Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/April 2016/Book reviews


 * By Hawkeye7

Since Britain's MI5 and MI6 have published official histories, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) decided to publish one too. Initially there were to be two volumes; subsequently it was decided to commission a third, taking the story up to 1989. The Australian National University won the tender to produce them, an irony that a close reading of the text will reveal.

The first volume, by David Horner, Australia's most eminent military historian, covers the period from when ASIO was formed in 1948 up until 1963. During the Second World War, Ultra decrypts indicated that secret information was being leaked from the Department of External Affairs to the Soviet Union, and then to the Japanese. When the American Venona project broke the wartime Soviet codes in 1948, they were appalled to discover that the Soviets had been spying on them. Among other things, they discovered a well-organised Soviet spy ring in Australia.

The United States threatened to cut off intelligence sharing with Australia, and this also jeopardised cooperation with the United Kingdom, threatening the work of the Long Range Weapons Establishment at Woomera. The Prime Minister of Australia, Ben Chifley, set up ASIO to rectify the situation. Over the next 15 years, much of ASIO's work would be on "the case", cracking the spy ring led by Walter Seddon Clayton (codename: Klod) that included Ian Milner (codename: Bur), a senior officer at the Department of External Affairs. Hence the title.

ASIO was not an executive agency; it could advise a government body that in its opinion a certain person was a security risk (or, for that matter, a Soviet spy) but it was up to the agency concerned as to what should be done about it. While some people were dismissed, most were simply moved to positions not involving the handling of secret materiel. There were no prosecutions, much less executions, since all the real evidence was via Venona, which could not be revealed.

This book is 5 cm thick and quite comprehensive. It debunks a lot of myths and conspiracy theories, such as the one that Robert Menzies engineered the defection of Vladimir Petrov and his wife Evdokia to win the 1954 election. It is not uncritical of the subject, although the reader sometimes needs to reflect on what they have just been told. The main problem with the book is the lack of context. While Horner admits that "It is impossible to understand the early history of ASIO without appreciating the political and social climate of the early Cold War period", you won't find that here. In a number of places, you are referred to other books that pertain to the subject, so it is more of a reference work.

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 * By Nick-D

The Wehrmacht Retreats is an analytic history of the Germany army (the Heer) during 1943. It's the latest in number of books on German military history by American historian Robert M. Citino, and focuses on linking the Army's traditions and doctrine to its performance in 1943. It covers the fighting on the Eastern Front and the Mediterranean, with each major theatre receiving approximately the same level of coverage.

The Wehrmacht Retreats is a refreshing corrective to a lot of writing on the World War II-era German Army. For instance, Citino discredits the myth that the Army remained a high-quality force into 1943 despite its massive losses. Instead he argues that the Army's tactical successes during the year (such as the Third Battle of Kharkov in early 1943 and the evacuation of Sicily in the middle of the year) were largely due to German success in exploiting Allied mistakes, and that none of these victories really improved Germany's position. Importantly, he also traces the deterioration in the Army's performance as its elite armoured units were unable to make good their casualties and the "line" infantry units became skeletons, and contrasts this against the relatively well-manned and well-equipped Allied forces. Put simply, the German Army was a wasting asset during 1943, and during the year lost the advantages it had previously enjoyed due to good training and doctrine to the rapidly improving Allied armies.

Citino's demolition of the argument advanced after the war by many German generals that they could have fought a successful defensive campaign if Hitler had granted them greater freedom to maneuver and retreat is perhaps the most important element of The Wehrmacht Retreats. While Citino provides many examples of Hitler's military ineptitude and acknowledges that most of Germany's leading generals were highly competent, he demonstrates that their tactical skills were not sufficient to offset the Army's many problems. For instance, he argues convincingly that even if the Army had been able to fight a war of maneuver in the Ukraine (as Erich von Manstein argued would have been the correct tactics to use during 1943 after the war), it probably wouldn't have led to superior outcomes given that the Soviet Army was by now even better prepared for this form of warfare than the German forces. Similarly, Citino is scathing of the German offensives against the Western Allies in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy, noting that all ultimately ended in defeat as, despite their advantages in training and doctrine, the Germans couldn't come close to matching the Allies' massive advantages in firepower.

Of course, the book isn't perfect. Citino doesn't cover the moral side of the German Army's performance in 1943 in detail, and fails to fully address the responsibility the Army's leadership had for both war crimes and continuing the war after it was clearly lost. The brutal campaign against Italian forces following Italy's surrender to the Allies is also covered only briefly, and the equally brutal campaigns against partisans are not mentioned at all. In addition, the book's maps are somewhat amateur in nature, and don't clearly illustrate the campaigns as a result.

Overall, this is an important addition to the literature on Germany's war effort during World War II. It provides excellent analysis of the German Army's performance during 1943, and makes a valuable contribution to explaining why the Allies won.

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