Michael Coffey - Days Of Infamy: Military Blunders Of The Twentieth Century

I don't remember buying this book, but I think that I could have spent my money better elsewhere. Coffey's Days of Infamy was similar in intent to Macksey's Military Errors of World War Two, except that Coffey claimed to look at more than just that war.


Similar to Macksey, Coffey focuses all of his time looking at the big blunders that have been examined countless times before, such as Dunkirk and Market Garden. When he does look at smaller blunders, he does not connect them to the war effort by showing their significance the way he does with the big ones. He also falls short by simply listing out the mistakes that were made and then moving on. Where Macksey attempted to both explain how and why the mistakes were made and then look at what might have happened had things gone differently, Coffey simply lists the facts. In general, that made for fairly boring reading.

I had hoped that Coffey's focus on military actions other than World War Two would help his book become more interesting, but I was wrong. His examination of World War One mistakes could have been interesting, but like with the WWII events he simply breezed through them without examination. I was most excited for the events after World War Two, but Coffey barely looked at them, listing only a few of the very well known events (the Bay of Pigs and Tet Offensive, for example). In addition, there are a whole host of factual errors throughout the book which make its reliability suspect.

Overall, Days of Infamy was a fairly boring read. Coffey fails in his attempt to look at military blunders of the twentieth century, instead looking at military blunders of World War Two with a few extras tacked on. He also fails to inject interest into the already well-known stories by digging deeper. In general, Days of Infamy reads like it was written by who it was: a journalist with very little extensive knowledge of the wars of the twentieth century.

Matthew Seligmann - Daily Life In Hitler's Germany

I bought Daily Life in Hitler's Germany a few years ago because it was in the discount section of one of the local bookstores. I wasn't overly excited to read it, but it wasn't bad.


In general it was a fairly good outline of Germany under Nazi rule, but it wasn't overly exciting. I had a few problems with it as well. For one, there were problems with the chapter on German resistance to the Nazis. Resistance seemed to be a fairly poorly defined concept, with the author somehow including Himmler's secret negotiations with Britain as a resistance effort rather than an act of self-preservation. Including actions like that could quite easily give the reader the wrong impression that German resistance was of more significance than it really was. Another issue I had with the book was its use of pictures. One of the things that drew me to Daily Life in the first place was how many pictures were included, but unfortunately in many cases the pictures were irrelevant to the text of the page (as an example, a picture of German tanks in Paris was included next to the section on German resistance).

Other than these problems, the book does a decent job of outlining the issues faced by ordinary Germans during the Nazi period. I would recommend this as a good book for people with little knowledge of the Nazi system to become acquainted with it.

C.S. Lewis - God in the Dock

I was given God in the Dock by my uncle and aunt a few years ago when they were giving away a lot of their old books. I had very little desire to read it, but as it was so short I decided to just get it over with. God in the Dock is made up of a series of short articles written by Lewis mostly in the 1940s. The back of the book advertizes it as being great to "put in the hands of an intellectual doubter," but I would disagree. Every one of the essays gave off a very strong vibe of "preaching to the choir," by skipping over major contradictory points and structuring hypothetical arguments to heavily favour the Christian side.


He devotes a number of essays to the idea of miracles, but his arguments are all based on the idea that the bible gave a verified account of events. That is, that what the bible says actually did happen, so how can it be explained other than through miracles. He generally claims that there can be no scientific explanation for the miracles of the bible. This is true. However, this argument is only actually valid if there is a consensus that the events spoken of in the bible actually did happen, rather than having been the exaggerations or fabrications of people writing decades later in order to gain followers and bolster the reputation of their leader. This can be seen particularly where Lewis discusses the birth of Jesus. He constructs a hypothetical discussion in which he and an atheist debate the idea of whether or not the birth of Jesus was a divine event or not. Interestingly, his hypothetical atheist does not seem to think of the rather obvious argument that perhaps the story cannot be explained by science because the entire supernatural element was fabricated decades later in order to give an added sense of legitimacy to Jesus' teachings, and that the historical Jesus was born in the regular way to regular parents. Lewis does address this point in a general way, when he argues that it is unlikely that the followers of Jesus would have attributed divinity to his actions after his death because they were Jewish, and to do so without it actually having happened would have gone against their traditions. This ignores the rather obvious fact that throughout history people have been both misled by leaders to go against their own traditions, and that people have told lies that go against their traditions in order to gain influence or power.

Lewis also makes the interesting argument that the laws of nature only explain the constraints of an action (if A, then B), but not the origin of the action itself. He argues that if you follow each action back to its origins, you find another action. Each of these is constrained by the laws of nature, but is not caused by them. He then goes on to say that if you follow these actions back far enough, you arrive at God. Therefore, he argues, it is God who causes actions, and he who has put constraints on them in the form of the laws of nature. He does not seem to want to take his own line of reasoning back one step further and look at God as another action. In other words, God may have caused the tides (as an example), but what caused God?

