Book Review - Hitler's Army by Omer Bartov

 Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich by Omer Bartov

New York: Oxford University Press, 1991                        ISBN 0195068793

This book was written at a hinge-point in our modern history: published in 1991 when the certainties of Cold-War Europe were disappearing and a new united Germany was allowed to come to be. This change in the political scene led to a wellspring of historical effort and post-revisionism about Germany's recent history. It had suited Cold-War confrontation to paint the horrors of the Third Reich as the result of an appalling dictatorship imposed on an unwilling populace - the Germans were all "victims" of the Nazis. This view posited that the soldiers that served in Hitler's army were not Nazis or Nazi sympathisers, did not willingly partake in the horrors of the regime, and were in many respects dupes of the hierarchy, such was the revisionist history of the mid Cold-War era.

In Hitler's Army Bartov sets out to question this idea, positing that - especially on the Eastern Front - the Wehrmacht was indeed more than willing to engage in criminal acts, spurred by an internalization by the troops of the tropes of Nazi propaganda and ideology.

Bartov's first steps in setting out this argument require him to dispel the idea that the Wehrmacht was merely an army rather than an instrument of Hitler's will. He demolishes the idea that Germany fought for so long because a) they were highly mechanized, and b) the army was organized around a "primary group" of soldiers drawn from the same area, and that these two things helped make them better fighters.

Through the use of simple statistics Bartov successfully demolishes both positions. Even in June 1941 when Germany invaded Russia, it was the Soviets who were the more mechanized army. This gap widened dramatically as the Germans failed to replace lost materiel and the Russians (and Americans via Lend-Lease) massively increased their production.

The staggering losses of men during the war in Russia (losses which rapidly rose from the very beginning of Operation Barbarossa) very quickly made the idea of a "primary group" impossible to maintain. In fact even by 1943 many groups were already ad-hoc, with whole regiments disappearing and joining with other remnants into "battle-groups".

So, if the revisionist historians were wrong: that it was not technical prowess and group cohesion that kept the Wehrmacht in the field, what was it that did? This is the major focus of Hitler's Army. Bartov contends that far from being duped by the Nazis, many (most?) soldiers duped themselves, by twisting reality to the point where they almost saw the War backwards. Soldiers saw Russian brutality and squalor at the Front as confirming what their propaganda had told them, without reflecting that what they were seeing was the brutality and squalor inflicted on the Russians by Germany.

They even came to believe in a sense that they were engaged in a preventative war, stopping the invasion of Europe by the Untermensch. The soldiers came to believe that they had a civilizing mission (even while destroying villages, massacring Jews and "Partisans") and so became increasingly frustrated when Russians continued to fight. 

This combined with an almost religious belief in the rightness of Hitler became in the end a fatal self-delusion: for example the thought that Hitler would sacrifice his soldiers pointlessly (in Stalingrad for example) was too absurd to be believed, so it wasn't.

Some of this thinking - this self-delusion - has an internal rationality when looked at from the viewpoint of an individual soldier. No soldier can find it easy to admit that their sacrifice will be in vain, or is in pursuit of an evil cause. Irrational belief in a final victory when all the evidence suggests the opposite must be maintained to avoid despair. These are in some ways natural responses.

As is the attempt after the defeat to try and deflect any responsibility for their actions, or indeed responsibility for believing in the cause. When your victors in pursuit of their own ends allow that deflection to stand, and indeed re-use some of the same men in rebuilding German armed forces, then alternatives to the truth easily become the accepted version of events.

A lot of the above is now well known and accepted by the serious student of Nazism and World War Two, but in 1991 Bartov was one of those scholars (like Goldhagen and Evans) who brought a new unprejudiced light to bear on the evidence. His arguments are mostly sound.

This is one for the serious student of World War Two.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Hitler as Military Commander by John Strawson

 Hitler as Military Commander by John Strawson

London: Sphere Books Limited, 1973 (first published 1971)    ISBN 0722182090

John Strawson was a retired British General by the time he came to write this book, which looks specifically at Hitler's ability as a commander of armed forces, which he was over every battleground during World War Two.

Strawson divides his book into two sections; the period of the War when Hitler was making the geopolitical and military running and other countries were reacting to his moves, and the latter period of the War when he was reduced to himself reacting to the decisions and actions of the Allied powers.

Over the course of his narrative, Strawson makes a case that while Hitler had a strong geopolitical sense, and grasped how modern weaponry and combined-arms operations could change the way war could be fought, he had no real grasp of how individual armies should be manoeuvred and used tactically or even strategically.

It was the Battle of France that, despite the German success, is the first illustration of these fundamental flaws within Hitler. He quickly grasped the way that a combined arms attack could quickly dislocate and destroy the French position and lead to disarray, with a bolder vision than that held by his General Staff. The absolute success of the attack on France fed Hitler's massive ego, and led him to believe that not only was he a better strategist than his Generals, but also superior when it came to tactics.

However, it was precisely at the level of army tactics that Hitler let down his armed forces. As Strawson writes "...in spite of being a gambler [Hitler] was unwilling to stake all on a winning number." As evidence of this view Strawson puts forward several examples, including Hitler's failure at Dunkirk, and his failure to adequately support the Afrika Korps until it was too late to make a decisive difference.

The most interesting part of the book for me was Strawson's writing on the Mediterranean Theatre, explaining that far from being a sideshow, if Hitler had fully understood Grand Strategy he would have grasped that: a) it was important to keep the Allies out of the basin as that secured his Southern flank (the Balkans, Italy, Greece, Türkiye) and b) that by pushing the British out of Egypt (eminently possible if Rommel had been supported in an adequate and timely manner) he could have threatened Ukraine and the Caucuses oil fields far more effectively and changed his Russian campaign.

That he didn't do these things comes down fundamentally to the fact that Hitler lacked the imagination to create dynamic strategy. All he could see is the dreams of his youth, and was unable to change as the situation of the War developed. He was unable to see the openings that his gambles had created, and unable to take advantage of them.

His lack of experience in tactics of deploying armies (as opposed to Companies or Platoons, which he also did) and his refusal to listen to those that did have experience led to the suicidal attacks and last-man defences that did so much to destroy the Wehrmacht as a fighting force as the War progressed.

Strawson's book is well-argued, but written in a somewhat pedestrian manner. There is a lot of explicatory material that - while it might be necessary for those unschooled in this subject - can bog down the reader. Of interest to arm-chair strategists only methinks.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass

 Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass, translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim

London: Harvill Secker, 2007 (first German edition 2006)      ISBN 9781846550621

I tend as a rule not to read biographies of authors, unless the life of the author is the mainspring of their work. Gunter Grass is an exemplar of that, mining his life to create amazing fiction over the years. I first encountered Grass in The Flounder rather than The Tin Drum, and I must say I found the latter not as powerful as the former, despite the fame it brought to the author. Be that as it may, I've been aware of this memoir since the controversy caused by it's publication, and thought it might give me some insight into Grass' works.

The controversy of course was the revelation that Grass - who famously has built his literary career on destroying the legacy of Nazi Germany - not only volunteered for the Wehrmacht, but was enlisted in the Waffen SS. Peeling the Onion deals with that and so much more as Grass reflects on his early life, up until his first marriage.

The book is a 400 page reflection on what Grass did do, what he didn't do, and how memory makes itself, sometimes out of nothing, sometimes with something small that gains a significance beyond it's worth, and sometimes eliding major events. The title of the book describes Grass' approach to writing his life: peeling the onion back layer by layer, investigating each skin to see what it can tell him about himself.

He spends much of the first half of the book investigating the question of what he actually did feel about the Nazis, and why in fact he volunteered for the army, much against his parent's wishes. He certainly never thought that the Nazi's were evil, he believed that Germany was fighting for it's existence, and in fact refused initially to believe the evidence of the Holocaust when a POW (as did most of his fellow prisoners).

His old self questions his young self about why he didn't  protest, why did he follow the progress of the German Army and Navy on maps, why did he acquiesce to it all, and why did he volunteer to fight? As with many things in life, the answers are complex - youth desires to be a hero, youth wants away from parents, youth wants away from the boredom of the Luftwaffe Flak unit he was dragooned into. Age describes the folly of his choice, and shows via others that acquiescence to evil is not obligatory. His description of a fellow recruit who refused to bear arms ("wedontdothat") is a picture of what he could have done if he had the wisdom of age when he was a youth.

By the time he joined his unit, an SS Panzer Division , the final collapse of Germany was underway, and he spent his time fleeing from Russians, until he was wounded by shell splinters and was sent to hospital in Marienbad, where he was at war's end, and from where he became a POW.

His descriptions of his time in the various POW camps describe the hunger, which gave his attendance at a cooking class given by another POW who was a chef an added glamour. This is one skin of the onion that Grass remembers distinctly - a room full of hungry men preparing imaginary dishes... dishes that he went on to cook himself once he was settled and had the means to purchase ingredients. He also writes about the time he spend in a camp sheltering in a foxhole with a very catholic young soldier named Joseph....who went on to become Pope Benedict XVI? Maybe... and that's one of the tropes of this book, can we trust what our memory tells us, and can we trust what Grass is telling us? He never resolves this point, which weaves it's way through this book as a ghostly echo of the life Grass may have led if he hadn't abandoned his faith.

After his release, and having located his parents and sister in Dusseldorf, he headed there to pick up the pieces of his life. He never questioned his family about the traumas they suffered as Danzig was overrun, but he knew that what happened there to them changed them for ever. Grass describes how he was determined to become a sculptor and began an apprenticeship as a stone mason, where he helped rebuild Dusseldorf. Eventually he was accepted into art school, and began his new life as an artist.

He goes on to describe how it was his poetry that first garnered attention, after having been taken up by Group 47. By this time he was married to his first wife, and he had attended a fateful dinner party where the son of the host marched around banging on a tin drum. This unleashed his mind to produce his most famous novel, and made him a writer of renown.

