Book Review - Wings of the Kite-Hawk by Nicolas Rothwell

 Wings of the Kite-Hawk: a Journey into the Heart of Australia by Nicolas Rothwell

Melbourne: Black Inc., 2009* (first published 2003)               ISBN 9781863954457

Recently, in a book of essays by Tim Parks, I read of his contention that all great literature is trying to come to terms with death, and that all great writers tend to return to one great over-arching theme throughout their works, however varied they may seem to be on the surface.

If that is the case, then Wings of the Kite-Hawk is great literature, and Nicolas Rothwell is a great writer. Many years ago I read his book Quicksilver and felt I didn't really grasp what he was getting at, but after reading Wings of the Kite-Hawk I feel that I have moved closer to what Rothwell is trying to express in his writing.

Rothwell enters the desert country of Australia on a search for meaning: "... the desert always gives those who search in its emptiness the dream, at least, of their desires." Rothwell's dream is to reconcile his life with the never changing rhythms of the desert. He wishes the desert to enter him (as all those who have spent time there wish).

Particularly, as an emigrant to Australia, he tries to find his way into the country through his fellow emigrants, the explorers. Through long meditations on the lives and explorations of Leichhardt, Sturt, Strehlow and Giles, Rothwell muses on life, on dreams of success and the reality of failure, and on the certainty of death - "[y]ou're much closer to death out here than in the city; you can feel it bending humanity to its will." 

The four explorers Rothwell chooses to focus on had a desire for death haunting their lives: Leichhardt, that strange visionary who has haunted the minds of white Australia for over a century and a half, actually did meet his demise in the back country - a demise that one feels he was actively seeking.

Sturt's voyage to the Inland Sea - a romantic folly that ennobled those that undertook it - was a doomed voyage that seemed made for the times. What was Sturt seeking? It surely wasn't an actual sea, which it seems he knew wasn't there: in leaving his wife and child, what was he doing? Rothwell speculates - "[w]here was he bound? Like every noble or beautiful thing, to the kingdom of death - that kingdom he longed to see with his own eyes, to endure, and to return from, with golden words upon his lips." He of course did return, unsuccessful, and with no golden words for recompense.

Strehlow was an explorer of culture rather than land, famously working his way through the traditions of the Aranda people. He eventually saw himself as the keeper of their traditions and (in)famously collected and photographed many sacred objects and events. He spent his life amongst the Aranda, but in the end completely failed to understand the culture he felt he was a part of. Rothwell describes in his recollection of the sale of the Strehlow Collection how Strehlow's efforts to preserve a people and their culture led only to fracture and decay. 

Rothwell himself as represented in Wings of the Kite-Hawk mainly interacts with white residents of the Outback, all the while understanding that it is the Aboriginal people who fully understand the country and its dreaming. In the cast of characters that cross his path, it is those who have absorbed some of the ancient learning that connect most with the spirit of the country which, for Rothwell, is embodied in the Kite-Hawk.

These birds permeate the story of Rothwell's journey: from being a sign of good fortune to a presager of death when his colleague Esterline hits and kills a Kite-Hawk with his car and bewails the bird's and his own demise (when he perished in the desert soon after killing the bird).

I think it is in the story of Giles that Rothwell finds a character most in tune with his own quest. Late to the country, Giles never gets to make a discovery that others would recognise as great or useful "...for in its last phases exploration, like life, becomes a retreat, a silence, a turning in."

In the end, despite his hopes, Rothwell does not find the answer to his quest in the lives and deaths of the explorers as he had hoped. Like him, they traversed across the country rather than into it. It is rather the encounters that Rothwell has on his journeys with those that have embedded themselves into the desert that show him the way. Enlightenment and peace will come if you let them, but not if you chase them.

A deservedly praised book: history, philosophy and a life-lesson. Highly recommended.

* The 2009 edition of this book has new foreword by Pico Iyer and preface by Rothwell that both shed light on what Rothwell was hoping to achieve with this book

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Budapest: Between East and West

 Budapest: Between East and West by Victor Sebestyen

London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2023 (first published 2022)  ISBN 9781474610018

A good book. Victor Sebestyen, born in Budapest, has written a book that is full of humour, frustration, and amazement about a city (and a country - this book is as much a history of Hungary as of Budapest) that has been at the centre of much of modern European history.

Budapest really became a city of note only in the nineteenth century, which is why much of Sebestyen's writing about the earlier years of Buda and Pest is more wide-ranging than merely the development of those two towns. And they were two towns for much of their history - Buda and Pest only united in the Nineteenth Century (when the first permanent bridge over the Danube was completed, and political union occurred), and they continue to have separate characters.

It was when Hungary became part of the Hapsburg Empire (owing to the Austrian King being the inheritor of the Kingdom of Hungary) that both Buda and Pest began to grow, and that Hungarian-ness began to become a political weapon. The revolution of 1848 was the making of modern Hungary, with Budapest being the centre of that change. The compromise reached in 1867, when the Hapsburgs created the Dual Monarchy, seemed like an elegant solution at the time, assuaging Hungarian aspirations while keeping them in the Hapsburg tent, but led to an unhealthy expansion in chauvinism in Hungary.

Budapest played a big part in this - the Hungary of the Dual Monarchy was only 49% Magyar, but in Budapest the percentage was much higher, and the willingness of those in power there to share power with other nationalities was non-existent. Hungary became the needy and difficult child of the Dual Monarchy, wanting special privileges but not willing to allow the other children to have anything.

Budapest has been invaded and destroyed many times throughout history, and shifted from one political extreme to another across what was a difficult Twentieth Century for Hungary and Hungarians. Sebestyen uses short pithy chapters to cover the irony of Budapest being a strong supporter of the Austrians entry into World War One, the joy of revolution, the terror of Bela Kun and Admiral Horthy and the descent into Holocaust and the madness of the Arrow Cross, and the alternating depression and fear generated by 50 years of Communist Rule.

What Sebestyen conveys is that the essence of Budapest - the cafe lifestyle, the easy sophistication of the denizens of the city, their (sometimes misplaced) pride in themselves and their country, have continued throughout all the fighting and oppression over the years. Each chapter begins with some apposite quotes, and I think the following, from Arthur Koestler is worth repeating here - "Hungarians are the only people in Europe without racial and linguistic relatives. The peculiar intensity of their existence can perhaps be explained by their exceptional loneliness... To be Hungarian is a collective neurosis..."

This book is a well-written tour through the history of part of Europe that we "Westerners" often gloss over.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware

 The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware (Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia)

London: Penguin Books, 1991 (first published 1963)   ISBN 0140135294

This book is a useful (if slightly dated) introduction to the structure, beliefs and history of the Orthodox faith. Those of us brought up in a Western Christian tradition (Anglican in my case) may see the Orthodox Church as remote and exotic: I well remember that when a Greek Orthodox church opened in the city I grew up in being amazed at the chanting, icons and incense that accompanied their services and festivals - very different to my experience of Church.

Of course what I didn't know then, but this book explains, is that Orthodox services are in fact a link back to the earliest forms of Christian worship. Orthodox theology is based around the Bible and the decisions of the first seven Ecumenical Councils of the Church, believing that this is enough for true worship, "neither adding anything, nor taking anything away."

What does this mean in practice? It means an acceptance by those that are Orthodox that the great mysteries of the Christian faith are not to be interpreted or re-interpreted, but are to be accepted and lived. That there is no separation between belief, prayer and worship, that they all form part of being an Orthodox Christian: you can't claim to be one if you don't attend to those three things. That the clergy and the laity together guard the Tradition of the Church: there is no Pope, as the Church runs in a collegiate fashion, with the Holy Spirit determining the path forward through discussion and consensus.

Mysticism plays a much greater role in Orthodox life that Western Rites, as does the body. The belief that both the body and soul are made in the image of God means that actions and physical rituals are as important a part of Orthodox belief as thoughts and prayers. So while outwardly similar to Roman Catholicism, Orthodox have different emphases to living a life in Christ.

There are also of course deeper divisions, Filioque being a major one. What might seem a minor difference in words in the Creed actually is a major theological difference. Orthodox belief places the Father as the unique source of Godhead, with the Son and the Holy Spirit as part of the essence of the Father ("the divine is indivisible in its divisions"). If one states (as the Western Tradition does) that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, then there is no longer a unique source of Godhead. This seemingly technical issue is one of the two major divisions between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church.

The second division centres around the figure of the Pope, and specifically the power he has drawn to himself. The Orthodox Church has always had a hierarchy of the Patriarchy, and the first in that hierarchy has always been the Bishop of Rome. However, the Orthodox Church is a deeply ecumenical church - no one person, Bishop or Patriarch can decide Church dogma. Rome may be first among equals, but the idea that any one person can be infallible, or that they could command others in their beliefs, is anathema to the Orthodox.

Ware writes about modern ecumenical possibilities - while he writes in a hopeful tone, fundamentally the Orthodox stand firm in their belief that they are guardians of the true Tradition, so if other Churches don't move to them, it's unlikely that there will be a communion of Orthodox with Roman Catholic or Anglican. Since the publication of this book, it has been interesting to see particularly within the Anglican community a move to explore more deeply what the Orthodox Church has to offer, from actions such as installing icons in churches, to a move of people and priests to convert to Orthodoxy.

The other (first) half of this book deals with the history of the Orthodox Church. The division of the Church into Orthodox and Roman Catholic came about around the Millennium. Ware explains how the geo-political arena both widened the divisions (once most of the Orthodox lands came under Islamic domination their ability to engage with Western Christianity was limited), and created the unique structure of Orthodoxy as we know it today (Islamic domination made the Church not only the centre of religious identity, but also of national identity).

The national nature of many Orthodox churches is both a blessing and a curse: unlike Rome, Orthodox churches were keen to translate liturgy into local languages, so that believers could be fully involved in worship, but the temptation to support national leaders to the detriment of humanity in general has been a temptation to which church leaders have often succumbed. Ware uses the Communist domination of Eastern Europe to demonstrate both the willingness of people to be martyrs for the Church, as well as be fellow travellers for secular governments who wish to control and even crush religion.

Overall this is an excellent book for those who wish to understand an important part of the Christian Church. It's well-written, informative and learned. I feel it might be the start of a longer journey for me (thankfully the book comes with a useful bibliography and index for those of us who wish to go further).

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Fall of the Roman Empire by Michael Grant

 The Fall of the Roman Empire by Michael Grant

New York: Collier Books, 1990 (rev. ed. first ed. published 1976)   ISBN 0020285604

This is a serviceable book that describes in broad terms the author's view on how the Western Roman Empire came to collapse in the Fifth Century AD. Unfortunately I have to state at the beginning of this review there are much better books covering the subject. Grant's style is workmanlike at best, his lack of footnotes is annoying given how many quotations are used in the text, and he can tend to some post facto explication of the fall of the West, especially when it comes to the influence of Christianity on the fall of the Empire.

After an introductory chapter, which focusses on the events of the last hundred or so years of the Western Empire, Grant then catalogues the factors that went into causing the fall. The headings for the sections of his book The Failure of the Army, The Gulfs between the Classes, The Credibility Gap, The Partnerships that Failed, The Groups that Opted Out, The Undermining of Effort, cover his main themes. The first two in particular are crucial to the final downfall of the once great institution that was the Roman Empire.

It's clear that as time went on, the Roman Empire became more and more militarized as the "Germans" pressed more heavily on their frontiers. As Grant explains in an appendix, the Western Empire with its much longer "barbarian" border, had to provide a much stronger military force than the Eastern Empire. This led to a requirement for a very large army, and the high taxation required to keep it running. In earlier times, service in the army was a path to Roman citizenship, but after Caracella decreed that all free people in the Empire were automatically citizens in AD 212, that encouragement to service was removed. Each province of the Empire needed to provide a certain number of recruits for the army, but many bought their way out of service: their money was used to pay for German soldiers. The dilution of the Roman portion of the army led to a less professional force, a less reliable force, and a smaller force. Grant point out that evidence suggests that in the last century of the Empire, it seems the biggest offensive forces to deal with breaches in the Empire struggled to reach ten thousand men, a far cry from the huge Roman armies of earlier times.

Grant also explains how the Empire crumbled from within - the crippling taxes levied particularly on agricultural production were inequitably enforced, with wealthy citizens able to evade or reduce their taxes more than middle classes. This type of activity led to what Grant calls the "Credibility Gap", where the disconnect between the vital middle classes and the government meant that when the Empire needed their citizens, those citizens were often not too interested in helping.

Grant also points out that while Rome was happy to have Germans come into the West to fight or farm for the Empire, it did little to embrace those Germans or make them feel welcome. The aggressive suppression of any religions other than Roman Catholicism in the West also did little to encourage people to feel like they were part of something bigger than their own group or sect. The East and the West also gradually drifted apart, failing to support each other, and developing differing interpretations of religion.

Grant makes much of the rise of Monasticism and asceticism, suggesting that the call to turn away from the earthly life to a life of contemplation and peace was a factor in the fall of the Empire. I think his theory is problematic on a couple of fronts. Firstly, much of the evidence he provides is from a period later than the fall of the Western Empire, and he extrapolates that evidence backwards, which is risky. He also fails to convince me that the numbers of people who would actively turn away from the earthly life would be significant enough to affect army recruitment, for example. Where he does make a valid point in my opinion with regards to clerical expansion is that many people who could have become good imperial administrators instead turned to the church. This change seems due to laws that meant that civil servants were often responsible for raising taxes, or covering the costs of the taxes they failed to raise. The Church was a less stressful career.

