Crosby was one of the most experienced and best navigator’s in WW II. This is his extraordinary memoir. He reveals all his self-doubts in a most humblCrosby was one of the most experienced and best navigator’s in WW II. This is his extraordinary memoir. He reveals all his self-doubts in a most humble fashion. His superior navigating (he often ascribed it to luck, got him promoted to Group Navigator. At one point he was just one mission shy of the twenty-five needed to get sent home, when, ironically, because the horrendous loss rate had begun to decline, the number needed was raised to thirty. The rationale for doing so was truly monstrously evil. The assumption was that given the loss rates approaching 100% over 25 missions, when loss rates dropped, the logistics of supply changed:
“Until then, 8AF losses were about four percent per mission. Theoretically, by the time we had flown twenty-five missions, we were KIA or POW, and we had to be replaced. If we bucked the odds, we got to go home. Since the Eighth couldn’t plan on our being there we might as well not be taking up bunks and rations. Now, losses declined a little, down to about three percent, and our human logistics changed. We had to fly thirty missions”.
“On this mission, one crew, piloted by Glenn Dye, flew their twenty-fifth. They were done. They could go home. They were the only original crew of the 100th’s original thirty-five who finished a tour. One out of thirty-five made it through a tour. And even on Dye’s crew, one gunner was killed. None of the original crew all made it. That did not encourage us much.”
Navigators were crucial to the success, and return, of a mission. In his scrapbook* on the Smithsonian website, Crosby flatly states, “From a good pilot all I expected was a good truck driver. I wanted him to shut up, drive the plane, and stay out of things and as the navigator and the bombardier took care of the mission.” They had to rely on dead reckoning and radios for navigation; all the celestial navigation skills they had been taught as school were basically useless, and their octants soon piled up in the trash.
Lots of interesting tidbits. My favorite was why he decided not to bomb Bonn and picked another target. It’s in the scrapbook, if you don’t want to read the memoir. Crosby suffered from severe airsickness, common among navigators, as they spent considerable time watching the ground from low altitudes where it was always more turbulent. On one mission, they spun out of control, the pilot recovering with just two functioning engines. The plane had 1200 shell holes, 1 dead crewman, and five injured. They just made it back to England, landing on a “dummy” airfield.
Harmony between the Brits and Americans was problematic. So many British men were overseas, leaving the country to American males. Crosby was sent to attend a conference to discuss inter-ally relations. He found it enlightening. “All during the conference, no matter what the announced subject for discussion, we always kept returning to two knotty problems, disharmony among the Allies and too much harmony between the genders.”
The B-17 was known for being a tough old bird. There was always competition between B-24 and B-17 pilots on which was the better aircraft. “You can still start an argument with a WWII Air Corps veteran as to which was better, the B-24 or the B-17. Because of its highly efficient Davis wing, the B-24 carried a heavier load and flew faster. However, because of that same slim, narrow wing, the Lib was vulnerable. Hit that wing and down went the plane. A B-17 could get its crew back on one engine. Even with half its tail torn off or with a huge, gaping hole in the wings, fuselage, or nose, a good pilot could get his Fort and his crew back to the base.”
Regardless, the 100th was notorious for its high losses. “We had too much combat exhaustion, which was what they called it when a crew member was afraid to fly and quit. We had too many midair crashes of our own planes. We had too many cases of our airmen getting into fights at the local pubs." Losses were horrendus. Crews had a 1 in 35 chance of making it back alive.
A truly fascinating and humble look at what it was like to fly missions in a B-17 over Europe.
Coram begins the begins his hagiography with an explanation of why Americans have an almost mythic view of the Marine Corps, a service that was close Coram begins the begins his hagiography with an explanation of why Americans have an almost mythic view of the Marine Corps, a service that was close to extinction by the turn of the 20th century -- before Belleau Woods. The American Expeditionary Force under General Pershing was sent quickly to France to bail out the exhausted British and French. Ludendorf, the German General, was about to deliver a hammer blow in an attempt to break through the trench lines and reach Paris. Pershing had forbidden war correspondents from identifying individual Army units, but left an inadvertent loophole with the Marines. The Army despised the Marines, wondering why they even existed as a separate command. At Belleau Woods, however, the Marines, identified as such by Floyd Gibbons, the only correspondent, to go with them, magnificently held off and beat a substantially larger force of Germans, and soon all anyone could talk about was the glorious Marines.
Krulak was a Marine. How he got there was quite interesting, but inauspicious. He was a Jew (non-practicing who lied about his background--antisemitism was rife with signs on establishments reading, "no dogs or jews"), short (5'4"), been married (it lasted but 16 days before being annulled as both he and the bride lied about their names), lied about his age, and failed the entrance exam the first time. So why Annapolis? One reason was that his father realized that graduating from the Naval Academy would open many doors for his son.
At the academy, because of some "commercial" activity, expressly forbidden by Academy rules, he racked up a huge number of demerits, but thanks to his friendship and mentor, an instructor (and unrequited racist and anti-semite, but then that was the Marine ethos of the time), made it through. Krulak had invented an entire backstory for his biography wholly at odds with his Cheyenne, WY and Jewish reality. Had the Navy known of that fiction he probably would not have made it.
Ever since the British debacle at Gallipoli, it had become standard doctrine that amphibious landings were obsolete and would never be part of future actions. The Ellis Report, part of War Plan Orange, presciently predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the island hopping strategy that made winning the war in the Pacific possible. That strategy required a multitude of amphibious landings but the Navy had no craft that would work. Krulak was to be instrumental in fixing that.
He and his pregnant wife had been posted to Shanghai, where, in 1937, he took the initiative to watch the Japanese amphibious landings in their conquest of the Chinese mainland. He was stunned to see the radical design of their landing craft and realized the flat-bottomed, ramp-equipped boats were just what the Navy needed. He whipped off a report (he was still a lowly 1st Lieutenant) to Washington anticipating swift action on their designing and building similar craft. The optimism of youth.
The story of the development of the famous landing craft and the role played by Krulak and, in particular, by a Louisiana boat builder named Higgins, is fascinating. Both Higgins and Krulak had to overcome Navy inertia and bureaucracy to get the boats built and approved. ( seeThe Boat That Won the War: An Illustrated History of the Higgins LCVP by Charles Roberts, Jr.) Inter-service rivalry also played a part and the Navy never did adopt the design. It was all Marines. Without the mentorship of General Holland Smith, whom Krulak knew from the Academy, however, he probably would have been drummed out of the Corps years before. He was later instrumental in developing tactics for the nascent Marine helicopter program.
Krulak was prominent participant in the inter-service rivalries following WW II and I was surprised at the vicious enmity that existed between the Army, which tried to get the Marines disbanded and molded into the Army, and even the Navy, envious of their reputation. The Marines never forgave the Navy for deserting them at Guadacanal. One might make a case that some of the "Chowder Gang's" (the name given to the Krulak led opposition to unifying the services) actions bordered on insubordination in their efforts to thwart Truman's wishes. He was, after all, the Commander -in-Chief. Krulak's certitude in himself spilled over into his treatment of their children, the eldest of whom described their childhood as resembling that of the Great Santini.
Reading this book, it's impossible not to come away with the feeling that the Marines won WW I, the Pacific in WW II, and Korea and that Krulak personally saved the Marines from the Marine-hating Army. Then again, Truman, got into a lot of trouble for complaining that the Marines had a propaganda campaign to rival Stalin's. Perhaps he was right.
This is the fifth Gerlis spy novel I have read. I liked all of them. They have interesting characters and sound historical grounding in real events. TThis is the fifth Gerlis spy novel I have read. I liked all of them. They have interesting characters and sound historical grounding in real events. This one follows Richard Prince, a British detective enlisted to collect information in Germany about the V-1 and V-2 rockets. It's the first in a new series. Now on to the second....more
Moorhouse portrays the life of the "average" German in Berlin from just before the war through its conclusion. For example, he notes how accidents wenMoorhouse portrays the life of the "average" German in Berlin from just before the war through its conclusion. For example, he notes how accidents went up significantly during the blackout; the murder rate rose; and in one lengthy passage describes the search by the Kriminal Polizei for a serial killer who bludgeoned dozens of women and then raped them, using the darkness as cover. Turns out he was a railroad worker who unrepentantly then blamed a Jewish doctor's wrong treatment for his gonorrhea. He was guillotined.
Following declaration of war by Britain after Hitler's invasion of Poland, Berlin remained in an uneasy quiet. Memories of WW I were still fresh, and support for the invasion was muted at best. Especially after the British began night bombing of Berlin, even though it was inconsequential.
Moorhouse describes the Kinderlandverschickung in some detail. During the fall of 1940, when it had become apparent that Goering would not be able to prevent the mass bombing of Berlin, the administration decided to evacuate children from Berlin. By the end of the year over 200,000 children had been sent to rural areas of the Reich and Czechoslovakia. Homes were requisitioned and special camps built to house the children. Recipients of the children were paid 3 DM per day, so of course, there was the usual opportunistic greed and some children became cheap labor. Some of the KLV camps --more than 9,000 camps existed by the end of the war -- were built as far away as Bulgaria which meant they needed to be evacuated west as Soviet troops pushed back on the eastern front. By the end of the war, some 900,000 children had been moved around out of the cities; an estimated 53,000 became orphans left to scavage at the end of the war. Experience varied. In some of the camps, run by the SS, political indoctrination and training for the Volksturm units was the norm. Others reported a rather carefree existence although Moorhouse reports rampant homesickness, an understandable sideffect. In the evening Fannenappel (flag call) was the norm. Moorhouse considered that a form of political indictrination, but it seems little different than the Pledge of Allegiance we all routinely say in this country.
I know it's become popular to blame all of society's ills on the latest technology: in the sixties it was television ruining our children, then the Internet, now it's cell phones. (Personally, I blame vegetables.) Germany was at the forefront of radio technology and its use for propaganda. Goebbels realized the importance of getting Hitler's message out to everyone and the Nazis heavily subsidized the cost of radios. 7,000,000 of an early low-cost set were sold in less than six years. But he also cleverly realized that propaganda could not be the sole content or people would tune out. So the proportion of music as a percentage of total broadcasting increased. Soon, everyone was sitting around the radio. Goebbels called radio the 8th great power and that the Nazis would never have achieved power without it. That coupled with Hitler's innovative use of the airplane to move around the country quickly gave the Nazis a huge edge.
