Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/April 2017/Book reviews




 * By Nick-D

The Battle of Hamburg is part of a wide-ranging series of books written by British historian Martin Middlebrook during the 1970s and 1980s. These books, the most famous of which is the classic The First Day on the Somme, broke important ground by building the history of the events they cover from the ground up through extensive interviews with ordinary service personnel and civilians, supplemented by first-rate archival research.

An important question to ask is why a popular history written in 1980 remains relevant. The main answer is that this is a book which simply couldn't be reproduced today. As part of his research, Middlebrook interviewed a remarkable range and number of German, American and British servicemen and civilians involved in the air raids on Hamburg during July and August 1943. For obvious reasons, this wouldn't be possible today. Also while some aspects of The Battle of Hamburg are now dated (for instance, Middlebrook's apologies to his readers and especially those in Germany for noting the impact of the Holocaust on Hamburg), his analysis of the raids was well considered, and has stood the test of time. Finally, the book remains relevant as it's very well written, and illustrated with a generous supply of well executed maps and tables, also something of a rarity in modern popular histories.

The greatest strength of The Battle of Hamburg is the way in which Middlebrook uses personal accounts to both supplement and expand upon the narrative gained from official records and secondary sources. For instance, readers are told about the losses of individual bombers, with personal accounts then illustrating the experiences of the men on board them. Similarly, the descriptions of the impact of the bombing are illustrated by both vivid accounts from people on the ground as well as bomber crews. As well as making the book highly readable, this approach gives Middlebrook's narrative and analysis considerable strength.

Of course, not all aspects of the book are perfect. Most notably, Middlebrook probably bit off more than he could chew by covering the entire series of raids on Hamburg: the coverage of the key raids is highly detailed, but others are relatively quickly passed over or have a somewhat less convincing narrative. I would have also liked to have seen more analysis of the impact of the raids, and the reconstruction of the city.

Overall though, The Battle of Hamburg is an outstanding work of military history and remains a very useful reference on air warfare during World War II.

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 * By Hawkeye7

In 1947, the British government took the decision to acquire nuclear weapons. Of the decision, Margaret Gowing wrote:"The British decision to make an atomic bomb had "emerged" from a body of general assumptions. It had not been a response to an immediate military threat but rather something fundamental and almost instinctive – a feeling that Britain must possess so climactic a weapon in order to deter an atomically armed enemy, a feeling that Britain as a great power must acquire all major new weapons, a feeling that atomic weapons were a manifestation of the scientific and technological superiority on which Britain's strength, so deficient if measured in sheer numbers of men, must depend."

This is astonishingly perceptive for a British writer; I have lived through the debates about replacing Polaris with Trident and then over the successor for Trident. In none of them were the issues of beliefs, culture or identity discussed; on the contrary, they were avoided insofar as was possible. Instead there were red herrings. There was the threat from the Soviet Union (and, after that fell, from North Korea). The concept of Britain fighting alone without allies (as it mythically did during the Second World War)—always a peculiar combination of the unimaginable with the unthinkable. This led to the so-called "Moscow criterion", echoes of the real debate at the highest levels about what actually constituted a "minimum deterrent" when civil servants began putting price tags on different options. Then there was the need for a "European nuclear capability" (and when France developed nuclear weapons, they added "apart from the French"). The British nuclear deterrent was said to be held on behalf of Europe. Ironically, while Brexit reduced that argument to ashes, it also made Trident's replacement inevitable.

The authors of this book have written several works on British nuclear weapons policy, but this one covers 1945 to 2015 in one volume, so if you want to know about it, and only feel like reading one book, this isn't a bad choice. It goes without saying that among the experts, beliefs, culture and identity are paramount, with deep roots in Britain's history and geography. As such the British nuclear programme cannot be argued against within this belief system, which is why the arguments against have failed to resonate. Since the book starts in 1945, the roots are not explored in depth; this would make a good book (or doctoral thesis) though. In passing, we can note how during the Second World War the Fall of France in 1940 was attributed in Britain to superior technology rather than superior leadership, tactics or doctrine, and how Britain came under attack by bombers and later V1 flying bombs and V2 missiles. As Britain's economy declined, its ability to design and develop its own weapons fell away.

Then there is the role of identity, the notion that Britain was a great power, a "pivotal" one, with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and a role, indeed an obligation, in the enforcement of international peace and stability. That it was a "force for good" in the world. The defender of Europe. And when economic factors cause that to slip increasingly distant from reality, it was a nation with a special relationship with the United States, which could make up the difference. The tension between independence and interdependence runs through the book. Above all, though, there was the notion that Britain was a unique country to which the rules do not apply.

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