WWII

German Pocket Battleships: Shipcraft 1 by Rogar Chesneau

. In the volume, the author has chosen the German ‘pocket battleships’ of WW2, the best known of which was the Admiral Graf Spee, scuttles after the battle of the River Plate in 1939. This innovative and infamous class of surface raiders has long been a popular subject for ship modellers, many manufactures producing kits of the Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer and the rather different Deustschland. This book shows model shipwrights how to turn their kits into something really special, while its unparalleled level of visual information is a superb source for the general warship enthusiast.

Antonio Bonomi is working on a volume of Kriegsmarine Naval Histories for Nimble Books that will complement this perfectly.

King George V- Class Battleships: Shipcraft 2 by Rogar Chesneau

The second volume in a new series providing ship modellers with all they need to know about a famous class of warship and associated model kits.
The five battleships of the King George V Class were the most modern to serve the Royal Navy in World War II; all rendered invaluable service in the war effort, and, indeed, the first two could be credited with influencing the very course of the conflict. Instrumental in the sinking of the battleship Bismarck, they bought about a fundamental shift in German naval policy, the emphasis moving away from heavy surface ships and towards the U-boat arm. With its unparalleled level of visual information- colour schemes, models, line drawings and photographs-it is simply the best reference for any model-maker setting out to build one these great battleships.

If you’re going to apply that logic, then you should also credit PRINCE OF WALES with changing the course of the war in the Pacific, sealing the loss of Singapore, and ending the British Empire.

That being said, I’d love to have a copy of this book!

Discussion forum for WORLD WAR II AND THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR.

The purpose of this book is to mine the military history of World War II for ideas and insights that may be helpful in understanding the “Global War on Terror.” I hasten to add that I do not advance a simple-minded equation between the two global struggles. I merely suggest that there are enough similarities to sustain interesting discussion. At the macro level, World War II was an effort by various major powers to recast the world system to their advantage. Does that sound anything like what’s happening today?

To be sure, the current struggle is different in many ways. To name just one, non-state organizations like al Qaeda and Hezbollah have played a major role in the most dramatic events of the period. But one might argue that the very reason non-state organizations have been so active is that the Western powers enforce a world system in which the power of the formerly “colonial” states is severely limited. In this light, the new power of non-state organizations is, fundamentally, a reaction to the system of international relations. In this view, it is no accident that the formerly colonial nations of the world have produced most of the angry non-state actors.

Furthermore, one must acknowledge that in many ways the current era is quite familiar, as conventional nation-states are working assiduously to recast the world system to their advantage. In that respect, the current period seems a lot like other periods of convulsive global change such as the Napoleonic era, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War.

At the micro level, some things are familiar, some things are not. Just as in WWII, G.I.s are riding around in trucks and relying on superior firepower while America sends expeditionary forces to the far corners of the earth in pursuit of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. But the “coalition of the willing” is a lot less robust than the Allied Coalition in World War II when either the United States or the Soviet Union, standing alone, had enough industrial power to overwhelm any combination of the Axis powers. Similarly, despite the flip David Shrum coinage of the phrase “Axis of Evil,” the “Axis” in the current struggle is in many respects different from the actual Axis of World War II. Palestinian homeboys being crushed by Israeli bulldozers are a lot more sympathetic than Nazis wearing the double lightning bolts of the Waffen SS.

I will argue in this book that there is a great deal that can be learned about the current struggle from looking at World War II at the “micro” level of individual battles and campaigns. The simple reason why this is true is that, as Ecclesiastes observed, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Of course, things do change, but many fundamental principles of war, politics, technology, and human nature remain the same. When we look closely at the campaigns and battles of World War II, it will not be difficult to find patterns and phenomena that give pause for thought about today’s situation.

One might argue that other historical periods are, in fact, more similar to the current period than World War II. For example, the Napoleonic period can be seen as a ruthless effort by a single “hyperpower,” governed by an ambitious, aggressive militarist, to export its radical social model throughout the “civilized” world, on its own terms, in a completely un-collegial manner. Sound familiar?

Let me conede at the outset that other historical periods may well shed equal or more light on the current struggle. There are sound practical reasons why I have chosen World War II as the jumping off point for my discussion.

WW II has been the subject of exhaustive study. Hundreds of thousands of books and monographs have been published. Official records and archives have been opened for scrutiny. We think we know most of what actually happened (unless we have read too many Jack Higgins novels). Most people who are interested in military history know at least something about the military history of World War II. Yet for almost everyone, there’s still plenty to learn! Finally, there is a ready-made community that should find the premise of this book provocative and interesting. At the end of the day, publishing is a practical art.

wfzimmerman's review: "An essential book for any WWII buff. Edited by Liddell-Hart."
Da Capo Press (1996), Paperback, 528 pages

wfzimmerman's review: "A canonical item for the WWII collection, but subsequent historiography has illuminated Liddell-Hart's active role in burnishing his own reputation."
Harper Perennial (1971), Paperback, 320 pages

wfzimmerman's review: "A fascinating subject to anyone interested in WWII naval history. The Italian frogmen were among the most effective "special forces" of all time, being single-handedly responsible for sinking or severely damaging several warships. I often wonder if the US Navy might be more vulnerable than it should be to an attack by frogmen with under-the-keel mines."
Da Capo Press (2004), Hardcover, 256 pages

Publishers Weekly shoots John Gaddis some lurve in this starred review::

If it’s difficult to imagine a history of the Cold War that can be described as thrilling, that should add more luster to Yale historian Gaddis’s crown. Gaddis, who’s written some half-dozen studies of the Cold War, delivers an utterly engrossing account of Soviet-U.S. relations from WWII to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. The ideological clash between democratic capitalism and communism predated the war, of course, but the emergence of nuclear weapons created a new political situation. Suddenly, it was easy to imagine total war that might destroy not only the enemy but also the victor. Gaddis assesses what he sees as the positive contributions Thatcher, Reagan and Pope John Paul II made to furthering the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. and concludes with a sympathetic portrait of Gorbachev; his refusal to use force ultimately cost him both communism and his country, but, says Gaddis, it also made him “the most deserving recipient ever of the Nobel Peace Prize.” The interpretations on offer are not startlingly original—we’ve read this before, mostly in other books by Gaddis himself—but a new, concise narration was Gaddis’s aim here, and he succeeds royally. His synthesis is sure to reign with general history readers and in undergraduate classrooms.

The best history of the Cold War that I’ve read is Norman Friedman’s THE FIFTY-YEAR WAR.

David Westheimer, 1917-2005 | Ann Arbor District Library

David Westheimer, author of Von Ryan’s Express (1964), died yesterday in Los Angeles.

The former WWII POW and later editor of the former Houston Post newspaper, used his wartime experience to pen Von Ryan’s Express which was made into a movie by the same name a year later, and starred Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard. In 1980, Westheimer wrote the sequel, Van Ryan’s Return.

Westheimer also wrote My Sweet Charlie (1965), which became a Broadway play in 1966 and which netted Patty Duke an Emmy for the TV adaptation in 1970.

David Westheimer was 88.

The book is darned good, and the movie is true to it. This is a death to be mourned.

Update: my trusty Ann Arbor District Library still had its first edition of the 1964 book. I re-read it this weekend. It is still a cracking good story with well constructed characters in a compelling situation. Gee, with all the cruddy Hollywood movies that they remake, why don’t they remake Von Ryan’s Express? It’s a natural.

The novel has aged well. There are some aspects of the story I didn’t notice on first reading that stood out more this time. For example, to make his escape from the prison train, Ryan has to kill twelve guards with his bare hands. That’s a lot of killing, and it shakes him … which is absolutely realistic.

One of Ryan’s key aides is the camp padre, who winds up being intimately involved in the death of German soldiers who confided in him in the confessional. Ryan forces him to make a choice between his uniform as a soldier and his uniform as a chaplain. A great side part for an accomplished actor!