Derek Nudd's Blog, page 6

Empireland

Sanghera spent two years researching and writing this book. The quality of his investigation and intellect shine through, as does his balanced approach to the topic. He rigorously avoids being sucked into the imperial shouting match, yet the reader can feel his rising fury (is that too strong a word?) at the things that he, and we, were never told.

Quibbles? There are a few points where he lumps together widely separated instances in the same paragraph to support the same argument. Is this to say that there is a common thread across the years? That may be so but the argument isn't followed up. More seriously, he almost completely ignores the maritime dimension, both mercantile (except for the slave trade) and naval. He recognises that Britain acquired its 18th and 19th century empire almost by accident and governed it with relatively tiny military and political resources. The same period saw Britain's suspicion of large standing armies (they tend to get ideas above their station) balanced by strenuous, and successful, efforts to control the world's oceans. In modern terms that was a huge force multiplier.

Sanghera reminds those of us who try to avoid looking at the past through a filter of current ideology that many of the actions we discuss were controversial at the time. If I have a few reservations it is still a hugely valuable book, mixing personal and dispassionate perspectives to great effect. And yes, it has changed my views.

Vanguard

Vanguard: The True Stories of the Reconnaissance and Intelligence Missions behind D-Day by David Abrutat

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There is an excellent book here, screaming to get out. It just needs a good editor to release it.
Let's get the grumbles out of the way first. As it stands the book is repetitive, disjointed and sometimes inaccurate - even contradictory. The chapters seem to have been written separately over time and then combined without a detailed read-through, resulting in a certain amount of material duplicated between chapters. Then there are the odd sillies - for example '... its contribution to the war intelligence machinery cannot be underestimated, ...' Errr, no, I don't think that's what he meant. And a trivial personal gripe, he capitalises 'radar' throughout. It's not an acronym. Fixing these problems would make it shorter, more readable and allow the author's genuine scholarship to shine through.
That's it for the gripes. Books have been written about each topic covered by this one individually; the unique strength of Abrutat's work is that he brings all the threads together and shows how they build the overall picture. For that reason, despite my whinges, it is a valuable addition to the bookshelf. It would best suit a reader who already has some knowledge of the topic and can extract the juice without being deterred by the sometimes bitty structure.
I read the first UK hardback edition and a should say a word about the production quality, which is superb. Heavy, semi-gloss paper does justice to the illustrations without the need for a plate section and you feel that if you dropped it you might crack the tiles. I hope the author has taken the opportunity of the later paperback edition to render my moans above obsolete.



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From Imperial Splendour to Internment

From Imperial Splendor to Internment: The German Navy in the First World War by Nicolas Wolz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Wolz starts in a different war, comparing the fates of Graf Spee scuttled at Montevideo in 1939 and Bismarck which went down with flag defiantly flying and immense loss of life in 1941. A point he could have made, but didn't, was that the damage to Graf Spee's fuel processing plant and Bismarck's rudder meant that neither ship had any chance of making a friendly port. Nonetheless Graf Spee's Langsdorff, having chosen to spare his crew the slaughter of facing what he believed to be an overwhelming force, felt he had no option but to shoot himself. Captain Lindemann, of course, went down with his ship.

This sets the theme for the book which explores the difference between the German and British concepts of naval honour and discipline in the First World War. Operations and battles are described only as far as needed to provide the context for this discussion.

You need to read his arguments and make up your own mind whether they hold water. That being so, I don't believe it's a spoiler to outline his conclusions. If you disagree, stop reading NOW.

Wolz seems, in my view, to say that the Kaiser's then brand-new navy looked to copy the Royal Navy's traditions but took a puritanical slant on them. So, while a RN captain needed a jolly good reason not to go down with his flag flying, there were at least admitted circumstances where further sacrifice was pointless. While the RN was still class-bound it accepted the need to lead rather than drive, and promotion 'through the hawse-hole' was not unknown. In the Kaiserliche Marine these concepts were an anathema.

The thesis needs taking seriously. Certainly the 'humiliation' of the High Seas Fleet's internment and scuttling in 1918-19 weighed heavily on the later Kriegsmarine's culture. I was left wondering if it had any bearing on the startling fact that when the WW2 Scharnhorst went down in 1943 the horrifying casualty toll was partly due to the fact that the crew had done no, repeat no, abandon-ship drills.

And if Langsdorff had known he was still only up against three cruisers instead of the battlefleet brilliantly imagined by British disinformation, would he have taken a punt on sinking at least one of them to even the score a little? Which comes back to relying on the captain's discretion. But sometimes the one-in-a-million chance pays off.

I think I would still like to see an equally informed cross-bearing on this topic.



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Jutland 1916: The Archaeology of a Naval Battlefield

Jutland 1916: The Archaeology of a Naval Battlefield by Innes Mccartney

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Innes McCartney combines professional use of historical records with fifteen years' maritime archaeology to tease new insights from the rapidly deteriorating wrecks at the bottom of the North Sea. In the process he developed new techniques to identify class of vessel from the often partial and degraded remains.

The book itself is well produced: hardback, nicely printed on heavy 245x190mm paper. My main whinge is over the design. Squeezing the charts, a vital element, into landscape presentation within over-wide margins makes them unneccessarily difficult to read. They deserve to be full-page and have better colour separation. Using black text on blue boxes for captions probably looks OK on screen but doesn't translate well to print. Switching randomly from black-on-white pages to white-on-black may help the underwater photos to stand out but I for one found it jarring. The overall effect was as though the publisher had given the project to an intern to finish off.

A pity. Losing style points in my opinion (others may disagree) does not detract from the value of the content. I will be returning to this book time and again. Perhaps with a magnifying-glass.



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Very Special Admiral

Very Special Admiral by Patrick Beesly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Like his WW1 oppo and mentor 'Blinker' Hall, Admiral John Godfrey was the right man in the nick of time to turn Naval Intelligence from a sleepy, career-ending creek to the war-fighting and arguably war-winning organisation it became. If his immediate predecessor Troup had revived the comatose patient, Godfrey pulled the sheets off and kicked it out of bed.

Personally he divided opinion. Patrick Beesly, who worked for him in the Operational Intelligence Centre and wrote this book was clearly a fan. On the other hand the naval interrogator Bernard Trench, whose formative years had been spent with Hall, detested him.

Hall and Godfrey were equally matched in drive, vision and intellect. Both built Naval Intelligence into the pre-eminent service intelligence branch, but Hall was expanding into a vacuum - MI5 and MI6 were new-born and Military Intelligence had largely parochial concerns - so he could build a level of influence matched by few spymasters in history. Godfrey on the other hand was trying to work with multiple and multiplying agencies of varying professional and emotional maturity, and the elephant in the room - Winston Churchill - who does not get a sympathetic press in this book.

Then there were the differences in personality. Hall would persuade you to cut off your own right arm. And then gift-wrap it for him. Godfrey, too often for his own good, had the diplomatic finesse of a flying brick. Perhaps that is an over-simplification: Beesly shows that he could summon tact and charm when he felt the need, particularly in the line of duty. Dealing with people for whom he had little respect however, no matter how influential, he simply didn't see the need.

The core of the book is inevitably Godfrey's spectacular three years and nine months as Director of Naval Intelligence, which occupy six of the fifteen chapters. The first five cover his early life, almost accidental choice of a naval career, specialisation in staff work, WW1 experience (including the Dardanelles) and eventual rise to command the battlecruiser 'Repulse'. Three chapters cover his time in command of the Royal Indian Navy after NID (including the 1946 mutiny) and one his retirement, which includes writing the historical monographs now in the National Archives.

I did say that Beesly was a fan. Don't look here for a balanced view. He quotes extensively from Godfrey's writing and it is sometimes difficult to tell their voices apart. With that caution, and the associated pinch of salt, I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone interested in the topic. It is out of print but shouldn't be too difficult to find.

I mentioned that Churchill doesn't get a very easy ride. Here are some examples.
P.58: [Godfrey speaking] "The British did not want to fight Russia any more than the French. 'Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just'. We did not feel that ours was just and we did not agree with Mr. Churchill who seemed to be trying to propel the country into a real war with Bolshevist Russia."

P.297: [Godfrey speaking] "There are no supermen who do everything well, and the tragedy of Churchill was that the thing he loved most he did least well i.e. strategy. Early on in the war his decisions were invariably wrong and caused us to lose ships, met etc. unneccessarily and to have the stuff at the wrong place. If you didn't agree with him you were axed e.g. Danks and Tom Phillips."

If he expressed these opinions out loud his sudden defenestration is no surprise. Nor is the fact that, uniquely for someone in his position, he received no honour in retirement. He did however leave his successor Rushbrooke a finely-tuned and smoothly-running machine. If, as claimed, the U-boats were the one thing that truly frightened Churchill he should have appreciated the cantankerous admiral in Old Building a little more.



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Securing the Narrow Sea - Steve Dunn

Securing the Narrow Sea: The Dover Patrol 1914-1918 by Steve R. Dunn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book partners Dunn's own Bayly's War in commemoration of the cold, wet, dangerous and exhausting task of the small-ship sailors tasked with protecting Britain's maritime trade and enforcing the blockade on Germany in the First World War. As such it inevitably lacks the single focus of a book on a 'spectacular' such as Jutland or Zeebrugge, but takes the form of a chronological survey of many smaller actions and developments.

Dunn points out early that, in strictly maritime terms, Dover is a daft place to build a port. There is no natural harbour, the narrowing of the Channel whip wind and tide to ferocity, and the area is littered with fearsome shallows.

As for the tools the Patrol had to work with, at one end of the scale they included monitors for shore bombardment to support the army. Their slow speed and shallow draught made them unmanageable in any kind of weather - sometimes they had to be towed into position. For the rest, destroyers and their cruiser flotilla leaders were at the large end of a scale which ranged down through motor launches, trawlers, drifters and yachts to tiny motor launches.

Dunn is commendably even-handed in his assessment of the Patrol's three commanders (Hood, Bacon, Keyes) with their respective strengths and vulnerabilities; also of the various attempts to impede U-boat passage with net and mine barriers.

Given the scope of the book he covers the few major actions well, though it would have been good to see illustrative diagrams placed in the text now and then - this could be done without additional plate sections. (There is one of these, containing 37 useful illustrations, by the way).

He also comments on the irony that Jutland, which left the High Seas Fleet bottled up and the blockade intact, was perceived in Britain as a defeat whereas Zeebrugge achieved almost nothing and was hailed as a glorious victory.



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Bayly's War

Bayly's War: The Battle for the Western Approaches in the First World War by Steve R. Dunn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The author states in his afterword that he started the project expecting to dislike Bayly and tell a tale of failure. He changed his mind about the first and ended up with mixed views on the second.

The Western Approaches are the funnel through which much of Britain's essential maritime trade must pour, and in which much of the slaughter that came close to winning WW1 for Germany in 1917 took place. Admiral Bayly inherited a motley collection of torpedo-boats and trawlers, and built it up into possibly the nation's second most powerful maritime force. In the process he integrated US and British forces harmoniously under a single command, gaining far greater recognition in America than from his own masters.

He was not remotely clubbable, yet inspired fierce loyalty in the small-ship crews he asked to face U-boats, mines, insane weather, exhaustion, and a largely hostile local population.

The book inevitably veers between the long view of strategy, tactics and politics, and vignettes of individual ships and their crews. This is both a strength, in that we never lose sight of the human dimension, and at times a distraction which threatens to lose the thread of the narrative. It is still a worthwhile addition to the literature on the unrestricted submarine campaign, bringing home as it does the difficulty of defending even an escorted merchantman against attack. The appendices add usefule extra material here.



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The Pigeon Tunnel

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John le Carré

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


John le Carré more than once observes that the worlds of inner and objective reality are so melded in his mind that he cannot always tell which perception belongs to which. Read this for tasters of the experiences and ideas that triggered his writing, and that will make you want to visit / revisit his novels (perhaps that's the idea?)

Remember though that the subtitle is accurate - it's stories from his life, not the story of his life. Look elsewhere for a biography, and be prepared to delve deeply between the lines for any glimpse of the man himself. In his own words, "As a maker of fictions, I invent versions of myself, never the real thing, if it exists."

With that caveat, it's a jolly good read.



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The Eyes of the Navy

The Eyes of the Navy: A Biographical Study of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall by Admiral Sir William James

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


'Alone I did it.'*
You might think the man who pronounced this verdict on the United States' entry into WW1 had an ego the size of a planet. You might be right.

He also seems to have had a mesmeric effect on most of the people he met, including Admiral James who once worked for him and later wrote this book. It thus comes over as more of a hagiography than a biography. David Ramsay's 'Blinker' Hall - Spymaster is a more recent and better treatment of the subject. Having said which James had the advantage of personal acquaintance and is worth reading afterward - you just need to keep a salt cellar to hand.

Hall himself is eminently worth study. He achieved a breadth and depth of influence probably unmatched by any British intelligence officer before or since, and which I'm sure no official of a democracy should have except in the most desperate emergency. He filled the role with an extraordinary mix of energy and ability, guided by a generally firm ethical stance.

I say 'generally' because the nearest James comes to criticism is over the way Hall undermined any chance of clemency for Sir Roger Casement, which raised eyebrows at the time and would be beyond-visual-range over the line now.

Hall's interpersonal skills were such as to earn the respect, sometimes even the liking of his professional opponents (both in the Admiralty and the Kaiserliche Marine). In this he makes an interesting contrast with his WW2 successor John Godfrey who, though equally energetic and talented, seems to have had most of the diplomatic finesse of a flying brick. Hall emerged with a lesser honour than he might have expected, and recommended by the Foreign Office rather than the Admiralty. Godfrey came out with nothing.

* - In fairness, James doesn't actually use this quotation. Ramsay on the other hand builds it into one of his chapter headings.




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Estocada

Estocada by Graham Hurley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Following as it does the fate of individuals caught in the maelstrom as the world spins uncontrollably toward war, this makes an interesting comparison with Robert Harris' Munich. Hurley's writing is taut and well-paced and he converges his characters' plot lines well. So why only three stars? A pivotal interview feels contrived and a bit implausible and, to my mind, the ending peters out rather than resolving.

Still worthwhile though.



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