In what was my least favourite of all his articles, Lewis also argued against allowing women to serve as priests. He makes it clear that this is not because he thinks that they are less intelligent or less able to be pious, but then almost immediately says that the idea of female priests makes him uncomfortable. He can dress it up all he wants, but using the fact that he is simply "uncomfortable" with the idea is still sexist. His main argument is that while he believes that women can represent humanity to God, they cannot represent (or speak for) God to humanity. He argues that this is because God is masculine and requires a masculine representative. Indeed, he goes on to say that those men who inadequately represent God are in fact not masculine enough, and so women should certainly not be allowed. This argument has no real merit, just a number of rather sexist talking points not based in facts. It also reminded me of the discomfort I felt years ago (as a child years before I became an atheist) when reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe when Peter is given a sword, but Lucy is given a healing cordial and dagger and Susan a horn to call for help and a bow and arrows. Both girls are told that they are to use their weapons only as a last resort, and not in battle. When Lucy protests, saying that she could be brave enough, Father Christmas replies that bravery is not the problem, but that "battles are ugly when women fight." No explanation, no reasoning given, just a casual sexist comment thrown out in order to tell girls that their bravery (and other qualities) do not matter, they are arbitrarily still not allowed to do what the boys can. Instead, they are constrained to act either as healers or to run and call for help rather than acting in their own power and standing up for themselves.

Overall, I found Lewis' arguments to be largely lacking in logic and not properly addressing the opposing side's main points. If you are a Christian who would like to read a pleasantly self-affirming book, then I would recommend God in the Dock. If you are a doubter or atheist looking for a solidly constructed Christian argument on the existence of God and miracles in order to challenge yourself or make you think, look elsewhere.

Taylor Downing - Churchill's War Lab

I bought Churchill's War Lab at a used book sale last week and I thoroughly enjoyed it. From the title and the book description, I expected it to be almost entirely focused on Churchill's involvement with the science and technology of war, but it looked at far more. Rather than being restricted to science and technology, Downing examined Churchill's personal role in the war as a whole.


One thing that I appreciated about Churchill's War Lab was that although Downing is clearly a supporter of Churchill, he does not fall into the trap of trying to portray him purely as a military genius and savior. Instead, Downing presents Churchill's many bad qualities (his stubbornness, his petulance, his sometimes rash actions, and occasional poor judgements) alongside his virtues (his ability to rally the morale of the people and his farsightedness in terms of how history would unfold, for example), and generally does not try to excuse them.

One of Downing's biggest focuses is on the level of micromanagement that Churchill employed. Throughout the war, he tried to be involved in as many decisions as possible. In some cases, this caused enormous friction with his Chiefs of Staff and his generals, but at other times his personal interest pushed through developments that would change the course of the war (like the development of the tank in World War One, or recalling General Hobart and allowing him to develop his specialized armour). As a side note, it was very interesting to see how while Churchill involved himself as much as possible in military matters and was accustomed to getting his own way, he also insisted on being surrounded by generals and advisers who were willing to stand up to him and argue their points.

What I found most interesting about Churchill's War Lab was how involved Churchill was in the development of new war technologies and techniques. Starting with the innovation of the tank in World War One, Churchill was generally very open to new thinking, making himself available to scientists (including Professor Lindemann, his personal scientific adviser). He instigated the development of mulberry harbours, and also pushed for the development of the SOE in order to harass the Germans with commando raids. Even when he was not directly involved with specific innovations, he created an atmosphere in which new ideas were fostered and military chiefs were encouraged to try new things and adopt new technologies.

I would highly recommend Churchill's War Lab. It provides a relatively fair (but obviously pro-Churchill) look at Churchill's development as a military and political leader and his direct role in the course of World War Two. It was well-written and very interesting.

Nathan Greenfield - The Damned: The Canadians at the Battle of Hong Kong and the POW Experience, 1941-45

I picked this book up a few months back because I realized that I knew virtually nothing about the Canadian role in the Pacific Theatre during World War Two. The book is divided into two major sections: the Battle of Hong Kong, and the Canadian POW experience. I definitely enjoyed the second section more than the first.


Greenfield states from the outset that his desire is to poke holes in a number of the pervasive myths that surround the battle, such as the idea that the Canadian troops were under-trained, but then provides evidence that they were, in fact, not trained as fully as they could have been because in many cases they had only been recently recruited. One of the reasons why I did not enjoy the battle section is because Greenfield does not do a very good job of setting things up. For one thing, he does a poor job of introducing the various men, which made it difficult to keep track of who was who. For another, he jumps from event to event in the battle so rapidly that it becomes somewhat confusing. The most interesting part of the first half of the book was Greenfield's general contempt for the British General Wallis, who he showed to have been largely out of touch with the situation and content to blame the Canadian troops for the problems that occurred. This seems to follow a general pattern in which British war histories tend to either disparage or diminish the contributions of the Dominion troops in both World Wars (or simply refer to them as "British," which while technically true does not do those soldiers justice).