The lack of footnotes is a real concern to me in this book - whenever I wondered at a quotation or a point, there was nothing for me to go back to and check. This book seems to want to rise above a popular history, but it doesn't quite get there. When I got to the end of the book I felt that I knew a lot about Grant's thinking about the fall of the Empire, but somewhat less as to why he came to the conclusions that he did. I would recommend other books before this if  you are interested in the fall of the Roman Empire.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert

 The French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert

London: Penguin Books, 1982 (1988 reprint, first published 1980)  ISBN 0140049452

While I have read a lot of modern history, the French Revolution is a definite gap in my knowledge. While I knew some of the what, I didn't know much at all of the how or the why. Christopher Hibbert's book has filled in some of the answers I was seeking, but added to my sense that the French Revolution was more confusion than clarity, and that whatever the revolutionists were aiming for in terms of a new society, they missed the mark.

Hibbert has set out his book in a series of chapters named after specific days in the "life" of the Revolution, such as "The Day of the Tennis-Court Oath", "The Days of the Tuileries", "The Days of the Terror" and so on. He uses these events to build the narrative of the Revolution, using apt quotes from observers to fill out a story of violence, confusion, high-hopes, and cruel realities.

The cruel reality that could be said to be the source of the Revolution was that France was broke. Years of unchecked and poorly monitored spending had left the exchequer bare, and a fiscal crisis loomed. So at the beginning, like most Revolutions it was about tax. Louis XVI was indecisive, not too bright, and poorly advised (or rather often took bad advice). His calling of the Estates General was not the best idea, especially given that many of the more radical people were led to believe that the parlement would do much more than approve new taxes. As we have seen throughout history, it's very dangerous to give people with no say a sniff of freedom. The Estates General soon got out of hand, driven by radicals in Paris, as well as the genuine needs of the poorest in society.

The French Revolution seemed to lurch from mob rule to factionalism and back again. The mob burnt down the Bastille, and attacked the Tuileries, while factionalism led to the takeover of government by the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre, and eventually to Napoleon ("Don't you know he is one of those Corsicans? They are all on the make.").

Overall, the Revolution was a sad and bloody affair - thousands were needlessly killed, the country fell into ruin and war, and the final act of the time was to re-instate a dictatorship which in some ways was worse than the monarchy. One gets the sense reading Hibbert's book, that if Louis was a bit smarter, and had a court with a bit more intelligence, there was a pathway for France to transition to the kind of Constitutional Monarchy that England was beginning to enjoy. Unfortunately Louis could not walk that path, and many of his court held the lower classes in too much contempt to ever deal with them.

If you want a vigorously written account of what happened between 1789 and 1799 (there is not much preliminary scene-setting and the narrative ends with Napoleon's coup), there is a lot to like in this book. Recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - France on Trial: the Case of Marshal Petain by Julian Jackson

 France on Trial: the Case of Marshal Petain by Julian Jackson

[NC]: Penguin Books, 2024 (first published 2023)       ISBN 9780141993096

This is a magnificent book. Lucid, well-written and informative, this blow-by-blow account of the trial of Philippe Petain is also an in-depth look at the pain that armistice, collaboration and Vichy caused the body politic of France from 1940-1944.

Petain's trial, which occurred in the period between VE day and VJ day in 1945, was for treason but the specific charges were rather convoluted. The prosecution tried to suggest that Petain was part of a pre-war conspiracy, which was fairly conclusively disproved. However, the trial struggled with the question of whether Vichy France was the legitimate government of France, and what part of Petain's actions constituted the treason with which he was charged - was it treason to sign the Armistice? was it treason to not move to Africa and continue the struggle from there? Was it treason to encourage French in Syria to fight the Allies? Was it treason to fire on Americans in Tunisia after they landed? Various people, including De Gaulle who would have preferred the trial to have occurred with Petain in absentia, had differing views on this question.

In the end, it seems to this reader, Petain's biggest crimes came to be meeting Hitler, and the encouragement he gave to Nazi power. However, his actual complicity in these words and meetings is in some doubt. In his late eighties, the trial revealed that often it was the  prime minister  Laval who was really pulling the levers, leaving Petain to be a figurehead. Of course the fact is that by remaining as figurehead, Petain gave these actions a legitimacy that came from his fame in World War One, which is possibly hard for a 21st century reader to gauge.

Another surprising aspect of the case is that very little time was spent discussing the mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of French to Germany to work in factories under appalling conditions, and almost no time spent discussing the fate of the Jewish people under Petain's government. These painful facts came out much later, in the long tail of Petainism, which Jackson describes well.

And what of Petain himself? He had returned from Germany (where he was taken when the war was being lost) to face the justice of the court, but famously said practically nothing during the trial. Whether this was due to his advanced age, or whether it was a tactic by the defence, or whether it was simply that the courtroom was so hot that he found it hard to stay awake (he wasn't alone there), it is hard to say.

Of course he was found guilty by the combined jury of parliamentarians and resisters, and was sentenced to death. De Gaulle instead put him in a prison on the Ile D'Yeu, where he died and was buried. The contested history of Petain, Vichy, and the actions of the French during World War Two are still being played out to this day. Petain has been the darling of the French right, but officially his memory is a political football - widely seen as the saviour of the French in the First World War, his actions in the Second are widely seen as shameful. Jackson explains this well.

Petain famously said in 1940 that he would give his body for France. In some ways he did so in the trial as well, as he absorbed the confusion and hatred that the French had about the previous years, and took it all on his head. He allowed De Gaulle to build a narrative of the French as a nation of resisters betrayed by Petain and his clique, a narrative which allowed the French to park the painful past and move forward free of guilt (of course, as always happens, this confected story fell apart in later years). Jackson's choice of title is apt.

From my reading of Alister Horne's book The Price of Glory it's clear that Petain was haunted by the terrible loss of life at Verdun, and it seems simple (too simple?) to posit that he did what he did in 1940 to stop it happening again. France had been traumatised by the First War, and were ready for someone to tell them it wouldn't happen again - they were pleased that Petain did that. They soon realised they had done a deal with a devil, and their regret and rage needed a focus, and Petain became that focus.

The Petain that comes out in Jackson's book is a person who wanted to do the right thing by his country, but beyond the armistice he didn't know what that was. He was hijacked and hoodwinked by those such as Laval who were more than happy to collaborate with the Germans for their ideological needs and, let's face it, for power and cupidity.

The France that comes out in Jackson's book is one that is divided, confused, and self-hating. Yet to come to terms with what had happened during the War, it gave Petain a trial that was divided and confused, with many of the participants hating the fact that they were involved in it.

Jackson has weaved all these threads into a wonderfully readable history, which is illuminating and enjoyable. A deserved winner of the Duff Cooper history prize, I can highly recommend it.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Reformation by Owen Chadwick

 The Reformation by Own Chadwick (Pelican History of the Church v. 2)

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986 (first published 1964, rev. ed. 1972) ISBN 0140205047

This book has travelled around with me for about 30 years - well, not this book, but the various editions I've owned and then lost or given away through my various moves. This copy I bought for $2 at a charity shop. In all that time, I've never read it cover to cover until now.

