rethinking history

Hypocrisy 2 - naval disasters and feminism

2012-01-18T00:40:00.000-08:00

The entertaining thing about the tragedy of the misguided Mediterranean cruise liner, is watching or listening to commentators turn themselves in knots trying to justify their perspectives on right and wrong.

So the crew abandoned before helping the passengers. Almost certainly wrong.

Did they do so because: a) they are bastards; b) they are slimy wogs who can't face things with a proper stiff upper lip; c) they are products of a modern world where no one is expected to know what a stiff upper lip is (yes the Titanic comparison was playing big on the whole issue of women and children first and men, particularly the captain, going down with the ship); or d) underpaid and under-appreciated workers who know full well their value and pecking order in relation to both the no doubt corrupt company and the average insufferable passenger, and therefore were fully justified in not considering their duties went to the point of sacrificing themselves for people who only treated them with contempt? Or was it just so fast that everyone panicked?

I would suspect all of those had a certain effect, but I wouldn't be willing to argue which individuals (passengers as well as crew) were effected by which.

But the fascinating thing is that the more it was discussed, the more the outraged commentators found themselves cast as ridiculous old fogies. And wasn't it a shock to the self righteous commenteriat that anyone could see the self contradictions in their perspectives?

My favourite bit was the 'women and children first' part. As countless bloggers pointed out, why in a world of supposed equality should women go first? Children, yes. Perhaps mothers escorting the children as some sort of preference (though in this day of stay at home fathers that is possibly a bit sexist),. But certainly not young healthy women before elderly and infirm of either sex?

One of the young men who phoned in rightly commented that if he was ever sitting on public transport, and a middle aged woman and an elderly man approached, he would offer the elderly man a seat first. Then a pregnant woman, then an older person of any description... amazing to hear such a young sounding living fossil.

The radio commentators were simply stuck on 'women first'. They acknowledged that although they had campaigned for equality for years, their own ingrained upbringing would insist they offer a woman a place first. It was quite sweet listening to them try and explain their reversion to ingrained prejudice, and the confusion they felt as they admitted it was politically incorrect, but nonetheless felt as though it should still be the right thing to do.

Hypocrisy is as often for good motives as for bad. In fact the worst and most dangerous hypocrisy is the self righteously 'but I am doing it for other people's best interests' kind. But the issue is self contradiction. (And I will give these two the credit of acknowledging they were being self contradictory...).

As I listened to two male baby boomer's – who have spent a large part of their careers castigating other baby boomers for hypocrisy – struggle to explain themselves even to each other, I reflected again on the inadequacy of logical thinking that most modern people apply to matters of morality. They talk of doing the right thing, and all they really mean is applying the prejudice that was ingrained with as a child, or that is currently fashionable (or in this case trying to balance the two).

They missed completely the sensible comment from the younger man, and from several women who rang up. They believe in equality, and will fight for it, but they accept disadvantage, and are willing to work to overcome that. They just don't know how to say that that is what they mean.

In practical terms what they seemed to mean was that in a modern age of equality, the hierarchy should be disadvantage. Buggar the idea of all women before all men. That is just prejudice. How about the physically disadvantaged like children and elderly - of either sex - before fit adults - of either sex. Then, if you want to be finicky, how about the mid 20's male with severe asthma ahead of the mid 50's female who swims 100 laps a day?

Interestingly this approach is far closer to the Titanic example than most commentators seemed to realise. The rich, powerful, important, and often elderly and infirm, men, who stayed aboard the Titanic, had an ingrained sense of not only disadvantage, but also of noblisse oblige. Noblity, real nobility (which already meant very little by that time) existed for centuries on the idea that priviledge involved sacrifice... in battle, or on a sinking ship.

[Nobility, on the English model, is quite separate to Arisotocracy, which, on the French model which the Americans seem to have adopted, has devolved into priviledge without responsibility. The insistence of the old French aristocracy on maintaining their rights regardless of not having many responsibilities anymore, is what led to the French Revolution. The Americans adopted this perspective to help explain their betrayal of oaths of loyalty during their revolutionary war, but then seemed to ingrain into their culture the concept that all priviledge was without responsibility. Which actually fights with their equally recognisable tendency towards charity by the wealthy in America... Or at least by the old fashioned wealthy. fortunately Bill Gates and others are old fashioned. But Americans as a rule seem have a hard time understanding nobility except in Holywood features about dog's.]

A medieval knight's deal with his peasants was that he would be priviledged, as long as he was willing to die to protect them. A king or nobles justification for priviledge was that they served. (Modern politicians make the same promises, but don't seem to suffer or take many risks for their vast returns. Given the choice between Prince Andrew coming from a family that expected him to use his helicopter to distract guided missiles from his aircraft carrier during the Falklands War, and expected Prince Harry to serve in the front line in Afghanistan: and President Clinton coming from a family who rigged things to keep him safe in the National Guard during the Vietnam war, you have to think seriously about which tradition might be valuable...)

Civilisation is built on morality. Many people can behave in a morale way without being able to explain it, and many people who drone on endlessly about rights couldn't recognise moral behavior if they were hit in the face with it. The two media commentators in this post fit the former, and the so called Feminists (who aren't really) in the previous post fit the latter.

Unfortunately modern children are being harangued with the misunderstood and misapplied crap of the latter all through school.

Fortunately, most generations want to rebel against the previous.

Any rebellion against the impossible hodge podge of misconception and self deception that makes up what is 'politically correct' at the moment can only be for the good.

Hypocrisy… the ultimate test of political value

2012-01-15T02:35:00.000-08:00

(Another rant I am afraid... enjoy)

I have got more than a little sick of self righteously high minded pratts preaching about the nobility of their ideas, and then failing to admit that they only hold those ideas when convenient to their politics. This sort of hyprocrisy is, to me, the worst possible failing of any politician, or idealist or idealogue of any sort.

Not acknowledging it is a clear statement that the person is an unprincipled shit, out only for what they can get.

Not recognising that there is any hypocrisy, is the sign of being too stupid to be trusted to run a church cake stall, let alone have a say in any policy on anything that might ruin people’s lives. (Sorry, forgot. Church cake stalls are illegal in the Victorian nanny state… OH&S issues and public liability now making baking a cake for privatye sale a criminal enterprise unless your kitchen passes health department guidelines, and your cake is plastic sealed and labelled with a complete list of ingredients, their origins, and the name, address and shoe size of the person who baked it…. Alright the shoe size is an exaggeration, but you get the point.)

Unhappily, the vast majority of modern politicians, journalists, lobbyists, and lawyers, are screaming hypocrites. Professionally. In fact they could not do their jobs unless they can either ignore the truth, or not recognise it in the first place.

There was a fabulous example quoted on the radio today. A few years ago a police car entered the men’s ceremonial area of a remote Australian Aboriginal tribe, with… a woman in it! Now the media had a field day with the ‘disrespect’ element of this, because of course cultural relativism argues that such a thing was disrespectful. But to do so the media happily quoted an Aboriginal elder who stated that, had the female been Aboriginal, she would have automatically been killed.

The fact that they quoted this was not a problem. It is a true reflection of Aboriginal culture. It was a true statement by the elder concerned. It was accepted by all who new the facts as a statement of reality. And, most importantly I suppose, it fitted the argument of how ‘disrespectful’ the female police officer was being to Aboriginal culture.

The problem is of course, that the statement that Aborigines reserve the right to murder women who are Australian citizens, was not remarked upon by anyone in the media. Not one single member of the press who commented on it that day thought it was a problem. (Others did later of course.) Not even the many hard line Feminists who had raged against the white ‘oppression’ of Aboroiginal culture seemed to think that it was a problem. Apparently, Aborigines are allowed to oppress women as much as they like in the eyes of an Australian Feminist, because Aborigines – also being victims of white male oppression – clearly have the right to hang on to a culture that oppresses women. In fact any attempt to stop them doing so must be racist.

Now I realise that the self avowed ‘left’ in politics has to find, or invent, causes to rage about to get people who are young enough or stupid enough motivated. (I frankly agree with the old joke that if you are not Socialist when you are 20 you have no heart – we know people’s rationalty is not fully developed until 24 or 25 – and that people who are still socialist at 40 have no brain.) But that does not excuse hypocrisy.

If you genuinely believe (as I do) that women are equal, and deserve equal rights, then you believe it for all women, in any culture. Not just for the ones who will vote for that, and not excluding the ones for whom you can get more mileage from denying those rights in the name of another supposedly honourable cause.

The reason that a police car was on the ‘men’s reservation’ in the first place, was because Australian police have the unfortunate task of trying to protect Aboriginal women from Aboriginal men despite the efforts of our Socialists and Feminists and lawyers and judges to keep them properly subjugated in the name of cultural relativity.

A court case at a similar time was about a 13 year old aboriginal girl who had been raped by a 50 year old aboriginal man. The judge was presented with serious arguments that the case be thrown out because the girl had been promised to the man as a bride by her family. (In fact her grandmother assisted with the rape!) Sad to say the cultural relativists have such a sway over the Australian legal system that the judge initially delivered a sentence of only a few weeks, explaining that the case fit more within ‘traditional cultural law’ than in modern Australian law.

Or, in other words, Australian female citizens should have no protectioin from murder or rape if that happens to fit the cultural practices of the primitive uneducated hunter gatherer tribe from which they come. (And why are they uneducated? Because the cultural relatavists have forced the missions and schools to stay away from the ‘purity’ of aboriginal tribal life… for their own good of course.)

Presumably this same approach will soon be available throughout Australia to Muslims in favour of female circumcision or honor killing, to New Guineans who would like to hang on to tribal cannabalism, and to Indians in favour of Suti. As long as they only practice it on members of their own tribes of course. It has to be culturally relative!

Hypocrisy in applying standards only where and when convenient – preferably to your own political advantage – is unforgivable. More, it is uncivilised. In fact it is one of the clearest signs of people working to undermine anything that could be called civilisation… again, usually for their own political advantage.

The only real test of a person’s political trustworthiness is whether they can recognise, and reject, hypocrisy. Those that recognise it, but take advantage of it, are scum. Those who fail to recognise it, are simply beneath contempt.

What a pity so many of them hold high office.

Rating General Wavell

2011-11-10T02:14:00.000-08:00

Archibald Wavell is probably the most difficult general of the Second World War to give a fair rating. His achievements against the odds are almost as astonishing as his failures to deliver anything final. He was undoubtedly a great man, and some of his actions argue that he was a great general. But those flaws...

His achievements are well known. He used O'Connor's tiny Western Desert force to blitzkreig an Italian army ten times its own size, and send them scurrying back in ignominy. He then conquored an equally large force in Italian East Africa with a classic double pincer, while cleaning up various other minor problems in Palestine, Iraq, Vichy Syria, etc. He ran 9 major campaigns in a little over two years, most of them successful, despite an appalling inferiority in men and materiel.
Meanwhile
However his failings are equally well known. He let the Italians in Libya off the hook when they were defeated, allowing them to recover while he concentrated on Italian East Africa. The Italo/German counter-attack took him completely by surprise. he was talked into vainglory in Greece despite his doubts, and put the British war effort back two years by losing many crack troops and much vital equipment in a 'forlorn hope'. It was to take years of hard slogging to retrieve the position lost by these decisions.

Almost as bad, when Churchill despatched him to 'sit under a pagoda tree' in India, he found himself caught up in the maelstrom of the Japanese blitzkreig through the American, British and Dutch possessions in Asia. Here he once again badly underestimated his enemy, and his direct interference amongst the commanders in the field of battle (whether undermining Percival without sacking him, or supporting Bennett without recognising him as a hopeless windbag, or imposing Hutton into a field command - Burma - he was not suitable for), had consequences that only avoiding being disastrous themselves because the situation was already so bad that they became mere icing on the cake.

On the success side, it is no small consideration to wonder which other general could have done what he did with so few resources. His victories in North Africa and East Africa and the Middle East were run on a shoestring that would have given Montgomery hives, and Eisenhower fits. (MacArthur would have thrown a tantrum and refused to even have tried without better resources.) None of the successful Allied generals of later in the war came anywhere near achieving what he did with so few resources, and arguably none of them could have. (Though I note that O'Connor was the one who actually did the heavy lifting, and may well have been able to repeat the exercise later...)

On the other hand his mistakes are dire. The decision to take advantage of some passing transport to remove the crack 4th Indian division from O'Connor's successful advance and send them to East Africa was a classic example of undermining a winning hand. Even after the Australian 6th division almost made up the weight, by continuing the pursuit well into Libya, he felt the need to undermine the effort again by looking at Greece. When Rommel arrived in Libya he had only a recconnassaince battalion to try and stop the British advance. Had Wavell let them finish the job, Libya would have fallen in 1941! (And possibly Rommel spent the rest of the war in a POW camp). Had the 4th Indian been still present, or the Australian 7th been heading there instead of to Greece, it would have been a certainty.

Greece was an even worse mistake. Certainly Churchill had been enthusiastic, and certainly there was a moral advantage to helping anyone willing to stand up to Hitler. But Wavell had a duty to, as Brooke put it, finish one job before starting another. Particularly jobs won with so much blood. His succumbing to Eden and Dill's overenthusiasm (despite Churchill's last minute words of caution), was hardly the stuff of inspiring legends.