But there was a downside for the Nazis to having all these radios available. It was a crime to listen to foreign broadcasts. Goebbels even insisted that red tags be affixed to every tuning dial warning of the severe penalities (11 people were executed for the crime, although this was rare) for listening to foreign broadcasts. They were constantly labeled as "fake news." But they were important to Germans as the British would broadcast the names of prisoners of war and since virtually everyone had a relation in the army, this information could become a solace. Unable to tell friends or relatives that some soldier was alive because of the broadcast, they would relate that this information came via a dream. Multiple people on the same street would have the same dream.
One interesting technology developed by the Nazis was their use of sending radio over telephone wires, a precursor to cable. This enabled people to received emergency broadcasts without any interference through the use of a splitter box attached to their radios.
Kerr has used his criminal detective Bernie Gunther to illuminate the German condition during WW II. Vigorously anti-Nazi, Bernie survives only by beiKerr has used his criminal detective Bernie Gunther to illuminate the German condition during WW II. Vigorously anti-Nazi, Bernie survives only by being an astute detective, and counter-intuitively by being excessively forthright with his evil bosses, Heydrich and Goebbels. In this rather horrifying volume of the series, Bernie is asked to carry a letter from an actress (a Goebbels' mistress) to her father, now a Croat colonel and ex-priest, who joyously runs a concentration camp for Serbs and dissidents, i.e. anyone opposed to Croatian nationalism, killing as many as possible.
The portrayal of the Ustase (it's handy to have access to Wikipedia while reading) is explicit and sickening. [ For those unfamiliar with the group, it was an odd combination of ultranationalism, Catholicism and fascism employing terror that enjoyed killing Jews, Serbs, and Roma. Very Roman Catholic, they condemned orthodox Christianity, the main religion of the Serbs, but did not oppose Islam which they considered nationalist and true Croatian where it was celebrated mostly in Bosnia and Herzegovinia. The religious aspect was downplayed in favor of nationalist Croatia.] It's rather amazing to me that Tito managed to hold Yugoslavia together as long as he did given the truly horrific slaughters that occurred between the Serbs and Croats, encouraged by the Nazis.
This is the 10th novel in the series of 11.
I've read a lot of Kerr's Bernie Gunther series. This one was OK but not as good as the original three volumes of Berlin Noir. The plot in this one was too unbelievable and the coincidences just too convenient. Still good compared to many others, just not up to his best. Perhaps the lackluster reading by John Lee, whom I usually like, had something to do with it....more
Edgar is back (I really don't like him much) in this excellent spy novel that takes place in Vienna during the forties. Not much to say in addition toEdgar is back (I really don't like him much) in this excellent spy novel that takes place in Vienna during the forties. Not much to say in addition to my comments about the other two books in the series (only loosely can they be called a series; only in the sense some of the characters are the same.) I hope Gerlis writes more. They are quite good....more
The east coast of Greenland is a vast wasteland inhabited only by a few intrepid hunters. Technically a Danish colony, some 2200 miles away and geograThe east coast of Greenland is a vast wasteland inhabited only by a few intrepid hunters. Technically a Danish colony, some 2200 miles away and geographically part of North America, the Greenland governor decided to cast the island’s lot with the allies, after Denmark was overrun by the Germans. It was of strategic importance to the United States and Britain who needed weather reports in order to predict weather over Europe. I didn’t realize just how far north the country is until I looked at a globe. It’s a forbidding country, uninhabited by only a few natives, and with severe weather.
A small group of Arctic-loving Norwegians and Danes protected the vital radio and weather equipment under very difficult circumstances. Ironically, the German captain sent to invade and seize the station was an Arctic climate lover himself and was sympathetic to those who lived and worked there. One cannot help but admire the hardiness of these folks who thought nothing of walking, often with hardly any supplies but a rifle to ward off polar bears, hundreds of miles in horrible conditions, thinking nothing of it.
The culture of these Arctic lovers and Eskimos was the antithesis of what was going on in the rest of the world. To survive they needed to be able to help each other and to count on that assistance. The prospect of shooting someone else or anything not for food was completely foreign to the Eskimos, especially, who had no comprehension of why the fighting was going on hundreds of miles away. The entire Greenland “army” consisted of nine (!) men tasked with patrolling an immense coastline. That they ever ran into anyone else is simply astonishing.
David Howarth has done a service of showing us how WW II was truly a *world* war and how it affected even desolate parts or the globe. Fascinating. I suspect some of it was fictionalized as the internal monologues and thinking of some of the participants must have been impossible to document.
N.B. The Wikipedia article on Greenland is quite interesting. It had been populated by people from Iceland until the Little Ice Age of the 13th and 14th centuries when settlements were abandoned. Study of bones shows the populace had been very malnourished. Growing anything must have been close to impossible. One theory, though, holds that they failed because of their Euro-centric thinking driven by the Church and large landowners, when to be successful they should have adopted the culture and ways of the Inuit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland The article on Greenland in WW II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenla...) provides additional detail and led me to Sloan Wilson’s Ice Brothers which I will start this afternoon. (Gotta love Kindle and credit cards.) ...more
A very interesting novel about a little known part of WW II, that of the Greenland Ice Patrol. Comprised mostly of trawlers, they were commanded by eiA very interesting novel about a little known part of WW II, that of the Greenland Ice Patrol. Comprised mostly of trawlers, they were commanded by either old-time ice fishermen or wet-nosed and inexperienced peacetime yachtsmen. The novel is based on Wilson's experience around Greenland. The fictional Wilson (Paul) was appointed as executive officer to a very experienced Mowrey, an old-timer with a terrible drinking problem, but one who could read ice conditions like no one else. The radio officer had no sea-experience at all but he had a loathing for Germans after his Jewish wife and child had disappeared somewhere in Germany. He happened to be an electronics genius, however, a skill that was to be more than valuable later on.
