THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP discussion
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2017 - October - Theme Read on book/s covering 1917 (Western Front & the Russian Revolution)
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Kerensky spoke at an "All-Russian Conference" in August 1917:"Rising to the occasion, Kerensky delivered a fiery opening speech. Alluding to the July Days, he vowed that any more Bolshevik putsches 'against the people's government ... will be stopped with iron and blood.' More awkwardly, Kerensky reminded everyone that, as justice minister, he had abolished the death penalty in March, only to bring about its 'partial restoration' as war minister - whereupon he was interrupted by 'boisterous applause.' In a revealing moment, he rebuked the audience, asking, 'Who dares applaud when it is a question of capital punishment? Don't you know that at that moment, at that hour, a part of our human heart was killed?' "
I've started on
The Unreturning Army. It's not what I was planning on for this group read, but it was a gift so it would be rude not to! It's also not solely about 1917, being the author's WW1 experiences told mainly through his letters, but it looks like 90% of it is about 1917. Assuming that's ok, here's the author's letter of commission in the Royal Artillery. Don't think I've ever read one of these..."George, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominion beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, etc.
To our Trusty and well beloved Huntly Strathearn Gordon, Greeting. We, reposing especial Trust and Confidence in your Loyalty, Courage, and good Conduct, do by these Presents Constitute and Appoint you to be an Officer in Our Land Forces from the Sixth day of June, 1917. You are therefore carefully and diligently to discharge your Duty as such in the role of Second Lieutenant or in such higher Rank as We may from time to time hereafter be pleased to promote or appoint you to, of which a notification will be made in the London Gazette, and you are at all times to exercise and well discipline in Arms both the inferior Officers and Men serving under you and use your best endeavours to keep them in good Order and Discipline. And We do hereby Command them to Obey you as their superior Officer, and you to follow and observe such Orders and Directions as from time to time you shall receive from Us, or any other superior Officer, according to the Rules and Discipline of War, in pursuance of the Trust hereby reposed in you.
Given at Our Court, at Saint James's, the First day of June 1917 in the Eighth Year of Our Reign.
By His Majesty's Command."
It looks like it will be a very interesting account Tony and I'm keen to hear more of the book as you go, keep us all posted.
From Sean McMeekin's "The Russian Revolution", in regards to the Russian delegation sent to Brest-Litovsk to negotiate the cease fire:"Everything seemed perfect until Joffe and Kamenev, motoring toward Warsaw Station, realized they did not have a 'representative of the peasantry,' and so plucked 'an old man in a peasant's coat' named Roman Stashkov from a street corner. 'Come to Brest-Litovsk,' Stashkov was told, 'and make peace with the Germans'."
Trotsky negotiating with the Germans at the Brest-Litovsk:"On February 10, Trotsky informed the Germans that, although he could not 'sign a peace of annexation, Russian declares, on its side, the state of war ... as ended.' Rather than sign a punitive peace treaty, the Bolsheviks would simply 'give the order for a general demobilization of all our armies.' The assembled delegates were stunned into silence by this bizarre proposal, until General Hoffmann exclaimed, 'Unerbort!' (Unheard of!). It was likely with this exchange in mind that the American liaison at Brest-Litovsk, Colonel Raymond Robins, called Trotsky 'a four-kind son of a bitch, but the greatest Jew since Jesus'."
From Seen McMeekin's book; The Russian Revolution:"After hearing an alarming report that French and British merchants in Irkutsk were being 'exterminated' by armed Bolsheviks and 'their property destroyed,' the French government mooted a proposal for a multinational force (French, British, American, Japanese, and Chinese) to 'proceed from Manchuria to cut the Trans-Siberian Railway.' So far had Russia fallen that lowly China was now among her oppressors, in a neat reversal of the humiliating 'Eight-Power Expedition' of 1900: China had already sent more than a thousand troops into Siberia."
Another interesting account from Seen McMeekin's book; The Russian Revolution:"Summoning his pride, Trotsky ordered everyone to return to work. Instead, six hundred employees packed up and went home. Employees at the Ministry of Agriculture struck next, followed by those at the Ministries of Education and Food. On November 7, telegraph and telephone workers walked out, followed by transport workers and schoolteachers, and then Moscow municipal workers. On November 8, the “Union of Unions” called a general strike of government employees against Lenin’s power seizure: The Bolsheviks, making use of brute force, have declared themselves at the head of government. Both capitals are reddened with the blood of fratricidal war, the lives and freedom of citizens have been brutally violated, and holy places have been ruined. Now, the Bolsheviks are aiming to get control… of the entire machinery of government… we defy [their] threats, and refuse to offer our experience and knowledge. The world’s first proletarian government was thus forced to devote its primary energies to strikebreaking."