Peeling the Onion tells us a lot about Grass the person - selfish, observant, obsessed with art and history, and from a young age understanding where he wanted to go, if not how to get there. It's a great piece of writing, a wonderful meditation on what memory is and how it can flatter to deceive, and how hard it is to arrive at any sort of "truth" about a life lived, especially in the tumultuous European 20th century.

A great book.

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 - Poland 1939 by Roger Moorhouse

 Poland 1939: the Outbreak of World War II by Roger Moorhouse

New York: Basic Books, 2020 (originally published as First to fight: The Polish War 1939 in 2019)

ISBN 9780465095384

We all know that World War II started when Germany invaded Poland on the first of September 1939. We also know that Poland was overrun in a matter of a month, and we may have heard stories of Polish cavalry charging at Panzers with horse and lance. Beyond that, what is known in the West of the Polish campaign? Moorhouse argues in the preface to this book that the attack on Poland that precipitated a World War needs to be given more than the couple of paragraphs and the well-worn clichés that many English-language histories of World War II give it. It's hard to argue against that.

In this well-written book, Moorhouse covers not only the fighting in detail, but also the machinations of the Nazi attack, the Russian intervention, and the atrocities committed mostly by the Germans (but also Soviets and civilians). The plight of the civilians is not overlooked by this book, but is more an underlying theme rather than a specific highlight.

While the German campaign against Poland was successfully completed in only 35 days, that doesn't mean that the Poles did not fight, and fight hard, or that the Germans didn't have setbacks and failures. As is usually the case in warfare, the protagonist with the greatest economic heft wins in any protracted campaign. Moorhouse states a "rather telling statistic...is that the entire Polish defense budget for the five years to 1939 amounted to only 10 percent of the Luftwaffe's budget for 1939 alone." That is probably all that needs to be said about the equipment disparity between Poland and Germany.

Another truism is that warfare is an extension of politics. No political or diplomatic manoeuvres by Poland would have forestalled Hitler's invasion, but politics did cruel Poland's chances of victory over and above their economic (in)capabilities. The pact with Britain and France was meant to be a deterrent: Britain and France thought that the threat of their intervention would be enough to stop Hitler, and never developed any serious plans to attack Germany if an invasion of Poland took place. Poland on the other hand thought that they needed to show Britain and France that they were serious and so placed most of their armies on the borders with Germany and Slovakia. This made political sense, but it didn't make military sense especially knowing that if war came they would need to hold on for as long as possible to allow their allies time to assist. Setting up at the borders meant that Poland's armies were on ideal campaigning territory, ideally suited for quick moving mechanized troops to drive through any holes in the front and encircle their enemies. Poland's army was not highly mechanized, so this was no advantage to them. Add to that the obsessive secrecy of the Polish armed forces, not sharing plans and not even allowing neighbouring armies to communicate with each other directly, and defeat was almost assured.

Moorhouse covers the military aspect well. Despite being out-gunned, the Polish forces gave the Wehrmacht some severe checks during the campaign. When they were able to be entrenched well with artillery, or when they had the element of surprise, the Polish army could inflict localized defeats on the Germans (and, later on, the Soviets). The cavalry too could be effective in dispersing infantry and allowing freedom of movement for Polish troops, until German or Soviet armour could arrive on the scene. Moorhouse points out that the famous image we have in our heads of Lancers charging tanks was a fiction created by an Italian correspondent, but they did on several occasions charge groups of infantry with success.

The military story is one of soldiers grimly holding on until their ammunition and food ran low, or of fighting retreats to try and join comrades, and at the end a fight to reach the borders. There were some occasions when the troops were routed, mostly it seems due to the bombing from the Luftwaffe rather than infantry attack. The Luftwaffe was also responsible for destroying many Polish cities and towns, in particular Warsaw, which was bombed incessantly throughout the campaign for terror more than for military reasons. 

The Nazi ideology of racial superiority was well-entrenched within the German military, and this meant from the first that atrocities were committed on both Polish military and civilian victims. Mass shootings were common, the shooting of hostages was policy, and when the SS and Einsatzgruppen arrived in numbers, Jews and Polish "intelligentsia" were in mortal danger.

While the Nazis were imposing their racial war on Poland, the Soviets, once they arrived to "liberate" the "suppressed" Ukrainians and Byelorussians (Stalin's cover for his land-grab) began their class war. Quite often in the early days of their occupation of Eastern Poland, just having soft hands was enough to see a person sent to a prison camp, or worse. While the Katyn massacres are outside the scope of this book, Moorhouse lets the reader know where most of the Polish officers captured by the Soviets ended up and sets the scene for the about-to-unfold tragedy that was Poland's fate until (and after) 1945.

In his conclusion, Moorhouse notes that the invasion of Poland by Germany and the USSR was far from a minor event in human terms - 60,000 Polish troops, 20,000 German and perhaps 18,000 Soviets died in those 35 days, and about 100,000 Polish civilians, which includes 16,000 "falling victim to extrajudicial killing by German military and security forces during the period of the military campaign." That's about five and a half thousand deaths per day during the fighting.