A sister trawler has disappeared off the east-coast of Greenland with only a lifeboat filled with machine-gunned sailors remaining. His commanding officer having been taken off the boat for alcoholism problems, Paul and Nathan, his now executive officer, are sent east to fight the Germans and dismantle whatever weather station equipment they had established. Knowing weather conditions over Greenland was crucial for air operations in Europe so both sides wanted the advantage. Greenland, part of Denmark, which had quickly surrendered to the Germans, declared a sort of independence from Denmark and was claimed by both the Axis and Allies. It was an icy wasteland inhabited (barely) by Eskimos. Wilson spends a lot of time describing the Eskimo culture and their total lack of understanding for the animosity between the two sides. His descriptions of the ice and their culture I found quite interesting, especially their attitude toward sex, totally uninhibited and devoid of any monogamous impulses, the children considered children of everyone and cared for by everyone, their emphasis being on survival and laughter -- not a bad way to get through life except for the frigging cold.
Lots of ruminations on war, hatred, why people fight and love. I enjoyed the book very much....more
Lt. Kurt Muller, nephew of the infamous Reinhold Heydrich, reports for work at the Abwehr one morning only to discover the body of his colleague, an oLt. Kurt Muller, nephew of the infamous Reinhold Heydrich, reports for work at the Abwehr one morning only to discover the body of his colleague, an ostensible suicide. It was certainly a peculiar way to kill oneself, pointing the gun to the back of his head before pulling the trigger. Odd indeed and Kurt starts asking a few questions, wondering why the Kripo is taking such little interest in the case. He’s soon promoted to the translation section where they receive all incoming signals which are then translated and distributed. The Gestapo takes an interest in Kurt’s meddling and it’s only because of his relationship to Heydrich that he’s not shot.
Kurt is sent to Ireland, where he was born, to find out what happened to their Irish agents. There he learns of the “Black Orchestra,” originally a college chess club, to which his father (his mother was German) and several others now prominent in the Abwehr had belonged. He finds himself enmeshed in a vicious political battle to take down Hitler but also for control of the Reich’s security forces orchestrated by his uncle.
It’s often a convoluted story with a few gaps but a fun read that barrels along.
Some nice similes: :”Our conversation was like a loose clutch” i.e., slow to start and jerky.”...more
Outstanding read. Patrick Blackett’s career is used as a metaphor for an examination of the role played by scientists in defeating the Nazis during WWOutstanding read. Patrick Blackett’s career is used as a metaphor for an examination of the role played by scientists in defeating the Nazis during WW II. Budiansky begins by discussing the profound effect WW I had on scientists, many of whom had served in the war and returned with deep-seated antipathy to war in general. Many turned to pacifism and Marxism as a perceived alternative, but the ill-considered racist actions of the Hitler regime against Jewish intellectuals and scientists, many of whom fled the country and were instrumental in the Allied war effort, coupled with Nazi militarism pushed them in the opposite direction.
Budiansky argues successfully that it wasn’t just new weapons and countermeasures developed by the scientists, it was also a new way of doing business for the military. They questioned the traditional ways of doing things in favor of a reliance on quantitative analysis. Focus on operational aspects often produced startling results. By looking at the statistical results of aircraft operations against U-boats depth settings were changed on depth charges and bombers were repainted white instead of black to make them less visible from the sea. These small changes resulted in the likelihood of air attack success from less than one percent to over ten percent.
In another very prosaic example, a scientist noted that long lines formed at the sinks after eating as soldiers washed their kits. Ana analysis showed it took much more time to wash the plates in the first sink than to rinse them in the second sink. Instead of having an equal number of sinks for both rinsing and washing, two thirds of the sinks were devoted to washing and that totally eliminated the lines.
Some of the conclusions reminded me of James Surowiecki’s Wisdom of Crowds ( see my review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) who postulated that the best decisions were made by groups made up of differing experiences and points of view, especially naysayers. I tried to utilize this concept as head of IT at the college. When we were doing strategic planning I always tried to include faculty from the anti-tech crowd and they often made very significant contributions that we, as IT types would never have thought of. Blackett insisted similarly in his operational activities, trying to include scientists who had no obvious experience in the area under discussion.
Mathematicians were obviously extremely important in dealing with ciphers, but their experience with probability was crucial to many important operational changes in the conduct of the war. But sailors had their own operational experience to share. Generally the word among convoy sailors was that if you were on a ship with a heavy cargo, like iron ore, you slept in your clothes on deck because, if torpedoed, it would sink like a stone. In a ship lightly cargoed, you slept in your clothes below decks, and slept lightly so you could rush on deck if hit. The only sailors getting a good night’s sleep unclothed were those in tankers. If they got torpedoed you went up in a flaming cloud so it didn't matter where you slept. Similarly, it was rapidly learned ships in convoy never stopped to retrieve survivors. Any ship that stopped became a perfect target for the U-boat and it was better not to lose another ship.