One more quote from my book:"Bolshevik commissars were instructed to record 'the quantities of: foreign valiuta [currency], gold and silver coin and ingots and bars of gold, silver, and platinum, all of which are confiscated and handed over to the State Treasury.' Just in time for Christmas, Lenin’s government had launched the novel policy of mass armed robbery of the citizenry, with the newly formed Cheka providing the muscle. In their first two months in power, the Bolsheviks had not so much won over the Russian people as harassed and bludgeoned them into submission. The November elections had returned a negative verdict.....,"
I found this information in regards to the Red Terror of interest:"Lenin certainly raised no objections to the wave of terror launched on his behalf, which claimed nearly fifteen thousand lives in the first two months alone - nearly twice the total number of prisoners of all kinds executed in the last century of tsarist rule (6,321)."
From
"My particular squad was drilled by Sgt. Wagstaffe of the Grenadiers. God rest his soul! A grey haired man, as stiff as a ramrod, he always appeared to be leaning backwards, as if in recoil from the series of explosions that we came to recognise as his words of command."
That's a great description, thanks for posting that quote from your book Tony!
From the author's letters home, on army organisation.
"July 19th. A/112 Bde R.F.A.
I think I may be going up to the guns for good tomorrow. Certainly there has been more firing since yesterday, and things seem to be boiling up a bit. Meanwhile I can catch up on some of your letters.
You ask about Army organisation. Well, starting at the bottom (where I am) there are 6 guns in a battery, each under a sergeant who has 8 gunners and a lance corporal or bombardier. Each sergeant also has 2 limbered ammunition wagons under him, with a corporal in charge of each. Each wagon and gun is pulled by a 6-horse team, with a driver riding on each near-side horse and controlling the off-side horse as well. When not taking ammunition to the guns these drivers, horses and wagons are stationed in the wagon lines 4 to 6 miles behind the guns (in trench warfare conditions). In open war, they would be conveniently tucked out of behind a nearby wood or hedge perhaps, so as sight to be ready for a quick move.
My section, when I stop being the odd-job boy and get a settled one, will be 2 guns (i.e. 1/3rd of a battery) with 50 or more N.C.O.s, gunners and drivers, and about 50 or 60 horses. Each battery is commanded by a Major, with a captain to help, usually in charge of the wagon-line. So there are 3 subalterns, with perhaps another sub to relieve them at the guns and help the captain at the wagon-lines. As the guns here may be firing anytime during the day or night, they usually work it that 2 only are on duty, while the other 2 are resting, as and when they can. Of the 2 on duty, one sees the guns are being properly laid and fired; and the other is on the end of the telephone issuing instructions, unless it is an automatic shoot, like an attack barrage, where every is an has been prepared beforehand."
Recently Condoleezza Rice wrote a brief article about Russia, more precisely the Soviet Union, in the NY Times. I was pleased to read her laudatory comments on --
The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture by James H. Billington.It is a masterpiece. Billington was educated at Princeton and was a student of Isaiah Berlin at Oxford where he received a doctorate. He was director of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in DC from 1973-87 and served as the Librarian of Congress from 1987-2015. Rice wrote:
The Icon and the Axe is a sweeping, intricate description of Russian cultural history, spanning the pre-Romanov era through six centuries to the reign of Joseph Stalin. Flowing with ease through time and topic — from art to music, literature, philosophy, mythology and more — the book provides readers with an alluring portrayal of Russia’s proud heritage. Its impressive scope and lasting insights have made it a foundational text in Russian studies. In fact, it was this book, more than any other, that captured my imagination and propelled me toward the study of Russia and the Soviet Union.
I couldn't agree more.
Here's the NYT article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/bo...
Hard to find a copy of the book for a reasonable price.
From Seen McMeekin's book on the Russian Revolution:" ... These figures, terrible as they are, paled in comparison to those of the Red Terror of 1918 or the atrocities committed by both sides in the Civil War. In a sense, the looting of the Church had been expected: revolutionaries had always targeted ecclesiastic wealth, from Henry VIII’s going after England’s Catholic monasteries to the French Revolutionaries nationalizing Church property in 1790. But the Bolsheviks were breaking new ground in sacrilege. In May, a looting team invaded the Petropavlovsk Cathedral in Petrograd, where tsars were traditionally buried. They removed the silver coffin of one tsarina, and a pearl necklace from the corpse of Catherine the Great. When the team reached the tomb of Peter the Great, however, even these ruthless Bolsheviks were given a “violent shock” by the sight of his body, which had been so “carefully embalmed” that it looked “as if he had just been placed there.” Unable to rob what appeared to be a living emperor, the looters, it was said, “insisted that the coffin should be closed immediately, and would not allow anything to be taken off his body.”"
Another account from the book in regards to the famine in 1921; "After hiding the truth for weeks, on June 1921, Pravda admitted that about 25 million people were on the brink of starvation, including 7 million children. Even this figure was underplayed, as the Cheka was reporting that 7.5 million faced imminent starvation in Ukraine, making a total of more than 33 million people.""The regime's abandonment of the prodrazverstka in March 1921 was a step in the right direction, but Lenin's truce with the peasants was belied by his reaction to the famine. The regime did spend some money on food imports in May and June, but these were for the cities, and they mostly consisted not of grain and seed, but perishable luxuries such as Persian fruits, Swedish herring (40,000 tons), Finnish salted fish (250 tons), German bacon (7,000 tons), French pig fat and chocolate. As one of Lenin's own purchasing agents later recalled with a shudder, Communist elites in Moscow and Petrograd were consuming 'truffles, pineapples, mandarin oranges, bananas, dried fruits, sardines and lord knows what else' while everywhere else in Russia 'the people were dying of hunger.' Far from easing up on the starving peasants of the Volga basin, on July 30, 1921, Lenin instructed all regional and provincial Party committees to 'bolster the mechanisms for food collection' and to 'provide the food agencies with the necessary party authority and the total power of the state apparatus of coercion'."
More from
, at Passchendaele."July 29th, 1917. D Battery, 112th Brigade R.F.A.
Now we have really belted the daylights out of them. With a continuous roar shells went screaming over our heads and burst in a flashing smoking line barely 200 yards away. Our fire was so accurate, that many of the chaps were getting up on the fire-step and shouting 'That the stuff to give the bastards!' and other quips: I was thrilled, and very proud to be a gunner. The Boche lines more or less disappeared some time ago, and I gather that they are thought to be occupying a line of big shell holes out there. But I doubt if there will be many occupants left by now."
And later...
"1st August, Noon
Before going on duty with the guns last night, I helped to work out revised barrage-lines in readiness for this morning's attack. It was a real shock to discover that our infantry have had to fall back a long way. And now today they are not attacking, but re-grouping; and tomorrow morning we start once more giving them barrage protection for more attacks only a few hundred yards beyond their original front line. There seems to have been a bad hold-up on both sides of the Menin Road, the 8th Div. in Chateau Wood, the 30th in Sanctuary Wood on our right, where many concealed concrete machine-gun posts withstood our bombardment.
Yesterday our barrage, as arranged, advanced to the Black Line (Westhoek Ridge) and beyond, but our infantry did not even take the Blue Line (Bellevaarde Ridge); so they must have lagged more than half a mile behind the barrage and lost all its protection. Their losses must have been very heavy. Last night I had to answer three S.O.S. calls, firing by map reference."
Very interesting to read about Passchendaele from the artillery line, great quotes Tony!
Not that we should celebrate per se, but today is "the" 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, with the storming of the Winter Palace... as a negative example, it proves the value of democracy, free trade and social security. The communist strength of centralized organisation was also invaluable in the fight against Nazism.
Dimitri, who is that behind Vladimir Illich in that illustration? Stalin, Trotsky and Dzerzhinsky?
Gregg wrote: "Dimitri, who is that behind Vladimir Illich in that illustration? Stalin, Trotsky and Dzerzhinsky?"That is the original version of Serov's painting "Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power in Smolny Palace, Petrograd, 1917" from 1947. Behind Lenin are Stalin, Dzerzhinsky and Yakov Sverdlov. In 1947 Trotsky would not have been in such a work. The painting was "sanitized" after Stalin's death to this version with Lenin speaking in front of soldiers and workers:
http://www.artrusse.uk/collection/art...
More from Passchendaele.
"September 11th, 3 p.m. On the Westhoek Ridge
We started off up the embankment of the Ypres-Roulers Railway. About a quarter of a mile in front of the battery we came to what had been the Boche Front Line before the push.
What a place! It was quite impossible to trace anything that had been a trench for more than a yard or two. The whole ground was a wilderness of overlapping shell-craters - A/112's shell craters. I viewed them with professional pride, and awe, thankful to have been at the dispatching end.
We ploughed our way slowly along the line of the rail way. All that remained of the rails was a number of broken fragments, some of which had been blown fifty yards or so from the track. A little further on we passed a crater big enough to take a good-sized house below ground level - an exploded underground dump perhaps. It was full of water, green from gas and putrefaction. Most of our dead had been buried, but here and there the churned-up ground there stuck out the arms or legs from submerged bodies. Most uncanny it was, without a sign of life anywhere. Stakes, wire, sandbags, concrete blocks, Boche helmets and boots (quite a number still occupied), discarded rifles and equipment, trench mortars, boxes of bombs - everything one could possibly imagine, all in the most fantastic jumble and confusion, stretching away as far as one could see both to right and to left. Eight of our tanks sat there, hopelessly bogged down, derelict and obviously there for the duration. But we did not linger as random shells were beginning to fall, and the smell was pretty sickening, even now that one is used to it."
Great account Tony, thanks for posting the details.
I've never heard of this before!"The most interesting thing to be seen from here is a certain tree-stump about ten feet high with several others just behind our front line. The first thing one notices is that it has quite a few bullet in it, yet the wood shows no sign of splitting. Closer inspection reveals a small door in the back of it, invisible to the Boche. It is in fact a steel reproduction, which has been substituted for the real tree-trunk, of which it is an exact copy. In it a man, arriving and leaving under cover of dark, might sit all day unseen within forty yards of the enemy front-line trench. What fun for him!"
I've seen photographs of a fake tree stump, used by artillery spotters and such like:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel...
I'm starting 
For once I'll start the theme read BEFORE the end of the month :)
Good to see Happy :)
happy wrote: "I'm starting For once I'll start the theme read BEFORE the end of the month :)"
Oh come on happy, where is the fun in that?
I thought it was before the BEGINNING of the month... ;-)btw - is there a theme for November yet?
Each theme starts at the beginning of the month and is open for the whole month (normally). We only have a theme read every second month to allow group members to have a break or to get involved in another groups activities.
Oh, I presumed you had monthly themes in the group. So the months in between is "anything goes" type of reading? Kind of like hanging out talking about whatever book that caught one's interest?
Haaze wrote: "Oh, I presumed you had monthly themes in the group. So the months in between is "anything goes" type of reading? Kind of like hanging out talking about whatever book that caught one's interest?"That's about right Haaze, its pretty relaxed in this group however if anyone ever wants to have a group 'buddy' read on a particular book or a theme read on a particular subject I am happy to open up a thread for people to use and if I can join in I will but also happy to leave it up to folks to conduct their own book discussion.
Ok, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks Rick! I'm so used to rigorous reading schedules in the GR groups. :)
If you are ever interested in organising a buddy read within the group just start a conversation up in this thread and we can see how it goes:https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "I've seen photographs of a fake tree stump, used by artillery spotters and such like:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel..."
Cheers Rick.
One last quote from
. No wonder casualty levels were so high amongst officers!"Major Jones took me and a couple of signallers forward to deal with that gun, on the way we called in at a company at a farm just behind Meteren. The infantry were there, deepening a ditch along hedgerow to form a trench. The company commander told our us that the village was effectively in no-man's-land. He, our major and myself walked into the kitchen garden to discuss how best to get at this gun. We must have been under direct observation, because a Hun sniper opened up on us. I would have liked to take cover, which seems sensible when some one is aiming at you, but the company commander probably wanted to impress his men, and as he wouldn't take cover, neither would Major Jones. The position was ridiculous. The Hun fired and fired, and missed and missed, while we stood on the path remarking on the excellence of the cabbages, each inwardly vowing that he would not be the one to suggest a move! Eventually however, honour was satisfied, and Major Jones and I left our signallers under cover, and went forward to find an O.P. in the village."
Tony wrote: "One last quote from . No wonder casualty levels were so high amongst officers!"Major Jones took me and a couple of signallers forward to deal with that gu..."
Remarkable brave but a tad stupid!
Finished Cheerful Sacrifice: The Battle of Arras 1917Good read - the author makes good use of first person accounts from both sides and is very complimentary of the British planning, esp Allanby's 3rd Army, leading up to the battle and the results of the first couple of days fighting.
He even excuses to some extent the follow-on disasters, blaming them on poor communication technology and political pressure - Haig was under a lot of pressure to continue the offensive even after he wanted to bring it to a halt, to prevent the Germans for tripping over the fact that the French Army had mutinied and was really unfit for combat.
One fact he brings out is that on a per day basis, Arras was the most costly British offensive of the war with a touch more than 4000 casualties pre day. The Somme averaged just under 3000 per day. Of course Arras was just 39 days and the Somme over 140 so...
Solid 4 stars
I️ just saw the fake tree pic posted! I️ never knew anything about this how interesting. Thanks for posting links
Deborah wrote: "I️ just saw the fake tree pic posted! I️ never knew anything about this how interesting. Thanks for posting links"Glad you found that information interesting Deborah.
THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP
Books mentioned in this topic
Cheerful Sacrifice (other topics)The Unreturning Army (other topics)
The Unreturning Army (other topics)
Cheerful Sacrifice (other topics)
Cheerful Sacrifice (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Nick Lloyd (other topics)David Stevenson (other topics)
Sean McMeekin (other topics)
Nick Lloyd (other topics)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/bat...
A list of men who were awarded the VC for actions at Passchendaele:
https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/c...