Mud, Blood, and Poppycock - Gordon Corrigan

I am going to assume that Gordon Corrigan is a nice man. In this 2003 Cassell edition of Mud, Blood, and Poppycock he shares with us that he is married and a church-goer, so this is a reasonable assumption. I genuinely do not want to spend ages telling you why this book is terrible – it’s not a particularly good use of your time or mine. I know I have said this before, but it is not really the purpose of this blog to self censor and only write nice, glowing reviews of wonderful books. So in the unlikely event that this spoils a nice person’s day then I am genuinely sorry, but this was one of the weakest, worst written history books I have read in a very long time.

It is not without its redeeming features – there are several passages of mildly interesting, if unoriginal, description of the structure of the British Army in 1914-18. I also learnt something I hadn’t known before about the role of horses in the war. If the author had just exercised some self control this would have been such a better book. I suspect he knows that, and decided to include the offending content, which I am getting to, to boost sales.

Just to be completely clear, revisionist history is a good thing. It is absolutely right that the assumptions we make about what we think we know about the past are challenged in the light of new evidence as it emerges. Lazy stereotypes need to be confronted, even when on examination they turn out to be broadly correct. So I have no problem that Corrigan decides that everything ever written about the Great War is wrong, that it was not a bloodbath, that life in the trenches was usually jolly good fun, and that we beat the Boche through force of character and a jolly good British stiff upper lip. Although of course this is parody, Corrigan really does write like this. The British Army was and is the best in the world, and anyone who suggests otherwise is unpatriotic. Oh, and by the way, Blackadder 4 wasn’t historically accurate.

The technique here is simple and very badly done.
Step 1 – make a general observation, unsupported by any reference or evidence whatsoever, about the popular perception of the Great War – for example that the trenches were full of very large rats.
Step 2 – claim with little or no evidence to the contrary that they weren’t
Step 3 – claim that there may in fact have been some true in the popular perception after all – but argue that the rabbits were larger in the French trenches, that the Tommies enjoyed the company of the rats, and who minds the odd rat anyway other than lefty pinkoes?

Just to emphasise – this is Corrigan’s approach, chapter after chapter, not a parody. Take one example. In chapter 3 he says that “The perception of soldering in the Great War is of a young patriot enlisting in 1914 to do his bit…Arriving at one of the Channel Ports he marches to all the way up to the front, singing “Tipperary” and smoking his pipe.” (Page 74).

I am not aware of anyone every suggesting that soldiers marched all the way from the Channel Ports to the front line. Nor apparently is Corrigan, because this perception is not evidenced in any way. Nevertheless, having set up this straw man, he points out that trains, motor vehicles, mules and horses were all in abundance in 1914 Belgium. Point made, straw man demolished. Yet a sense of honesty compels him to admit only a few lines later that “The pre-war army was …well accustomed to marching. The reservists were not so lucky. Reservists sitting by the side of the road, boots off, and feet bleeding were a common sight (75). Again, no authority is provided, but it is hardly surprising if the common perception of soldiers having to march an unreasonably long way grew up if this was a common sight on the roadsides of Northern France and Belgium.
There is an opportunity here for some serious historical investigation to be done. The Army stands accused of not looking after its solders very well, of making them march long distances in uncomfortable footwear, and of not providing enough motor and equine transport. So is that true? What does the evidence say? What did other armies do with regard to moving their troops about, in the circumstances where transport was limited and the need to move troops around urgent? Was transport taken seriously as a military discipline? I don’t know, but neither, apparently, does the author.

The First World War was a terrible, shocking bloodbath. Hundreds of thousands of men marched to their deaths in circumstances that remain distressing to this day. I have written elsewhere about the “thankful villages” – Corrigan references these as evidence that not every community lost someone during the war, missing the point that so very few did so. In denying the enormity of the shock of the war – there was no lost generation, not that many people died compared to other conflicts, that the only people with a problem were poets “who wrote for money” (!!!! – the monsters) – he insults the memory of those that fought and died, and denies them a voice. There are so many powerful records – diaries, letters, etc. - of the time telling us what the war was like, but Corrigan ignores these voices and relies on distorted statistics and a relentless refusal to accept that any concern about the war and its conduct could possibly be wrong.