Sometimes the results of the analysis was not welcome. Blackett’s group discovered that only an estimated 400 Germans were being killed in bombing raids per month while 400 airmen were killed during the same period, hardly a fortuitous ratio. (After the war when more accurate data was available, it was learned the number of Germans killed was only about 200 per month.) They also discovered that production was more influenced by holidays rather than bombing. They recommended putting more resources into the naval battle and protecting ships that were in convoys delivering much needed goods and military supplies, i.e., the war against U-boats. That was not a message the RAF wanted to hear. They were basically told to back off and the RAF changed the justification for their bombing to the importance of “dehousing” the population. Note that the fire bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Pforzheim and Tokyo produced substantially different results. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilia...)
Inferno doesn't begin to describe it. Guadalcanal represented the first major invasion by U.S. forces in the 20th century and many hard lessons had toInferno doesn't begin to describe it. Guadalcanal represented the first major invasion by U.S. forces in the 20th century and many hard lessons had to be learned. The oft-repeated charge that the Marines were abandoned there by the Navy is belied by the statistic that for every Marine who was killed on land, five sailors died at sea in the horrific battles there. “The puzzle of victory was learned on the fly and on the cheap.”
Hornfischer brilliantly, succinctly (and often horrifically as he describes the dreadful injuries suffered by the sailors) sets the stage discussing the personal and political challenges and conflicts that affected and drove the allocation of resources: the Army v the Navy (McArthur v Nimitz and King) in the Pacific; Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in the Atlantic, with George Marshall stuck in the middle. The importance of Midway in boosting moral and altering the overall strategy cannot be overstated.
Here’s an interesting little detail. Admiral Kinkaid was a day late getting to the staging area because his charts showed the International Date Line in the wrong place. Personally, the thing always confuses me, but his staff were careful not to let the higher brass learn of the error.
Things got off to a bad start right from the beginning. Admiral Fletcher, (supported by Nimitz) in charge of the carriers, and Admiral Turner(supported by King), commanding the landing, hated each other. At the planning meeting at Saratoga, Fletcher worried about the risk to his carriers and refused to provide air support for more than 3 days. Turner, knowing the supply ships had not been combat loaded (so the most important supplies could be off-loaded first) knew that he could not afford to have the Marines abandoned after three days. This became infamous as the “Navy Bug-Out.” Whether Fletcher was correct in arguing that the risk to the carriers was far more strategically important is a debate that continues to this day. Hornfischer explains the rationale from both perspectives without coming down on either side.
The Japanese were already suffering from “victors’” disease and tended to dismiss the landings as inconsequential and but a diversion aimed at slowing down the Japanese advance on Port Moresby. The Japanese had their own army-navy slugfest of distrust. The Army, in fact, had not told the Navy that the U.S. had broken their operational code. There was no central intelligence gathering unit and army commanders had to rely as much on their instincts as hard intelligence that was virtually non-existent.
But the US Navy had a lot of hard lessons to learn. The Battle of Savo Island (otherwise known as the Battle of Five Sitting Ducks) revealed that the three minutes it took to get everyone in place after calling for general quarters was way too long. Especially as it meant having everyone run around changing places from where they had been. Leaving float planes on the decks of cruisers during action meant having aviation-fueled bombs on the rear deck. And captains ignoring the warnings of some of those being supervised could be deadly, not to mention poor communications and reluctance to trust new radar. Admiral Turner summed it up nicely: "The Navy was still obsessed with a strong feeling of technical and mental superiority over the enemy. In spite of ample evidence as to enemy capabilities, most of our officers and men despised the enemy and felt themselves sure victors in all encounters under any circumstances. The net result of all this was a fatal lethargy of mind which induced a confidence without readiness, and a routine acceptance of outworn peacetime standards of conduct. I believe that this psychological factor, as a cause of our defeat, was even more important than the element of surprise".
There were lots of lessons to be learned and many heads to roll. Communications was a big problem as frequencies differed between services and even between planes and ships. One little tidbit was that southern boys, of which there were many, had to be kept off the radios since their heavy regional accents often made them incomprehensible to those on the other end of the wireless. Another was the importance of communications and knowing the difference between friend and foe. Many casualties occurred and ships sunk because the combatants couldn't tell the difference at night.
Guadalcanal became the trial run for many of the islands that were to follow.
A man cuts some telephone lines he thinks connect the military bases one to another. He's seen by two members of the Hitler Jugend who report his acti A man cuts some telephone lines he thinks connect the military bases one to another. He's seen by two members of the Hitler Jugend who report his actions. He's summarily arrested by the local police. The regional commander is summoned and a summary trial is conducted and the man executed. This scenario occurs just four hours from the town being overrun by the Allies in Germany. The question Kershaw asks and answers is why did local bureaucracies and systems continue to function so well as apocalypse was often just minutes away. Why continue to resist at a cost of inevitable total destruction. In early 1945, German soldiers were dying at a rate of 350,000 *per month.* It was a scale of killing that even dwarfed the First World War. British and American bombers were leveling cities and killing thousands of civilians, yet the populace and it's representative structure continued to resist and function.
I was confused in the beginning by what seemed to be contradictory points, i.e., that many in the general staff and lower ranks were very supportive of Hitler to the end while at the same time he cites numerous examples of terror shown to any kind of disloyalty or wavering on the part of civilians or military, especially after the Stauffenberg assassination attempt (an astonishing 20,000 German soldiers were shot as opposed to 40 British which would indicate to me a substantial level of defeatism or discord among the lower ranks). Special squads were created to enforce loyalty and the number of executions soared. At the same time he examines numerous letters and diaries showing support for Hitler among those soldiers and the civilian bureaucracy continued to function at a high level. I might argue that finding support for a position in the myriad number of papers left by the highly literate German people might be found regardless of the overall view.
Contradictions abound and just as one view was proposed, Kershaw presented evidence to the contrary. What’s much clearer is the entanglement of motivations of many different people for many different reasons. Partly, it was that Himmler brought his administration of terror from the East back to the Reich. Another was the personal loyalty of from those mignons at the top, Himmler, Bormann, Goebbels, et al, who derived their power from Hitler so it was natural they would remain fanatically loyal to the end. The extreme brutality of the Russian soldiers on the eastern front led to the desire to hasten westward where the Americans and British were perceived to be more amiable.
The slaughter at the end of the war is simply unimaginable and Kershaw doesn’t spare the reader. Hundreds of thousands died in the last few months of the war. Twice as much tonnage of bombs were dropped by the Allies in the first four months of 1945 than in all of 1943. Millions were left homeless and fled the approach of the Soviet Army eager to apply much of the same fearsome slaughter the Germans had inflicted on the Slavic people on their march east. Fifty percent of the German soldiers who died in the war were killed in the last ten months. A few deserted, most continued to fight. The machinery of the state continued and defeatists were murdered by Nazi death squads.
The failure of the Germans to give up when clearly all was lost may lie in the culture Hitler had created. The oft cited reason of allied demands for unconditional surrender Kershaw dispenses with, if not entirely convincingly. The German people had been so used to dictatorial and fanatic leadership that they were unable to do anything but follow orders and were suitably cowed and ripe for the leadership of anyone. Put broadly, the simplest reason may be that people simply “went along to get along.”
It’s a fascinating study. My only quibble is that I think the book might have been strengthened by a comparison with events in Japan, which, one might argue, were similar. ...more
I’ve never been a huge fan of McCutchan’s Halfhyde nautical fiction, but McCutchan hits his stride in works dealing with the Royal Navy in WW II. ColdI’ve never been a huge fan of McCutchan’s Halfhyde nautical fiction, but McCutchan hits his stride in works dealing with the Royal Navy in WW II. Cold War is part of a series that follows the career of Cameron who had been on the Ark Royal when it was sunk near Gibraltar. Now he’s navigating officer on the HMS Sprinter, a frigate escorting a convoy to Russia and carrying two important officials, one a British Minister and the other a Russian general, so the stakes are higher than usual.
As is typical in wartime, nothing goes as planned and after the two VIPs, Minister of War Production Harcourt Prynne and Marshal Yurigin, had been transferred to the Sprinter in preparation for a fast trip to Murmansk, they have an engine breakdown, the captain is killed by a flying splinter, and the new captain is having eyesight problems. Cameron is now the Executive Officer, and everyone is tired of the bombasity of the new warrant officer Fasher, in charge of the guns, who loves applying punishment more than anything else. Adrift in a blinding snowstorm, their radar shows a large capital ship heading straight toward them on a collision course. In a surprising twist at the end, Cameron is ordered to do something totally unexpected.
The tension that appears in other works about the Royal Navy in WWI between reservists and regular Navy is apparent here as well and the title is clever, referring to much more than the weather on the Arctic convoys.
Fans of nautical fiction will enjoy this book. I intend to read more in the Cameron series and more in the line of nautical books published by Endeavour Books which offered me this book in hopes of an honest review which I am glad to do....more
Gerald Astor has done a masterful job of weaving together personal recollections from the different sides in the Battle of the Bulge. I really enjoy hGerald Astor has done a masterful job of weaving together personal recollections from the different sides in the Battle of the Bulge. I really enjoy history that mixes context with oral history of the participants. Stories of the rank-and-file are always interesting. In one such example, Lt. General Bradley came up to the line and was miffed when the soldier didn't accord the proper respect with a salute and told him so. The soldier replied that with all the German snipers around, any saluting made the recipient of the salute instant dog food. That, the general understood, and thanked him. I wonder if Patton would have reacted the same. Probably would have been another slapping incident. Of course, no sniper would have failed to see the pearl-handled revolvers. That positive aside, with all the different characters and such a close-up of individual events, it’s sometimes difficult to get the broader picture.
Few of the German commanders were optimistic about the success of Hitler's command for the breakout to take Antwerp through the Ardennes. Training had been poor and the units thrown together collected the rejects of other units. Hitler had ordered that each unit send their best troops, but most commanders, not being daft, sent their rejects and kept the best for themselves. Field Marshal Model was quoted as believing that the attack had barely a ten percent chance of success. Ironically, Skorzeny's idea of dressing Germans as American soldiers paid off occasionally. In one instance a bridge that was to be blown to hinder German tanks, failed to go up because some of the “Americans” involved in laying the charges sabotaged the effort.