A standout intellectual general, Wavell had delivered a series of lectures entitled 'Generals and Generalship' during the 1930's which had been avidly consumed by international officer training schools. (It is notable that while Wavell had a book if poems beside his bed during the North African campaigns, Rommel kept a translated copy of Wavell's book beside his.)

Wavell was one of three possible choices for Chief of Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in 1938, and, to the minds of men who later held the post like Dill and Brooke, he was undoubtedly the stand out. Unfortunately a smart-arse politicians did what they do best, and appointed an attractive looking junior as a PR exercise (excusing Lord Gort's obvious limits with the idea that his deputy Adam would be able to do the thinking for him). The decision to send Wavell to the Middle East instead was thereafter considered either a godsend (at least until 1941), or a mistake (thereafter).

Would Wavell have made a better CIGS? than Gort? Definitely. Certainly he was unlikely to run off to the excitement of being commander of the BEF and taking most of the the War Office with him. He would almost certainly have appointed either Dill or more likely the bilingual and French raised Brooke to run the BEF, and the army and nation would have been much better off.

On the other hand his greatest failing was his inability to communicate with the politicians. He had written extensively on the importance of good communications between pollies and generals, and it had been a key part of his famous lectures, but he was not able to live up to it in the field. Brooke repeatedly appealed to him to talk to Churchill, or write chatty letters, but Wavell did not fit that mold. (It might just have been Churchill I suppose, a notoriously difficult character. But the point of Wavell's writings was the need to get on with any political leader.)

In retrospect if Wavell had been CIGS in 1938 - 1941, and had stood down for Brooke thereafter, the result might have been better for all. Particularly if Wavell had then been assigned a post that ideally suited his skills, such as co-ordination with the Soviets. (One of the several languages he spoke was Russian, and he had done extensive travel and research in Russia. He was one of the few men in the war who stood up to Stalin and made passionate speeches at Russian dinners that even Stalin applauded.)

But speculation aside, Wavell must be judged on what he actually achieved, and here he is certainly the most difficult assessment of the Second World War.

He did what few others could have done in the vital points in the lean years. Tick. But undid much of it through bad communication with the politicians. Cross. ( I am including Greece in this category). He was a disaster in ABDA, but was possibly too exhausted and sick to be blamed for that. (A sign of superiors making the wrong assignments at the wrong time.) Then he blotted his copybook further by letting the retreating Burma Army be treated with contempt by Eastern command... or perhaps by not paying adequate attention to be aware of what was going on. And by disastrous attempts at offensives by the Eastern Command later. (So even the common soldier, who had worshipped him in the early years, suffered in the latter.)

Perhaps this was not his fault. Brooke felt before Wavell's sacking that he was exhausted and needed several months rest at home. Certainly he had held a crucial position through more stress just in Middle East command longer than any other Allied general held for the whole war. Unfortunately Churchill did not want him in London, available to stir up unrest in parliament, and sent him to what he hoped would be a quiet zone just in time to face, and fail, new threats. Even then, his failure there was probably more from being assigned to a post in charge of an area of which he new nothing, more than it was to inadequate resources. (After all, he had achieved miracles with inadequate resources when given time to prepare and in an area he knew reasonably well.)

So was Wavell a goood general, or a bad one?

He was certainly better than many who got more credit for doing far easier jobs later. He had better understanding of strategy than Dill or Marshall (but not better than Brooke or MacArthur); better grasp of theater command than Eisenhower or Alexander (but not Nimitz or Brooke), and better leadership of troops than Bradley or Anderson (but not Montgomery or Truscott). So in practical terms he was one of the best all round generals of the war, which means he may well have shone in the roles that Dill or Marshall or Eisenhower or Alexander or Bradley or Anderson received undeserved credit for.

His faults largely came down to being too deferential to his political superiors, and to being misused by them. Which in the end means that his superiors were at fault for asking the impossible too many times, and never giving him a break with adequate guidance or support.

Wavell had the potential to be, and in many ways was, one of the best generals on any side during the war. But he was asked to do what very few others could have attempted, and thus weaknesses of character that most of his contemporaries in simpler roles could hide eventually came out. Brooke, who did seem to understand his strengths and weaknesses, did his best to help him once he became CIGS, but too late.

In the final analysis, Wavell deserves to be ranked as a very good general. Like all of them he had failings, but these only became a problem when he was used and abused by his superiors. In fact I would write off all his problems in the Far East, where he was ignorant and exhausted (and later injured), and concentrate on the two mistakes that do reflect badly on him. Not finishing a defeated enemy in Libya, and letting his desire to please the politicians divert his attentions to Greece despite the obvious risks.

The second was the fault of his superiors (particularly Eden and Dill, but Churchill included), and he should get some consideration for letting his repeated demands that generals bow to the politicians undermine his judgement. Unforgiveable, but perhaps understandable.

But the lack of resolve that did not finish the defeated enemy in the Libyan campaign before starting two other campaigns can't be written off as the result of outside pressure. This was his mistake, and largely his alone. It is impossible to imagine Brooke or Montgomery or Patton or Truscott making such a mistake. This, and this alone drops him from the ranks of top generals.

Considering what he did achieve, this is a harsh judgement. Particularly considering that so many other generals later in the war had much easier paths to being considered 'great'. (Montgomery and Patton included.) But nonetheless the key to moving from what Montgomery called 'a good plain cook', to genuine greatness: must include the killer instinct, and a ruthless will to pursue it. Wavell, the brilliant academic and passionate poet, was just too much of a gentleman (in both senses) to cross the line.

Uselessly comparing Patton and Montgomery

2011-10-31T18:29:00.000-07:00

One of the things I most dislike about bad comparisons from World War Two, is romantic comparisons that take the public imagination, but serve no useful relation to reality. The Western Allies tendency to idealise Rommel as the best German general for the simple reason that he was the sexiest or most dramatic general THEY fought is such a useless statement. In practice they were beaten by von Runstedt and Guderian and many others in 1940, and had a hard time matching the far less resourced von Kluge and Model in 1944. Still it hangs around more for its popular romance than any useful purpose.

Such is the idea that Patton and Montgomery were the great rivals of the war. Please!

The great rivalries amongst the Allies that made a real imact were Marshall and Brooke over war policy, Nimitz and MacArthur over resources, Eisenhower and Montgomery over strategy; and then between Percival and MacArthur for incompetence, Patton and O'Connor for aggressiveness, MacArthur and Clarke for vainglory, (and possibly Clarke and Wavell for the stupidity of letting defeated enemies escape), were the issues that defined the war for the Western allies. The idea that a competition between Patton and Montgomery was more important is cute, but niave.

I am not even sure where the idea comes from. Much is made of the bet between Patton and Montgomery over reaching Palermo in Sicily first, but in practical terms that was the only time in the war that Patton ever appeared on Montgomery's radar. For the rest of the war Monty was so much higher up the food chain than Patton that he was unaware, or disinterested in Patton's opinions.

Montgomery was, by 1944, an experienced general who very successfully fought extensively in both combat and staff roles for 4 years throughout World War One. (Patton got a combat command for a few weeks when the Germans were already collapsing.) Montgomery led a division very successfully through the Battle of France, and a corps through the crucial Battle of Britain training and rebuilding years. He led an army in combat for two years, through many successful battles both on defense and in attack. By 1944 Patton had led a corps for a few months, and an army for a few weeks. For the very brief period of the Sicily compaign they were theoretically equals in command, but probably only in Patton's mind. (Montgomery saw Patton as an enthusiastic if amateurish old man.)

Montgomery saw his HQ 'betting book' as a bit of fun (and was delighted when bet a B17 by someone who should have known better). When he and Patton met and co-ordinated the Sicilian campaign Alexander seemed not interested in co-ordinating, Monty saw Palermo as a similar bit of fun to pursue, no bigger or smaller than the hundreds of other bets in the book. Patton saw it, as he saw anything relating to his persona, as the most vitally important challenge of his whole life... up until the next one. Montgomery lost a bet and moved on to the next challenge. Patton won but didn't. (Or at least that is what bad writers have tried to suggest. I think he moved straight on to the next challenge anyway.)

That was the last time Monty and Patton were in direct competition, no matter what revisionists or romantics would say. The next time Patton was allowed in the field he was one of half a dozen army commanders in Monty's Normandy army group, and, familiarly, he did not arrive until the Germans in Normandy were already collapsing. Very soon afterwards Eisenhower split off Bradley's army group, and Monty had no control, nor much interest, in what Patton was up to thereafter.

The romantics like to suggest that therafter Monty railed against Patton's supplies, and that Patton railed against Montgomery's caution. The truth is less foolish for both of them.

In fact Montgomery railed against Eisenhower's broad front strategy regardless of which of the other sub-commanders was benifitting (to the point of Montgomery making an offer to serve under Bradley as long as someone got single control to pursue a single strategy). He railed against the diversion of resources anywhere not at the main point where a thrust might have achieved early victory. Leaving aside whether that victory could have happened, Montgomery's beef was with Eisenhower first, his appalling chief of supply Lee second, fellow Army Group Commanders who couldn't control the excesses of their subordinates like Bradley (and to a lesser extent) Devers third, and only then with the several army commanders who each tried to do their own thing.

In practical terms Montgomery seemed more appalled by the negative effects of the incompetence of Hodges (1st US Army,) and the obnoxiousness of De Gaulle's orders to 'his' army (French First Army), and perhaps even the ineffectiveness of his own subordinate Crerar (Canadian 1st army) , than he did by Patton's enthusiasms. There is hardly a mention of Patton in his diaries through this period, compared to several comments on Bradley and De Gualle, and endless ones on Eisenhower.

Patton too is being maligned by the pretense that his war was taken up with a vain competition with Montgomery. Patton, like Montgomery, was totally concerned with the main issue of defeating Germany. But unlike Montgomery, he did not have Brooke - the Chief of Imperial General Staff - to rely on for support against Eisenhower's broad front strategy. Patton too was convinced that this was the wrong way to go, but to get his version of a thrust (with him at the front) happening, he had to be a bit more manipulative than Montgomery.

Every word Patton used to wheedle and manipulate support, or at least a blind eye to what he was doing, was designed to get more resources from his superiors. Indeed, if he couldn't get them from Eisenhower, he was willing to steal them wherever he could, and then get Bradley to pretend to not know what he was doing. In this he was quite willing to encourage Bradley's inferiority complex in relation to Montgomery, and to happily manipulate Bradley into tantrums to get what they both wanted, but it seems likely that Patton was more interested in getting his way by making his superiors compete with Montgomery, than in competing with Montgomery himself.

Patton is actually a more complex and clever character than the romantics give him credit for. His 'kill them even if they try to surrender' speeches in Sicily were part of his stage management of troops, not part of his innate personality. HIs 'us against the world' propaganda was more manipulative, not so much like Bradley's inferiority complex. He wanted to win, and he would use anything to get what he needed to win, even ramping up his superiors to distrust their allies. But his genuine competitiveness with Montgomery at this stage was less about him and Montgomery, and more about him and how he could maneouvre others to support him. He would have shown the same level of competitiveness, and the same willingness to undermine, any competitor at this point. British, French, Russian or even American.

Montgomery on the other hand only saw Patton as one more junior general syphoning supplies from an inadequate source. Montgomery was in competition with Eisenhower for control, and possibly with Bradley for resources. Minor army commanders in other people's army groups only registered on his horizon if he could get their armies assigned to his army group.

Just for amusement, it might be fun to consider how Montgomery and Patton might have worked together?

Montgomery was notoriously superb to serve under, no matter what your nationality. British, Australian, New Zealander, South African, Indian, Canadian, French, Polish, and American troops who served under him were all very happy to do so. So were their generals. Bradley certainly learned more about being a field commander from a few months of Montgomery's distant mentoring than from anything Eisenhower ever did for him in their much closer relationship. There is no doubt that Montgomery preferred effective subordinates to ineffective ones, and it seems possible that Patton would have made a preferable subordinate to Crerar or Bradley in his mind.

As for Patton, he would have served anyone who got him what he wanted. Had Montgomery offered him the chance to spearhead the attack into Germany, there is virtually no doubt that Patton would have jumped at the chance. Patton was not the racist that Bradley or Eisenhower were, and was happy to have black troops. He was not the American supremacist that Roosevelt or MacArthur were, and worked well with others (as long as they let him have enough lime light). Had Montgomery been left as land forces commander, there is little doubt that he would have used Patton's aggression in a way that would have made Patton much happier than Eisenhower's broad front strategy ever allowed.

It is fun to imagine Montgomery as land forces commander using Patton's 3rd Army in conjunction with British 2nd to leapfrog ahead at top speed into Germany. The best British tactics were never the broad front strategy that the worst American's like Marshall and Eisenhower fancied. They were always the 'hold the enemy, crumble the enemy, breakthrough the enemy, and pursue with as much force as fast and far as possible' skills that had worked since the development of mechanised warfare in 1918. (As demonstrated by the Germans in Poland and France and Russia, the British and Germans in North Africa, the Japanese and British in Asia, and the Russians in Eastern Europe.) Montgomery would have used his traditional two corps up, one back, one resting deployment, adapted to armies, to keep up the momentum. Patton's preferred tactics were almost exactly the same, and he and his 3rd Army would have fit it like a glove into Montgomery's thrust strategy.

Personally I think that the limited reality behind their competitiveness paid trumps in Sicily, and I wish that it had been repeated in France. Patton could not have been a worse Army group commander than Bradley was, and would almost certainly have been better. It is amusing to think of him and Montgomery effectively conspiring to destroy the broad front strategy while they got on with winning the war in the best spirit of competition. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that one of Patton's biographers was right to suggest that by 1945 he had suffered a few too many hits on the head, there is little doubt that he would have been almost as valuable to the Allied cause in Bradley's place against Eisenhower's policies directly, as he would have under Montgomery's army group. That might have been a useful version of rivalry.

But I still wish people would get over the big Montgomery versus Patton beat up. By 1944 Patton would have competed against anything or anyone to get his way, and co-operated with anyone who would support him. Anyone. Aw for Montgomery, he simply did not see Patton as competition.

Rioting, the welfare state, and zoo's.

2011-08-16T01:23:00.000-07:00

Feeling like a bit of a rant (you have been warned...)

At a discussion group in the other night, I received an incredulous response to my semi-flippant comment that the rioters on British streets were the Blair generation at play, fulfilling the inevitable outcomes of New Labour policies.

Now I said is it in a sense of fun, and to provoke some sort of response, but I was a bit shocked to hear some people suggest that New Labour bore no responsibility for the decay into a situation where we had an entire generation who were schooled to believe they were all rights with no responsibilities. What I found particularly stunning about this, was that some of the youths who were interviewed used Labour Party election slogans such as “give respect, get respect” to justify their desire to smash anything representing authority figures, or indeed anyone in their own community who could anyway be considered slightly better off than they were.

The problem with the ideologues who constantly propound further and further expansion of the welfare state mentality, is that their very ideology blinds them to the incredibly overwhelming evidence of the failure of their programs. There are people on the radio every day trying to suggest that families in a downward spiral because they have been welfare dependent for multiple generations will magically have their problem solved if the government provides yet more welfare. Considering that many African l leaders are screaming for a dimunition of the aid/welfare cancer that is destroying whole societies, it is hard to fathom how such fantasist’s can keep banging their head against such an obvious wall. The more hard-nosed ideologues have quietly abandoned such pathetic excuses for political programs as Marxism and Communism (and in that category I include Nazism – as I have never understood how a Nationalist Socialist People’s Party can be any different from any other form of socialist ideologue party regardless of whether they are supposedly left or right wing), and snuck into the new traps for gullible voters such as the equally nihilistic Greens movement. But the truly stupidly idealogical stick with the unrestricted Welfare State and governemnt control of everything.

The problem is that any absolute solution will absolutely fail. Absolute monarchy, absolute democracy, absolute socialism, absolute welfarism, and even absolute anarchy, are all theoretically advantagous in some circumstances… at least in principle. But all are ideological positions that will be hoisted by their own petard. Black and white simplistic solutions lead to misery and chaos and horror. End of story.

In reality all human interaction is in shades of grey, and any structure that will allow humans to participate, express themselves, and evolve, will be a compromise of different elements.

Now I have nothing against the ideals of limited socialism. I certainly believe that there should be a safety net for basic items such as education and health. But it should be a safety net, set at the minimal necessary standards, and with as many inducements to escape out of it as it is possible to devise.

By contrast of the morons who believe that the safety net should be the one and only standard that must apply in every case, are actively attempting to destroy their own society. I constantly read idiots claiming that the state education system should be as good as any private school, or at least that all private schools should be forced to be as bad as your average state school, as if this will improve the human condition. Apart from destroying diversity, and dragging everything down to the lowest possible common denominator that can be easily controlled by central bureaucratic structure, this is simply a recipe for dis-engaging as many people as possible. It is appalling for instance, that the teachers unions who push this cretinous concept have slowly dismantled all the technical schools, and trade schools, and agricultural institutes, and elite academic selection schools, that actually catered to diversity and allowed young people to follow a path that fit their capacaties and which (horror) they might even enjoy: and replaced them with a lowest common denominator one size fits nobody solution. And some of them actually do believe that this will help people!

In Australia the most surreal version of this is what our ideologues have done to Aboriginal communities. First, in the name of better conditions for workers, they destroyed the preferred casual employment of Aboriginal workers, throwing entire generations out of work in their own communities. Their solution to this created problem was then to give these same people “sit down money” to ensure that they did not try and find any alternatives. Simultaneously, in the name of ethnic diversity, they gutted the school system, forcing much teaching into obsolete languages and skills, to ensure that the sad remnants of ancient cultures could have no place in the modern workforce. Then, in the name of fighting racism, they set up socialist ‘communities’, supposedly run by tribal elders, which reflect both the worst elements of Communistic Collectivism, and the worst elements of barbaric political thuggery. Naturally many of the political aparatchik's who run the system, mostly to their own benefit, shout loudly and often for more and more money: but the real independent leaders and forward thinkers in the community’s are desperate to escape this socialist ideal world.

I was teaching ancient culture at a school recently, and used to the examples of Australian Aboriginal tribes to compare warmer climate and cold climate survival techniques. I was amazed and fascinated to have a couple of students comment that many Australian politicians seem intent on trying to force modern Aborigines into a sort of historical zoo where the supposed elegance of the noble savage lifestyle can be theoretically protected. The scathing disdain expressed by 13-year-olds for what was being done to Aborigines in the name of socialist ideology gave me a momentary hope for future generations.

I am now is somewhat more convinced on them when I originally made a flippant comment, that the riots in Britain are representative of what the British Labour Party has been trying to achieve for so long. Despite the apologists who parade around pretending that these people have no stake in the society and therefore no hope, this is not a case of a political movement by Blacks, or Asians, or Muslims. This is in fact a social movement by everybody who has been told for so long that their lives are all about rights, and that they have no responsibilities, because they are outsiders: that even university educated teachers and social workers are participating.

It is simply not correct to suggest that these people are in any way united by race, or religion, or class, or income. But I think would be fairly safe to suggest that the vast majority of them, from the 11-year-old girls, to the 30-year-old civil servants, are safe Labour voters from safe Labour seats. And certainly the overwhelming majority of them are in the age group that did its schooling at the time when New Labour was force feeding them the anti-social self-righteous claptrap that has been such a hallmark of the destruction of a functional school system.

They are indeed the Blair generation.

The problem of (American?) politically correct history.

2011-07-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

I was listening on the radio to some of the drivel coming out of the politically correct school of US history in relation to the 150th anniversary of their Civil War. It boils down to saying that we can now pretend that the entire reason for the Civil War was nothing to do with states rights or freedom of self determination or anything like that, just with slavery. Only slavery. Nothing but slavery.

This fits nicely with the pretence that the American Revolution was nothing but ‘no taxation without representation’. Only that. Nothing but that.

Both lines are crap of course.

The first rebellion, or revolution, or civil war, or whatever, was inititally about Northern states fighting against any limits on their expansion into the Indian territories that the British had signed treaties to limit (see Royal Proclamation of 1763 amongst oathers). The Southern states joined only because British law was in the process of making slavery illegal (see Somerset's Case), and they could see this inevitably spreading to all British colonies. The small number of radical bourgeois pamphleteers in the bigger cities could pretend all they wanted that the free voters in the various state parliaments and dominions were repressed victims of autocracy, but the fact of the matter is that no matter how hard you spin it, there has never, and will never be a popular uprising of fighting in the streets about a voluntary tax on a luxury item that most people had stopped drinking (and which tax was removed before the revolution began anyway).

The second rebellion, or revolution, or civil war, or whatever, was also about the Northerners wanting to expand into Indian/Mexican territory (creating ‘free’ states which would unsettle the unstable compromise of the federation), and the Southern states wanting out of the system because the example of British law had inevitably spread (see Pennsylvanian law) despite the United States no longer officially being dominions.

The two conflicts were fought for almost exactly the same reasons, the only difference being that in the first conflict the Northern and Southern groups could both claim to be victimised in some fashion, whereas in the second conflict only the Southerners could claim to be victimised.

This makes a mockery of the idea that the Southerners had the moral high ground in the Revolutionary War, but the moral low ground in their Confederacy war of Independence. But even more laughable is the idea that the Northerners could claim the moral high ground for wanting to repress the natives in the first conflict. (It is remarkable that the ‘protector of black rights’ apologists for the North in the second conflict carefully avoid noticing the persecution of the Indians at the same time… many of whom fought for the South, just as they had previously fought for the British… Apparently the Northerners highly noble motivation about black people's rights were not so deep as to notice red people's rights.)

The argument actually appears to be, that those supporting the rule of law and the rights of people should be considered to have the moral high ground. Which of course implies that the North (protectors of blacks only, lets forget Indians) sort of had the moral high ground in the second conflict, but that the British (protectors of both Indians and blacks) certainly had the moral high ground in the first conflict. But that of course would never be acceptable to the politically correct lunatics who attempt to twist and turn every story to be the good guys at all points.

The truth is of course, that there were good and bad motivations on all sides in both conflicts. And that any attempt to simplify things down to the ridiculous extent of saying it was just about slaves, is just teaching young people to accept propaganda instead of analysis.

As a byproduct of this, it is amazing to note that many of these same American commentators like to pretend that they have had a single ongoing constitution since 1776 (or least since their constitutional conventions soon afterwards). This of course is also crap.

On this basis, you could happily argue that England has enjoyed steadily improving democracy since Simon de Montfort’s first Parliament’s in the 13th century. A romantic fantasist might even be able to draw a straight line of steadily increasing franchise from the time those first burghers elected to represent market towns. However in doing so, that they would be playing pretty fast and loose with certain items in history. Notably a couple of fairly dictatorial monarchs, the suspension of democracy and imposition of oligarchy by the Long Parliament, the Communist style People’s Republic of the Rump Parliament, and the outright dictatorship of the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell.

Not even the the restoration monarchy could be considered a foundation of the modern democratic constitutional monarchy. That arrives in its first stages with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and remains in somewhat limited property franchise until the reforms of the 1830s and 1840s, or votes for women almost a centruy later.

Similarly one would have to be a complete fantasist to believe that the American Constitution has been consistent for over 200 years. The most obvious whole in this argument is the civil war itself, where almost half the States in the union voluntarily seceded. (And some that might have joined them were prevented from doing so by local military action to stop their parliaments having a vote on the topic.)

The anit-constitutional efforts being made by the Rump of the American Congress to enforce their will by reconquering that recalcitrant defectors, was only emphasised by the Protector (Abraham Lincoln’s) suspension of large tracts of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to ignore habeas corpus, and to create a variety of concentration camps – despite the protests of the supposed constitutional protectors in the Supreme Court. Even less recognized is that the re-conquered states were stripped of democratic representation (such as it was) as part of their war guilt. For many years the Southern States franchises were limited to the point where some areas had only black representatives. (Who of course could not be tolerated in the dining rooms of the supposedly idealistically liberating Congress, and who had to eat in the kitchens).

It has sometimes been an amusing introductory question to some of my talks on the problems with Republican systems, to ask audiences when the United States became a representative liberal democracy? Almost nobody is silly enough to suggest it was 1776, though some are foolish enough to nominate the end of the civil war. More cautious thinkers suggest that a better guess would be at the end of Martin Luther King’s protest movements, but even they are completely incorrect.

According to the US court system, the United States is still not a representative democracy. One Appelate Court judge recently pointed out that many so-called citizens, particularly of those in places like Peurto Rico and on some of the Pacific island territories, have no voting rights in the federal system. (In fact the limitation of their democratic rights to make decisions about such things as taxes by the imperial protecting power – the US, is almost exactly the same as could have been said of those free citizens living in the Dominion of Virginia in 1775 of their imperial protecting power – Britain!)

Gross oversimplification of history for the purposes of political correctness is offensive. Gross oversimplification of history to prove that my side is always better than your side is pathetic. Twisting the two together while pretending not to notice that they contradict themselves is contemptible. The fact that most of the media commentators seem incapable of recognizing these contradictions is worrying.

So-called historians who smugly run con games from the pretentious moral high ground of their unrealistic ivory towers are not just dangerous, they are the sorts of people who have caused appallingly offensive self-righteous acts by delusional nations throughout history. Almost every pogrom or persecution or genocide has been justified by this sort of sloppy pseudo intellectual claptrap.

As an Australian who faces equal problems with politically correct claptrap about Australian history, I am deeply scared about the implications of teaching generations of stdents that all debates can be reduced to the most simplistic possible black-and-white, good versus bad, with no recognition that there may be some grey in there somewhere. I realise the approach has always been popular – particularly amongst the Fascists and Communists and Islamicists etc – but I don’t really see that as a desireable reason for re-introducing it into cultures that should have grown out of it.

Here’s to ‘warts and all’ history.

Atheism, a dead end philosophy?

2011-04-22T00:33:00.000-07:00

THE FOLLOWING WAS PUBLISHED IN THE MARCH 2011 QUADRANT MAGAZINE, WHICH HAD BEEN DEBATING ATHEISM AND ITS VIEWPOINTS FOR SEVERAL ISSUES.

Sir, congratulations for Quadrant’s ongoing high quality debate on atheism.

As a humanist, I have found the weakest arguments aired against religion to be those that scorn the faithful for their undeniably flawed histories. It is apparently a revelation to some atheists that humans have a tendency to be human, and regularly corrupt noble ideas. Writing off all religions on the basis of such distortions would perhaps be a slippery slope. This approach suggests that human attempts at government, at law, at science, and indeed at morality, should all be given up because humans have a record of doing them badly more often than not.

Many atheists apparently fall for the spurious philosophical argument that we should only believe what we can touch, a mindboggling assumption for anyone who thinks science might involve a willingness to explore the unknown. They suggest that the currently fashionable theory of a Big Bang should be adequate, without any explanation as to why a Big Bang might have happened (or why, if it wasn’t a unique event that had a cause, we don’t see many examples of ‘Little Bangs’).

To continue Mike Alder’s point (The Religious Impulse of Richard Dawkins - Quadrant Jan-Feb 2011), Sir Terry Pratchett explores how humanity needs to believe the little untruths at a childlike level – like the Hogfather (Santa Claus), or indeed a paternalistic diety – in order to believe the big lies – like truth, justice, equality, fairness and all those other fantasies that cannot be seen or touched - which are a vital part of making humanity a worthwhile, if ongoing, project. Even leading atheist Christopher Hitchins reluctantly admits humanity could probably not have developed morality without religion.

I can see nothing wrong with saying that we don’t really understand, and indeed find that more comfortable than those who insist they have a direct line to God. But to claim that because we don’t understand then there cannot be, is the exact opposite to science. More importantly to claim that just because we strive imperfectly to know the ‘divine’ in the universe, means we should give up on striving, is an abandonment even of hope. Humanity has a long way to evolve. Those comfortable to declare that repeated failure requires surrender, have made their own Darwinian choice.

Nigel Davies - Melbourne

The deployment of Allied land forces in 1942

2011-03-19T03:55:00.000-07:00

I have had a few negative, in fact disbelieving, comments about the deployments of Allied divisions in 1942. In particular, when I commented that there were more British divisions on the Persian frontier in 1942 than in either the Western Desert or Burmese frontier armies, I was practically accused of fantasising.

This brings up a very interesting issue about how military histories and even statistic books fail to give adequate information. Even otherwise good books like John Ellis’ World War Two Data Book, give misleading information when it comes to the use of Allied divisions. American divisions are simply listed as ‘overseas’ without an expalanation of whether they were in combat or sitting in a garrison, whereas British divisions are ony listed when actually in combat, not when in an overseas garrison.

Now this could be a matter of some confusion. Technically the United States garrison in Peurto Rico was ‘overseas’, even though it was never in danger of fighting, whereas the garrison in the Aleutian islands was ‘at home’, even though it was effectively on the front line (not that it ever did any serious fighting). For contrast the British divisions in the UK were in serious danger of a major battle in 1940 and 1941 even though they were home, whereas the garrisons in West Africa and the Carribean were never in danger of serious fighting. You would have to say however that the garrisons of Malta and Gibralter were pretty important, even though the Axis never actually mounted any of the many attacks they planned. (In fact I think that speaks for itself about the value of garrison troops to the war effort doesn’t it?)

A better example though is the issue of the British 8th, 9th, 10th, and 14th armies. The 8th fought in the Western desert, so all its units are listed ‘in combat’ for their deployments. Fair enough. The 9th defended Cyprus and Syria against further German attack of the type that had captured Crete, and prepared to reinforce Turkey should that country be attacked like Greece, or voluntarily join the war. It’s units are only listed ‘in combat’ for the brief period they fought the Vichy French. The 10th Army in Persia (Iraq and Iran mainly), is not listed in combat except for the very brief operation when Iraq attempted to join the German side. Yet this army was the biggest army in the field in 1942, and was desperately preparing to defend the middle eastern oil reserves should the Germans succeed at Stalingrad and continue their planned offensive past the Baku oil fields in southern Russia. (The 11th and 12th armies were India command units, and were never in danger of real combat, but they had to prepare for a possible invasion from the North or the East for exactly the same reason that Australia had to prepare for a possible invasion… Just because it is almost impossible, doesn’t mean someone might not try it!... And if you don’t prepare at all, it might even succeed… The same concepts that applied to American garrisons in Iceland and British in Northern Ireland and West Africa.) 14th Army of course fought on the Burmese frontier (though it was not called 14th Army until 1943).

With retrospect it is possible to write off the efforts of 9th and 10th armies as irrelevant to winning the war, but clearly that is not how it was seen at the time. Crete had been lost to paratroop attack, so Cyprus had to be garrisoned and prepared. Vichy Syria had let German aircraft transit to the Iraqi revolt, so both had to be occupied. If no troops had been deployed, then the likelihood of Germany occupying all three without opposition was very high (particularly if the Vichy and Iraqi’s invited them to.) Given the speed and skill with which the Germans occupied Tunisia without an invitation and in the face of serious Allied efforts, pretending that forces deployed in these areas were irrelevant to the war effort is spurious.

The threat of Russia collapsing was also a serious concept in both 1941 and 1942, and there is no point pretending that Allied efforts to cope with such a collapse were irrelevant to the war effort. Many bad historians have suggested that the vast quantities of supplies the Allies shipped to Russia were not vital, but this is also dubious. The Americans were effectively feeding much of Russia for much of the war, and the Russians were as grateful for British fighters and tanks as they were for British made army clothing and millions of pairs of boots. The advances by Russian forces later in the war were made possible by American trucks convoyed to Russia by British warships in Allied cargo ships.

The early success of the German 1942 campaign in southern Russia was terrifying to the Allies. Possibly only the stupidity of Hitler in insisting on wasting one of his best offensive armies in street fighting at Stalingrad saved the Russians. Even then German units came within site of the Baku oilfields before being recalled to the mess behind them. The Western Allies took the threat so seriously that more resources were pumped into the 10th Army in Persia in 1942 than into 8th and (what would be) 14th armies combined. At the height of the Japanese advance into Burma, India was sending twice as many divisions north as it was east. (The Indian Armies 6th, 8th and 10th Infantry divisions, its 31st Indian Armoured Division, and the 10th Indian Motorised Brigade were all in or on their way to Iraq and Iran even as the 2 division Burma army was retreating towards the Indian border!) And the best units too. The main flaw with the Indian 17th division rushed to Burma in 1942 was that it was given inexperienced Indian brigades when much tougher Ghurkha units were available. But India command felt the Ghurkha’s were more vital on the possible German front than in Burma).

Here, for interest, are the figures of suggested deployments for June and December 1942, as listed by the new Combined Chiefs of Staff in March and April 1942. (I got these from the microfilm files at Australian Defence Forces Academy when I was studying at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU some 20 years ago, but have not been able to find them as an on-line release. If anyone knows of such a release I would be delighted to hear of it.)

Ground Units…

Middle East and Malta:
5 Commonwealth armoured divisions in June, rising to 7 in December. (2 Commonwealth Independent Armd Bdes counting as a division equivalent.)
13 Commonwealth infantry divisions in June, rising to 19 in December (includes Free Poles, Greeks, etc). (Plus 26 Miscellaneous battalions for both.)
Total of 18 divisions in June and 26 in December.

India, Burma and Ceylon:
2.5 British Armoured divisions in June, rising to 4 in December.
12 British Infantry Divisions in June, rising to 17 in December. (Plus 152 miscellaneous battalions rising to 172. Mostly internal security or training.)
Total of 14.5 active divisions in June, rising to 21 in December.

Australia:
2 US infantry divisions June and December.
1.5 Commonwealth armoured divisions in June, rising to 2.5 in December. (Includes British armoured division if necessary.)
11 Commonwealth infantry divisions.
Total of 14.5 divisions in June, rising to 15.5 in December. (Japan could never have raised more than 3 or 4 for an invasion, and lacked the shipping to move even that many.)

United Kingdom:
1 US armoured division in June, rising to 3 in December.
1 US infantry division in June rising to 4 in December.
11.5 Commonwealth Armoured divisions in June, and 11 in December.
33 Commonwealth infantry divisions in June, and 31 in December. (Plus 132 miscellaneous battalions and 1.5 million Home Guard rising to 1.8 million.)
Total of 46.5 divisions in June, and 49 in December. (Plus Home Guard and static or training battalions.)

Africa and Gibraltar:
8 Commonwealth infantry divisions in June rising to 9 in December. (Plus 11 miscellaneous battalions.)

(Note that this does not include troops in New Zealand or South Africa or other places considered unlikely to be threatened, and more than it included troops in Hawaii or the Falklands.)

Air Forces (allowing for expected wastage)…

Middle East and Malta:
Commonwealth - 700+ bombers and 700+ fighters in June, rising to 750+ and 930+ in December.

India – Burma – Ceylon:
US – 30 bombers and 160 fighters June and December.
Commonwealth – 320+ bombers and 200+ fighters in June, rising to 780+ and 300+ in December.
Total 350+ bombers and 360+ fighters in June, rising to 800+ and 480+ in December.

Australia:
US – 200+ bombers and 320+ fighters (including aircraft for one Australian group) in June and December.
Commonwealth – 300+ bombers and 126 fighters in June, rising to 350+ and 126 in December.
500+ bombers and 445+ fighters in June, rising to 550+ and 445+ in December.

United Kingdom:
US – 220+ bombers and 400+ fighters in June, rising to 1300+ and 1000+ in December.
Commonwealth – 1600+ bombers and 2100+ fighters in June, rising to 2550+ bombers and 2400 fighters in December.
Total of 1820+ bombers and 2500+ fighters in June, rising to 3850+ bombers and 3400 fighters in December.

Now we can comment a few things here.

First, these figures are not fantasy, or guesses, they are the official CCOS documents released 50 years after the war. (And thus much more detailed than the information usually available earlier, where historians – and even many senior field commanders writing memoirs – often had to sift through telegrams and reports to assemble often inaccurate or incomplete lists.)

Second, of the 18 divisions in the Middle East in June, and 26 planned for December, only 7 (in June) and 10 (in December) were for 8th Army (and even that would push supply limits across the Western desert, as Rommel expereienced all too often). The rest were to face the Germans from the north… and it was worring whether they would be enough. (Though the German supply difficulties for an advance across the Turkish mountains or vast open spaces of Southern Russia made it unlikely that forces substantially larger than Rommels Panzer Army could be sent so far even if Russia collapsed).

But if you read any of the major histories, you will get the impression that the 8th army was the only active British force in the Middle East.

Third, that almost none of the December estimates were fullfilled. But this is not (as some of my interogators have implied/stated), because this was impossible. It was because changed circumstances led to changed deployments. The extra divisions for Persia were reduced after Stalingrad made them unnecessary. The American divisions destined to defend Britain if Russia collapsed went to invade North Africa instead. (Don’t believe the invasion of Europe in 1942 concept, that was really fantasy unless Germany unexpectedly collapsed.) The British Armoured division destined to defend Australia joined 8th armies pursuit of Rommel after Coral Sea and Midway made Australia secure. Some of the Commonwealths UK based divisions destined for India went to North Africa instead after the Japanese advance faltered and other troops could be released from Persia.

Similarly aircraft were redeployed. Half the American units for Britain went to North Africa. Most of the Commonwealth units for Persia went to the Middle East or India. Planes destined for the last ditch defence of Australia if necessary were sent to the Russians for their 1943 campaigns once Australia was safe.

All these were sensible redeployments to fit changing circumstances. In fact continuing to send troops or aircraft to Australia or Persia in late 1942 would have been about as useless as sending the planned 1943 reinforcements to North Africa after Italy surrendered!

My point here is that it is absolutely pointless looking at individual campaigns without considering the overall flow of the World War. Did Britain have enough tanks and aircraft to save Singapore in 1941? Yes. Was it possible to move them to Singapore if other commitments had been given lower priority? Probably. Was it more important to save Russia? Yes. Did Britain have more divisions waiting in the 10th Army ‘in case’ the Russians collapsed than in both 8th and 14th Armies? Yes. Was this a waste of resources? Only in hindsight. Did the troops in 9th Army sit on their arses for two years? Yes. Did it stop the Germans from invading Cyprus, Syria and Iraq? Almost certainly. Did the troops garrisoning Malta and Gibraltar do as much to help win the war as those fighting in Guadalcanal? Probably more. (Guadalcanal, like Singapore, could be lost without the Allies losing the war, whereas the loss of Gibraltar might have been fatal. The resulting collapse of the Allied position in the Mediterranean might have meant the loss of Middle Eastern oil. The combining of the German and Italian fleets might have forced the Royal Navy to abandon the Indian Ocean to the Japanese. The new U-boat bases might have won the Battle of the Atlantic. A link up of German and Japanese forces in the Middle East might have been possible…) Gibraltar was far far more vital than the Phillipines or Singapore or Guadalcanal to the Allied war effort.

I get a little tired of people suggesting that because planned reinforcements never arrrived, they were mythological. No, they were usually re-deployed. Britain and America could both easily have sent extra aircraft to the defence of Australia in 1943, but Australia was not remotely threatened in 1943. Those aircraft fought in the Pacific, in Burma, in the Mediterranean, and even in Russia, instead. They were not fantasy, they were diverted from redundant defence to renewal of offense. That is a sign that things are going well!