Finally, Corrigan is at pains to let the reader know he is a retired soldier. If the numerous reminders of this are not sufficient, he uses playground language – “wedding tackle”, “willy”, and “dirty water” – at times in a way that is utterly inappropriate in a serious work of historical inquiry. But perhaps that is the point.

 

Trench Warfare 1914-1918 – The Live and Live System– Tony Ashworth

I do read some interesting books don’t I? This is one of the Pan Military History series, originally published in 1980 (that date is important by the way, and I will come back to it) and was a bit dry to be honest. It’s more of a reference book than a page-turner. Which was a pity, because the author has identified something really interesting about military conflict, and the First World War in particular, and that is the tendency of combatants to impose some control on their environment, even in the midst of the bloodiest, nastiest conflict imaginable, by refusing to kill their enemies. Ashworth calls this the live and let live system, whereby troops in the trenches would come to informal understandings with those facing them that they would leave one another alone in certain circumstances, at particular times, days, and for particular purposes. This understanding found its most vivid expression in the extraordinary Christmas truces of 1914, when trench warfare was still a relatively new experience, and when the bloody battles of Ypres, Passchendaele, the Somme etc. had entrenched (if you will forgive the pun) bitterness against the enemy.

For me, this was a bit of a light bulb moment. I knew of course that soldiers in the trenches were not constantly fighting, and that there was evidence from other conflicts, touched on at the end of this book, that a surprisingly large proportion of soldiers would avoid killing one another when they could. But the nature of trench warfare, when troops were in close proximity – certainly in hearing range in many cases – to their enemy for long periods of time – meant that they would slowly begin to recognise their opponents as people rather than abstract entities. Once that happen – these are people that eat, sing, hate the rain, etc., like us – then killing them becomes harder. Peace kept breaking out despite all the efforts of the war machine to stop it. In 1917 there were extensive mutinies in the French army across the whole of their front – mutinies which the Germans opposing them at the time were blithely unaware of. As the author points out, this was no doubt because these fronts were largely applying the live and let live principle at the time – if you don’t attack me I won’t attack you.

The context of the war is important here, and it is something Ashworth doesn’t really mention. The belief that a continental war was coming had been around for decades, fuelling spending on the Royal Navy for example, but in many scenarios the Germans, with our shared Royal family, were on the same side as the UK. France was to many our traditional enemy; we had never fought the Germans in a war, whereas we had hardly stopped fighting the French over centuries. So there was no inherent hostility towards the Germans. The media tried to stoke it up of course, and atrocity stories played a part, but the evidence presented in this book suggests that many soldiers in the trenches were quite happy to consider not killing Germans if the reciprocal could be ensured. When higher commands ordered activity, Ashworth argues and demonstrates that firing to miss was common-place.

I have mentioned one omission from this study, the context of the war, but there are a couple of other factors which are not given any focus. I think the conflict in the trenches was – to an extent – seasonal. The weather dictated the extent and nature of the conflict, and this is supported by the casualty figures I have seen elsewhere. Ashworth identifies many different features which meant “live and let live” was more or less likely to occur, but doesn’t mention these practical considerations of weather and season. A minor point I suppose.

I also mentioned earlier that this book was published in 1980, 35 years ago. The relevance of this is that the author was able to interview and correspond with survivors on the Great War, an opportunity that would not exist today. I wonder if he realised at the time how precious this opportunity was. Diaries, letters and journal can tell us a lot, but I don’t think they could ever be a substitute for the oral history of survivors.

The Last Days of Adolf Hitler - Hugh Trevor Roper

Probably the last thing the world needs is another book about the Nazis, but I bought this (second hand) at the same time as the Bullock biography, read it, and it seems daft not to review it for risk of repetition. It does overlap with the later chapters of the Bullock book to some extent, and indeed is cited in it, but is quite distinct in other respects.

This book was originally commissioned as an investigation into (you guessed it) the last days of Adolf, specifically to address the rumours that he had escaped Berlin and was lurking somewhere in South America. The absence of a body, and the Russian refusal to clarify some of the confusion around his last days, fuelled this speculation. Trevor Roper puts this all neatly to bed, and while conspiracy theories linger to this day, unsurprisingly, they have never had the potency one might expect given Hitler's status as the ultimate bogey-man.

To pad things out a little, the book opens with a summary of Hitler's court, describing the principal characters and the bizarre wider cast of astrologers, masseurs, vegetarian chefs and the like. This is reasonably standard stuff, but where this book really takes off is in the almost minute by minute account of the last days of the Third Reich. I couldn't avoid speculating how the British Government might have ended had things gone badly in 1941. Hitler's choices once again seem hard to fathom. if he wanted to fight to the bitter end, why not leave Berlin, join some of the surviving German forces, which remained considerable, and fight on? Instead he holed up in a city destined to be taken by the Russians, and then killed himself rather than being captured.

As a reference work this is second to none. As a read it is well-written and relatively short. If you want to know about Hitler's last days there are probably more up to date accounts available, as well as plenty of documentaries and the like, but nevertheless I am quite happy to have added this to my collection.

Hitler, A Study in Tyranny - Alan Bullock

This is probably the definitive Hitler biography, against which all others are judged. It was originally published in 1952, seven short years after the end of the Second World War, and despite some subsequent updating; it inevitably shows its age. Since 1952 we have learnt a lot more about the history of the Third Reich, and indeed Hitler’s personal history – for example in this edition the fate of Martin Bormann is unknown, the number of deaths in the Holocaust is given at 4.2 million, and the whereabouts of Hitler’s remains was undetermined. So was this worth perserving with through 800 odd pages, when there are more up to date biographies available?

The point is of course moot, because I did (persevere, that is) but the question goes to the merits or otherwise of this text, despite its limitations. I learnt some (a few) things I did not know about the history of the Third Reich, but was left noticing some significant gaps – things I knew about the period which were not included, for no obvious good reason. Let’s start with the former. Of the 5 million Russians taken prisoner of war by the Germans, over 2 million died in captivity, from hunger and cold, often as a deliberate policy by the Germans. (More detail on this on page 696 of the book). That slaughter is never mentioned in programmes about the Second World War in my experience. The relationship with Mussolini was not something I knew much about, nor the very different relationship with Franco, alive and in power when this book came out of course.

But equally there are those omissions. The Holocaust is covered, of course, but in a very detached way. Tracing the origins of Hitler’s anti-Semitism, and the way it took hold across Germany, deserved more focus than is given here. Equally, I know that Hitler began experimenting with euthanasia of the sick and disabled long before the outbreak of war – this was nothing to do with lebensraum, or indeed anti-Semitism, but about racial purity, which Bullock never really focusses on. The slaughter of trade unionists, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, and so on, also doesn’t get mentioned, let alone explored. Hitler’s control of Germany once elected Chancellor is worthy of closer examination. His recognition that power rested in institutions and organisations through the country which needs to be smashed, closed down, or assimilated was surely the key to his success in turning a minority Cabinet – his first Cabinet in January 1933 had only 3 Nazi members, including himself – into one in which national plebiscites showed hysterical levels of support over 99%.

There are some eternal questions about Hitler which challenge any biographer or historian of the period. Why did Germany elect such a man? Why did no-one properly understand the risk he faced and do something about it? How did he turn a tiny party of workers (the German Workers Party, which became the National Socialist Party in the early 1920’s) into a continent-dominating machine, able to command devastating levels of support? It can’t just be about charisma and luck, surely? How could the extermination camp guards kiss their children goodnight? Why was his personal life such a blank canvas, and was he religious in any way? We get a little closer to the answers here, by following the story from rural Austria to the Chancellery and beyond, but many of the mysteries and myths remain. I suspect much of the “traditional” features of the Hitler story can be traced to this book. There are things everyone is taught about Hitler, and other things that are simply ignored. I suppose what I am saying is that there was a familiarity about this book. Each phase of Hitler’s life came on schedule, with few surprises or revelations. Is this book the source of the orthodox account of Hitler’s life? I suspect so.

