What are you reading at the moment?

So far Chris I think it's excellent. For a Merchant Navy service novice (me) it's ideal.
John Slader is clear from the outset on what it is and what it isn't.
Give me a few minutes to finish my toast (bread variety, not drink!) and I'll post the contents list, and list of Illustrations, up for you.

Kind regards, always,

Jim.

 

Here you go Chris, contents and illustrations.

I will never have the knowledge to be able to speak on the books accuracy. From memory I think Hugh MacLean has mentioned it previously, and I'm sure he, or RoyMartin, or Steve49 could give you a definitive yea or nay on taking a punt on it.

Kind regards, always,

Jim.

 

Thanks, Jim!

 

David Irving's Nuremberg: The Last Battle.

 

Non WW II topic. Digging All Night and Fighting All Day: The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort by Paul Brueske.

 

Am catching up on my New World Order studies, and so am reading this notorious tome:

 

An update for Post 4722, which refers to John Kiszely's excellent biography of Hastings Ismay and a "plug" by Dr. Robert Lyman:

He refers to a RUSI podcast (32mins) on open access:

See: Episode 1: Leading a Defence Startup: NATO’s First Secretary General, Lord Ismay

 

Butler's Battling Blue Bastards. 3/395 of the 99th Div (Battle Babies).

 

On the tank museums web page, they have copies of the The Universal Tank and the Great Tank Scandal for only £14.99 each. That's a lot cheaper than the copies I bought.

Books on WWII

 

Charity shop find.



For more see Clive's thread here: Thames Tugs

Kind regards, always,

Jim.

 

Just started re-reading Matthew Parker's Monte Cassino. First read it when it was published as a paperback in 2004.

 

I just finished reading The Plain Cook and the Showman and I admit to disappointment. I would have liked more examination actually of Anderson and Montgomery. Instead it is a sometimes slightly bewildering account of First and Eighth Armies' fighting in Tunisia. The author made sure to always remind you of unit transfers between divisions etc even at the expense of clarity. I found the description of the last thrust to take Tunis confused by his reference to just "the Bou" as the initial objective without, so far as I could tell, actually identifying it by name.

By no means a terrible book, though? I liked the hand-drawn maps - they had a certain charm to them.

 

Helene Munson's Hitler's Boy Soldiers. Her father was volkdeustch from Chile who was sent to Germany for his education. He is selected for Feldafing, an elite boarding school where the boys are indoctrinated into nazism. As he gets older in 1943, he becomes a flakhelfer (age 15) and at age 17, instead of serving in the Reichsarbeitdienst, he is sent to the barracks for military training. They are assigned to the Panzer Grenadier Regiment 39, III Battalion of the 18th SS PZGD Horst Wessel. They are thrown into battle in the Sudatenland where most of his classmates are killed and he is injured by a grenade.

 

I am reading Three German Invasions of France – The Summer Campaigns of 1870, 1914 and 1940 by Douglas Fermer (Pen & Sword, ISBN: 978-1-781593-54-7). I am just finishing up Part 1 which is about the 1870 campaign. I am finding it fascinating reading.

 

Movie making publicity literature from a time long gone.

Good on the charity shops!

Kind regards, I am Spartacus, always,

Jim.

 

Have delved into the French attack into the Ardennes in August 1914 (a precursor of the 1940 Arras counterattack?):



Simon J. House produced a balanced analysis of this operation, which involved two French Armies (Ruffey's 3rd Army and De Langle de Cary's 4th Army), moving north across the Semois River into the lower Ardennes, between Longwy and Sedan, on August 20, 1914. The French intended to strike at the 'soft' underbelly of the German right wing, the Schwenkungsflügel of the Schlieffen Plan, and cut if off. They clashed with the German 4th (Duke Albrecht of Württemberg) and 5th Armies (Crownprince Wilhelm), moving west resp. southwest to south through the Ardennes. Due to faulty intelligence and poor reconnaissance, both sides were unaware of each other. The operation developed into a mutual confused collision of French and German invasion forces in the lower Ardennes forests on 22 August, 1914. The loss of life was appalling. August 22nd would become the most bloodiest day in French Military History with losses up to 27.000 men. To top it all the French missed two opportunities, due to ill-coordinated and hesitant performance of their military leaders, to split in two (battle of Neufchateau) or outflank (battle at the villages of Anloy - Maissin) the Duke of Württenberg's 4th Army. House puts an end to the myth of the 'Attaque à outrance' and that of a well-prepared German opponent who awaited the French in well-prepared positions and led them into an ambush.

House's work, a disertation, is available in pdf on the internet: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/12690581/Studentthesis-Simon_House_2012.pdf

Another nice one is Jeane-Claud Delhez's book. Giving a succint history of the encounter battles, a number of 15 in total, in the lower Ardennes in August 1914:



The French military historian A. Grasset produced a series of excellent tactical monographs on the operations, entitled La Guerre en Action (Ethe, Virton, Neufchateau and Rossignol-St Vincent):



Grasset's publications are available on Gallica, see: p1 - Votre recherche - Au volume / fascicule Liste de résultats Tout Ethe : 2 résultats - Gallica

 

Tim Heath's Women of the Third Reich. Like children soldiers, it's a tangential subject matter.

 

That Guns Of Naverone is awesome

 

For you wtid45.

On Rhodes, and the making of: "A German wartime fuel base, consisting of a vast tiled chamber excavated and concealed in one of the island's largest cliffs, became the entrance to the gun cave."















And that's only the half of it!

Kind regards, always,

Jim.

 

I'm reading David Reynolds Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders who Shaped Him which discusses Churchill's relationships with and opinions of his 'great contemporaries' including his father, Lloyd George, Neville Chamberlain, Hitler and Mussolini, Roosevelt, Stalin, Charles de Gaulle, Gandhi, Atlee and Clementine. I've previously plodded through several volumes of the official biography and, more enjoyably, the WW2 volumes of the Churchill documents but, nonetheless, have been impressed so far by this "new" look at Churchill.

One discussion in the Chamberlain chapter that caught my eye was Reynolds' analysis of Churchill's campaign for an increase in size and speed of British rearmament in the 1930's. He points out:

"p.105
[…]
Today, Churchill is renowned for his prophetic speeches in the 1930s about the imperative need for British rearmament. Yet it’s important to be clear about what kind of rearmament Churchill wanted. He focused above all on the need to strengthen the Royal Air Force, rather than the Navy or the Army. And the reason was clear. Back in 1914, he told MPs in February 1934, the Navy had been ‘the “sure shield” of Britain’, but now the ‘cursed, hellish invention and development of war from the air has revolutionised our position’. He went so far as to say, ‘We are not the same kind of country we used to be when we were an island, only 20 years ago’. [Note 14: HC Debs, 285:1193, 7 Feb. 1934]"

and:

"p.107
Churchill’s rearmament campaign, as the historian Donald Cameron Watt observed, ‘never focused on the issues that might have made an impact on German military opinion – military arms production, conscription, a Continental commitment’. [Note 21: Donald Cameron Watt, ‘Churchill and Appeasement’, in Blake and Louis, eds, Churchill p. 204.]"

"p.108
[…] In short, Winston’s 1930s rearmament campaign played a part in winning the Battle of Britain, but it did little or nothing to prevent the disaster of the Battle of France."

Thinking back, I don't recall ever reading Churchill commenting about a need to strengthen the RN or the army in the 1930's. I know about the "fear of the bomber" and all that, it does seem strange, however, that as an ex-army officer and former First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill doesn't seem to have tried to influence the government's rearmament policy more broadly than just his "air-focus".

It is certainly a thought-provoking re-appraisal of a very familiar story and who can ask for more than that!!

Regards

Tom