The Battle of the River Plate by Richard Woodman. Review by Jonathan Beard

Military history, like any other field with a vast literature, produces many mediocre books, a few excellent ones, and a fair number that were not worth publishing. The Battle of the River Plate, unfortunately, falls into the last category. It is marred by a few minor mistakes and fails to present the battle between the British cruisers and the pocket battleship in an interesting way. But, more important, it represents opportunities missed. We have a well understood battle, one that was chronicled by Dudley Pope’s entertaining 1956 book of the same title. Anyone publishing a book in 2008 should have new information to present, or a new interpretation of the battle. Woodman has little new information–and missed some that was available at the time he was writing the book–and nothing in the way of interpretation. There are two sections at the end of the book called “Aftermath” and “Analysis,” but they do not contain any real analysis. They do have some interesting material on the two commanders–Captain Langsdorff and Commodore Harwood–and the fact that hundreds of crew members from the Graf Spee ended up either staying in Argentina, or emigrating there after World War II. But nothing on the importance–if any–of the pocket battleship’s short-lived career as a raider or her destruction by British forces.

The two most obvious things missing from the book concern radar and salvage. The Admiral Graf Spee was one of four ships equipped with the first model of Germany’s Seetakt radar, a search set that operated at a wavelength of 60 cm. As far as I can tell from reading various websites, the Graf Spee used this for surface search during her weeks in the South Atlantic, but did not use it for fire control. But there is not a word about this in Woodman’s book, even though I believe this was the first time radar was used at sea during the war. The only time he mentions radar is at the end, when he points out that when the pocket battleship was scuttled, the tower, with the radar antenna, remained intact and above water. The Royal Navy sent a technician, and Woodman reports that he “removed a section of the antenna and the cathode ray tube.” The former makes sense–the antenna is visible in photos of the wreck, and recovering a piece would enable British technicians to determine its operating wavelength. But it is hard to believe the fragile cathode ray tube would have survived the explosions and fire, and it would not have been at the foretop with the antenna–so I doubt the latter is true. More important, though, one thing that we know much more about in 2008 than in 1956 is radar. If the Graf Spee used it–to locate targets, much less for fire control–this should have been in this book.

The other omission is less important. Woodman ought to have known that the systematic salvage of the wreck began in 2004. The main range finder and the large eagle with a swastika have been removed–and possibly much more by the time this book came out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_pocket_battleship_Admiral_Graf_Spee

Review of James Holland’s “ITALY’S SORROWS”

In many ways James Holland’s new book, Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-45 is a very excellent book.

The absolute horror that civilians experienced as the front line moved throughout the Italy in 1944 is described in detail. The military analysis is balanced with Italian, Allied and Axis perspectives. The combination of solid military analysis and the inclusion of a multiplicity of perspectives make this book excellent.

It comes really as no surprise that for each moment that the front line was in movement, and thru each village it passed, the citizens of those in the general are were subject to abject horrors. The surprise is that Holland transcends the normal boundaries of military history to include the perspective of the non-combatants. Refreshingly, the fears and attitudes of Italian non-combatants, partisans and soldiers alike are featured equally. Their recollections are forceful and don’t always fit neatly with the historical narrative we think we know. Italy was having a near all out civil war after the collapse of the government in Rome. Italy was under the aegis of three different governments: the mafia infested allied occupational government in the south, Axis occupational government in the north and of course, the rump puppet government of Mussolini, the Salo Republic.

But, if you were a civilian living astride the front line you had more pressing problems than who was in charge where. You would be very lucky if the war would move through your town or village in a day or maybe two days. There would be shelling, there would be death – but it would be over quick.

If you were unlucky, like those that lived in Casino or in other places up and down the Italian peninsula, the war would stall in your town or village for not one or two days but months or weeks. When this stall occurred the destruction was usually complete, 90% – 100% of structures destroyed in a given area, not to mention the loss of life and the horrendous conditions of living in a war zone. Your home would be destroyed; your livelihood gone and many, many friends and family would be killed.

Holland brilliantly follows several Italian families who experienced this passing of the front. The recollections about those killed by ordinance that has not yet exploded or the feeling of utter confusion of wandering through a battlefield in the absence of information attempting to reach safety, but knowing full well, that any second could be the last for you and your family, all make for harrowing reading.

Civilians faced danger from the air, from both allied and axis aircraft, danger from ground troops, incessant shellfire, land minds and extreme German anti-partisan laws that legalized killing anyone for any reason.

Soldiers, at least generally, have access to food, water, medical attention and information. Civilians on the battlefield, generally, have none of these things in quantity. These elements of the civilian experience of war are often under explored in history and military history books, yet they are at the forefront of Holland’s history. For this, he deserves much credit for these eye opening accounts of Italy’s Sorrow.

The New York Times Reviews HUMAN SMOKE

Today The New York Times Book Review examined Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke.

Here is part of Colm Toibin’s closing paragraph of this excellent review:

“It is possible that “Human Smoke” will infuriate those who believe that Churchill was a hero and that war, in all its viciousness, is often the only way to defeat those who declare or threaten war. “Human Smoke” will not be admired by those who argue that methods used to win a war may seem, especially to novelists writing more than 60 years later, impossible to justify. Nonetheless, the issues Baker wishes to raise, and the stark system he has used to dramatize his point, make his book a serious and conscientious contribution to the debate about pacifism. He has produced an eloquent and passionate assault on the idea that the deliberate targeting of civilians can ever be justified. “

This writer can’t help but think that binary thinking, that Baker strongly rejects, i.e. good vs. evil, and the with us or against us mindset, only speeds the march to war.

–JD

Nicholson Baker’s HUMAN SMOKE

A Brief Review of Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke

I did not open Human Smoke with an open mind about the origins of the Second World War. My strongest conviction about the Second World War, namely that the war was perhaps the only one the United States fought for the right reasons in nearly 200 years, are still intact. Yet Nicholson Baker effectively challenges all readers to at least open their eyes to the possibility that the actions of the Allied nations were not uniformly moral in the run up to the war. Undoubtedly, the western democracies held the moral high ground before and during the war. Human Smoke reminds us how slippery a moral slope these nations were on.

Baker is an unapologetic pacifist. He quotes numerous other pacifists that were living contemporary to the origins of the war. Human Smoke is written in episodic style in lieu of more traditional narrative history. Thus, Baker’s pacifist leanings and his style are likely to be too nonconformist for many reviewers. This book isn’t a comprehensive look at the beginnings of the war. Yet, this episodic style provides Baker with the opportunity to quickly change topic without transitions or linking narrative. The end result is that a great deal of complementary information is presented to readers in short compact pieces.

The run-up up to the war was an unmitigated disaster. This was not just because Germany was unrestrained by the rest of Europe. Contributing to the disaster, according to Baker, was a distinct lack of compassion on the part of leaders like Roosevelt and Churchill who failed to compassionately help the oppressed escape Europe. The Nazi hate machine made it very clear from the beginning that life as the Jews of Europe knew it would be drastically different.

 

Compounding disaster was the fact that even after the war began in 1939, Baker reminds us, there were opportunities to try and bring the world back from the brink. These opportunities were uniformly missed. Once the war began the sheer folly that was strategic bombing brought death to innocent civilians in unprecedented numbers without an appreciable effect on morale.

If you’re interested in reading about moral equivalence and war, or are willing and desirous of challenging some of your core precepts about good vs. evil and the beginnings of the Second World War, this is certainly a book you will remember.

-Jeff Demers