A powerful, synthetic recounting of Germany’s ill-managed siege during World War II, which marked the Eastern campaign’s turning point. The sometimes barbarous spring-summer blitzkrieg had driven deep into the treeless Russian steppe, but the campaign foundered in the street fighting of a Volga-side city, reduced to rubble by German bombing. Nazi advantages were thereby neutralized and the Soviets grimly hung on until winter set in. Ruthless use of humanity characterized the defense, which catalyzed on the belief that it could not retreat into Asia. Encirclement (kessel) preceded the destruction of the 6th Army as well as the start of Germany’s long retreat. The book divides time between geopolitical decision making and the chilling lot of the common soldier, unhealthful and cheap.
World War II
15. Morison, Strategy and Compromise (18 Nov 2007)
Limns the Allies’ key strategic decisions of World War II, dividing them geographically between the two major theaters and presenting them sequentially within each. Europe takes pride of place because America committed to defeating Hitler first. The author, an admiral turned Harvard professor, is frequently critical of the British predilection for nipping Europe’s edges (as well as its quibbles with American resources sent to the Pacific), but acknowledges Overlord would have been more difficult before 1944, once Torch was approved in 1942. Island hopping the way to Japan also was a synthetic solution (thus the title), but Morison speaks relatively little of the decision to use atomic weaponry. Admirable introduction, great Mill Valley library pickup.
9. Whiting, Bloody Aachen (28 May 2023)
Narrates the fall of Aachen in fall 1944, the first German city conquered by the Allies. Part of the Siegfried Line but otherwise lacking strategic importance – the border town of 165,000 was merely on the way to American objectives in the Ruhr – the ancient Carolingian capital nonetheless possessed cultural significance. Ample men and materiel were reallocated from the Eastern front. The defenders’ first commanding officer tried (and failed) to surrender the city; the second fought nearly to its destruction, having held out long enough for Germany to provision counterattack in the Ardennes – the famous Battle of the Bulge. Highly personified from general to private, less effectively mapped, the story moves briskly.
On Stalin’s evil genius
Sean McMeekin’s
- Stalin’s War
asserts the Soviet leader manipulated interwar Europe in his interests, in ways that have been obscured by the West’s focus on Hitler’s Germany. ‘At its core is the claim that Stalin saw an advantage in the renewal of global hostilities, so he helped facilitate them’, writes Yale’s Ian Johnson.
Stalin had his war — and won it…. A looming question throughout the book is the counterfactual. Was there an alternative to partnering with Stalin against Hitler? That question has rarely been raised in serious scholarship but merits the consideration McMeekin gives it. The historical evidence in Stalin’s War shows how badly senior statesmen, particularly in the U.S., misunderstood Stalin, the Soviet system, and the price of their alliance with the USSR.
In the contemporary era, there are three implications. First, the extent to which ‘reductio ab Hitlerum’ has ruled scholarship and indeed social understanding. Nazi Germany was not sui generis but a form of tyranny matched by Soviet Russia. Second, FDR’s foreign policy was equally as inept as economic policy (e.g., 1937’s double-dip recession). Third, progressives seem little better judges of telos than of merit. It is little wonder the academy is sinking.
14. Kagan, On the Origins of War (14 Aug 2019)
To identify elements that commonly cause global conflicts, studies the Peloponnesian and Punic wars, World Wars 1 and 2, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite the modern taste for social-science explanations such as irrational behavior or systemic competition (e.g., Kennedy’s belief miscalculation launched the Great War), Thucydides’ precept holds: wars commence from honor, fear, or interest. The historian of war ought to hold out hopes of statesmanship surmounting avoidable conflict: some wars are just and must be resolved, but many can be put off, sometimes through concession but more often by deterrence. There is a typology of treaties (e.g., victor’s peace, punishment without destruction, and mutual agreement that continuing costs surmount the gains) which are the starting point for defense of peace.
Peloponnesian War: The Spartans’ honor required defending its coalition and discouraging defections to Athens. Archidamus failed to stem his fractious allies, who were more like NATO than the common analogy of the Soviet bloc. Pericles sought to demonstrate Athens was a sated power, and through defensive strategy to show traditional Spartan warfare could not prevail, but lacked a credible offensive deterrent (such as encouraging slave rebellion).
World War 1: Germany undid Bismarck’s attempt to demonstrate its satisfaction through the belligerence of Kaiser Wilhelm and his cabinet. The pursuit of naval power and colonies was a point of honor (not interest) which threatened Britain’s traditional objectives to control the seas and the Low countries and well as to preserve a continental balance of power.
2d Punic War: Rome struck a poor peace, its Senate failing to ratify the first treaty and seeking a larger indemnity, both of which served to inflame Carthage. Additionally, Rome carelessly conceded vital interests, such as the security of Saguntum or defending the Ebro border.
World War 2: Versailles was not unduly harsh, but the Germans didn’t believe they’d lost, and the UK didn’t see itself as responsible for enforcement. Its economic power flagging, Britain was persuaded by traumatized, rationalist intellectuals to trust in the League of Nations. Well before Hitler’s rise, the Germans had shaken off occupation of the Rhineland, renegotiated reparations, and begun rearming (in cooperation with Soviet Russia). Subsequently, Chamberlain replaced moral disarmament with military unpreparedness as a reason for appeasement. France too, cowering behind the Maginot Line, lacked the will to defend Eastern Europe.
Cuban Missile Crisis: Geoffrey Blainey observes wars start when rivals can’t agree the allotment of power. Both sides agreed the US was stronger but Khrushchev perceived Kennedy wouldn’t act on it. The Bay of Pigs, disastrous Vienna summit, and erection of the Berlin Wall as well as Soviet premier’s skill at strategic deception and bluster shook the American president. In belatedly exposing the Soviet missile gap, Kennedy pushed his rival into a corner without intending to keep him there. Similarly, the warning against deployment was too late for prevention, too precise to explain away their discovery. Khrushchev underestimated the pressure on Kennedy to act, just as Chamberlain had been forced by opinion to confront Hitler. (The US cabinet saw Cuba as a domestic matter not a military problem, ruing that a less precise warning would have allowed the administration to eventually explain the missiles were no threat.) Kennedy contemplated trading missiles in Turkey for Cuba very early and volunteered the terms. Khrushchev accepted the concession, taking advantage of a weak player.