A re-emphasis here. The Western Allies, as is seen from the figures above, had dozens of spare divisions available. (In fact the figures above don’t even mention troops stuck in the continental US!) What they lacked was transport to move them and their supplies around. Given the circumstances, they made the best deployments they could. Losing the Phillipines and Guam (and Wake and parts of the Aleutians), and Singapore and Burma (and the Solomons and parts of Borneo and New Guinea), was a minor and necessary cost in winning the World War. Anyone in possession of the overview would be hard put not to agree, however reluctantly, with Churchill’s post-war assessment that all the disasters experienced along the way were minor inconveniences compared to the correct decisions on priorities made in 1941 and 1942.

And a point on ‘quality’ for those who continue to think that much of the problem was low quality or badly equipped troops. Japanese troops in 1944 and German troops in 1945 were desperately short of supplies, but that did not make them bad troops. American troops at the Battle of the Bulge had an embarrassing luxury of supplies (don’t you love the film making such a fuss over fresh cream in cakes flown in from America!), but that did not make them good troops. The American 1st Armoured division at Kasserine did not collapse because they were bad troops. In fact they were good professional troops with excellent supplies and equipment. They were just inexperienced men facing combat vets (and badly led). The same thing goes for the British 18th and Australian 8th divisions at Singapore. The American 32nd Infantry division in New Guinea, and the 36th at Cassino were bad troops that failed terribly at first, but (unlike the Indian 9th and 11th divisions in Malaya) were lucky enough not to face a serious attack themselves until they built up skill and became better troops. (That is a bit unfair, several Indian battalions in Malaya held, retreated, and even counter-attacked successfully as told, and never broke.) The quality of the troops has more to do with the skill of their leaders and their gradual development of experience in combat than with fanciful armchair strategists dismissal of ‘bad troops’ here versus ‘good troops’ there.

For myself I believe that if Dill had pushed a little harder on Far Eastern reinforcements in 1941, and appointed some better leaders, then Malaya and Singapore might not have fallen (or not so fast). But this is idle conjecture from someone not tied down with the stresses of fighting for survival over half the globe. It is possibly unreasonable to expect so much from mere human beings. The more fascinating question remains why the US, with the luxury of being at peace and not already fighting on three continents and four oceans like the British Commonwealth, was unable to make any better effort in the Phillipines?

Please, please, before making more comments about non- existent forces, bad troops, fantasy reinforcements, or any other misconceptions from reading pre 30/50 year rule ‘official histories’, or single focus campaign histories, try and get some real sense of what was really available, and how and why it was deployed or re-deployed depending on circumstances.

The results are not only suprising, but give a much better insight into why Churchill (and Roosevelt) made the decisions they did.

Do stable states need imperial roots?

2011-03-12T21:13:00.000-08:00

Although humans make a lot about the intricacies of government, and are very proud of their different styles of government, in actual fact there have only been a very limited selection of basic styles of government for humans to choose from. Really there are only those recognized by Machiavelli as monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, (or their evil twins dictatorship, oligarchy and ‘licentiousness’), but there are many forms that these types can take.

Monarchy for instance is a possible long term solution for a citystate, an independent country, a confederation of states, or a great empire. Aristocracy will work almost as well for most of these, at least for the medium term. Democracy, has proved a bit more limited, and has historically been for much shorter terms.

Citystate’s have always been with us. Many of the ancient empires of the Middle East were in fact single city states with large hinterlands, or a loose confederation’s of city states. The most famous example being ancient Greece. Medieval city states included not just those on the Italian peninsula like Venice and Florence, but scattered bodies through the Holy Roman Empire and along the North Atlantic and Baltic coasts. Early modern citystate’s then spread to the Americas, with most modern American East Coast states growing out of the system. In more recent times Hong Kong and Singapore have been ideal city states, and several developing Middle Eastern Emirates are headed in the same direction.You will notice that some of these, now as then, are monarchies, some aristocracy’s or oligarchy’s, and some democracies (at least in theory).

The more standard states, which are usually a collection of coherent provinces and with a number cities and rural areas connected within a single boundary, are the default system in human history. Again, such states ranged from ancient Egypt, through medieval France, to modern Botswana.

Having said that such states are the default system, it is noticeable that their incorporation within empires has been amazingly common. Egypt within the various ‘Egyptian’ (actually a series of different tribal powers), Alexandrian, Roman, Arab, Turkish and British Empires; France within the Carolingian, Plantagenet, Bourbon, Napoleonic and French empires; and Botswana within various African confederations before the British Empire. Indeed it could be suggested that such states do not actually become nations until they have been, or have been affected by, an imperial system. Medieval France is the classic example here, because its disparate territories could only be considered a nation once combined under the Imperial pretensions of various monarchs or autocrats. Men like Charlemagne, Richelieu, Loius the 14th, and the Napoleons (I & III) were amongst those who had the most profound effect on the development of the idea of France as an actual nation rather than as a collection of feuding principalities.

The United States for instance is entirely a product of empire. The various colonies were established by various empires, and their eventual consolidation under the British crown was as a result of imperial wars. (Indeed the 7 Years War was pretty much forced on Britain and France and Spain by the American colonists in pursuit of exactly this result.) The later revolting Northern states were both demanding their traditional rights as Englishmen to a say in their own affairs, and rebelling against the central powers treaties with the Indian nations that would have limited their expansionism. (The Southern states joined what could be considered a second round of the English civil war more because British law was clearly heading down an anti-slavery path than for any other reason. Which was amusingly the same reason for the third round of the English Civil War/ second round of Wars of Independence, sometimes called the Confederacy War of Independance – note that the categories of Cavaliers, romantic but wrong, and Roundheads, repulsive but right, still applied to the two sides.)

Actually the trigger for the American Civil War was the imperial expansion into Indian or French or Spanish territory that led to the creation of so many new states which threatened the balance of power in the federal senate. After this minor bump in the road, imperial expansion raced even faster, with wars against Mexico and conquest of overseas possesssions in the Carribbean, Pacific and Asia all part of the plan. It is interesting to wonder if the United States as they currently interract with the world would remotely resemble the Federation of Independant American States that would have developed had these imperial pretensions not fundamentally changed the shape of their culture.

The same can be said for several other supposedly ‘post colonial’ states of the modern world. Red China is an imperial power. This is a simple statement, even just looking at their attitude and behaviour to various subject groups within the confines of the traditional Chinese Empire, let alone their occupation of Tibet. Their attitudes to spreading their influence in Africa and sabre rattling in the Pacific are also earily similar to American efforts a century or so earlier. (Taiwan for instance might well expect to have a major Chinese warship unexpectedly sink nearby as an excuse for war, in a way that would be familiar to residents of Havana at the time the US battleship Maine went down in 1898.)

India is another imperial power. This started with the extraordinary decision by a supposedly pro self-determination new state to greedily accept a, literally violently anti-integration, Kashmir. It is followed by the ‘nationalisation’ of the many principalities guaranteed a place within the original constituition within a few years. For the last twenty years it has been developing its naval power with the stated intention of making the Indian Ocean literally that. Various ministers and admirals have quietly commented that they are now willing to play a part in the internal affairs of their ‘near neighbours’… such as Malaysia, Kenya and South Africa…

In fact it could be argued that an imperial phase in the development of any state is the norm… if that state is actually likely to maintain its independence for more than a few decades.

In practical terms there are few examples in history of city states or small states being left alone long enough to gain secure independence unless they develop the ruthless use of power necessary to guarantee their own security. Look at the Italian city states of the Rennaissance for the best examples, but remember that every great empire in history started as a tribe or sitystate somewhere (The exceptions to this are tiny statelets like Andora and Monarco, that live on sufferance, and because they are no threat to anyone.)

Many new independent states have been set up in the modern age of idealism about self determination, but few have so far lasted as much as 50 years. Most small states set up by fiat of the great powers at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, or World War One, or World War Two, were usually incorporated under other imperial powers within decades. (Despite the so called security supposedly guaranteed by the fanciful League of Nations which failed so dismally… what we now call the UN.) Many post Second World War states have become parts of bigger states – the Baltic, Malayan and Indian states being good examples – and it is exceedingly likely that many of the post Soviet states are either going to be re-incorporated in the Russian Empire, or be subsumed into regional affiliations for mutual security/control. The artificial colonial divisions in Africa are also starting to come apart, and it is virtually inevitable that the splits between Muslim north and Christian/Animist south that are already developing in some countries (see the recent independence vote for South Sudan) will end in new federations bearing little similarity to the colonial drafts.

There is not a state in the world today that is not a product of the interraction of empire. Most are actually the product of imperial borders, and their stability depends on whether the habits of those borders are ingrained or not. (See South America for ‘ mostly stable’, and Africa for ‘mostly unstable’.) Nor are there many states, other than some complete backwaters of no interest to others, that could be considered stable contenders for long term survivial, that have not undergone some version of their own phase of power politics along the lines that would usually be considered ‘imperialism’. (The most obviously violent examples being China, India, Russia and anything approaching a power in the Middle East or North Africa.) There are many states that do not fit these categories, but that is almost a synonym for saying that there are many states whose long term future looks doubtful. The most stable small independent states for instance – the apparently secure ex-British Imperial colonies of Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei etc – are nervously facing negotiating with their neighbours for mutual defence pacts against the stirrings of imperial China.

Imperialism is the default condition of human history. Interaction of imperialism is the default foundation of states. States that want to survive play the imperial game, and those that want to thrive play it well. States that don’t play either rely on the sufferance of the real powers, or become short lived footnotes in history. Frankly, despite our fantasies about Leagues of Nations/United Nations providing security, the vast majority of the states granted independence since 1945 are either lining up for playing the imperial game, or for extinction.

Statistical confusion – whose troops actually did the fighting in World War Two

2011-02-16T19:01:00.000-08:00

I was recently researching how many divisions were in action for which nations, at what time and for how long, during the Second World War: and came up with some astonishing misconceptions. (Coincidentally backed up by a recent readers question about who ‘Frenched’… not a term I am familiar with, but I can hazard a guess at its meaning.)

China for instance had theoretically more than 300 divisions, though in fact most were lucky to have the combat power of a Western battalion, perhaps Regiment if they were one of the best equipped. Some of their best ‘Armies’ might have matched a poor Japanese division… maybe. When Stillwell was assigned to rebuild a more useful force on American lines he felt he might assemble about 30 lightweight divisions out of the resources actually available, with no pretence that any of the end products would actually match a Japanese division in the field (even if the Chinese would have let them fight).

The Eastern Front is also a bit fanciful in this regard. Although some German units started each campaign season at or near full strength, for most of the war the vast majority of divisions on both German and Russian sides were perhaps the equivalent of a Western Brigade or Regiment. Many were far weaker (particularly those of Germany’s ‘allies’). As a rule a Soviet Corps might match a weak German division, but you would probably need a small Soviet Army to match a fully mechanised Western division in combat power.

So talk of the Germans having 200+ divisions on the Eastern Front compared to only 80 facing the West tends to hide the fact that a large majority of the Eastern Front units were undermanned infantry, and a far more significant percentage of the units facing West were mechanised, and often at or near full strength. In sheer combat power, the removal of ten percent of divisions (say 20 divisions) from the Eastern Front to face the Western Allies (happened 3 times – Tunisia/Mediterranean 1942, Sicily/Italy 1943, and France 1944) looks a lot more significant if it involves moving 50% of the available Panzers and 70 or 80% of the high quality, full strength, specially equipped, Paratroop or Mountain or Waffen SS divisions. (Though far more Germans – and their Axis Hungarian, Rumanian, Finnish, etc allies – died on the Eastern front than in the west. See my post here for a discussion of the numbers fallacy on the Eastern Front.)

But the really interesting thing was working out the numbers of Western Allied divisions deployed at any point in the war. I, like most others I suppose, knew that American units were not relevant until late1942, but I assumed they formed a large percentage of units in action fairly quickly after that. Certainly I had subconsciously fallen for the idea that by the time of the D-Day invasion the Americans were providing the bulk of the combat troops for the Western Allies. But apparently that is just another example of letting your pre-conceptions run away with you.

Throughout 1942 British Comonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in French North Africa, Libya, Egypt, Cyprus, Syria (torn between expecting airborne assault, and preparing to reinforce Turkey if that country was attacked), Iraq and Iran (German invasion from the north was attracting more British troop deployment until after Stalingrad than those facing Japan and Rommel combined), Madagascar (fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina), Ceylon (at the time of the Japanese naval raid that looked like it might prefigure and invasion), India, Burma, outposts of the East Indies, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and other Pacific Islands. A total of 30+ divisions in combat, and another 30+ expecting imminent attack. (This does not include yet another 30 odd British and Canadian divisions in the UK.) Apart from the Philippino forces surrendered early in the year, the Americans had a couple of divisions in action at Gaudalcanal after August, one in New Guinea by November, and late in November a few arrived in French North Africa.

In 1943 the Americans managed to get their numbers up to half a dozen divisions at the front in Europe and the same in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or Indian armies respectively, and barely matching the combined efforts of minor allies like the Free Poles, French, Greeks and Italians etc.

The breakthrough in American numbers was not until after the middle of 1944, when American units started arriving direct to France (which admittedly, was what Marshall had been trying to do all along).