Just one other point: there is a slight tendency in this book, subtle but noticeable, to praise Hitler just a little too much. Positive comments are almost always followed up with condemnation, but his “achievements” are given more than sufficient attention. For example, on page 724 (yes I did get that far) Bullock writes very positively about Hitler’s prescience about the Cold War: “No-one, looking back at German anti-Bolshevik propaganda from the era of the Cold War, can fail to be struck by the aptness of much of the argument”. I accept that a biography that simply portrayed Hitler as a monster would be over-simplifying things, but the tone here is, at times, just a little too positive for my liking. Here’s another example: Bullock writes at length and at several points about Hitler’s ability to “read the mind” of his audiences (for example, page 722, “Hitler’s gifts as an orator had always depended on his flair for sensing what was in the minds of his audience.” Now presumably this is metaphorical rather than literal, but what is the metaphor for? How was Hitler able to tune into what his audience wanted, and give it to them? You could probably work this out through some close textual analysis, whereby he tries out themes and then either drops them or develops them depending on the audience’s response, but that is not attempted here. Instead Hitler is just credited with a supernatural ability to read collective minds. I'm not saying Bullock was a supporter of Hitler in any shape or form, simply that attitudes towards him (Adolf, not Alan) have hardened in later generations.

I really ought to read a modern Hitler biography for contrast, and probably will in time, but for now I need something lighter!

War: What is it good for? The role of conflict in civilisation, from primates to robots - Ian Morris

I have only read a handful of pages of the introduction to this long, weighty book, but I can honestly say I have never disagreed so profoundly with so much in so many different ways as I do with this author. To be precise, if the introduction is a faithful summary of the book as a whole then I disagree with it in numerous ways. Whether this is going to get in the way of actually finishing the book remains to be seen of course.

The astonishing thing for a book of popular history is that it takes as its central thesis the argument that Edwin Starr was wrong. More specifically, it argues that war, far from being good for absolutely nothing is at the heart of the development of civilisation. War builds society while at the same time driving behaviours that make war less likely and less damaging. War creates larger, more prosperous, and safer communities, and seems to have been the only way to create such bigger societies. At the same time war is now in the process of putting itself out of business. Strange that we happen to be living at such a turning point in the development of human history, the one time when war, having been the driving force behind social change and improvement, suddenly becomes obsolete. The end of history anyone?

Morris, to be fair, does seem to genuinely believe his thesis. No-one could be as cynical as you would need to be to think up a controversial and hard to prove position as he has here, dedicating the hundreds of hours of research required to support his arguments. (I assume that the following 400 pages or so aren't filled with Garfield cartoons or such, but follow the pattern of densely written argument found in the introduction. Time will tell.)

Morris is so spectacularly wrong, in such a variety of ways, that it is quite hard to find a starting point. Let's begin with the classic mistake of associating two things that happen at the same time and believing they are related. So wars (of many different forms) have characterised human history since the last ice age, and the beginning of modern civilisation. At the same time human civilisation has developed, population has grown, forms of Government have become more complex, and in essence we have become more "civilised". Are the two things related? It's impossible to disprove a theory like this. If you point to periods of peace and prosperity where society has taken a leap forward, well that's just people reaping the rewards of earlier conflict. And periods where society has descended into barbarism - preparing the ground for the next step onward and upward. The problem here, you will have spotted, is that the exact same set of arguments could be used to prove the oppostive point - that war harms society, and the peaceful resolution of conflict or the avoidance of conflict, in those rare moments when it is tried, is what allows society to prosper.

