Shadow Divers

Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson (2004) provides a thrilling account of the effort of numerous deep sea divers to solve a mystery about a recently discovered German WWII submarine off the coast of New Jersey. While the book discusses the dangers, competition, and excitement involved in deep sea diving, the real focus is on researching facts about German submarines and their orders, both of which allowed the divers to determine which submarine they discovered. The story provides excellent insight into the last mission of the submarine as well as the crew and overall challenge and dangers of being a member of a sub crew during the last years of WWII.

John Chatterton and Richie Kohler were the two lead divers and researchers who finally determined the U-boat's true identity. They first found the sub in 1991 in 230 feet of water sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey (roughly the Breille area). Since I live not too far from that area, I was particularly interested in the story about their effort to identify the U-boat. Diving at that dangerous depth required only elite divers to participate in the effort, and a few lost their lives in the hunt to find the sub's identity.

The U-boat was a real mystery with no historian nor government official able to provide an answer or even a logical conclusion. No German submarines were ever reported sunk within 150 miles of this location, and German records contain no accounts of U-boats being lost in New Jersey waters. Kohler said it all: "I gotta say, this is a mystery like you read in a book. A German U-boat comes to our doorstep in New Jersey. It explodes and sinks with maybe sixty guys onboard, and no one--no government or navy or professor or historian--has a clue that it's even here." (p. 185)

Chatterton and Kohler were, in reality, WWII archaeologists, investigating an artifact and trying to determine its existence. They consulted shipwreck chronicles, U-boat histories, WWII naval records, the National Archives, visited a captured U-boat on display in Chicago, and went to Germany to interview experts and veterans. Identifying the U-boat was not the main goal, but providing closure for the drowned sailors and possibly their ancestors was most important. Additionally, the finding of the sunken sub raised the question of how it sank. There were records of encounters with subs off New Jersey and possibly one of those led to the sinking of the sub.

My rating: Excellent (*****). A well-written book. Just fascinating with suspense and intrigue.

Some interesting facts provided by the author include:

• Between 1939 and 1945, Germany assembled a force of 1,176 U-boats. 757 were either sunk, captured, or damaged beyond repair in home ports or bases. That left 859 U-boats that left base for the frontline. 648 of those were sunk or captured while operating at sea, leaving a loss rate of more than 75 percent. (pp. 54-55) "In October 1940, at the peak of what German submariners called the 'Happy Time," U-boats sank sixty-six ships while losing only one of their own. ... Five months later, just a few U-boats had sunk nearly six hundred ships in American waters at a cost of just six of their own, the worst defeat ever suffered by the U.S. Navy." (p. 235) "By the war's end, more than thirty thousand U-boat men out of a force of about fifty-five thousand had been killed--a death rate of almost 55 percent. No branch of a modern nation's armed forces had ever sustained such casualties and kept fighting." (p. 234)
• A U-boat veteran suggested they "Search the boots. If you can find boots on the wreck, look inside them. ... they all wrote their names inside their boots so no one else would wear them. They hated when other guys wore their boots. And they put their watches and jewelry in their boots, too, and some of that stuff also had their names." (pp. 142-143)
• "According to Chatterton's research, torpedo-tube hatches--the circular doors that swung closed after a torpedo had been loaded into its firing chamber--contained on their faces a tag bearing the U-boat's number. ...With any luck, the tags would reveal the wreck's identity." (p. 198) The tags were supposed to be made of resilient brass, but an elderly U-boat veteran in South Carolina told them that brass had become scarce and tags had been made of leftover materials that could not survive long in the marine environment. (p. 207)
• "U-boat men splashed cologne on themselves to battle the body odor inevitable on the hundred-day patrols in broiling boats in which showers were unavailable." (p. 167)
• A man who was based out of Lakehurst, NJ, claimed to have sunk a U-boat with a depth charge from a blimp in 1942. Blimps had been a formidable force in keeping U-boats submerged and in escorting ships along the eastern seaboard. At one point, during WWII, more than fifteen hundred pilots had manned blimps carrying sophisticated antisubmarine technology. A case of a blimp fighting with surfaced U-boat existed, with the blimp shot out of the air and the sub being damaged. (p. 150)
• The Civil Air Patrol (CAP) claimed it sank two U-boats but never received credit for them. The CAP were a group of civilian pilots organized in 1941 by NYC Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to fly small privately owned airplanes to help defend coastal shipping. They hunted U-boats with a pair of minibombs jur-rigged under the plane's wings. Over the course of the war, the CAP had detected more than 150 subs and had dropped depth charges on several of them. The CAP believed the US Navy did not want to credit civilians with sinking any U-boats so they never received credit. The Navy believed it would have terrified the public to think that average civilians were needed to fight the U-boats and that the U-boats were coming so close to our shores. (pp. 151-152)
• "As the divers studied further, they recognized that the current assessment by German naval historian Axel Niestle--that U-879 had been sunk off Cape Hatteras--was correct. But the lesson was stark and by now familiar: written history was fallible. Sloppy and erroneous assessments had been rushed into the official record, only to be presumed accurate by historians, who then published elegant reference works echoing the mistakes. ... Along the way, each marveled at how easy it was to get an incomplete picture of the world if one relied solely on experts, and how important it would be to further rely on oneself." (p. 229)
• "Time and again during their research, they had been astonished to discover that historians had been mistaken, books fallible, experts wrong." (p. 287)
• "Scientists joined the war effort from U.S. laboratories and universities. One of their most potent weapons was radar. Even in total darkness or a violent storm, radar-equipped airplanes and ships could detect a surfaced submarine at great distances. ...they suddenly found themselves pounced upon by Allied aircraft that seemed to appear in the sky as if by magic." (p. 236)
• "An Allied ship that suspected there was submerged U-boat in its vicinity could use sonar--the broadcast of sound waves--to sniff it out. Once sonar echoed off the submarine's metallic form, a U-boat was tagged for death" (p. 236).

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Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor

Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert Stinnett (2000) answers the question of whether FDR pushed the Japanese into attacking the US and if FDR knew in advance of their plans to attack Pearl Harbor. Stinnett's research is extensive and he supports his conclusions with corroborating facts from different US sources as well as Japanese sources. His research spanned twenty years and access to previously classified documents through the Freedom of Information Act. The physical evidence is extensive enough to draw the conclusion that FDR intentionally implemented a step by step policy to incite the Japanese into war, and that FDR expected the attack since he was kept informed of their plans which were learned from Japanese communication transmissions deciphered from codes that were broken.

Roosevelt's intent and strategy began when he removed Admiral James Richardson from command of the Navy. Richardson was not afraid to stand up to Roosevelt and by doing so he ended his naval career. Roosevelt divided the naval command into a two ocean navy, creating an Atlantic and Pacific Fleet. He appointed Admiral Husband Kimmel to head the Pacific Fleet and he became the scapegoat who received the brunt of the blame for not being prepared for the Japanese surprise attack.

Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum, head of the Far East Office of Naval Intelligence, proposed an eight point plan to incite a Japanese attack on Hawaii in October of 1940. Roosevelt embraced the plan and enacted it, point by point. Roosevelt was in favor of joining Great Britain to fight the Nazis and also to prevent the aggressive expansion of Japan throughout Asia. However, he felt the only way for the American public to support joining another European War was if a clear act of war was enacted upon the US.

The act of war had to be severe enough to create a furor among Americans. Therefore, Roosevelt believed it would be necessary to sacrifice some lives by not being prepared for such an attack. He went to great steps to keep the commanders at Pearl Harbor in the dark so they could not repel the attack and that enough damage was done to the US fleet to create an undeniable response of the public for revenge. The US had broken the Japanese codes for communication, so every move made was known and provided directly to FDR. The attack on Pearl Harbor was not a surprise, just a well-kept secret to promote FDR's agenda to enter WWII to save the world from Germany and Japan. FDR promised an isolationist America in his campaign for his third term that he would keep the US out of the war. He didn't want to renege on that promise voluntarily, but he would be justified if an overt act of war was taken against the US.

There were 2,476 people killed in the Japanese attacks of December 11, 1941. 1,104 sailors were killed on the Arizona, accounting for almost 1/2 of the deaths. FDR needed a Japanese attack that would rally the country, and "Remember Pearl Harbor" would not have been a battle cry if the island were better defended. I think FDR did not expect a lucky bomber to sink the Arizona and cause so many deaths, but even with the Arizona, the number was not too severe especially when considering the number of people that would die in the coming years.

My rating: Very Good (****). A scholarly, thoroughly researched book by a WWII Navy veteran. The nature of the topic requires excruciating detail by the author. The reader must wade through the detail to capture the overall essence of the findings and conclusion.

The author provides about 400 pages of detailed facts which support his position. The following are some interesting points presented:

• "Roosevelt had carefully selected and placed naval officers in key fleet-command positions who would not obstruct his provocation policies." (p. 11)
• "By late July 1941, [Pacific fleet commander Admiral Kimmel] had been cut off completely from the communications intelligence generated in Washington." (p. 38)
• "... intercepts and the corresponding radio logs of Station H are powerful evidence of American foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Americans do not know these records exist--all were excluded from the many investigations that took place from 1941 to 1946 and the congressional probe of 1995." (p. 45)
• During President Roosevelt's fourth-term campaign in 1944, Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey learned of the [deceit] and saw in it the political means to defeat Roosevelt. He reasoned, if the White House was reading Japanese messages leading up to the attack, why were our forces in the Pacific caught so woefully unprepared? In the autumn of 1944, Dewey planned a series of stump speeches charging Roosevelt with advance knowledge of Japan's plan to attack Pearl Harbor. Dewey's proof was the intercepted Japanese messages. ... General George Marshall, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded Dewy to call off the code controversy. 'American lives are at peril,' Marshall aptly warned." (p. 77)
• There had been an intentional cover-up of the facts. "But the most astonishing disclosure on Hart's typewritten message is a handwritten margin note which directs that the dispatch be removed from Navy files and a dummy message substituted in its place." (p. 80)
• Roosevelt allowed Japanese spy Tadashi Morimura "to operate freely throughout 1941. ... Morimura was able to supply Admiral Yamamoto with highly accurate bombing charts of Pearl Harbor and other US Army and Navy targets on Oahu." (p. 85)
• "Attorney General Janet Reno has refused to declassify secret FBI files on the matter, citing FOIA rules that prohibit disclosing national defense secrets." (pp. 86-87)
• "Two dozen FBI and Navy documents dated before the attack link Morimura with espionage in Hawaii. According to these documents, senior American intelligence officials, including the President, knew of Morimura's espionage at the Honolulu consulate. His reports clearly pointed to Pearl Harbor as a prime target of Japanese military planners." (p. 95)
• "Neither [General] Short nor Kimmel received the cables [about the impending Japanese threat] until after the December 7 attack. According to the evidence, it was not a bureaucratic snafu that delayed the cables getting into American hands but Washington deceit--and the Hawaiian commanders, their sailors and troops, and the civilians of Honolulu were the victims." (p. 107)
• Information was kept from Kimmel and Short to "ensure an uncontested overt Japanese act of war." (p. 108)
• Lieutenant Commander Joseph Rochefort, who commanded the Navy's Mid-Pacific Radio Intelligence Network, stated in his Oral History "that the carnage at Pearl Harbor on December 7 was a cheap price to pay for the unification of America. His unity observations parallels that of his close friend Arthur McCollum and suggests that Rochefort was aware of or approved of McCollum's eight-action plan that called for America to create 'ado' and provoke Japan into committing an overt act of war against the United States." (p. 117)
• "'War with the United States may come with dramatic and dangerous suddenness' was the closing sentence of a lengthy report sent by [Ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew] to Secretary of State Cordell Hull the next day [November 6, 1941]. Grew cautioned that in the event diplomatic conversations failed, the United States should not underestimate Japan's obvious preparations for war. He felt that the risk and danger of war was very great and was increasing." (p. 143) "On November 17, he again predicted a sudden military or naval action by Japan's armed forces. Grew was specific. He was referring not to China but to other areas available to Japan for a surprise attack." (p. 144)
• "When White House military officials learned Kimmel's warships were in the area of what turned out to be the intended Japanese launch site, they issued directives that caused Kimmel to quickly order the Pacific Fleet out of the North Pacific and back to its anchorages in Pearl Harbor." (p. 145) "An open sea engagement between Japan's carrier force and the Pacific Fleet would have been far less effective at establishing American outrage. Japan could claim that its right to sail the open seas had been deliberately challenged by American warships if Kimmel attacked first." (p. 151)
• "On orders from Washington [on December 5th], Kimmel left his oldest vessels inside Pearl Harbor and sent twenty-one modern warships, including his two aircraft carriers, west toward Wake and Midway." (p. 152) "With the departure of the Lexington and Enterprise groups, the warships remaining in Pearl Harbor were mostly 27-year-old relics of World War I." (p. 154)
• "Beginning with the cancellation of Kimmel's exercise, and continuing through the final days before the attack, conclusive cryptographic evidence indicates that FDR shared McCollum's intentions and left the Pacific Fleet in harm's way." (p. 155)
• Army Chief of Staff George Marshall said on November 15 in a secret briefing to the press "The United States is on the brink of war with the Japanese. ...We know what they know and they don't know we know it." He predicted war would break out the first ten days of December. Yet Marshall did not communicate that message to General Short or Admiral Kimmel. (pp. 157-158)
• "Overwhelming evidence proves that Yamamoto, as well as the commanders of the Task Force warships, broke radio silence and that their ships were located by American communication intelligence units." (p. 162)
• "In the two weeks prior to the attack, Roosevelt's access to Japanese naval intercepts is documented by a series of radio intelligence bulletins, called monographs, that were prepared by McCollum." (p. 167)
• Kimmel followed orders which "handcuffed the Pacific Fleet. ... But because he followed these orders Kimmel would later take the blame for Pearl Harbor." (p. 173)
• "General Short placed full trust in his 'old friend of forty years,' General Marshall. Admiral Kimmel did the same. Kimmel had been friends with his boss, Admiral Harold Stark, since their Naval Academy days. But after the successful Japanese raid on December 7, Marshall would go on to be lauded for his direction of World War II in his role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kimmel and Short would be fired." (p. 176)
• Secretary of War Henry Stimson recorded in his diary: "In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people, it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this, so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors." (p. 179)
• "By December 4, a paper trail of Japanese intercepts had found its way to the White House. Japan's diplomatic messages, Japanese navy communications, and RDF bearings locating Japanese warships heading toward American territory in the Western, North, and Central Pacific were all in the pipeline and available to Roosevelt." (p. 182)
• General MacArthur, in the Philippines, received copies of the intelligence reports that showed the radio activity of the advancing Japanese fleet. (p. 185)
• "After November 26, the reports detailing the Japanese military advance on Hawaii were excised from the Presidential monographs." (p. 188)
• John Toland's book Infamy, published in 1982, quoted Lieutenant Robert Ogg's statement that radio direction finder bearings placed Japanese warships north of Hawaii from November 30 to December 4. "Ogg's statements were challenged by prominent historians, who cited Japanese claims that the Pearl Harbor warships were on radio silence and could not possibly have been intercepted by Americans. ...But he assured skeptics that confirmation could be found in the records of the Navy's intercept station at Dutch Harbor, Alaska. ...But no one looked." However, research by the author found "compelling evidence for Ogg's assertions. ...This vital information obtained by the five units was logged in official Navy reports and forwarded to Washington, but was withheld from Admiral Kimmel and the Pacific Fleet." (pp. 194-195)

  I find it remarkable that the "prominent historians" had the nerve to condemn Ogg for presenting a view different that what they believed. These historians did not even attempt to find factual evidence to either disprove or confirm Ogg's claim. Yet they had the audacity to claim he was not telling the truth. Obviously, the historians were not as prominent as they believed they are. This is an example of academics who never go beyond searching through a bunch of books and simply repeat written items and take them for truth. When a participant who was there offers a different story, he is attacked without proper research being conducted.

• "In his oral history, Joseph Rochefort said that none of his officers or operators were fooled by Japanese radio deception: 'It is awfully difficult to deceive a trained counter-communications intelligence organization, awfully difficult." (p. 202)

• "Radio was the only means to return the First Air Fleet to its tight formation" which was driven off course by the typhoon-force winds, scattering tankers and warships. (p. 205) "The information that Kimmel needed was available--so available, in fact, that it often appears as though the Japanese had made few efforts to conceal it. As we now know, Lieutenant Commanders Joseph Rochefort and Edwin Layton could have provided that indication, but they did not do so. Their failure allowed Japan's First Air Fleet to make its surprise attack and then to escape to Japan." (p. 203)

• There appeared to be a deliberate cover up after the war. "We examined the Fourteenth Naval District Communication Summaries and found that those summaries had indeed been cut off from the bottom of the pages. We have no idea why this was done, but it appears that the documents were entered into evidence during 1945 and 46 in this manner." "So began the myth of the radio silence of the Japanese carrier force. It is a myth that has endured for over fifty years and that continues to baffle historians." (p. 208)
• General Marshall was involved in a cover up about his involvement in the deceit. "... a later attempt to distance Pearl Harbor investigators from Marshall and the 1:00 P.M. deadline and involves coercion of a US Army colonel to alter his testimony. It even reaches to post-surrender Germany in 1945 when that colonel, Rufus Bratton, was flagged down on the Berlin Autobahn and persuaded to 'modify' evidence against Marshall." (p. 228)
• Marshall successfully relayed the alert to MacArthur in Manila, but failed to do so to General Short in Hawaii. (p. 235)
• "The key evidence of what really happened began to be concealed as early as December 11, 1941, only four days after the attack. The first step in the clean-up came from Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, the Navy's Director of Communications. He instituted the fifty-four-year censorship policy that consigned the pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese military and diplomatic intercepts and the relevant directives to Navy vaults. 'Destroy all notes or anything in writing,' Noyes told a group of his subordinates on December 11." (p. 255)

• "As heinous as it seems to families and veterans of World War II, of which the author is one, the Pearl Harbor attack was, from the White House perspective, something that had to be endured in order to stop a greater evil" (p. 259)

• "The real shame is on the stewards of government who have kept the truth under lock for fifty years." (p. 259)

• "After years of denial, the truth is clear: we knew." (p. 263)

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Behind Hitler's Lines: The True Story of the Only Soldier to Fight for Both America and the Soviet Union in World War II

Behind Hitler's Lines: The True Story of the Only Soldier to Fight for Both America and the Soviet Union in World War II by Thomas H. Taylor (2002) is about the wartime experience of paratrooper Joseph Beyrle of the 101st. Beyrle parachuted into Normandy twice before the invasion, carrying gold for the French Resistance. He parachuted again on D-Day, but eventually was captured. He was reported killed in action since the Germans stole his dog tags and placed them on a dead soldier's body. He spent time in a POW camp, escaping twice only to be recaptured. The brutal treatment he received by the Germans was quite different than the Geneva Conventions specified. Eventually he escaped again and headed toward the advancing Russian troops. Upon reaching the Russians, he insisted on joining a Russian tank brigade. He was injured during a Luftwaffe attack during the advance toward Berlin and had to return to Russia to make his way to the US embassy in Moscow where he was suspected of being a Nazi assassin. Joe Beyrle was "the only vet on either side to have fought against the Germans on both the Western and Eastern Fronts" (p. 281).

Parallel to Beyrle's story, the author follows the action of the 101st throughout the war. This book is a good companion to Band of Brothers since both cover much of the same campaign. The author is a Viet Nam veteran and former member of the 101st. His father was General Maxwell Taylor, commanding officer of the 101st during World War II. Therefore, some of his report of the story may be biased from the perspective of hearing about the war from a general.

My Rating: Very Good (****). A fascinating story. The book was well-written and quite readable.

Some interesting items stated in the book include:

• A member of the French resistance said to Joe: "We are called the resistance, but our countrymen's resistance is weakening. There has been too much time for them to adjust to life under the Germans. Too many of us are adjusting to it." (p. 51) And that "Churchill sacrificed the French-speaking Canadians in a cold-blooded experiment [at Dieppe]" (p. 52).
• While getting ready for D-Day, "Unauthorized weapons proliferated because officers were taking along plenty of extra firepower themselves." (p. 66) These included everything from German burp guns, sawed-off shot guns, six-shooters, and .45's.
• "The [air sickness] pills were so strong that a medical investigation revealed some troopers were half asleep when shot by the Germans." (p. 73)
• "The Gestapo's extensive experience with torture as a means of extracting worthwhile information had proven that insufferable pain was most often counterproductive; that is, that the victim would say anything for relief, whether truth or lies, and the two were nearly impossible to distinguish even by subsequent interrogation." (p. 119)
• The Germans paraded the POWs through the streets of Paris. "French collaborators took up a chorus of hisses and jeers, then began to throw garbage at POWs shuffling by, some of whom were so hungry they caught and ate it. ... He had crossed the ocean to rid France of [the Germans], but there were the French spitting on him." (p. 140-141)
• During Operation Market-Garden, the Dutch impressed the 101st. As soon as they landed, "the Dutch underground surfaced like dragon's teeth." (p. 185) The Dutch steered the 101st around German strong points, and pointed out the number of Germans hidden at each of their positions. "Aided immeasurably by the Dutch, within fifteen minutes the Currahees destroyed both 88s, killed thirteen Germans, [and] captured forty-one" (p. 186). When mortars were falling near a squad, "Suddenly men with orange armbands tackled [them] and covered them with their bodies." Their explanation was that the 101st was fighting the Germans, and protecting them was the best way to help get rid of the Germans. (p. 187) "The Luftwaffe had slipped through, to kill thousands of civilians in a raid of terror and retaliation for Dutch joy." (p. 189)

  The cooperation of the Dutch underground and the 101st willingness to use them, was a stark difference than the British 1st Airborne that landed further inland to take Arnhem Bridge. They refused the Dutch help, and were severely beaten as a result. With incorrect radio frequencies, they could not communicate, however, the Dutch underground had no problem communicating through the civilian telephone system that was still working. That alone, besides the intelligence regarding German troops, would have made the First Airborne and the British tanks trying to reach them more successful.

