Book Review - Hubris: the Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century by Alistair Horne

 Hubris: the Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century by Alistair Horne

New York: Harper, 2015                    ISBN 9780062397805

Those few who regularly read my blog will know that I've read a few books written by Alistair Horne, and enjoyed them all. I enjoyed this one too, as it is well written and informative, but I must state that I found the premise of the book a little thin. Horne, in his introduction to Hubris, states his aim to be to show how that state of over-confidence can lead to disaster, and how, often after a great victory, hubris creeps in and infects (Horne likens it to a virus) the body politic and the body military and leads to inevitable downfall.

To illustrate his point he chooses key battles from the first half of the Twentieth Century, Tsushima, Nomonhan, Moscow, Midway, MacArthur in Korea, and the battle of Dien Bien Phu. His contention is that in each case it was hubris that led to defeat, and that victory could lead to the development of hubris in the winners. This theory is fairly self-evident to any serious student of military history, and Horne does not add significantly to thinking in this area in my opinion.

Nevertheless, he does show the links between Japan's victory in 1905 and their over-confidence in Mongolia in 1939 and at Midway in 1942. America's crushing of Japan can be argued to have instilled a sense of inevitability to the United States and MacArthur's view that the Korean War would lead to a speedy victory; and the similar racist views of the French (as well as their internecine bickering and arrogance) led them to grievously underestimate the Viet Minh and General Giap.

Although Horne only touches on them, to me two other themes loom large in this book - racism, and ruthlessness. Much of the hubris shown by the Russians, Germans, Americans and French was engendered by their racist view of their opponents. European commanders - and political leaders for that matter - had a very dim view of their Asian brothers. What is fascinating to see is how these views remained unchanged, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Japan in particular suffered from European scorn, despite destroying the Russian Fleet in 1905 and conquering Manchuria and Korea after that. This meant little to the Americans and British who continued to see the Japanese and other Asians as less than human.

This racism led directly to their hubris when facing the "Asian hordes", as did their lack of understanding of the ruthlessness of their foes. Both MacArthur, and the various French leaders in Indochina (the revolving door of French military leadership at the time surely didn't help their cause) looked at their opponents through their own eyes. They failed to understand that the North Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese were prepared to sustain much greater casualties than their Western counterparts could bear, and, although they may not have had the latest technology, they had a greater will.

No-one was more ruthless than Stalin. Unlike his Western "comrades" of World War Two, he had no racist limits to his thinking, so when Japanese troops encroached on his Mongolian border, he threw in his best troops, his best tanks, and Zhukov, his best general. In fact, when it came to the battle of Nomonhan, it was the Japanese who underestimated their Slavic opponents - not racially, but ideologically. Stalin smashed them, as he eventually smashed Hitler. Hitler's hubris came from his victory in France, and his racially inspired theories that led him to think that the Russians were less than human. Stalin was prepared to not only destroy his country to deny it to Hitler, but send millions of his countrymen and women to their deaths to stop him.

While Hitler was just as ruthless than Stalin, he didn't have as many men to sacrifice, and so lost.

As always, Horne writes smoothly and well - Tsushima is fading into history, and Nomonhan has always been obscure, so to re-read the narratives of those battles is pleasing. Horne provides good context for those battles and the others he discusses. He uses his narrative flair to take the reader right into the history of each battle, but his theoretical strength is less gripping; at times the hubris angle seems tacked on, or an afterthought to his racing narrative history.

So, what to make of this book? As narrative history it's gripping, as a theoretical work less so. I note that some of this book first appeared in the Military History Quarterly, and that makes sense to me, as I think the issue with this book is the lack of connexion throughout the book. It seems that Horne may have thought of these episodes separately and tacked them together. Perhaps I'm doing him a dis-service but, for me, this book was less than I hoped for given how it was marketed, but still was a good read.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Black Dragon River by Dominic Ziegler

Black Dragon River : a Journey down the Amur River at the Borderlands of Empires by Dominic Ziegler

New York: Penguin Press, 2015                       ISBN 9781594203671

This fascinating book is both more and less than its cover would suggest. It is a much broader book in scope than merely looking at the Amur River itself, with the author beginning his journey in Irkutsk, far from the source of even the Onon River, the most Easterly of the Amur's tributaries. Ziegler intersperses his trip, which eventually brings him to the mouth of the Amur, with the history of the lands surrounding the river. He begins this history with Genghis Khan, who grew up in the foothills from which the Onon River springs.

However, most of Ziegler's historical writing is to do with the attempts by Russians to explore, subdue, and exploit the land around the Amur. And what an interesting history it is. Many of the people who moved there became proselytizers for development, suggesting that Southern Siberia was the Russian "West", where not only a civilization could grow, but where a new type of society could flourish. This idea was partly driven by the Russians exiled there for insurrectionist activities, and who re-discovered their Russian-ness in exile.

The Russians back in St. Petersburg were more interested in strategic and resource-getting activities. After the sable and sea-otter were hunted down, timber and caviar became the next targets. Ziegler describes how the rape of the countryside is happening to this day, with the Russian Mafia and Chinese State taking on the role of the early Cossacks in despoiling the land.

Ziegler shows how the early promise of the region - when it was thought that the Amur Basin would be a paradise, with goods flowing from it across to America from Nikolaevsk, the town at the Amur's mouth that would become a new San Francisco - gradually diminished owing to the difficulties of the terrain, the weather, and lack of investment. Even the Trans-Siberian Railway didn't help: the line back West meant that dreams of Eastern development were once again stymied.

As Ziegler travels along the river he sees old dreams that have been shattered, and much despair left in their wake. There are no good modern stories to be told along the river, although much of the past is being twisted to serve nationalistic ends. Much has been forgotten, and much remembered wrongly.
And what of China, across the river? Ziegler shows how a treaty between Russia and China signed in 1689 set a benchmark for mostly peaceful relations since. Both sides choose not to provoke the other, while trying to minimize the other's historic presence in the region by re-writing history.

So, this book, while an interesting social, historical, and political work on Southern Siberia and the relations between Russia and China, is not really a trip down the Amur River.

One more gripe with this book - while it has a good general bibliography and index, the one map provided is hopeless: more than half of the places mentioned in the text are not shown on it. There are no photographs or drawings of any kind in the book, a poor showing from the publishers, as they would have added considerably to the text.

All-in-all this book is a bit of a curate's egg: interesting in parts.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell