One of the pleasant things about New Orleans is that you can spend hours in used bookstores, shifting through volumes which reflect the mind set of the locals. I have found a number of gems over the years, and this last trip enabled me to find this excellent volume on RMA (revolutions in military affairs). I have to admit that I had never heard of the book (originally published in 2001 while the volume I found was from its seventh printing in 2008. The last printing was in 2015), but it is a find that I shall keep close. The contributors range from professors of history to the Director of Royal Artillery, British Army. This is short (less than two-hundred pages) but serious book.

According to their thesis, there have been five military revolutions in Western history:

1. The creation of the modern nation state which brought about the discipline of military power.
2. The French Revolution which “merged mass politics and warfare.”
3. The Industrial Revolution which made the nation states to pay, feed, cloth, and arm masses of manpower.
4. The First World War which merged numbers 2 and 3 while “set(ting) the pattern for twentieth-century war, and
5. The Cold War which was cold in the “decisive European and northeast Asian theaters.”

These five RMAs are more important than any momentary tactical advantage (such as the superior use by the Germans of tanks vs. the French use in May 1940). They are more important as they completely change how war is fought across all theaters involved.

Moving into the book, there are separate studies regarding the Western army in seventeenth-century France, the impact of the French Revolution with it dramatic introduction of the mass army, the U.S. Civil war, the Prusso-German RMA of 1840-1871, the Battlefleet revolution of 1885-1914 under the direction of First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher, and of course the First and Second World War.

One might be tempted to ask about the current war in Ukraine and the impact of drones on the battlefield. I believe the authors would not say that drones are a real RMA as they would fall into the category of say, the introduction of the tank in World War I. Yes, they do make an impact, but the initial monopoly by one side was quickly lost and, in many ways, it mirrors the technological battle that was fought during the Battle of the Atlantic.

The writing is decidedly not academic: each section is sharp and well argued with a minimum of excess verbiage. The writing is tight and the average armchair military historian could easily grasp the ideas put forth in each section.

A very interesting book that does not focus on the actions of the Indians who served in either the British or Free India movement of Subhas Chandra Bose, but rather on how the war impacted much of India as it was drafted into the struggle first against Germany, then against Japan.  It traces the initial reaction of both the Brits in India who managed for quite a while to maintain their colonial stature and the men from India who “volunteered” for service (some for historical reasons as they were from traditional “warrior” cultures while others enlisted for better food or to protect their families businesses from special war taxes).  As the war progressed and as more of India was mobilized for the effort and especially with the advance of Japanese forces into Burma, food shortages began to appear for a myriad of reasons and a huge migration began as individuals both on a voluntary and on an enforced basis were moved from potential invasion locations.

The book also has an excellent discussion on how the traditional leaders of Indian independence were marginalized after they were arrested and jailed by the British.  While the British thought such an action would calm India, the exact opposite occurred as the younger generation, not policed by the traditional leaders, began a campaign of strikes, marches and violence against the British.

I would have liked to have had move of the movement by Bose covered, but overall this is an excellent book for anyone unfamiliar with the subject and will provide a good basis for future reading.  A major fault lies in the lack of maps as for most people, reading about various Indian provinces and towns will be as confusing as reading about the same in the Ukraine.

Although in recent years, more histories of the battles on the Eastern Front during World War II have been published, it is the landings in Normandy that still hold most Western Europeans and Americans attention and interest. Indeed, even the name “Eastern Front” reflects the prejudice of Western historians, for most certainly that name was never used by either the Soviets or those Europeans who fought in that area of Europe and the then Soviet Union. The lack of general knowledge can be considered amazing as the German military suffered ninety percent of its casualties in that theater of operations. It was the Soviet military and more importantly, Stalin who was willing to accept the huge losses throughout the war to insure victory.

It can be difficult to appreciate the size of the battles in the east, but a comparison does show that no battles in western Europe after the Normandy invasion comes close to the size of the final battles in the east. The invasion of Normandy and the following ten weeks ended costing the Allies about 209,000 casualties vs 276,000 German. The Battle of the Bulge in forty-one days totaled for both sides almost 200,000 men killed, wounded or missing. Market Garden was a small business with losses totaling about 25,000 (to put it in perspective, during the battle for Stalingrad, the Soviets executed about 12,000 of their own men for desertion, cowardice, etc.)  The battles covered in this book in the period of January-May 1945 resulted in a million Germans and one and a half million Soviet losses. Two and a half million men killed, wounded or missing. Many of those men were killed when their fuel and ammunition ran out and they stood practically disarmed, often little more than a militarized mob, spent after six years of battle.

In action after action, German troops fought and delayed the Soviets in desperate battles against huge odds. Often outnumbered up to ten to one, the Germans delayed their enemy so civilians could try to reach the zones the American or British occupied. Civilians fled in freezing weather and had to camp in bare fields while being attacked by Soviet war planes. The book covers dozens of actions where officers and men sacrificed themselves in often vain attempts to save their compatriots. The Soviets, urged on by Stalin and their officers, raped, burned, and crucified tens of thousands of German civilians.

Unfortunately, the average reader will not think of the Soviet civilians who fled from the Germans in 1941 and after. Nor will they fully understand the terror of living under German occupation when hundreds of thousands were rounded up for slave labor or mass executions. It was likely that a huge proportion of the Soviet soldiers showing no mercy to the fleeing Germans had family members who had lived and suffered under the German occupation and had lost members of their families. Was the revenge meted out to the Germans fair, or justified? Unfortunately, because of the how the Soviet system worked, few common Soviet soldiers left written records as was the case with the Germans.

In the end, the battles came down to desperate Germans and Soviets, driven on by a sense of duty, fear of capture, the hunt for glory from their officers and tactics which was the only option at a time when everyone wanted the war to stop.  Battles create mountains of dead, but when at the very end, one side is out of ammunition and has no opportunity to escape, and the killing continues at an industrial rate, there is nothing but murder.

It is easy to understand how, after the war, many Germans viewed themselves as victims. They were pounded from the air, night after night. Their armies were torn apart and slaughtered at a rate which towered about the four terrible years of the First World War. Their cities were destroyed, hundreds of thousands of their women raped and hundreds of thousands of their soldiers were simply wiped off the face of the Earth. Yet, their terrible experiences were the result of one simple fact; they started the war, their intended victims finished it.

At the end of the Second World War, German Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring whose troops fought both British and American troops in Italy and Western Europe, was asked “What was the best American division faced by troops under your command on either the Italian or Western Fronts?”. Without hesitation he said, “The Marne men.”

Who were the “Marne men?”  They were the men of the U.S. Army’s 3^rd Division. They won more medals than any other infantry division in Europe and within its ranks were at least one of every U.S. medal, including the Medal of Honor; some medals were won by those two men as many as three times. Their names were Audie Murphy Maurice Britt. Both men received major wounds, and Murphy would have the more public but also more troubled private lives. Here is a list of medals won by Murphy: * Medal of Honor *2- Silver Stars * 3-Bronze Stars * Distinguished Service Cross *3-Purple Hearts. In total, the “Marne” division won more than one-fourth of all Medals of Honor won by the ground forces, an amazing accomplishment. The winning of medals helped determine when the serviceman was able to go home and at the end of the war, who could be discharged and in what order.

The book follows a number of individuals from the divisions landing in French North Africa, through the battles in Sicily and Italy, including Anzio plus the landing in the south of France through the final battles in the Colmar pocket. While Army psychologists thought that the “breaking point” of an infantryman was two-hundred days of continual combat, many of the men of the division were in continuous battles for over four-hundred days, and the survival rates was about seven percent.

Kershaw continues his excellent writing in that while he describes the overall strategic scope of the battles, focuses on the lives of the men at the most basic level. He has obviously taken great care in doing his research, in his interviews and writing to bring the men, both high and low to life. Their stories and exploits put modern day movies and stories to shame, for these were real individuals taking huge risks in order to lead their men and insure that as many of them would return home at wars end. It is a shame that young boys of today watch silly comic book heroes in movies instead of learning about real bravery as exhibited by men of their great grandfathers and grandfathers’ generations. It is hard to say anything positive about war, but to see the bravery and selflessness of the men in this book makes one realize the amazing ability of ordinary men to do extraordinary deeds.

Classic Conflicts Series, Christophere Chant Consultant Editor

I first read this book in 1997 and during this re-read, I found that it has easily stood the test of time. By this I mean that reading this one book will give the reader a solid basis in most of the key areas key to an understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the German military under Hitler, as well as a basic understanding of the various military fronts, key German military personalities and problems faced by that military.  Or to put it another way, reading this book will save the reader the time and expense of going through other books published this 1997 which deal with the same areas but add nothing new.

The book itself is divided into several parts which focus on specific areas. For example, Part I entitled, “Hitler’s War Machine” deals with Germany in the thirties, the general economy, science, and technology, etc. Part II deals with Hitler’s generals and their battles in each of the key fronts. Various generals are highlighted with a good analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. The last part deals with the Luftwaffe and its challenges from fighting on numerous fronts and the impact of the strategic bombing campaign. Surprisingly, the Kriegsmarine receives short shift and is only covered in a section of fourteen pages.

The key of course to the defeat of Hitler’s war machine was the overwhelming strength of the allied coalition. Added to this is the fact that although the Germans were operating for most of the war along interior lines (unlike the United States which fought simultaneously in theaters thousands of miles apart), their shortages of key materials and short war outlook doomed them from the start. Without a quick victory, the chances of a German victory lessened each day.

Realizing the logistical problem of the German may encourage the reader to research information on the topic. I suggest Brute Force by John Ellis (reviewed 12/28/2023), Freedoms Forge by Arthur Herman (reviewed 4/28/2025) and Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy. These excellent books will give the reader an amazing view of the power available to the modern nation’s state.

Overall, this is an excellent book which covers most of the key areas. It is more of a technical look at war, devoid of human-interest stories but written in a manner that easily holds one’s attention.

In June 1942, for the first time since the war of 1812, the United States was invaded.  Invaded in an area where few Americans had ever been, on an island that even fewer Americans had ever heard of, but it was an invasion which had to be faced. 

To mislead American forces from the main Japanese thrust in the Central Pacific, Japanese forces landed on the island of Attu, an island at the extreme end of the Aleutian Island chain.  The island that held no tactical or strategic value, was racked by one hundred mile and hour winds that thundered down from the mountains and had an average of ten days of sun a year.  Wet, cold and remote, tens of thousands of men would meet each other in mortal combat for not valid reason.

Beyond the battle however, this is a story about two men, one Japanese, one American.  The men met in a split second, one killed the other, but their lives were forever bound by their love of America and duty to their native land. 

Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi was the son of Japanese Seventh Day Adventists who studied medicine in the United States and who came to love the country.  The size, freedom, opportunity all promised all that he could wish and when he met a beautiful Japanese student, he married and began a family.  Life was not to allow him to enjoy his opportunity however, as he and his little family travelled back to Japan in a successful attempt to free one of his sisters from prostitution to which she had been sold by the family’s elder brother during the worse days of the Depression.  Then, Tatsuguchi was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army (though he was mistrusted so much that he was the only doctor in the Army who was not an officer).  Shipped to Attu with the invasion forces, Tatsuguchi was cut off from the world he loved and was subjected, as were all Japanese troops, to constant propaganda regarding the glories of Japan and his duty to the Emperor.

Dick Laird escaped the poverty of Appalachia by joining the U.S. Army where for the first time he had three meals a day, regular pay and a clean place to sleep.  He met, impregnated and left a girl but during the war, he matured, went back and married her but he still had to pay his debt and fight his battles in the Pacific.  One early morning, with a thick fog all around and in the middle of a Japanese suicide attack, Dick accidently killed a comrade and then killed Tatsuguchi.

Dick never really recovered from the battles he fought (he won the Bronze and Silver Star medals) and Tatsuguchi had left behind a diary which was circulated widely by U.S. troops even though it went against the image built up during the war which showed the Japanese are a deadly, sneaky crazy enemy who had no human feelings. 

Many years later, Dick managed to find the family of Tatsuguchi and told them how he had killed their father/husband. How both sides faced the truth and what they learned is a great story.  And, this book also brings out the sacrifices of the men of both sides who fought in one of the most hellish places on earth, in a campaign that produced the highest percentage of American to Japanese causalities until the battle of Okinawa. 

This is a fine read, both for the military historian and for more personal aspects.  Highly recommended.

This is the story of how American business, which is the American people came together to produce the best equipped military in the history of the world.  The book has two key players; not FDR, not Eisenhower, not even Marshall, but two Americans, one a first generation American, the second, an immigrant who helped to focus and force American industry at a time of national peril. 

The first was Henry Kaiser, first generation American who through his drive and skills was the driving force behind such pre-war projects as Boulder and Grand Coulee dams, as well as thousands of miles of paved roads as the country was getting behind the wheel of their new cars.  His vision of what he could do enabled him to move into ship building, but his skill was not just in being able to successfully move from industry to industry (during the war he would build ships, airplanes, etc.) but in finding ways to mass produce them in record time.  An example is his work building the Liberty Ships which helped to defeat Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic.  When given a contract to build ships, he also had to build his own shipyards, as well as recruit workers and provide housing for them.  The workers came from every facet of American life; they were teachers, hairdressers, farmers, students, housewives, etc. and they all had to be taught how to handle tools, cut sheet metal, maintain equipment, order parts, inventory those parts, supervise production lines, etc.  All from scratch.  And he did it so successfully that a ship which use to take 200+ days to produce were coming down the waterways at one every 15-20 days.

The other main character in this excellent book is William Knudsen, a Danish immigrant (he landed in the U.S. before his teens) who not only revolutionized the production facilities of Henry Ford, but also was the driving force behind General Motors which he managed to be built to a point where it surpassed the production of his old boss, Henry Ford.  Knudsen was the type of production man who could look at a production problem and, in his mind, reconfigure the entire process to speed up production and better quality.  In recognition of his skills, he was the only civilian in the history of the U.S. to be made a Lieutenant General in the military.

But this is also the story of the average Americans who not only worked at the huge war plants but created tens of thousands of businesses to support the war effort.  An excellent example is Ma and Pa Harrington in Rockford Illinois.  Their specialty was making machine tools for turning artillery shells and tank turrets.  When they realized that a new lathe would cost four thousand dollars, they made their own out of a junked lather, an old washing machine motor, and oil pump from a 1926 Chevrolet and an old washtub that caught the oil that leaked from the bottom of the home-made tool, all in their living room!  This is an example of American ingenuity which was not found anywhere else in the world and which contributed so much to the war effort.

In the days before the internet, social media, faxes, computers, even a reliable nationwide telephone system, we would able to design, order, produce, ship, inventory and assemble the 55,000 parts for a bomber, all in record numbers.  That ability won the war as surely as the men on the front line, and despite the best efforts of the New Dealers in Washington who wanted to direct all production centrally, as occurred in Nazi Germany. 

This is an inspiration book, of interest to anyone interested in production, or wishing to read a book about what the country was capable of during those dark hours.  Is the country, are our people still able to pull together in such a desperate time?  That is for you to determine.

One of the advantages of building a library is the luxury of being able to go back and re-read the books which are worthy of being in your library. There are certain books in my library that I have read several times over the years; why? Some are wonderful novels (such as the trilogy by Sienkiewicz) or the dissent novels by Rybakov. Others are histories filled with a myriad of facts or insights (think of Richard Evans, Richard Overy or William Manchester). I love that they can clutter my brain with obscure facts that I can pull out during a conversation or discussion on a related topic. Those books are special and fall into a special category of those which can be re-read every five years or so and be as fresh and entertaining as the first time they are opened.
Retribution by Max Hastings is one of those rare military books that falls into that special category. It has all the prerequisites of a great history book. It provides a broad overview of events, then focuses down to the strategies and tactics involved in those events. Another key element is that it is loaded with obscure facts which I find so interesting and even useful (in the right company at the right time), an example of the obscure is when he writes about the development an problems with the largest single expenditure of the war (even more costly than the Manhattan Project). Did you know that “The construction of a B-29 required 27,000 pounds of aluminum, over a thousand pounds of copper, 600,000 rivets, nine and a half miles of wiring, two miles of tubing.”. Do you care? But it is that type of detail that when you realize the U.S. produced thousands of those planes that you begin to realize the enormity of the war. Or that with the defeat of Nazi Germany, Canada announced that only those citizens who did not wish to stay in the war to defeat Germany could cease war activities.
His narrative is especially excellent when he goes down to the basic level; that of those doing the actual fighters. Some are British troops fighting in Burma, one of the worse areas of combat in the war and the least reported and celebrated. The humidity, rains, foot paths which turned into thick, boot sucking mud, poor food and an enemy who fought with determination even though many died of hunger. What about the survivors of the kamikazes? How could they survive, how many volunteered, how many were drafted into the ranks and how did it feel for those who taught the new pilots to see their poorly trained students take off knowing that they were doomed. Every nation which fought in the Pacific is highlighted as brave and pathetic stories are woven through the book.
This was my third reading of this history, and it will occupy a special place in the library; a place where timeless quality of writing and research is noted and I confess, I shall read it again in a few years and enjoy it just as much.

When we think of war, we tend to think of great campaigns, great Generals, and the struggle between nations. The countless small battle actions done by the millions of people who make up the battles are often overlooked. We know no individual combat action by any of those millions will be decisive in the war, but taken together, they create the victory or defeat in war.

The battle of the River Plate, off the coast of Montevideo in mid-December 1939 was a single action that was not a major factor in the loss by Nazi Germany. It was a battle that was more symbolic for the British and a lesson learned by the German Navy. On the surface it was a battle between a German “pocket battleship” and the British navy; one ship against a professional navy that could call on aircraft carriers, battleships, heavy cruisers, and other ships by the dozen. Logically, there was no doubt of the outcome of the battle, yet it had to be fought for war is not a gentleman’s game.

The German ship was the Graf Spee, a lone ship whose main purpose was to seek out and destroy Allied merchant ships in both the Atlantic and even the Indian oceans. The presence of such a ship, armed with six-eleven-inch guns put every merchant ship, destroyer, and light cruiser in harm’s way. If the Graf Spee could not sink any ships, her existence and presence would disrupt the passage of merchant ships and with every ship valuable to the survival of England, she had to be hunted and destroyed.

The author does and excellent job of outlining and following how the British reacted to the realization that the Graf Spee was lose in the Atlantic. They immediately reached out to their major ports to gather ships capable of destroying the German raider and created several hunting groups. From the North Atlantic to the Med to the southern tip of Africa, heavy units of the British navy all joined the hunt for the Graf Spee.

For anyone not familiar with navy ships, the book does leave something to be desired regarding the match up between the Graf Spee and the British; speed, armor, firepower are briefly covered by the assumption seems to be that the reader at least has a glancing knowledge of these topics. Also missing are the stories of the individual sailors for both sides. Anyone who has read the excellent Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D. Hornfischer will be disappointed at the lack of personal depth in this book.

In the end, the British sank the German raider, the war moved on to the Battle of the Atlantic and one episode in a great war ended. Yet today, it is a tradition when sailing off Montevideo to sail over the graveyard of the Graf Spee and think even if only briefly, of those men who fought and died some eighty-five years ago.

Bloodlands, his 2010 history of Eastern Europe, Timothy Snyder presented a graphic picture of the continual wars, revolutions and famines which has plagued Ukraine and surrounding lands. We have seen for over two years with the Russian invasion of Ukraine more heartless killing and terror. In Prit Buttar’s Retribution we witness a merciless war of attrition between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as the Soviets drive to recapture an area which was overrun in 1941 and which suffered under the Nazi regime.

This is a detailed military book of that campaign which totally ignores the suffering of the local population. Caught between two gigantic military forces, we can only image the terrible cost that the locals faced when thousands of tanks, airplanes and hundreds of thousands of men on both sides fought in a no mercy military campaign driven and directed by military and political commanders who gave little if any thought to their own troops, let alone the civilians.

In a book of nearly five hundred pages, there are numerous eyewitness accounts by soldiers and field grade officers (most of them from the German side) which can very well lead the reader to exhaustion after only a few pages. The fighting was so brutal and unrelenting that it makes the battles of attrition of World War One almost seem to be less horrific than they were. Why? Because which World War One introduced the war between machines which replaced the wars between men, the leap in technology and lethality of the means of killing had exploded exponentially. Although the German army still had a slight professional edge, the Soviets had learned well from the Germans and had increased their ability to adapt and foresee the German defensive moves. Yes, the Soviets still used on many occasions the blunt force of superior numbers in both men and material, but the constant drain of experienced German officers, NCOs and material, though endless battles deprived the average German soldier of any hope of relief let alone victory.

The individual German tank crews were still, tank for tank and man for man, superior to the average Soviet tank crew, but as would be the case in Western Europe in the next year, the Soviets like the Americans were willing to lost three or four tanks in order to kill one German tank.  The Soviets outproduced German production by a ratio of two, three and even four to one, and while the Soviets could concentrate their efforts in one continuous theater, the Germans had to spread their production and manpower over several theaters.

Was the reconquest of Central Ukraine a forgone conclusion? Nothing is ever guaranteed in war, but nothing short of a miracle could stop the Soviets. The mistakes of the Germans earlier in the war such as not knocking out England, or their defeat in North Africa, even the German declaration of war on the United States all came home to be paid in this campaign. The Germans decided to fight the world knowing that time was not on their side. When they committed serious errors which upset their timetable, they faced the reality they created.

The shame of it all is that we see another war of attrition in the same area today. Once again, the average person will pay the price for a tyrant’s illusions.