Wholesome History Reads Group discussion
War Books
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Second World War Books
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Snow and Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45 by Peter Caddick-Adams
I've just finished 'A Woman of No Importance', the story of Virginia Hall, an SOE and OSS heroine in WW2 France.
.It was very positively reviewed in newspapers, including an Economist review 'to die for'. I was less impressed. She was an amazing woman and I would not wish to play down her remarkable and courageous achievements, but one gets the impression that the French Resistance, other undercover agents and the Allied forces were bit players in her triumph over the Nazis. Nevertheless, a good read.
I've just finished the newly published 'A Schoolmaster's War', by the late Harry Rée and edited by his son. I've written about Harry myself, but this book is an unusual collection of short pieces by him about his experience after being parachuted into France . A thoughtful and moving book that I recommend.My review is at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
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Nice review Peter, thanks for mentioning this book as I sure it will interest a number of group members.
A Schoolmaster's War: A British Secret Agent in World War II by Jonathan Rée
Thanks for adding the cover/link, Rick. I did the post in a rush last night and forgot!
The men of the Black Watch of Canada have a less than overwhelming first encounter with the German armed forces:"The scout platoon crossed paths with another batch of prisoners of war marching under armed guard, making for the enclosures on the beach as they neared the bivouac point. To Hook Wilkinson, his first glimpse of Nazi prisoners left him with the impression that a whole generation of German manhood had gone missing. The “rabble on display” included only the very young or the very old, with most over forty or under eighteen, and as Hook related, “some looked much younger as most couldn’t even shave.”
Brunner, eavesdropping on snippets of their conversations, chuckled at the wild speculation concerning their impending fate. Many wondered if they’d end up in England, Scotland or the United States, while others, seeing the Canadians march past, feared they would end up in the Siberia- like “gulag” system in northern Canada that Nazi propaganda had invented and taught them to dread.
The other thing that surprised Brunner was just how few of these men spoke proper German, as a sizable portion hailed from the conquered regions of eastern Europe and Russia. These Ostfront soldiers, men captured by the Nazis who then either volunteered or were pressed into battle, all wore Wehrmacht uniforms but spoke regional dialects endemic to Poland, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia or the Baltic states. At one point, Hook noticed a small group of Mongolians and Koreans whom the less- than- worldly men around him collectively referred to as “Japs.” All of them, in Hook’s assessment, “were weedy specimens,” evidence no doubt that Hitler had failed in his crusade to produce anything close to his vaunted “master race.” Then the Hitler Youth prisoners appeared.
Striding past the Black Watch columns, these tall, blond, sinewy teenagers, who had survived the nasty fighting for the battered and blackened Carpiquet airfield outside Caen, wore the distinctive pea- dot camouflage smocks with Hitlerjugend embroidered on their cuffs. Members of the fanatical 12th SS Panzer Division, each of these teenagers remained thoroughly committed to Nazi doctrine despite their recent defeat and impending incarceration.
Mere infants when Hitler took power in 1932, they grew up fully immersed in Nazi racial ideology and the bravado of Hitler’s triumphs, and above all, they oozed a genocidal self- righteousness that manifested itself in the murder of nearly two hundred Canadian and British prisoners in the days immediately following the invasion. As one war correspondent later opined, “They were poured into that mould at the age of six and removed from it as perfect Nazis when they were sixteen. As the finest flower of the Hitlerian experimentation, much superior to the non- conditioned Nazis, their cold, cruel mind does not recognize the difference between war and murder.” Led by hard- bitten veteran officers and NCOs transferred from the 1st SS Leibstandarte Division (Hitler’s bodyguard) fresh from the Russian front, where laws of war had no place and execution of prisoners was commonplace, their adolescent fanaticism meshed readily with their mentor’s murderous intent."
Seven Days in Hell: Canada's Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers
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Blood and Honor: The History of the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth," 1943-1945 by Craig W.H. LutherSlightly, but only slightly off topic, have you seen the movie "Jojo Rabbit"? I quite enjoyed it, a good laugh at a serious subject.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2584384/...
I've heard the "imaginary Hitler" sequences are very funny. I'll have to check it out when I get a chance.
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It seems the Canadians had a really dim view of the Hitlerjugend Division in Normandy, Rick;"Rumours had swirled for weeks about the criminal activities of the SS in general and the fanatical Hitlerjugend, who had murdered Canadian and British captives in the days following the invasion, in particular.
In one case, they bayonetted wounded prisoners, including a padre, while in another they lined up a group against a wall at a nearby château, shot them down, dragged their bodies into the road and ground them into a fine pulp with the tracks of their tanks. Another report told of three dozen captives murdered on the Caen– Bayeux road when a section from the Hitlerjugend advanced in a skirmish line from behind with Schmeisser submachine guns blazing. In all, close to two hundred British and Canadian prisoners died at the hands of the 12th SS in the days following the invasion, including twenty either bludgeoned to death or shot in the head with a pistol on the abbey grounds.
No doubt the nascent nature of the invasion, which hung in the balance in the first forty- eight hours, encouraged the SS to act out. Planning to drive the Allies back into the sea, they never expected their crimes to come to light. But as the Allies gained a foothold and slowly and painfully expanded it, they overran the murder sites and ironclad evidence appeared that got the blood up within Canadian ranks. What enraged the Canadians was that none of these murders took the form of “heat of battle” killings where men let boiling tempers and a rush of adrenalin and blood lust get the better of them, something both sides engaged in. These were unarmed prisoners of war in German hands for hours or days, and as such warranted the full protection from harm under the provisions of the Geneva Conventions. Instead, the SS seized their papers, subjected them to brutal interrogation and then shot or clubbed them to death in cold blood.
According to Robert Rogge, an American from Glen Osborne, Pennsylvania, who joined the Black Watch in the summer of 1941 but later transferred to the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders and landed on Juno Beach on D- Day, his intimate experience in combat against these teenagers left him unequivocal. “The SS . . . were unmitigated bastards in every sense of the word. They were all psychopaths, totally imbued with the filthy Nazi credo and remorseless killers of both prisoners and wounded. They were hated by their Wehrmacht almost as much as by us— and all allied troops. The ordinary Jerry would fight one Hell of a battle, but if all were lost, he would surrender, or retreat. Not the SS. They fought to the death— and so they were killed, as they deserved.”
The legacy of the SS, and particularly the Hitlerjugend division the Canadians dubbed the “Murder Division,” led officers like B Company second- in- command Captain John Taylor (one of the only Black Watch officers to have seen previous combat) to use their actions in his carefully crafted “hate talks” designed to whip up the killer instinct in his men. Stopping short of murder, he eschewed the taking of SS prisoners, and when they did, he advocated holding them to the lowest threshold possible. As one of his sergeants eagerly boasted, “They know what they get if they make a wrong move!”
Excellent book so far; I'd go so far as to suggest up there with Middlebrook as an examination of a single engagement.
Seven Days in Hell: Canada's Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers
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"Rumours had swirled for weeks about the criminal activities of the SS in general and the fanatical Hit..."
Really sounds like I will have to make room for this book sooner than I planned. Great post Jonny and there is no denying that the 12th SS were a bunch of fanatics.
Finished up Seven Days in Hell: Canada's Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers and managed to get sums thoughts down here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
And you can get some spoilers from my highlights here, if you're so inclined:
https://www.goodreads.com/notes/49755...
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Hello all,Lockdown has helped me focus on my second book about the Special Operations Executive: the story of Massingham, SOE's secret Mediterranean base. Self-isolation made me get my head down in the books and files. It can still be improved, but I wonder if members might be interested in getting an Advance Review Copy.
I've had lots of help from 'beta-readers', finding embarrassing typos such as the 'Phoney War of 1039-40'. Not many people knew that sort of thing happened in the eleventh century!
Massingham was formed by SOE to spearhead subversion and sabotage in what Winston Churchill called ‘the soft underbelly’ of Europe. Although hundreds of books have been written about SOE, I don't think any have this focus. The book will be published in mid-July, but the Kindle version is available now for pre-order at a special launch price.
I won't put in the link, but if anyone would like to download an ARC, send me a direct message with an email address and I'll send you a personal invitation. Or if that's too complicated, the inexpensive pre-order is there for your convenience. Thank you!
I've finished off the excellent The Ghosts of Roebuck Bay; it's an excellent book telling the story of the second most deadly air attack on Australia in the war. It's a little harrowing at times, but an excellent example of how the little story is really big. My review:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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I'm nearly halfway through The Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission: The American Raids on 17 August 1943 at the moment; I've noted two passages highlighting exactly why I hold Mr Middlebrook in such high regard as a historian; the first the preface to the attacks on the force targeting the Messerschmitt factory at Regensburg:"The next set of quotations are from men who were in some of the B-17s being shot down in this furious battle. They show a good deal of steadfast devotion to duty, but there was also some understandable human frailty and a few of the survivors would live the rest of their lives bearing bitterness or embarrassment at what they saw as failings in fellow crew members or at their own lapses under that terrible pressure of danger. Those who have not looked death in the face should never condemn the occasional flash of panic in such cases."
and this lead in to the massacre of the Schweinfurt force:
"The practical difficulties of describing such an encounter are many. So far in this book it has been possible to break down action into individual events and to identify the units and even the individuals who were involved on both sides. The experiences of the Schweinfurt-bound bomber force from Eupen onwards were so hectic, however, that such identifications will rarely be possible. Furthermore, no written description can adequately convey the nature of the experiences of the men in those planes. This shortcoming may be partly remedied by the use of direct quotations from many of the men involved, but these men were the survivors, talking or writing more than thirty years later, far removed from those moments when they were, quite literally, staring death in the face. Readers who have experienced these or similar events will know exactly what it was like. Those, like myself, who have never faced such situations, will never know. The final shortcoming of a written account is that the terror and agony of the men who died can never be reported."
The Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission: The American Raids on 17 August 1943
And after that, I couldn't not include the story of one Fortress in the Regensburg force:"Second Lieutenant Mike Doroski was the co-pilot in Second Lieutenant Hummel’s crew, 100th Bomb Group.
It was definitely a new unit of 109s which got us. They had gone out to the front and carried out a classic frontal attack, level, and they started at the bottom. We were tail-end Charlie in the low squadron, the lowest element in the group.
I had been trained as a fighter pilot and I watched them coming in. I knew they were aiming at us. I watched them carefully and knew at what stage I would have opened fire if I had been that fighter pilot. I shouted out to Tom Hummel to pull up at that moment to spoil the German’s aim – to give him a more difficult angle. I feel very strongly that we would never have been shot down on that first pass if we had done that but Hummel didn’t respond; he just froze and it was too late. The nose and wings of the German fighter aiming at us were lit up like Christmas trees twinkling with light. At that split second we were hit. The Number 2 prop dome was hit and the feathering mechanism damaged. The blades were no longer under control. We fell right back.
The second attack was left frontal and it hit the Tokyo tank in the left wing tip; it caught fire and the bale-out order was given. There were further attacks before we could go and one cannon shell entered the right-hand side of the cockpit just below the window. I was leaning forward, trying to feather the engine that had been hit, and I think that shell just missed me. It had passed through my back-pack parachute.
I tried to alert the top turret gunner to bale out. He was slumped forward; I thought he was leaning forward to detach his oxygen bottle and would follow me, but now I think that the shell which just missed me had hit him. Later, I found the left leg of my flight suit was covered in his blood.
The cannon shell which had passed through Doroski’s parachute pack had so damaged it that he came down too fast and received crippling injuries to his hip and spine.
Staff Sergeant Gordon Williams was the ball-turret gunner in the same crew.
We were hit in the nose early and I heard the bombardier saying to the navigator, ‘I can’t get the guts in.’ I thought he’d been shot in the stomach and I thought, ‘Aw jeez; that’s one less person on the guns.’ But he was the first person I met when I landed by parachute later and I found out that it had been his gun that had been in trouble.
I thought we were doing real well after that but they had been hitting us a lot more than I realized. I looked around and saw one of the elevators was full of holes and they told me the waist area was pretty badly shot up too. I was nearly out of ammunition by then. I could see that one of my guns only had twenty rounds or so and the other gun only had a few more. I was figuring on going back and fetching some more but then we were hit hard again.
Things happened fast after that. The engine which had been hit was the big thing; a good big sheet of flame started coming back past me. I was so close that I felt it was heating up my turret but that might have been imagination. Then the pilot peeled out of formation in case we blew up and took the others with us. Then the oxygen started burning and we got the bale-out order.
Three of us in the waist – myself, the left waist gunner and the radio man – were preparing to bale out when the oxygen exploded and blew us out but the other waist gunner was still at his gun —he was that kind of guy. We used to go out drinking a little and, when he’d had a few drinks and his inhibitions were lowered, he used to say that the rest of us would make it but he wasn’t going to. He had been a good friend."
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Perfectly highlights why Martin Middlebrook is highly regarded by many who read his books. I think I have read nearly every one of his military history books. His account of the Somme was the first book of his that got me started.
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"Second Lieutenant Mike Doroski was the co-pilot in Second Lieutenant Hummel’s crew, 100th Bomb Group.
I..."
Great stories Jonny, thanks for sharing the accounts from the book.
To mark the eightieth anniversary of the "Finest Hour" I'm reading a few appropriately themed books. I've just finished Leo McKinstry's "biography"
Hurricane: Victor Of The Battle Of Britainfor which I'll post a review in due course (although in short, it'd have to be pretty awful for me not to have given it glowing reference) and I'm now going to start on Kristen Alexander's
Australia’s Few and the Battle of Britain
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Another little story about the Fortresses:'From June 1944, the Germans were in retreat and the Allies had achieved air supremacy over France. It became possible to schedule drops of weapons and stores by large formations of American aircraft in daylight. An unverified tale, recounted at an Imperial War Museum conference, describes a formation of USAAF Flying Fortresses that dropped some 300 containers of arms and other supplies to an SOE circuit in the Jura. An extra aircraft joined the tail end of the formation. The Standard Operating Procedure if a bomber became detached from its formation was to join any formation the crew spotted and bomb its target. Fortunately, the crew noticed in time that the aircraft ahead were dropping parachutes and desisted from bombing the drop zone.'
(From my 'Guardians of Churchill's Secret Army', p.122. The story was recounted, I think by SOE historian MRD Foot, at an IWM conference on 27 October 1998).
I've finally put up my review for
Hurricane: Victor Of The Battle Of Britainhttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
And my highlighted notes here
https://www.goodreads.com/notes/21248...
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I wrapped up Australia’s Few and the Battle of Britain a week ago - and finally got my thoughts down in writing here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I'm like British Rail, I get there eventually! A few thoughts on Sinclair McKay's Dresden: The Fire and the Darkness here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
And my Kindle notes, if they're any help:
https://www.goodreads.com/notes/51008...
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I made a start on Ben H. Shepherd's Hitler's Soldiers: The German Army in the Third Reich at the weekend; so far I've it as far as the fall of France. It's excellent stuff, short punchy chapters which make their point, and he certainly knows his stuff. No holds barred either; he's not shy of calling a spade a spade either.
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Glad to hear you are enjoying the book Jonny, keep us all posted on your progress.
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"Aware that the wheels of diplomacy require frequent lubrication, they also shipped an ocean of alcohol including a thousand bottles of whiskey and gin. Churchill recommended whiskey as a salve for everything: 'Good for typhus,' he said, 'and deadly on lice'."
And;
"Roosevelt led Stalin into his red velvet–lined study and made a pitcher of dry martinis, a ritual he often performed at the White House. As he passed a cocktail to Stalin, “he said apologetically that a good martini should really have a twist of lemon.” Stalin said nothing, but the next day a huge lemon tree was flown in from Georgia, its branches laden with two hundred ripe lemons."
The Yalta Conference:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs...
Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World by Giles Milton
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"Hinde was offered the Berlin appointment in the aftermath of the battle for Normandy in the belief that he had all the necessary qualities: “Dash, decisiveness, wisdom, supreme courage and deep responsibility.” He also had a deliciously whimsical streak that had earned him his nickname, “Looney,” along with an insatiable passion for butterflies. “Anyone got a matchbox?” he asked during a battlefield briefing in Normandy, having just spied a rare species of caterpillar. His stressed junior officer snapped that it was no time to be studying nature. “Don’t be such a bloody fool, Mike,” said Looney. “You can fight a battle everyday of your life, but you might not see a caterpillar like that in fifteen years.”"
Brigadier Robert 'Looney' Hinde:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
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"Ulbricht had the dogmatic asceticism of a desert monastic. He didn’t drink, didn’t socialize, didn’t eat meat or fish. His mealtime preference was for raw vegetables, a dietary regime that even his most diehard comrades found hard to stomach. According to one, “he never gave cocktail parties, never had affairs and even gave up smoking as a drain on his revolutionary activities.” When he spoke, he did so in a curiously high-pitched voice, dispensing revolutionary wisdom in his singsong Saxon dialect. His judgment was final and irrevocable. “He has the last word always, interrupting everybody [and] heckling speakers he dislikes.” He was the prototype for so many future leaders of Eastern Europe: grim, ashen-faced, and entirely devoid of humor."
Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World by Giles Milton
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By the last week of April, Berlin had ceased to function. There was no government, no electricity, no transport, and precious little gas. Essential supplies had run out long before. In the Schneider cellar, they had no more toilet paper—a serious sanitary problem given that everyone had dysentery. They resorted to using pages ripped from Nietzsche and Shakespeare. “When a culture ends up in the shit,” remarked one of those living there, “a people is finished.”
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By that first week of June, postwar Berlin even had its first newspaper, Die Tägliche Rundschau (The Daily Review). Berliners immediately dubbed it Die Klagliche Rundschau (The Pitiable Review) because it was filled with Soviet propaganda. In the inaugural issue, there was a personal message from Stalin to the inhabitants of Berlin, thanking them “for their generous gifts” to his soldiers. It was a bitterly ironic message for all who had been robbed and raped.
Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World by Giles Milton
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"The private plunder he sent back to Russia was on such an eye-watering scale that it did not go unnoticed. The first hint of trouble came when a train heading from Berlin to Odessa was stopped, searched, and found to contain eighty-five crates of furniture, all of it being sent to Zhukov’s home address. This news was forwarded to Stalin, who ordered an undercover search of Zhukov’s Moscow apartment and his dacha in nearby Rublevo. The search was conducted by Viktor Abakumov, head of state security, who was shocked when he forced an entry into Zhukov’s dacha. In the dimly lit interior, the bolts of rich cloths and damasks looked like the ill-gotten booty from the hold of a Spanish argosy. Silks, brocades, and sables were piled to the ceiling. There were priceless tapestries and carpets from the Potsdam palaces (forty-four in total) along with classical paintings, porcelain tableware, Holland and Holland hunting rifles, and silverware. “Not a single thing of Soviet origin,” Abakumov’s official report noted. But the loot stored in the dacha was, in the words of that report, just “a drop in the ocean.” Hundreds more treasures were found in Zhukov’s Moscow apartment: fob watches, cigarette cases, and pendants, all of gold, along with diamonds and precious chains."
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"For a fortunate few, the indiscriminate looting brought unexpected windfalls. In Potsdam, Valerie Hoecke was informed by a neighbour that someone, probably a Soviet looter, 'had dumped what looked like an entire library on the side of the gravel road leading to the Alexandrowka Colony'. The neighbour suggested that the books 'could be used as fuel for the stove'. When frau Hoecke went to investigate, she found them to be valuable, with bookplates that indicated that they had once belonged to the illustrious Von Jagow family. She sent her children out to collect them and they spent much of that afternoon carting them home. The haul included complete sets of Voltaire and Rousseau, the collected works of Dostoevsky and volumes on ancient Greece and Rome."
Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World by Giles Milton
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"In this frantic bout of pillaging there were inevitable tragedies and the most terrible of these occurred on 5 May when a fire broke out in the Friedrichshain Flakturm. The Soviets claimed it was an act of arson undertaken by fanatical SS officers, while others said it was started by thieves carrying flaming torches into the gloomy interior. Whatever the truth, the resulting inferno consumed many of the greatest treasures of western civilisation: canvasses by Fra Angelico, Rubens and Reynolds, as well as tens of thousands of antiquities."
Friedrichshain flak tower fire:
https://www.nga.gov/research/library/...
Had to smile at this one; seems that a few people had the measure of Winston when Chamberlain brings him back into government in 1937:When Chamberlain came to construct his Cabinet, Margesson suggested that it might be a good idea to find a ministerial place for Churchill. The new prime minister quickly dismissed the idea. He was too busy to go to the coronation fleet review, but he noted with amusement that his wife, Annie, who went in his stead, had been ‘fortunate in finding Winston’, who proved only too ‘delighted to show her how admirably he would fill the office’ of first lord of the admiralty by talking her through the ships on display. Chamberlain, however, had no intention of offering a ministerial position to a potential rival of unpredictable temperament, dubious loyalty and proven poor judgement. As he told his new secretary of state for war, Leslie Hore- Belisha, when the latter canvassed Churchill’s inclusion, ‘He won’t give the others a chance of even talking.’
Britain's War: Into Battle, 1937-1941
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"Those early sessions were dominated by the problem of feeding Berlin's inhabitants. All agreed that the neediest should get the most calories, but there was no consensus over who was most in need. The Soviets said it was the professional classes, including political leaders, while Howley insisted in was the elderly and infirm. Turning to his Soviet counterpart, he said: 'You can't kick a lady when she's down.' The Russian flashed him an indulgent smile. 'Why my dead Colonel Howley,' he replied, 'that is exactly the best time to kick them'."
Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World by Giles Milton
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"That hoped-for confidence was undermined by his awareness that he was an anomaly in the American army, a senior general who had never done any fighting. One colleague snorted that Clay had 'never commanded anything with more firepower than a desk.' This was true but unfair: his expertise lay in logistics and supply. He was an organiser par excellence who had been in charge of American military procurement since 1942. Although the job lacked the guts of combat, it was of vital importance to the war effort. For three long years of war, Clay had kept millions of soldiers supplied with everything they needed. The experience would stand him in good stead for Berlin.
'The most able fellow around this town'—such was the opinion of the Washington-based Henry Morgenthau when he was secretary of the treasury. Clay also had a streak of ruthlessness that led American newspapers to view his German assignment with glee. '[It] served the Germans right for losing the war,' gloated the Baltimore Sun."
General Lucius Clay:
https://www.army.mil/article/216006/g...
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h17...
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"Churchill was in ebullient form during the voyage, drinking five large Scotches before the onboard dinner and reciting anecdotes about his youthful skirmishes against the Boers in the parched backlands of Natal. The two protagonists got along famously and agreed to call each other 'Winston' and 'Harry'; they played poker into the late hours and watched the darkening plains unfurl into the endless horizons of Indiana and Illinois. At one point, Churchill put down his cards and gushingly expressed his desire to live in the United States, although he swiftly added that he deplored some of its more recent customs. When Truman inquired as to which customs he had in mind, Churchill said, 'You stopped drinking with your meals'."
And;
"The first stir of that historic day was caused by Churchill himself, and within minutes of his arriving in Fulton. '[His] desire for liquid refreshment became something of a problem, [for] Fulton was a dry town.' So wrote the young Margaret Truman, who was astonished by Churchill's capacity for alcohol. After a frantic search, General Vaughan managed to find both liquor and ice for the insatiable Winston. 'Well, General,' joshed Churchill as he poured himself a generous sharpener, 'I am glad to see you. I didn't know whether I was in Fulton Missouri or Fulton Sahara'."
Winston Churchill's visit to Fulton and his famous speech:
https://missourilife.com/winston-chur...
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"There were the occasional light-hearted moments, yet even these were fraught with tension. On one occasion, Brigadier Hinde invited everyone to accompany him on a wild boar hunt in Spandau forest, an invitation that was eagerly accepted. Howley and Hinde came equipped with hunting rifles and were aghast to discover that Kotikov and his men had come armed with submachine guns. As a troop of boar crashed out of the undergrowth, the Russians opened up with everything they had.
'I hit the dust,' recalled Howley as he found himself caught in a maelstrom of Soviet bullets. Hinde's British party also fell to the ground, 'frantically burying their heads in leaves to escape the Russian fusillade'. When they eventually looked up, the ground was covered with dead boar. 'It was practically the second Battle of Berlin,' said Howley, who noted that Kotikov's deputy had killed five of the animals and wounded many more. The British were left speechless by the lack of fair play. 'The blighters!' fumed one as he went over to examine the massacre."
Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World by Giles Milton
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"Operation Osoaviakhim saw the rounding up of 1,900 German scientists living in Soviet-occupied Germany, along with a further four hundred from Berlin itself. There were so many of them, and their laboratory equipment was so cumbersome, that it required the use of seven hundred railway carriages."
Operation Osoaviakhim:
https://walled-in-berlin.com/tag/oper...
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/a4_tea...
Britain's War: Into Battle, 1937-1941; not yet 'Bomber', but Arthur Harris seems to have been pretty belligerent even in the autumn of 1940:Meeting the vice chief of the air staff, Arthur Harris, at the height of the Blitz, the American airman General ‘Hap’ Arnold remarked that the British people didn’t seem to know they’d lost the war. Harris replied: ‘Good God no. We haven’t started the ruddy war yet.’
I'm about a week and 200 or so pages through Peter Caddick-Adams 'everything you need to know about D-Day, even the stuff you never thought you needed to think about' Sand & Steel: A New History of D-Day. As other members have said, it's excellent stuff, with the first two hundred or so pages covering mainly the American occupation of Britain and some planning. 
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Really glad to hear you are enjoying the book Jonny. He really goes into some detail and none of it is boring.
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Eight Hundred Heroes: China's Lost Battalion and the Fall of Shanghai by Stephen RobinsonDescription:
Acclaimed historian Stephen Robinson brings to life a legendary last stand.
Shanghai 1937. With invading Japanese troops poised to capture one of the world’s greatest cities after almost three months of brutal urban warfare, the Chinese Army begins to retreat – except for a single battalion that stays behind to fight. These soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Xie Jinyuan, known as the ‘Eight Hundred Heroes’, defended Sihang Warehouse – a six-storey concrete building and natural fortress. The men repulsed waves of Japanese attacks with intense bravery as thousands of spectators looked on from the relative safety of the British Concession inside Shanghai’s International Settlement. Western journalists with front row seats to the spectacle spread the story across the globe as the plight of the heroes captured the sympathy of the world. Their valour raised Chinese morale as did the actions of the heroine Yang Huimin, a Girl Guide who delivered a Chinese flag to the defenders that flew over Sihang Warehouse as a beacon of hope.
Eight Hundred Heroes is an in-depth account, resulting from extensive research that for the first time comprehensively utilises first-hand accounts of the Chinese participants and the observations of westerners who witnessed the battle at close range. It also explains how this incredible feat of heroism became an enduring myth that helped define modern China.
There is also a movie on this battle titled; "The 800 Hundred":
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7294150/...
Wholesome History Reads Group
Books mentioned in this topic
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They Have Their Exits: The Best-Selling Escape Memoir of World War Two (other topics)
Saturday at M.I.9: The Classic Account of the WW2 Allied Escape Organisation (other topics)
The Real Cruel Sea: The Merchant Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic, 1939–1943 (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Kristen Alexander (other topics)James M. Scott (other topics)
James M. Scott (other topics)
James M. Scott (other topics)
James M. Scott (other topics)
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This is superb read, maybe the single best look at D-Day that I've read. I highly recommend it. My thoughts if anyone is interested
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...