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Class of 1957 Book Review Site. ©2007. To add a Book Review, or to comment on a book already in this listing, send your material or review to Sam Coulbourn at Persnav@shore.net. Photo at top of each page shows ENS Arleigh Burke beneath 14-inch gun aboard Battleship USS Arizona, 1923. Revised 27 March 2008. |
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WAR HISTORY Flags of Our Fathers
By James Bradley, with Ron Powers, 2000.
James Bradley discovered only after his father’s death that John “Doc” Bradley had received the Navy Cross nearly fifty years earlier for heroism as a Navy corpsman during the assault on Iwo Jima. “Doc” Bradley was one of the six flag raisers on Iwo Jima, and this book details James Bradley’s quest to learn more of these men and, in so doing, to discover “the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy” of their lives.
The noted author and historian Stephen Ambrose writes, “The best battle book I ever read. These stories, from the time the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima enlisted, their training, and the landing and subsequent struggle, fill me with awe.” James Bradley brings the horror and heroism of Iwo Jima to life. His book is superb.
WAR HISTORY Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945
By Charles Sydnor, 1990, Princeton University Press, paper, 392 pp.
Well written and thoroughly documented, Charles Sydnor’s Soldiers of Destruction sets the standard for individual unit histories. Sydnor carefully crafts his work in an easily readable format that appeals to both well versed historians and those less knowledgeable. This format, allows the reader to retain an understanding of both the organizational mindset and ethos of the Totenkopf (Death’s Head) division as well as the impressive battlefield performance which this infamous division displayed. Sydnor deserves much credit for this carefully researched and written record of one of the most destructive units of World War II. Modern interest of World War II often gravitates toward the European theater and, in particular, the war with Germany. A major factor in this un-proportional interest in Hitler’s war machine involves the mystery surrounding the SS and the atrocities which it generated. In this informative work, Sydnor demystifies one of the most ruthless and effective Waffen SS formations of World War II. Syndor also shows how the personality of its early commander, Theodor Eicke, played a critical role in the development of the extreme ruthlessness and ethos of the Death Head division. The ethos instilled within the Totenkopf exemplifies the impact of thorough indoctrination on the performance of an individual unit. Although not entirely stereotypical, the Totenkopf does exemplify the true nature of the ideal Nazi soldier. The exceptional ethos and esprit de corps within this unit exhibited itself throughout all of World War II, and specifically on the Eastern Front. Sydnor vividly describes the losses and conditions in which the Totenkopf fought and continually out performed its adversaries. Even when encircled and fighting under desperate conditions in the Demyansk Pocket, [name for the encirclement of German troops by the Red Army around Demyansk south of Leningrad, during the Second World War, which lasted mainly from February 8 until April 21, 1942.] the Death’s Head division continued its ruthless killing of Soviet soldiers. Late in the war, when any hope for the Nazis had long since passed, the Totenkopf still continued their tenacious defense of Hitler’s unrealized goals. Thus, the battlefield performance of this storied division further exemplified the uniqueness and elite nature of this unit. Sydnor quickly illustrates how Eicke succeeded in creating a formidable fighting force which outfought nearly every unit it met. Sydnor also illustrates, however, that this success came with a price. Although not a price the Nazis considered harmful, the men who served within the Totenkopf lost all humanity in the course of their indoctrination and fighting. Sydnor reveals that this division consistently partook in genocidal and inhumane behavior against not only their enemies on the battleground, but also against unarmed civilians. The Totenkopf repeatedly committed heinous atrocities against everyone they fought. Thus, the ideological motivation, which undoubtedly increased their fighting capability, also serves as a lesson as to what can result from such thorough indoctrination. Sydnor’s account of the Totenkopf division offers far more value than merely superb analytical history. His excellent analysis of the organizational ethos within this SS division suggests that one should pay attention to the valuable lessons hidden within the history of this unit. Certainly, any military leader should take careful notice of the results of creating such an indoctrinated organization. Sydnor also reexamines the issue of military effectiveness and necessity. He shows that Totenkopf used the idea of ‘military necessity’ to its fullest extent. Although such an extreme example of military necessity seems foreign to modern society, the danger of similar events reoccurring looms closer than one might envision. Sydnor warrants much praise for his ability to create such a comprehensive and thought provoking manuscript.
Reviewed March, 2007 by Midshipman Paul Bailey, Student in the Class of Professor Wick Murray, Chair in Naval Heritage sponsored by the Class of 1957.
WAR HISTORY Vietnam, A History: The First Complete Account of Vietnam at War
By Stanley Karnow, 1984.
