There certainly is no shortage of World War II histories, most of which cover the various campaigns around the world.  There are also some excellent histories which cover the logistics of the war, arguing first one way then the other about when the window of opportunity for Germany closed and the tide turned forever against the Axis powers.

While the military side of the war is covered in this book, the main emphasis is rather on the average German and their shifting outlook during the war.  This includes the treatment of Jews and how much the average German knew about the treatment of the Jews in the East, the camps, etc. If they were willing to listen the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) or SS Security Service which was formed in the early 1930s but organized and given new powers when commanded by Reinhard Heydrich provided accurate information on the state of mind of the German people.  That information advised Nazi leaders such as Goebbels when attack the Jews and when to throttle back those attacks and instead focus on some other aspect of the war.  The SD noted the reaction to Goebbels call for Total War which ignited the crowd where he spoke but which was thought to be staged by many listeners.

Throughout the book, the average Germans views on the treatment of the Jews (and other “lesser” peoples), is viewed through the millions of letters, photographs and camera footage shot by the common German soldier and sent home.  The idea that the home front did not have any idea of the mass executions in the East is difficult to sustain given the volume of the information which was provided by the soldiers and freely provided to their families.  Although some letters attempted to shield the civilian (normally a wife or other loved one) from the brutality of the killing by saying that the writer does not want to shock the reader too much, it is clear that mass killings were witnessed. 

No history of the time would not be complete without information on the bombing of the German cities.  Germany, unlike Italy, had a complex and well organized system to maintain production and provide for those who were bombed out of their homes.  In order to maintain morale during the bombing, over fifty-thousand anti-aircraft guns were deployed and those guns devoured about a third of all artillery production at a time when the troops in the field were heavily outgunned.  For those who lost their houses, furniture, clothing, and other household basics were provided by the loot taken from the German Jews. This did lead to instances where the new German owners complained that the loot was either too big, of poor quality or not maintained correctly. As the bombing campaign continued to build, it was not unusual to hear that it is a Jewish payback for how the German Jews had been treated.

One strong aspect of this volume is the use of correspondence between the soldiers and those at home.  They bring an excellent personal touch to the book and when the correspondence from the front stops (such as one correspondence where the writer is at Stalingrad), it brings the pity of war that much closer.

This is an excellent book for anyone to see both sides (campaign and home front) in a single well-written and researched history.

If there is one consistent image that has come out of the Civil War, it has been of Robert E. Lee, the calm, brilliant strategist who fought for the Confederacy out of a sense of loyalty to his state of Virginia; a soft spoken man, opposed to slavery but believing more in State’s Rights and the honor of the South.

Many of these myths are exploded in this book as Nolan quotes from Lee’s pre-war letters regarding the institution of slavery; how the slaves were well looked after, how they were better off in their present condition than when they were in Africa as they had the opportunity, at some undisclosed date, to become better than they were (although they could not be as good as whites).  Yes, Lee admitted that there were abuses, but they were few and sometimes necessary to keep the blacks in check until that golden day in the future where they could move up the human food chain. 

Nolan also criticizes Lee as a general in that he failed to fully understand until too late the overwhelmingly destructive firepower of “modern” rifles and artillery.  A prime example of this could be seen at Gettysburg where Lee ignored the strategy put forth by General Longstreet to hit the U.S. army on its flanks.  Instead, Lee threw the fresh troops of Pickett into an assault on the center of the Union line with no reserves at hand so that even if Pickett’s troops had been successful, they would have been swamped by Meade bringing up reserves from both of his wings.  Lee believed in the power to the spirit and was certainly not the last General to fall prey to the idea; the French army in the beginning of World War I was another force that failed to comprehend the full implications of “modern” technology. 

After the Civil War, Lee held an honored place in the minds of most Southerners, even though he admitted that he realized after Gettysburg that the South could not win the conflict.  He fought on and kept his troop together in a cause that was lost against a foe that was more ruthless than he could be in the conduct of the war.  The hundreds of thousands who died after his realization must be in part, laid at his feet but the myth of Lee will not be laid to rest until sometime in the future.

A good book for the reader who is unfamiliar with revisionist history, but a revisionist history that has much merit.

I will say this for Mike Pompeo; he does not give an inch.  His book primarily deals with his time as head of the CIA and then Secretary of State during the Trump administration is probably the most direct political memoir I have read.  He states his positions very clearly and makes note of his successes and failures for all to see.  There is no doubt where he stands and what he stood for while holding those two positions. I can see that if he had been in different administrations, he would not have achieved what he did and certainly would not have lasted as long as he did.

A staunch believer in his country, he is not ashamed to admit that he gathers much of his strength from his family, especially his wife and their strong religious beliefs.  He will quote scripture to show how the Bible has helped him achieve his successes and in more than one situation, his knowledge of scripture won him high marks in the international field.

To a greater extent than normal, his freely gives credit to those who work for him praising their dedication, knowledge and patriotism.  The list is long and is referenced throughout the book; here is a man who has built businesses and has signed paychecks and who knows that a successful manager is one who surrounds himself with the best people possible.  On the other hand, he names names and gives examples of D.C. professionals who are shallow, seek to feather their own nests and are certainly not beholding or supportive of any particular occupant of the White House. Unlike other Trump officials, he always remembered that he signed onto the Trump administration and that while he may have disagreed with the President on certain matters, he was free to voice his opinion and then his job was to soldier on, as long as the job did not cross the line of his own conscience.

This is a book of survival, of innocence, foolishness and bravery as a class of people finds itself suddenly outcasts from those that they had exploited for hundreds of years.  In the chaos of the Russian revolution, even before the seizure of power by Lenin, the very ground beneath a once powerful class was shifting and no one had any idea what the outcome of those movements would be.

For powerful aristocratic families (some who had owned up to 500,000 serfs) and for the poorest of the aristocrats, their world with it’s table of titles and addresses, it’s position above the law and its belief in the Czar would all be lost, almost without a whimper.   They would suddenly find themselves thrown out of their houses and palaces, their valuables seized by the State and thrown onto resources that most of them had never dreamed they possessed.  Despised as useless exploiters, they were often hunted down and shot or hung (if they were fortunate in their manner of death), while they tried to keep their families together often during a time when they were fleeing from town to town to stay ahead of the Red Terror.  Throw into this mix the chaos caused by the Russian Civil War and it is easy to see how literally hundreds of thousands of “aristocrats” (a term used for the highest to the poorest of the species) were destroyed. 

Some aristocrats decided to join the White armies, others believing that Russia needed to be purged, joined the Reds.  If they had joined the Reds, it was no ticket to survival for they were always viewed as a danger to the new Soviet state.  With the coming of the purges under Stalin, they were singled out after having led quiet lives for years, often in the service of the State; suddenly once again they were denounced and hunted, shipped to Siberia or executed.   Even their children were targeted as the stain of the exploiters was believed to be passed on from mother and father to son and daughter.

In the end, ancient families who had served the Czarist state for better or worse were exterminated.  Some were fortunate to flee to the West, ending up often as door men or waiters in the exile’s haunts. Even there, in France and other countries they could be murdered to sooth the paranoid images of the rulers in Moscow.

One reads this book and may question why the hatred of that class was so strong; everything they possessed or stood for was either destroyed or mocked and held up as an example of that classes uselessness.  We must remember that for hundreds of years the aristocrats had exploited millions, bought and sold them like so many lumps of coat while living a life of unimagined luxury.  Some aristocrats tried and did contribute to society, but they were a small handful against a tide of greed and cruelty.  And so, they died, hunted and hated and because of their past sins, and millions more would have to pay a price as a bold new world was created which was more corrupt and crueler than what they had destroyed. 

During the twentieth-century, Russia has suffered through two World Wars, a civil war, and numerous famines (both natural and manmade).  The result was a population that suffered upwards of 70-100,000,000 million dead.  This on top of a long history filled with carnage, tyranny and cruelty.  The dead when they could be buried faced a bureaucracy which required numerous forms, not enough cemeteries (in the cities) and waiting times that could often lead to the literal rotting of the dead.  During the siege of Leningrad, the dead were warehoused during the winter as the ground was too frozen to dig and their grave diggers were all dead. Now, in the midst of another war, many of the dead, the Russian soldiers are not buried, they are merely cremated in an effort to hide the true casualities.

How does death on such a scale affect the mind of the average Russian?  Illnesses such as PTSD were denied in the Soviet Union (and later) as a capitalist plot and the average Russian was deemed “too tough” to fall for such capitalist tricks.

The author spent years roaming Russia talking with survivors of the purging of kulaks, victims of the forced collectivization and its famine, survivors of the German invasion, of the purges by Stalin, etc.  How did they cope with seeing starved bodies piled up in the streets, or watch everyone in their village slowly die of starvation? How were they able to lead seemingly “normal” lives and how were they able to keep buried their emotions. What impact does that have on the development of the survivors, their children and the society?

What comes out of the book are stories of great human strength, of tragedy and the realization that the average Russian who lived through those terrible times and experienced the strange world of Communism had a very different mindset so they could survive.  Memories passed on as history die hard and the question that remains is how long will it take for the average Russian to move beyond those memories, that history to a world where they truly believe they have some control over their own destinies. Unfortunately, they appear to being no closer to “normalcy” under the current regime, one in which censorship and strict guidelines for behavior are not that far from those under the old Soviet system.

Much of the history of Japan lives withing a cloud of myth and legend along with a masterful manipulation of reality. This is especially true since the Meiji restoration whn the emperor was taken as the new central figure in Japan.  Suddenly the Emperor, who had traditionally had no power and was controlled by the Shogun was presented figuratively to the population as divine and the central focus of Japanese life.  Yet, the Emperor himself lived in a closed world or court etiquette and political intrigue.

This excellent history tells the story of who was the power behind the throne and of the vast scale of looting conducted by the Japanese during World War II.  Within Imperial Japan, there was a cadre of powerful families, former samurai war lords who controlled the military and the zaibatsu and thus the economy.  By controlling the military and the economy, they were able to work hand in hand with each other to gather enormous riches and unquestioned power, all while creating a cult around a compliant Emperor.

During World War II, an Italian Senator who was forced to resign his post by Mussolini. This was the man who in 1925 published his three-volume work on the causes of the First World War.  At 2280 pages, Senator Albertini provides the serious student of history with a detailed, inside glimpse at European power politics reaching back into the mid 19^th century.  In these volumes he exposes to the light of day the most minute diplomatic dispatches as well as his own personal discussions with many of the diplomats who had key roles in the lead up to the First World War. 

Reading diplomatic dispatches, letters and notes is never fascinating in the best of times, and with the distance of time, it is often difficult to remember or place correctly the individual players.  German Foreign Ministers of the Kaiser come and go; diplomats of the Czar long forgotten are suddenly brought back to light and the internal wrangling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire between the pro-German factions and the landed Magyars who are at direct logger heads with the Austrian Foreign office can be mind numbing. Added to the pile of information are the even more obscure Italian officials who want so badly to be taken seriously by the “great” European powers and are generally scorned, mistrusted and pushed aside and you have a web of intrigue that is difficult to follow without copious notes or a mind trained to a unusually high level of boredom.

            Yet the volumes can also at times read like a great mystery tale, but one in which you know the outcome and which, at times, you want at times to reach back in time to throttle, berate and besiege the players so that the terrible bloody outcome can somehow be avoided. At times you begin to see the engine of history moving forward, picking up speed and moving in what seems to be an unstoppable manner to the conclusion which chewed up the lives, future, and fortune of so many tens of millions of individuals.  At times you must put the book down as you shake your head with the knowledge of future events which seem so clear nearly a hundred years later, but which were so shrouded at the time.  The book can be infuriating and at times you hope there is a God with a sense of Justice, with a capital “J”.  You hope there truly is a day of reckoning for so many individuals, such as:

Studs Turkel was a legend in Chicago for decades. Known for his sharp wit and clear writing, he had a successful career as a bit actor, sport commentator, TV MC, writer, and social commentator.  This book, one of many, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985.  In it, he interviewed veterans from across the U.S., as well as civilians who worked in factories, hospitals, research labs and even some who were involved with the development of the atomic bomb.  He offered a street eye view (which was his specialty) of how men and women felt about the war; the excitement, fear, hopes for the future and life played out for some and their views on the government and the Viet Nam war as their children went to fight their own war.

Despite the acclaim of this book, and the huge sales, I was disappointed; the interviews seemed to be divided between veterans, most of whom expressed their fears and excitement, the remembrance of the close bonds they felt for their comrades, some of whom became life long friends, and the non-combatants, many of them intellectuals and well paid factory workers who often seemed to be disgruntled by their experiences. Being a child of that generation, I saw this sharp divide.  For example, when my parents went to their 50^th high school reunion, each attendee was asked to write a short biography.  I was amazed that every single male, except for my father, started his bio stating what he did in World War II (my father started his stating how long he and my mother had been married).  That reflected the importance of the war to a generation of men who endured the poverty of the Depression and for whom, the military was the first time they had enough to eat. 

Several years ago, I read Luigi Albertini’s massive, three volume, 1800-page work, The Origins of the War of 1914. It was a heartbreaking work as it laid out a chain of events beginning about thirty years prior to the outbreak of the war which seen from today, clearly pointed to the start of that terrible war.  Misunderstood actions, political snubs and fumbles, conflicting personalities, etc., seem to drive the Western powers toward a cliff from which none could turn.

In a sense, this book gives one the same feeling, only you reach the conclusion by about page 80; you want to put the book down and wonder how so many poor decisions could be made by so many policy makers and leaders. Anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of asymmetrical warfare, can see the fundamental errors which turned a solid opportunity into a fiasco.

What is amazing is that many of the military leaders who had fought in Viet Nam and who had vowed never to make a mistake like that again, went along with political leaders and committed basic errors during and after the initial invasion; inadequate troop strength, ignorance of the culture, disruption of the economy which led to many military Iraqis joining the insurgents simply to put bread on the table, poor training of the infantry, disregard of the lessons of local control learned in Viet Nam, etc. managed to alienate the populace and actually feed the insurgency.

Ricks blames most of the problems on Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and L. Paul Bremer III as they ignored advice which did not agree with their preconceived ideas and amazingly enough, they had no plan for what to do with Iraq after the military victory.  There seemed to be some sort of mystical belief that our occupation would be short lived and that some sort of civilian leadership would arise that could span the Sunni-Shite-Kurdish canyon and run a government which had been an authoritarian state under a suddenly outlawed political party. Bremer managed to put out of work the entire Iraqi army, the key bureaucrats and destroy any hope for central power to run the country.  For this, he eventually was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with George Tenet and General Tommy Franks, both of whom managed in their own way (intelligence and military) to mislead or misdirect the war and occupation. Professionally written and documented, the weakness of this book is that it ends in 2006 and the author, entirely misses the options from that point forward.  He could not see the rise of ISIS of course, but his discussion on the political options read as if he were in a hurry to finish the book.  This should be a must read at West Point and for at least the top ten percent of the “leaders” in Congress and the bureaucracy.  Just be prepared to put the book down every few pages and shake you head in wonder at the foolishness, stupidity, and ineptitude of those who wield such power.

Imagine that your native land is invaded not once, but several times by opponents who are much more powerful and ruthless.  In the first invasion, tens of thousands of your nations finest minds are deported to camps thousands of miles away.  The next invasion is by another opponent who to win your favor, executes tens of thousands of your fellow citizens who made the mistake of being born into a different religion.  To complete the job of cleansing your land, many of your neighbors to worked with the first invader are also executed.  A couple of years later, the first invader returns and again, executes or deports your fellow citizens who co-operated with the second invader.  Fast forward two generations and the first invader is finally expelled but during that time, everyone who has lived under the expelled regime has lived, worked or in some manner supported the hated invader.

Whom do you trust?  Who was a spy or informer for the invader?  Who was married to someone who profited from working with the invader?  Will the invader return?  Is the new system honest or will it be staffed by those who worked for the invader?

Sofi Oksanen, a Finnish- Estonian playwright and novelist is now published in twenty-nine countries and has written a novel that looks at those questions and others.  An elderly woman is taunted by young boys who throw rocks at her house on her old dying farm.  Why?  Did she collaborate with the hated invaders?  Was she an informer?  What is her secret?  Then, a young woman in fancy city clothes appears in her yard and for the rest of the book, each mentally dances with the other, prying and gradually learning the truth that binds the two.

The story will make the reader question how does a nation which, like the nations in Europe formerly occupied by the Soviet Union, begin the healing process and acceptance of the challenges generated by the past.  Who, having lived for decades under a repressive police state is free from guilt and is there an acceptable line beyond one should not have crossed?  At the same time, there is a valid call for Justice and who will be the ones to carry out such measures as are set? These questions and others are not often discussed by those who have studied totalitarian states or even whose which have not gone to that extreme.  The amazing thing is that it appears that overall, those nations which have suffered have found a way to deal with the past and have arrived at a way of moving forward without using the fearsome methods that were used on them.