But although American troops may have outnumbered British and Commonwealth troops in France by late 1944, the total of Allied troops, including the Free French, Poles, Czech, Dutch, Belgians, ensured that it was never quite as clear cut a domination as it appears. Devers ‘American’ 6th Army Group that come up from the South Coast was half French after all. In fact in 1945 it became a race to see if the Americans could import new divisions faster than the French could commission theirs (France had 1.3 million men in the field by VE Day). But the Americans fielding 60 divisions in France compared to only 20 British Commonwealth/ minor allies is the figure waved around as significant. (Ignoring that 15 of the American divisions did not get there until 1945, and by the end the liberated French had mobilised a couple of dozen divisions too, making the non-American total more like 40).

So the Americans did predominate in France, but the war was spread a bit further than France. If you take Europe as a whole, then the situation gets more interesting. The Americans in combat in Europe possibly didn’t start to outnumber the total other Western Allies until about the time of the collapse of Germany’s frontiers, and only weeks before the final surrender.

In Italy American troops never played more than a subsidiary part to the operation, and throughout the war even the ‘American’ 5th Army usually had as many (if not more) British, Canadian, New Zealander, Polish, Italian or French troops in it than Americans. Again, it was not until almost 1945 that even the 5th Army was majority American. They rarely made up more than a third of Allied ground forces in Italy.

If we include the Mediterranean/North African/Middle Eastern forces fighting the ‘anti-German’ half of the World War in a combined ‘European Theatre’ (which was one American generals fanciful suggestion when they wanted Marshall in charge of all ‘European’ operations), then American troops do not dominate ever. There are just too many British and French and Polish and Canadian and New Zealand and South African and Indian and Italian and Greek and Brazilian and other troops garrisoning recently liberated places from Morrocco to Iran and Ethiopia to Belgium; and still fighting to secure Greece, Austria, Denmark and Norway. (Note: The Soviets were starting to pile on pressure in Iran and throughout the Middle East already, and Greece was in serious danger of falling behind the Iron Curtain until British troops did some hard fighting.)

The war against Japan is even more deceptive, particularly if you fall for the fantasy that it was a ‘Pacific’ war. Leaving aside the supposed millions of Chinese, the British Empire and Commonwealth already had more than a million men at the front in India, Burma, Malaysia, New Guinea, Indonesia, and in the Pacific Islands, before the Americans had introduced more than a few divisions. Again, it is almost 1945, less than 10 months before the Japanese surrender, before the Phillipines campaign actually saw an entire American army (the 6th) deployed at a single time, instead of just a division fighting on this island for a month, and two or three on that for a few months. Until well into 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the Americans. The Americans never put more troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the Indian Army (which had a total of 32 divisions at its height, several in Europe or the Middle East, but many of which eventually faced Japan).

On a worldwide scale, the point at which the Americans fielded more troops than just the other Western allies (leaving aside the Russians and Chinese, the Hungarians, Rumanians, Yugoslavs, and all the others who fought the Axis), was… well never. The British Commonwealth alone fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 (though admittedly many were weaker garrison forces than proper mechanised field divisions), compared to the American total of 88 by the end of the war. The French had fielded 100 in 1940, and were to field 20+ again just in France by the end of the war. In fact the largely forgotten minor allies, the Free Poles, the Free Italian combat Groups, the Brigades of Free Greeks, Belgians, Dutch, etc, and the South African divisions, the New Zealand divisions, and the Brazilian division, had between them outnumbered the total American commitment to combat in Europe before the last four months of 1944. Add in the British, Canadians and Free French, and the American commitment before mid 1944 looks rather less impressive than is justified by the hype.

I will even go as far as quoting the figures, taken mostly from John Ellis’ World War two - A Statistical Survey, with a little reference to the microfilm archives of the CCOS deployment figures. (Though I foresee problems with comparing apples and oranges, so please do not consider these numbers as more than a very rough calculation. Particularly as some units have to be estimates. The British Commonwealth uniquely deployed ‘independent armoured brigades’ with roughly the same tank strength as most American armoured division, or some German Panzer Corps, or Russian Tank Armies, which I have accepted in John Ellis’ category and loosely called ½ a division. The same goes for the Italian ‘combat groups’ which I have also ranked as half a division. Many Pacific islands were invaded by a couple of American Regiments, which again could be loosely considered ½ of a division. When I say ‘rough’ estimates, I really mean it.)

The United States divisions were ‘deployed overseas’ for a total of about 1,150 months. Of that: Infantry in Europe about 500, infantry in the Pacific 312, armour 158, marines 128, airborne 37 and cavalry 19… roughly. But ‘deployed overseas’ is a bit different from everyone elses ‘in combat’ definition. For instance US 82nd Airborne is listed in Europe for 19 months from July 1943 to May 1945, but it was out of combat more often than in during that time. By comparison the British 6th Airborne, which was also ‘in Europe’ for all those months, gets listed as actually being in combat for three operations – June - September 1944 for D-Day, December - January 1944 for The Bulge, and March 1945 for The Rhine - and only gets credited with 6 months in combat.

This sample is much worse in the Pacific, where more than 20 American divisions are listed as ‘in Pacific’ for several years, regardless that usually only one or two were actually fighting anywhere at any given time. 1st US Marine Division for instance, probably the hardest fighting US dicvision in the Pacific, is listed ‘in theatre’ for 37 months, August 1942 – August 1945: but apparently fought on Guadalcanal for about five months, then on Cape Gloucestor in New Britain between 26 December 1943 and 16 January 1944 (call it two months?); then on Pelelui for a month, and on Okinawa for three months. Total 11 months, or a bit less than 30% of time 'in theatre' actually in combat.

So compared to a grand total of 1,150 months ‘overseas’ for all American divisions of all types, make what you will of these numbers, all months actually ‘in combat’:

Infantry divisions - British 284 months in combat, Indian 282, Australian 183, Canadian 44, African empire troops 68, South Africa 33, New Zealand 35 (Commonwealth total 935 months in combat). Also Free French 75, Free Poles 34, Free Italians 28, Brazilians 10 and Free Czechs 6, + Greeks, Jews (Palestinian Jews), etc. (Total of minors 153+). Total of just the infantry divisions of the non American Western Allies comes to almost 1,100 months in actual combat. (Although the Americans come up with almost 500 months ‘in Europe’, and 312 ‘in Pacific’, it would be extraordinarly generous to suggest that the total number ‘in combat’ came to more than 60% of that. In real terms it is unlikely that the American total in combat came to half of everyone elses 1,100 months.)

How about armour? British armoured divisions/brigades 245 months ‘in combat’, Indian 18, Australian 25, Canadian 31, New Zealander 9, Free French 27, Free Poles 18, Free Czechs 6. (Total 379 months in combat.) American armoured divisions 158 months ‘in Europe’. Again, even being hugely generous, the American total ‘in combat’ is unlikely to be much more than a third of everyone elses.

(By the way I think the Australian and New Zealand numbers in the Pacific theatre are as woolly and questionable as the American ones, but their African/European numbers are definitely correct, and I think the point is adequately made.)
Total non-American Western Allies army troops in combat about 1,500 months. Somewhere between two and three times total American Army and Marines combined.

Now I am not suggesting that the Americans didn’t contribute. They contributed an awful lot. By the end of the war they contributed more fighting divisions than any one of these named nations (finally equalling the combined total of the reduced numbers of full strength units deployed by the British Comonwealth). But over the total course of the war the United Kingdoms of the British Isles alone had more divisions actually at the front for more combat months than the Americans, as indeed did the French Army before their collapse in 1940… In fact India and Australia combined probably put in more divisional combat months than the US, and throwing in either the South Africans, or the Canadians, or even the New Zealanders, let alone all of them, would make it a certainty. (The Americans should be grateful that the Poles collapsed within a few weeks in 1939, because otherwise they too would have contributed more to the total divisional combat effort in the war than the Americans in Europe too. 47 divisions/brigade groups for – lets give American style generosity and call it 2 months each in the 1939 campaign – plus 127 months later by British or Russian aligned forces thereafter, for a total of 221 months.)

[I would be really interested to see if anyone can provide good evidence against any of these numbers. There must be some other good sources out there?]

Nor am I suggesting that the war could have been won without the Americans… though the total troop numbers do make it seem a far closer concept than most pretend. (And I should note that the American ‘in theatre’ concept would make the comparisons ridiculous if it was equally applied to everyone else. More British and Indian divisions were deployed in Iraq and Iran and ready to go to Turkey in 1942 – just in case of the very real threat that the Germans would break through the Soviets at Stalingrad – than the Americans had ‘overseas’ that year, or indeed the next. If you added all the troops waiting for an invasion of Britian in 1940-41, or Ireland, or Iceland; or Cyprus in 1942, or Syria, or Persia, or India, or Madagascar, or Ceylon, or Australia or New Zealand: the British Commonwealth numbers ‘in theatre’ jump to over three times the total American time ‘overseas’.)

I am suggesting that total American contribution to ground combat is vastly exaggerated by most of the literature. Through the war as a whole it amounted to about a quarter of the Western Allied total all up. Until mid to late 1944, the American contribution was minimal, and could have been replaced with other troops. In Europe their contribution really became important starting in June 1944, and in Asia starting November 1944. (But by 1944 there were more French and Italian and Indian and Polish volunteers than could be trained and equipped, so an idle side thought is that perhaps a lot of this American manpower might have been more valuably deployed as an arsenal of democracy workforce from 1942 - 1945, rather than spending years in training as infantry divisions that only got into action in 1945?) It was not until the end of 1944 when the large majority of American divisions started to make their presence felt worldwide (well, Northern Europe and the Pacific at least, if still not the Mediterannean, Middle Eastern or mainland Asian theatre’s)… at about the time when the European battles were mostly won, when Germany was already falling apart, and when Japan was trying to get the Soviet Union to be a go between in surrender discussions.

As usual, the problem is beware of statistics. Impressive sounding numbers of divisions do not necessarily relate to an actual combat value, particularly if they are not often in action. In terms of contributing to winning the war Chinese ‘divisions’ were a joke, Russian ‘divisions’ were an exaggeration, and the vast majority of American divisions were too late to see fighting in the critical years – early 1942 to late 1944 – when the tide was turned.

Rating Generals Cunningham, Ritchie and Percival

2011-01-29T19:37:00.000-08:00

This companion article to my piece on rating Generals Fredendall, Dawley and Lucas, is a little bit more interesting, because the three most famous British generals to be sacked in World War Two are not universally written off as complete failures in the way that the American generals were.

In fact although General Percival went into captivity with his men and cannot be considered anything but a failure in battle, General Cunningham had been extremely successful before his sacking, and General Ritchie became even more successful after his sacking.

At the start of the First World War Arthur Percival, who worked in the city of London, volunteered for the army and was made an officer. He was athletic and hard-working, and very popular with his men. He served on the Western front as a lieutenant in the infantry, and worked his way through a number of field and staff positions, finishing in command of a battalion, and then from brief period a brigade. A highly decorated officer, he was efficient and beloved by his men, and was recommended to the Staff College. He volunteered to service in Russia, and went on to see action in Ireland, and staff jobs in Nigeria, and was a student and teacher at various military colleges.

He was noted during this time as an officer of great ability, and put on the fast track for promotion. Unfortunately his commander at Staff College during his stint as an instructor was General John Dill, a staff officer who, when he later became Chief of Imperial General Staff, was referred to by Churchill as “Dilly-Dally”. Dill was extremely impressed by Percival’s ability, military knowledge, good judgement and hard work, and Dill was to be the one who promoted him into the Army command of the exposed an endangered outpost of the Malayan peninsula just in time to face the Japanese onslaught. Dill might have benefited from taking the moderating opinion of the General Sir Ian Jacob who considered Percival to be a very pleasant man, highly intelligent and brave, but not “the man for a whirlwind”. General Alan Brooke, on hearing the news of Percival’s appointment, raged in his diary against the idea that any competent staff officer probably had what it took to be a good battle leader.

The kindest thing that can be said about Percival’s response when the whirlwind did descend on his command, was that he tried his best. In fact he was completely out of his depth, and one officer commented that he always looked as though he was waiting to the umpires to blow their whistles (when he hoped to get at least points for trying). He was too indecisive to take the opportunity to pre-empt the Japanese landings in Thailand (the way a Montgomery or a Patton certainly would have); he was unable to adapt to Japanese tactics; he was unable to inspire his troops; and he lacked the ability to control his fractious commanders (or the self-confidence to sack the sub standard Lewis Heath, or the impossible Australian Gordon Bennett, even after the Australian chief of staff suggested it to him). He was, frankly, a prime example of a general who had been promoted out of his depth.

But whether he was an inevitable failure is more questionable. He had served well and efficiently in combat commence in the First World War, and in staff duties between the wars. He had done very well as chief of staff to the British first Corps in France in 1940, to the point of being made the deputy CIGS for a while, and was showing potential as the commander of a division in a Britain facing German invasion. Perhaps if he had been given a chance to lead that division into combat under the command of a good Corps or Army Commander, he might have developed the ability to have led higher formations later in the war. It is quite possible to envision him as a contemporary of Generals Leese or Dempsey, or Hodges or Bradley. Unfortunately he was thrown unprepared into a situation beyond his experience, or his ability to adapt.

