Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/October 2021/Book reviews




 * By Nick-D

This book is a social history of the 'National Service' conscription scheme that was in place in the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1963. While it discusses the politics and strategic goals behind the scheme, the focus is on the effects it had on the young men who were conscripted and their experiences in the armed forces.

I found the book to be quite interesting. Vinen is sceptical about the purpose and value of the National Service scheme, and demonstrates that it had both a harmful impact on those caught up in it and a malign impact on the British foreign policy by helping the government to sustain the illusion that the country remained a great power. By taking a social history approach, Vinen explores the clash of cultures behind the astonishingly snobby postwar British Army and the mainly working class men who were forced to serve with it. At best, the conscripts missed out on two years of wages and had to sustain themselves on the miserably low rates of pay (not surprisingly, many married men deserted) but had some interesting experiences. Most put up with drudgery at run down bases in the UK and Germany, and a minority were sent to fight in Korea. A particular strength of this approach is that Vinen casts an entirely unsentimental light on the armed forces - for instance, he notes that the Royal Pioneer Corps was officially a dumping ground for badly educated or troublesome men and that most conscripts were desperate to avoid serving in the infantry. He also takes on the notion that peacetime conscription is worthwhile as it 'makes a man' of young men, demonstrating that the armed forces were generally able to rid themselves of those who most needed reform while the men who remained often came away from the military with a range of bad habits including a propensity to dodge unpleasant jobs.

I'm not sure about the history behind this book, but it's main limitation is that it feels like it started life as a PhD thesis or similar. This has led to the usual problems with too much information being provided on the literature on the topic, and uneven coverage of its subject. For instance, while one of the main purposes of the National Service scheme was to man units deployed to Germany and train them to fight the Soviets, there is almost nothing about the experiences of conscripts who served with the British Army of the Rhine. The focus on the experiences of the conscripts can also be excessively tight at times - I would have liked to have read more about what the families and partners of these men thought about having them taken away from their lives - there are some interesting hints about this, but it's never properly explored. A comparison of the experiences of British conscripts with those who served in other Cold War militaries would also have been useful but might have resulted in an unmanageably large work.

Overall, this is a useful book and the approach it takes could be applied more broadly.

Publishing details:




 * By Nick-D

The 55th book in Osprey Publishing's 'Raid' series covers the attacks German heavy cruisers and battleships made on Allied merchant shipping in the North Atlantic during World War II. These were a core part of the Kriegsmarine's war strategy but have received relatively little coverage. The book was written by Osprey regular Angus Konstam, who has had a focus recently on World War II in the North Atlantic and Arctic.

This is an example of Osprey at its best. The subject matter is well suited to Osprey's format, with 80 pages being sufficient to explain the context of the six completed raids and cover them in detail. The decision to focus on these lesser known operations and only provide a summary of Bismarcks famous failed raid was a good one, not least as it puts Bismarcks raid in some much-needed context. The book features excellent maps and well selected photos. While I find Konstam's research to be a bit hit and miss, he's done a good job with this book and I didn't spot any errors. His analysis of the effectiveness of the raiding strategy breaks some new ground and is convincing.

It's hard to find much to criticise with this volume, but the format's 'aftermath', 'analysis' and 'conclusion' sections are a bit clunky here, as they forced Konstam to split up related material. The bibliography is also a bit sparse, and oddly focused on works covering individual warships rather than the Battle of the Atlantic as a whole, despite Konstam having obviously drawn on a wide literature.

In summary, this is a very useful addition to the literature on World War II in the North Atlantic and Germany's naval strategy.

Publishing details: