The book seems to be an outgrowth of the author’s graduate school Ph.D dissertation. Clymer reviews Hay’s ideological development and comes to the conclusion he was typical of his age as he held strong racial and cultural views that sought to expand Anglo-Saxon influence in the world. In discussing Hay’s career outside of diplomacy the reader is presented with a hard nosed business type who vehemently disliked labor unions, in part because he did not trust the Irish and was an extreme Anglophile. Hay’s role in the diplomatic issues of the period are presented in detail and are somewhat dated as the book was published in 1975. Issues such as Panama, the open door to China, boundary disputes with Canada and others are seen from Hay’s prism and other figures of the period. One of the more interesting chapters deals with Hay’s relationship with Teddy Roosevelt. The author concludes that Hay had one foot in the 19th century and one foot in the 20th, but he tried not to be totally drawn into the bombastic nationalism that afflicted the United States after the Spanish-American War. Since the book is somewhat dated he would direct anyone interested in reading about John Hay to a new biography due out around May 20, 2013 by John Taliaffero.
Author: szfreiberger
ISAAC’S ARMY by Matthew Brzezinski
Ten years ago my wife and I visited Poland. Since I had studied the Holocaust for many years I thought I knew what to expect, but after visiting the remnants of the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz-Birkenau I was wrong. Since many of my relatives were murdered in Auschwitz and part of my journey was to find my father’s village outside of Krakow I had a very sobering and emotional reaction to what I saw. I have read countless books on the Holocaust, but few measure up to Matthew Brzezinski’s ISAAC’s ARMY. The book is not a comprehensive history of the plight of Polish Jews during the Holocaust, but after reading it I had the feeling that it was. What is presented is an eye opening account of Polish Jewry before, during, and after World War II. The author’s main focus is the city of Warsaw which was depopulated and destroyed by the Nazis between 1940 and 1944. By focusing on a select number of Jews who lived, died, and survived the trauma that befell Eastern European Jews the reader is exposed to fresh insights and is taken on a journey like no other.
The author begins by describing the difficulty of imagining Warsaw from the platform of 2012. Today Warsaw is thriving with a modern capitalist economy, but as Brzezinski points out the office buildings, financial centers, hotels and other modern edifices are built on the “holy ground” that was the Warsaw Ghetto. The first chapter provides an insight to the Polish mindset as the German invasion takes place on September 1, 1939. The masses retained the firm belief that this was another Hitler land grab and once he seized Danzig (Gdansk) and some Silesian land he would be satiated and things would return to normal. Though their neighbors seemed confident there was a “collective nervousness” in the Jewish community. Within a few days reality hit home as the Germans entered Warsaw on September 8th.
After his introductory material Brzezinski shifts his attention to Warsaw and the ghetto that the Germans created. His narrative is presented through the eyes of a number of people. By focusing his attention on Isaac Zuckerman, Simha Ratheiser, Mark Edelman, Boruch Spiegel, Zivia Lubetkin, the Osnos and Mortkowicz families, and a number of other important individuals the reader is drawn into their world and their co-religionists struggle for survival. By mid-September the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east making it very difficult to escape. As the narrative develops Brzezinski describes the inability of the Jews in Warsaw to develop a unified response to events. The Nazis created the Judenrat, designed to rule the ghetto and carry out their policy. Within the Jewish community a Zionist faction emerged whose goal was to get as many Jews as possible to immigrate to Palestine, opposing them was the Bund who felt allegiance to Poland and wanted to build up the Jewish community as nationalistic Poles and remain in Poland. A Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) was created and both the Zionists and Bund members could not unify against the Nazis. In addition the Polish gentiles created a Home Army supported by the British.
By October Poland as an independent nation ceased to exist. The Nazis worked ceaselessly to rekindle Polish anti-Semitism that had plagued Polish Jews for centuries but had declined in the early 20th century. Soon a Jewish underground developed to cope with the deteriorating conditions and oppose the Nuremberg Blood Laws which defined the Nazi version of Jewishness, the looting, roundups for slave labor and outright murder carried out by the German command. Through the eyes of Brzezinski’s characters the reader gets a glimpse of Jewish life and culture in pre-war Poland that the Nazis destroyed as they seized Jewish businesses ranging from banks to publishing and industry.
The author weaves the story of the escape of the Osnos family from Poland to Romania by way of Germany to highlight the immigration barriers set up by western countries especially the United States and the machinations of Breckenridge Long, an assistant Secretary of State who created numerous roadblocks to prevent Jews from entering America (see David Wyman’s two volume history of American immigration policy before and during the war towards Jews). The Osnos family escaped Warsaw before the Nazis walled in the ghetto in the fall of 1940 resulting in almost 500,000 people squeezed into 732 acres. (100)
Once the ghetto was created Brzezinski describes the underground smuggling operation that would feed the ghetto for the next three years. The author integrates the important role that children played in the process as families relied on their offspring for survival. Many Jews were rounded up and along with Gentile Poles were sent to perform slave labor in Germany and areas they occupied in the East. Isaac Zuckerman was one of the 1.6 million people who suffered the fate of being a forced laborer and through his eyes we experience what it was like. Overall the Jews in the ghetto suffered from an ethical dilemma, how much should they cooperate with the Nazis. Under the Judenrat, headed by Adam Czerniakow a Jewish Police Force was created to assist in rounding up and policing Jews. Czerniakow’s diary (THE WARSAW DIARY OF ADAM CZERNIAKOW edited by Raul Hilberg) describes his mental state as he presided over the ghetto under the Nazis and the day to day issues that Polish Jews faced. Finally on July 23, 1942, Czerniakow could no longer deal with the situation and committed suicide.
Though Brzezinski concentrates on the Warsaw Ghetto he also describes the pogroms in Vilna and Kovno following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941. As numerous historians have pointed out Hitler did not plan in advance as to how the Jews would be dealt with once Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Decisions and killings would be made on an ad hoc basis until the Final Solution was decided upon at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. Special killing squads were employed by the Nazis in the East and experimental methods were instituted to maximize death until finally the concentration camps were refined to maximize the killing.
On July 22, 1942 the Nazis ordered the Gross Aktion (Great Deportation) to empty the Warsaw Ghetto and settle people in the East. Mark Edelman emerged as a leading figure in the underground and as a hospital orderly he helped smuggle Jews out of the Ghetto. Preference was given to underground members and as Edelman described years later he felt like he was playing God as he chose who he could assist. Soon after this Edelman and his cohorts learned that Jews were not being resettled but were being taken to a new concentration camp, Treblinka. By September 21, 1942 the deportations had ended as over 300,000 Jews had perished at Treblinka.
Throughout the book Brzezinski provides details of the negotiations between the different factions among the Jewish community as to how to deal with Nazi depopulation policy. In addition, the author provides insights concerning discussions with the Polish Home Army to acquire weapons. What emerges are the many obstacles that the Jews faced as they tried to fight the Nazis and just survive. The latent anti-Semitism of the Home Army, the ideological predilections of the different factions, and the many “greasers” (the term used to describe Ukrainian and other ethnic groups that the Nazis used to harass, rob, and murder Jews) all contributed to the inability of thousands of Jews to save themselves. By January, 1943 the Germans began to round up the remaining 50,000 Jews that had escaped the Gross Aktion.
The new German effort to deport Jews to Treblinka led to the ZOB merging with the Bund and a more unified Jewish command. The ZOB took over leadership from the Judenrat and Brzezinski explores how they developed their strategy, bomb making capacity, and acquisition of weapons. Though they did not acquire a great deal from the Home Army they were able to manufacture their own “version” of weaponry. On April 20, 1943 the SS stormed the Ghetto to liquidate it. They were met by roughly 500-750 armed Jews. Receiving little help from the 380,000 member Polish Home Army they shocked the Germans who expected to be met by a few revolvers not bombs. Heinrich Himmler fearing another Stalingrad type situation in Warsaw appointed Jurgen von Stroop his counter insurgency expert to deal with the situation. Von Stroop applied massive artillery to flush out the insurgents as building after building was destroyed. Brzezinski goes into great detail as to how the Jewish defenders survived the onslaught. The remaining Jews were able to escape their harrowing situation by entering the sewer system to reach the Aryan side of the city and seek a path to safety.
On May 16, 1943 von Stroop declared the Ghetto liquidated, but 28,000 Jews remained hiding in the city. The biggest threat were the “greasers” who continued to extort and murder Jews. These “greasers” numbered between 5-10,000 Poles and were on a fee basis from the Gestapo. Brzezinski correctly points out that little research has been done concerning this problem, but he sheds more light on the precarious situation Jewish survivors of the liquidation faced. It is interesting that so much work has been done concerning the role of Righteous Christians, but so little with “greasers.” (See Jan Grabowski’s new book, HUNT FOR JEWS: BETRAYAL AND MURDER IN GERMAN OCCUPIED POLAND)
On August 1, 1944 Warsaw erupted once again as the Home Army led a revolt against the Nazis. The Poles wanted to liberate themselves before the red Army arrived. Brzezinski explores the diplomacy among Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin concerning the future of Poland and it becomes clear by the Tehran and Yalta Conferences that Britain and the United States despite protestations realized that Poland would fall into the Soviet sphere. During the Warsaw uprising Stalin kept 800,000 troops from entering Warsaw and refused the use of Soviet airspace to the British and the United States who sought to assist the Home Army. From Stalin’s perspective the more Poles the Nazis killed the better. The man who was responsible for the Katyn Forest Massacre earlier in the war was just finishing a project to decimate the Polish leadership, politically and militarily as soon as possible. On October 2, 1944 Warsaw capitulated with 200,000 casualties in 63 days. (362) “From a pre war population of 1.35 million, only an estimated five thousand remained hidden in the rubble of October 1944.” (369)
Once Poland was liberated by the Soviet Union and the war was brought to an end the full horror of the Holocaust was brought front and center for the world to witness. For the remaining Jews who survived the war they trickled back to Poland, but their ordeal was not at an end. Over 300,000 Jews returned to Poland and most did not want to remain as most Poles were not happy that so many Jews survived the war. Isaac Zuckerman worked ceaselessly to assist as many as possible to immigrate to Palestine, but the British, now a declining empire refused their admittance for fear of angering the Arabs. For those Jews who wanted to remain in Poland prewar anti-Semitism quickly resurfaced. As Jews tried to regain their homes, businesses, and other property from the prewar years many Poles either owned or occupied them and refused to go back to their prewar status and return them to their rightful owners. Beatings of Jews and robberies and other types of harassment were common in postwar Poland, but none reached the level of the pogrom at Kielce in July, 1946, which resulted in the death of 40 Jews and many more injured. The massacre was carried out by “ordinary Poles; bakers and seamstresses, white collar workers and carpenters, God-fearing Catholics who went to church on Sundays. How, after the tragedy of the Holocaust, something like this could occur in a supposedly civilized society, Isaac could not understand.” (401) For a full description of the events in Kielce and the role of the Polish government consult Jan Gross’ account in his book, FEAR: ANTI-SEMITISM IN POLAND AFTER AUSCHWITZ. The Polish government would then, after asking permission from the Soviet Union, facilitated the immigration of 115,000 Jews to Palestine. (403)
Brzezinski closes his narrative by reintroducing characters that he had interviewed for the book . Some of these survivors lived in Israel and had to deal with the remnants of their experiences. Issues such as post traumatic stress disorder were apparent in most survivors and for Isaac and Zivia death would come at a fairly young age. Mark Edelman returned to Lodz after the war and became one of the Poland’s leading heart surgeons. Many settled in Krakow, while others went to Toronto and New York. As time moves further and the continued building of skyscrapers all physical evidence of the Holocaust in Poland will be extinguished except for a few yards of the ghetto wall which stood as of my visit in 2003. At that time the wall was tended to by an older gentleman. I wondered as I closed Brzezinski’s book if that gentleman was still alive, and if not had someone else taken over the mission of caring for some of the last evidence of the Nazi destruction of such a beautiful city. ISAAC’S ARMY is superb book that reads like fiction, but the trouble for humanity is that it is all based on fact.
IMPEACHED: THE TRIAL OF ANDREW JOHNSON AND THE FIGHT FOR LINCOLN’S LEGACY by David O. Stewart
David O. Stewart has written a well researched book dealing with the attempt to remove Andrew Johnson from the presidency after the Civil War. The author goes through excruciating detail describing the conflict between Radical Republicans and Democrats following the war between the states. The author explores the great personalities involved, ie; Thaddeus Stevens, Andrew Johnson, Ben Wade, U.S. Grant etc. Currently, we are in an age of extreme political partisanship that does not compare to the Reconstruction period the author discusses. Further, the book rebuffs many of the myths associated with the impeachment process in targeting Johnson for being too lenient on the south as the United States attempted to reunite. The pervasiveness of bribery and corruption during the process is shocking and the author offers a number of important documents in an attached appendix. The book is well worth reading for those interested in the post-Civil War politics or those who are drawn to the sinister nature of men whose beliefs are so strong they will stoop to any convoluted argument to achieve their goals.
HITLER’S HANGMAN: THE LIFE OF HEYDRICH by Robert Gerwath
Until 1942, the year of his assassination Reinhard Heydrich was the chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service and the Gestapo. He played a significant role in the planning of the “Final Solution” and was responsible for many of the atrocities implemented by the Nazi hierarchy until his death. In this new biography, HITLER’S HANGMAN: THE LIFE OF HEYDRICH by Robert Gerwath, the Director of the Center for War Studies at the University College Dublin,the reader is presented with the most complete study of this perpetrator of evil that has been written to date. Heydrich was the “complete” ideological Nazi. One who grew up in a privileged middle class family and the narrative and analysis follows his career progression to the point of becoming one of Hitler’s most trusted policy makers. Gerwath presents the inner workings of the Gestapo and other Nazi police organs. The reader witnesses the complexities of the Nazi secret police, the personal conflicts and power struggles and the resulting affects on its victims. It is a study that explores the personal and public character of its subject and leaves no doubt that the Holocaust was greatly facilitated by the former overlord of Bohemia and Moravia. His assassination (the topic of a fascinating new novel, HHH by Laurent Binet) by a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service in 1942 did the world a service by ending the cruelty of the “butcher of Prague.” The book is designed for the general reader as well as an academic audience and is very well written and well worth the time if one is interested in this type of subject matter.
HITLERLAND by Andrew Nagorksi
Hitlerland, by Andrew Nagorski is a useful survey of the attitudes expressed by Americans who witnessed the rise of the Nazis to power from the 1920s onward and their reactions to Nazi policies in the 1930s. The author integrates a number of important Americans, ie; US Ambassador Wiiliam Dodd, the journalist William L. Shirer, George Kennan, Dorothy Thompson etc in ascertaining what Americans thought concerning the events that they witnessed. If you want to get a flavor of what it was like for Americans in Germany as World War II approached and reactions to the rising anti-semitism under the Nazi regime this book should be of interest.
HHhH by Laurent Binet
Recently I read Robert Gerwath’s HITLER’S HANGMAN: THE LIFE OF HEYDRICH. It was an amazing biography of a person described as “Himmler’s Brain.” Reinhard Heydrich was the Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service and the Gestapo, also the ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia during World War II. In addition he was the leading organizer of the “Final Solution” until May 27, 1942 as well as the “host” for the Wannsee Conference that many believe set up the infrastructure for the Holocaust, quite a resume! Heydrich was one of the most important figures in the Nazi hierarchy and quite possibly would have worked his way up to be Hitler’s successor had he not been assassinated by a Czech and a Slovak as part of a British secret service plot in May, 1942. Since Heydrich was such an important historical figure I was fascinated by Laurent Binet’s remarkable book, HHhH translated from French into English by Sam Taylor and published last year. Binet’s work is a combination of historical fiction and historical narrative, a process he describes as an “infranovel.”
This book is an unusual combination of impeccable historical research and prose. The author seems to meditate over his material as he presents it in the form of a conversation with himself. His application of subtle sarcasm exists throughout and his descriptions of his characters are hauntingly accurate. The first half of the book presents the background in the form of a bio-fiction of Heydrich’s life and then the author moves on to discuss his main concern the assassination of the “Butcher of Prague.” The reader is provided an interesting portrayal of Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis the British trained assassins, who are parachuted into the Prague area in May, 1942. The reader is taken for a chilling ride with these partisans as they carry out their mission, the Nazi reprisals resulting in the massacre of the Czech town of Lidice, their own deaths and the eventual extermination of all individuals who are linked to the plot by the Germans. Binet is irreverent in his descriptions, be it social situations or ideological debates to the point that some of the scenes seem farcical. The author’s blend of historical accuracy and fictional musings draw the reader in with his commentary, i.e.; in dealing with Anglo-French sellout of Czechoslovakia in September, 1938 he states, “at this level of political stupidity, betrayal becomes almost a work of art.” The book is truly an accurate portrayal of history presented in the form of a novel. As a historian I wish he could have provided footnotes and a bibliography!
GETTYSBURG by Allen C. Guelzo
According to Allen C. Guelzo, as of 2004 6,193 books, articles and pamphlets have been written about the Battle of Gettysburg. Now in the 150th anniversary year of a battle that has been seared into American memory we have another prodigious volume that describes and analyzes the battle, the leading characters, as well as the soldiers who were involved in the fighting. Guelzo’s work GETTYSBURG: THE LAST INVASION may be the best one volume account since that of Bruce Catton’s appeared in 1952. In summarizing the Civil War as “large numbers of organized citizens attempting to kill one another,” he has also captured the essence of Gettysburg which he describes in particular were “conducted with an amateurism of spirit and an innocence of intent which would be touching if that same amateurism had not also contrived to make it so bloody.” (xvi) It seems that every aspect of the battle was discussed, be it, strategy before, during, and after the fighting ended, to the political and military recriminations that appeared soon after. In addition, Guelzo describes the problems that the battle created including damage to the town’s infrastructure, people’s capacity to earn a living, along with the lack of quality medical care for survivors including the issue of how thousands of corpses were to be buried.
At the outset the author puts to rest the idea that the Civil War was a modern total war. Guelzo correctly argues that technology and military strategy had progressed since the Napoleonic Wars but not to the degree that the fighting involved society in its totality. Another point raised at the outset is that Gettysburg does not really touch on the issue of emancipation because as Lincoln said many times it was a war for union. The plight of slaves is mentioned in the context of freed blacks who resided in the battle area who were seized as property by the Confederates, but not as part of the overall concept of emancipation. For Lincoln the preservation of the union was the key to the success of liberal democracy which was not possible without a Union victory. For Guelzo, “Gettysburg would be the place where the armies of the Union would receive their greatest test, and the Union its last invasion.” (xix)
The book is organized into a number of sections. First, themes are laid out in the Acknowledgements and the reader is provided with a glimpse of the arguments that Guezlo employs throughout the book. A background chapter follows and then each of the three days of battle is broken down into larger chapter groupings. The book concludes with a few chapters that discuss responsibility for events, the immense cost in lives and property, and an analysis of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The author employs diaries and letters of all the major participants, including the foot soldiers and officers that provide the reader an intimate look at their state of mind as it related to what was transpiring on the battlefield as well as the decisions that led to the fighting. The topography of the battlefield is not left out as Guelzo describes the importance of hills, ridges, and peaks, how muddy the roads were, as well as the obstacles of fenced in farms presented for the soldiers. For example the discussion of Cemetery Ridge as it related to artillery with its broad flat plateau and uncluttered view of the area provided an elevation that could block attackers from 600 yards away. (124)
Early on Guelzo asks the question of what motivated the ill led, ill equipped, and ill trained soldiers to fight. According to the author, for the most part the Union army fought to save liberal democracy from a conspiracy to replant a European style aristocracy in the United States. They fought in obedience to duty and patriotism not hatred for the Confederacy. The southern cause was not as noble since their soldiers fought for slavery. Their motivation was tied to home and country represented by sectional and personal financial interests, as one out of every three southern soldiers owned at least one slave. They assumed they were god’s aristocrats and had the utmost confidence and adulation in Robert E. Lee and would follow him anywhere.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the mini-biographies the author presents for all the major participants in the battle. The reader is privy to the intra-military rivalries that existed on both sides and the major disagreements pertaining to battle strategy. Robert E. Lee is presented as a person who sees slavery as a moral and political evil that would end sometime in the future. He also viewed the southern fire-eaters as a political cancer, but he was a slave owner who felt a strong loyalty to Virginia for personal family reasons. Perhaps the most important conclusion Guezlo comes to deals with what he terms “Lee’s invisibility” during the battle. Lee’s decision to invade the north as a vehicle to stirring up Democratic Party pressure in Congress to foster a negotiated settlement is discussed in detail as is the military planning before the battle. However, Lee was the type of commander who allowed his officers a great deal of leeway in implementing his plans. This could be seen each day and particularly on July 3, 1863 in dealing with George E. Pickett’s charge into the center of Union lines. Lee’s relationship with James Longstreet is reviewed as is Lee’s anger toward J.E.B. Stuart who Lee would later argue might have cost the Confederacy a victory through his actions.
Guelzo reviews the McClellan-Lincoln relationship as it relates to the internal politics of the Union military and how it created a schism between pro and anti-McClellan factions. This schism greatly affected the overall conduct of the war, though to a lesser extent at Gettysburg. Guelzo’s presentation of a George Gordon Meade is extremely important to our story in a number of ways. Meade was a supporter of McClellan and eventually Lincoln would compare his inability to pursue the enemy when victory was at hand as he previously had done with McClellan after Antietam. Meade was placed in a very poor situation as he was made commander of Union forces following the firing of Joseph Hooker on June 28, 1863. Meade did not want the command and was the most surprised man in the army to receive it. Meade favored compromise to end the war and Radical Republicans in Congress saw him as a McClellan Democrat and a supporter of the man who would run against Lincoln for the presidency a year later. Because of good intelligence Meade had a pretty good idea were Lee’s army was located. However, Meade’s situation highlighted a problem for both sides, the poor communication that existed between commanders. For example Meade really did not know exactly where his own army was as the first evidence of the battle trickled in and after General John Reynolds who was in command of half the army at Gettysburg was killed Meade did not know who was in charge. In addition to poor communication Meade was unsure of how many troops were available to him. It was assumed he had about 112,000 men on July 1, but muster reports placed the figure at 95,000 because of how troop strength was determined (it included all soldiers who had non-combat missions, for Lee this was not a problem because he had 10-30,000 slaves for non-combat roles). After Day two of the battle Meade was strongly considering retreat. Though he vehemently denied the charge, why did he call for a war council that night? Most of his generals did not favor pulling back and Meade did not favor the advice he was given and said so, “Have it your way gentlemen, but Gettysburg is no place to fight a battle.” (356) By Day Three Lee had decided to soften up Union forces with a massive artillery barrage, but due to a misjudgment of the strength of Union artillery and Lee’s uncoordinated command style and poor communication when Pickett’s Charge finally occurred it was repelled and created a major Union victory. The question remains how much credit should Meade receive for a victory that seemed to fall into his lap, and why after Lee began retreating didn’t Meade pursue him? Lincoln described McClellan as having a serious “case of the slows,” a description that could also describe Meade.
For the author no detail pertaining to the battle is insignificant. I found his attention to the average foot soldier very insightful as it placed the reader in the middle of the fighting and the deprivations that each combatant had to endure. Discussions of rationing ammunition, the large amount of foraging of the area, the poor medical care, and the emotional ups and downs of battle reflect the torturous situation thousands of young men from all over the country had to endure. The author’s chapter on medical treatment of soldiers after the battle is excellent. At a time when our soldiers are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, I cannot imagine the mental turmoil the survivors of Gettysburg had to cope with when the fighting was finally brought to a close.
Guelzo brings the book to a conclusion by discussing the “blame game” that took place after the battle, and for years following the Civil War. Reputations were on the line and the testimonies of witnesses during Congressional hearings changed over the years and still today historians and partisans argue the same issues. Upon completing such a detailed military history I wondered who the audience for this work would be. I concluded that the time I spent reading the book was well worth it, and though at times the military minutiae was a bit much, Guelzo’s overall approach to his topic and his writing style allows for a broad audience including the general reader and the academic. My plan was to read this book right before visiting the Gettysburg Battlefield National Park, hopefully our representatives in Congress will allow me to do so next week.
FDR AND THE JEWS by Richard Breitman
One of the most contentious debates pertaining to World War II deals with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s role in trying to mitigate the horrors of the Holocaust. Many argue that Roosevelt was a political animal who based his position on the plight of world Jewry on political calculation and did little to offset Nazi terror; others argue that FDR did as much as possible based on conditions domestically and abroad. In the new book, FDR AND THE JEWS, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman address all aspects of FDR’s policies during the Holocaust synthesizing most if not all the relevant secondary and primary sources with a layer of new material. The authors reach the conclusion that FDR’s views were consistent throughout the war and he was “politically and emotionally stingy when it came to the plight of the Jews-even given that he had no easy remedies for a specific Jewish tragedy in Europe.” (210) The authors argue that “FDR avoided positions that might put at risk his broader goals of mobilizing anti-Nazi opposition and gaining freedom to act in foreign affairs,” (151) for example dealing with the refugee crisis, the issue of Palestine, immigration, and organizing the defeat of Nazi Germany. The authors describe in detail the fear of domestic anti-Semitism, especially in the State Department; the inability of American Jews to present a united front; the role of the War Department; and presidential politics. Overall, the reader is presented a picture of a president who had a great deal on his plate during the war and did as much as he could given the political and military situation in Europe in trying to bring to an end the horrors that beset the Jews during the Second World War. Overall, the book is an exceptionally detailed work that is worthy of an academic as well as a general audience as it centers in on the important issue that remains with us today; what is the “appropriate response of an American president to humanitarian crises abroad?” (327)
DUNKIRK: THE MEN THEY LEFT BEHIND by Sean Longden
Last July I found myself looking out from the white cliffs of Dover peering across the English Channel at France. After touring the tunnel caves carved out during Napoleon’s time and put to use by the British during World War II I began to wonder what it was like for the soldiers who were not rescued by the “mythical British flotilla” that saved so many at Dunkirk. While browsing in the main bookstore for the historical replication of the tunnel caves I came across Sean Longden’s DUNKIRK: THE MEN THEY LEFT BEHIND. What unfolds in Longden’s narrative is the horrific experience of the 40,000 British soldiers who were not rescued as the Germans marched through France and threatened the channel coast. These were the men who performed a rearguard action that allowed the hundreds of thousands of British soldiers to escape. The story of the rearguard soldiers who would spend five years as prisoners of war was not publicized by the British government as they sought to translate the Dunkirk evacuation not as a defeat, but as a victory. Therefore, the plight of the POWs was kept hidden from the British public for years. According to the author it took until the publication of Richard Collier’s THE SANDS OF DUNKIRK for the true story of the evacuation to be told. Longden has resurrected the story of these men through numerous personal interviews and mining the vast historical documentation. What emerges is the application of the survivor’s descriptions and emotions from their experiences interspersed through a well written and extremely thoughtful narrative.
Longden begins the book with a history of the Dunkirk evacuation and explores how the British found themselves in such dire straits in May, 1940. The author describes the lack of training given to recruits and the equipment that was World War I vintage. The German advance through Belgium and France that fostered thousands of refugees is described as is allied military incompetence. The resulting carnage of the British retreat is described with stunning images. Once the order to fall back was given a rearguard action was instituted to allow as many British soldiers as possible to escape across the channel. The British government highlighted the evacuation and purposely forgot about the men who were left behind. Many of these men felt abandoned, though there were other rescue attempts that did not come to light until sixty years later.
The author takes the reader along on the odyssey that befell the remaining British Expeditionary Force who were not fortunate enough to reach Dunkirk. The reader witnesses all aspects of what the soldiers experienced. The poignant and difficult stories abound as some soldiers tried to escape through other venues; while others were captured by the Germans and turned into POWs who were marched across Western Europe to their destination in camps in eastern Germany. The detailed descriptions of the horrors the POWs experienced as they marched including daily humiliations, malnutrition, shootings, and exhaustion by their German captors leaves nothing to the imagination. The Germans did their best to foster hatred between British and French captives, and singled out the English soldiers for “systematic inhumanity” as reported by a later government investigation. (369) Longden description on p. 373 summarizes the plight of these men well, “For so many of the marchers it was a lonely existence. They were surrounded by thousands of men. All were sharing the same hideous experiences, all had known the horrors of battle and seen their friends slaughtered, yet they had no emotions to share. Instead each man became wrapped up in his own small world – a world that revolved around the desperate desire for food and rest.”
The plight of the POWs continued over the next five years of captivity. The narrative employs the words of the survivors to recreate their experiences. The Germans were totally unprepared to house the massive influx of POWs, particularly as it related to their medical condition. What resulted were years of depravity, continued malnutrition, dysentery, gastro-intestinal issues, lice and a host of other problems. Emotions were shattered as they witnessed the shootings of their comrades and the total disregard for humanity exhibited by their German guards. The lives of the prisoners “revolved around forced labor, inadequate food, disease, violence and death.” (456) Not only does the author describe daily life but he accurately explores the physical, and especially the mental state of the prisoners during captivity.
After five years in POW camps the prisoners were finally liberated in April, 1945. The liberation created a confusing situation as to whom to surrender, which direction they should follow, how to gain enough sustenance to make their way west, and how to deal with their own physical condition. The earlier march east was endured by heat; however the march west was so cold that frostbite was a regular occurrence. As they left the camps they continued to witness the horrors of war. Soviet vengeance against the Germans was ever present, contact with Holocaust survivors, performing what seemed to be barbaric medical procedures on their “mates” to save them, starvation leading to eating and drinking the foulest things just to survive, are all difficult to imagine.
The stories of liberation are heartwarming, but repatriation and homecoming could not possibly go smoothly based on the condition of the men and what they had experienced. Post traumatic stress disorder was very common, but in 1945 it was not a diagnostic category with recommended treatment. Longden correctly points out that the mindset of the returning soldiers centered on the failures of the British army in France in 1940 as they felt they were trained as a 1918 force to go up against a mechanized German machine. “They had witnessed the superiority, in both numbers and quality, of German tanks and aircraft….and seen allied armies outmaneuvered by advancing Germans…..they had been let down by a government that had sent them to France in 1940 ill-prepared for modern warfare.” (525-526) “As the prisoners returned home there was a general lack of understanding of what they had endured…..Whether it was the soldiers surrounded at St. Valery, the men who received disabling wounds during battles, or the men who had been plucked from the sea following the sinking of the Lancastria, the plight of those left behind at Dunkirk seemed like a footnote to history.” (528) The story of the miracle of Dunkirk seems to have passed these men by and they felt it upon their return home and for many years to follow. What separates Longden’s book from others is the use of the words of the captives describing their emotions and what had they had experienced. It leads to a powerful narrative for anyone interested in reading a work of history that sets the records straight.
DISSOLUTION: A NOVEL OF TUDOR ENGLAND by C. J. Sansom
In DISSOLUTION: A NOVEL OF TUDOR ENGLAND, C.J. Sansom introduces the character of Matthew Shardlake, a reformer who is summoned by Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s vicar general. Employing the skills of a professional historian and novelist Sansom takes the reader on a journey through sixteenth century England, at a time when the kingdom was split between those who supported the Tudor monarchy and those who supported the Catholic Church. Shardlake is charged with solving the murder of a royal official on the south coast of England. During the investigation what emerges is the paranoid nature of English politics of the period, the byzantine workings of the Catholic Church and its corruption, in addition to the accurate portrayal of the historical characters on display. The book has many plot twists and keeps the reader engrossed as the author exhibits a superior knowledge of Tudor England, the inner workings of Henry VIII’s court, worthy of Hillary Mantel, and it is well worth the read. Fortunately, DISSOLUTION is the first in a mystery series that continues with DARK FIRE, Matthew Shardlake’s next challenge!
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