The blame for this lies squarely with Gen Dill, who had as pernicious an affect on British generalship as Gen Marshall was to have on American. There is a theme here of clever but ignorant staff officers (Marshall and Dill got on so well because they were both stuffy staff officer types) promoting people who have caught their attention to positions far beyond their actual abilities (or at least to beyond what their current experience levels justified). Just as Marshall, Dill repeatedly promoted staff officer types over actual combat leaders. Just as Marshall, Dill repeatedly let his fanciful ideas draw the army into impossible positions. (Dill was responsible for the ill-fated expedition to Greece, and Marshall repeatedly tried to start an invasion of France with inadequate numbers of ill trained, novice troops.)

Had General Alan Brooke arrived as CIGS a few months earlier, the Malayan campaign would have been in the hands of a tried battle commander like Montgomery or Alexander. The end result may have been the same, but there can be no doubt that the process would have been very different. (In fact Japanese accounts of the campaign make it clear that the operation was on a logistical knife edge which might well have been pushed the other way by a remotely competent opposition.)

By contrast, in General Cunningham, who broke down in the face of an aggressive counter-attack by Rommel’s Africa Corps, had previously been a very successful army commander.

Cunningham was the same age as Percival, but had been a professional soldier from the start. His Great War career was solid, though not nearly as impressive as Percival’s, and his interwar progress was less spectacular. However his appointment as General Officer Commanding East Africa in 1940 gave him the opportunity to lead a successful campaign of conquest into Italian East Africa. His widely dispersed columns started from different ends of the Abyssinia, and successfully overwhelmed a much larger Italian forces (in a very similar fashion to what the Japanese would achieve in Malaya). He appeared to be the ideal commander to take over the army in North Africa after Rommel made his appearance and captured the previous commanding general. But in fact his carefully prepared counter-attack was not well handled, and he literally broke down in the face of Rommel’s aggressive and successful tactics.

There are two complimentary possibilities to explain why Cunningham failed so badly after having succeeded so well. The first is simply that a successful frontier general, quite competent to campaign in the slow paced old colonial manner against the unimpressive Italians, was not prepared to face a blitzkrieg by German combat veterans commanded by a freak of nature such as Rommel. And despite having previously commanded an Army successfully, he did not have the experience with modern mechanised warfare to deal with the new circumstances.

The second, and more important reason, may simply be that the poor man was exhausted. There are many records of fine generals becoming tired, dispirited, lethargic, and unresponsive, if they had been in constant command of forces in combat for too long. The simple truth of the matter is that even the best generals gain great benefit from a few months of rest and relaxation every now and then. General Wavell was a far better man and leader than was evident during the Battle of Malaya, but he had been in constant stress for over two years. He was the wrong man to supervise the desperate circumstances of Malaya at that time. Cunningham had the same problem in Noth Africa.

Alan Brooke had been unhappy with the idea of Cunningham going straight from one command to another without a rest (he would have preferred Wilson, who had recent experience facing a German blitzkreig in Greece), but had reluctantly accepterd the preferences of the theatre commander on the spot General Auchinleck. As a result, when Cunningham broke down and had to be replaced, Brooke was happy to bring him back for rest and recuperation, and then to give him a training command in England. (Note that the distinction here. Marshall put people into training commands who all other American front-line generals considered absolute failures. Brooke accepted that an exhausted man who had previously been a success, was probably capable of learning from his failures, and might make an even better training command as a result. This perspective may be reinforced by noting that Brooke was to sack many training generals in the next few years, but he kept active, and promoted, Cunningham.)

General Neil Ritchie is an even more fascinating example. Ritchie was a decade younger than the other two, and frankly did not belong in command of the army in 1941. But he was thrown temporarily into that position by Gen Auchinleck, and then made permanent despite the misgivings of all concerned, including himself.

Ritchie who had been a professional soldier, and had served well during the First World War, earning decorations, but being too young to achieve high rank. He had followed a fairly normal division between field and staff posts between the war, and had impressed Alan Brooke with his ability. Brooke was to become his patron, in the same way that Dill had been Percival’s. But there was a real difference in approach.

Alan Brook had been very impressed with Richie’s performance as his chief of staff at first Corps in France in 1940, but recognized his inexperience. Ritchie was briefly given command of the division in England in 1940, but then returned to is most valuable role, as chief of staff to Aukinlek in the Middle East. Brooke’s normal practice would have been to give him a year or so in this appointment, then put him back in charge of the division in the field under an experienced Corps Commander. When Brook discovered that Aukinlek had instead thrown Ritchie in to be the commander of the army, he was horrified. He felt that Ritchie was not ready to such a position, and that he would be ruined if too much was asked of him too quickly. In fact when he failed and had to be replaced, Brook immediately brought him home and spent two years rebuilding him as a commander of a Division and then of a Corps, before sending him back into action in France and Germany. Ritchie’s success as the Corps Commander at this time makes an interesting statement about the importance of experience, training, and careful nurturing of senior officers.

Auchinleck’s decision to make Ritchie an army commander was ridiculous. As a relatively junior Major General with no command experience in modern combat, he was thrown into over the heads of several very senior and very experienced lieutenant generals who were to be his corps commanders. Although he was later to turn out to be a good leader, he lacked the prestige to convince his division and corps commanders that he knew what he was doing, and they all treated him as just a cipher for all Auchinleck. Realistically though, this is exactly what he was, and he knew it as well as they did. Auchinleck was simply trying to double up his duties as theatre commander with those of being the supervisor/hand holder to a deputy army commander. He tried to do both, failed at both, and had to sack Ritchie to cover the inevitable results. Within a few months he too would be sacked.

These then are the great failures of British generalship during the Second World War. One was promoted from his comfort zone as a staff officer to a position beyond him, through the ignorance and stupidity of his superiors. He was to finish the war as a prisoner of war. Another was what Montgomery would call “a good plain cook”, but was thrown already exhausted into a situation for which he needed a little more experience. He finished a succesful trainer. The third was almost ruined by the capricious winds of a superior, but was carefully salvaged and rebuilt into an effective officer through a sensible approach by a competent superior. He finished as an excellent combat leader.

The common theme here is less the men themselves, and more the roles of their superiors. Percival failed even more spectacularly than Fredendall, but the difference was that Percival was an excellent staff officer, whereas Fredendall was an incompetent buffoon. Both failed because the men who assigned them to their roles did not have the ability to recognize the limitations of their characters.

Cunningham failed despite his previous experience, because he was too exhausted to cope with the situation he was thrown into. It will always be questionable whether, had he been fit and fresh, he would have been able to cope, or whether his inexperience at armoured warfare would have required more preparation. It was a failure of imagination by those who appointed him, that they could not recognize the need for rest and recuperation to keep leaders fit for command.

And Ritchie just had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and under the wrong man.

The key point to be made from these examples is that even the best men need to be carefully shaped into their rolls as competent battlefield leaders. The vast majority of Western Allied generals during the Second World War had little chance to develop their skills before being thrown into a situation for which they were often not ready. The fault was usually that of their superiors, particularly those who lacked the ability to assess the real capabilities of the men they were promoting in an objective fashion. (However it must be pointed out that sometimes the higher ups had little choice. Democracies almost always go to war ill-prepared, and those in charge often have to assign the best fits they can. Throughout the war Brooke lamented that he did not have enough good leaders, but that he could not find better alternatives.)

Good generals do not spring magically out of the ground. They have to be nurtured. This requires not only an opportunity for slow and well supported development, but also the fortune of having a superior officer who knows which people are best suited to what sort of development. Ideally there will also be an opportunity to give them the time they will need to be ready.

Of the six genreals in these two posts, Fredendall and Percival were poor choices, Dawley and Lucas were inadequately prepared, Cunningham got belated support, but only Ritchie – a decade younger than the others - got the development he really needed.

So much for the myth of a general being born and not made,

Rating General’s Fredendall, Dawley and Lucas

2011-01-17T00:15:00.000-08:00

Any discussion of failed Allied generals in the Second World War will throw up the names of the British commanders who failed in North Africa and Malaya (Cunningham, Ritchie and Percival will be covered in another posts), and the three American Corps commanders who were sacked at Kasserine, Salerno and Anzio. This post will look at the Americans.

In some ways the comparisons are ridiculous. The characters of the three were completely different. Major General Lloyd Fredendall was a pompous egotistical braggart in the Patton mould, but without Patton’s redeeming features of leadership and battlefield nouse. After failing appallingly at Kasserine, he was sent home to a training command.

Major General Ernest Dawley was supposed to be a good reliable leader, but Patton at 7th Army had asked to exchange him for Bradley (whom he trusted), and so he was left to 5th Army. His superior there, General Clarke, hovered over him like a mother hen at Salerno, but to little effect. Alexander called him a ‘broken reed’, and Eisenhower expressed frustration at Clarke’s unwillingness to sack him. He went home to a training command.

Major General John Lucas was a calm, quiet, fatherly and extremely cautious man, who was also indecisive and lacked any notable battlefield leadership skills. He was sacked in the middle of the battle. He went home to a training command.

Truthfully, the three men had very different personalities, and very different approaches to leading men. Looking for a common theme in why they were promoted to positions they all proved completely unsuitable for leads to only one result. General George Marshall. He thought they were all going to be excellent. (In fact his phrasing goes considerable beyond that. “I like that man, he’s a fighter”, was his comment on Fredendall, who front line generals later branded a moral and physical coward.)

Eisenhower, who was responsible for appointing actual combat commanders in the European Theatre of Operations, was unfortunately willing to take whoever Marshall sent him at the start of the war. Sometimes this worked out, as in the cases of Patton and Bradley, and sometimes it failed dismally, as in these three cases. Unfortunately Eisenhower was not willing to think for himself at this point, and just parroted Marshall’s opinions of men like Lucas, even if he came to regret doing so later. (Which only demonstrates the ingenousness of Eisenhower wondering why Clark was reluctant to sack men sent to him by the Marshall/Eisenhower team.) It was only as Eisenhower gained confidence later in the war - and gained experience of how often Marshall was wrong about men and situations - that he started acting with more caution. Often too late.

This is not to suggest that none of the three could have made a competent general. They all suffered from being promoted to high command with no, or extremely little, combat experience. Although Fredendall probably lacked the ability to be a real leader, the other two might have done better had they had any experience of leading Battalions or Regiments first, then Divisions for a few months, before being exposed to the role of a corps commander. Judging by their performances they may never have made dashing battlefield leaders, but they might have made what Montgomery called a ‘good plain cook’… if they had been given a chance to develop slowly.

However they suffered the fate of most generals in democracies thrown into a war for which their countries were not prepared. They had to fill roles for which they were not suited. They lacked any experience in battle, let alone experience at leading large formations. Leading large formations against the counter-attacks of high quality veteran German troops was certainly not something for which they had any real preparation. (It makes very clear the unreality of Marshall’s fantasy that untried American troops led by such untried leaders could have successfully invaded France in 1942 or 1943! As Alanbrooke commented later, Marshall’s plan would certainly have ended the war earlier, but probably not the way the Allies would have preferred.)

It should be noted however that all three, having failed at the front, were sent to training commands at home. Every army has a tendency to do this, but most also provide a few good leaders with proven ideas as well. The American fixation with putting failed leaders in charge of training was one commented on by many American generals later in the war as they continued to receive battlefield replacements that were ill prepared for the environment they were entering. Again, we see the fell hand of Marshall’s preferential treatment, and of Eisenhower’s unwillingness to disabuse his boss of his illusions.

No one would rate any of these three as good generals, but I imagine many are not as willing to concede that Dawley and Lucas were merely unfortunate to be revealed so obviously. My contention would be that many other generals were thrown unprepared into situations beyond their experience or abilities, but that most were lucky enough not to face such immediate and devastating counter-strikes that revealed their weaknesses to the whole world. Dozens of other Division, Corps and even Army leaders in the Allied ranks, possibly only did better than Dawley and Lucas in the history books because they faced much weaker opponents later in the war. Their reversals were hidden by the far larger scale of operations, that allowed their mistakes to be lost in the morass.

Even the best generals cannot be expected to be magically ready for that most dangerous of circumstances – defending against an unexpected and powerful offensive. Skills that look good using superior numbers in attack, can be shown inadequate against even inferior numbers of good troops in a well led counter-attack. Such skills take painfully learned experience to develop, and many otherwise successful generals never achieve them. (Cunningham and Hodges spring to mind – more posts later.) Most generals were never even tested at this. (Even Patton may well have been lucky that he only ever led attacks or counter-attacks, not defences. Only Montgomery amongst Allied generals repeatedly demonstrated mastery of both.)

Personality is a crucial part of being a general, but so is training, experience, competent superiors, and luck. These three lacked the personality to overcome the problem that the other factors were conspiring against them. But how many equally bad candidates managed to hide in their weaknesses in the overwhelming Allied numerical superiority at the end of the war?

Comparing naval aircraft of World War II

2010-12-20T20:27:00.000-08:00

As another instalment on the problems of comparing apples and oranges, I thought it would be a useful to make sense of some of the ludicrous claims made about naval aircraft during the Second World War.

