Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/April 2020/Book reviews




 * By Hawkeye7

This book is the result of a 2002 workshop at the University of Sydney that brought together scholars from Australia, Canada, the US, the UK and Israel to discuss the logistics of the Crusades. First published in 2006, it is now available at a reasonable price as a paperback. Like most books emerging from conferences and workshops, it consists of chapters by different authors and is therefore uneven in style, although in this case all high in quality. For some reason, the editor decided that the papers should be ordered alphabetically by author, so the book careens over the subject matter. If you're unfamiliar with the history of the Crusades, you'll be completely lost; such knowledge is assumed.

The result, the authors concede, is a long way from a comprehensive history of the logistics of the Crusades, but at the same time is a valuable resource on the subject. The food, water and fodder requirements of a medieval army are carefully calculated. There are good chapters on roads, ships, harbours and maps, and a fascinating one on money. Since the required amounts of food and fodder were too great to carry over the distance, the crusaders took currency and ingots to purchase their requirements en route. The First Crusade departed at the end of summer, marching when agricultural surpluses were available for purchase in autumn, reaching Constantinople at the end of winter when the emperor could put them up.

The obvious alternative to the overland route was to sail down the Atlantic coast and across the Mediterranean. This too required timing, as the waters were too rough in the winter for the medieval craft. Moreover, their vessels could not negotiate a westward passage of the Strait of Gibraltar due to the current, so the voyages were one-way only. Ships were subject to attack by teredo navalis, and were unlikely to survive the voyage in any case. And there was the strategic problem that Spain was occupied by the Muslims. While they were generally willing to assist the crusaders in order to get rid of them, they were occasionally hostile, and in some cases the local Christian rulers diverted the crusaders onto missions in Spain.

This book is highly recommended, but only those with a serious interest in the Crusades or medieval logistics, rather than the general reader.

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 * By Hawkeye7

This book is about Curtis LeMay's time in command of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) from 1948 to 1957. It is not a biography, and only covers that period. It is mainly sourced, sometimes indiscriminately, from LeMay's diary and papers. The book argues forcefully and repeatedly that LeMay's strategy was one of preemption. In the the event of a nuclear war, he intended to minimise the damage to the United States by destroying Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems on the ground.

Albertson notes that while preemption implies first use of nuclear weapons, a sharp distinction is drawn between it and one of preventative war, in which the a nation starts a conflict to deal with a potential enemy who will only become stronger in the future. To take the analogy of a western movie gunfighter, preemption is where the gunfighter is quicker on the draw, while preventative war would be bushwacking his opponent.

LeMay envisioned the first stage of a nuclear conflict was preemption, which SAC called "blunting". This was seen as the doctrinal effort to gain air superiority. In the next phase, SAC would switch to military targets in support of the ground and naval forces. The targeting of cities as such, at least in the opening phases, was not part of the plan, because new production from industry was not expected to be in sufficient volume to affect the conflict.

Preemption was technically feasible during LeMay's time in command of SAC and for several years afterwards. It was problematic in the early years because US intelligence on the location of bombers and nuclear installations was lacking. After that, the deployment of intermediate range ballistic missiles threatened the overseas bases on which SAC's B-47 bombers and KC-97 tankers depended, promoting a shift to the longer-range B-52 bomber and KC-135 tanker, which could be based in the United States. The deployment of intercontinental ballistic missiles eventually made the preemption strategy obsolete.

I would have thought that the book's central thesis was not so controversial and contested as to require such lengthy treatment, but I may be wrong; LeMay's Wikipedia article makes a mess of it. Having given away the whole plot of the book here though, I doubt that most readers will find much of interest in it.

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Various books on the Dunkirk evacuation