Puttering in the Study

An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy - Rick Atkinson

The one book I took to Greece on our recent vacation was volume 1 of Rick Atkinson's trilogy about U.S. Army operations in Europe in World War II.  As I posted recently, I just finished listening to the second volume on the campaigns in Italy and Sicily, and was curious about the first volume on the initial action, which was the invasion of North Africa.

As I suspected, it was a horror story of poor planning, bad leadership, inadequate training, with both cowardice and courage mixed in.  Eisenhower, who's pretty inadequate at the beginning, appears to grow into his role as commander as time goes on (at least that's what Atkinson tells us happens - Ike's story is actually something I'm really interested in after reading these two books).  Likewise, the battlefield commanders, who appear pretty clueless initially, are gradually weeded out and replaced with commanders who can effectively lead and army into battle.  The clearest example is Omar Bradley, who though a mixture of sharp thinking and tactical insubordination actually gets things done where his predecessors and colleagues often didn't.  Logistical operations go from the totally disorganized to the sometimes adequate, with immediate effects at the front, when commanders like Bradley can effectively translate material superiority into battlefield success.  There is also a tremendous quote along these lines from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who observed that battles are won by the quartermasters before the fighting even begins.  That's so true in this book - the Allies are hampered only initially by bad logistics, and the Germans are essentially disarmed by the end of the North African campaign, with no replacements for their destroyed tanks, and no ammunition or fuel for the few that remained at the end.

Atkinson is a terrific writer, but he again suffers from reuse of adjectives - in this books panzers always "slammed into" Allied units, and defenders are always "winkled out" of their positions.  But other than that, the writing is extraordinary.

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 - Atkinson, Rick

This is the middle of Atkinson's trilogy on the U.S. military offensive in the European theater of operations in World War II.  The trilogy began with An Army at Dawn (which won a Pulitzer) about the November 1942 invasion of North Africa, and after this book proceeds to the Normandy landings.  Justice Bailey Moseley lent me the audiobook for this one, and I just finished it.

As I was promised, Atkinson can flat write - his language is outstanding and a pleasure to read.  My only quibble would be that the adjective "sanguinary" should only be used once to refer to how much bloodshed a unit suffered - but the author uses it repeatedly.  Once is clever, more than once - even in the same book - is too cute with a serious subject.  You can reuse "bloody" but not "sanguinary," in my opinion.

That point aside, the chief problem with the book is the campaign it documents.  I knew very little about the Italian campaign prior to listening to it.  While I now know the facts of the campaign - the who, where, when and what - I still don't know the why.  Nor, really does Atkinson.  The American high command never wanted to go into Italy, as the British did, and were eventually dragged into the campaign largely by the inertia of having an army finishing up the North African campaign with nothing to do for the next year until the invasion of France could begin.  The ostensible reason for the campaign was to knock Italy out of the war (which the invasion of Sicily accomplished in a nice corner pocket shot) although why that was a war aim given the ineptitude (and exhaustion) of the Italian war effort at that stage, I am not certain.  The secondary reason for the campaign was to tie up German resources so they could not be used in France when the invasion came in 1944, but in a damning admission (at least I think it was) Atkinson's epilogue nowhere noted whether the resources the Germans devoted to Italy justified the forces the Allies invested, and lost (although he makes a great point that effect in aiding Russia probably justified the operation - American and British forces simply could not just sit idle for a year waiting for Andrew Higgins to build boats while Russia was suffering casualties in the millions).  Italy was a terrible place for offensive operations, Atkinson narrates, and a miserable one was well, which I already knew from many years' familiarity with Bill Mauldin's Wille and Joe.  The sheer size of the misery and bloodshed was new to me, though, as were the fairly negative details of the U.S. commander Gen. Mark Clark that Atkinson provides.  (Atkinson's character details are magnificent - even Patton apparently had some redeeming personal characteristics, although Montgomery still awaits a complimentary observation - probably deservedly so).

One thing I would have been interested in, and Atkinson only deals with it obliquely was towards the end of the book, where he does credit the campaign with seasoning and training the American military in modern military operations.  The North African campaign can in many particulars (I look forward to reading his book, but I know a bit about it already) be portrayed as on-the-job training for the U.S. military, especially the Army, and it was replete with fiascos in both operations, leadership, logistics, planning - you name it, at some point it went wrong (something of a European version of Tarawa but far larger and lengthier).  The best part of the book for me is where Atkinson provides a thorough explanation of the many variations of the acronymn SNAFU that were in common use at this stage to describe the indescribable acts of incompetence that were commonplace at the beginning of the campaign, from the individual soldier all the way up to the way Roosevelt and Churchill managed the war effort.  I'm not saying everything was bad, by any means - just that the U.S. simply had no experience in managing a military operation of this size and it took time and a lot of mistakes to work things out.  In the Pacific carrier operations, new admirals sometimes got to watch their predecessors for a few weeks in what was called "makee learn" and that to some extent is what was going on here except there weren't predecessors - the initial commanders were learning on the job.  But as bad as things were at time, what is indisputable was that America was learning - as competent NCOs and officers were identified and gained experience, and gradually learned better ways of doing things, the SNAFUs grew fewer and smaller in scale, and most importantly, claimed fewer lives, as the American war machine gradually learned to do things better.  A good example is airborne operations.  The airborne portion of the invasion of Sicily was a phenomenal SNAFU - but when the airborne parachuted into Salerno to support the initial landings only a matter of weeks later, it did so without a glitch.  Similarly, amphibious operations - poorly done in North Africa, better but still bad in Sicily, were improved at Salerno and (I think) even more so at Anzio.  To what extent this expertise paid off in the Normandy campaign Atkinson does not say clearly, but certainly it must have to some extent.

But Anzio raises the real point - why was the landing made there, and in fact, why was Italy invaded at all?  What was the overall strategic goal, and if there was one, was it met?  Atkinson makes this crucial question the thesis in his epilogue and to me, did not answer it definitively, giving us essentially Ernie Pyle's take on the invasion, which was that he had to believe that the campaign paid for itself in lives saved in the next great offensive in France - because the thought that it did not meant that all the suffering and the loss was for no reason at all.  Again, this misses the larger geopolitical significance of having forces engaged in continental Europe to keep Germany from being able to concentrate against Russia.  And I wonder if it doesn't also miss something Atkinson notes FDR said one time to the effect that the goal was as simple as attrition - that Clark was simply following in Grant's footsteps by being willing to sacrifice whatever was available in the name of killing German troops wherever they were found simply to weaken the German war effort. 

Again, a very good piece of work, and I recommend it highly.  I'm looking forward to reading the prequel and seeing Atkinson's take on the subsequent campaigns.

How They Won the War in the Pacific: Nimitz and His Admirals - Edwin P. Hoyt

I've been looking forward to reading this book for some time.  It's perhaps somewhat dated by now, as it was originally released in 1970, but it's still a good summary of the story of the Pacific War from the perspective of the admirals who fought it.  It shows Nimitz as the clear-headed leader that kept all the egos and agendas from pulling the war efforts in the Pacific apart, and explains what he did and why involving the promotion and assignment (and reassignment) of admirals during the conflict.
It may be because it predates some better research - I don't know - but I found Hoyt's explanation of some controversial episodes insightful.  He was fair to Admiral Fletcher at Midway and especially at Guadalcanal (he's not so fair in a later book I'm reading) and makes Leyte Gulf a lot clearer by explaining that far from abandoning the invasion fleet at Leyte, Admiral Halsey was never charged with protecting it if an opportunity to attack the Japanese fleet presented itself.  Whether he should have been so charged is really the question, and strangely enough, the blame here actually might have been Nimitz'.  Hoyt relates the story of how Nimitz' son, a sub commander, happened to be at CincPac when Leyte occurred, and when he read what Halsey's orders were, he told his father that the blame lay with his father for not charging Halsey with protecting the invasion fleet - Halsey did exactly what his orders told him to do (although he was at fault for not making clear what he was doing, which Hoyt explains was an example of Halsey's chronically bad staffwork).  Historians seem to assume that he should have, but that job was actually assigned to the Seventh Fleet, not Halsey's Third, and was just another by-product of the divided command structure that caused problems (which you are actually surprised weren't worse)  of having dual commands in the Pacific - Nimitz and MacArthur.  This book, by the way, illustrated those proiblems better than anything else I have read, surprisingly including E.B. Potter's Nimitz, which came out at about the same time as this book.

World War II: A Military and Social History

 I finished this course a couple of weeks ago, starting it immediately after finishing the WW I course.  Overall a good course and an okay presentation.  I learned a great deal, but the most surprising had to do with Hitler's war aims.  I didn't know that Germany never fully mobilized for war, in large part due to Hitler's reluctance to impose that burden on his country after seeing its effects in World War I.  I also didn't realize that his true objectives were in the east against Russia, and that he did not want war with the western allies, and essentially backed himself into a global conflict.  The similarities between the 1918 German offensive and the December 1944 Ardennes offensive that resulted in the Battle of the Bulge were also new to me - in both cases Germany made a colossal strategic blunder squandering assets that could have been used to preserve (or achieve) a stalemate that could have permitted negotiations for a peace.  in both cases, irreplaceable assets were squandered for a tactical victory that was worthless, and opened Germany to a forced armistice in the firts war, and invasion and occupation in the second.
Childers also taught me about the difficulties that Hitler faced attempting to invade England by sea, making clear that while it was not at all clear at the time to either side, there was never any real risk of a successful invasion of England - a large scale amphibious landing was simply not possible early in the war. 
He also emphasized the effect of England's full mobilization, and I learned about how the tactical and strategic roles of the RAF were sharply different from the US air forces - something I hadn't considered before.  Britain's small land army, and its geographically protected position caused it to build air forces for a different purpose than the U.S. did.  It had better fighters sooner, and grasped earlier the role that strategic bombing might play in a general war.  I say "might" because as Childers discusses, it's not at all clear that strategic bombing was ever the war-winning tool that its advocates claimed.  It never broke the morale or destroyed the ability to make war of the nations it was used against (Britain, Germany, Japan).  While it arguably kept Germany from mobilizing more effectively than it did toward the latter part of the war, and it certainly resulted in widespread destruction in Japan, the only weapon during the war that actually destroyed a nation's ability to make war was submarine warfare against Japan, which strangled the Japanese conomy far more effectively than bombing ever did.
In the latter example, though, it is clear in retrospect (well, at least to me) than neither strategic bombing nor submarine warfare, nor even the two nuclear weapons used againt it is what actually caused Japan to sue for peace, because its military leaders continued to be steadfast in their plan to die defending Japan rather than surrender.  What caused the surrender was the Emperor's personal intervention in the matter in a cabinet meeting where he ordered his government to end the war to stop what his subjects were enduring.  had he not done so, the war would have continued.
Anyway, good set of lectures, which I enjoyed.

Band of Brothers - Stephen Ambrose

After several years of searching, I finally found a good hardback copy of this book, and took it with me to read on a plane trip to Austin Wednesday, almost finishing it in a day.  Very good book, and helped explain a lot of things about the HBO miniseries that weren't clear to a civilian (unit organization, for example).  Ambrose writes well, but this is an unusual book in that it is really a first-person narrative by Ambrose of his experience interviewing the veterans, narrating their stories for the most part, but at times commenting on the interviews or adding tidbits he learned while working as Eisenhower's biographer.
Very good book, though, and the HBO series does it justice.

The Great Raid

I've been meaning to watch this ever since reading Ghost Soldiers since this is an extraordinary story I'd never heard before.  TiVo caught it a week ago, so when I had a few minutes between refinishing Grayson's bookcases this weekend I watched it. 

Overall, I was disappointed.  I'm glad they made it, and some of the performances (most notably Joseph Fiennes as a cadaverous, malaria-stricken POW) are good.  It's fairly accurate and points out the courageous efforts of the Filipino resistance, but it just never really went anywhere emotionally.  In part maybe that was because the most dangerous part (in the book) was the long retreat carrying the freed prisoners through Japanese-held territory after the rescue.  The movie completely skips that.  Perhaps that was a good decision from a dramatic standpoint, but I was expecting something after the  actual freeing of the prisoners and when it didn't come, I was really disappointed.  One of the enduring statements in the book was how the Rangers and the POWs saw each other.  To the POWs, the Rangers were huge - just physically imposing specimens after three years of seeing shrunken POWs and smaller-framed Japanese and Filipinos.  They almost didn't seem like the same species as the soldiers they were rescuing.  For the Rangers' part, the survivors of Bataan were legendary, and to have the opportunity to free them and get them home was a once in a lifetime opportunity.  To its credit, the movie hints at that (and maybe I'd like it better if I watched it a second time) but given that this movie had the compelling reason for the rescue that Saving Private Ryan lacked - a reason why these men were worth dying for - it's a little odd than Ryan ended up being so compelling, and this movie didn't.

Anyway, the important thing is that this movie got made - and that I didn't buy it on Blu-Ray.

Fredericksburg trip - Hangar Hotel & Nimitz Musem

A couple of weeks back I had a bar association meeting in Fredericksburg, Texas.  We stayed at the Hangar Hotel, which is literally a hotel inside an old hangar at the airport.  It, and the adjacent conference center and diner which are built inside what is supposed to look like a hangar, are both World War II themed, and the whole experience was like watching the menu for the Pearl Harbor DVDs which, if you know me, is a good thing.
I also made my first trip to the Nimitz Museum (now the National Museum of the Pacific War) in fifteen years, and was really impressed with the new exhibits.

Victory - Call to Arms - Stephen Coonts

I have actually read very little World War II fiction, but after going through a couple of historical fiction thrillers in the past couple of weeks I thought this might provide a nice change of pace.  The book consists of three short stories set in World War II by Stephen Coonts, Barrett Tillman (who I know through his nonfiction on Pacific War aircraft) and David Hagberg.  The Hagberg story I had a little trouble following the dialogue, but the Tillman and Coonts were quite good.  If I see the next book in the series, I'll pick it up.

The Price of Admiralty - John Keegan

I've been looking forward to reading this book for some time, and finally started on my trip to Houston just before our Alaska trip, then finished it just now in the Wheelhouse Lounge on the Island Princess as it entered Glacier Bay.
Back to the book.  Keegan illustrates the history of war at sea (he never really explains the title) using four battles, Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway, and the Battle of the Atlantic (specifically two convoys' struggles against U-boats in March 1943), and ends with a quick conclusion that the submarine is the naval weapon of the future.
His summary of the background on navies - originally created to protect a nation's trade fleets from pirates, and only later used to assert national primacy over a conmperting nation's fleet of warships - is a good and something I didn't know.  His lead-in to Trafalgar and analysis of the battle itself was very good, especially since I knew virtually nothing about the battle itself (after all, Hornblower wasn't there).  The chapter on the Battle of Jutland was also quite good, although Massie's analysis of it in Castles of Steel (the followup to one of my all-time favorites Dreadnought).  But when he got to Midway, factual errors started creeping in.  There was the almost standard provision of a photograph of the wrong Yorktown, and while he narrowly got right that the Army B-17s that attacked Nagumo's fleet did no damage, he mistakenly asserts that the U.S submarine Nautilus sank the damaged carrier Soryu, something no historian I'm aware of in the last forty years has claimed (Price of Admiralty came out in 1989).  While it isn't surprising that his analysis doesn't have the insights that Shattered Sword provided (although he tracks parts of what their analysis that I've never seen anyone else do) the analysis of Midway is still a bit off, and inexplicably his bibliography doesn't cite Walter Lord's seminal Incredible Victory, which came out over 20 years before.  Granted that's my all-time favorite work of nonfiction so I'm perhaps a bit biased, but how he could publish a book on Midway and not even cite it as a source is inexplicable to me.  He could disagree with it - Shattered Sword certainly did and I agree with it, but not even citing it perhaps led to the Nautilus/Soryu errors, as well as others.
Finally, the chapter on the U-boat battles is just narrative, and while well-told, it was just a snapshot of the seesaw battle that went on from 1939 to 1945.  And the hasty postscript that "submarines are the ultimate weapon" seems almost as dated as the prior assumptions that battleships and carriers were.  While I can't say I disagree that subs are a necessary part of any navy - assuming you don't have the national resources to operate a carrier fleet as well - I think that both carriers, subs and surface fleets have benefits, and which is better depends on who you are and what you have to contend with.  In short, your options are a lot better if you have a five billion dollar carrier task force hanging around (which necessarily requires another two task forces in bases refitting for their turn, and several other trios in other parts of the world).  I am probably judging the book with hindsight because Keegan was writing during the Cold Ward, when a substantial Soviet fleet was opposed to the U.S. Navy, and the problem was far more acute then than now, when there is in effect no other naval power that could compete with the U.S.
Anyway, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it.  I just think the premise is a bit dated, and the Midway section (which is all I have outside expertise on) has a few errors.
In the end, I think the book might better have ended with Jutland and contrasted it with Trafalgar, because that was to me the best analysis the book had.

The Battle of Leyet Gulf - H.P. Willmott

En passant.  En passant.  En passant. 
The most memorable pat of this book is the author's inexplicable use of this phrase (which he never translates for the reader) over and over and over throughout the book - sometimes twice on a single page.  While it may be useful to note that something is said "in passing" it is sympomatic of the book's serious disregard for readability.  I reread the first sentence at least half a dozen times trying to figure out what the author meant - and the firts paragraph at least three times.  Paragraphs go on for nearly a page more often that not, and the author's comments, such as "no further comment is necessary" leave you completely lost as far as what he meant - did he agree with the statement or disagree with it?  Add to that that the author clearly intends the book to be not a dispassionate account of a very complex battle but a highly opinionated retelling, and you have a very difficult to decipher book.  (Another problem I had was with the repeated use of the phrase "the waters that washed..." The first time I read it in reference to a place I thought it was a great phrase - but the author used it at least six times - that's a vanity that no editor should have permitted).
Let me say that I don't object to the opinionated nature - I just can't always tell what his opinion is, due in part to the snarky way he writes.  I can tell generally what he thinks about Halsey (and especially MacArthur) and I agree, but at innumerable places he tosses off a sarcastic bon mot than I am just unsure I am correctly interpreting.
Halfway through the book, I realized what the problem really is.  The book is hard to understand when read - but it would be clear as a bell - and probably very entertaining - if read aloud by the author.  Most of the problems stated above would be solved if I could consider tone of voice.  Sarcasm is rare in historical writing, and hard to evaluate on the written page.
The above aside, the book obviously reflects a tremedous amount of research and provides a useful resource for basic data on the battle, and I like the way the author identifies the conventional view of something and then sets forth a little-known fact or theory about it - but it's never clear whether he's debunking a belief because it deserves to be debunked, or just out of pleasure at debunking something.  As subjective as the book's judgments are, it's just not a reliable source for these newly-stated beliefes, in my opinion, because the author doesn't demonstrate a thorough understanding of the status quo of historical scholarship before taking issue with it (Shattered Sword being the gold standard in this area).  I'm not questioning that he has it - I'm just saying that he didn't show it before he explains why it is wrong.
The appendices and footnotes are good, although in my opinion the maps ought to reflect the same level of detail as the text (what's the point of explaining something happened between A and B near the C creek when the maps don't show it) and ought to be somewhere useful - not all collected at the end.
Bottom line is that in my opinion the book needed a serious editing - at least a third of it needed to go, and the author needed to be forced to back up his opinions and write in a more readable fashion.  And ditch the repeated metaphors and en passants.