Moorhouse in this history doesn't really go into the question of whether this tragedy was avoidable (probably not in my opinion), but does give the reader a good insight into both the immediate background to, and the progress of, this tragic month of history. If you want to flesh out those few paragraphs in any omnibus history of World War II that you might have read, I can recommend this book (apparatus is a mixed bag - good bibliography and notes, OK index, poor maps).

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Dead Man in the Bunker by Martin Pollack

 The Dead Man in the Bunker: Discovering my Father by Martin Pollack, translated by William Hobson

London: Faber and Faber, 2007                                           ISBN 9780571228010

What a fascinating book, on so many levels. Martin Pollack has written an account of trying to track down the story of his father, an Austrian SS man who was murdered trying to cross the Brenner Pass in 1947. He takes us on a journey into the borderlands of the German people, the beginnings of the German nationalism that fed the growth of Nazism, and the forgetting that occurred after the War.

Pollack begins the story by finding the spot in a bunker on the Pass where his father's body was found. He then winds back through history, to the late Nineteenth Century when his family lived in Styria, on the "border" between Slovene and German people. Pollacks father's family, the Bast family were upstanding Germans, members of German nationalist groups, anti-Semitic, and early converts to Nazism. Pollack well describes the increasing tension on the "German language border" which only increased after World War I, when new borders exacerbated the tension. The Basts soon joined the Nazi party, which was a provocative and illegal act in Austria at that time. Gerhard, Pollack's father, risked prison as he rose further in the Party, and joined the SS. After the Anschluss, Gerhard's father rose in the Nazi bureaucracy as his son rose higher in the SS. 

 Pollack takes us further into the history of his family - he explains that Bast was not married to his mother, and in fact his mother was married to another man and had two children already. His mother divorced and married Bast in April 1945. When the war ended Bast was on the run, and so Pollack's mother re-married her first husband...and yet his mother sent him on holidays to the Bast grandparents. A very tangled story, but one he could never really talk about at the time to any of his family.

Getting information about what his father did in the War is also tangled. As Pollack explains, records for German forces, the SS in particular, are patchy owing to how many were destroyed at the end of the War, and the difficulty in tracking one person through a multitude of files in a multitude of cities and countries.

And so this book is just as much about what is not known, as it is about the facts. Pollack, naturally wants to believe that his father was - as his grandmother tells him - a good man, but he knows that would be too good to be true. He was right. 

Gerhard Bast had many phases to his SS career... one of which was commanding Sonderkommando 7a toward the end of the war, where he was definitely involved in the execution of innocents. There is no doubt that Bast was a committed Nazi. There is no doubt in Pollack's mind that his grandparents, Bast's parents remained Nazis even after the War, as did his mother and step-father...their views of the world, of Jews in particular, did not change. Pollack is unflinching in the way he describes how his views clashed with those of his family, and it is painful to read how the trauma of the experience of war, what his family suffered and the suffering it caused, throws ripples through history forever.

The Dead Man in the Bunker is one man's attempt to understand those ripples and what his family history means for him. A forceful, moving and painful book.

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 - Passchendaele: the Story Behind the Tragic Victory of 1917 by Philip Warner

 Passchendaele: the Story Behind the Tragic Victory of 1917 by Philip Warner

London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1988 (first published 1987)    ISBN 0283997451

This book, for me, was like the curate's egg - good in parts. As a blow-by-blow account of the campaign to take the Passchedaele ridge near Ypres, the book is serviceable. As an insight into broader strategy it is patchy. As a definitive story of one of the bloodiest episodes of World War One it is definitely not the final word.

For those after a brief rundown of the battles that together become what we know as Passchendaele, the Wikipedia article is excellent. This book adds colour to  something like that article, but not much more meat from a historical perspective. Which is not to sell Warner's work short - He describes the actions that led to many of the Victoria Crosses won during the campaign, and his judicious use of letters and diaries adds an important element of verity to the book. I found his selections particularly interesting, as many of them were not the usual writings of soldiers or officers, but from medical staff and those at GHQ. 

So, we have a book that does a reasonable job of describing the progress of the battles, and effectively uses commentary of the time to tell us what it was like to be a part of the fighting and how soldiers survived the horror. It is when Warner moves to broader themes that I think this book struggles. 

Warner can't bring himself to decide whether Haig was a dunce, or just one among many other like-minded generals. What Warner fails to enunciate is just how Haig (or anyone else) would go about the battles of World War One differently. We can look back and pick holes in what happened, but with the knowledge and technology of the time, were there actually any alternatives to the type of mass attack that was normal during this campaign? Warner provides no conclusions, and does not, I think, emphasise that British tactics were indeed changing, and by the end of the battle they   had hit upon methods against which the Germans could not defend.

What Warner does emphasise is the effect of the weather on the progress of the battles, and on the misery suffered by those involved. He points out that the constant artillery barrages destroyed the intricate drainage system that was important in stopping the land becoming waterlogged. This was compounded by the unseasonal amount of rain that fell during most of the campaign. In the end, the mud became almost as much of an enemy as the Germans.