Karnow’s Pulitzer Prize winning book traces the war in Vietnam from its roots in the ambition of Monsignor Pierre Joseph Georges Pigneau de Béhaine, bishop of Adran, upon his return to France from Cochinchina in 1787 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. The historical insight he provides is valuable whether or not you agree with the occasional personal perspectives he interjects (which are minimal). Karnow provides a chronology of events both related and unrelated to Vietnam from 208 B.C. to 1982 as broader background, and the identity of a large number of Vietnamese, French, American, and other principals involved with this history in appendices. The history of Vietnam up to the fall of Dienbienphu which he provides in the text (166 out of 670 pages) is particularly worthwhile, but the entire book helps us understand the history of this struggle.
WAR HISTORY A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City
Anonymous, 2005
This book was originally published in Switzerland in 1953 and in Germany in 1959, but was too painful for German readers to endure at that time. It has since been re-published in Germany in 2003, following the death of the author. The book is a true story, based on the journal of a German woman who lived in Berlin when the triumphant Red Army smashed into that city in the closing days of World War II. The Russian troops were determined to have their revenge for the frightful excesses wreaked upon their nation by the German forces in the previous four years, resulting in tens of millions of Russian deaths, and incalculable destruction. The conquering Russian soldiers raped more than 100,000 Berlin women as they overran the capital. Many women were raped repeatedly, day after day, during the initial weeks of the occupation. The author brings insight and authenticity to a phenomenon that accompanies wars the world over. In the midst of devastating personal anguish she somehow retains a sense of perspective and even dignity that confers on her the moral high ground in what most would consider a hopeless situation.
Reviewed by Paul Roush, March 2007.
Fields of Fire
By James Webb, 1978.
Webb’s fictional account of a platoon in Vietnam has been called “the most important novel to emerge from the Vietnam War.” He leaves little to the imagination in describing the nature of combat, the impossible predicament of being caught between the enemy you can identify and the enemy you can’t identify, and the destructive effect of political correctness imposed by those “outside the arena” not directly engaged with the enemy. Jim Webb’s Fields of Fire parallels Ilario Pantano’s Warlord with regard to the effect of a politically correct ethos at work in some military leaders distant from the battlefield. Webb’s account is fictional and Pantano’s account is real, but both bring the reality of combat ¾ and the troubling effect of non-combat correctness into your living room.
WAR HISTORY Very Special Intelligence: The Story of the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Centre, 1939-1945
By Patrick Beesly, Sphere Books, London, Mass Market Paperback, 1978.
In Very Special Intelligence Patrick Beesly analyzes the exploits and short-comings of an under-appreciated and under-explored branch of the British Admiralty, the Naval Intelligence Division. The Naval Intelligence Division was a necessary measure, considering the problems confronting the Royal Navy during World War II. Unlike the Army or Royal Air Force, controlled by commanders-in-chief of appropriate regions, the Navy was a top-down organization. The Admiralty concerned itself with much of the high-level command and control of its forces. As a result, it required a strong intelligence branch to provide the necessary information for effective management of assets throughout its areas of responsibility. At the heart of the Naval Intelligence Division was the Operational Intelligence Centre, charged with breaking German codes and collecting intelligence for use by fleet forces. It is this topic that Beesly examines. Even only a few pages into Very Special Intelligence, it becomes evident that Beesly is thoroughly familiar with the concepts behind the Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC). Unfortunately, that is the book’s greatest flaw. In terms of readability, this account receives low marks. One needs to be familiar with the Allied intelligence apparatus during World War II in order to understand Beesly’s work. At the start, he begins with code names and acronyms that a layperson (like me) can not understand. A good example of this is from page two, where Beesly discusses a shortcoming of the intelligence apparatus. “Although, thanks to its staff’s ability to read German naval wireless signals, it knew more about the procedures and intentions of Admiral Sheer’s High Sea Fleet than any other department in the Royal Navy, it was not allowed to communicate direct with Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet .” Who or what is Jellicoe? Beesly makes no previous mention of this name and does not clarify what it signifies. Oversights like this make reading Very Special Intelligence difficult. Aside from not accommodating the layperson in his writing, Beesly has created a fine book, both intriguing and informative. His extensive experience within the OIC is evident. As such, his ability to remain unbiased in his assessment of the intelligence community’s successes and failures is all the more impressive. A fine example of Beesly’s impartial attitude towards the British intelligence machine is on page 107. He criticizes the Admiralty for too tightly compartmentalizing the wealth of information in the OIC, thus making it difficult to formulate an overall cohesive strategy for victory. It is clear that Beesly’s primary goal is to educate readers about the intelligence community in World War II, specifically about the Battle of the Atlantic. Beesly’s interesting, yet challenging account of the Naval Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty during World War II is a fine piece of writing. It could be better-used as a tool for education, however, if the book were geared more towards readers who are not already familiar with intelligence in Europe during World War II. Aside from that short-coming, this book is a necessity for anyone wishing to learn the real story behind the intelligence battle of World War II.
Review by Midshipman Matt Wiegand, Prof. Murray’s Class, March, 2008.
WAR HISTORY Very Special Intelligence: The Story of the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Centre, 1939-1945
By Patrick Beesly, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000.
In relating the previously-untold story of the Admiralty’s covert intelligence campaign against the Kriegsmarine during the Second World War, author Patrick Beesly chronicles the shaky origins, robust life, and demonstrative importance of the Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) of Great Britain’s Naval Intelligence Division. This memoir of the OIC takes the reader from its intellectual foundation during the First World War through the triumphs and, significantly, the failures of operational intelligence by the Admiralty during the Second World war, analyzing several key case studies involving the maritime campaign against the German commerce raiders and U-Boats. Throughout the work, Beesly, a former officer with the OIC, displays a remarkable attention to detail and a thorough knowledge of the subject matter undoubtedly stemming from his own extensive personal experience and commendable field research in both the original British and German sources. By maintaining a keen focus on the most pertinent questions of his source material, Beesly’s work speaks for itself in positing how the OIC deftly maintained the crucial balance between reality and expectation when situated at the intersection of raw data collection and the operational necessities of the Royal Navy commanders. With the restoration of the OIC’s true nature for the historical record as the purpose of Very Special Intelligence, the author, in choosing his various anecdotes, succinctly pooled his own experiences and that of his colleagues in addition to key primary sources in their original German. The three decade-wide chasm spanning the end of hostilities and the Ministry of Defence’s decision to release the first files concerning the extensive code-breaking operations during the war might have resulted in a degree of nostalgic Quixotism in Beesly’s arguments concerning the overall conduct of the OIC throughout the war. However, quite to the contrary, the author, through his expert treatment of source material, displays no discernable bias in discussing the successes and shortcomings, however few, of the British intelligence gathering community in the dominating light of the final strategic victory over the Kriegsmarine. Arguably Beesly’s greatest achievement in Very Special Intelligence remains the relative ease with which he conveys the intricate and oftentimes convoluted relationship between intelligence and operations. Throughout the book, the reader witnesses first hand the inherent differences in the dynamic liaison of the two bedfellows. Arguing that the greatest tragedy of the OIC’s Great War equivalent, Room 40, rested in the failure to intertwine their copious intelligence data with operational missions, Beesly describes at length the maturation of the OIC into an intelligence house driven by the operational necessities of the Admiralty. The author notes that, later in the naval campaign, intelligence often drove operations, as the OIC benefited tremendously from the attention it earned among the top officials within the Admiralty, albeit at the cost of blood and treasure in the early days of the war. In conceding the almost pitiful lack of initial intelligence information presented to the OIC, the author never loses sight of the unspoken mantra to always acknowledge the humbling utility of intelligence. Whether Beesly wrote of the hunt for German guerre de course vessels, the tragedy of Convoy PQ17, the missed opportunity commonly called the Channel Dash, or the war against Dönitz’s U-Boats, the author consistently viewed the duties of OIC to assist the war fighters. Beesly expertly guides the reader with clever prose, granting an insider’s view into the oftentimes confusing and painstaking process of sifting through the reams of data and processing a cogent outcome. The author makes the argument, that, as opposed to the days of Room 40 and the First World War, that the division of duties between raw-data cryptology, handled by Bletchley Park ciphers, and the analysis of such information at OIC contributed greatly to the success of the maritime war. The story of the OIC and its key contributions during the Second World War remain a well-versed topic today. However, in Very Special Intelligence, the original thrust in the darkness after the secrets of Ultra became public, retains an austere sense of validity even when faced against the wealth of scholarship written after its publication. Perhaps more so than the mere facts of the cryptographic war against the Kriegsmarine, the clever analysis and quality commentary concerning the intersections of intelligence and operations as well as the overall utility of intelligence that Beesly portrays throughout his work cement the place of Very Special Intelligence in any officer’s bookshelf. In the literature on the topic, scholars and popular authors alike often mistake the Ultra intercepts for the silver bullet of the Second World War. However, Beesly never once permitted this error, never forgetting the mantra that W.J.R. Gardner states in the book’s introduction: “Wars at sea have to be fought by people at sea.”
Review by MIDN Matthew D. Warshaw, March 2008. |
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USS Mendota, ca. 1864 |