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152 of 167 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A comprehensive view of the collapse of Japan, 4 Oct 2007
Most accounts of the fall of Japan follow, understandably, the progress of the US across the Pacific, culminating in the invasions of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and finally the cataclysmic events of August 1945. Hastings paints a much broader picture, following events in Burma, where the British Empire forces were engaged in a stunningly successful but ultimately pointless, in terms of the final destruction of Japan, campaign, to Borneo where the Australians where relegated to fighting in a backwater, losing much of their stature gained in the Western Desert 3 years before, and being hampered by in-fighting. Macarthur's arrogance - megalomania even - in the Philippines is described with the savage battle for Manila. The necessity for the battle for Iwo is seriously questioned with the normal answer "it saved allied aircrews" being doubted. Some of what he describes is well-known - the fire bombing of Japan's cities, the battle for Okinawa are covered well but less-known aspects are handled well: the China war (which had been going on for far longer that WW2), the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (Stalin's race to grab land before the war ended - the battles there continued for some days after the "official" surrender) and the choking of Japan's logistical supplies by the relatively small (compared with the U-Boats a couple of years earlier) US submarine force. Hastings makes the point that the sinking of Japan's merchant navy dwindled back in late '44 and early 45 for the very simple reason: there was pretty well nothing more to sink. He criticises the USAAF (a la Bomber Command) for not diverting more resources into the mining of the Inland Sea. When this did happen, the results almost crippled Japan's inter-island traffic. The actual nuclear attacks are briefly covered - I suspect that Hastings realised that they are just too well known - but the political build up, in Washington, Tokyo and Moscow, is covered is some detail.
For those used to Hastings's earlier work dealing with the end of WW2 in Europe - Armageddon and Overlord - will be familiar with his technique of mixing personal memories and reflections with the broader picture - both military and political. In Nemesis he succeeds again admirably and this book thoroughly deserves five stars.
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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Overview , 26 Nov 2007
Max Hastings describes how and why Japan was finally brought low in 1945 - the politics and the military grand strategy - and what it was like for the ordinary people swept up by these events. And in his descriptions of action on the ground in China, Burma, the Philippines and across the Pacific, he succeeds in conveying the horror of total warfare by allowing participants to speak for themselves. The book does not, however, provide a detailed operational analysis of the campaigns involved, and the absence of a bibliography which is dismissed as an author's `peacock display', is therefore a disappointment. A good bibliography is a resource and the literature of this subject is little better known than its detail, so the absence of one, or at least of a bibliographic essay, is a pity - hence only 4 stars. This is all the more apparent given Hastings's clear exposition of Japanese as well as American strategic imperatives; he shows why this war degenerated into a slugfest.
There are excellent pen pictures of leading characters, and the failings of senior commanders are rigorously examined: General Douglas MacArthur, for example, was a paranoid megalomaniac obsessed with his personal mission to liberate the Philippines, and ignored any intelligence that didn't suit him. In describing systematic Japanese brutality towards both Allied prisoners and fellow Asians, Hastings is also careful to shade the coin, showing that not all Japanese were sadists. But if today some Japanese suggest such inhumanity was no worse than Allied bombing, he notes that having started the war, they `waged it with such savagery towards the innocent and impotent that it is easy to understand the rage which filled Allied hearts in 1945'.
The horror of the atomic bombs is put in context by the description of the fire bomb raid on Tokyo of 9 March 1945, in which as many as 100,000 people died, and the strategic significance of aerial bombardment is itself put in context with the submarine campaign that effectively crippled Japan's economy. Subsequently Hastings doesn't dwell on the horrible effects of the bombs themselves, but describes the Tolstoyan inevitability of their use in balanced terms. He concludes that if today Japan is guilty of a collective rejection of historical fact in denying its army's brutal and nihilistic actions, some US historians interpret the pursuit of decisive victory - unconditional surrender - as the American way of war, an outlook that `renders the country liable to chronic disappointment'. In Nemesis Hastings has covered a vast canvas with superbly realised detail, and has provided an excellent companion to Armageddon, his earlier study of the defeat of Germany.
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25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece, 12 Jan 2008
There can be few, even knowledgeable, students of the Second World War who will not learn much from this really impressive book. Max Hastings has already contributed some masterly WW2 histories but this must be his finest. It is one of the best histories of the War that I have ever read.
What impresses most is the scope and breadth of this book. All the major campaigns are covered and their relative importance made clear. The British campaign in Burma was never much more than a side-show, no matter how that fact must pain the dogged combatants under Bill Slim who drove the Japanese out. The relatively little known but hugely successful American submarine war against Japan's shipping is given its proper due.
None of the combatants fought a very clean war (if there can be such a thing). The Americans slaughtered many Japanese civilians and prisoners and their campaign seems to have been fuelled by a hatred of Japanese that they did not feel towards the Germans. However, upon reading of the many and hideous atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese - many denied or overlooked by Japan even today - the hatred of them by their opponents seems all too understandable. The last-minute declaration of war against Japan by Stalin, that cynical opportunist, unleashed the Red Army upon Manchuria, in the full plunder and rape mode that made them dreaded for decades to come.
Even today the dropping of atomic bombs by the United States upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains perhaps the most controversial act of the War and some think the greatest atrocity. Hastings gives much of the detail of the attacks themselves and the thinking behind them. He also reveals that the planned November 1945 invasion of Kyushu, Japan's southern island, by the Americans was not that likely to be undertaken. The Americans were coming round more to a strategy of bombing and starving the Japanese into submission, rather than suffer the appalling casualties that an invasion of Kyushu would produce. It also seems to have been conventional wisdom up to now that the two atomic weapons dropped on Japan on the 6th and 9th of August 1945 were the only ones in the American armoury and that no more would be available for several months at least. However, it seems that a third weapon would have been available by 19th August and that the target could have been Tokyo.
Fortunately, the third atomic bomb was not necessary. The Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, who had allowed, on the most charitable view, the military to take over the running of the country and plunge it into a war dominated by Japanese atrocities, at last partially redeemed himself and ordered them to surrender unconditionally. The atomic bombs had definitely changed Japanese thinking and brought the War to a premature end - there seems little doubt that the countless lives saved more than outweighed the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In many ways this is a sickening book to read. The ruinous potential for Man's inhumanity to Man comes over with great force. It should be compulsory reading for all the World's leaders. The desperate problems posed to Civilisation by the Axis were solved by going to war but the cost was prohibitive and atomic weapons raised that cost to insupportable levels. There can only ever be one more War like it - the last.
Max Hastings has done a considerable service by writing this book and reminding present generations of the truly appalling costs in blood and treasure of the last World War. It does help to give a better perspective on the different, and I suggest less difficult, problems that we face today.
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