The second thread of Morris's argument is that over time people have become less violent, and that deaths as a result of warfare have declined - as a percentage of the population. This argument is reference in Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, and I probably ought to read what I said about it then, but that would be cheating. I now think, irrespective of what I argued then, that the only way this point can be demonstrated is by cheating - cheating with the definition of warfare for example. The thesis becomes confused here - war builds societies, which allow people to prosper, but war is declining, becoming less lethal. Some of the wars we learn about in history involved professional armies a few tens of thousand strong, drawn from populations many times their size. I will need to see what evidence Morris presents before going much further on this point, but for now I am not persuaded.

Societies build, become larger and more prosperous, for many different reasons. Technology is obviously key, for example, in the Industrial Revolution. Morris probably would argue that war enabled the conditions in which technology could play its part, and I would concede that war has proven the catalyst for many technological breakthroughs. But was the spinning jenny developed as a response to the threat of war? Did we send battalions of steam engines or Internet enabled laptops into conflict against the French, the Germans, or anyone else we felt threatened by? You can argue war is at the root of these changes. Take the agricultural revolution - we needed more food to feed a growing population which happened because we were at peace because we had won previous conflicts, or alternatively because of a growing empire, won by war - you see, the theory fits whatever the circumstances, which means ultimately it is useless.

The Real Band of Brothers - First-hand Accounts from the Last British Survivors of the Spanish Civil War - Max Arthur

This book is a collection of eight first person narrative accounts of the Spanish Civil War, told by International Brigade survivors. Accounts such as this, obviously inspired at least in part by the fading away of the last of the Great War veterans, are an important historical legacy. This is not a history of the war, although a useful introduction provides some context. The accounts have been tidied up to an extent – no-one struggles to form a coherent sentence or remember a name – but apart from that sensible editing the accounts stand largely untouched. There is no dramatizing of events, no sanitising – when one of the interviewees describes shooting a Spanish soldier there is no hint of any regret. International Brigade volunteers went to Spain largely on their own steam – there seems to have been very limited active recruiting – and the haphazard nature of the struggle is clear. These personal accounts provide clear testimony of the struggle against fascism in the 1930s – these men and women understood the threat of the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy and of course Spain, as well as the home grown varieties in the form of Mosley’s blackshirts, and the Irish equivalent, the Blueshirts (which I hadn’t read about before, so I learned something!). Not one of the interviewees expressed regret,  nor any hesitation in saying they would do it all over again, despite the very heavy price paid.

I have only one minor reservation about this book which relates to its title – the Real Band of Brothers. This title suggests that other bands of brothers lacked some essential quality which this group had. If that’s the author’s position – that because this group were all volunteers who were ideologically committed to their cause, rather than conscripts or people who sign up for other reasons, they are more real than others – then it needed to be argued rather than suggested.  Without wanting to over-react on this issue, other bands of brothers (such as Henry’s Agincourt comrades, pressed men, mercenaries and regular troops) had a comradeship that was the equivalent of the international Brigades. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia shows that comradeship on the republican side of the civil war had to say the least its limits.

Thankful Villages

This entry isn't about reading or books at all really, except that in a way it fits in with much of my non-fiction reading over the last twelve months,which has kept coming back to the World Wars of the twentieth century.

Humans are famously unable to comprehend large numbers. We deal much better with dozens, maybe even hundreds, but thousands? What does a crowd of thousand people look like? Or ten thousand? We understand the concept, but it stays at that level - we have nothing meaningful to equate it with in our day-to-day lives. This inability to envisage large numbers lies, I think, at the heart of people's problems with probability, whereby they mistake everyday coincidences with the supernatural.

A million British troops died in the First World War. More died in the Second, as well as significant numbers of civilians. I acknowledge of course that other countries suffered far higher rates of casualties. But what does that number mean? What do a million dead people look like? What is the impact of a million deaths on a country the size of the UK?

