The Second World War: A Military History [Hardcover]

I downloaded this book for my Kindle initially to provide some background information to J.G. Farrell's The Singapore Grip (which I also have on my Kindle - and can recommend as a wonderful work of fiction). I must admit that the bargain price was the sole reason for downloading this book, but having been impressed by Corrigan's account of the war in the Pacific, I have now started to read it from cover to cover and have no hesitation in awarding it five stars. This book can be read either from cover to cover or individual chapters dipped into as required. The Kindle edition comes complete with full screen maps, but no photos.

Mr. Corrigan is a military historian with a distinguished career in the Gurkhas Brigade of the British army, from which he retired some years ago. The author of the well-known "Mud, Blood and Poppycock" account of WW I, his subsequent "Blood, Sweat and Arrogance: The Myths of Churchill's War" appears to place him squarely among the WW II historians who are very critical of Winston Churchill's leadership and strategic ideas, mistakes or blunders, depending on one's views.
WW II history buffs will not learn much from Mr. Corrigan's book but it is an enjoyable read. As a career officer himself, he knows what he is talking about when comparing orders of battles or describing the structures of German, Japanese or allied military units. He writes in crisp and witty prose, which contains some apparently offhand - but probably long pondered - comments that can be quite funny and sometimes outrageously so.
For instance, I had a good laugh at his characterization of Nietzsche as " a vastly overrated German philosopher who was barking mad for most of his life". In some ways though, Mr. Corrigan seems to be tempted to engage in an attempt to rehabilitate the German army. No one will deny that the Landser - the German infantry man of the time - generally trounced any opponents, be they English, French, Russians or Americans, or that the German soldier was beaten only by superior equipment and numbers and displayed the most amazing fighting capabilities to the very end.
But should we really be treated to the fairy tale that, somehow, the Wehrmacht was good and honorable and all the horrors in the east were committed by the SS ? It has been proved again and again to be an inaccurate claim, to say the least, as German Wehrmacht soldiers happily participated in one atrocity after the other, killed civilians, torched villages and starved prisoners to death. Also, British readers might be mildly annoyed by the description of the Wehrmacht's oath of personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler, which Mr. Corrigan characterizes as "frightfully bad form on Hitler's part, but in the British Army we are bound by an oath that says that we shall "..bear true and faithful allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ", so the Germans were only copying us." One can only hope that the author is joking.
Further along, Mr. Corrigan even appears to distinguish between the "good" SS - the Waffen SS, that is the military SS (admittedly of great military valor but a bunch of blood thirsty murderers nonetheless) - and the bad guys in the concentration camps, supposedly quite different from the militarized comrades. Frankly, this is quite disappointing and a really untenable proposition.
The same applies in my view to the following comment about Adolf Hitler : "had he stopped after the absorption of the Sudeten Germans he might well now be regarded as the Greatest German since Charlemagne".
Except for such bizarre allegations, the book is a good read but it leaves the reader wondering whether Mr. Corrigan's views are really that remote from those of David Irving, whom he quotes extensively in an otherwise rather short bibliography. Caveat lector !

Gordon Corrigan looks at the course of the Second World War from a somewhat untraditional angle, viewing it as simultaneous, large-scale conflicts, which had less in common, then we usually tend to think. The book is "a military history", even though the account keeps a thought-stimulating ratio of military and political aspects of the war; the former, certainly, always being in the foreground. The reader, supposedly, should not be taken aback, noticing that the narrative palpably is written from a British perspective. Hence, for example, the warfare on the Eastern Front receives equivalent, but less expressive analysis than depiction of hostilities whether in Burma or Italy.

The author is good-humored and says that he is a simple infantryman. However, regardless of the military background, Corrigan is a pragmatist and admits that wars are not decided by the courage, leadership, training and loyalty of the troops, but money, population and industrial capacity. He dares to say, that for American industry the war came as an economic bonanza and finally got the US out of the Great Depression. Japan, on the other hand, entering the war took up an enormous gamble, since it had stocks for only eighteen months of military consumption. Germany, even with the best of its efforts, couldn't match Russian industrial production helped by Western aid.

The same happened on operational level. Rommel was finally forced to accept that the supply and manpower situation in Panzer Army Africa precluded any further offensives. Wehrmacht in Russia, despite some of its advanced armoured and motorized divisions, overall, could move no faster than Napoleon's Grande Armée. Corrigan ascertains that after the battle of Moscow the German army did not have any stores to build defenses, to say nothing of winter clothing and troop accommodation. On top of that, mundane matters like food rations, identical for all ranks in Wehrmacht, made understanding between the German army and its allies even less common. Thus, the Spanish Army's Blue Division's officers, whose rations used to be more plentiful, on the Eastern Front had to accept the same amount and quality for everybody, and also would they have to put up with sausages, sauerkraut and German bread, rather than fresh meat and vegetables. Thus supplies had a major impact on the course of the whole war, deciding a lot more than mere outcome of the battle in Stalingrad pocket, where 1500 tons of supplies per day were needed.

The narrative is enticing because of the author's healthy dose of criticism, like when describing the British as a nation old in the art of duplicitous diplomacy. He affords to be vaguely cynical saying that for the British Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a delightful Christmas cake, since the whole Churchill's war policy was based on hanging on until America could come in.

Here we come to the author's attitude towards Churchill and Corrigan here is merciless. He says Churchill wanted finest hours, glorious adventures and swashbuckling offensive action; that he was largely responsible for the shambles of Norway (p.96) and considered the war with Japan a very remote possibility (p.179). Churchill was his doctors' most cantankerous patient (p.306) and considered most RAF officers to be oily mechanics (p.207). The most humorous is a paragraph about a signal, that reportedly in 1939, was sent from the Admiralty to all ships: "Winston is back". According to Corrigan, no trace of this signal has ever been found and nobody but Churchill has ever admitted to seeing it. Even more, some cynics had suggested, if it was ever sent, it was in exasperation rather than jubilation. However, not everything in the book about Churchill is only in a negative light. He praises, for instance, Churchill's line versus Chiang Kai-shek (p.388) and his bearing in not accepting Hitler's peace feelers (p.110).

Corrigan isn't lining up brass hats against frock coats, though clearly sympathizes with intelligent military commanders, like Japanese Major-General Kuribayashi, who was fluent in English and able to quote Shakespeare. Particularly depressing Corrigan finds expression of some politicians - "to hold at all costs", meaning that soldiers are destined to be killed. On the other hand, Corrigan praises military discipline. Whether total abstainer or not, but he contrasts Wehrmacht's artillery lieutenant-colonel shot by firing squad, because found drunk on duty, and the Russian General Vasily Chuikov, who commanded the Sixty-Second Army in Stalingrad and consumed alcohol as if prohibition was just round the corner. Hong Kong Volunteer Defense Corps, in its turn, he says, had unkindly been referred to as a uniformed drinking club. As Allied troops in Italy were greeted by cheering crowds in the towns and villages, the rate of Allied desertion duly went up, because soldiers couldn't resist temptation sitting out the war surrounded by Italian girls.

That's, evidently, the reason why Corrigan comes to conclusion that unlike the war itself, the battles were won by the soldiers, who were led by wise and experienced officers. He even doesn't vacillate to voice his assessment, that in comparison to the Red Army soldiers, the German soldier was a far better in 1942 (p.238), and therefore Wehrmacht reached Volga, despite 3,25 million Germans at the time were facing 6 million Russians. He also admits that the British knew they couldn't beat the Germans in a battle of manoeuvre (p.401); but for the US Marines it took on average 1500 rounds to kill one Japanese!

In a 600 page volume I found some insignificant inaccuracies. It is said the Courland pocket was in Lithuania (p.530), whereas it was in Latvia; the Winter War lasted from 30 October 1939 until 13 March 1940 (p.93), whereas it started at the end of November. The author also is a bit simplistic saying that 9 May is VE Day in Russia and the states of the former USSR (p.563).

Overall, I was impressed by the book. It is an exciting read for WWII buffs and history experts alike. Corrigan doesn't romanticize the war - not even for a second. However, he makes us realize, that one should know more about the epoch, which despite the horrors of war and food rationing provided the healthiest generation of Britons ever.