Category Archives: Book Reviews

The obvious, reviews of books I have read

Book Review: July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin

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I have probably read 30-40 books exploring the origins of World War I in the past 5-6 years and I thought that just about everything relevant there was to be known about the events of the month leading up to the war were known and historians have just been stirring the ashes and finding trivia in trying to determine a more accurate chain of causation. July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin disabused of that notion.  This work has made me aware of several things about the critical month between the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War I that I am amazed have not gotten wider notice in the literature on World War I’s origins. This book is superb diplomatic history that through tight, focused prose and in depth research manages to untangle the tangled web of events in July 1914.

The book itself has 406 pages of text separated into two sections of 25 chapters including an Author’s Note, prologue, and epilogue. There are extensive endnotes for each chapter with relevant footnotes inserted into the text where appropriate and a 10 page bibliography. The two sections of the book cover the immediate reactions of the Great Powers of the day to the assassination and the subsequent diplomatic maneuvering leading up to the war.

There are several revelations in the book and no time is wasted in introducing the first, which I thought was a bombshell. This is that the relevant Russian and French archives have almost no records of the activities of their respective ambassadors for the month of July. What records for their activities that do exist are all secondary sources from the other great powers such as Germany, Austria, and Britain. I find it amazing that this lack of records has not been more highly touted in books on the origins of the war as it was these ambassadors, Paléologue for the French in St. Petersburg and Izvolsky for the Russians in France that played a pivotal role in relations of the two countries during the period leading up to Russian mobilization and the coordination between the two Allies. Another interesting fact that has gotten short shrift in the literature thus far is the sequence of events and timelines surrounding Russian mobilization. It is widely known that Russia began mobilization before any other power, what is not so widely known is that Russia had apparently decided on war at the time she declared the pre-mobilization “Period Preparatory to War” which was just mobilization by another name to begin with.

I have thought for years that the ultimate responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914 lay with Russia. McMeekin’s work tends to confirm me in that belief. The final decision for war lay with the Tsar and more importantly with Sazonov his Foreign Minister and Yanushkevitch the Chief of the General Staff, both of whom pushed for war. .As you read the narrative it becomes increasingly clear that Russia wanted war. Why is not perfectly clear although it is certainly plausible that Russia felt they needed to be assertive because they had been humbled so often in the decade prior to the war and that Russia was at risk of losing its status as a great power. There is also the element of Russian lust for control of the outlet on the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, which would give the Russians a warm water port and was something they had wanted at least as far back as the Crimean War. Russia wanted war and right up until the last minute they had the ability to avoid one, all they had to do was stand down and allow the Austrians to punish Serbia for their support of regicide. That, the Russians would not do and in the end they dragged the rest of Europe into a war that was unnecessary.

Sean McMeekin has taken an opaque subject like diplomatic history and shed light on the manner in which diplomacy was conducted in the month prior to World War I. He masterfully weaves together the various actions of all the powers of Europe and makes a very complex series of events clear and easy to understand. July 1914: Countdown to War is the best diplomatic history of the period I have ever run across and is certain to become a classic and the standard work on the subject. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in why and how World War I broke out. A very clear look at a very muddy subject.

Book Review: Castles and Fortified Cities of Medieval Europe: An Illustrated History by Jean-Denis G. G. Lepage

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Castles and Fortified Cities of Medieval Europe: An Illustrated History is a very interesting book.  I picked it up because we had a three hour bus ride to get to my son’s football game and my wife was using my Kindle.  I am certainly glad I did.

This is a well written 330 page book.  It includes an index and bibliography, both unfortunately short.  The book is organized chronologically in five chapters covering fortification and castles from the 5th to the 16th century A.D.  Each chapter is further subdivided geographically and covers both eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East. There are many illustrations, both ground plans and sketches that help to illuminate the text. This is a very good introductory volume to medieval fortification.

I found the book to be both entertaining and informative.  The author has a very readable writing style and except for using the unavoidable specialist vocabulary of fortification is easy to understand.  For someone like me who finds the military aspects of castles fascinating it was quite illuminating to read.  I already knew quite a bit about castles but I learned a few things myself.  Of particular interest to me was the discussion of the development of the Trace Italienne fortifications of the 15th and 16th centuries.  I was not aware that many of the elements of that style were not really developed in Italy, but instead were only perfected there. One of the most interesting things about this book is that the author deliberately chose to focus most of this work on less famous castles and forts.  Everyone has heard of Carcassonne, Beaumaris, and Krak des Chavaliers.  Most people have not heard or seen descriptions of such equally important castles as Helmond Castle in the Netherlands or Bellver in Spain.  Many of these lesser known castles are fascinating in their own right and the descriptions cause me to add some of them to my bucket list of places to visit.

The only complaint I have about this book is that it does not include a glossary of terms which I feel would be extremely useful, especially for people unfamiliar with the technical terms for the parts of fortification   It can become pretty confusing to keep the different elements in mind when the author continually throws around such terms as enciente, ravelin, keep, donjon, burgfried, bastille, bastion, etc. Overall this well-written and illustrated work about medieval European and Middle Eastern castles and frost is well worth reading.  I highly recommend this work to anybody interested in European castles and how they developed over time.

Book Review: Death in the Baltic by Cathryn J. Prince

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author for purposes of reviewing it. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own]

Wilhelm Gustloff Modell sx3 cropped

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a German built pleasure ship built by the Nazis to bolster their public image both at home and abroad in the late 1930′s.  It is remembered today because when it was sunk by a Soviet submarine in early 1945 as it was evacuating civilians and wounded military personnel from East Prussia to Kiel its sinking became the ship sinking with the highest loss of life in recorded history.  Nobody knows for sure but the smart money is that somewhere north of 8,500 people died when the Gustloff sank into the icy Baltic waters on January 30, 1945.  This is a story that should have been told a long time ago as it is an event that is virtually forgotten outside of the families who lost relatives and historians.  I would love to be able to say that Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by Cathryn Prince is the book to tell that story but there are so many issues with the book itself that I have a hard time doing that.

The book is 200 pages of text separated into eleven chapters with an appendix, notes for each chapter, a bibliography, and index.  The chapters describe the war in the east, the drive for Germans to evacuate, the evacuation operation itself, the situation in the Baltic, and the sinking and rescue of the ship.  The writing is for the most part very clear, though there were parts where I was confused as to what point the author was trying to make or what information she was trying to impart.

First, let me say that it is obvious that quite a bit of effort and research went into writing this book.  That alone makes the glaring errors that appear regularly throughout the text so disheartening.  All is not bleak in my review however.  The book does an outstanding job of narrating the events surrounding the sinking and subsequent rescue attempts.  I also found the stories of what the survivors did post war to be extremely interesting and well written.

The errors, I generally tab books that I read for review at places where there are errors or misinformation as well as passages of particular note.  This book has plenty of the former and only one of the latter.  Many of the errors are simple errors of fact that even a cursory search of Wikipedia or Google would show to be wrong.  Some examples of this include:  1. pg. 17 – The claim is made that a sailor received a payment in Deutsche Marks in January, 1945.  This could not be since in January, 194 the German currency was the ReichsMark and the Deutsche Mark was not introduced for circulation until 1948 and in the intervening Years occupation scrip and ReichsMarks had been used Post-War.  2. pg. 31 – The claim is made that German girls joined the Hitler Youth at the age of ten.  They did not, German girls joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel, which was the female Nazi youth organization.  This is corrected later and then the terms are used interchangeably, which they are not. The Bund Deutscher Mädel and Hitler Youth were two separate organizations with separate training programs.  3. pg. 40 – I was surprised to find out that the 6th Army that surrendered at Stalingrad only had 90,000 men.  It would be useful to make it clear that that is how many men surrendered but that the 6th Army had upwards of 500,000 men on it’s roster and only 90,000 men survived to go into captivity.  These are just a few of the examples of factual errors.

Chapter five discussing the tactical and operational situation in the Baltic Sea is thoroughly confusing in its entirety.  Mainly because one gets the impression that the author does not have a good grasp of geography.  She seems to use the terms Black Sea and Baltic Sea interchangeably or at least as though one were an extension of the other.  That is certainly not the case as the two seas are separated by over 1,500 km on land and to get from one to the other by sea you have to travel through the Mediterranean, Atlantic Ocean, and North Sea.

There are many other similar instances of confused facts or outright misinformation in the first six chapters of the book.  I found myself jarred every time I ran across one.  Some are obvious editing errors such as misspelling Führer to errors that showed a lack of basic knowledge of the time.  Not every reader will catch many of these mistakes, but that does not excuse them.  I found myself wondering as I read it if any historian had proofread the book prior to publication?  Almost all mistakes are amenable to simple fixes that can be fixed in subsequent editions.

This could be an outstanding book about a little known, obscure, but important topic. The author is absolutely correct that the suffering of ethnic Germans in East Europe has largely been ignored post-war. She is also correct that it is time these stories were told and told in such a way that it is clear that not every German was a Nazi but that all Germans ended up being painted with the Nazi brush.

Because of the nature and importance of the story told and topic covered I will reluctantly recommend this book.  There are almost literally no other English languages sources for stories of the dislocation of ethnic Germans at the end of WWII. Readers should just keep in mind that the best and most important part of the narrative is that part surrounding the actual events just before, during, and after the MV Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed. The author has showcased her research and storytelling ability in these compelling chapters. I only wish that the same attention to detail had gone into the rest of the book.

 

 

Book Review: Dresden: A Survivor’s Story by Victor Gregg

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own]

Victor Gregg’s Dresden: A Survivor’s Story is a short work describing the author’s experience as  POW who got caught in Dresden in February, 1945 when the Allies bombed the city in what would become known as the Firebombing of Dresden.  The attack essentially destroyed the city center and killed an estimated 25,000 German’s.  Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the attacks that also discusses the controversy surrounding them that has grown up since the war.  To sum up the controversy, general anti-war people claim they were a crime and so do Neo-Nazi’s.  Both claim that Dresden was not a legitimate military target or that if it was the bombing did not hit them.

Back to the book.  Dresden: A Survivor’s Story, is the story of what one man saw and did just before, during, and just after the bombing.  Printed the book would only amount to roughly 40 pages.  It is an engaging tale and the author writes with a witty sarcasm that keeps the narrative flowing.  The events he relates surrounding the Dresden bombing seem fantastical but are probably accurate representations of what actually happened.  There is no doubt that the bombing of Dresden and it’s aftereffect were horrific.  Mr. Gregg’s narrative reflects this.  The only part of the book I take exception to is the afterword which I felt was a poorly written attempted rationale for why the Firebombing of Dresden was a war-crime.  I leave it to the individual reader to research it on their own and make the decision of whether a war-crime (A term I object to) occurred or not.

Editorializing: Personally, I find the whole talk of war crimes to be farcical.  It would be comical if so many people did not take the notion so seriously.  The term and the associated crimes against humanity, genocide, etc. Have been so misused that they no longer have meaning.  The traditional Laws of War stood the Western World in good stead for centuries and nothing that was done in WWII seems to me to have mitigated against their use.  What has happened in the last hundred years is a Quixotic attempt to civilize war, an activity that is inherently uncivilized.  The right of the victors would have sufficed perfectly to put the perpetrators of the holocaust against a wall but for some reason, the West felt the need for legalized vengeance.  Their invention of these crimes has subsequently turned around and bit them ever since.  There was no need to justify the destruction of Dresden, it was an enemy city and thus subject to attack.  The severity of said attack was and is irrelevant.  There is no such concept of proportionality in warfare, nor should their be.  Warfare is doing what you think you need to do to compel your enemy to submit; no more and no less.

Overall this is a well written work of personal reflection.  I recommend it for people that would like a description of what it was like to be in Dresden during and immediately after the bombing.  There is no great amount of detail here but it gives a good general description of what living through such an event was like.

Book Promotion: The Mogadishu Diaries: Bloodlines by Eddie Thompkins

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Loyal readers,

I was approached by Mr Thompkins via email about reviewing his novel The Mogadishu Diaries: Bloodlines. This is a self-published work and one I will not be able to read for at least a month because of the pile of other books I have recently gotten from publishers. I plan on reading this book and writing up a review on it but in the meantime in the interests of encouraging other people to write and giving them a chance to publicize their own work I offered to let him post a promotional piece here at Battles & Book Reviews. Below is the text he sent me to promote his book. Notice that it is available for free on Smashwords.

The Mogadishu Diaries: Bloodlines-Book Cover

The Mogadishu Diaries: Bloodlines-Book Cover

In 1992 Somalia was on the brink of humanitarian disaster. Warring tribes had sparked a violent civil war following the collapse of the Barre government in 1991. The distribution of food and resources was heavily disrupted, leaving the people of Southern Somalia to starve; 300,000 would die in the famine. As the death-toll rose and the intensity of the conflict increased, a team of United Nations Peacekeepers, led by the United States, entered Somalia with the aim of creating a protected environment for humanitarian operations.

The mission was known as Operation Restore Hope.

Eddie Clay served as a US Marine peacekeeper during Operation Restore Hope. The Mogadishu Diaries: Bloodlines is based on his personal experiences in Somalia between 9 December 1992 and 21 March 1993. Clay recounts the pursuit of a beloved and revered warlord, the disarming of an entire community – and its unexpected consequences – and reveals how he fell in love with a beautiful Somali interpreter named Ayan. He explains the challenges, the fears and the crisis of ‘conscience versus the Rules of Engagement’ he shared with his fellow Marines, Airmen, Sailors and Soldiers during this notorious humanitarian mission.