John F. Sweets - The Politics of Resistance in France, 1940-1944

I bought this book years ago, tried to read it, and gave up. I'm not sure why though, because this time around I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sweets traces the evolution of the French Resistance in the southern (Vichy) zone of France during the Second World War, looking at its formation, struggles, and efforts in the Liberation.


I don't have terribly much to say about The Politics of Resistance except that I quite liked his detailed analysis of events that I didn't know terribly much about. One point he made that I found quite interesting was that when the three major resistance movements in the south merged, they did so with very little friction, since most of the members by that time had joined for the sake of resisting, and had not joined a particular group based on its ideology. The conflicts between the unified southern resistance and the communist and socialist movements was also fascinating, especially regarding Sweets' conclusions that the communists actually cooperated better with the Resistance than the socialists because the communists and Resistance were both focused on the matter of driving out the Germans, while the socialists were seemingly more preoccupied with preparing for politics after the Germans were gone.

The problems between the Resistance and the Allies was something that I had not been fully aware of previously. I found it quite interesting that even though the Resistance was fully committed to de Gaulle as their future president, they were also very frustrated with his seeming lack of comprehension of the situation on the ground, as well as his unwillingness to listen. In addition, I had not realized before reading this that the Resistance was also preparing to rebel against the British and Americans if they attempted to control France the way they had Italy, and in order to forestall that they had installed local authorities everywhere they could to prevent the Allies from doing so when they advanced.

I had a few minor criticisms of The Politics of Resistance. First and foremost was Sweets' tendency to incorporate French phrases into the narrative with little or no translation. While I could generally figure out what was being said, it made the reading somewhat more difficult. Second, while Sweets did a good job of examining the relationship of the Resistance with the pre-war left-wing political parties, he almost never mentions the right-wing parties. I would have liked to know if the members of those parties had joined the Resistance as much as the left-wingers had or if they were more predisposed to either remain neutral or collaborate. While the assumption would be that they would likely collaborate at a higher rate it would have been nice to have that confirmed or disproved.

Despite these flaws, it was an excelled book and I would recommend it to those with an interest in the Second World War.

Richard Lourie - Hunting the Devil: The Pursuit, Capture and Confession of the Most Savage Serial Killer in History

I have no idea where or when I got this book, but it was certainly an interesting read. It chronicles the crimes of Andrei Chikatilo, who murdered over fifty people in the late 1970s to early 1990s, as well as the investigation by Issa Kostoev.


It was an interesting book, and quite well-written, but I don't have a lot to say about it. The narrative style was very dramatic (something that the author admits in the prologue), so it is hard to know exactly what is fact and what is conjecture. In addition, the author is overwhelmingly in favour of the version of events as recounted by Kostoev, dismissing the versions of others involved in the investigation, so the book certainly has a bias.

In general it was a fairly good book and it was an easy read, so it would be worth reading if you are interested in the subject.

André Stein - Hidden Children: Forgotten Survivors of the Holocaust

A few years ago I read the book Quiet Heroes by Stein (about Christian rescuers during the Holocaust) so I was quite interested to read Hidden Children. It tells the stories of ten children who survived the Holocaust by going into hiding.


It is an excellent survey of the different sorts of experiences that these children had, ranging from relatively safe to constant peril. It also does a wonderful job of showing the different types of people who did the rescuing. Some fit the bill of the commonly-described Christian rescuer, saving the Jewish refugees out of the goodness of their hearts. Others, however, did it only so long as they received payments, or so long as they were allowed to forcibly convert the children to Christianity. Still others took in children but were horribly abusive to them.

Throughout the book Stein does a very good job of linking the ten stories with a number of themes. One such theme was a sense of shame for being Jewish. Being children, they only knew that they were being persecuted because they were Jewish, so therefore being Jewish must be a bad thing. Another common theme for many of the children was a sense of resentment or estrangement towards parents who left them in hiding in order to save them. In many cases the children felt that they were being punished. For others who found loving homes they were not eager to return to parents of whom they had little memory. Yet another theme was a sense of guilt for not being able to save family members who had been taken away. Many of the children felt that they should have been able to do something to save them, even though there was nothing that they could have done. Finally, the most prevalent theme was one of silence. The children were taught to remain silent and secretive during the war years, and once the war ended they generally found that they world did not want to hear they experiences, especially the experiences of children that were thought not to be terribly reliable. This sense of silence and internalization in many cases continued into adulthood.

I have nothing critical to say about this book whatsoever. It was an excellent and moving read, and anyone interested in the Holocaust should read it.

Gordon Kerr - Fugitives: Dramatic Accounts of Life on the Run

Fugitives is a collection of several dozen stories of fugitives, ranging from POWs to wild west outlaws to modern criminals. The idea behind the book is excellent, and it had the potential to be incredibly interesting.


Unfortunately, however, it was generally a very poorly written book. The grammar and punctuation were horrendous, making it necessary to reread some sentences multiple times before the meaning became clear. Similarly, on a number of occasions Kerr mixed up the names of the people involved (at one point a man named Gunther was referred to as Gerhard for a page). Kerr also made a number of factual errors, including the dates of the Korean War. If he made mistakes in such basic facts, there is no telling how many more serious errors slipped past the editors. Finally, the narrative structure was generally poor, as Kerr jumped around in his writing leaving me baffled as to what the order of events was on a number of occasions.

I would recommend against Fugitives. The subject matter is interesting, but the book itself is too flawed to make it worth reading.

Simon Wiesenthal - The Murderers Among Us: The Wiesenthal Memoirs

I got this book last year at a used book sale, and I had been meaning to read it for a while. Most of the book is a collection of stories by Simon Wiesenthal about his hunt for various Nazi war criminals, while the rest is a brief biography of Wiesenthal written by editor Joseph Wechsberg.


One of the things that really stuck out for me in the book was Wiesenthal's emphasis on the idea of shades of grey, and how guilt is not always as clear-cut as it might seem. He illustrates this by telling the story of a number of SS men who found themselves in situations that they could not stomach and who did their best to help the Jews that they were supposed to be killing. On the flip side of that, he cites a number of examples of civilians in occupied countries volunteering to help persecute the Jews when they could have stayed out of it without fear of consequences. His perspective is interesting as well in that he condemns Jewish collaborators alongside the perpetrators. Unlike some Holocaust work I have read, Wiesenthal also rejected the idea of collective guilt on the part of the German population. This is because, as he says, the idea of collective guilt has been used for centuries to persecute Jews. To his mind if it is an invalid charge against the Jewish community then it is an equally invalid claim against the German population. Finally, I definitely appreciated the perspective of the book. It was published in 1967, which means that at that time a lot of the major war criminals (Josef Mengele, Klaus Barbie, and more) were still alive and at large and the fate of others (like Martin Bormann) was still unknown. Reading accounts of the ongoing efforts to find and capture these men added a lot to the interest of the book.

I did have a couple of criticisms of the book. One is the acceptance of the ODESSA network as fact. While Wiesenthal was convinced of its existence, and Nazi aid and smuggling networks certainly did exist, it has never been proven that a single all-encompassing network such as ODESSA was active. That being said, reading about it from Wiesenthal's perspective certainly was interesting. Another criticism was in the structure of the memoir. In it, Wiesenthal quoted enormous sections of dialogue between himself and others, sometimes from conversations over twenty years old. While I'm certain that the conversations took place, I couldn't help but wonder whether or not Wiesenthal would have been able to remember those conversations word-for-word. That relates to my final criticism, which is Wiesenthal's penchant for exaggeration. Over the course of his life he made a number of claims that have been proven to be untrue (such as the number of concentration camps he was in), which call into question whether or not some of the more minor details of the memoir are completely true to life.

None of that, however, takes away from what is otherwise an excellent book. It is a fascinating look into the post-war hunt for war criminals, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

John Cornwell - Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII

I got this book at a used book sale last year. It caught my eye because I have always heard accusations against and defences of the wartime papacy, but I had never really done much reading on it. With a title like Hitler's Pope I was expecting it to be a rather violent diatribe against Pius XII and the Catholic Church in general. I was mostly pleasantly surprised. Cornwell is a practicing Catholic, which meant that there wasn't an automatic bias, and for the most part the book is in support of the Church in general, just not of some specific practices. Cornwell claims that he went into the project intending to defend and vindicate Pius XII but couldn't do so after confronting the evidence. Whether or not that is actually true, the book made for good reading that traces the life of Pius XII from his birth, to his role as nuncio in Germany, to his efforts to shape canon law, and finally to his papacy. Cornwell condemns the wartime papacy on a number of grounds.


First, and most flimsily (in my opinion) is his assertion that Pius XII was at least somewhat anti-Semitic, and that therefore influenced his opinion in order to do nothing in the face of the Holocaust. He cites a number of incidents from the early 1900s, including one in which Pius XII (then Eugenio Pacelli) rejected a request by the Jewish community in Germany to help them obtain palm fronds for a Passover ceremony. According to Cornwell, Pacelli rejected the request himself but let the Jewish leaders believe that he had done his best and that the decision had come from the Vatican. Cornwell also claims that in the post-WWI chaos in Germany Pacelli began to link the Jewish community with communism, which in his opinion was a far worse threat than fascism. For the most part, I think that this argument is somewhat weak. While there might easily have been some amount of anti-Semitism on the part of Pius XII, that was not exactly a rare sentiment during the first half of the twentieth century, especially in Europe. In my opinion, actions such as the palm frond incident illustrate less of a dislike of Jews and more of a disinterest in any religious community that was not Catholic.

As mentioned, Pius XII believed communism to be the primary threat to Europe until his death. In his role as Secretary of State for the Vatican prior to being elevated to the papacy, Pacelli was of the opinion that while the fascists could be reasoned with, the communists were a deadly threat to the Catholic community of Europe. This opinion would change over the course of the war, but by then it was far too late. Even then, however, fear of communism clouded his thinking as he refrained from supporting the resistance in Italy after the Allied invasion for fear that if the resistance overthrew the government before the Allies arrived in Rome then the communists might take over the country. His efforts against communism continued during the Cold War, and interestingly he loudly and publicly called for Catholic resistance in a way that was drastically different than his actions during WWII. Cornwell uses this as more evidence of Pius XII's anti-Semitism, but I would again argue that it indicates more his apathy for the lives of non-Catholics in general.

Part of the problem, according to Cornwell, was that Pius XII believed in a church that was authoritarian in nature. This accomplished three things. First, it severely hampered the efforts by clergy in the war zones from doing anything "official" to help. There were early and public denunciations of Nazism by a large number of German bishops when the Nazis were rising to power, but Pacelli and his predecessor walked those back and silenced the outspoken bishops for speaking out of turn. Second, it contributed to an anti-democratic attitude that put Pacelli more in sympathy with totalitarian fascist governments than with the European democracies. Third, and perhaps most important, it led to Pacelli (as Secretary of State) being able to force Catholics to withdraw from politics in pre-war Europe. Specifically, it meant that as part of the bargaining process with Hitler Pacelli forced the Catholic Center Party to dissolve in exchange for the protection of the religious rights of Catholics within Germany (which Hitler largely ignored, obviously). Since in the early 1930s the Center Party was one of the largest parties in Germany and was in many ways the only stumbling block in the way of Hitler's ascent to power these actions on Pacelli's part in essence smoothed the way for Hitler to take over Germany. This is yet more evidence that Pacelli was only concerned with Catholic well-being to the exclusion of all else. In my mind this is also the most damning of the accusations laid at Pacelli's feet. His supporters might claim that during the war speaking out would only have made things worse (as will be seen below), but there is little that can be said in favour of surrendering the Center Party except Pacelli's own belief that Catholics should stay out of politics.

Prior to the war Pacelli was strongly in favour of appeasement of both Germany and Italy. He did not speak out against either the Anschluss or the takeover of Czechoslovakia, and he pushed for Poland to allow Germany to take a "corridor" to Danzig through their territory. In addition, he did not condemn the invasion of Poland until mid-October 1939. While Cornwell makes this out to be a major failing, and in some ways it is, it is not that different from the appeasement of both Chamberlain and Daladier, and does not make him stick out more than either of those two men.

Once the war began and the facts of the Holocaust became known, the recently elevated Pius XII was almost entirely silent on the matter despite the efforts of the Allied governments to convince him to denounce the atrocities. In fact, over the course of the war he made very few public statements, and when he did he confined himself to general statements condemning all violence against non-combatants, never mentioning either Jews or the Nazis specifically. His detractors (like Cornwell) and his supporters have very different arguments for why this is so. The main argument by Pius XII's supporters is that speaking out against the actions of the Nazis not only would have done nothing to stop the atrocities, but may have led to reprisal attacks against Catholics under German control. They also argue that a denunciation may have led to an increase in the pace of the Holocaust, which I find fairly hard to believe considering the pace at which it was already moving. Cornwell lays out a number of arguments against these theories, based mostly around three incidents. Cornwell and other detractors argue that Jews in western countries (specifically France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) were caught off-guard by the extremes of anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust when Germany invaded. He believes that the Pope could have made a public denunciation prior to the invasions and thereby given warning to the Jews in those countries. In Croatia, in many cases the local Catholic clergy warmly welcomed the Nazis and in some cases they participated in the massacres. Cornwell states that the Vatican was kept completely up to date on these issues and yet failed even to rein in the priests committing murder. In Cornwell's opinion Pius XII kept silent on this because he saw Croatia as a gateway to converting the Orthodox in the east. If true, this is more evidence in my mind of the unconcern for anything not Catholic by Pius XII. Finally, in the roundup of Jews in Rome before the Allies liberated the city Cornwell argues that Pius XII made virtually no efforts to save them even in the face of pleas to do so by the local German authorities who feared that the roundup by the SS would lead to riots.

While I largely agree with the arguments put forth by Cornwell, there are nonetheless a number of flaws in the book. Many of these have to do with the dismissal by Cornwell of the seemingly sincere (but ultimately ineffective) efforts by Pius to bring about peace, such as his part in writing an encyclical critical of Germany in 1937. He also did what he could to convince Mussolini to stay out of the war, including publicly praising him for wanting to maintain peace. Pius XII was also a somewhat complicit party in a 1939-1940 attempt to overthrow Hitler, acting as a go-between for the plotters and the Allies. While Cornwell does praise this last action, for the most part he is contemptuous of the efforts by the papacy for peace and seems to argue that Pius XII spoke when he should have remained silent and said nothing when he should have spoken out (the latter of which I agree with).

I believe that there were several other flaws in the form of absent information. For one, virtually nothing is mentioned in the book of what Pius XII did in the years between the liberation of Rome and the end of the war. Cornwell says nothing of whether the pope began to speak out or remained silent, and this is a major problem in the scope of the book. Second, Cornwell makes very little effort to address the main argument of Pius XII's supporters; namely that the pope supposedly saved a huge number of Jewish lives (one source puts it at 860,000). Cornwell dismisses this argument but doesn't actually offer any real evidence to refute it. These two omissions call into question whether the book is written fairly and leave major holes in the argument.

Nonetheless, I very much enjoyed the book. Although I wish it would have expanded its argument to cover the omissions I mentioned, the evidence it does present is compelling. I would recommend the book, but perhaps also recommend reading a book that is supportive of Pius XII in order to get a fuller picture of the issues and to look at the evidence presented in favour of Pius XII having worked to save the Jewish community.

Greg Campbell - Blood Diamonds: Tracing The Deadly Path Of The World's Most Precious Stones

I got this book at a used book sale a few years ago after seeing Blood Diamond in 2006, but never got around to reading it. It was written in the early 2000s by Greg Campbell, a journalist investigating the conflict diamond trade and the civil wars that were spawned around it.


The book was definitely well written, and gave a lot of excellent background information for those not familiar with the region and with the international diamond trade. Chapters are devoted to the history of Sierra Leone and the slave trade, the illegal arms trade, the mining process, and the history and practices of De Beers, which dominates the diamond industry. I thought that Campbell also did an excellent job of switching between testimonies of the victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone, the perpetrators, and the politics that were at work. Also fascinating was his description of the link between the illegal diamond trade and international terrorism, specifically Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

He does a good job of adding a sense of realism to the book as well. One part that I particularly appreciated was when he compared the statistics and optimism of the UN leaders with the realities on the ground. Namely, that while some child soldiers had been disarmed and many adult soldiers had given up their weapons, many were feeling tricked and angry and those who were still armed were still illegally mining diamonds.

One problem I did have was with the tone of parts of the book. At times Campbell seems to be looking down on everything and everyone. Descriptions of some of the villages or the refugee camps seem not just to be describing the squalor but are somewhat contemptuous of the inhabitants as well. One example of this that particularly stuck out for me was when Campbell and his photographer were in a small refugee village with the UN. Campbell, tired of the poor conditions he was in and frustrated because his research was taking longer and was more difficult than he had anticipated, demanded a place on one of the planes being used to evacuate the sick and some disarmed child soldiers rather than wait to leave when he had planned. While I understand his eagerness to be out of the situation, I couldn't help but wonder if he and his photographer were taking up space that might otherwise have gone to refugees.

One thing I had to keep in mind was when the book was written. The bulk of his work was done towards the tail end of the civil war in Sierra Leone, with the epilogue addressing things that had happened until about 2003. Since that time, Sierra Leone has been mostly peaceful and far more democratic than it had been, and neighbouring Liberia (which was discussed extensively in the book) has transformed into a mostly functional democracy and has extradited former dictator Charles Taylor to the Hague. I would very much like to read the updated version of the book that has just been released.

In general, I would greatly recommend this book to anyone who wanted to learn more about blood diamonds, but I would suggest purchasing the 2012 version rather than the 2003 version that I have.

Anne Arnott - The Secret Country of C.S. Lewis

I was given this book by my uncle and aunt when they were getting rid of a large number of their old books. As an avid fan of the Narnia books I thought that it might be an interesting look at C.S. Lewis' life, but I was somewhat disappointed.


It is a biography of his life, but rather than focusing on his literary work (which is what I had been hoping for) the focus is almost entirely on his spirituality. It explores his disillusionment with Christianity as a young man, his period of atheism, and culminates with his return to Christianity. It is certainly not an objective view of his life, and his return to Christianity is shown as a great triumph. The books he wrote during this period are given only passing mentions in favour of focusing on his spirituality.

I found the beginning of the book to be the most interesting, as it explores Lewis' childhood and his fascination with reading and mythology. However, I become somewhat skeptical of the details that were included, since they often talked about the thoughts and feelings of Lewis as a very young boy. The book was written after Lewis' death and drew on other works of his and on his correspondence from later life, and so I am somewhat curious as to whether or not many of these memories were not either invented outright or at least greatly embellished by Arnott.

Regardless, it was an interesting read, and at 123 pages it wouldn't be a waste of time to skim through it.

August Kubizek - The Young Hitler I Knew

I bought this book off of Amazon a few years ago after it was recommended to me, but I never got around to reading it. It was written by August Kubizek, who was friends with Adolf Hitler for about four years when they were teenagers. The core of the book was written while the Nazis were in power at their behest (although Kubizek denied this), and was later expanded upon. It was published in the early 1950s, shortly before Kubizek died. It's a fascinating read, but it required me to try to separate the facts from the embellishments and evasions that were fairly obviously present.


Kubizek's perspective for much of the book is one of near-infatuation. His own youthful insecurities shine through as he heaps praises on the young Hitler. Hitler was "wise beyond his years" when he was sixteen, he employed "mature" handwriting, and had no interest in the "follies" of youth. He is portrayed as a dedicated, hard-working young man who did not let setbacks fluster him. Kubizek claims that his grand plans for reshaping society were "noble," and intended to benefit all of society (except those who were considered "undesirable," of course, but Kubizek doesn't mention that). The hero worship is laid on so thick at points that it seems almost like a gospel. In particular, Kubizek relates one instance in which the two men climbed to the top of a mountain, after which Hitler declaimed his vision for society and how he would shape it. The modern introduction to the book casts serious doubts over whether this incident ever happened, and I am inclined to agree that it seems like a fairytale designed to help foster Hitler's mystique. To be honest, reading through this book I kept thinking of parallels between this and the last Harry Potter book. In Kubizek's eyes, Hitler was a young Dumbledore, with him content to be Elphias Doge, faithful sidekick, bootlicker, and defender of character. The political discussions held by the two men also bring to mind Potter references, although Hitler obviously turned out to be much more of a Grindelwald than a Dumbledore.

The book is a fascinating source, however for a number of things that shaped Hitler's worldview. One is his obsession with buildings and architecture that followed him into his later life. His desire to physically reshape society into the image he wanted it to fit into obviously started at this stage of his life. The other is the genesis of his Aryan superman theories, which can be traced back in large part (in my opinion) to his obsession with Germanic mythology, specifically the works of Wagner, and the outright rejection of works from any other culture.

One of the biggest things that struck me about the book was how careful Kubizek was to distance himself from the adult Hitler. While he refers to the Hitler of his youth as Adolf, without fail the adult is referred to either as Hitler or the Reich Chancellor. He definitely tried to separate himself from any hint of support for Hitler's policies of anti-Semitism. He virtually never mentions it, and when he does he is careful to point out that anti-Semitic attitudes belonged to Hitler, and not to him. Kubizek does this to the point of possibly conflating Hitler's own early anti-Semitism, since he claims that in 1908 Hitler joined the Anti-Semitic Union in Vienna, despite the fact that no such organization existed at the time. In general, the book improved in terms of bias as it progressed. I think that this can largely be attributed to the increasing tensions felt between the two young men, which in many ways seemed to lessen Kubizek's hero worship that was so pervasive early in the book.

Perhaps one of the most interesting parts of the book has to do with Hitler's love life (or lack thereof) in this stage of his life. He was, according to Kubizek, obsessed with a young woman named  Stefanie. She belonged to a family that was considerably wealthier than his, and as such was well out of his reach. His solution to this was to stand on a bridge that she walked over each day and stare at her. Daily. For almost four years. He never once introduced himself, and according to Kubizek he barely even nodded to her, but he was convinced that she was as in love with him as he was with her. During those periods when he was away he had Kubizek, the faithful sidekick, stand on the bridge alone and report back to him whether or not Stefanie had inquired as to where Hitler was (she never did, obviously). In fact, Hitler's only communication with her whatsoever was a letter he sent her from Vienna asking her to wait for him, which he did not sign. Despite this, he remained convinced for almost four years that she was in love with him and was prepared to marry him.

I really enjoyed this book. It was obviously written from the perspective of a supporter of Hitler trying to portray him in the best possible light, but it is absolutely fascinating. I would definitely recommend it.

Legion Magazine - True Canadian War Stories

I got this book a few years ago at a used book sale, since while I had a lot of books on the World Wars I had very few on Canada's part in them. The book itself is a collection of short true stories written by veterans about their experiences during the First and Second World Wars as well as the Korean War.


I don't have much good to say about this book. It was 300 pages of universally dull stories. Some of the stories would have been interesting, but they seemed like they were excerpts from larger accounts, and the reader is dropped into the middle of a story with no context and no way of knowing who is who. Many of the other stories are simply boring; anecdotes about war experiences far from the front that were no doubt amusing to the people involved but which have no real interest or relevance for the reader.

It's an easy read, and a few of the stories are somewhat intriguing, but in general I wouldn't recommend this book. There are far better sources of Canadian war history out there.

Joseph Pistone - The Way of the Wiseguy: Secrets to Success in the Mob, Everyday Life, and Business

I have no idea why I bought this book, but thankfully I got it cheaply at a used book sale because it was a waste of my time and the paper it was written on. The author is Joe Pistone, best known for having been undercover in the mafia for six years as Donnie Brasco. This book, a follow-up to his book on his time undercover, is supposedly an "inside look" on how wiseguys look, act, and feel. In the first chapter, he talks about how real life wiseguys are nothing like the fictional wiseguys seen on TV and in movies, and then proceeds to fill the book with sweeping stereotypes about them that are identical to the portrayals in Goodfellas and The Godfather. These stereotypes might very well be true, but it's not like this book is somehow offering new and exciting insights.


The book is split up into several dozen short chapters, each addressing a specific topic such as "Why Wiseguys Will Kill You" and "Wiseguys Love Their Food." The stereotypes are so pervasive that given the chapter titles I likely could have written the content after having watched a few episodes of The Sopranos. Pistone doesn't seem to care that his blanket statements seem to contradict each other on a regular basis, either. In the chapter entitled "Wiseguys and Money" he says that when wiseguys go out to eat, "you get the check, and you pull out a three-inch-thick roll of Lincolns and Hamiltons." A few chapters later, in "Wiseguys Are Cheap," Pistone asserts that "When wiseguys go out, everything is on the arm--given to them for free."

Obviously these observations are drawn from his real-life experiences, but the book reads like he was an extra on The Sopranos. Don't bother reading this book. If for some reason you haven't already done so, go out and watch The Godfather. It's just as informative and a lot more entertaining.

Benjamin A. Valentino - Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century

To give myself a break from WWII books, I decided to take a look at this book, which I picked up at a used book sale a few days ago. As it turns out from the excessive amounts of writing in the margins, it was one of the textbooks for a mass killing and genocide history class that I had wanted to take when doing my BA but hadn't had the chance to.


Valentino divides the mass killings of the last hundred-odd years into six categories, and focuses on examples in the three main ones. Communist mass killings (USSR, China, and Cambodia), ethnic mass killings (Armenia, the Holocaust, and Rwanda), and counterinsurgency mass killings (Guatemala and Afghanistan in the 1980s). His basic conclusions are two-fold. First, that in no cases (not even the Holocaust) was the mass killing done for the sake of killing alone, and second, that in all cases the root of the killings can be traced to either a single leader or a small group of leaders.

To address that first point, he argues that the mass killings that resulted in all cases did so only after the regimes responsible had attempted other options and found that it was easier and/or cheaper to kill large numbers of people or that the deaths resulted as a part of social change. In the cases of the communist killings, widespread societal changes forced on the people led to starvation and repression of rebellion. That, combined with the imprisonment and murder of so-called enemies of the state resulted in the massive death tolls. Even in the cases of deliberate murder of a certain group (such as the kulaks in the USSR) they were not being killed for the sake of killing people, but because the regime viewed them as a threat (they weren't, obviously, but the regime believed they were). In the cases of the ethnic mass killings, in all cases the regimes ended up murdering enormous numbers of people after trying a number of other options first. They first tried expulsion, but that failed to reduce the population of the target group sufficiently. In Turkey/Armenia and Nazi-controlled Europe, they next tried segregation. Since that required the regimes to feed and shelter the target group, that was also deemed inefficient. Only then did they turn to directly killing on a wide scale. None of this excuses the actions of the regimes, of course, but it does provide insight as to how they arrived where they did (since even in Nazi Germany up until the end of 1940 top Nazi leadership still wanted to expel the Jewish population to a place like Siberia or Madagascar and had rejected systematic murder). Finally, in the case of counterinsurgency mass killing, regimes ended up killing large numbers of civilians in order to deprive guerrilla fighters of their base of support after trying to directly engage those fighters had failed.

For his second main point, he argues that there must be a combination of both a fanatical leader/group of leaders who genuinely believed in their cause (however perverted it might be) and a general passivity on the part of the general population. In the Holocaust, for example, the drive to kill the Jewish people was done by the leadership, mostly Hitler. The actual killing was done by a relatively small group (when compared to the population as a whole). The Nazi regime did not need the willing participation or even approval of the general population, they simply needed most of them not to care, and they needed those who did care to be too frightened for themselves and their families to do anything about it. Similar situations occurred in virtually all places where mass killings occurred.

Valentino also spends a portion of his book rejecting the most common assertion as to why mass killings occur, namely that there exist deep social cleavages between the group that is killed and the group that is doing the killing. He rejects this for two reasons. First, in many cases (particularly the communist killings) there were no real differences. The kulaks as an actual social group in Russia were mostly a figment of Stalin's imagination. In Cambodia, there were virtually no differences between the killers and the killed other than that most of the killed had once lived in the cities. Second, he rejects the social cleavage theory on the basis that if it were truly the reason for mass killings there would be a lot more than there have been. He points out, for example, that in the early part of the 20th century many European countries were as anti-Semitic if not more so than Germany, but it was only in Germany (and German-occupied regions), where there was a fanatically anti-Semitic leader bent on expanding German territories that the mass killings occurred.

For the most part I agree with Valentino's arguments, although I would argue that there were a number of things that he overlooked. The major one for me was that while his theory can be applied correctly to Germany and German-occupied western, southern, and northern Europe, I do not think it can be in eastern Europe. Many of the people there were not simply passive watchers, but active participants. The Nazis found huge numbers of volunteers in Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and other countries who joined killing squads and willingly went to guard concentration camps. Those who did not enlist were often all too willing to inform on Jews in hiding (there were few examples of people in those countries hiding Jews or smuggling them to safety as there were in western and northern Europe). So in that case, the mass killings were not just attributable to a single fanatical leader but rather to a violently anti-Semitic population who had been given permission to kill Jews. The other small quibble I had was in his examination of the mass killings in Guatemala. While I think that he did a fairly good job of looking at it, he did not examine the role that foreign support (specifically the US) played in the killings. I think that it would have been valuable to look at whether or not the killings would have happened on the scale they did without foreign support. Overall, I very much enjoyed the book and I would recommend it. It's not light reading, but it's worth it.

Stephen Ambrose - Pegasus Bridge

This book tells the story of the British 6th Airborne Division on D-Day, and their mission to take two bridges near Caen in order to hinder German counterattacks and ensure that the Allies would be able to cross the Caen Canal and Orne River. I picked it up a few days ago at a used book sale when I saw the author's name (he has also written Band of Brothers, which I very much enjoyed). I knew virtually nothing about the operation before reading the book, so it was quite informative.


Like Band of Brothers, Pegasus Bridge is a fairly easy read. Ambrose's prose is simple but eloquent, and it does not generally bog the book down with unnecessary figures. I thought that it gave a good summary of events, but it did not go into a lot of detail in places that it could have. One major point in its favour was that it was not just an account from the side of the Allies, since Ambrose was able to interview both one of the German commanders and one of the German soldiers who had been guarding the bridges. I think, however, that Ambrose's scope was somewhat limited--he interviewed only a handful of the British participants, and generally seemed to portray their experience as the whole story. There were moments when he would seemingly skip over parts that did not involve his interviewees that I wish he would have covered in more depth.

Overall, the book was enjoyable but certainly no more than a light read.

E.B. Sledge - With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

Like Helmet For My Pillow, I decided to read With the Old Breed after watching The Pacific on HBO. This book was written by Sledge later in life, and was apparently originally intended as an account for his family to learn about his war experience.


The book came highly recommended, with a number of sources naming it one of the top WWII memoirs available. After reading it, I would completely agree. I thoroughly enjoyed every page. Like Helmet For My Pillow, Sledge's book addresses the points of the war experience that the mini-series didn't--specifically getting to know Sledge as a person as well as his experience in boot camp. Sledge's descriptions are amazing, and I think that they express the horrors of jungle warfare as well as they can be expressed on a page. He spares the reader no horrors, and a few of the images really stuck with me, including the extraction of gold teeth from a still-living Japanese soldier and the experience of one of Sledge's comrades who fell down a muddy slope into a pile of decomposing corpses. Sledge also does not spare himself in his description of the war (which was a major problem I had with Leckie's book). He fully admits to his fears, his hatred of the Japanese that developed as he fought them, and his gradual desensitization to things like the looting of bodies. All of that made the book a lot more real for me.

I had virtually no problems with the book other than that outside of a few people almost no one was named in the book. I can understand why he would want to keep people anonymous, but at times it made things somewhat difficult to follow.

This was one of my favourite war memoirs, and I would recommend it to anyone (over and above Helmet For My Pillow).

Robert Leckie - Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific

 

According to Wikipedia Leckie decided to write this book after walking out of a performance of South Pacific, declaring that he needed to write a book to show people that the war was not a musical. I decided to pick it up after watching HBO's The Pacific. One of my main problems with the mini-series (which I otherwise enjoyed quite a bit) was that we didn't really get to know the characters as people. I thought that reading Leckie's own account of the war might fill in some gaps for me.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, although I found that some parts dragged a little. Leckie gives a great account of life in boot camp, which was something that I was hoping for. His accounts of the various battles are visceral, and don't leave any illusions as to whether or not war was like a musical. He also does a good job of mixing in the periods between battles and keeping it interesting for the most part, throwing in the moments of humour that he experienced alongside the moments of horror.

I did have a few problems with the book. He tended to introduce people without terribly much background information. I realize that this is a war memoir and not a novel, but there were points where I was trying to figure out who exactly was who, and where they fit into the unit or command structure (part of this came from his tendency to use nicknames for virtually everyone). Another minor problem I found was that Leckie almost invariably portrayed himself in a positive light. His various escapades in Australia and on Pavuvu were never his fault, they always seemed to be explained away by him being a loveable "brig-rat" (to use his term). This wouldn't be a huge problem, except it made me start to think that if he glossed over things in those parts of the book, were there other parts that he wasn't totally honest about as well?

Regardless of those problems, it was an excellent book and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in a first-hand account of the life of a marine in the Pacific.

My First Post

I recently realized that because of my habit of going to used book sales at every opportunity (and because relatives often give me their old books) I have a lot of books on my shelf that I have never read. I've decided that I'm going to try to read them all, hopefully many of them by the end of summer. Since I generally want to talk/rant about books after I'm done with them, and since most people don't want to listen to that, I decided to review them on here when I finished (I have no illusions about whether or not anyone will actually read this, I just wanted a place to express my thoughts about these books and dislike the idea of keeping a paper journal). So enjoy, and please feel free to comment either on the reviews themselves or with suggestions of other books. Here's the list of books I'm starting with, and more will likely be added (current count is 52/175 read):

Martin Allen    Himmler's Secret War: The Covert Peace Negotiations of Heinrich Himmler
Ayaan Hirsi Ali    Infidel
Stephen E Ambrose    Pegasus Bridge
Anne Arnott    The Secret Country of C.S. Lewis
Nicholson Baker    Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization
Dan Barker    Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists
John Barron    KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents
Earl R. Beck    Under the Bombs: The German Home Front, 1942-1945
Edward Behr    Hirohito : Behind the Myth
Michael R. Beschloss    The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, And The Destruction Of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945.
Charles Bewley    Herman Göring and the Third Reich
Key Porter Books    True Canadian War Stories
R. J. B Bosworth    Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945
James Brabazon    My Friend the Mercenary
Barry Broadfoot    Six War Years, 1939-1945: Memories of Canadians at Home and Abroad
Marcus Brotherton    We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories from the Band of Brothers
Anthony Cave Brown    Bodyguard of Lies: The Extraordinary True Story Behind D-Day
Michael Burleigh     Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II
Greg Campbell    Blood Diamonds: Tracing The Deadly Path Of The World's Most Precious Stones
Joseph Campbell    The Power of Myth
David Cesarani    Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a "Desk Murderer"
Roselle K. Chartock    Can It Happen Again?: Chronicles of the Holocaust
Nien Cheng    Life and Death in Shanghai
Denise Chong    Girl In The Picture
Winston S. Churchill    The Gathering Storm
Winston S. Churchill    Their Finest Hour
Winston S. Churchill    Triumph and Tragedy
Winston S. Churchill    Closing the Ring
Winston S. Churchill    The Hinge of Fate
Winston S. Churchill    The Grand Alliance
Michael Coffey    Days Of Infamy: Great Military Blunders Of The Twentieth Century
Tim Cook    The Madman and the Butcher: The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes & General Arthur Currie
Tim Cook    Warlords: Borden, Mackenzie King and Canada's World Wars
John Cornwell    Breaking Faith: The Pope, the People, and the Fate of Catholicism
John Cornwell    Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII
William Craig    Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad
Edward Crankshaw    Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny
Gregor Dallas    Poisoned Peace: 1945 - The War That Never Ended
Mike Davis    Late Victorian Holocausts
Nuel Pharr Davis    Lawrence and Oppenheimer
Richard Dawkins    The God Delusion 
Richard Dawkins    The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
Len Deighton    Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II
Daniel C. Dennett    Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Jared Diamond    Collapse
Taylor Downing    Churchill's War Lab
Allen Dulles    Great True Spy Stories
Bart D. Ehrman    Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
Dennis Eisenberg    The Mossad: Israel's Secret Intelligence Service
Peter Eisner    The Freedom Line
Dominique Enright    The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill
Richard Evans    Third Reich In Power
Richard Evans    The Coming Of The Third Reich
Ladislas Farago    The Game of the Foxes
Robert Gellately    Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe
Martin Gilbert    Holocaust Journey: Travelling in Search of the Past
Martin Gilbert    Kristallnacht: Prelude To Destruction
Martin Gilbert    The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust
Michelle Goldberg    Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
Doris Kearns Goodwin    No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
Gershom Gorenberg    The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount
Joseph C. Goulden    Korea: The Untold Story of the Korean War
Nathan Greenfield     The Damned: The Canadians at the Battle of Hong Kong and the POW Experience, 1941-45
Sam Griffith    The Battle for Guadalcanal
Sam Harris    The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason 
Sam Harris    Letter to a Christian Nation
Max Hastings    All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945
Waldo Heinrichs    Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry Into World War II
Burton Hersh    The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA
Charles Higham    American Swastika: The Shocking Story of Nazi Collaborators in Our Midst from 1933 to the Present Day
Christopher Hitchens    God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Christopher Hitchens    The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
Christopher Hitchens    The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Walter L. Hixson    Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945-1961
David Irving    The Trail of the Fox
Susan Jacoby    Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
R.V. Jones    Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945
Kathryn Joyce    Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement
Tony Judt    Postwar
Donald Kagan    The Peloponnesian War
David Kahn    Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II
Jan Kamienski    Hidden in the Enemy's Sight: Resisting the Third Reich from Within
Kazik    Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter
John Keegan    The Second World War
Anthony Kemp    D-Day and the Invasion of Normandy
Frederick Kempe    Father/Land: A Personal Search for the New Germany
Thomas Keneally    Schindler's List
Gordon Kerr    Fugitives: Dramatic Accounts of Life on the Run
Thomas King    The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
Walter Klaassen    Marpeck: A Life of Dissent and Conformity
Carl A. Krause    Benjamin Ralph: One of God's Gentlemen
August Kubizek    The Young Hitler I Knew
Robert Leckie    Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific
C S Lewis    God in the Dock
C S Lewis    The Problem of Pain
Stephen Lewis    Race Against Time
Gerald F. Linderman    The World Within War: America's Combat Experience in World War II
David Littlejohn    The Patriotic Traitors: History of Collaboration in German Occupied Europe, 1940-45
Walter Lord    The Miracle of Dunkirk
Richard Lourie    Hunting the Devil: The Pursuit, Capture and Confession of the Most Savage Serial Killer in History
David W Love    A Call to Arms: The Organization and Administration of Canada's Military in World War One
Douglas MacArthur    Reminiscences
Terence Macartney-Filgate    Dieppe 1942: Echoes of Disaster
Ben Macintyre    Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured and Allied Victory
Charles Mackay    Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Kenneth Macksey    Military Errors Of World War Two
Don Malarkey    Easy Company Soldier: The Legendary Battles of a Sergeant from World War II's "Band of Brothers"
William Manchester    American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964
Mark Mazower    Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century
Marci McDonald    The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada
James L McWilliams    The Suicide Battalion
John Melady    Korea: Canada's Forgotten War
Catherine Merridale    Night Of Stone: Death And Memory In Twentieth-Century Russia
George Reid Millar    Road to Resistance: An Autobiography
David Mills    Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism
Jenna Miscavige Hill    Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape
Carlos Alberto Montaner    Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution
Desmond Morton    A Military History of Canada
George L. Mosse    Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich
Brendan Murphy    The Butcher of Lyon: The Story of Infamous Nazi Klaus Barbie
John Myers    Doc Holliday
Patrick K. O’Donnell    The Brenner Assignment: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Spy Mission of World War II
Charlton Ogburn    The Marauders
Masatake Okumiya    Zero! The Story of Japan's Air War in the Pacific: 1941-45
Richard O'Neill    Suicide Squads: The Men And Machines Of World War II Special Operations
Cami Ostman & Susan Tive    Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions
James Owen    Nuremburg: Evil on Trial
Erna Paris    Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History
Moshe Pearlman    The Capture Of Adolf Eichmann
Mark Perry    Partners In Command
Joseph E. Persico    Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage
Richard Pfau    No Sacrifice Too Great: The Life of Lewis L. Strauss
Norman Charles Phillips    The Tragedy of Apartheid: A Journalist's Experiences in the South African Riots
Charles P. Pierce    Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
Nicholas Pileggi    Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family
Joe Pistone    Way of the Wiseguy: Secrets to Success in the Mob, Everyday Life, and Business
Gordon W. Prange    Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring
Andrew Prestion    Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy
Anthony Read    The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact 1939-1941
David Reynolds    Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945
Richard Rhodes    Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
Jeffrey T. Richelson    A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century
Mordecai Richler    Writers On World War II
Bertrand Russell    Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Cornelius Ryan    Bridge Too Far: The Classic History of the Greatest Airborne Battle of World War II
Dora Sanders Carney    Foreign Devils Had Light Eyes: A Memoir of Shanghai 1933-1939
Ronald McNair Scott    Robert the Bruce: King of Scots
Matthew Seligmann    Daily Life In Hitler's Germany
Tom Shachtman    Laboratory Warriors: How Allied Science and Technology Tipped the Balance in World War II
Michael Shermer    Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
William L Shirer    The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
Dennis Showalter    Patton And Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century
Hampton Sides    Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission
E.B. Sledge    With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
Albert Speer    Inside the Third Reich
Debbie Spring    The Righteous Smuggler
André Stein    Hidden Children: Forgotten Survivors of the Holocaust
William Stevenson    The Bormann Brotherhood
John Strawson    Churchill and Hitler in Victory and Defeat  
David Suzuki    Earth Time: Essays
John F. Sweets    The Politics of Resistance in France, 1940-1944
Studs Terkel    The Good War: And Oral History of World War Two
Gordon Thomas    Guernica: How Hitler's Air Force Destroyed a Spanish City for Franco in Practice for World War II
John Toland    Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath
John Toland    Adolf Hitler
Irving M. Troper    None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948
Isaiah Trunk    Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution
Benjamin A. Valentino    Final Solutions: Mass Killing & Genocide in the 20th Century
Dan Van Der Vat    D-Day: The Greatest Invasion
Max Wallace    The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich
Simon Wiesenthal    The Murderers Among Us: The Wiesenthal Memoirs
Dick Winters    Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters
Peter Wyden    Day One: Before Hiroshima and After
Desmond Young    Rommel: The Desert Fox
Erich Zimmerman    Germans Against Hitler