• After being released the former 101st POWs were being "served chow in April 1945 at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, by German POWs, some of whom had SS tattoos. The result was an international melee in which several Germans were killed with steak knives and cafeteria trays." Apparently, some soldiers went back for seconds and the Germans refused to serve them, starting the confrontation. (p. 190-13 and p. 340)
• "If ten thousand Russians starved to death at Stalag III-C, it wasn't because there was nothing to eat but because the Krauts wouldn't feed them." (p. 202)
• "I read that right after the war the U.S. government asked Hollywood to reconstruct the Germans. Please don't make any more movies about nasty Nazis; don't always make the Germans the villains. We need American public opinion to support the new Germany as an ally against the USSR." (p. 202)
• "Colonel Harper of the 327th in his after-action report: 'All we commanders at Bastogne could do was put our men on what we considered the critical ground. When that was done the battle was delivered into their hands. Whether we were to win, even survive, was then up to the individual soldier. ... He stayed, and froze, where he was put and often died rather than give an inch." (p. 241)
• After the breakthrough to Bastogne by Patton, "General Taylor received the situation report from McAuliffe. 'Sir, we're ready to attack' was the first sentence." Eisenhower ordered an attack and Patton was eager for it, but the only division near was the 101st which was at less that 50% strength and those soldiers were completely worn from the siege. They "needed relief and rest. What they got instead was fighting so vicious and unremitting that they would look back on the siege as their easier days in the Bulge." (p. 246).

  This was poor use of 101st. An immediate attack accomplished little since the snow was so deep and without proper winter equipment (such as snow shoes and winter clothing), their advance was limited. Also, the good weather now allowed resupply and the troops could have fully been reequipped. They even could have been replaced by fresh troops. Better air support could have been coordinated and a later attack would have been more successful. Yet, because McAuliffe and Taylor wanted to look good with Eisenhower (who was safe in the rear and didn't understand what troops went through in extended combat), they further pushed the 101st.

• "As secrets of World War II have come out, one was that Stalin told the Allies that if they wanted their own POWs back, they'd have to turn over Vlasov's army (Russians who volunteered to fight on the Western front rather than starve in POW camps), which had surrendered in the west. Eisenhower acquiesced in what must have been his most terrible choice." (p. 302) Eisenhower showed a lack of courage to send these POWs to their death. Even if it took months, Eisenhower should not have relented although he did have good reason. "No more than one in ten POWs of the Russians ever got back to Germany, and that wasn't until the 1950s." (p. 327) However, it should be noted the Russian hatred of the Germans was much different than their relationship with their Allies. Possibly, the failure of the US to call Stalin's bluff on the return of the US POWs was ingrained in Stalin's head and became part of his bold strategy in Cold War when opposing the US by aiding Communists in Korea, Cuba, and Viet Nam.

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A Short History of World War II

A Short History of World War II by James Stokesbury (2001) provides, as its title suggests, a succinct history of World War II. It begins with the prologue to the war, and then covers the war in three subsequent sections: the expansion, the allied organization and confrontation, and the road to victory.

My Rating: Good (***). The book is well-suited as a text in a history class, or a simple refresher of World War II. It provides a good overview, and as the title states, a short history. The book reads well and the author does a good job of narrowing volumes of World War II history into one book that can be read in a reasonable time frame.

Interesting strategies or themes raised by the author include:

Aggressively conducting one's duties will raise conflict if counter positions are not exercised.

• "For practical purposes, however, World War I and II can be considered part of one large struggle--the struggle of united Germany to claim its place as the dominant power on the European continent" (p. 15).
• "France was well on the way to becoming a second-class power. The official view was that as long as Germany could be kept down, France would retain her primacy. The French therefore became the most obstinate supporters of the status quo as enacted a Versailles." (p. 22)
• "... the French and British taxpayer chose to support governments whose policies led to military weakness rather than strength. Of course, it was not the fault of the civilian politicians if the money they did allocate to their military advisers and experts was misspent, as it generally was." (p. 32)
• "Hitler had assessed Great Britain and France as weak; they were not disposed to challenge his reassertion of German power. Mussolini followed suit." (p. 47)
• There was little difference between the duties and responsibilities of Hitler and Chamberlain (Britain) and Daladier (France). Hitler's over assertion of Germany's status combined with their under assertion of France and Britain's caused the war (see The Origins of the Second World War by A. Taylor). (p. 54)
• In response to Germany's 1939 invasion of allied Poland, "... why did Britain and France not strike quickly and hard? ... They could, and should, have easily defeated Germany, and the Second World War would never have gotten off the ground. ... Facing the German frontier [the French] had eighty-five divisions. ... Against them the Germans had eight weak regular divisions. ... The French had 3,200 tanks; the Germans had none... The French and British together had 1,700 aircraft, the Germans had almost none." (pp. 75-76)

Strong leadership will beat weak leadership, even with fewer resources.

• "[MacArthur] was reluctant to act when the news of Pearl Harbor came in. His air force people urged an immediate attack on Japanese bases on Formosa, well within range" (p. 208).
• "It was not so much that the Americans were caught napping as that they were psychologically unprepared for what was happening." (p. 209)
• "The Japanese general Homma was actually inferior in numbers to the Americans and Filipinos" (p. 210)
• "[MacArthur] left on March 12, he and his family and staff going south on PT-boats, then flying to Australia. Many of the troops, though they accepted the logic of it all, felt bitterly betrayed, and MacArthur's famous 'I shall return' had a hollow ring to those who were not allowed to leave." (p. 211)

Interesting facts or positions raised by the author include:

• The French felt that Britain failed to support them in stopping the German invasion of France and that "Britain was willing to fight to the last Frenchman." (p. 99).
• Churchill was afraid the French navy would fall into German hands. The British "sank the battleship Bretagne and the new battle cruiser Kunkerque and several destroyers. They killed 1,300 French sailors and wounded another 350." (p. 104)
• "When the first German Army units entered the Ukraine, they were greeted as liberators by the local inhabitants. ...[They] were treated to girls throwing flowers and men breaking out the wine bottles for them. ...Within weeks in the rear areas, the Jew-hunters and the political squads were at work, rounding up, exterminating, robbing, raping, and killing. Soon there were no more pretty girls by the side of the road throwing flowers; there were only bitter men throwing Molotov cocktails. The Master Race found that even it could not afford gratuitously to alienate several millions of people. ...Germany not only bled to death in Russia, she also made enemies of millions who might have bled for her." (pp. 156-157)
• "De Gaulle was the prickliest of allies, Roosevelt thoroughly disliked and distrusted him and did his best to cut him off" (p. 183)
• "Roosevelt therefore sprung [the idea of unconditional surrender] on a press conference, and the somewhat surprised Churcill quickly backed it." (p. 185) Some say this lengthened the war since it encouraged the Germans to fight to the bitter end. Also conditions were provided for Japan, or else they refused to surrender.
• The British mounted a major raid on the port of Dieppe in August of 1942 with a force of 7,000 men which included 5,000 Canadians. It was a disaster with only 2,000 of the 5,000 Canadians escaping back to Britain. "It was a costly way to prove the Allies could not invade Europe in the immediate future, and the Canadians, who had been asking for action for two years, still have bitter memories of the way they got it." (p. 224)
• "There is an old proverb that Russia has two unbeatable commanders: Generals January and February." (p. 232)
• "Fighters had not been able to provide cover for the bombers all the way to the target. Ironically, the answer had existed long before the problem. The American Curtiss F11C-2, a short-lived fighter with the U.S. Navy in the mid-thirties, and the German Heinkel He51, a biplane fighter that served in the Spanish Civil War, had both been fitted with auxiliary gas tanks slung under the belly." (pp. 283-284)
• "Hitler once remarked disgustedly, 'The Italians never lose a war; no matter what happens, they always end up on the winning side." (p. 292)
• "It was Rommel who made the now famous remark that the first day of the invasion would be 'the longest day,' and he believed that if the battle were not fought and won in the first day, it would not be won at all." (p. 313)
• "Many of the plotters [to kill Hitler] ended up hanging from meat hooks by wire nooses, strangling while movie cameras recorded their death agonies for the delectation of Hitler and his chosen circle." (p. 320)
• General Bradley failed to close the "Falaise gap" which would have trapped the retreating German army in France. He was afraid of friendly fire with the Canadians coming from the north, and thought the gap was closing on its own. (p. 322)
• "As long as they could, the Allies had stalled off de Gaulle's return to France, but when he finally got over the Channel, he immediately announced the establishment of a legal government, and began acting as if he were running the country." (p. 322)
• "[The Canadians] were handed the unhappy task of clearing the Channel ports as the Allies pushed north, a job that cost them such high casualties as to cause a crisis at home in Canada over the issue of conscription for overseas service." (p. 324)
• "Peleliu: it cost the highest casualty rate--nearly 40 percent--of any amphibious assault in American history." (p. 341)
• "For the first two years of the war the Americans were plagued by faulty torpedoes that more often than not failed to detonate when they hit a target. ...It was late in 1943 before the faults were finally remedied" (p. 365).
• "One of the great ironies of the American war effort was the way it was borne disproportionately by a relatively few people. ... only a limited number of people saw combat. Those who did saw probably far too much of it. ...For the vast majority of Americans it was a good war... People were more mobile and more prosperous than ever before." (p. 380)

Some inconsistencies presented by the author include:

• The author contradicts himself regarding the Italian invasion of Greece. First, he states the British had to send troops to bail out the Greeks and that this would cost the British and eventually the United States, many months of fighting and many hard knocks (p. 141). Then he states "The Greeks fought; moreover, they won." He added "Through the winter of 1940-1941, the Greeks slowly pushed the Italians back through the mountains of the Greco-Albanian Frontier."

  The British decided to send in their troops to guard a possible German invasion. The Greeks did not want the British troops on their soil since they felt that would incite Hitler to attack. They were right. The Germans sent their armour into Greece and beat the British in every engagement. The British soon abandoned their Ally, Greece, and were evacuated by the Royal Navy. This is where they suffered their losses, when their own Navy could not protect the troop ships from attacks by the Luftwaffe. "...about 12,000 men and substantial amounts of equipment, almost all the casualties coming during the evacuation when ships were sunk and machine-gunned unremittingly by the Luftwaffe." (p. 144) This is further evidence that the British did not put up much resistance against the Germans in Greece, or their casualties would have been on land in the front lines, not when escaping on their Navy's ships. The author does add "In the end, Greece was not materially helped, and there are those who claim she would have been better off-or at least no worse off-without the British intervention." (p. 145)

• The author again makes an error on the impact of the German invasion of Greece. He states it was not a factor in delaying the German attack of Russia (p. 146). This is a totally illogical argument since it is a fact that the Greek campaign cost the German's time from other campaigns and it also diverted their armour and troops. Anyone with a basic understanding of project management, can understand that the Greek invasion was a predecessor of the invasion of Russia, and therefore in the critical path. It caused a day for day slip. The Russian front was so vast, the resources used in Greece was critical for being available to the start of war with Russia, and that is what caused the delay which made the German's fight into a brutal winter which would cause their defeat.
• The author states "The Americans knew something was going to happen. They had broken several of the Japanese codes" (p. 169) However, the author keeps with the standard surprise attack position regarding Pearl Harbor, and does not even suggest the conspiracy theory regarding FDR knowing in advance of the attack (because of the broken naval codes), but allowing it to occur to force the American public (who were most isolationists because of their experience in WWI) to fight the expansionist polices of the Japanese and Germans. It should be noted that FDR was also reelected to a third term by promising to keep the US out of the war.
• The author stated (also see the Leadership topic) that the troops understood and accepted the logic of MacArthur's running from the battle, but felt bitterly betrayed (p. 211). How do you feel betrayed, yet agree with someones action? That is impossible and illogical. The reason many US officers were admired is that they led by example (see Band of Brothers for an excellent example). MacArthur led by running from the battle. No wonder the troops were discouraged and quick to surrender even though they outnumbered the enemy. What is even more remarkable, is strength is from a defensive position. The attacker often needs four times the troops to overcome the enemy who is dug-in and well-positioned. The author fails to suggest the fallibility of MacArthur as a commander and counter the myth of his leadership based on the facts.
• The author states in the North Africa campaign, General Montgomery beat Rommel. "El Alamein was one of the great turning points of the war, fairly won and exploited to the full." (p. 223) This completely contradicts what the author previously states: "The British and Commonwealth troops, about 200,000 strong, outnumbered the Germans and Italians in men and tanks by two to one; they enjoyed complete air superiority." (p. 222) "Montgomery did have one startling advantage enjoyed by his predecessors: he had a copy of Rommel's operation order. The Germans were still unaware that the British code-breakers were reading their signals." (p. 221) Additionally, the author does not give much emphasis on Rommel's supply problems as a factor in his defeat when he was almost abandoned by the Germans without adequate supplies and reinforcements needed to win.

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