And I'm glad I did. Owen Chadwick has written a lively and comprehensive history of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, covering not only Luther's revolt, but all that followed - Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Calvinism and all the other groups that grew from the great initial revolt at the torpor and corruption of the Catholic Church. He also covers the Catholic reaction to these changes, with the growth of the Jesuits, and the attempts to clean the Augean stables that was the Medieval Catholic Church.

We all know the outlines of the Reformation - disgusted at the corruption and sinfulness of much of the church, Luther famously set out to clean up church doctrine, liturgy and ritual. He never intended to set up a rival religion, but, partly through mismanagement by the Pope, and the political situation in Northern Germany, that is what happened. Once the Pandora's box was open, many went further than Luther in ridding religion of ritual, music, pictures, bishops, and in fact most of what made the Catholic Church the Catholic Church.

Chadwick covers both the political and religious sides of the history, and explains how the Catholic Church "fought back", with Jesuits and Dominicans in particular bringing the Catholic Church back to the people. Chadwick also writes about the Church's move into the Americas, and how the way the Conquistadors treated the natives made many churchmen consider what the church should be to all people, and how Christ's message should be delivered.

Chadwick weaves his way through the chronology of the Reformation quite skillfully, and towards the end has an interesting chapter on how the average peasant coped with the changes that occurred not only in areas that turned Protestant, but also in the Catholic world, where services changed and many excesses were done away with.

Overall, if you want to read a comprehensive, well-written account of the religious upheavals of the Sixteenth Century, this is well worthwhile.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - A History of the Jewish People by James Parkes

 A History of the Jewish People by James Parkes

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964

This is a handy little crib on the history of the Jewish people, rather than the Jewish faith. Of course, it can be difficult to separate the two; as Parkes writes in his introduction, "[t]he history of the Jews is the story of a people inextricably interwoven with that of a religion. Neither can be told apart from the other. It is obvious that there would be no story of Judaism if there were no Jews; but it is just as true that Jews would not have survived the long centuries of their total dispersion had there not been the cement of a religion moulded to their need either to transform or to tolerate the conditions of their corporate and individual lives."

Parkes' history shows a long tradition of a people trying as much as they can to accommodate themselves to the situation in which they existed at any one time. From the earliest days there were geographically diverse groups of people practicing the religion of Judaism, with more or less oppression from the powers of the time. There have only been very short periods of time when Jewish people have had the capacity to control their own polity - very early and very late in their history.

The story of the Jews after Classical times is one of interaction with both Christendom and Islam, and the changing fortunes of those relationships. Christendom very quickly began oppressing the Jews, as they saw them as a threat to the growth of their own religion. The Jews were, in Christian eyes, apostates, Christ-killers, and subverters of fellow Christians. Islam initially treated Jews much better than did Christians, but as the Muslim world shrunk in the face of Western Christian dominance of Europe and Africa, and Islam withdrew into itself, that relationship too became poisoned and died. During the secular age, rather than religious scares, the route of anti-Semitism runs along the lines of finance and conspiracy - the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Nazi rantings about Jewish control of finance took the place of older tropes of Blood Libel and miscegenation.

Parkes explains how the Jews developed their faith and ideas in separation from each other - the Sephardic Spanish versus the Ashkenazi Central Europeans. While non-Jews were the people's biggest enemy, they were not averse to internecine conflict either. The destruction of the Temple and exclusion from Jerusalem meant that the old ways of Jewish worship had to change, through a "democratic" system of congregationalism, through to a "professional" structure of paid Rabbis. This is not gone into in great detail, but is fascinating to a non-Jewish reader such as myself.

The final section of the book deals with the horrors and hopes of the twentieth century - the Holocaust, and the creation of Israel. Parkes focusses on the British Mandate in Palestine, how something that began with such high hopes ended in disaster, with the British washing their hands (a la Pilate) of the problems they had created with a poorly thought-out plan to let Jews come back home. Written in 1964, this book doesn't cover much of the ongoing disaster that has come out of this recent history.

If you are a person who doesn't know much about Jewish history this book, although dated,  isn't the worst place to start.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Scenes from the End by Frank E. Manuel

 Scenes from the End: the Last Days of World War II in Europe by Frank E. Manuel

London: Profile Books, 2000                                        ISBN 1861972415

This is a short but interesting book. Frank Manuel was a journalist, and in World War Two became an intelligence officer. Scenes from the End is a reflection on his time in Germany as the war was ending based on notes written at the time, the letters he sent home to his wife, and "[c]onversations reported here [that] have passed through the smoke screen of memory, recollections of the spirit, rather than the precise detail, of events; sometimes they echo the voices of other observers."

And what does Manuel record? The justifications of Germans, the thoughts of those enslaved by the Germans, the feelings of the surviving Jews, and the explanations of German generals, interspersed with his attempts to make sense of what he was hearing and experiencing as an American of Jewish descent. 

There is a tone of contempt for those Germans who claim that they didn't know of Nazi crimes, and for those who engage in retribution against enemies (dobbing in a "Nazi", whether they were one or not), and for those who are feeling sorry for themselves and their country.

There are descriptions of the various nationalities that find themselves in Germany at the end, forced labourers that are suddenly free and who take their vengeance, former concentration camp inmates who tear their former guards apart limb-from-limb, former concentration camp guards or members of the SS who try to melt away, and of German officers who still maintain their valets, cars and copious luggage as they move into captivity. 

There is talk of "Werwolves", who never actually seem to appear, there is a story about a fanatical sergeant's attempt at sabotage, who needs a direct order from Sperrle before talking to Manuel about his mission, which contrasts with the willing cooperation he received from Sperrle and the other Nazi General Staff that he interviewed.

The last part of the book describes Manuel's time in Leipzig, where he is involved in ensuring those German scientists who wish to avoid Russian captivity can move to the American Zone. By this time he is sick of his job, sick of Europe and its entangled histories, and wanting to go home.

Scenes from the End is a well written memoir, and left this reader wanting more.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning

 Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning

New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992                                       ISBN 0060190132

"In mid-March 1942 some 75 to 80 percent of all victims of the Holocaust were still alive, while 20 to 25 percent had perished. A mere eleven months later, in mid-February 1943, the percentages were exactly the reverse." With this stark statement Christopher Browning begins his study of one part of that whirlwind of murder, the work of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Poland between July 1942 and November 1943.

That Browning is able to undertake this study is due to the fact that in the 1960s prosecutors interviewed 210 members of the Battalion in their investigations of war crimes from the period. Delving through the obfuscation and downright lies that are contained in some of the testimony, Browning lists a catalogue of horrors undertaken by this unit, and speculates how the "ordinary men" of Battalion 101 could do such things to their fellow human beings.

Unlike the Einsatzgruppen or the members of the SS assigned to run the death-camps, the Reserve Police received no special training or ideological reinforcement before being assigned to murder Jews. The Battalion was a mixture of career policemen, recruits too old to serve in the regular army, or who had joined the Reserve Police to avoid conscription. By no means were all members card-carrying Nazis, although there was a small core of party members among the group. When they were shipped to Poland, they were under the impression that they were being sent to ensure order in the civilian population behind the front lines.

However, not long after they got to Poland, they were assigned to clear the town of Jozefow of Jews, which meant sending the fit Jews away, and massacring the rest of the population. The Battalion had no idea how to go about such a task, and the resulting slaughter was a horrible mess. An extraordinary detail which the prosecutor's interviews reveal, is that the commander of the Battalion, Major Trapp, allowed members to be excused from the killing if they felt they couldn't participate. That only a few took up this offer is at the core of Browning's history....why so few?

Many others, while not "officially" standing apart from the killing, found other ways to not pull the trigger, by making themselves scarce, or participating in other tasks during that time. Browning's take on the evidence is that there was a very small number of willing killers, a majority that would kill when told to do so, a small number who tried to avoid killing when they could, and the very few who objected from the beginning, and took no part in the killing (although they did participate in other tasks such as clearing ghettos, loading Jews into trains for shipment to the death-camps, and so on).

Browning, in the last chapter of his book, goes into some detail about the theories as to why people such as the members of this battalion did the things that they did. He focuses mainly on the results of the Milgram experiment which showed that people will follow authority and do things that they wouldn't otherwise do if it is normalized in some way. The members of Battalion 101 not only had the formal structure of being ordered to do things, but also the over-arching mentality, ideology and thought-patterns of the Nazi world pushing the idea that exterminating the "Jewish threat" was for the good of their Fatherland. Most importantly, in Browning's view, is the pressure to conform with other members of their unit, which is indeed a powerful force in group dynamics. The final words in the book state the problem succinctly - "Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?"

I am not someone who feels themselves extremely well-informed about the Holocaust, so a source of fascination for me was the apparent disorganized way in which much of the killing took place. From a general understanding of World War Two and Germany, the impression is of the Holocaust as a well-oiled killing machine, trains running to timetables, and bureaucrats ticking Jewish populations off as they were transported to their deaths. The truth, it seems, was sometimes far from that. We have the example of Reserve Police Battalion 101 itself, being thrust into the maelstrom without any preparation, and having to almost make up the procedure of killing as they gained experience. Browning, in the beginning of this work, explains how the work of the Einsatzgruppen in Russia was expanded to include firstly the Jews in Poland and then the rest of Europe, but no extra manpower was assigned to those that Himmler instructed to complete the task. And so not only the Reserve Police, but groups of ethnic Germans, Latvians and others were brought together to assist, as did at times Waffen SS and even Wehrmacht troops.

Ordinary Men is a fascinating and horrible journey into the heart of one of the most terrifying events in human history. What makes it terrifying is that Browning shows clearly that such horrors can be committed by people just like you and I. For an insight into the inner workings of the Holocaust, I can highly recommend this book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Bormann: the Man who Manipulated Hitler by Jochen von Lang

 Bormann: the Man who Manipulated Hitler by Jochen von Lang with the assistance of Claus Sibyll (Translated from the German by Christa Armstrong and Peter White)

London: Book Club Associates, 1979 (published in German under the title Der Sekretar in 1977)

"Give them a uniform and they think they're Hitler!" How many times I've heard that when people rail against the petty bureaucracies of modern life. After reading this well-researched piece of journalism and history, you will understand that the quote should be slightly changed to read Bormann in place of Hitler, for it was Martin Bormann, with his lack of vision, but lust for power and control, who was the master of using bureaucracy to make hell of the lives of not only ordinary people, but even the paladins of the Nazi Government and Military.

Von Lang begins his book by explaining that, to the vast majority of German people, Bormann was unknown, even after the War. He stayed in the shadows away from publicity (von Lang notes several instances where his name was mis-spelled on the rare occasions he did make it into the papers). However, through his tenacity and willingness to take on any job no matter how mundane, he gained the trust of Hitler and became indispensable to him. He used this closeness to the Fuhrer to enlarge his sphere of influence, eventually becoming a gatekeeper, and so in many ways he controlled the Third Reich by controlling access to its head.

In reading von Lang's book, it seems that Bormann's greatest ability was the ability to work. He had no grand visions of his own: he ensured that Hitler's rantings were written down, and he saw his role as turning these rambling thought bubbles into concrete orders and programs. His role as the Secretary to the Fuhrer meant that he could state that anything he proposed came from the Fuhrer, and by restricting access to Hitler frustrated those who might want to push their own programs. Those who disagreed with Bormann, or who wanted him moved on, sometimes grouped together to try and push him out or reduce his influence, but invariably they failed. Bormann had ensured that a wide range of people within the party owed allegiance to him, and so often knew of intrigues before they came to fruition, and the complete trust that Hitler had in him meant that it was usually impossible to cast any doubts on his performance.

It's well-known that Hitler disliked giving power to any one individual or group, which caused many problems in running Nazi Germany as it seemed that everyone had a finger in every pie. Bormann used this tendency to his advantage, supporting one group, then another, to ensure that decision-making was impossible unless he facilitated it. Many Nazi potentates held their noses while dealing with Bormann, but deal with him they had to.

Bormann was not a good speaker, he was not a charismatic man, and he didn't come from a good family. Many Nazis in the early days looked down on him, which came back to haunt them when he gained power: he often used it to diminish or destroy those that had snubbed him in the early days - this even extended to his own Father-in-law. Unlike a lot of other top Nazis, he didn't crave medals, or even wealth (although he did amass real estate). What he craved was to be indispensable to his Fuhrer, and to be the one wielding the power that emanated from him. As Germany foundered, the Party became more important than the Government, or even the Military. His power increased with that of the Party which led to the "grotesque irony of Bormann the bureaucrat... that, as his sphere of authority expanded, the actual physical area where that authority counted shrank. The more completely he got his hands on Hitler's domain, the smaller the domain became. Shortly before his death, he had thirty-six hours of glory as absolute regent and supreme commander of the Nazis, but his rule extended over not much more than one square kilometer of Berlin real estate."

Von Lang came to this story through his journalism, when Bormann's and Stumpfegger's bodies were found in Berlin in 1972. The story of proving they were Bormann's, and reconstructing his last day form the last chapter of this book, but they were the first foray of von Lang into this story. There had been much speculation as to what happened to Bormann before and after the bodies were found: that he had made it to South America, that he ran a "Fourth Reich" organisation, and so on. Von Lang provides conclusive evidence in this book that he died in Berlin, with final proof via genetic testing coming in the 1990s.

If you want a comprehensive account of the life of one of the more shadowy leaders in the Nazi world, I can recommend this book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Land where Lemons grow by Helena Attlee

 The Land where Lemons grow: the story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit by Helena Attlee

London: Penguin Books, 2015 (first published 2014)        ISBN 9780241952573

When my wife bought this book several years ago I was intrigued by the sub-title. I know the mafia germinated in the lemon groves of Sicily (excuse the pun), and thought that this book might give me some insight into that snippet of Italian history. It didn't really do that, but it has given me so much more, and is a fascinating insight into the story of citrus fruit and how it has intertwined with the Italian lifestyle for more than five hundred years.

Attlee's book is a combination of her experience travelling around Italy's historic citrus growing areas, sprinkled with the history of the fruit, and the social milieu of the growers over time, focusing mainly on history from the Renaissance. The book is full of interesting snippets of history, information about the fruits and how they were used, and fills the reader with the desire to go and see these scenes themselves.

There is lots of interesting information about citrus. Attlee explains that the entire citrus catalogue sprang from three original fruits - Pomelo, Mandarin and Citron, from Malaysia, China and the Himalaya. A curious feature of the citrus family is that cross-pollination is not only possible, it happens incredibly easily, so if you plant different types of citrus together they will continually hybridize.

And so we have Oranges, Lemons, Bergamot and Citron, which along with smaller references to Sour Orange (a fruit which is now pretty much a historical oddity), form the framework of this book. Attlee seeks out the places in Italy where they are still grown, explains their origins in the country, their expansion, decline and regrowth.

The fruits were originally brought in by others (the Citron to Calabria by Jews in c. AD 70 and the Lemon to Sicily by Arabs in approximately 900), and through hard work, the climate of Italy did the rest. Attlee is at pains to point out that for some reason the citrus grown in Italy is superior to those grown in other climes. The Citrons of Calabria are still valued by certain Jewish sects to use in their ceremonies. The Bergamot is valued in perfume. The Lemons of Sicily are world famous, and made many (particularly the Mafia) rich on the back of supply contracts with the Royal Navy.

But it's not only Southern Italy where citrus flourished. The Medici and other Italian nobility had great collections of citrus in the Sixteenth Century - in the colder climes of Tuscany and Lake Garda the citrus was potted and moved into glasshouses to survive the winter, or, if planted at Lake Garda, had greenhouses built around them to overwinter. 

Once the Nineteenth Century moved into the Twentieth, the citrus boom died off. The Lemons of Lake Garda disappeared during World War One, when the timber of their temporary greenhouses was used for trenches - the aristocratic citrus gardens of Florence had long since withered. The Royal Navy had turned to "British" limes (from the West Indies) for its vitamin C (about half as good as Sicilian lemons as it turns out), and the world had found cheaper and closer places to source citrus.

Attlee explains all this in just enough detail to be interesting, but not so much that the reader gets lost. She also describes how some entrepreneurial Italians are trying to rebuild the great traditions of Italian citrus growing, becoming artisan producers, with a focus on quality to try and recapture the glory years.

The Land where Lemons grow is a wonderful book in so many ways - highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan

 The Peloponnesian War: Athens and Sparta in Savage Conflict 431-404 BC by Donald Kagan

London: Harper Perennial, 2005 (first published 2003)             ISBN 9780007115068 

There is little doubt that Donald Kagan is one of the pre-eminent historians of Ancient Greece, and particularly the Peloponnesian War, about which he wrote a magisterial four-volume history. The book I am reviewing here is a distillation of that work and his scholarship, to provide a more easily digestible history for the non-academic reader. He has succeeded mightily in that task - this book is a wonderfully concise, yet at the same time comprehensive, narrative of the nearly thirty years of war between the two greatest Greek states, and the two ideologies that they represented.

Kagan has written a very readable history, adding his and others commentary on why events transpired as they did. There are a few things the reader can draw from this, things that reverberate throughout history. Athens, the democracy, and Sparta, the oligarchy, both had strengths and weaknesses that came from their method of governance. Athens had the benefit of support from its population for the war, support that was demonstrated each time a vote was taken. The flip-side of that support is that the polis could be swayed by demagoguery, as it was on occasion throughout the war. Kagan explains clearly that the doomed expedition to Sicily became so when Nicias tried to counter the demagoguery of Alcibiades by trying the rhetorical trick of expanding the expedition beyond what he thought the polis would accept. They did accept it, and the failure of that sortie was the beginning of the end for Athens.

The key to Athens' strength was its navy, which relied on two factors. The first was tribute from the Athenian Empire - most subject states paid for protection from the Athenian navy - money which paid for ships and sailors. The second factor were the crews themselves, members of a democracy, which gave them a stake in the outcome of a battle. These factors not only meant that Athens mostly had the biggest navy, but they also were better trained and more aggressive. Given that the Peloponnesian War was mostly a maritime venture, Athens had the upper hand most of the time. Therefore when they lost  men and ships  it was a disaster, and the final battle of  Aegospotami when the fleet was destroyed, and there was not the funds to replace it, meant the end of Athens.

Sparta's strength was that it was willing to do deals with whomever might help them, including the Persians. It was Lysander in league with Cyrus who finally brought about the defeat of Athens.

What else do we learn in this book? That war has not changed in thousands of years: atrocities, betrayals, both over-confidence and cautiousness bringing about defeats, and failure to think strategically bringing down a state. Kagan notes in his conclusion the irony that shortly after the end of the war and Spartan victory Athens once again became a democracy, and Ancient Greece as it had been was overtaken by Persia and Alexander the Great....the futility of war...

Kagan deals with all of this very well - obviously Thucydides looms over the history of these events like a giant, but Kagan is not afraid to disagree with him when he feels the evidence shows that the great historian got it wrong.

The apparatus of this book is quite good - decent maps and index, a short but interesting bibliographic essay, useful notes and an interview with Kagan.

So in short, if you want an up-to-date, well written account of the Peloponnesian War I think it would be hard to go past this volume. Great to read alongside Thucydides.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Campaign in Russia by Leon Degrelle

 Campaign in Russia: the Waffen SS on the Eastern Front by Leon Degrelle

Torrance, California: Institute for Historical Review, 1985 (originally published in French as Front de l'est 1941-1945)                                                                       ISBN 0939484188

A fascinating and interesting insight into one of the lesser-known facets of World War II. Thousands of non-Germans fought in the German Army. In the case of Leon Degrelle, one of the founders of the Rexist movement in Belgium, he was instrumental in forming the Walloon Legion of French-speaking Belgians, that became part of the Waffen SS and spent much of the war fighting in Russia.

Degrelle was an interesting character. The introduction to this book gives some background to the man, even if it is coloured by the obvious ideological bent of this whole publication. He was very active in Belgian politics, and formed the Rexist movement out his initial involvement with Catholic politics in Belgium. Initially the Rexist party was a nationalist movment, but gradually moved to the right and became influenced by fascism. While initially supporting Belgium's neutrality, once Germay had invaded Rexists generally supported the occupation. Degrelle had the idea of forming a battalion of Rexist volunteers for the German army, with the thought that if Belgians fought well during the War, they could carve out a better accommodation with Germany in the peace that would follow. Degrelle backed the wrong side...

...however, he, and most of the troops under his command, backed it to the hilt. Campaign in Russia is a catalogue of Degrelle's time in the SS, from where he rose from Corporal, through to General of the Walloon Legion (called so even though it never grew much beyond Brigade strength). Like most personal descriptions of fighting in Russia, it lays bare the lack of preparedness of the Germans, their struggles even while "winning", the horrifying privations that the troops suffered because of the weather, and the horror of the final collapse in 1945.

Where Degrelle's memoir differs from others that I have read is in the macabre descriptions of death, the dead, and the wounded. One description struck me as particularly callous and vicious: "I had picked up an Estonian officer. I would have liked to use him to command his compatriots scattered among my troops, but he was consumed by panicky fear. He turned green hearing the bullets whistle past, and lay down flat against my boots, as stiff as a board. One bullet, instead of hitting me in the foot, struck him full in the face, went through him from one end to the other, and came out between his buttocks. He twisted about like a worm, spat, cried, defecated. It was too late. He had digested the bullet too quickly. Ten minutes later he was dead." As you can see, he almost seems to revel in describing the carnage, to the extent that I am left wondering whether he suffered some sort of PTSD: given the amount of fighting and death he saw, it's almost certain that he did suffer mentally from his actions. He himself was wounded several times, and was no doubt a brave soldier.

While the introduction would have us believe that he thought the Russians just as brave as the Germans, - and he does mention that several times during the text - there is no doubt that Degrelle was a committed anti-communist and Nazi. He never fails to make racial slurs about the Russian soldiers he encounters, to emphasise their stupidity, and to glorify the Germans, the Nazi State, and Adolf Hitler himself. In fact he met Hitler on more than one occasion (Degrelle was the only non-German to receive the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves) and comes away convinced of the man's genius, even though intellectually he knows the War will be lost.

The Wallonian troops, if Degrelle is to be believed, were often used a shock troops, which Degrelle put down to their ideological ardour. They were certainly sent to undertake impossible tasks again and again, with ever decreasing levels of support from air, artillery and tanks. Degrelle continues to praise the "calmness" of the German General Staff, even when they were transmitting impossible orders to hold on to him and his units.

In fact Degrelle's lack of insight is a theme that runs through this book. He lambasts the Soviets for their poor equipment but continually describes the lack of such equipment for his troops. He lampoons the Russian command for their crude tactics, and yet is continually describing lunacy coming from his own superiors. He reviles the brutality of the Russians, and yet calmly describes the execution of German deserters in the last days of the War.

Perhaps his biggest self-delusion was the one that led him to form the Walloon Legion itself - that 8,000 or so Belgian troops fighting for Germany would somehow mean that Hitler would give their country some sort of self-determination. He must have been very blind to all that the Nazis did everywhere in Europe to continue to believe that. He makes much of fighting for European civilization against the communist Slav, and yet who was it that began the conflagration; who was it that invaded Russia? He has nothing to say about the treatment of the Jews or the Russian population more generally, and I suppose it may have been that he did not know too much, given where he was posted and the times he was posted there, although he does write, when searching a Russian that he had killed "He had on his person a last will in which he had sworn that, as a Jew, he was resolved to do everything to avenge the Jews." Which does at least imply that he knew something of their fate. More self-delusion in the sentence he wrote following the one just quoted - "Men's fanaticism has no limits." That actually took my breath away.

The Wallonians had a small part to play in the Ardennes offensive (Battle of the Bulge), as they were coming in behind the attacking troops to take control of Belgian territory, but when that assault failed they were sent back to the East to face their final martyrdom. Degrelle describes the final carnage and confusion well, including his own flight to Oslo and eventually to Spain, where he lived in exile until his death in 1994. His Legionnaires went on to various fates, but most ended up back in Belgium to ponder what they had done.

Campaign in Russia is a racy description of the life of one unit on the Eastern Front in World War II. It is also an interesting psychological study into how someone can fall in with evil from what they consider high ideals, and how the brutality of war leaves a stain on everyone involved.

A few words now about the physical book itself. The copy I read is a handsome hardback volume, with a nice black-and-white dustjacket. It's printed, for an American book, on lower quality paper (although still better than the trash used by most Australian publishers), has only one black-and-white photograph (of Degrelle), and has no maps and virtually no other apparatus, apart from some laughable "notes", and a Glossary of terms. There are noticeable printing errors, spelling mistakes and mis-translations throughout the book. The Introduction, by Ted O'Keefe, which is basically a short hagiographic piece on Degrelle, rang alarm bells for me immediately. Who was Ted O'Keefe, what was the Institute for Historical Review, and why would they publish this particular work?

A little bit of fishing around on the Internet confirmed that the Institute is in fact some sort of anti-Semitic group that operates in California, so basically a bunch of nut-jobs. I picked this book up second-hand because I hadn't seen it before, so I know it's relatively scarce. While reading it it's impossible not to notice that it is a pro-Nazi work, so it's not surprising that Nazi sympathisers published it - a quick trip to their website store shows exactly what type of operation it is - and where you can find an "updated" edition of the work under review, which I note has an index - I wonder if there are any maps? Both are sorely lacking in the edition which I have read.

If you are a serious student of World War II, and in particular the Eastern Front, this book would be worth hunting out. If you can stand the pro-Nazi flavour, there is much good writing on what the life of the soldiery was like during nearly four years of hell.

Recommended, with reservations.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941 by Victor Serge

 Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941 by Victor Serge, translated and edited by Peter Sedgwick

London: Oxford University Press, 1967 (this translation first published 1963)

I have been meaning to read Victor Serge for many years - in my peregrinations through the literature of revolution and totalitarianism and the tortured history of the Twentieth Century his name crops up again and again (in fact it's generally accepted that he coined the word totalitarian). I've finally got around to his memoirs, and what a fascinating and depressing read they are.

Depressing in the sense that he catalogs in great detail the failure of Socialism in the first half of the 1900s, specifically the descent of the USSR into despotism and a police state, far from the hopes of those that fought the Revolution hoping for a worker's democracy.

Serge does not in this memoir really go into his personal life: he briefly describes his childhood in Belgium and France (his parents were exiled Russian socialists), and while we know from the book that he has a son, and that his first wife was eventually driven insane by the privations and persecutions Serge and his family suffered in Russia, they are the background to the wider story Serge wishes to tell.

While this is not a history of the Russian revolution, Civil War and times up until the Terror, it provides all the background information to such a history: wonderful pen-portraits of major and not so major figures in Russia during the 1920s, descriptions of the tightening grip of the Cheka on Russian society and government, and the increasingly difficult time to be weathered by those that did not absolutely conform to the Bolshevik line.

Serge never stopped fighting for the Socialism that he believed in - he went to Russia to help the worker's revolution, he joined with the Bolsheviks because he believed at the time that they were the only group that could deliver such a revolution. When the Bolsheviks went down the path of authoritarianism and repression Serge fought from within the system, as to his mind that was the only way he could make a difference.

He watched with dismay as the Bolshevik leaders consistently chose the path of repression over openness. Instead of worker's tribunals, the leadership chose unlawful detention. Instead of abolishing the death penalty, they chose to allow the Cheka to shoot people without trial or recourse to any mechanism for reprieve. Serge laments that the new regime had learnt from the Tsarist one, and continued many of the unjust activities of the past - as he writes "[t]he Russian Revolution, although led by men who were upright and intelligent, did not resolve this problem; the character of the masses had received, from the experience of despotism [i.e. under the Tsars], a fatal stamp whose effects were imprinted in the leaders themselves."

Eventually, Serge's opposition to such despotism made him a marked man, for "[o]ur great Marxists of Russia, nurtured on Science, would not admit any doubt concerning the dialectical conception of Nature - which is, however, no more than a hypothesis, and one difficult to sustain at that." Because Serge espoused this, he was hounded out of his positions, and sent into internal exile. He most probably would have been shot or died in a prison somewhere as happened to many of his friends, but because of his international fame, particularly in France where he was well-known as a novelist, he was eventually expelled from Russia.

That was not the end of his troubles - the Russians made it very hard for him anywhere he went in Europe. Pushed to the edges of the socialist movement, Serge just barely scraped by financially (although lack of money or the finer things of life never worried him), and when the Second World War came, he was forced to flee to Mexico, the only place that would take him. Although Trotsky (whom Serge often disagreed with) could not escape Stalin's vengeance in Mexico, Serge managed to spend his last years there in relative, if miserly, calm; writing this memoir before dying in 1947.

Serge's legacy is that of a true revolutionary socialist, and a clear thinker much in the mold of George Orwell. He was always working for the proletarians, and against the apparatchiks and place seekers. When he wrote this memoir he was hopeful that the War would finally bring about the socialism he was looking for - it didn't, but certainly, in the West at least, many people's lives have been improved by governments adopting some measures that alleviate the lot of the workers.

I finish this review with a quote that bears repeating again and again, for totalitarianism in all its forms continues to be a blight on the human race, and we need to keep fighting for freedom. Serge wrote that "Totalitarianism has no more dangerous enemy than the spirit of criticism, which it bends every effort to exterminate. Any reasonable objection is bundled away with shouts, and the objector himself, if he persists, is bundled off on a stretcher to the mortuary. I have met my assailants face to face in public meetings, offering to answer any question they raised. Instead they always strove to drown my voice in storms of insults, delivered at the tops of their voices."

This book is dense, but full of wisdom and pathos. If you are a student of the history of the Twentieth Century, I can recommend this book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Hitler 1936-45: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw

 Hitler 1936-45: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000             ISBN 0393049949

Well I have climbed the Everest that is Ian Kershaw's two volume biography of Hitler (you can see my review of volume one here), and like the mountain, the journey is a hard slog, you learn much along the way, and the view from the summit is breathtaking, except in this case it is a vista of destruction, barbarism, and the ruin of the Twentieth Century.

In this volume Kershaw moves beyond the early years and begins at the highpoint for Hitler. It might seem strange to state that the highpoint of Hitler's life and political success was prior to the Anschluss and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, and before the conquest of Poland, France and much of the USSR. Yet Kershaw convincingly argues that beyond the re-taking of the Rhineland, Hitler was gambling with Germany's fate and began walking the path that led to war, his own downfall and that of Germany as well.

Of course war was always Hitler's aim. His obsession with living space for the Germanic "race" was posited on invading his Eastern neighbors and enslaving or eliminating the people there. This was the irreducible logic of Nazi government in the 1930s: it was not a government for the masses, it was not a government for the rich, it was not a government for those of faith, it was a government that needed violent conflict and expansion to justify itself and keep the ship from sinking under the weight of expectation.

Kershaw, in my opinion, gets very close to explaining why the whole country went with Hitler on this journey into the abyss. His closest cronies would always follow him, as their views were at least as radical as his, and often more so. Many others saw their enemies (Bolsheviks, Poles to name a few), being crushed and rejoiced, and others enjoyed Germany's resurgence. The humiliation of World War One - which was the cornerstone on which Hitler built his political career - was a national trauma, and his struggle to rid Germany of this stain drew many people to his movement. As the war progressed and Germany began to lose, Hitler's appeal began to shrink, which led to the growth of terror-tactics to keep the populace in line and the army fighting in the last disastrous months of the war.

The military hierarchy too were complicit in keeping Hitler in power. They were perhaps the only counterpoint in German society that could have removed Hitler, but they were actually fellow-travellers, if not in every way, certainly to the extent of subduing Poland and attacking Russia. Even the opposition groups that tried to assassinate him agreed with Hitler's war against the Poles. While they may not all have agreed with the Holocaust and while most definitely did not agree with Hitler's tactical ideas (especially when Germany lost the initiative), they were unable to be the rational force for good that Germany needed to be rid of this megalomaniac.

Kershaw explains the growth of Hitler's ego and megalomania very clearly. Hitler's belief that he was sent by providence to lead Germany only became stronger after his first victories, and especially when he had success on the Eastern Front over-riding his more cautious Generals. His personality ran amok with no restraints, which not only led him to interfere in almost every facet of German life and culture, but to increasingly control military efforts as well. That this would be too much for anyone is quite obvious, but under the structure that he had built, there were no checks or balances that could be employed to share decision making. In fact Hitler actively worked against any initiatives to implement other sources of decision making within the Government. As the war moved on, the shambolic structure of Nazi Germany impeded rational decision-making in times of crisis. Hitler's rationality has often been called into question, but for most of the war he worked along the lines that he had set for himself. As the man sent by Providence, only he could ultimately make decisions. As a political genius only he could decide when the time was right for action....and so on. His nature, exacerbated by his obsession with the "stab in the back" of 1918, was to seek retaliation for any wound. So things that seem illogical from a "normal" standpoint fitted into Hitler's thought-world. If the Allies bombed German cities, then he would delay jet fighters until they could bomb English cities in retaliation. If the German people were not "strong" enough to win the war, then he would order the total destruction of the country regardless of any humanitarian motives. In many ways his thought patterns were those of a child - if I can't get what I want, then someone has to suffer!". The Jews of course were the prime example of that philosophy in action.

By the time the war had turned against Germany, there was no reasonable alternative to the Hitler regime: all opposition had been crushed, and everyone in the German hierarchy owed their position to the personal largesse of Hitler himself - no-one had any legitimate source of power except through him. Kershaw maps all this out very well. As Germany lurched from crisis to crisis, Hitler retreated more and more into a fantasy world - refusing to move troops from Norway and Italy at the end because they would be needed for the counter-attack, or to protect sources of minerals....long after they served those or any other strategic needs.

The end, when it came, was a farce for Hitler, and a tragedy for Germany. In the end Hitler's reign was the narcissistic adventure of one man who managed to create his own world, and lived out his dream by destroying European civilization. It's both fascinating and horrible to think about. One can hope that we'll never see his like again. There are those that compare Putin to him, and some of the comparisons are justified, but I for one don't think that any one man can again do what Hitler did. I hope I am right.

For those that seek to understand the Twentieth Century, the rise of the Nazis and World War Two, I cannot recommend these two volumes highly enough. I don't think they will be surpassed.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell