Watch on the Rhine

Hiya Bookies! Sorry for the delay in blogging, life happens.

65 years ago today, December 16, 1944, the Germans launched Operation Watch on the Rhine, known to them as the Ardennes Offensive and to the Allies as the Battle of the Bulge. There have been literally hundreds of books written about this battle, from both perspectives, and in my experience many of them would make a fine gift for the World War II buff. In particular I like Charles MacDonald's A Time For Trumpets. He was a company commander for the US during the battle, his prose is clean and clear.

But for those in the US, especially, it is necessary to put the Bulge into context. At the time most US generals panicked when the attack came. The German plan was to attack a weak spot in the American lines, break through and cross the Meuse River, then swing north and re-take Antwerp, thus cutting off all US, British and Canadian troops to their north and east. In short, to re-create their crushing victory of 1940. The problem was that the Germans simply didn't have the manpower to pull it off, and the German General Staff knew it. The only person wholly in favor of throwing in the very last of Germany's offensive striking power, not to mention her last troops reserves and every drop of gasoline they could siphon out of the pipeline, was Adolf Hitler. And anything less than total victory would be a defeat, making the subsequent Allied counter-attack all the more successful as fewer Germans would be around to stop it.

And that's more or less what happened. The Germans attacked but never had the weight necessary to even cross the Meuse River, much less attack Antwerp. They inflicted a lot of casualties but suffered more than twice as many as they caused. Patton knew right away that is was a huge mistake and took advantage. Hitler made things worse by not allowing the attack to be called off even when it had clearly failed. When the Allies finally did counter-attack later in 1945, there were tens of thousands fewer Germans left to defend their homeland, and more than 1,000 irreplaceable tanks no longer on hand to help.

But just because we can see this clearly now doesn't mean it was so clear then, nor does it alleviate the suffering our troops went through in one of the coldest winters on record. When you see the aged veteran who suffered through this ordeal, throw him a salute and remind him how thankful we are for his service. Sitting in a foxhole covered with ice and snow as German tanks were heading for you would not have been any easier if you knew that it was a huge strategic mistake. It would have been just as terrifying as if you were fighting to hold the Germans out of Washington, DC. It would have been just as cold as winter is anywhere, and if the Germans shot you it would not have mattered how much faster their foolish attack might end the war.

BLACK CROSS by Greg Iles

Black Cross by Greg Iles. Dutton, 1995. First edition identified by number line ending in '1.'

Iles 2nd book, like his first, deals with Nazis. Except this time it's actually a World War 2 thriller that is quite taut and very well written. You could already see his talent on display in this book, a well-rounded and mature adventure that preceded the chilling Mortal Fear.

Iles is also one of the better authors to hear in person. He's funny, honest and pretty much answers anything, including how much he gets paid for each book. By all means see him if you get the chance.

The dangers of re-reading a book

Good morning bookies!

Bright sunshine today in West Tennessee, but cold, high 30's, which to me might as well be Antarctica.

No link today, just a passing thought. I guess you all know I'm researching a book dealing with World War II. Whether or not the book ever actually gets written, I don't know, but I research it daily. Last night about 11:30 I was re-reading (for the umpteenth time) The Last 100 Days by John Toland, a book I probably could repeat large swatches off by heart. And what did I suddenly find that I had never found before? A major error. How could I have missed it? Moreover, how could his editors have missed it, not to mention the historian himself?

On page 205 he mentions that Sepp Dietrich's Sixth Panzer Army had lost 30% of its tanks and AFVs attempting to relieve Budapest.

Ummm...no, it didn't. Budapest fell on February 11-12, with breakouts continuing for a few more days by small groups. The three relief attempts in January and February were all carried out by Sixth Army, commanded by Hermann Balck, not Sixth Panzer Army commanded by Sepp Dietrich. Sixth Panzer Army wasn't even fully in Hungary yet and did not actually fight in that area until the offensive on the Gran River later in the month. How had I never noticed this before? And how many other errors have I overlooked in this book?

It just goes to show you that re-reading a favorite book isn't always a good thing.

The Age of the Audiobook

Good morning bookies!

West Tennessee is wet and cold today, so let's get straight to book stuff. I don't know about you but I love audiobooks. I have for a long time now. Back in the late 80's-early 90's I had a job that had me driving all over the southeast and south, from Texas to Florida to North Carolina and home to Tennessee. I had a company car, or rather a company van, each of which was equipped with a fine stereo system and one of which had a showpiece audio system. 29 speakers, 17 of which were sub-woofers, 9 amplifiers, etc. I could literally make my windshield ripple from the sound pressure. And, for a while, it was great listening to music on those long drives of 8 or 10 hours. But only for a while. After a few years I wanted nothing more than silence while putting miles on the van, but the danger was that silence lead to fatigue and fatigue lead to car wrecks and...well, you get the idea.

And then I found the audiobook. Pop in something good read by a great narrator and presto! You're two hours down the road and don't remember getting there. Without exaggeration, audiobooks extended that career by at least two years, otherwise I would have gone nuts and quit.

So today's link is a nice article on the future of audiobooks and featuring none other than Neil Gaiman, sort of the Superman of nuevo-Horror. I have long been thinking about getting an MP3 player and this makes it seem like a worthy investment.

Neil Gaiman and the future of the spoken word

As a bonus for today, let's also look at one of my favorite sites, Librivox.org. Librivox features books in the public domain that are free to anyone. You can download them in MP3 format, or download the whole book and burn it to disc, which is what I do. The readers are all volunteers, which means that some are good, some are bad and some have accents so thick you can barely tell they are speaking English. But they are free, so what do you want? I'm currently listening to Book Two of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, I'm on disc 17 of 22, which 20 discs in book one. There are six books altogether. Whew! I'm glad it's free. Now if I only had an MP3 player.

Librivox

Recording Japanese atrocities

Good morning bookies!

It's sunny in West Tennessee today, warmish, with a high in the 50's. If you're shivering in North Dakota while reading this don't feel too bad, our low for Friday night is predicted to be 22. Not so warmish.

Today's comment pertains to a new book on the systemic and systematic Japanese terror machine during World War II, the kempeitai. For those who aren't World War II buffs and think only the Gestapo wrought terror during that war, not so. When dealing with horror and evil there's no point in measuring one against the other, which one is the worst. Stalin versus Hitler? Who can say? On paper Stalin killed even more innocent civilians than Hitler, he invaded just as many countries without provocation as Hitler, he declared war on smaller powers for no reason, just like Hitler. Yet he was a US ally. Does that lessen his guilt? And when discussing the Japanese, it's hard to put a face to their guilt as there were multiple leaders who all shared in the horror. Ultimately it was Hirohito who approved of everything, but he has been redeemed in postwar eyes. Tojo? He was only prime minister for a relatively short while. Not being able to easily quantify Japanese guilt into a single person has sometimes lead to their atrocities being overlooked. And yet they may have been worse than Stalin or Hitler.

Japan's Gestapo: Murder, Mayhem and Torture in Wartime Asia by Mark Felton seeks to detail the apparatus and crimes of the Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police who had broad powers to do just about anything they wanted. And for sheer wanton cruelty they often made the Gestapo look like amateurs, the NKVD like wannabes. These were cruel people, people. The effects of some of their biological experiments are still being felt today.

This review cited below seems, to me, to have something of its own attitude. The reviewer seems a bit biased herself, so consider that when reading. However, I include this in today's blog merely as a point of reference for the hard-core WWII buff. I'm not sure this should wind up under the Christmas tree of the guy who wants to read more about Leyte Gulf or Midway. It's not exactly the merriest of subjects.

The third Axis cog in the machinery of death