Southern Victory

 I had written about this awhile ago, so long ago that the blog didn’t survive to the current platform, Blogger.  So I can revisit it without repeating myself.

 As most of us know, the US Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865, ending in a Union victory, which is why there is no Confederate States of America today.  Living in Northern Virginia, I have occasion to travel to DC and Maryland and back fairly often, and never cross a border doing so.  Though the events of January 6 suggest that some people, a very militant but clueless minority, are threatening to repeat the same idiocy a second time.

 Naturally, some authors have written fiction – alternate history – in which different things happen.

 Newt Gingrich, the infamous former Republican politician from Jawja, wrote a trilogy of books which speculates what might have happened if Lee didn’t engage Union forces at Gettysburg in July 1863 but simply continued further through Pennsylvania.  This is Gettysburg, Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat.  Worth reading once but not much more compelling than that.

 A science fiction writer who seems to specialize in alternate history, Harry Turtledove, has a standalone book, Guns of the South.  In this story, white supremacists from South Africa somehow managed to develop time travel, return to the US Civil War, and equip the Confederate forces with AK47s, which the Confederates refer to as “repeaters”.  Needless to say the Union forces, using muzzle-loading black powder Colt 1861 rifles, can’t compete, and the South wins the war and continues as a separate country.  Later, the Confederates and the South Africans bump ugly against each other, among other things Robert E. Lee takes over as President from Jefferson Davis, the South Africans’ time machine is destroyed, and the Confederates attempt to keep some of the technology brought by the South Africans – including the nitroglycerine pills that treat Lee’s heart condition.  Anyhow.  If time travel was ever invented, I doubt it would be the South Africans who do it.

 Turtledove followed this fairly implausible scenario with a much better one not requiring time travel – and which wound up being 11 books in total, referred to as the Southern Victory or Timeline 191 series.  In real life, Britain and France sat out the Civil War and remained neutral.  In 1862, McClellan managed to acquire Lee’s battle plans, dropped on the ground by mistake by a Confederate courier, and matched Lee to a draw at Antietam.  This battle persuaded Britain and France to remain neutral throughout the entire war, and the US won.

 In this timeline, the courier retrieved the plans, Lee defeated McClellan decisively at Camp Hill, and the British and French finally decided to actively support the Confederates.   Lincoln was forced to agree to an armistice, and the Confederates won, surviving to be a separate country.  Fast forward to 1881, the US President is James G. Blaine (actual secretary of state to James Garfield and Chester Alan Arthur), the Confederate president is James Longstreet.  The Confederates, having already acquired Cuba and Haiti, now purchase Sonora and Chihuahua states from a cash-strapped and desperate Mexican government  These are Mexico’s northernmost states, which border Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and have a Pacific coast port at Guaymas.  Blaine attacks in Kentucky, but that invasion from Ohio goes nowhere.  The British and French harass the US, which only gets a minor victory in Montana.  Most of the characters are historical:  General Custer, Theodore Roosevelt, Samuel Clemens, Longstreet & Stonewall Jackson, Frederick Douglass, Schlieffen (the German architect of the famous WWI plan to attack France, a German advisor to the US here) and Lincoln, who survived the Civil War and is now a Marxist, succeeding at bleeding off enough Republicans to make the Socialist Party a strong competitor to the Democrats, likewise dooming the Republicans to a marginal third party.   The Civil War is called the War of Secession, whereas the 1881-82 war is called the Second Mexican War.  This first book, which sets everything up, is How Few Remain.

 There is a WWI series:  Great War: American Front, Great War: Walk In Hell; and Great War: Breakthroughs.  There is an interwar series:  American Empire: Blood & Iron; American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold; and American Empire: Victorious Opposition.  Finally, the WWII series:  Settling Accounts: Return Engagement; Settling Accounts: The Grapple; Settling Accounts: Drive to the East; and finally Settling Accounts: In At The Death.

 Historical Characters:  Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Count von Schlieffen, George Custer, Longstreet & Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Al Smith, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, General Patton (CSA), Franklin Roosevelt, Eugene Debs, Upton Sinclair, Huey Long (Governor of Louisiana), Guderian;

 US (Fictional) Characters.   Flora Hamburger, Socialist US representative from New York City; Hosea Blackford, Socialist US Senator from Dakota; Sam Carsten, US Navy seaman; Chester Martin, Toledo steelworker and US private; Irving Morrell, US tank officer; Jonathan Moss, US pilot; George Enos, US Navy seaman (WWI), Sylvia Enos, his wife, and George Enos, Jr, also US Navy seaman (WWII); Abner Dowling, US officer, adjutant to General Custer; Cincinnatus, black truck driver in Covington; Leonard O’Doull, US medical officer (WWII); Nellie & Edna Semproch, coffee house owners in Washington, DC; Armstrong Grimes, US private (WWII), son of Edna Semproch. 

 Confederate (Fictional) Characters.  Jake Featherston, Confederate artillery sergeant; Clarence Potter, Confederate intelligence officer; Anne Colleton, South Carolina plantation owner, plus brothers Jacob and Tom, both Confederate officers; Roger Kimball, Confederate submarine captain (WWI); Scipio, Anne Colleton’s black butler; Jefferson Pinkard, Birmingham steelworker and Confederate soldier; Hipolito Rodriguez, Confederate soldier from Sonora state, and his son Jorge Rodriguez, also a Confederate soldier; Professor Fitzbelmont, Confederate nuclear physicist; Cassius, black rebel and son of Scipio (WWII) and many more. 

 Canadian Characters: the McGregor family in Manitoba, Canada; the Galtier family in Quebec.  

 Some of the WWI characters continue through to WWII, other WWII characters are the children of WWI characters.  Many characters die off in WWI, between the wars, and of course in WWII.  However, it’s not a GRRM narrative:  most characters survive, and with few exceptions most deaths are not all that surprising.   

 Throughout the series, events in Europe are mentioned, but none of the narrative takes place there.

 WWI.  Having been on the receiving end of an embarrassing loss in the Second Mexican War, the US finally decides to balance out the CSA’s alliance with Britain and France, with its own alliance with Imperial Germany.  The country introduces conscription, and lines up for an upcoming rematch with the Confederates.  Sure enough, in 1914, the Archduke is assassinated, but this time around Woodrow Wilson is the CSA President, Theodore Roosevelt is the US President, and the US is involved from the beginning, aligned with Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.  The CSA aligns itself with the historical Entente powers.

 The main battle fronts are along the Roanoke Valley between West Virginia and Virginia; in northern Kentucky at Covington (across from Cincinnati); up in Canada; and some other fighting in Texas and on the oceans.  By now most of the characters are fictional, with some historical characters like Custer, Roosevelt and Wilson thrown in.

 After bloody stalemate and trench warfare,  the US finally develops not only tanks – called “barrels” throughout the series – but also the proper doctrine of using them, thanks to General Custer.   A Mormon rebellion in Utah is suppressed, British and Canadian forces are worn down, and eventually the US slugs the Confederates to an armistice.  Overall, the Central Powers are victorious, thus Germany remains Imperial and the Nazi Party never materializes.  Red rebellions among Marxist-inclined blacks erupt throughout the south, drawing off Confederate forces.  Moreover, blacks who had been performing manual labor for the Confederate Army, also join the rebellion, embarrassing Jeb Stuart III, who had vouched for his own servant and protected him from scrutiny, despite suspicions of Stuart’s artillery sergeant, Jake Featherston, as articulated to intelligence officer Clarence Potter. This prevents Featherston from being promoted and upsets him big time.

 The Japanese fight US naval forces in the Pacific, though no strategic impact is made, except for taking the Sandwich Islands (aka Hawaii) away from the British and getting Pearl Harbor in the bargain.  As part of the peace terms, the US takes Kentucky away from the CSA, as well as Virginia north of the Rappahannock (river north of Fredericksburg).

 Interwar period. Carston attends officer candidate school, many of the military characters return to civilian life, but most importantly, disgruntled Jake Featherston starts a reactionary party, the Freedom Party, to work towards rebuilding the CSA.   By the end of the second book, after the 1929 market crash, Featherston wins the election, consolidating power throughout the third book.  He gets the Confederate constitution amended to allow him to run for President again, and he succeeds at bludgeoning the courts into accepting his dictatorial powers, which allow to throw his Whig and Radical Liberal political opponents into prison camps.   Using black Marxist rebellions throughout the country as a pretext, he persuades US President Herbert Hoover to acquiesce in allowing the CSA to re-institute conscription and rearm overall.  The Confederate Air Force flies unarmed fighter planes of new designs labeled “Confederate Citrus Company”, while tractor factories expand, the same factories producing the barrels (tanks) otherwise prohibited.  In other words, the US is asleep at the switch as the Confederacy rearms.  The Socialists manage to elect several Presidents in the US:  Upton Sinclair, Hosea Blackford, and Al Smith, and elect significant numbers in Congress.  The Democrats act as the conservative, pro-capitalist party, and the Republicans are marginalized in between the two. 

 WWII.  Having persuaded US Socialist President Al Smith to agree to a plebiscite in 1940, Featherston manages to get Kentucky back to the CSA.  On June 22, 1941, Confederate forces attack Ohio, taking the US by surprise – although a handful of US characters can sense a war on the horizon.  Featherston had set up prison camps to handle the white political opponents and blacks taken in Marxist rebellion, but eventually expands the camp system, led by Jefferson Pinkard, to begin taking in as much of the black population as it can – and permanently disposing of them, first by firing squads, then carbon monoxide trucks, and finally cyanide gas chambers.  Its major camp, analogous to Auschwitz, is Camp Determination, located in western Texas.  Both sides also begin atomic weapons programs, the US helped by Germany and the CSA helped by Britain.  Rebellions break out in Utah – again – and Canada, whereas CSA forces are tied down in the prison camp system. 

 The initial Confederate drive reaches Cleveland and Lake Erie, cutting the US in two.  Featherston proposes a lopsided peace agreement to Al Smith, who tells him to shove it.  The CSA attacks east into Pennsylvania, with a huge city battle in Pittsburgh consuming troops on both sides.   When winter hits, the US slams into Mexican troops guarding the perimeter, then surrounding the city:  Pittsburgh becomes Stalingrad for the Confederates trapped inside.  Predictably, attempts to break through fail, and the Confederate army in Pittsburgh is lost, which lets the US begin taking the strategic initiative. 

 The US then drives the Confederates out of Ohio into Kentucky and fights its way southeast through Tennessee, then into Georgia and further on.  As the war continues going downhill for the Confederates, their atomic bomb program winds up being their only hope to even the odds.  Poison gas remains in use during WWII. 

 There’s a fair amount of….intimate activity between husbands and wives and unmarried soldiers and sailors and the women who do this for a living (fortunately, same-sex activity is merely hinted at and not described, and there are no gay characters).  As the books progress Turtledove thankfully turns down the detail considerably; I consider it to be more embarrassing than provocative.  

 Accents are a constant source of discussion.  Everyone smokes – Confederate tobacco consistently agreed to be superior to US versions - but cannabis is nonexistent; Cuba figures briefly, Jamaica not at all.  The fictional characters are well fleshed out, and even the ostensible villains, mainly Jake Featherston and Jefferson Pinkard, are still remarkably sympathetic, though the mass genocide of the Confederacy’s blacks is by no means sanctioned.  The astute reader can acknowledge some callouts thrown in:  Carl and Bob sweep Flora’s office for CSA bugs, and tell their assistant “Dick” to shut up; a Confederate navy officer in Plains, Georgia, defends his town against black guerillas; Morrell meets Guderian, a German officer, whose own adjutant, a surly corporal, doesn’t like Morrell’s own Jewish adjutant; and many more.   Franklin Roosevelt is Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a substantial character but nowhere near President, which Flora Hamburger speculates he might have been had he not had polio.  

 It’s tempting to dismiss the series, as Turtledove mainly blended the US Civil War, WWI, and WWII, having an abundant supply of source material.  We all know what happened.  Featherston’s fate is probably the most significant example of an original outcome in the series.  I would say that Turtledove does a good job of making characters we care about.  This is my fourth time reading the full series; sometimes I read the dialogue out loud.  With Turtledove’s inclination to focus on accents – e.g. Potter speaks with a Yankee accent despite being a Confederate officer – I’m sometimes inclined to read out with the wrong accents deliberately.  Or even give Featherston that affected voice that men who like men seem to use (!); he never does get an Eva Braun or a male lover, his hard-on is for revenge (!!!).   

 The #1 plot hole concerns the Confederacy’s atomic program based in Lexington, Virginia, surrounded by West Virginia to the west and US forces already on the Rappahannock when the war begins and already in Richmond by the time the CSA manages to get a working weapon, meaning the location is surrounded on three side by US held territory.   For the US to take Lexington and destroy the Confederate nuclear program would have been too simple and easy to not have happened – here all they do is bomb it with conventional weapons.   I suppose Turtledove made this exception because Featherston’s hope for the atomic bomb was the only thing keeping him going after the US continued on the strategic offensive and the Confederate situation gets even more hopeless.  A lesser plot hole is Camp Determination’s location in west Texas, not far away from the US border with New Mexico, an area sparsely populated and defended on both sides of the border.  This makes it particularly vulnerable once the US decides to go after the camp.  But neither of these significantly compromise the overall appeal of the stories.  As noted, I enjoyed reading the full 11 book series no less than 4 times, the most recent time just recently.  I can easily recommend this to anyone else with an interest in history and a tolerance for multiple books without pictures. 

 Speaking of pictures, the only diagrams are the maps, everything else having to rely on written descriptions.  Both sides start WWI wearing service caps (analogous to Civil War kepis), though by now the US has switched from dark blue to green-grey, and the Confederates have switched from grey to butternut, aka khaki.  As head wounds prove the cloth headgear to be unsatisfactory, both sides switch to steel helmets.  The US version is like the German WWI pattern helmet, the Confederate equivalent similar to the British/US Brodie helmet from WWI.  No mention is made whether the US switches to the 1935 German equivalent for WWII, but the Confederates switch to a rounded version most likely analogous to the US M1 helmet from WWII.  US troops carry bolt action Springfields in both wars, whereas the Confederates switch from bolt action Tredegars (supposedly a copy of the Lee Enfield rifle) to semiautomatic rifles in WWII.  Both sides use submachine guns in WWII and machine guns in both wars. 

 One of the weirder elements is simply the alliance of the US with Imperial Germany, which puts it at odds with Britain and Canada.  US forces fighting British and Canadians, our biggest and best friends in real life?  Kind of strange.  Most activity in Europe is only mentioned in passing, and actual cooperation and interaction with Germany in both wars is de minimis. 

 Movie/TV.  The next Turtledove book which makes it into a movie or miniseries will be the first, at least to my knowledge.  This series would be best served making How Few Remain a movie, and each book in the series as a miniseries, which would add up to 10 seasons in all.  I won’t hold my breath.  In the event it did happen, here would be my casting suggestions.   Roger Kimball (Tom Berenger); Anne Colleton (Nicole Kidman); Scipio (Morgan Freeman); Cincinnatus (Denzel Washington); Sam Carsten (Daniel Craig); Jake Featherston (Edward Norton); Irving Morrell (Brad Pitt, in Fury mode); Chester Martin (Seth Rogen); Jonathan Moss (Paull Rudd); Hipolito Rodriguez (Cheech Marin); Jefferson Pinkard (Dennis Quaid); but that about extinguishes my imagination.  Will it happen?  We’ll see.

The War That Came Early

Recently I finished yet another of Harry Turtledove’s alternate history series, this one he calls The War That Came Early, the books being Hitler’s War, West And East, The Big Switch, Coup D’Etat, Two Fronts, and Last Orders.

Premise.  In real life, the 1938 talks at Munich between Adolf Hitler (Nazi Germany), Eduard Daladier (France), and Neville Chamberlain (UK), resulted in an agreement essentially allowing Germany to swallow up Czechoslovakia, which the Germans did by March 1939.   The Czechs were not part of this negotiation and the benefit (to the extent we can ascertain any benefit at all) was that the European powers avoided a war – only temporarily.  The UK and France thought Hitler would stop here, but of course he was simply getting what he could without war but would invade if he had to, e.g. Poland just a year later.  Who knows how much firmer Chamberlain might have been had he known this – which is where this story picks up.

In this timeline, German-Czech troublemaker Konrad Heinlein is assassinated by a Czech troublemaker.  Although the Germans had nothing to do with it, Chamberlain and Daladier believe it’s too convenient and probably a set-up intended as an excuse to allow the Germans to invade Czechoslovakia.  Angered by what they perceive as immense bad faith by the Germans, they break off the talks.  Hitler, frustrated by this turn of events, decides to invade anyway, and the war which was postponed until September 1939 in real life, with the German invasion of Poland, arrives in 1938 with a German invasion of Czechoslovakia.  That goes fairly well for the Germans, and a French incursion into Germany stalls not far over the border. 

Spain.  In real life, Marshal Sanjurjo was the intended leader of the Fascist revolt, which began in July 1936.   Taking off with a small plane from Portugal overloaded with his heavy crate of uniforms, the plane crashed and he was killed, leaving Franco to lead the Fascists…to victory in March 1939.  Here, the pilot persuades Sarjurjo to leave his uniforms behind and he lands safely, surviving to lead the Fascists.  To victory?  We’ll see.  Since the real Spanish Civil War ended in March 1939 with the real WWII beginning in September 1939, versus, in these books, war breaking out in Europe BEFORE the Spanish Civil War ends, this cuts off the supplies to the parties involved so this war continues far longer, while WWII is still going on. 

Far East.  The Japanese succeed at defeating the Soviets up in Manchuria…for the time being.  Having his hands full fighting the Germans and Poles + the British and French, Stalin cuts a deal with the Japs just so he can focus on things further west.   They also romp over the Far East, but the Pearl Harbor attack never happens.  The Japanese use germ warfare against their opponents.

Eastern Front.   Poland and Germany are allies against Soviet Russia.   They make some modest progress into Russia, later losing that ground after the alliance with Britain and France breaks down and the two front war re-erupts.

Western Front.  The UK and France initially fight against Germany, briefly ally with Germany and help invade Russia, then switch back to being against Germany, returning to a two front war.  The UK itself has some internal struggles which cause it to switch sides twice, and the French simply followed their lead each time.

Holocaust & Internal Affairs.  Jews are mistreated in Germany, but the Final Solution never gets running.  Moreover, when the war turns into a stalemate, many of Hitler’s generals start causing problems.  The biggest problem is that the “blitzkrieg” which happened in the real war never quite gets full steam here, so most of the war is a series of stalemates on various fronts. Hitler has no decisive victory against any opponent to make him popular with his people or apparently infallible to his generals.  

United States.   The US enters the Pacific War against Japan, fighting over Wake Island and Midway, but stays out of the war in Europe.  There doesn’t seem to be much cooperation and coordination between Germany and Japan - or I should say, even less than there was in real life. 

War details.  The biggest nugget I got from this (Dana Carvey-as-Johnny Carson “I did NOT know that!”) was discussion of the German Panzer II tank.  I knew it had a 20mm cannon, but I didn’t know the cannon fired on full auto from a 10 round magazine.  I also didn’t know the radio man sat towards the back, near the engine, rather than up front next to the driver; there was no bow machine gun.  Plus there's some discussion of the Red Air Force, the dynamics between the various nationalities in the Soviet Union, and some some fun about "mat", which is the highly colloquial and heavily colorful slang which Russians use, particularly peasants and underworld denizens.  

Writing.   By now I’ve read the reviews on Amazon of Turtledove’s work and I agree with the consensus.  As a storyteller in terms of plot and what actually happens, Turtledove is fine.  No one really complains all that much about where his stories go. 

            It’s his writing that we beef about:  grotesquely repetitious.  What is a six volume series should really be a three volume series.  Every time a character is dealt with, HT has to repeat – even later in the same book – the same opinions, idiosyncrasies, and problems the character has.  Issues about ersatz coffee, cigarettes, etc. are repeated OVER and OVER again.  It becomes a deliberate pattern of conspicuous padding, and severely compromises the quality of his work and our ability to enjoy it.  This seems to be the most consistent complaint readers articulate against Turtledove for most of his books.

            Another problem I have with his writing, and which I haven’t seen complained of (yet), is the tone.  HT tells the story in a way that overexplains things to the point where you wonder who his target audience is.  Alternate history is a subset of science fiction which would only find an audience among people who know the real history and derive some entertainment from an alternative narrative.  I’m 46.  HT writes like he’s writing to his 12 year old nephew.  Are young teenage boys the target market?  Are the girls reading Harry Potter while the boys read Turtledove?  Is this Young Adult Fiction in disguise?  It’s just a step above Harry Potter in narrative sophistication, and J.K. Rowling seems fairly open about HP’s market, even if plenty of adults such as myself have actually read the books.  Just a thought…    

The Most Important Man of WWII

Hitler?  Stalin?  Churchill? Roosevelt?  Patton? Rommel?  Perhaps none of the above.   Perhaps it was…Richard Sorge.

December 1941.  The Nazi hordes were knocking on the doors of Moscow.   German General Heinz Guderian advised Hitler that if Moscow fell, it would be game over for the USSR.   The Germans assaulted the Soviet capital from the south and west, and almost took it.  Almost.

Stalin was uncertain about bringing troops from the east back west to face the Germans, because he was concerned about Japanese plans in Manchuria (northeast China), which had traditionally been an area of mutual interest and conflict between Russia and Japan, going back to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. 

A German reporter in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, was ostensibly a German spy working for the Nazis.  Unbeknownst to the Germans, he was actually a double agent reporting back to Moscow.  And what he reported was that the Japanese actually had their hands full to the south and had no immediate plans in Manchuria.   This left Stalin free to transfer 15 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry divisions, 1700 tanks, and 1500 planes – including some very hardcore Siberian troops who were virtually immune to bitterly cold weather – westward to defend Moscow. 

Arriving in the fierce snowstorms of December 1941, these troops slammed into the Germans, smashing them away from Moscow.  The following spring, ignoring Guderian’s advice to resume the attack on Moscow, Hitler sent his forces southeast, towards the Caucasus and a city named Stalingrad.   That battle ended in February 1943 with the surrender of the Sixth Army, and by April 1945 the Red Army was in Berlin.

What might have happened, had Sorge not informed Stalin of Tokyo’s military intentions?  Very possibly, the Germans might have taken Moscow in December 1941.  From there, they could have consolidated their hold on the Russian capital and won the war on the Eastern Front. 

Having done so, Hitler could also transfer troops west to handle any possible Allied invasion of France.   The D-Day invasion might have been called off altogether, or attempted and failed.  It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which the Germans win the Eastern Front war but still lose against the Allies (although that’s exactly what happened in World War I).   Most alternative history stories featuring a victorious Germany – In the Presence of Mine Enemies (Harry Turtledove) and The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick) – assume that Germany defeated the Russians. 

This being the case, that makes Richard Sorge one of the most important men of World War II.  However, he did not live to see the VE Day in May 1945.  The Kempetai (Japanese secret police) became suspicious of him, arrested him, and tortured him.  Naturally he confessed.  Stalin refused to trade for him (note that Stalin also refused to trade with the Germans when his own son was captured by them), and the Japanese hanged Sorge in November 1944.  In the Japanese movie “Spy Sorge”, he’s played by Iain Glen, best known as Ser Jorah Mormont on HBO’s Game of Thrones.  

My Way and 9th Company

Now it’s time for another blog on obscure foreign movies, and as you may expect by now, they’re about WAR, which is one of my favorite topics.

The first is a South Korean film about World War II. 

My Way.  A Korean – Jun-Shik Kim (JSK) – and Japanese – Tatsuo Hasegawa (TH) start off as friends/rivals.  Both are good marathon runners and compete against each other in the mid-30’s leading up to the war, even trying out for the Japanese Olympic team, i.e. the 1940 games which were supposed to take place in Tokyo, but which were cancelled due to the war.  Tatsuo is the grandson of the Japanese military governor.  Korea was a Japanese colony from 1895 (the first Sino-Japanese War) until 1945.  The movie depicts the Japanese as arrogant and mistreating the Koreans as second class.

            They both end up in the Japanese Army in 1938. Tatsuo is an esteemed officer, while JSK is a lowly private; he and his fellow Koreans in the unit were conscripted as punishment and suffer the abuse you might expect.  TH and JSK don’t get along.

            Part I:  Up in Manchuria, the Japanese bump ugly against the Red Army.   “Banzai” suicide charges aren’t enough to defeat several waves of Soviet tanks (which look like T-26s).

            Part II:  The pair wind up in Siberia in a Soviet POW camp.  One of the Korean soldiers is now the block leader and browbeats the previously abusive Japanese, now POWs.   TH and JSK still don’t get along. The Germans invade, so the Red Army comes by looking for warm bodies to fight the Nazis.  Facing imminent execution for a prison riot, our two buddies quickly agree.

            Part III:  Stalingrad?  Sverdlovsk?  Who knows.  In some battered Soviet city, the Red Army schmucks are thrown up against a wall of Germans with MG42s and other fun stuff; from the timeline it’s still 1941, so the Germans are still very much in the game.  And the stereotypical Commissar is right behind them to shoot anyone retreating.  SOMEHOW, both guys survive this…slip into German greatcoats and uniforms…and trudge through the snow to the German lines.  They get split up at this point for the next three years, each not knowing if the other has survived, although JSK did help TH survive the battle and helped him escape.

            Part IV:  These two Asians in German uniform who speak no German eventually wind up in an Ostbatallion (mixed Wehrmacht unit of Arabs and other miscellaneous Russian ethnic groups all thrown together because the Germans have no clue who they are, only that they’re not European) at Normandy in June 1944, and finally reunite.  Guess what happens! 

An epic story, very long, but intriguing to see what happens to these two, sometimes at odds, sometimes rivals, but ultimately friends.  They have to depend on each other to survive in a brutal war on three different fronts in three different uniforms.

The second film is a Russian deal, in Russian with English subtitles, taking place in Afghanistan.

9^th Company (DVD).  This was in the previews which came with “My Way”.  Imagine your typical French Foreign Legion film:  various disreputable types flee to the FFL to escape either justice or boredom, get sent to the godforsaken desert of North Africa, and wind up practically wiped out by angry Arab tribesmen.   Got it?

            Ok, now instead of the French Foreign Legion, it’s the Red Army in 1988 – towards the very end of the Soviet Union.  Instead of North Africa, it’s Afghanistan.  Instead of Justin Bieber tribesmen, it’s the mujahedeen.   But almost exactly the same.  Some things never change, do they? 

            The funny thing about this film is that back in 1988, we’d be rooting for the mujahedeen against the Red Army.   Nowadays, knowing the “muj” (as the Russians call them) morphed into the Taliban?  Eh, not so much.  Most of the Russian soldiers are as sympathetic as Paul Baumer & his buddies in “All Quiet”, or the Band of Brothers gang, or any other close-knit squad of misfit soldiers who only want to survive.

Brazilian Expeditionary Force in WWII

“You’d be more likely to see a cobra smoking than see Brazilians fighting in Europe.”  Adolf Hitler

 I had known that Brazilians did send a unit to Europe, but until I read Brazilian Expeditionary Force in World II, by CC. Maximiano and R. Bonalume N., an Osprey Men-at-Arms publication, I had very little idea of the details.  I had been past the WWII Memorial in Rio de Janeiro, but hadn’t actually gone inside.

 They sent three regiments – a single division – to Northern Italy in late 1944, which served until VE Day in May 1945.  The units served along the US 10^th Mountain Division and faced 2^nd tier German forces, basically a loose aggregate of leftover Wehrmacht units thrown together almost at random.  As with the Spaniards in North Russia, the Brazilians had to deal with cold temperatures worse than any they would endure in Brazil.  Brazil also supplied a squadron of pilots, who flew P-47s, but the air element operated independently of the ground forces and were not assigned to the same tactical areas. 

 Most of the Brazilian soldiers had little or no combat experience.  Prior to WWII, the Brazilian army had been equipped and trained by the French and wore Adrian helmets.   The training, such as it was, was insufficient and had to be redone along US lines.  Nevertheless, with one notable exception, they fought fairly well.  One particular unit deserted and turned tail, the so-called “Laurindo” battalion: “Quem é que vem descendo o morro? Ê o Laurindo que vem sua turma guiando” (“Who is that going down the hill? It’s Laurindo guiding his gang”, a popular samba song at the time).  For the most part the Brazilians earned the respect of the Americans alongside whom they fought.  The Germans were neither contemptuous of them nor terrified of them; pretty much the Brazilians got the job done.  Of course by that time the Germans really couldn’t resist much, but one division “doing its job” in such a crucial theater as Northern Italy could hardly be considered to have a strategic impact on the war overall.  One Brazilian officer was Lt. Col. Castello Branco, who wound up as Brazil’s general-president during the military dictatorship in the 1960s.

 The standard rifle tended to be the 1903 Springfield, though they received BARs, Thompsons and M3 submachine guns as well.   All the equipment they used was provided by the US in Italy and none of it was brought over from Brazil. 

 The soldiers were issued US clothing and weapons, although they tended to modify the clothing somewhat.  The most noticeable and substantial modifications were: some of the longer jackets were shortened, some of the soldiers wore low jackboots (so-called “Natal boots”), and the soldiers took Hitler’s phrase and made a “smoking cobra” patch in response.  Instead of one white star on their vehicles, they painted the Southern Cross.  Brazilian MPs had a Brazilian flag on the front of the helmet in between the M and the P.  Eventually the uniform tended to morph into a grey version of the US WWII uniform, and has persisted to the present day in the form of the Brazilian police uniforms I recognized in Rio de Janeiro.  Brazilian cops seemed to look less like cops and more like soldiers, especially wearing paramilitary uniforms with jungle boots.  The general impression of pictures of Brazilian troops in Italy was that they look like US troops with slight variations in uniforms, the biggest difference being the multiracial element:  while the US Army was still segregated at the time, the Brazilian Army was not, so blacks, Japanese, Portuguese, and all sorts of mixed multiracial soldiers were all together in the same unit.  

Panzer Leader

I suppose this is a good sequel to my Rommel blog entry, as the premier German tank general of World War II, Heinz Guderian, also wrote a book.  Two books in fact, but I didn’t bother to read his pre-war book Achtung! Panzer!, instead opting for his post-war memoirs, Panzer Leader instead.  Actually, the idea for Guderian to write memoirs came from the Americans, who were extremely impressed with him after interrogating him after the war (“dude, you kicked major ass.  You should write a book!”).

 Rommel came into the tank picture fairly late in the game, only being given command of an armored unit in spring 1940 just before the attack on France.  He was never involved on the Eastern Front, which is where all the most important tank battles were fought, although his operations officer, Bayerlein (who in fact wrote several entries in The Rommel Papers) was Guderian’s in Russia before being transferred to Africa.  Guderian was involved with Germany’s tank program from the very beginning, starting with secret developments of tanks in the Reichwehr in the inter-war years. 

 I’ll spare all the details and cover the main areas.  His book starts with a brief chapter on his inter-war years (1919-1939) and he explains how they developed the panzer divisions.  Although Guderian had served in WWI and Germany did have a few A7V’s in that war, Guderian had been an infantry (signals) officer in the war. Germany had been on the receiving end of the Allies’ tank warfare, so he was determined to learn from his enemies.  He gives Liddell-Hart a good deal of credit; ironically, Liddell-Hart was pretty much ignored in his home country, England, nor did the French pay any attention to him either.  The victors, having won, decided the way they did things in WWI was good enough for the next time around.  Guderian figured the Germans needed to innovate and change things if they wanted to have a shot at beating the Allies the second time.  Part of this was concentrating tanks into panzer divisions instead of spreading them out among infantry divisions as support weapons.

 As Guderian describes it, typically terrain can be divided into three types: (1) terrain completely unfavorable to tanks, (2), terrain which is neutral, and (3), terrain which is extremely favorable to tank warfare.  The enemy has chosen to spread his tanks across all infantry units, including many in areas (1) and (2).  Guderian thought it was smarter to concentrate his tank forces in type 3, where they would have not only a terrain advantage, but also a tactical, numerical advantage despite the fact that, overall, Germany had less tanks than its opponents.  He also felt that tanks themselves should be the vanguard of the attack, not merely supporting the infantry. 

 His first taste of battle was in Poland, where his forces were involved in the northern sector, near Danzig and the Polish Corridor.  He was even able to visit Kulm, in East Prussia, where he was born.  Then, of course, he was also involved in the invasion of France.  The crossing of the Meuse, while a dangerous affair early in the campaign, nevertheless had its light moments.  Lt-Col. Balck, throwing Guderian’s own words at him (from an earlier exercise), warned his superior that “joy-riding in canoes on the Meuse is forbidden!!” 

 Then it was on to war with Russia.  In August 1941, Guderian had hoped and fought that the German forces would advance on Moscow as soon as possible, but Hitler had other plans.  The Fuhrer wanted to sweep back and take the Ukraine and Sevastopol (Russia’s “aircraft carrier to attack the oil fields in Romania”), Guderian was vetoed.

 On page 208, he describes something I have to laugh at.  “[On August 31, 1941] the 10^th (Motorized) Infantry Division succeeded in crossing the Desna, to the north of Korop, but was thrown back again to the west bank by heavy Russian counter-attacks, besides being attacked on its right flank by strong enemy forces.  By sending in the very last men of the division, the Field Bakery Company, a catastrophe to the right flank was just avoided.”  Not THE Field Bakery Company??  Forget the Grossdeutschland Division, or the SS, it’s the Field Bakery Company which struck fear into the hearts of the Red Army.  Surely an elite unit.  Did they have a special counter in Squad Leader?  Red player: “Your assault engineers don’t frighten my Guards.” German player: “Oh yeah, well here’s the Field Bakery Company.  Prepare to die!”  Red player: “No!!!!”

 On a darker note, Guderian notes the German High Command (OKH) and Hitler were completely oblivious to conditions on the front: the persistent mud, the bitter cold, the petrol shortages, and the overall hardships which the average German soldier was forced to endure.  Coddled in their warm, comfy headquarters hundreds of miles behind the lines, these staff officers, and the Beloved Fuhrer, couldn’t possibly imagine the hell which the troops were going through.  Remarkably, these boneheads would neither accept the word of the generals such as Guderian who had been to the front, much less even consider going to the front themselves to see what was going on. 

 In December 1941, the offensive ground to a halt to the west, south and north of Moscow in the bitter cold, the troops too frozen to fight any more – especially since, by that point, the Russians had poured in large reinforcements, including Siberian units well-equipped for cold weather combat, whereas the German troops still did not have any cold weather uniforms – they were stuck in Warsaw.  Guderian advised Hitler that the troops should be permitted to retreat to river lines with previously prepared defenses to wait out the winter; Hitler disagreed.  Based on this disagreement, Guderian was relieved of command, and remained inactive until March 1, 1943.

 At that time he took over as Inspector-General of Armored Troops.  His two strongest recommendations:

1.  Don’t create any new units, simply refurbish the old ones to full strength.

2.  Don’t put any new tanks into combat until you have enough of them to make a full unit, and the men know how to use them.  Feeding them into combat piecemeal simply lets the enemy learn how to fight it (almost like the tank version of a vaccine). 

 Rommel.  In spring 1944, Guderian went to see the Atlantic Wall preparations, and ran into his old buddy Rommel (who I’ve described at length earlier).  Guderian was very impressed with Rommel’s track record, had very nice things to say about him, and believed Rommel deserved his reputation.  But they differed on the best way to deal with the oncoming invasion.  It’s funny – Rommel claims that Hitler agreed with the generals who believed that the German forces should be held away from the beaches, and Guderian here admits that he is one of them.  But Guderian claims that Hitler agreed with Rommel!   Go figure.

 Waffen SS.  He generally tends to be favorably impressed by the fighting ability and morale of the Waffen SS.  The Second SS Panzer Division, Das Reich, was under command of his army group in 1941, and he got along well with, and liked, its commander Paul Hausser.  He did not like Himmler, who he thought was completely incompetent as a military commander.  He was also good friends with “Sepp” Dietrich, the commander of the First SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler – when Guderian was sacked in late ’41, Dietrich came to visit him as a show of support.  Unlike Skorzeny, he actually recognized the Holocaust, condemning it but claiming extremely limited knowledge of the major details.  He also condemned as criminally stupid the ill-treatment of the Russian and Ukrainian local populations – here they had vast numbers of people who hated Stalin, and were willing to fight, even die, for the Germans against the Red Army, yet somehow the Nazis managed to screw that up, alienating these people and turning them into partisans cooperating with the Red Army in throwing the Germans out of Russia. 

 Later war role.  On July 21, 1944 – immediately after the bomb plot (see “Valkyrie”) Hitler appointed Guderian Chief of the Army General Staff.  Guderian knew something of the plot, but had kept his mouth shut and unlike Rommel had not been fingered by anyone.  He had refused to join the plot, reasoning that by that point the Allies were insisting on unconditional surrender, so anyone taking over from Hitler would be equally f**ked.  He thought the plot was half-assed and extremely poorly conceived.  Despite this, he still argued with Hitler, as one of the few generals who would talk straight to Hitler and not kiss his ass.

 Bewilderingly, with Russian troops in East Prussia, threatening Berlin, Hitler insisted on sending what few surplus units they had down to Budapest.  It turns out that Germany’s last sources of oil were in that neighborhood, now that Romania was gone and the synthetic oil plants were destroyed by Allied air raids. 

  Also, Hitler refused to allow the generals to establish fortified defense lines, especially on the German border, which might have assisted them in defending Germany from the Soviet onslaught.  His reasoning was: if we build these lines, the cowardly generals will simply retreat behind them immediately.  We don't want to give them any more incentive to retreat than they already have. 

 Finally in March 1945, Hitler couldn’t take any more, and advised him to go on vacation.  “Hitler said to me, ‘Please do your best to get your health back.  In six weeks the situation will be very critical.  Then I shall need you urgently.  Where do you think you will go?’ Keitel advised me to visit Bad Liebenstein.  It was very beautiful there.  I replied that it was already occupied by the Americans. ‘Well then, what about Bad Sachsa in the Harz?’ asked the solicitous Field-Marshal.  I thanked him for his kindly interest and remarked that I intended to choose my place of residence for myself and that I planned to pick a locality which would not be overrun by the enemy within the next forty-eight hours.”  He ended up in the Tyrol, where he was on May 10 when the Germans surrendered. 

 The remainder of his book consists of fairly candid character analyses of Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, and other major players (except Rommel, who he had praised earlier).  I found this just as fascinating as the rest.  I can see why the Americans were so impressed with him – I certainly was. 

PPSH-41

I’ve never had the pleasure of firing this gun, or even holding one in real life, but it sure is impressive. This is the PPSh-41, the top submachine gun of the Red Army during WWII. It fired a 7.62x25mm pistol round at 900 rounds per minute. Although a 35 round box magazine was available, and was more reliable, the ubiquitous 71 round drum magazine, copied from the Finnish Suomi submachine gun, was considerably more common and popular. Approximately 6 million of them were produced during WWII, and entire units of the Red Army were equipped with it. It was the ideal weapon for close-quarters street fighting in Stalingrad, though once the distances opened up, the more advanced German Stg-44 assault rifle became more advantageous – provided there were enough Germans left alive to fire them. With a capacity advantage of more than 2 to 1 against the the Germans’ MP40 (with its 32 round box magazine), the PPSh-41 gave the already more numerous Red Army soldiers a definite edge. For their part, the Germans adapted the PPSh-41 to 9mm, and even attempted a double-stack magazine setup for the MP40, which worked as poorly as you can imagine.

After WWII, the PPSh-41 was supplied to North Koreans, Chinese, and other communist countries. Pictures circulate of rebels in Hungary in 1956 using them, and early in the Vietnam War, before the AK-47 became the standard weapon of the VC and NVA, it was used by those forces.

Remarkably, long after the AK-47 has captured our attention – thanks to the PLO and countless other terrorist groups adopting it as their signature weapon – the PPSh-41 made a comeback, in the most unlikely context. US forces in Iraq, involved in street fighting, have adopted the PPSh-41 and have been using it there - even fitting high-tech laser aiming systems obviously not available to the Red Army in WWII. Only the Danish Madsen machine gun has more staying power over the years – from 1903 to at last being retired by the military police of the state of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, as late as 2008.

Joyeux Noel

The true story of the “Christmas truce” of 1914 in WWI. On Christmas Eve, somewhere on the trench lines where a Scottish unit was stationed next to a French unit, peace broke out between the two sides. A German opera singer and his fiance (also an opera singer) sang for both sides; the troops came out and shared stories, alcoholic beverages, and pictures; and on Christmas Day they buried their dead and played some football. They could walk around No Man’s Land without worrying about shooting each other. Needless to say, the top brass considered all this “treason” and forbid this from ever happening again. Sure enough, it was GOOD for morale and BAD for the war. How can you shoot at men you’ve talked to in person just hours before? How can you go on when you can see how stupid the war is? When you see you have more in common with the poor soldiers on the other side than with the idiots running the war on your own? And imagine if this “truce” had occurred all the way up and down the trench line, from Switzerland to the English Channel. The war would have been over immediately; they would have faced a wholesale mutiny on all sides, German, French and British. It doesn’t take too much to imagine the soldiers telling the officers, “fuck you, if you and the top brass want a war, you can fight it yourselves!”

Clearly, soldiers who took enemy trenches could see that their foes lived in as much misery and filth as they did. Watching your own soldiers get wiped out by “friendly fire” drove home how much damage they were doing to each other. For the life of them, the soldiers could not grasp what the war was all about. Even had they been astute enough to have some idea of the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo, that still wouldn’t explain why Germans, French and British were slaughtering each other in France. Why not just let the Austrians and Serbs murder each other – assuming the Archduke’s life was worth even that?

In “All Quiet on the Western Front”, the German soldiers casually speculate on the reason for the war. Although (with a few exceptions) they’re fairly bright soldiers, they still come up with blanks. Even the dull soldier has the common sense to realize, “I’ve never even MET an Englishman until I fought them in the trenches, and I dare say many of them would say the same about us.” Time and time again the soldiers realize, “I have no particular beef, gripe, complaint, or grudge against the opposing side, either as an aggregate country or against enemy soldiers in particular.” How can they? They’ve never even met each other.

WWII was a bit different. There, suddenly, they had ideology to motivate them – ideological motivations which were mostly absent during WWI. The Germans were motivated by regular nationalism (most Wehrmacht personnel), National Socialism (Waffen SS), and anti-bolshevism (all of them); add to this the remarkable multi-national nature of the Waffen SS, somehow able to recruit French, Belgians, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians, etc. (former enemies!) to fight against the Russians – hell, they got RUSSIANS to fight the Russians. Again, testimony to how brutal and unpopular Stalin and the Soviet government was that there was no shortage of not only Ukrainians and other ethnic groups, but even Russians, willing to fight for the Nazis against the Red Army. For their part, the Russians were motivated by their own nationalism (for most soldiers of the Red Army) and communism (for the minority). The Allies were motivated by abstract notions of freedom and liberty; and the moral indignation became even fiercer once US troops began liberating concentration camps and discovering what the Germans were really up to all this time. The Japanese sincerely believed in their own country’s destiny to rule Asia and defeat the caucasian US/European powers. Of course, WWII was also a dynamic war, with no stalemates on any front. Men died, but in the course of attacking and defending, not this business of thousands dead for a few inches of strategically inconsequential mud. The front moved too fast for soldiers to worry too much about how their enemies were dealing with it.

And in Iraq today there is no connection between the US troops and the insurgents they fight against. The insurgents don’t see us as normal human beings trying to make Iraq a better place, we’re just occupiers. And our troops aren’t inclined to view the insurgents as normal human beings trying to liberate their own country, they’re just a bunch of sick fucks (which they are). The cultural and religious differences are too much between the sides to permit the kind of fraternization which occurred in No Man’s Land on Christmas Day in 1914, to occur in Iraq today.

Consider this, too: in the US, we have Protestants, Catholics, Jews, etc. all living together peacefully without killing each other (Northern Ireland is a different story). Yet in Iraq there is civil war beween Sunnis and Shi’ites – sects of the SAME RELIGION! If Sunnis and Shi’ites can’t get along with each other, how can Muslims possibly relate to, much less peacefully coexist with, other religions? More directly, how can the Muslim insurgents ever relate to the US soldiers? We’re talking about fanatics by their nature. But at least us Americans and Europeans can enjoy our own peace and Christmas.