Essentially it means that every family lost someone, or knew someone who died in the war. That is where (finally) the concept of the Thankful Villages comes in. There are over four thousand village parishes in this country. But in only a very small number of parishes - it is hard to be exact, because the records are inevitably not 100% accurate, and you can always argue about definitions - did all the servicemen who set off to war return home alive. The best estimates are that there are about between 30 and 50 such villages in England and Wales, and not one in Scotland or Northern Ireland. Those figures really brought home to me the scale of the devastation, how all encompassing it was. Incidentally I have read elsewhere that France has only one such village.

For anyone living in a town or city, the important thing to realise is how tiny some of these villages are. Ten men lost from a hamlet of (say) sixty people would have devastated many communities. The names of the Thankful Villages are part of the special impact of the idea - the English have a particular brilliance in naming their villages, and some of the Thankful few epitomise that flair - Herodsfoot, Ousby, Langton Herring, and Colwinston to name a few.

For me the concept of the Thankful Villages brings home with greater impact than simple numbers the scale of the cost of the Great War. Very few people escaped without losing a family member or friend. The war could not be escaped wherever you lived, whatever you did, no matter how remote or obscure. And of course the cost of the war, in lives lost, books not written, weddings not celebrated and children not born, cannot be quantified, which is why a symbolic representation of this loss has such an impact and is so valuable.

You can read a lot more about the enduring fascination of the Thankful Villages here: http://www.hellfirecorner.co.uk/thankful.htm

Savage Continent - Keith Lowe

This survey of post war Europe is a natural sequel in terms of my reading to Ian Kershaw's "The End", reviewed here last month. "The End" described and explained the utter destruction of much of central Europe at the end of the Second World War - this books follows on by describing some of the consequences of that destruction.

I knew very little about this period before reading this book. If pushed I would have mentioned the Marshall Plan, and guessed that the process of moving from the anarchy and chaos of war to civilised society would take time and a lot of pain. Britain, which had never been invaded or occupied (the Channel islands excepted), and which had ended on the winning side, struggled to recover, and was not clear of the shadow of war until the 1950's (arguably a whole generation was damaged by the conflict) - how much worse must it have been for those countries utterly wrecked by occupation, saturation bombing, and the deliberate destruction of industry by retreating forces? Add in the bitterness of ethnic tension and a thirst for revenge against collabarators and others, and it is hardly surprising that "Europe in the aftermath of World War 2" was the "savage continent" Lowe describes.

The human instinct for neatness means we readily accept the story that the war ended in 1945, but for many of the people of Europe their problems had only just begun. For many others the war raged on without respite. Lowe chronicles these stories clearly and navigates the complex moral issues adrioitly. His analysis is bravely unblinking - he does not turn away from analysing atrocities irrespective of who commits them. Suffering is not ignored, even if he does not fall into the trap of drawing moral equivalences between the crimes of an invading regime, and the revenge attacks of the newly liberated. He engages with some of the most difficult and passionate controversies of the 20th Century - for example, do the crime committed against the German people of Eastern Europe by the Soviets and others in any mitigate the impact of the Holocaust - and presents the arguments and evidence and makes judgments the reader is compelled to trust.  

The importance of knowing how the Europe of today emerged from the ashes of World War 2 is key to understanding so much about European history - the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia (the one country that didn't undergo massive ethnic cleansing in the post war period); the Cold War; the formation of the Warsaw Pact, and the modern European Community amongst many others. I simply didn't know before I read this book about the subversion of democracy in (ironically) post-War Greece, aided by the British, nor how the Communists took control in many Eastern European countries in a manner reminiscent of the Nazi take over in Germany - get a foot in the democratic door, then gradually use what levers of power you do control to get more, until the opposition is finished. That is what makes this such an important book. Knowing World War 2 didn't have a neat tidy ending is one thing; understanding how the continent was torn apart before it could be slowly reassembled is quite another. This isn't an easy read, both in terms of content and length, but it is well worth the investment.

The End: Germany, 1944-45 by Ian Kershaw

As readers we are as guilty as the rest of the media when it comes to our insatiable obsession with the second world war. We just keep returning to it, drawn irresistibly, by that haunting "what if?". Here the focus is on the last year of the war in Europe (incidentally, it would have been nice if Kershaw had even acknowledged that there was a war going on elsewhere) and tries to answer the question - why did Germany fight on into 1945 when the end was only a matter of time, and when the cost was so high in terms of human life and destruction of property, including Germany's cultural heritage.

Asked this question a non-historian would hazard that the Nazi party, its leadership, in particular Hitler, would have had something to do with it, and of course this is the case. So successful had the Nazi's been in making themselves part of every aspect of German existence that the thought of giving up when their leaders where still promising victory was inconceivable. factor in the mythology of the stab in the back surrender of 1918 and the scene was set to a fanatical fight to the death. The detail of this is portrayed by this book - and it is fascinating to see how the administration managed to keep mundane activities running almost up to the end of the war. More chilling is the retribution meted out to anyone who tried to hasten the end of the war, or surrender, even with the Allies at the point of victory.

Kershaw makes very effective use of letters home and diaries, as well as other sources such as secretly recorded prisoners of war, to get nearer to the heart of what ordinary Germans really thought about the end of the war. The illusion of Hitler's invulnerability was extremely strong.

There are a few things I would like to have seen covered in this book. Firstly, the war is portrayed as a European battlefield, and while the focus was on Germany I don't see how the context of the World War could be ignored. Secondly, the war the conflict to the north and south of Germany is largely ignored, along with pretty much any other non-Germanic part of the conflict. As I understand it Germany had large reserves of forces in for example Norway which were never called into the final struggle for the homeland - why not, when old men and young boys were being pushed into uniform? Finally, we hear time and again that many Germans clung to the hope of some secret weapon that the Nazis were working on. We are led to believe that these were simply false hopes, rumours dreamt up by a desperate populace and allowed to spread by a propaganda machine running out of lies. But is that the whole story - was there really no German research into new weapons that could, potentially, have turned the course of the war?

Berlin - Antony Beevor

Berlin - The Downfall 1945 Antony Beevor, Penguin, 2002


You might get the impression from some of my recent posts that all I do is read German history, but it is fair to say that these entries are not entirely representative of my reading habits. Before I get to the book itself, a little gripe - this book's cover includes the strap line "The Number One Bestseller". It is amazing how often that line is used - I think it is largely devalued now. No doubt if challenged the publisher could justify it by selecting a very limited period of time, or category, or location. Number one in the non-fiction category on December 11th 2004 in Latvia doesn't really count.


I am being overly cynical however, because this book is a highly authoritative account of the fall of Berlin. As you might expect, the horror is unrelenting, and while I now know more about this terrible period of history than I could possibly want, I confess the detail has not stuck - there is a long parade of generals with similar sounding names, battles across unknown terrain, without any clear overall picture of the progress of the war - there is simply too much detail for the non-academic reader.

What has stayed with me (as I usually find) are the images. History says that the fall of the Third Reich was a long but inevitable process. Where you start the beginning of the end from is a matter of choice - the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbour (my choice, because after the USA joined the war there was really only one way it was going to end) D-Day or the end of the Battle of the Bulge, it all pointed to defeat for Germany at the end of the war. A negotiated peace was theoretically possible but the Nazis would never have let it happen. So the crushing of Berlin, principally by the Russians, was always going to be brutal. Despite this, it seems many Berliners tried to continue normal life right up to the end , rather than getting the hell out of there. They did not see the end as inevitable. The ability to deceive oneself despite all the appalling evidence to the contrary is quite chilling. Of course there were also many Berliners who could see what was coming but could do nothing about it.

When it was published I remember the book being controversial because of its focus on the systematic rape of German girls and women by the Red Army. While these accounts are hard to stomach, the context justifies their inclusion, and Beevor makes it clear that he is not taking sides or using this abuse as a justification for anti-Soviet propaganda, a pretty pointless exercise in any event. German atrocities are not the focus of this book but are referenced as part explanation for the brutalities of the Red Army.

This is "popular" history, that is history for the mass market, with half an eye on a TV series, but few concessions have been made to accessibility. It's not an easy read, for many reasons, and even students of the period could probably find better, more digestible accounts. It is also one of those history texts that provide little in the way of food for thought. Compared to say When Money Dies, which can provide much to think about in the context of today's society, all this book tells us is that when wars come to a bloody end there is an incalculable price to pay, which I think we knew.

When Money Dies - Adam Fergusson

When Money Dies – the Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-inflation

(First published in the 1970’s, although I read the 2010 version pictured here.)

First off, what a great title for a book. But the obvious question I need to address in the first instance is once again, “Why?” Although I studied Economics at A level in the (early) 1980’s my interest in the topic, faint though it was even at the time, has not been maintained.  I could pretend that I found the debate around how to control inflation in the face of spiralling public expenditure and falling revenue a particularly pertinent one given the financial times we find ourselves in in 2012. And I suppose that would be true, although with hindsight the behaviour of the German political establishment seems baffling – if we just print enough money it – all our economic woes - will all go away.  George Osborne doesn’t strike me as much of a reader, but he would love this book with its messages of controlling expenditure, maximising revenue, sacking lots of unnecessary public sector workers, etc.  However the parallels between Weimar Germany and 21^st century UK can be overplayed – we aren’t being occupied by the French army for instance.  

I could also argue that the rise of Hitler is inextricably linked with the series of crises in the German economy, and that would be closer to the truth, because in reality I read this book because I wanted to stay one step of my sons who was studying the rise of the Nazis in GCSE History. But as he will never read this far my secret is safe!

Incidentally, the QI theory of history – that everything we were ever taught in school is wrong – doesn’t really apply here. People really did have money worth less than the paper it was printed on, although whether the wheelbarrow stories are true is another matter. What I found interesting was how Germans managed to survive this period – for example rural Germans were much less affected than those in the cities, having access to their own food sources.

I can’t hand on heart recommend this (unless you are Danny Alexander or Ed Balls I suppose) because there are histories of the Weimar that tell the story with more “economy” (see what I did there?) and more context. I’ll write about one of these, by Richard J Evans, when I finally finish it!

(PS After I wrote this I saw this book recommended by an economist writing in the weekend newspapers!)

The Greatest Day in History - Nicholas Best

The Greatest Day in History – the 11^th Hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th Month – How the Great War Really Ended by Nicholas Best (Phoenix 2008)

I am probably being pedantic here, but I see a bit of a contradiction between this book’s title and its sub-title: either the book is about the 11^th November 1918 – the day – or the 11^th hour of that day, or about how the war really ended, which is infinitely more complex than just the analysis of one hour or day.

Pedantry aside, what the author has done here is actually very interesting – he has gathered together a series or memoirs and recollection of the end of the First World War, and woven them together. Sensibly he hasn’t been dogmatic about the time span, and where the narrative requires it he has gone outside the 24 hour constraints.

The book is a curious mixture of these memoirs with some genuine historical analysis, charting hour by hour how the Germans came to sign the Armistice. Armistice not of course surrender, a detail which matter significantly for the later course of European history. The Nazi version of events, whereby the undefeated German army was betrayed by the politicians, is comprehensively demolished through this detail. The last hours of the Kaiser before the abdication is also minutely described. Other scenes are more impressionistic – what various famous or to be famous people were doing at the time of the Armistice.

Many scenes from this book stayed with me, including the account of how, when the news that an armistice and ceasefire was imminent, some troops rushed to the front so they could claim they had “seen action”, not wanting to miss the last chance to have a go at the "Boche". Some men died minutes before 11, and of course some fighting went on after 11.

I was a little surprised that this approach worked – that a deep dive into one day could tell so much about broader European historical themes such as the end of the second Reich and the Austro-Hungarian empire, instead of a traditional, broad narrative sweep across the years. The use of so much raw material, especially the diaries and letters, gives the account an immediacy and urgency – you can share the elation, the relief, and the bitterness as the war ends.

For anyone who wants to read about the Great War but doesn’t want to lose the personal stories of those involved, this is highly recommended.