The book improves considerably when Greenfield begins to describe the captivity of the soldiers. Perhaps because in this section he was confined to using smuggled diaries and interviews with the surviving troops the account he gives is focused on a manageable number of people and follows a relatively clear storyline. He does an excellent job of describing the horrors that the Canadian prisoners went through, and I was struck by the bizarre contradiction between the Japanese allowing some prison camps to have large libraries and sports events while simultaneously denying them sufficient food or medicine.

There were a number of factual errors that bothered me while reading The Damned. One was that Greenfield misidentified the dates of the liberation of Belgium and the Netherlands. While this is not a significant error (at least not for this book, since those events were mentioned only in passing), it made me wonder if other dates which I was not familiar with might have been misidentified as well. In addition, Greenfield makes that claim that by January 1943 the Japanese knew that the war was over because of Midway and Guadalcanal. This is not strictly true. Midway had hampered the Japanese fleet, but had certainly not "neutered" it as Greenfield claims, and while Guadalcanal was significant, it was only the first step of a very long process that the Americans did not yet have a clear guarantee of winning (at least not as easily as Greenfield makes it appear).

Overall, The Damned was a relatively good book. I wish that the account of the battle had been better written, but there was a definite improvement as the book progressed into the POW section.

Martin Gilbert - The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

I bought this a few days ago at a used book sale, mostly based on Gilbert's reputation as a historian. It was generally a good book, but I didn't enjoy it as much as Andre Stein's Quiet Heroes or Hidden Children or Eva Fogelman's Conscience and Courage.


It was a good survey of the many stories of rescuers during the Holocaust, but I think that Gilbert tried to cram too many stories into too short a space. As a result, the stories were not given the detail that they deserve, and the reader moves along at an almost frantic pace. This is a shame, since I think that had he focused on just a few of the stories the impact of the book would have been much greater. In addition, Gilbert chose to categorize his stories by region, and as a result lacked a more comprehensive narrative like the one found in Fogelman's Conscience and Courage, where she looked not only at the stories of rescue but also the motivations of the rescuers.

One thing that I did appreciate was Gilbert's emphasis of how rare rescuers really were (especially in Eastern Europe). At the start of each section he lists the number of people from that country or region are recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, which helps to drive home how few people were willing to rescue Jews (and conversely how many were willing to aid the Nazis either out of hatred or a desire to obtain reward money).

The Righteous was a good read, but if you are looking for a book on rescuers during the Holocaust I would recommend either of Stein's books or Fogelman's book before this one.

Tim Cook - The Madman and the Butcher: The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie

I bought this book shortly after it came out because I had read Cook's previous books (At the Sharp End and Shock Troops) for a First World War history class I took in university a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them. While I have to say that enjoyed the other two books more, The Madman and the Butcher was certainly an interesting read.


In general, Cook comes across as a strong defender of Sir Arthur Currie (commander of the Canadian Corps) and a fairly harsh critic of Sir Sam Hughes (the Minister of the Militia). Cook does an excellent job of examining the decisions that Currie made and putting them into the context of both the war itself (casualties were obviously to be expected) and Canada's position within it (as a subordinate nation to Great Britain, Canada had limited control over its troops). My one criticism of Cook's focus on Currie is that he generally brushes off both Currie's pre-war embezzlement of militia funds to cover his own debts and his falsification of military records reflecting one of the orders he gave. Both of these were fairly serious errors of judgement, but Cook spends little time on them.

His examination of Hughes was far more nuanced. Rather than simply attack Hughes as many other historians have done, Cook looked at both sides. Certainly he criticizes Hughes' style of personal attacks, patronage appointments, willful ignorance about the realities of war, and his often outright lies, but he also examined Hughes' accomplishments. These include the remarkable feat of recruiting and mobilizing over 400,000 volunteers for military service as well as his relentless efforts to ensure that Canada's war effort would not be subsumed by Britain. Overall, I thought that Cook offered a sympathetic look at Hughes, to the point that I felt some amount of sympathy for him when I read about his deteriorating mental state after being dismissed from Prime Minister Borden's Cabinet.

Overall, The Madman and the Butcher was a very interesting examination of the two biggest names involved with Canada's effort in World War One. I would recommend it highly.

Dick Winters - Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters

I picked this up after reading Band of Brothers, and I don't have much to say about it other than that it was one of the best first-hand accounts of World War Two that I have ever read. Part of that undoubtedly comes from having watched and read Band of Brothers and therefore identifying with the people that Winters mentions in his book, but a large part also comes from the fact that he tells a riveting story. He does not bog down the account with the minute details of military operations, but instead tells the stories of the men that he served with.


Probably because Winters wrote Beyond Band of Brothers after and in response to Band of Brothers, he often focuses on different people and events than the other book and tv series did. Some of the events that were of significant importance in the mini-series, like the last German artillery barrage at Bastogne or Easy Company's discovery of the Buchloe concentration camp received only brief mention in Beyond Band of Brothers. Instead, he focuses on his own personal reactions to and reflections on events that were not central to the series. He also tends to discuss the actions of the more senior officers he was involved with, which the series rarely focused on.

Beyond Band of Brothers is an excellent book and I highly recommend it, especially if you have seen Band of Brothers and want to know more about the men of Easy Company.

Kenneth Macksey - Military Errors of World War Two

I bought this book yesterday at a used book sale on the recommendation of one of the workers, who gave it high praise. It was interesting, but not overly so. The basic premise of the book was to examine the various errors made by both sides in World War Two (mistakes made by the upper-level commanders) and then examine how they played out and what might have happened had other decisions been made.


Some of the mistakes that Macksey looked at were ones that have been examined countless times, such as the failure during Market Garden to secure bridges in order to allow for Allied advances, or the mistakes made by Admiral Nagumo during the Battle of Midway. For the most part he does not offer new insights into these mistakes, but merely discusses what countless other historians have looked at already.

Macksey also examined Dunkirk, although he presented a possibility that I had not considered before. He is of the opinion that had the Germans pressed on, not only would they have killed or captured many of the Allied troops (an opinion that is shared by most historians) but would have also been able to launch an immediate invasion of Britain based on the fact that all three branches of the British military were severely weakened at that moment. It was an interesting bit of conjecture that I had not thought of.

Macksey's central thesis for many of the mistakes made revolves around technology. Namely, that the commanders and governments of all of the countries involved were generally unable to keep up with or effectively apply new scientific advances. He points to this as being a deciding factor in the Germans not developing advanced U-Boats to win the Battle of the Atlantic, the failure of the Japanese to aggressively pursue radar, and the failure of either side to invest in tanks that were effective in desert warfare (allowing the North Africa campaigns to drag on longer than necessary).

Overall, Military Errors was an interesting read, but not an overly insightful one. Much of what Macksey discussed has been examined many times before.

Michael Burleigh - Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II

Moral Combat sets out to examine the complexities of morality withing the Second World War, but ends up merely parroting the same arguments made by Western historians for years, namely that the Germans, Soviets, and Japanese are all guilty of war crimes (which is true) but that all actions by the British and Americans can be excused by the necessities of war.


Burleigh spends a considerable amount of time examining the myth of the "good German," or the German soldier (and by extension the Wehrmacht) who was not complicit in war crimes but was instead merely fighting for his country and knew nothing of concentration camps or other atrocities. He does a good job of puncturing this myth, and showing that even if they generally did not participate directly, they did know about the crimes and generally did not act to prevent them or mitigate the effects. Burleigh makes an interesting argument that in those cases where the Wehrmacht command did protest the slaughter of Jews on the Eastern Front it was not out of a sense of moral duty but rather because they feared that the influence of the SS actions would spread to the Wehrmacht troops who would join in, thereby dissolving military discipline.

One of Burleigh's biggest failings is that all atrocities committed by the Western Allies are looked at through the lens of German/Soviet/Japanese crime. He generally reaches the conclusion that while the Western Allies did commit atrocities they were either not as bad as those committed by the Axis and Soviet Union (and therefore are irrelevant) or were justified. In justifying attacks such as the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, he generally parrots the justifications made by Allied commanders at the time, that they affected Axis war industries (which they didn't) or more significantly that they were calculated to affect the morale of the civilians (which they didn't--at least not the way the Allies intended). In those cases where neither argument can be made, Burleigh's general thesis seems to be that it was war and that alone justifies it. He also makes a seemingly arbitrary distinction between the inaction of the Western Allies to stop the Holocaust (which he excuses as being both strategically irrelevant to winning the war and impossible anyway) and the inaction of the Soviets (which he condemns).

Moral Combat has an interesting premise, but in general does not do what it purports to; namely examining morality in World War Two. Instead, Burleigh spends the book examining Axis and Soviet crimes while excusing and justifying Western Allied crimes. While I certainly agree that the Axis and Soviet crimes are far more horrific than any committed by the Western Allies, Burleigh is not presenting any new information in Moral Combat, he is merely rehashing the same arguments that have been made for the last 70 years that define the war as a strictly black and white affair while ignoring the myriad shades of grey that actually defined it.