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


 * By Peacemaker67

This is a well-presented and readable book that has an interesting take on the brutal counter-insurgency operations of several German divisions in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. The author is Dr. Ben Shepherd, currently Reader in History at Glasgow Caledonian University. One of Shepherd's key themes is that the World War I experiences of the commanders of each division had a strong influence on the extent to which their division exceeded the usually ruthless methods promoted by the German Army to crush resistance. He acknowledges that German counter-insurgency doctrine had tended towards the extreme end of the spectrum since the 19th century, and also recognises the role of Nazi ideology and other factors in the mass reprisals, burning of villages and targeting of civilians that occurred during the huge but ineffective cordon and destroy operations.

What adds the extra dimension to this study is the idea that commanders who experienced extensive service on the Eastern Front in World War I were more likely to order higher levels of brutality by their divisions than those that saw other types of service during World War I. This is not to say that the latter group weren't themselves brutal, but instead that those that had seen service on the Eastern Front in World War I were more likely to exceed the standard level of brutality exhibited by the German Army in World War II. Key to this idea is that such commanders had seen Slavic peoples as enemies during their service in World War I, and therefore more closely adopted the Nazi conception of Slavs as "sub-human". Shepherd reinforces his observations of the behaviour exhibited by German Army divisional commanders in Yugoslavia with similar examples drawn from the operations of three security divisions in the rear areas of Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front.

Although he is working off a fairly small sample, Shepherd's ideas are developed and presented in a compelling way, and warrant further study. The book is a valuable contribution to the examination of counter-insurgency operations by the German Army during World War II.

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 * By Nick-D

The Secret War is the latest book by the prolific British historian Max Hastings covering World War II. As indicated by its title, it covers the role of military intelligence throughout the war, as well as the activities of covert sabotage units such as the British Special Operations Executive and resistance movements in occupied countries.

I find Max Hastings to be something of a guilty pleasure: his works fall squarely into the "big books by blokes about battles" genre, and can contain woefully under-researched or ill-considered sections (the chapter on the Australian military in his book on the final months of the Pacific War was simply terrible, for instance). Despite these limitations, his books are generally of interest to both the general public and more specialised readers as they are well written, range widely, and tend to shine a light on under-considered aspects of the wars they cover.

Unfortunately The Secret War isn't one of Hastings' better books. Its central problem is that it covers too much ground: trying to describe the intelligence and covert warfare activities of all the major countries between the late 1930s and mid-1940s within 550 pages simply isn't practical. Hastings attempts to solve this problem by focusing on the aspects of these topics that haven't previously been covered in popular works (for instance, there isn't much on the Allied successes in decoding Axis radio signals, but there is a lot on the Soviet Union's intelligence systems), but even this proves somewhat unsuccessful. The coverage of the role of intelligence in the Pacific War, for instance, is woeful with Hastings focusing mainly on Europe and downplaying the use of intelligence in the Pacific - this felt like an excuse to not cover the topic as it doesn't reflect the conclusions in the more specialised literature. The material on resistance movements is too sketchy to be of much use, and doesn't fit in well with the rest of the book. As the narrative is also marred by some minor - but obvious - factual errors, the overall impression I gained was that the book was rather under-edited.

Nevertheless, it does have some real strengths. While Hastings' unfortunately doesn't analyse the effectiveness of intelligence in detail, when he does his conclusions are highly convincing. Similarly, he's able to put his broad knowledge of the war to good use by placing the role of intelligence gathering and sabotage activities in their proper context: he repeatedly notes that whatever insights were gained through intelligence and whatever the assistance resistance movements provided, Allied victory could only be won by defeating the Axis' military forces in the field. His material on the German and Soviet intelligence systems is also fascinating, and helps to address the limited coverage of these topics in mainstream books.

Overall, The Secret War is an interesting read and a useful reference. However, it would have been a much better book if Hastings had narrowed his scope.

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