their convoys safe. Enter Geoffrey Pyke, with his idea to build a massive ship out of ice. The full design was to be a 2,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and 2 million ton aircraft carrier with a hull 40 feet thick. The hull itself was a mixture of ice and sawdust, dubbed 'Pykrete' after its creator.

Alas for the future of Britania's iceberg-navy, the demand for so much sawdust would have been a drain on wartime paper production and the idea was shelved. The farthest it got was a 30 X 60 foot test bed floating in Patrica Lake in Alberta, Canada.

"Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days-- You would not believe if you were told." (Habakkuk 1:5)

And You Thought Your Town Was a Teenage Wasteland

2007-08-28T17:01:00.000Z

From the way these posts are going, people are going to start assuming I'm a Polish nationalist or something. I swear, it is just the way that things have been distributing themselves. As far as I know, I have no Polish ancestry (the same could not be said of my wife and daughter).

A friend of mine sent me link to a new role-playing game (RPG) called Grey Ranks. The name is a reference to the members of the Polish Boy Scouts who became a very effective underground network and insurgent fighting force in WWII. The game is centered around the Warsaw Rising in 1944. Players take on the role of one of the child-soldiers of the Home Army as they try to take control of the Polish capital, removing the Nazis before the arrival of Soviet troops from the East. What was intended to 4-5 day operation instead stretched for 63 days as the Soviet advance stalled (some say deliberately stopped) outside the city. Help from the Western Allies was also minimal. The Polish Parachute Brigade, who had been training to help in the Uprising, were instead committed to Montgomery's over-reaching Operation Market Garden in Holland.

I haven't gotten a chance to play the new game from Bully Pulpit Games. It looks to have a large touch of soap-opera or anime high-school drama and tension layered on top of the military grimness. The result looks a bit like TFOS meets The Longest Day, only much less cheerful. One of the testimonials from a play-tester said:

"Grey Ranks ... was fun, if you can call driving yourself to madness and serial killing from the sewers of WWII-ravaged Poland after your girlfriend refuses to have your baby aborted, then gets killed fun. Which I do." - Rob Bohl

That sounds a little crass, or bloodthirsty, or something. But it also shows, once again, that these people, were real people. Real people in amazing, horrifying situations, but still just kids.

Could I do what they did? Could my children? I'd like to think they could if they had to. I truly hope they never come close to needing to find out.

Propaganda Posters -- Part Deux

2007-08-22T16:58:00.001Z

I wrote before about my wife finding a book of WWI and WWII propaganda posters. It seems that I am not the only person to be enamored of these historical images. Keith Ball, online gamer extraordinaire, has compiled a collection focused on WWII that rivals and even surpasses that pulled together for the Dover Clip Art Book.

This collection definitely has a broader base, including posters from Nazi German, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia along with the well known British and American images. While I had heard the slogans before, this was my first look at propaganda posters from the Vichy French.

Thanks go out to the folks at Digg.com for pulling this one into the internet's communal consciousness.

read more digg story

Go West, Old Country

2007-08-17T13:30:00.000Z

I've written here before about the great finds published at Strange Maps. Today's entry covers the controversy over Poland's post-WWII borders. In short, Stalin insisted that the Soviet Union was not going to give up any of the territory it had gained through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the 1939 partition of Poland. To compensate Poland for these loses, and to punish the Germans, the Polish western border was moved to the Oder-Neisse Line.

What Strange Maps has found and shared with us all is a map, marked in Stalin's hand-writing, marking the line along the more eastern "Glatzer Neisse, while the present-day border is composed of the Lausitzer (or Görlitzer) Neisse, 200 km to the west."

The more westerly border was eventually accepted which put Wroclaw (Breslau) fully within Polish territory. This may have helped lessen the loss of Lviv to Soviet Ukraine. An added bonus from Stalin's perspective is that a more westerly border would help keep Poland afraid of Germany and firmly within the Soviet orbit.

Tales From the Recently Read Stack...

2007-08-14T13:41:00.000Z

I've been on a run of WWII-themed reading material of late. I'm going to have to take a break soon to fit in"The No-Cry Sleep Solution" so that my wife and I can sleep for longer than 2-3 hours at one time without having our toddler go ballistic on us. But in the meantime, here's some of the recent reading material that has been cluttering up our apartment.

Harry Turtledove continues on with his Great War or Southern Victory series. I can't bring myself to pay hardback prices for this series, so I've just finished The Grapple while In at the Death hits the bookstore shelves. These two represent books eleven and twelve in Turtledove's alternate timeline the separates from ours shortly before the battle of Antietam. Some eighty years later, North America is embroiled in a Second World War between the USA and CSA.

The many different point of view characters and lack of traditional narrative arcs makes epic alternative history books like these hard to follow at times. Turtledove fans have even spawned their own wiki to keep track of his works, timelines, and characters. I will never argue that Turtledove creates great literature, but I think it is good sometimes for Americans to imagine what life would have been like if the ravages of war had visited our shores as well as those of Europe.

The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst does aspire to be great literature. The story follows the life of an Italian emigre in Paris in 1939. Carlo Weisz splits his time between reporting on a Europe lurching towards war for Reuters and serving as editor for a clandestine Italian resistance newspaper. There is, of course, a romantic plot line thrown in as well. I really felt that the strongest portions of the book centered on Weisz serving as a witness to history, from the end of the Spanish Civil War to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. These scenes of 'neutral' reporters rushing with and ahead of armies to get the scoop and the story were more compelling and tension-filled than the shadowing and counter-shadowing of Italian emigres by Mussolini's secret police.

Finally, I'm still working my way through a non-fiction entry, a biography of John Whitesides Parsons. Strange Angel covers Parsons' work as one of the pioneers of rocketry during the 30's and 40's in America. Parson's was central to the creation of modern solid-fueled rockets and the use of JATOs by the US Army Air Corps and US Navy. He was also a priest in Aleister Crowley's cultish Church of Thelema. Parson's was a renaissance man and all-around geek at a time in which membership in the American Communist Party, the Ordo Templi Orientis, the American Interplanetary Society, and the Los Angeles Science Fiction League were all technically legal, but looked down upon with equal disdain. All of these groups sought to change the world and open up new frontiers through learning, and Parsons moved in the circles of them all until his death in an explosion in 1952.

WWII Superheros Return

2007-08-03T15:37:00.000Z

It sounds like Marvel is sorry for having killed-off Captain America. In recompense, they have dug through the company archives and revived twelve super-heroes from the last days of WWII. Like Steve Rogers, these heroes have been in frozen animation. Unlike Cap, it was no accident in the Arctic. Instead, the story is that all twelve were captured by the Nazis and placed in frozen stasis for later study. It is only new construction in Berlin that has located them, purely by accident.

Since none of these characters have seen print in over sixty years, it will be interesting to see what the Marvel writers are going to do with them. While we think of the superhero genre as well-defined, back in the forties there was a blurry line between supers of the four-color comics and grittier, less morally defined characters of the pulps, like The Shadow or Doc Savage.

An Enigma Wrapped In a Mystery

2007-07-28T19:46:00.000Z

My last post talked about an Enigma machine up for auction. But unless you are already a WWII geek (like me), you might not get what is so important about this thing that looks like a weird German typewriter.

Right, who else but WWII geeks are reading this anyway?

Well, I'm going to talk about it anyway.

Enigma was in many ways the last of its kind, the last encryption system from a time when a 'computer' was a woman (or rather a lot of women) in a room with a slide-rule. Enigma was the last great analog cryptography system.

There were many versions of the enigma machine made for business, government, and different branches of the German military in WWII. The British managed to crack every one through the efforts of such brainy types as Alan Turing at Bletchley Park. In the process, they invented the modern digital computer.

From those days on, cryptology became less of a game of cloak-and-dagger, less about the great brains attacking a problem as a matter of pentaflops.

Enigma Machine For Sale

2007-07-27T02:20:00.000Z

Here's a piece of WWII history for the cryptography fans out there. A museum-quality original Enigma code machine is up for auction on eBay. I'm afraid my German is way too rusty (or rather never that good to begin with) to translate the details of the auction. Luckily for us monoglots, Boing Boing has an article on it as well.

While I'm sure that it will be easier to bring home this machine than it was for the Polish agents who first smuggled examples out of the Nazi Reich, you can still expect this auction to run to well over $10,000 US. Alas, outside of my price range.

Propaganda Posters

2007-07-10T19:56:00.000Z

My wonderful wife purchased a book collection of WWI and WWII posters for me on a whim. Some of these images are so well known that they've become part of our daily vocabulary, whether it's Uncle Sam picking you out of crowd or Rosie the Riveter showing that feminism wasn't invented in the 60's.

Other posters have been forgotten, or at least their messages seem to fall on deaf ears. I'd love to see some of these on the walls of your local strip mall or Home Depot. After all, have you really tried to save gas by car-pooling?

Shrugging-Off the Atomic Bomb

2007-07-03T12:52:00.000Z

Sixty-two years later and the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki claim another victim, the political career of Japan's defense minister Fumio Kyuma. Kyuma resigned due to the uproar over his comment that the bombings were “shou ga nai” (described by linguists as a “verbal shrug” implying “it’s not good, but what can you do?”).

Well sure, it's not good. The whole war was not good (contrary to what Studs Terkel might tell you). And sixty years later, what can you do? Continue to pick up the pieces and try to see that it doesn't happen again...doesn't need to happen again.

The issue here is that survivor groups feel that Kyuma's comments justified U.S. actions. Whether the bombings were justified is a post for another time perhaps. Personally, I'm happy that such a debate continues and that the bombings remain so pivotal and feared in world culture. The more mythic that status we give to nukes, the less likely we all will be to use them.

The Pentagon and Roosevelt

2007-06-20T13:12:00.000Z

Today, Slate Magazine has an interesting article on the role played by FDR in the siting and design of the Pentagon. The author takes the publishing of Steve Vogel's The Pentagon: A History as an opportunity to talk about the influence that various president have and didn't have on the architecture of DC and the US in general.

Some interesting Pentagon facts:
The Pentagon is still the largest office building in the world with 4 million square feet of floor space.
The project to build the Pentagon at the height of WWII was headed by Leslie Groves who later lead the Manhattan Project. The Pentagon was completed on time and under budget.
One original plan for the Pentagon called for the massive building to be turned into a records storage facility for the National Archives once the war was over.

Wiki Distractions

2007-06-19T17:00:00.000Z

It has been too long since I have updated this all. My excuse is that I roped myself into building and maintaining a wiki for the bi-weekly GURPS WWII Supers RPG campaign I am in. I debated linking Doolittle's to that wiki, but most of the other players thought that it would be a boring read for you all.

In summary, it is now April 1943 and I am playing the character of a Polish cavalryman who has been turned into a perfect soldier ala Captain America through the use of a stolen Nazi serum. Now he is fighting the Axis alongside four American superheroes in North Africa, Palestine, Italy, and soon Germany! All in all, quite fun to take my historical knowledge and watch it bump up against the other players' comic-book based assumptions.

Trip to Washington D.C.

2007-06-04T16:45:00.000Z

After a short family vacation to Washington D.C. it is time for that dreaded form of entertainment, the vacation slide-show!

I'll be nice and limit the photos to WWII-themed places I got shots of:

First comes the new WWII memorial on the Mall. My wife still thinks that it breaks-up the sight-line between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, but I feel it is a good addition.

While I had seen plenty of shots of the memorial, I had never noticed how it was designed to be handicapped and disabled friendly. Notice the gently curving ramps from the fountain level to the pavilions for each of the Theaters.

After visiting the Mall, we went out to the new Air & Space Museum Annex near Dulles Airport.
The star of this show, or at least the WWII section, is clearly the Enola Gay, the most well known delivery system for a WMD in the world. It was amazing to me how large and yet how small this bomber was in her shining aluminum.

And here's a little rarity, a Japanese balloon-bomb. It's the answer to the trivia question "What was the last military attack on the US mainland?" (I'm not counting 9/11 as military here).

And, the best thing about the Air & Space Annex? Room to grow. They're adding stuff all the time. That's my toddler daughter down at the end of the hanger in the space reserved for more flying wonders.

Lego Tanks

2007-05-15T20:12:00.000Z

And planes and jeeps even!

I admit it, I love Lego. Fun little models that, if they, break, you can just put back together...or arrange differently. Whatever you want.

Mechanized Brick has combined everything I love about Lego with the fun of model tanks and planes from WWII. The jeep is just too cute.

The Other Alpine Redoubt

2007-05-08T20:24:00.000Z

Strange Maps today has a great post about the Swiss National Redoubt and general plans to defend against a German invasion during WWII.

The Swiss get a lot of abuse about their role in the war. Particularly their policy of not opening bank accounts that most likely hold Nazi loot or the abandoned savings of Jewish victims of the Holocaust is galling to many.

But take a look at these plans to sacrifice two-thirds of their country, including all the major cities and most of the arable land in order hold out against German invasion. Swiss leaders may have been 'bankers to the Nazis' but they were also under a very real threat.

It also seems like their carefully laid plans for an Alpine Redoubt inspired propaganda in Germany and worries in Allied High Command that the Nazi's might follow suit in the mountains near Hitler's 'Eagle's Nest' home in Berchtesgaden.

70 Years Since the Death of the Zeppelin

2007-05-07T20:08:00.000Z

OK, so it was yesterday...

On May 6th, 1937, the Hindenburg burst into flame while attempting to land in Lakehurst, NJ. When that airship went down, it took with it the future of the dirigible.

It was not, however, the end of the airship. The true height of airship use was to come in WWII when the US Navy fielded the K-ship blimps for use primarily in anti-submarine warfare. By the height of the war, Goodyear was producing 11 blimps a month.

Letters from the Front

2007-05-03T19:28:00.000Z

So for all you bloggers out there, where would you have captured your thoughts if you had been born 50-60 years earlier and sent off to the front lines of WWII?

Blogs aren't nearly as new as everybody seems to think; in many ways they are the children (and grandchildren) of the wartime letter home and the war diary. Short notes to capture the boredom, long and poetic ramblings on life, love, and the meaning of it all. The fevered scribblings of those trying to process the world.

Remember, these letters weren't nearly as private as you would think at first; many were opened and read by at least one level of censor before ever reaching home. And if you thought comments on your blog were rare, having a reply mail make it to a your foxhole in Italy or PT Boat on patrol in the Pacific was much rarer.

But now, many family members and amateur historians are seeing fit to share their treasured family correspondences with the world. It's like our own wayback machine.

http://dadswwiiletters.com/

http://www.merkki.com/letters_from_home.htm

http://www.galik.com/stanleygalik1922/wwii/194307.htm

http://www.checkertail.com/

One Dead in Fight Over Bronze Soldier

2007-04-27T13:11:00.000Z

If you thought the controversy over the WWII Memorial in D.C. got heated, be glad you don't live in Tallinn, Estonia.

Estonian officials are trying to move a Soviet-built WWII memorial and military grave complex out of the center of their capital city. Estonian nationalists say that 'Bronze Soldier' is a reminder of the Soviet conquest and occupation of the Baltic States in 1940 (and again in 1944). As in many parts of Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, partisans stayed in the wild to battle the Red Army after harassing the Nazis for years. Ethnic Russians in Estonia feel that the memorial simply honors the soldiers who died to defeat Nazi Germany.

Excavations have begun to move the memorial and at least one man is dead in the subsequent protests and riots. The Russia's upper house of Parliament is calling for a break in diplomatic relations with Estonia. Even with the threats and the violence, it looks like the Bronze Soldier can expect to find a new home in a military cemetery outside the city.

What I'm Reading

2007-04-26T14:04:00.000Z

Life may be hectic, but I have always felt that having something that you are reading is important. I thought I'd take a moment to cover two books, one I just finished and a second I've started to dig into.

First is The Utility of Force by General Rupert Smith. I was inspired to order this book after seeing Smith, a retired British general and former D-SACEUR in NATO, give history lessons to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.

Although the book was only 400+ pages, it was amazingly dense with analysis of war and military power from the reforms of Napoleon to our current mess in Iraq. The main thrust was to show how the militaries of the West in particular are still wed to the idea of 'industrial war' that was created by revolutionary France and 'perfected,' for lack of a better term, in the two World Wars. The advent of the atomic bomb made that sort of war unwinnable. Instead, almost all wars since 1945 have grown out of the guerrilla tradition. Now we face what Smith inelegantly calls "war among the people." Instead of using strength and force to break the will of your enemy, we must capture the will of the people to break the strength of the enemy.

I'm really not doing justice to the book here. Smith is calling for a fundamental re-assessment of the purpose and organization of the military in a way that has not been seen since Clausewitz. It is not an easy read, but it does put all of the political and military fumblings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Chechnya in a stark,but now understandable framework. I wish it were required reading for any of our presidential candidates.

So, after a scholarly work of military theory, I decided to slip into my guilty reading pleasure, the sometimes pulpy alternate-histories of Harry Turtledove. In this case "The End of the Beginning," the second book in his "Days of Infamy" series. The point of departure is the decision by the Japanese to not only bomb Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but to follow-up with an immediate invasion of the islands.

Folks can debate all they'd like whether the Japanese had the logistical ability to handle such a long-range operation, but I think Turtledove handles these questions pretty well. The interesting challenge with this series versus other alt-histories is that the invasion isn't likely to irrevocably change the world. In the World War series, alien invasion changes the world eventually beyond recognition. Turtledove's Great War series, has a much smaller point of departure (a dropped set of orders wrapped around some cigars), but has led to a version of WWII being fought in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Here, the Japanese hold the Hawaiian islands, but the most I can see that doing for them is to delay the inevitable for a year or so.

Turtledove is clearly aware that he is not playing with the fate of worlds in this series and instead limits his point-of-view characters to the island of Oahu and a few Americans training stateside for the inevitable US invasion. The trick works rather well; the reader finds themselves hanging on every rumor of the war in the wider world. The limited geography also helps to create more of a feeling of oppression and claustrophobia inherent in the occupied territory. In the end, it isn't great literature, but for a WWII geek like myself, it's an enjoyable read.

'Black Book' and Women in WWII

2007-04-04T20:20:00.000Z

Paul Verhoeven the director of such pulpy Hollywood movies as Robocop, Showgirls and Basic Instinct has decided to try his hand at WWII movie making back in his native Holland. Black Book follows the adventures of Rachel Stein, a Dutch Jewish woman through the closing years of the war. After the trauma of Allied air raids and betrayal of an escape plan she joins the Resistance. Here she her sexual assets to seduce, and apparently turn, the commander of the Gestapo in the Hague.

I've never been much for Verhoeven's ham-handed stylings. He seems to think that as long has he provides a mixture of sex and violence at regular intervals, he can keep an audience from thinking any deep thoughts about what he has to say. However, Verhoeven is delving into an growing area of WWII study and writing, the role of women in the war, particularly in the various Resistance movements. Vera Atkins and Virginia Hall probably never used sex as weapon in the model of Verhoeven's heroine, but they were certainly formidable opponents to the Nazis and their collaborators.

Is 'Black Book' at all accurate? No. Is it a turning point for Verhoeven to serious matters (a la Steven Spielberg in Schindler's List)? I doubt it. Will it be entertaining and will it sell tickets? Of course.

And maybe someone walking out of the theatre will go and pick up the biography of Elsa Caspers to see how life really was for a female spy in Holland.

WWII as Entertainment

2007-03-30T15:07:00.000Z

In case you haven't surmised from my earlier posts, I am of a later generation than most writers on the Second World War, neither GI Generation nor Baby Boomer. As such, I wasn't there and wasn't even raised by those who were there.

I find the entire war period fascinating. I devour books about all theatres of the war, both fiction and non-fiction. I grew up watching black-and-white documentaries about the war. I don't think anyone can claim to have seen all the movies about WWII, but I've seen my share. I hope to one day turn Doolittle's into a bookstore to make this all more than just a hobby.

And I game.

I've played computer games, both strategic and tactical. When time, space, and opponents permit, I play table-top wargames. I'm currently involved in a role-playing game set in the 1940s.

But what do you do when your 80+ year-old grandmother turns to you and says "For us it wasn't a game."

One of my favorite web sites for a while was called "Gary's Wargaming Page." Every week or so, he would update a bunch of play-by-play summaries of WWII wargames taking place all around the country, complete with commentary. One day, when I visiting the site, there was just a banner saying that he could no longer keep the site running in good conscience after watching "Saving Private Ryan." A few weeks later, the site was now devoted to tropical fish.

Another of my friends has said that he feels uncomfortable playing in a modern military role-playing campaign while he watches his neighbor recover from wounds he received in Iraq.

Is what Spielberg did with actors in "Ryan" any different than what Gary did with cardboard counters? Does pretending to be a Polish paratrooper at Arnhem Bridge in a role-playing game diminish the sacrifice of a Marine wounded in Fallujah?

I think most gamers realize that everyone involved in war is a person, a human, just like you and me. Even the saints and the monsters were just human. By retelling, replaying, even fictionalizing, their experiences, I don't think that we are dishonoring them.

Nazi Germany's Antarctic Colony

2007-03-16T14:52:00.000Z

Today's post is a chance for me to point out one of my favorite snippets of Web-strangeness. Strange Maps has a wonderful 1930's map of Neu-Schwabenland.

The 1938-1939 expedition in which Germany surveyed and claimed this swath of the frozen southern continent has led many of the more conspiracy-minded to believe that the Third Reich lived on (and may yet still live on) in secret bases beneath Antarctic glaciers. Supposedly the massive 1946 survey and training exercise Operation Highjump was an effort by the United States to find and defeat these Aryan hold-outs.

Regardless of Nazi penguin aficionados, the Strange Maps site also holds several other WWII era gems, such as Nazi propaganda claiming secret plans to dismember post-war Germany, actual Dutch plans to expand into German territory, and the Czech aerial threat to the Nazi regime.

Captain America, Dead at 66

2007-03-08T21:27:00.000Z

Marvel Comics has killed-off Captain America.

The patriotic character was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby 9 months before America entered WWII and was centered around that conflict for his first few years. Later, Cap was used by writers to reflect on what they saw as an earlier era's morals and courage.

Of course, there is something ironically fascist about a blond-haired, blue-eyed, super soldier at the 'peak of human potential.' But the comics industry has always had a the problem of how to tell their epic stories without falling into the trap of supporting 'Big Man' theories of history. Captain America's problems are nothing compared to Superman, inspired by Nietzsche's Overman philosophy.

Campaign for a Purple Heart Bond

2007-03-07T19:44:00.000Z

Maybe this is off-topic, maybe not.

Reading the news articles about the utter debacle and poor conditions at Walter Reed Hospital has gotten me thinking about the continuing differences between the Iraq War (and larger War on Terror) and WWII.

Several other folks have commented on the lack of sacrifice requested of the American public in the wake of 9/11. And maybe the world is different now and cutting back on luxuries would only help our enemies. Maybe sacrifice on the home front - victory gardens, conservation, rationing - would do little to help in the fight.

However, I think most Americans can agree that our wounded veterans deserve the best medical care available. Iraq veterans are surviving wounds at amazing rates versus previous wars, but that means that the military and VA medical system are treating a much higher number of patients in long-term care than anyone expected from a war of this size, intensity, and length (assuming anyone expected it to be this long, this bad, and this large).

At the same time, other populations served by the VA are also facing crises. More American WWII vets die a day now than at the height of the fighting in the 40's. Vietnam Vets are heading into their 60s.

To serve all of these folks, the US government should build a network of top-notch, modern medical facilities. I'd like to see 21st Century hospitals and out-patient care facilities that any vet could walk into and staff will have immediate access to his full medical files. Take this opportunity to show what modern medicine can do for chronic injuries, end-of-life issues, and support in the home for the disabled. This new VA system can then serve as an example, and backbone for a more-modern national hospital system.

But how would you pay for such a grand system? I propose a Purple Heart Bond. Much like WWII's War Bonds, this plan would allow individual citizens to do more to help than stick ribbons on their cars. I would even guess that a fair number of these bonds would never be cashed, instead they would serve as patriotic reminders that we can sacrifice some luxury now to help those who need it, and in the end come out with something better than what we had before.

Holocaust Archives finally being opened

2007-03-06T14:49:00.000Z

First, let me apologize for letting Doolittle's go so long without a post. Explanations really aren't worth the digital ink.

OK, for those who do no know me, I'm a professional Records Manager by trade. I've had the honor and joy of touring and working with some of the great archives of the U.S. including the Library of Congress, National Archives, Boston Public Library, and the Smithsonian. Maybe it was these organizations' zeal to make their collections relevant and accessible that made me all the more surprised by this story.

The International Red Cross has been managing the archives of the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen since the end of WWII. This repository contains "files on more than 17 million people who passed through the concentration camps and forced labor camps of the Third Reich, as well as the displaced persons camps that sprang up across Europe after the war." Sounds like a great resource for historians, genealogists, and those who just want to know what happened to friends and relatives who were subjected to this system of camps.

Apparently, attempts to access this information have been effectively stymied by a combination of bureaucratic inertia (the archives are under the jurisdiction of eleven nations), eccentric management, and little to no technological or monetary investment. Now, finally, the information is being digitised (an expected total of 7 terabytes) to be made available to the member nations.

Each country will have to handle the information according to their own privacy rules. In addition, the original hard copies will only be available to family members of those mentioned within them (in order to protect the physical items). But even with these limitations, this will be a huge boon to survivors and their families as well as researchers and historians.

The fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of massive archives in Russia has allowed for new popular and scholarly examinations of the Soviet Gulag. The opening of the ITS archives holds the promise of similar new research not just on the Holocaust, but also on Nazi labor camps, population transfers, and even Nazi rat-line networks such as the infamous ODESSA group.

This release may also help quiet Holocaust deniers. To paraphrase the Supreme Court, the solution to bad information is always more information, not less.

New WWII Video Game Allows for Non-Linear Play

2006-11-01T15:57:00.000Z

The competition in the videogame industry for the dominant WWII-themed first-person shooter (FPS) is heating up. The two dominant players are Electronic Arts (EA) with their 'Medal of Honor' series and Activision's 'Call of Duty' series.

The latest move has been made by EA with Medal of Honor: Airborne. The game's new airdrop function allows players to start levels anywhere on the battlefield. This is a big change from the previously linear and scripted gameplay in earlier versions of both games.

Of course, if a videogame truly wants to simulate the experiences of airborne troops in WWII, the player might get choose the best place for a landing, but there would be no guarantee that the transports would get him anywhere near his intended DZ or with any of his requisitioned weapons.

More open-ended WWII video games are also available through multi-player online games like Aces High and WWII Online. But these aren't supported by the big game and console companies. It's an open question as tow which, if any of these games capture even part of what it must have felt like to be there. And should they even try?

Poles Seeking to Settle German WWII Territorial Claims

2006-10-30T21:14:00.000Z

Sounds like a headline from August 1939.

This time, it is the Poles who are pushing the German government to have its citizens finally renounce property claims from the end of WWII. Ever since Poland was shifted west to accommodate Stalin's larger Soviet Union, German private citizens have maintained claims on the property that they left behind in the now-Polish territory.

Now that Poland and a reunified Germany no longer have issues of larger Cold War politics dominating policy, a newly nationalistic Polish government would like to see these claims renounced. With the exception of ongoing issues with the Kurile Islands, this seems to be one of the few WWII territorial issues still floating around.

It seems like more festering territorial issues of the 21st century were born at Versailles, than at Tehran, Yalta, or Potsdam.

Royal Navy X-Men

2006-10-27T20:00:00.000Z

No, I'm not talking about the Marvel Comics mutants here.

Instead, I'm referring to the volunteers who served aboard the British Royal Navy's experimental midget submarines. The four-man submarines were known as X-Craft, and hence their crews as X-Men. I hadn't heard the term used until recently when I saw a BBC documentary on the 'Lost Heroes' of Operation Source.

Three 50-foot midget submarines traversed over a thousand miles (much under tow), infiltrated a Norwegian fjord under heavy guard, and managed to damage the German battleship Tirpitz so badly that she didn't put to sea for over six months.

All 3 subs used in the attack were lost, and the commanders of two of them were awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry.

It seems to me that WWII is unique for being so full of astounding actions by all parties. While Source was certainly one of the war's greatest raids, it was not the only one. The list of such actions, both long-planned and performed extemporaneously, seems at times absurdly long.

They Just Don't Build Them Like That Anymore...

2006-10-24T12:45:00.000Z

Happy United Nations Day!

Today, I feel I must take a moment to praise the designers of the Russian T-34 tank. Wehrmacht forces were very unpleasantly surprised to discover this advanced and highly capable design in Russian hands when they invaded in 1941. The highly touted German Panther tank was built in response to the hard lessons that the T-34 taught.

But did anyone rushing these machines off of assembly lines during war-time really expect them to still work in 50-60 years? Protestors in Hungary's capital of Budapest apparently had the gumption to try it out. There is something very strange about having Hungarian protestors use a Russian T-34 tank against what they feel is a corrupt government during the 50th anniversary celebration of the Hungarian Uprising. But who thought the thing would still work?

'Flags of Our Fathers' Receiving Positive Reviews

2006-10-20T15:21:00.000Z

So far, everyone seems to be giving nothing but praise for Clint Eastwood's new movie about the men in the famous flag-raising photo on Iwo Jima.

I am very glad to hear that the movie does recognize that its central image of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi was in fact the second such flag-raising. The central part of the story revolves around the three surviving men from the photo who were whisked home to sell war bonds and their various ways of dealing with their special treatment.

Long discussions of Eastwood's "elegant filmmaking technique with an almost experimental storytelling structure" leave me rather cold. I was in no way a fan of "Unforgiven" or "Million Dollar Baby".

The default setting of showing heroism (or propaganda about heroism in this case) only through flashback is a bit troubling. Yes, America is losing more WWII vets a day now than during the height of the fighting, but this storytelling trope has the unnerving affect of forcing more recent generations (especially the Baby Boomers) into a narrative that never truly involved them in the first place. Is the GI Generation so foreign to Americans now that we can only empathize with them through an intermediary generational gap?

One reviewer called 'Flags' an unrepentant 'old man's movie.' But which old men are we talking about, those of the generation who were there, or a younger generation who is suddenly feeling their age?

Mystery Bullet in Remains of HMAS Sydney II Crewman

2006-10-18T13:30:00.000Z

One of the unanswered mysteries of WWII, the final fate of the Australian light cruiser Sydney II, has just gotten a bit stranger. As this article states, Australian authorities have finally exhumed the remains of a man assumed to have escaped from the Sydney before she sank. No one seems to know why he would have a bullet from a handgun in his head though.

The accepted story is that in November 1941 the German merchant raider Kormoran on a patrol in the Indian Ocean, lured the more heavily armed Sydney into a point-blank engagement and left the Australian ship burning as she sailed away to the south. The Kormoran herself was so badly damaged that she was scuttled shortly after.

The wreck of the Sydney has never been found and no survivors were located.

Those with a more conspiracy and pulp-fiction bend of mind wonder if in fact the ship didn't sink, but instead was captured by the dreaded Antarctic Space Nazis!

Echoes of WWII

2006-10-13T13:31:00.000Z

A scan of today's news brings up a few interesting parallels between events today and and those of sixty-odd years ago.

First, the play "In Times of War" by David Alan Moore is playing in Chicago. Most Americans now are going to come out of this portrayal of the military tribunal trial of would-be Nazi saboteurs with thoughts of Guantánamo Bay and recent Congressional legislation on the handling of terrorism 'detainees'. However, the story itself, of a reluctant Nazi commando and his pricipled Jewish defense attorney, stands fine on its own. Most Americans have never heard of this story or even suspected that German agents had been landed on American soil.

Elsewhere, Adam Gadahn has the dubious honor of being the first U.S. citizen to be formally charged with treason since the immediate post-WWII era. With the recent passing of Iva Toguri D'Aquino, who was convicted of treason (and later pardoned) for her role as Tokyo Rose, the issue of the use of treason law to punish propagandists is once again before us all.

WWII parallels don't magically make today's news clearer, but we should know that many have been down these paths before. It is worthwhile to examine the maps that they drew for us.

Why a blog on WWII?

2006-10-12T15:20:00.000Z

When I was a kid, I was a sucker for the epic, the grand, the titanic battle between good and evil. That's World War II in a nutshell. Especially WWII as it's represented by most of the media right now.

As I grew up, I realized that the topic was much more complex -- even fractally complex -- and much more interesting because of it. From the sweeping strategies of world empires locked in a duel to the death to the thoughts running through the mind of the 19-year-old kid who was the first off the boat at Normandy, it's infinitely nuanced.

Alas, a lot of the scholarship on WWII these days is ... fawning. Brokaw's paeans to the "Greatest Generation" and Clint Eastwood's facile movies are unfortunate because they reduce what was a real, human, and subtle conflict to a cheap (if grand) myth.

I don't mean to demean the roles of the soldiers -- my two grandfathers both served, one in each theater. But I think that a deeper understanding of the world they lived allows me to appreciate their courage and sacrifices more thoroughly than I would if I just accepted the Hollywood gloss on the war. There are more stories than we can possibly cover in one movie -- from the purely evil (beheading contests on the streets of Nanking) to the nearly saintly (the fishermen at Dunkirk). But most of them are somewhere in between and I don't think it's demeaning to point out that it wasn't all good and evil back then. It was much more interesting.