Advance to barbarism: The development of total warfare from Serajevo to Hiroshima,

by Frederick J. Veale

Hardbound with dust jacket very good condition name stamped in front cover copyright 1968.

Genres: History, War, World War II, Military Fiction

363 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Frederick Veale who died in 1976, was a well known member of the Brighton Branch of British Union before the war. By profession he was a soldier. He was also a prolific writer and a regular contributor to the "Nineteenth Century and After", the famous monthly review whose policy was present objective and unbiased articles on home and foreign affairs. It was the type of serious publication we could do with today.

In addition to articles on economic and historical subjects, Frederick Veale wrote "Lives of Lenin" (1932) and "Frederick the Great" (1935). However, it was after the second World War that he really showed what he was made of. At a time when the victorious allies were baying for blood (at Tehran, when Churchill handed Stalin a "Sword of Honour" and Stalin demanded that Churchill and Roosevelt agree that 50,000 German officers should be shot after the war was over),

Frederick Veale wrote a book entitled "Advance to Barbarism" which was published in the United States as well as in Britain. It was updated in 1963 and is still available. In the book he pointed out that an appalling precedent had been set by the verdicts of the International Military Tribunal in 1945. For their judgements meant that in any future war the Admirals, Generals and Air Marshals of the defeated side could expect to be condemned to death for obeying the orders of their government. This was also the view of Field Marshal Montgomery. This also meant that the prosecutors were judge and jury in their own cases.

Reviews

[CasaJB · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't want to write a review for this book because it is just too well written and monumental to even try, but after having finished it months ago, I am constantly reminded of its importance in other books I read and podcasts/interviews I hear. This book is quite simply a must read for an understanding of what really happened (and changed) in the past, and how we got where we are today.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a peculiar book written just after WWII by a London "jurist".
The author describes warfare as it existed in Europe from the 1700's to 1900 as being fairly civilized and gentlemanly, if such a thing is possible. He delineates the unwritten (more or less) agreement among all parties in European wars to avoid involving civillians in warfare and gives several interesting historical examples of such behavior. He decribes the restrained, nonvindictive attitude of the victors over the vanquished.
He then spends the rest of the book critisizing the activities of the Allies in WWII.
His complaints center on two main points: the deliberate Allied bombing of civillian, non-military areas of Axis cities, and the Nuremberg trials.
He makes a fairly convincing argument that the Allies were the originators and primary perpetrators of the deliberate bombing of civillians during the war. He is meticulous in his arguments and cites cabinet meeting transcripts, memoirs of those involved in the decision-making, and many other sources to nail down his argument that the British and Americans were the first and the best at killing innocent civilians. One comes away with the feeling that any objective jury would have convicted the leaders of the Allies of war crimes, had such a trial been possible.
His objections to the Nuremburg war trials are not without merit, but are less convincing. He focuses on the trials of those military commanders who were convicted and punished (sometimes by execution) for simply doing their duty for their country in wartime, and he gives several examples of such men. However, he tends to disregard and not mention those Germans who were tried for the establishment of the concentration camps and slaughtering of Jews and other so-called "undesirables".
One comes away from the book with the idea that perhaps WWII was not the "good war" it is so often made out to be, but wondering as well if the author was not a crypto-fascist.