Things weren't much better on the American side. The brass were wildly over optimistic in their assessment of German strength and generally bought the air corps reports that the German war machine had been decimated, something we now know to be a fairy tale. German war production was actually up, although they were having some fuel issues. The army did not trust civilians so they disregarded OSS information gleaned from the populace. In addition the troops on the line, as the Germans intelligence had reported, had become a 9-5 army, keeping watch only until about an hour after sunset, then hitting the sack, returning to their observation points an hour before dawn. This lead some German commanders to want to cancel the proposed artillery barrage that was to proceed the attack arguing it would simply alert the American troops. They were overruled. Often, troops that had hardly been in any fighting were ordered to destroy their weapons and surrender. Given the incident at Malmedy, they might have done better to keep fighting. At least then they might have sown a bit more confusion among the German ranks. (I was shocked at how many soldiers were injured when they tried to destroy their rifles by smashing them on rocks only to shoot themselves because they had failed to unload them.) Sometimes paperwork and bureaucracy hindered soldiers in the field. One airdrop of food and ammunition was ultimately canceled because the C-47s, flying out of the UK (another mistake) was canceled when fighter protection hadn’t been notified and the appropriate maps remained undelivered.
It’s a wonder things went as well as they did for the Germans, given the poor training of the “volunteers,” and their own lack of faith in the attempt. Certainly the overly optimistic allies helped. Montgomery was convinced, “the enemy was in a bad way,” and had neither the transport nor fuel to mount an attack. The American front line was know as a 9-5 army, staying on guard until only one hour past dark, then heading back to their huts for sleep, returning to their posts an hour before daybreak.
But after the salient attacks on Bastogne, the push back from the Third Army was tortuous for the infantry. The Germans had specifically infiltrated English-speaking troops in American uniforms into their front lines and they had captured a lot of American equipment so sometimes telling who was the enemy could be problematic. The ground was frozen making foxholes almost impossible to dig, dysentery was rampant, and outfits shifted from place to place making the soldiers wonder just where they were and having no understanding for the total picture. “With all of our constant confusion, I couldn’t see how we were winning and the Germans were retreating. I wasn’t killing anybody. I didn’t see any Germans and their only manifestation was in their shells and machine guns.” Many were frustrated and the inevitable atrocities occurred. “They had nothing to look forward to—except a wound that would evacuate them or a coffin . . . . fighting mad after wading through waist-high snowdrifts for twelve hours to get to Herresbach. Some of our boys ran wild, shooting everything that moved in the town. The Krauts used up all their ammo shooting at our guys, then came out yelling, ‘Kamerad!’ Our troopers would reply with ‘Kamerad, hell!’ and a burst from a tommy gun.” Patton even remarked in his diary that he hoped no one would find out.
In the end, it’s no spoiler that the attempted German breakout was doomed to failure as the Allies’ overwhelming air superiority and materiel determined the outcome as did Hitler’s failure to provide support for the effort once underway. Probably not the best book to read for an overall strategic view of the battle, but excellent for detailed personal accounts.
After 18 months in an NKVD jail for “treason,” i.e. showing more intelligence than his commanding officer, Yuri Nosenko, is suddenly released, fed andAfter 18 months in an NKVD jail for “treason,” i.e. showing more intelligence than his commanding officer, Yuri Nosenko, is suddenly released, fed and treated medically, and given his old rank of captain back. He’s become far more cynical during the course of the war.
“His arrest by the NKVD after Smolovici exposed the treachery, the lies, the twisted logic of Party doctrine, its fear and paranoia. Stalin’s death mills came into sharp focus during his encounter with Soviet justice. Never more than after witnessing Colonel Antonov’s vengeful, fabricated testimony against him—dereliction of duty, disobeying a direct order. And how members of the tribunal hearing his case had, without a moment’s deliberation, returned a unanimous verdict. Guilty of all charges.”
Nosenko learns the reason behind his release is his knowledge of german and Berlin where he had been stationed before the war. The Russians desperately want him to find General Heinrich Müller (known as Gestapo Müller) who has escaped both the NKVD and American intelligence after faking his death during the fall of Berlin. He has documents showing the Russians had committed atrocities against the Poles at Katyn Forest (Nosenko doesn’t know this, only that the Russians are fearful the documents will fall into Allied hands. Müller is ostensibly negotiating with the Allies, but no one knows his location except it’s in Berlin somewhere.) It’s a seemingly impossible task.
To make matters worse, Nosenko’s old nemesis, General Antonov, is now his boss and wants him to fail. Nosenko’s search becomes a descent into never-never land, trudging through the ruins of Berlin, trying to stay ahead of Antonov, but forced to make daily reports. But just what can he report? If he didn’t report the hidden room at Seelingstrasse 509, it might prove useful later, though how he didn’t know. Failure to report it might prove dangerous if Antonov already knew about the room and was waiting to see if Nosenko had found it—a test. If Antonov knew about the room, what else did he know? Had the NKVD planted the wedding dress? The map fragment? If they had, it likely meant that Antonov and Fitin knew that Katarine still lived in the apartment. Another test?
There’s a scene to warm the hearts of all librarians in which Nosenko needs to find some files in the Gestapo archives. The Germans were meticulous record keepers and he believes the files will help him locate Müller. Unfortunately, Gestapo headquarters is a shambles and many of the boxes have been rained on. But he, with the help of another “reprieved Soviet” scour the files and after hours manage to locate what they are looking for.
The story and writing are above average except for short occasional passages of maudlin sentimentality that don’t fit. Great story.
Historical note: Müller is the only high command German who was never captured and whose death has never been confirmed. He had worked his way up through the police to become head of the SS counter-intelligence units and investigated the assassination of Heydrich in Czechoslovakia. He was last seen in Hitler’s bunker the day after Hitler’s suicide....more
# 4 in the John Russell series. At the end of volume 3 in this excellent series, Russell had escaped to Sweden and Effi had returned to Berlin, hiding# 4 in the John Russell series. At the end of volume 3 in this excellent series, Russell had escaped to Sweden and Effi had returned to Berlin, hiding in plain sight disguised as an old woman by using her make-up and acting skills. Germany had just declared war on America and the Gestapo sought both of them. Fast forward to April, 1945. Paul, John’s son, is sixty miles from Berlin on the eastern front as part of a Panzerfaust unit as the eastern front shrinks, Effi is surviving but also working to help refugees escape, and Russell is in Moscow hoping to enter Berlin with the Russian troops to find Effi.
Downing follows the travails of John (struggling to get back to Berlin to find Effie), Effie (hiding from the Gestapo as she helps refugees escape the city), and Paul (trying to stay alive as his unit is pushed back to Berlin) as each tries to survive the war in the inferno that 1945 Berlin had become. And Downing vividly describes that hell.
I won’t risk spoiling anything about the plot. Let it be enough to say this series is excellent, but please read them in order.
NB: Re the Kindle edition. The book switches perspectives regularly, e.g., from Russell to Effi to Paul and back, and there is often no transition in the Kindle edition, it’s just the next paragraph, no space, no chapter, no nothing. That needs to be fixed. On the other hand, I see there are new editions out and mine is an older one, so perhaps that has been fixed. ...more
I must say I have enjoyed this series (which I recommend reading in order) so far. This is the third and continues an examination of Germany during WoI must say I have enjoyed this series (which I recommend reading in order) so far. This is the third and continues an examination of Germany during World War II as seen through the eyes of Russell, an American journalist, who is tied to Germany by his girlfriend, Effie, and his German-born son.
You get a real sense of the claustrophobia people must felt as they became hemmed in by bombing and the repressiveness of the regime, constantly having to watch what you say, who you say it to, and who might overhear you.
Downing is very skillful in showing elements of the Third Reich’s control. For example, Russell stops to purchase a copy of the Beobachter in which he reads that Ernst Udet, WW I ace and big Luftwaffe general had been killed testing a new fighter plane. Thinking that was a bit strange I utilized the wonderful feature of my Kindle and clicking on Udet’s name read the piece on Udet in the Wikipedia only to learn that Udet had committed suicide. So I figured Downing had erred. Just a few pages later, however, at a press briefing, he uses a question from another reporter to point to the suicide (“Does the administration have any comment on the rumor that Udet had committed suicide?”) The truth is outed as well as the ministry’s attempts to hide it.
Russell is a journalist, after all, and in his attempts to discover what’s really happening on the eastern front, he cultivates a locomotive engineer. Some of the important detail that’s revealed I had not learned by reading the standard discussions of the Nazi failure in the Russian winter. For example, Russian tenders carried a larger supply of water, so their water tanks were further apart; the steam pipes were built around the boiler rather than on the outside as with German engines, so they didn’t freeze. These all provided clues for Russell as to why the war in the east had bogged down.
Some people have complained about the ending. It’s a series. Get over it, people. I can’t wait to start the 4th. As I noted above, read them in order. ...more
I received a free advanced reader's ebook (lots of editing yet to do) in return for an honest appraisal.
This is the rather extraordinary story of an I received a free advanced reader's ebook (lots of editing yet to do) in return for an honest appraisal.
This is the rather extraordinary story of an operation that saved many lives in Holland following the harsh winter of 1944-1945. The winter was harsh on the Germans as well who had barely enough food for themselves. An appeal from the Dutch government in exile to Franklin Roosevelt--Roosevelt was rather proud of his Dutch ancestry (the British were not particularly helpful)-- resulted in his request to Eisenhower to help the Dutch. He died before anything concrete could be done. Once the operation was approved, the problem became how to deliver the supplies. Eisenhower and his chief of staff Bedell Smith took over the operation and following extensive negotiations, the Nazi governor of Holland ordered the troops not to fire on the low flying bombers who were dropping food from as low as three hundred feet.
But the story is more complicated. It involved Operation Market Garden, a Monty flop mostly due to his failure to trust Prince Bernhard, German born and ex-Nazi, but now married to the heiress to the Dutch throne. Bernhard had become a vigorously loyal Dutch advocate whose contacts with the Dutch resistance provided information that could have prevented the disaster at Arnhem. The result of Market Garden was to leave western Holland in the control of the Germans and isolated. The Germans, by this time, perhaps all but Hitler, realized the war was lost, but Hitler had refused to pull German troops out of Holland and he had issued a "destroy everything" order through Albert Speer. Speer was reluctant to enforce it, as was the German governor, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who was willing to help the Dutch for his own reasons.
This book is not for everyone. It's a very detailed look at the negotiations and diplomacy required to pull off a rescue mission that saved many lived in Holland. It's also an interesting view into the lives of Germans who knew the war was lost and the actions they took in response to that knowledge. For historians or those interested in events of the last year of the war, it's a gold mine.
Audrey Hepburn plays a minor role in the author's portrayal of Dutch suffering during the winter.
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