And what of the strategy behind this campaign? Warner is equivocal about Haig's stated reasons for going ahead with such a large campaign. He dismisses the aim of getting to the coast to capture the U-Boat bases as so much hot air, deprecates the idea of a battle of attrition, and grudgingly accepts that the British needed to take the pressure off the French after the mutinies of 1917. However, I think that all three of these strategies made sense at the time. Haig may have been getting a false idea of German capability and morale (Warner is particularly scathing of Charteris in this area), but Warner himself, in a chapter devoted to German reaction to the campaign, shows us that the continued onslaught of the British did almost crack the German lines, and will to resist. The campaign also stopped Ludendorff from moving troops to crush Russia, and from assisting Austria against the Italians. It is easy to criticize Haig, but his options were to work in the situation he was in, and with the information he had.

Passchendaele was a terrible disaster for so many. The casualties were appalling - over half a million casualties from July to November. Those casualties  included my great-grandfather, who was killed on 20 September 1917, in what came to be known as the Battle of Menin Road.  I, and many others like me, read to try and understand. Warner's book is useful in understanding what it may have been like to be in Flanders in 1917, but on the larger themes I would be looking elsewhere for satisfaction.

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

Book Review - Soldat by Siegfried Knappe and Ted Brusaw

 Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier 1936-1949 by Siegfried Knappe and Ted Brusaw

New York: Orion Books, 1992                                                ISBN 0517588951

This is a very interesting book. The story of Siegfried Knappe, who finished his war in Hitler's bunker as an officer of the General Staff, is in some ways a typical one of that time and place, but striking and interesting in its own way.

Knappe came of age in the late 30s in Germany, and his service began in the Labour Corps, before entering the Army in the artillery. We follow his journey through training, the Sudetenland, France and Russia, his journey through officer training, and his personal life - marriage, the death of his brother in Russia, and his travails as a prisoner of the Russians after the war.

Knappe comes across as an intelligent young man, good at his job, and an efficient and effective officer. He (as many others) did not question what his country was doing until it was far too late. He was at General Staff training during the July plot, and saw at first hand the fear of the officers, and the rage and revenge of the Nazis.

In many ways he had a :lucky" war. Being posted to Stalingrad, he never got there as he was unable to get a flight in. Sent to Breslau to organise its defence, he was airlifted out before the final battle. He was either wounded or in training when his regiments suffered their greatest casualties.

He became a staff officer for General Weidling in the final weeks of the war, and regularly visited the Bunker before the end, before spending three years as a prisoner of the Russians, where he was regularly interrogated (his description of how to counter the pressure of the Russian interrogations is interesting and instructive. He was clever enough to realise that he needed to keep his story the same every time, and never admit to stealing Russian items or abusing Russian people. He realised that he didn't actually have to profess Communist sympathies to remain safe).

What can we learn from this book? Well, that the German army was not very mechanised (Knappe spent most of his war riding and using horses to move his guns), that the average soldier did not necessarily see atrocities, and that toward the end of the War the country and the military were a shambles - Knappe knew the War was lost more than a year from the time it did end, but kept fighting.

That the War was a great tragedy is well known, and we on the winning side don't often think of the tragedies that happened in Germany to Germans. In many ways Knappe was lucky, but this book still underlines the truth that war is hell, and there is little noble about being a soldier in World War II. If you are interested in the history of that time, this is worth reading.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Into that Darkness by Gitta Sereny

 Into that Darkness: an Examination of Conscience by Gitta Sereny

New York: Vintage Books, 1983 (Originally published 1974)       ISBN 0394710355

I really don't know why it has taken me so long to get around to reading this book. I have read other books by Sereny, one of which I have reviewed here, and I have always admired her unflinching search for the truth, and her excellent style, given that English is her third or fourth language. Her life's quest was to try and understand the Third Reich, through talking to those that were involved - Franz Stangl being the first, along with others such as Albert Speer.

Into that Darkness grew from an article about Stangl, which originally appeared in the Daily Telegraph Magazine. Sereny spent over seventy hours interviewing Stangl, with the aim of trying to find out why - not why the Nazis eliminated the Jews, but why a seemingly normal middle-class man who, it seems, was liked by many he met, could continue to choose to work in unspeakable places and be in charge of unspeakable things.

With this goal in mind, Sereny probed Stangl about his work in the Euthanasia Centres, why he thought he'd been chosen for work in the extermination camps, what he did there, what he thought of it, how he interacted with his family during that time, what happened to him after the War. Sereny kept probing, trying to fight her way through the self-justifications that Stangl had wrapped around his life, trying to see if he could admit guilt. That he eventually did is a testament to both Sereny, and in some ways to Stangl, who fought hard against the moral judgement that he surely deserved, and which he finally began to understand.

In the book Sereny works hard to try and prove (or disprove) the many statements that Stangl made about his career, and his activities both in Sobibor and Treblinka. She also closely investigates the circumstances around his escape firstly to Syria and then Brazil, which cast a poor light on the activities on the Catholic Church in Rome. Sereny is scrupulously fair in her judgements, but often the facts speak for themselves.

The main part of this book is a very detailed look at how the death camps worked. Sereny builds this picture up not only through her discussions with Stangl but also with other SS and importantly the few Jewish survivors of the camps. For someone like me that didn't have a clear delineation in my mind between concentration camps and death camps, this history is eye-opening. The numbers are staggering, and sickening. At Treblinka,  nearly a million people were murdered in less than eighteen months. Just as staggering is the fact that, in all the extermination camps, for the whole period of Aktion Reinhardt, there were only 96 SS personnel involved in running the death camps. That so few (assisted by Ukranian guards and Jews forced to work disposing of bodies and sorting through clothes and such) could unleash such horror...

Sereny describes how carefully the gassings were organised. For richer (Western) Jews, who arrived on seemingly normal passenger trains, the (fake) station, and "welcoming" troops who explained carefully that everyone needed to be disinfected before heading out to work meant that these victims moved in an orderly fashion to their deaths. For the poorer (mostly Polish) Jews, who arrived packed into cattle-cars, the guards whipped and beat them to instil terror, forcing them into the gas chambers with the butts of their rifles.

Confronting Stangl with these facts, Sereny watches and listens as he tries to justify why he didn't leave: she (and we) knew that quite a few soldiers did and could leave the extermination camps, but Stangl used as his justification the "fact" that he would have to go back to his normal police job and a boss who hated him, and that he was a soldier following orders. He also claimed that he tried to be as kind as he could to those going to their deaths. Sereny's clear and factual tone lays bare the torturous logic that Stangl had to use to try to forgive himself for the unforgiveable. He couldn't forget either, explaining that on seeing some cattle awaiting slaughter in Brazil, he could no longer eat meat. Sereny's interviews with Stangl's wife show us a man who was slowly falling apart, unable to control his emotions in the years before his arrest and deportation back to Germany.

Sereny has her own ideas why Stangl may have kept going - from the time he was recruited from the police to assist in the Euthanasia program at Hartheim, Stangl was ambitious, enjoying the increasing rank and privileges that came with his increasing responsibility. It was only as the War went on and defeat seemed likely that he suffered stress-based illness, and understood that he was one of the "war-criminals" that would have to face justice. He remarked to Sereny with some cynicism on his posting to battle partisans around Trieste after the dissolution of the camps that he "realized quite well...that we were an embarrassment to the brass:...[s]o we were assigned the most dangerous jobs".

Stangl escaped the prison-camp in which he was placed after the War, and quite openly moved to Damascus and Brazil, where he lived under his own name for nearly twenty years before being "discovered" and sent back to Germany for trial. This section of the book is also fascinating. Once again an author blows apart the credibility of Simon Weisenthal, and once again an author uncovers the uncomfortable history of the Vatican both during and after the War. Sereny, even though acknowledging the difficulties of finding the criminals who were mingling in the millions of displaced persons, shames the Church through rigorous use of documents and interviews. While she may forgive the fact that Stangl slipped through "un-noticed", she can't forget the appalling lack of moral fortitude from the Vatican throughout the War, when it came to telling the world what they knew of the Holocaust.

Eventually, at the end of their time together, Stangl faces the fact that, because he was there, because he facilitated the murder, he shared the guilt, even if he didn't actually murder anyone with his own hands. It is a dramatic moment, heightened by the fact that eighteen hours after he finally admitted that to himself, Stangl died of a heart attack.

As a journey through the most terrifying phase of World War Two, Into that Darkness is in turn fascinating, horrifying and above all, edifying. A must read of Holocaust history.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Soldiers of Destruction by Charles W. Sydnor Jr.

 Soldiers of Destruction: the SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945 by Charles W. Sydnor Jr.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977                  ISBN 0691052557

So, here is the book that I should have read - rather than the sensationalized Curse of the Death's Head - to learn more about the SS Totenkopf Division and it's role in the fighting and killing of Nazi Germany and World War II. Whereas Rupert Butler went for the Hollywood angle of the story, Charles Sydnor has produced a meticulously researched, factual but very readable account, which Butler has obviously used as the basis for his airport non-fiction.

Soldiers of Destruction catalogues the shaky beginnings of the Totenkopf organisation - Theodor Eicke being the driving force behind not only the re-organization of the concentration camp system, but really the progenitor of the military arm of the SS. Sydnor shows us in Eicke a man who was in turn brutal, bullying, racist and yet in some ways very particular and prissy.

Through his vigour and chivvying Eicke managed to set up a national concentration camp system, which eliminated the personal sadism of previous commanders, and imposed not only a set of instructions which institutionalized brutality against those incarcerated, but also engendered within his SS cadres a feeling of being special and superior to those whom they opposed.

With his organizational ability and thrusting personality, Eicke was a natural choice to be the leader to initiate the armed wing of the SS. It also helped that the Totenkopfverbande was really the only source of combat-capable SS troops to create an armed division. Eicke's bullying blustering nature, and his ability to claim to be fulfilling the will of not only Himmler, but Hitler himself, initially didn't get him far in his battle with the German Army to get equipment and arms for his division. The Army did not like competition, did not like the overt ideological nature of the training of the SS troops, and frankly thought that the SS would not be able to fight.

Despite such opposition, Eicke worked hard to get his division up and running - begging, borrowing and stealing equipment - on many occasions incurring the wrath of Himmler, and working his troops very hard to get them up to speed. Eicke was determined that his troops would not only be the most ruthless in their pursuit of victory, but be exemplary National Socialists as well. He regularly cashiered soldiers and officers who transgressed his rules - many to do with drunkenness and sexual crimes, or anything else he thought besmirched the honour of the division. By the time SS Totenkopf arrived in France, the division was itching to get into battle.

That happened soon enough in France, where the division suffered proportionally more casualties than other units, owing to both their vigour in prosecuting battle, and their commanders not yet fully grasping how to use troops in modern war. Once France was defeated, the division not only had more experience, but plenty of  captured equipment. They also had some grudging respect from the Army for their efforts. What we remember today from the Totenkopf's time in France is the Le Paradis massacre.

This was not the last war crime that the Totenkopf - or its members that moved onto other SS organizations - committed.

Soon enough the division was on its way to Russia, where it was part of Army Group North's push to Leningrad. While we now think of the German invasion of Russia as a bit of a walk-over up until Winter arrived, Sydnor makes clear that even the early advances came at the cost of huge casualties, especially for Totenkopf, for whom the Russian war was the apogee of their ideological world-view. The Division's high and low point came during the battle of the Demyansk Pocket where they proved that they were one of the best fighting units available to Germany, but where they had their heart torn out by the unremitting Russian assaults. By the time the Pocket was relieved, the Totenkopf had almost ceased to exist as a fighting unit.

They were sent to France to recover and refit, but found themselves instead part of the force who occupied Vichy France, before being sent back to Russia - this time the Ukraine. Here they were used as the "firemen" of the German forces, sent wherever the need was greatest. It was here that they lost their leader, with Eicke shot down and killed just before the Battle of Kursk. While the division made the most headway of any German unit during that battle, Russia defeated the Germans, and the remainder of the War saw Totenkopf continuing to fill holes in the German front, with less and less success, until they ceased to exist around Vienna at the end of the War.

Syndor has used the archives fully and well, which is why we find out much more about the Division before the death of Eicke, and not so much after, owing to the fact that the later records of the Division were destroyed at the end of the War. Syndor doesn't shy away from the criminality behind not only some of the actions undertaken by the Totenkopf, but behind its very basis. He shows through evidence that the idea espoused by some that the Waffen SS was merely another part of the Army and not tainted by all the evil undertaken by the rest of the SS is not near the truth. The Totenkopf Division in particular regularly cycled officers from combat, back to the camps and administration of Einsatzgruppen, and then back to the Division. He shows us that Hitler valued his SS Divisions, eventually giving them preference over his Army divisions when it came to equipment and manpower. He shows us that they were anything but another division in a normal army.

This book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand how the Waffen SS was born, how it grew, how it died, and how it was as much part of the SS as the Camp Guards and members of the Einsatzgruppen. A great piece of scholarship.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Curse of the Death's Head by Rupert Butler

 Curse of the Death's Head: the story of the SS Totenkopf Division by Rupert Butler

London: Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1985                  ISBN 0099427605

Well I've been taken on a wild ride with this book - I've been entertained in a somewhat gruesome way, but I'm not sure I'm any the wiser as to the activities of the Totenkopf Division in World War Two. This breathlessly written tome is military history written as airport fiction, with a focus on whatever interesting story might be found within the activities of this division, rather than a considered volume that contains useful reference material.

And that's a bit of a shame really, as it wouldn't have taken much to turn this book into something much weightier, while still being an entertaining read. As it is, this is a mish-mash of a potted biography of the first leader of the Division, Theodor Eicke, a run-through of Himmler's obsessions, a couple of side-tracks into Hitler's bunkers and Skorzeny's kidnapping of Horthy's son and subsequent takeover of Hungarian leadership, before a fairly fragmented description of the end for Totenkopf.

The book is hamstrung by its lack of maps and apparatus, and by the choice of language and tone. Butler lurches between the melodramatic, the "Boy's Own" adventure, and breathless excitement, as he variously describes Eicke's bluster, the invasion of France, and Himmler's obsessions.

As you can guess, I didn't enjoy this book. It was a page turner, but I ended it really none the wiser about much of anything at all.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Great War by Les Carlyon

 The Great War by Les Carlyon

Sydney: Picador, 2007  (First published 2006)           ISBN 9781405037990

It's only after finishing this book that I have realized why I have been feeling melancholy  for the last week. The Great War is a distillation of tragedy and waste: 800 pages of sadness. Les Carlyon used all of his skill to portray the story of the Australian Army on the Western Front, both from the view of the soldier at the front, and the commanders behind the lines, while also including vignettes that explain how the Australian experience fitted into the wider experience of War.

By the time Carlyon came to writing this book, he had already written a book about the Gallipoli Campaign. I do wonder about the choice of title: The Great War to my mind, is somewhat misleading given the subject matter. For this book is strictly a campaign history of the Australian forces from Fromelles - their first foray on the Western front - to the final act of the AIF, the taking of Montbrehain in October 1918. For many people my age Carlyon is better remembered as a journalist who mostly wrote about horse racing. The cognitive dissonance of who I thought Carlyon was and the misleading title of this book took me a little time to overcome. While not a pedant (well maybe a bit), I think the title was poorly chosen, especially as there is no blurb or any other material to alert the reader to the fact that this book is not actually a history of the whole of World War One.

Once I understood the limits of this book, I found it a good read. Carlyon not only writes well about the battles that the Australians fought, but uses his journalistic skill to provide a flavour of what it must have been like, using extracts from diaries and letters to give the reader a sense of the horrors, but also of the personalities of the Australian troops. He has ended most chapters with a view of the battlefields in the present day, contrasting the generally bucolic countryside of the 21st century with the vision of hell that most of it was in 1916-1918.

Like all histories of Australian exploits in the Great War, Carlyon is following in the footsteps of Charles Bean. While Carlyon is not a doe-eyed admirer of the official historian, quite often criticizing his conclusions and his distaste for General Monash, he is influenced as all writers have been by Bean's magnum opus. The Great War is mostly a history from the Battalion level, a narrative of small actions within the wider War.

Carlyon is more readable than Bean, and does try to provide some context for the Australian battles. He intersperses his battlefield descriptions with short essays on the strategic outlook and the political intrigues that swirled around the British forces during the War. He has much to say about Haig, Gough, Plumer, Lloyd George, Nivelle, Foch and Clemenceau. Most of it is not very flattering, and suited to Carlyon's story of the war. This causes him some problems during the book: Plumer is a genius at modern battle, until he isn't, Haig is a tongue-tied nincompoop until he is a rock of determination, and so on. The wish to characterize people simply is something that Carlyon tries to avoid throughout the book, but sometimes he can't help himself and his journalistic desire for a good story overwhelms the more nuanced narrative that may be closer to the truth.

The one character he does map with some complexity is Monash. Carlyon shows us that he was almost certainly the ablest officer in the Australian forces, but also points out clearly that there were others, both British and Colonial, who were his equal. Not only did he lead masterstrokes such as Hamel but there were also times when he pushed his men too far with too little support. What Carlyon shows is that Monash not only had a great tactical mind, he also had the ruthlessness required to sacrifice lives when he felt is was necessary.

While Carlyon describes battles well, there is very little in The Great War about the lives of the troops behind the lines, except when it can add an amusing anecdote to bring out the nature of the troops. Carlyon's descriptions of the AIF tend to follow the template of an army that was short on barrack-room discipline, but good at fighting - the mythical Aussie digger. There is a kernel of truth to all myths, and there is no doubt that the AIF had a more democratic nature than the British army as a whole, but sometimes the good story takes over from the duller reality.

I feel like I'm writing a bad review for this book, which is not my intention. The Great War is a very well written account of the Australian battlefield experience on the Western Front. Carlyon does well to bring out the waste and horror of war, and his trope of ending the chapters with a description of the countryside as it is today, perhaps also describing the cemeteries in which some of the soldiers he writes about lay, evokes the pity of war as well as any book I have read. 

The advantage, if I can call it that, of writing a book from the battalion view is that the writer does not have to linger too much on what it was all for. The final few pages lay out the Australian achievement on the Western Front - considerable territory captured, some vital battles, and an honorable part played in a bigger picture. By the end of the war, the AIF was dangerously low on numbers (Carlyon writes pithily and well on the two conscription campaigns run in Australia during the war, as he also does more generally on the machinations of Billy Hughes as Prime Minister, and Keith Murdoch as stirrer), but as one of the most experienced corps of troops on the front, was in demand as a shock force. By the time of its last battle it was spent - the war ended not a moment too soon for the Australians.

If, as a reader, you would like to know about the battles Australia fought on the Western Front, I can recommend The Great War. It's well-written, and gives just enough context to what was going on so that the uninitiated can understand where the Australians fitted into the bigger picture. The maps included in this paperback edition were at best adequate, but there are endnotes, bibliography and a reasonable index.

The strength of the book is in Carlyon's evocation of the average soldier: he is successful in helping the reader get into - as much as one can - the shoes of those who were there. While Gallipoli has become the overarching military myth of Australia, most Australians who died in World War One did so on the Western Front - even the term "digger" was coined on that front in 1917. The lasting effects of the War trickle down to the present day: my Great-Grandfather was killed at Menin Road, one of his brothers was invalided home to Australia in the same year, another had already been killed at Lone Pine, and his other brother, one of the original ANZACS, and someone who participated in every battle listed in this book except the last, was sent home early, one of only 6,000 left from those men who landed at ANZAC Cove in 1915. Their memory, and the memory of the trauma that they suffered, lingered in the minds of the family they had left, and has been passed down to the present day.

I can recommend this book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell