Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/February 2012/Book reviews


 * By Nick-D

Armies of the Adowa Campaign is the 471st(!) book in Osprey Publishing's Men-at-Arms series. It provides a short (48-page) account of the First Italo-Ethiopian War with a strong focus on the Battle of Adowa, which ended in the disastrous defeat of the Italian forces at the hands of the Ethiopian Army.

While the book's short length is a significant constraint, McLachlan has managed to squeeze a reasonably detailed and even-handed account of the war into it. The book provides a brief history of the background to the war and a good summary of the main events before the Battle of Adowa. The coverage of the battle itself is clear, though not as detailed as I was expecting, and McLachlan includes some interesting observations gained from visiting the battlefield. While I don't understand why the section on the organisation and capabilities of the rival armies is at the very end of the book (after the coverage of the campaign!) it's very good and provides an interesting description of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the armies which goes a long way towards explaining why the Italians were soundly beaten. As is standard for Osprey books, Armies of the Adowa campaign is heavily illustrated. It includes eight colour pages showing the uniform and appearance of soldiers and officers involved in the campaign. While these drawings are nicely done, they're rather unrealistic as all the men are wearing spotlessly clean clothes!

Overall, Armies of the Adowa Campaign is a success. It serves as a useful introduction to this little-known war, though it would have benefited from being somewhat longer.


 * Publishing details:
 * Articles this book will be useful for: Battle of Adwa, First Italo-Ethiopian War and related articles


 * By Nick-D

Hell to Pay is a myth-busting account of the last months of the Pacific War and the likely consequences of the planned Allied invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall), which was scheduled to have taken place had the war continued into late 1945. It was written by American historian D.M. Giangreco.

This book breaks new ground, and is an important addition to the literature on the Pacific War. Giangreco's main theme is that, despite the claims of some critics of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan was well-prepared to meet an Allied invasion and the casualties from this fighting would have numbered in the millions. He provides very strong evidence from United States and Japanese wartime assessments to support this argument, and convincingly demonstrates that the Allied forces had almost certainly underestimated the difficulty of invading Japan. As part of developing this argument, the book provides lots of detail on the activities undertaken by Japanese and Allied forces which will be very useful for many Wikipedia articles on the last six months of the war.

Despite the strength of Giangreco's analysis, the book is unfortunately less than the sum of its parts. Its main flaw is that it feels like a collection of essays rather than a single work - there's no clear order to the chapters, some material is repeated in different chapters and several parts of the book go off on tangents (such as the short chapter on the production of Purple Heart medals in the US in preparation for the invasion). While I was convinced by the book's overall argument, at times I felt that Giangreco was contrasting the best possible-circumstances for the Japanese with the worst-possible circumstances for the Allies during descriptions of how the invasion would have been fought rather than providing an balanced assessment. Moreover, while the book provides an excellent analysis of Japan's military situation at the end of the war, it barely mentions the fact that the national economy was rapidly collapsing in August 1945 and would have been crippled by Allied bombing had the war lasted much longer. In addition, the book does not discuss the morale of the Japanese population, despite there being significant evidence that it was also deteriorating at the time - instead, Giangreco appears to have assumed that civilians would have sacrificed themselves en masse in line with government propaganda. These are important oversights, as they would have undermined Japan's ability to continue the war and the extent of the resistance any Allied invasion forces met. Unusually for a book published by the Naval Institute Press, Hell to Pay also includes several typos and some poor grammar.

All up, Hell to Pay is a worthwhile book that sheds new light on American decision to use the atomic bomb and likely outcome of the planned invasion of Japan. However, it would have benefited from much stronger editing to pull the book into shape and strengthen its arguments.


 * Publishing details:
 * Articles this book will be useful for: Operation Downfall and most articles on the last six months of the Pacific War.