All navies entered 1939 with a combination of biplane and monoplane machines, all of which were behind the performances of equivalent land-based fighters and bombers. By December 1941, when the Japanese and American Navy’s joined the war, things had moved on a bit for all combatants, but not nearly as far as most books would have you believe. Bad historians for instance - scathing about the British still using biplane torpedo bombers, and the Japanese still using fixed undercarriage dive bombers - often claim that the Americans had already moved too far more advanced aircraft. The magnificent Avenger torpedo bomber, is often mentioned, regardless of the fact that the first half dozen were not in action until the Battle of Midway, and that they did not appear in any numbers until 1943. By that time of course, both Britain and Japan had their own new torpedo bombers entering front-line service.

So it would be sensible to make some comparisons between what was available to whom at what time.

By the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, most 1939 aircraft were obsolete. Britain had already retired the Blackburn Skua dive bomber, despite it’s having equivalent performance to the Japanese Val dive bomber, and superior performance to the American Devastator torpedo bomber, that were both still in service. So Pearl Harbor was carried out by a combination of quite effective modern aircraft like the famous Zero fighter, reasonable torpedo bombers like Kate, and elderly but still competent dive bombers like the Val. They were faced by American carriers largely armed with reasonable dive bombers like the Dauntless, elderly and inadequate torpedo bombers like the Devastator, and relatively recent but very uncompetitive fighters like the Buffalo – which was in the process of being replaced by the workmanlike but uninspiring Wildcat. At the same time British were working with the reliable but uninspiring Sea Hurricane fighter (and were also starting to use Wildcat’s), the powerful but slow Fulmar fighter reconnaissance plane, and the latest version of the venerable Swordfish torpedo bomber, the Albacore biplane. All of these aircraft had a serious limitations which had already been recognised. All of them (except the Dauntless for some reason) had replacements already in the pipeline.

Aircraft being phased out since 1939

Despite the claims that the United States Navy developed the best and most advanced interwar aircraft, the tubby little Grumman F3F biplane fighter [264 mph, 1 x .5 and 1 x .303 mg, 980 miles range] that had served until 1941 had been by far the least adequate carrier-borne fighter of 1939. Its performance was comparable to the Gloster Gladiator [257mph, 4 x .303 mg, 440 miles range] which was almost completely fazed out by the British in 1940 (but which served valiantly against the Italian airforce when 4 crated examples were found in storage on Malta). It’s inadequacy for front line carrier operations can be assessed by the fact that naval airmen were expected to rejoice when the inadequate F2A Brewster Buffalo [321mph, 4 x .50 mg, 1000 miles range – sounds better than it actually was], turned up in mid 1940. (When the British received some Buffalo’s at the same time, they found that even removing the heavy naval equipment like landing gear and life rafts left them inadequate as land fighters for European service, and ironically sent them to the Far East instead.)

The Japanese fighter of 1939, the Mitsubishi A5M ‘Claude’ [280mph, 2x x7.7mm mg, 750 miles range] also had no great performance characteristics to recommend it for the Second World War, and was being phased out of front line operations by December1941.

The Japanese Torpedo bomber was the Yokosuka B4Y 'Jean' [171mph, 1 x 7.7mm mg, 1,600 lb torpedo or bombs, 978 miles range]. The most complimentary thing that can be said about it was that it was no worse than the American Devastator or British Swordfish, but at least it was due to be phased out by December 1941, whereas the Devastator would still be the main American torpedo bomber until after Midway. (In fact the Jean continued to serve on smaller carriers until 1943, and some served at the Battle of Midway.)

The British torpedo bomber was the Fairey Swordfish [138mph, 2 x .303mg, 1,600lbs torpedo or bombs - later rockets, 1,030 miles range]. A slow but reliable biplane, with more lift and range than the Devastator, and more combat survivability than the Jean. (It frequently astounded even the crews how much damage a Swordfish could absorb and keep flying. Ragged anti-aircraft holes in the wings and tail and fuselage, lines of tracer holes across various surfaces, broken struts, cut control cables, the Swordfish would absorb them all and make it home.) Nevertheless the Swordfish was quickly proved to be a deathtrap for daylight operations against an enemy with fighter cover, and was scheduled for replacement by a more modern torpedo bomber for combat ops. Yet, amazingly, the Swordfish was the only allied pre-war naval carrier aircraft still in production when the war ended.

There are three reasons for this feat. The first is that the British were early adaptors of night operations, and performed successful Swordfish strikes (such as the amazingly successful strike at the Port of Taranto which crippled or sunk several major warships – becoming the Japanese model for Pearl Harbor), and successful night attacks at sea once the second innovation came in. This was the development of airborne radar, which was first operational on Swordfish operating on British carriers six months before Pearl Harbor. The British were to hold this unique ability to use radar for carrier aircraft operations for a couple of years before the Americans deployed similar concepts in 1943. They were to hold their unique advantage of night-time strikes also. (Both the Japanese and Americans lost many pilots over the next few years in strikes that failed to get home before dark!) So the Swordfish could soldier on under the cover of night, and continued to be useful as a strike aircraft long after its use in daytime had been demonstrated to be suicidal by the easy slaughter of those attempting to attack the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the Channel Dash in 1941.

The third, and unexpected reason, why the Swordfish was still in production at the end of the war, was that it’s unrivalled flying characteristics made it the only aircraft capable of surviving operations from small escort carriers operating in the Arctic Circle in bad weather. Whereas more modern, higher speed aircraft, like the Hurricane and Wildcat and Avenger could work from escort carriers in calmer seas, none of those would even consider operations under the sort of conditions that a Swordfish could easily manage. So the venerable old bus continued to serve successfully purely as an Anti-Submarine role until the final days of the war. This was not because there weren’t many better aircraft available, but simply because no other aircraft available could do the job as well. An example of a World War Two aircraft still having a (slightly reduced) role, long after being technically obsolete - see the many inadequate fighters that lived on as very successful night fighters. (Though the fact that ‘modern’ B-52’s are scheduled to still be operational 80 or 90 years after their initial deployment shows that new roles are always possible for reliable old aircraft, even when their technology is fifty years out of date.)

Another British multi-role aircraft was not so fortunate. The Blackburn Skua [225mph, 4x .303, one 500ln bomb, 760 miles range] had been discarded as a dual purpose fighter/dive bomber because it was not a good enough fighter, and the Armoured Carriers the British favoured for European operations had smaller air-groups that made a dedicated dive bomber too much of an investment. (British carriers had already moved to 40/60 fighter/ torpedo bomber mix by 1941, whereas the inexperienced Japanese and Americans were still trying to use 20/40/40 fighters/ dive/ torpedo bombers. Though it should be noted that because the British had dropped a type, the total number of fighters and torpedo bombers were more comparable than one might expect despite the smaller air-groups.) In some ways this was a shame, because the Skua had been a very good dive bomber (16 of them easily accounting for the German cruiser Konigsberg in April 1940), and had a superior ability to that later noted by the Japanese Val dive bomber, to defend itself as a limited fighter after having dropped its bombs. (In fact it was an excellent bomber killer, and only failed to stack up against modern German fighters.) As a dedicated bomber, the Skua would have been right at home amongst the Devastators, Kate's and Val's in the Pacific battles of 1942.

Aircraft still soldiering on in December 1941

The most obsolete first line strike aircraft in any carrier force in 1942 was the American Douglas Devastator torpedo bomber [206mph, 2 x.303 mg. 1,000lb’s of torpedo or bombs, range 716 miles]. Despite – or because of - being the first monoplane on any carrier air-wing (1937!), it had never been a very good aircraft. Fully loaded with a torpedo (a much lighter torpedo than used by anyone else), it had a hard time getting off the deck, and a much reduced speed and range. In fact it’s attack speed was actually slower than a Swordfish, and it lacked the Swordfishes maneouvrability or capacity to take damage. Used in daylight (the only way it could be used), it was an absolute death-trap if there were any airborne opposition at all. In fact the role played by the Devastators at the Battle of Midway was as kamikaze decoy targets to draw the Japanese fighter forces out of place. A point made even clearer by the fact that the few Devastators which had managed to attack at Coral Sea had usually seen their torpedo’s fail to work anyway. (The American carrier fleet would not get a successful airborne torpedo until mid 1943!)

The next most obsolete was the Japanese Aichi D3A Val dive-bomber [266mph, 3 x 7.7 mg, 1 x 500lb and 2 x 60lb bombs, 970 miles range] which had also entered service in the mid 30’s. It was a fixed landing gear dive-bomber modeled on the famous Junkers Ju 87 [183mph, 1 x 7.7mm mg, 1,000lb bomb, 621 miles range], and was just as good a dive bomber… if there was no opposition. Unlike the J87 (and like the Skua) the Val also had the ability to defend itself as a second rate fighter once the bombs had been dropped. Still the Val relied for success on clear skies, and achieved excellent results under those conditions at Ceylon (cruisers Devonshire and Cornwall and unarmed old carrier Hermes) and Coral Sea (carrier Lexington). Under even moderate air pressure at Trincomalee and Midway the performance fell of markedly, and later in the war the phrase that comes to mind is ‘Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot’. Nonetheless they had to soldier on because their replacement aircraft was too fast for the smaller carriers that were to become the majority of the Japanese carrier fleet after Midway.

The next in line for obsolescence was the British replacement for the Swordfish, the Fairey Albacore [161mph, 3 x .303 mg, 1,610lb torpedo or 2,000lb’s bombs, range 930 miles], which was merely an improved biplane, and looked quite odd against the monoplanes being introduced by everyone else. However the Albacore was one of those compromises forced on a nation fighting on too many fronts to modernize everything at once: an interim design while awaiting the monoplane replacement due in 1943.

In spite of being a slow death-trap by day, the Albacore proved a more than capable stopgap, for the reasons raised by the Swordfish. The Albacore was not actually expected to mount a strike against an enemy fleet by day, but to use it’s radar guided strikes to find and destroy by night. Here it was undoubtedly successful, as it would be another two years before even the Americans worked out how to mount night-time fighter defences from their carriers, and the Japanese never got that far. The Albacore was to continue to operate successfully by day under adequate fighter cover in the Mediterranean, making excellent use of it’s reliability, stability, good payload, and resistance to damage. But as a front line carrier strike aircraft against enemy fleets with aircover, it was only good for night ops, and would have been slaughtered almost as easily as the Devestator had it come up against serious daytime opposition. The reason why the British specialized on night actions like Taranto and Matapan for naval air attacks, was A) because day time was close to suicidal if there was any possibility of enemy fighter cover, and B) because night was the environment that gave them an advantage over everyone else. That was why at Ceylon the Japanese advanced their airpower by day and retreated at night, and the British advanced their radar equipped battleships and strike aircraft by night and retreated by day. (As a result neither could get a decisive victory without a strong and unlikely element of luck.)

Also in the ‘thank God a replacement is starting to happen’ class is the American Brewster Buffalo [321mph, 2 x .50 mg, 1,000 miles range] fighter. This poor excuse for a fighter was unsuitable for the European theatre even in a land based mode, with much of the heavy naval equipment like landing gear and life-rafts removed. The RAF and RAAF units in Malaya had been forced to strip out armour and equipment, fit lighter guns, and reduce ammunition and fuel loads, in an attempt to make it more competitive, but nothing really worked. Given that the land based Marine squadron at Midway was easily slaughtered, the even slower navalised versions still on the carriers were even more of a deathtrap than the Devastators. (At least the job of the Devastators was to avoid enemy fighters, not take them on!)

[Note that the Buffalo did have considerable success for Finnish units fighting against the Russians. There were three reasons for this. First, Finnish engineers fixed the engines to make them work better. Second, the cold weather made for much better performance than the tropics. Third excellent Finnish pilots were fighting very poor Russian conscripts, who stuck to useless standard formations despite the Finns picking them off one by one. This last suggests that the Buffalo might have actually done better later in the war against less experienced Japanese pilots.]

The right aircraft for the right time – and their weaknesses

Some aircraft at the time of Pearl Harbour were recent innovations, and quite good for their time. But even these had their weaknesses.

The famous Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter [331mph, 2 x 20mm, 2 x 7.7mm mg, 1,190 miles range] was light, reasonably fast, maneouvrable, and long ranged. It was a shock to the Allies because in level flight it could practically run rings around most American fighters. In a dogfight it could turn inside even the British Hurricane, which was considered exceptional an exceptional dogfighter. It built up an enviable and terrifying reputation. On the negative side, it was un-armoured, had no self-sealing fuel tanks, and a tendency to fall apart or burst into flames from just one or two little hits that any Western plane would most likely shrug off. Its very lightness also meant that it was unable to match Allied aircraft in dives, and this was the way to beat it. Allied pilots quickly learned to dive through formations for best effect. Allied pilots also became good at working together in pairs and fours in defensive weaves. It would be too much to claim that the Zero was the best naval fighter of the period, because no sensible Western pilot would be caught – pardon the expression - dead in such an unsafe fighter. Still it had a frightening impact on Allied morale until techniques to deal with its weaknesses were developed.

The American Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter [331mph, 4 x 0.5 mg, 840 miles range] had been in operation with British carrier forces since mid 1941, and was becoming the main American carrier fighter at the time Pearl Harbour. By the time of Midway the majority of the American fighters present were Wildcat’s, and the British fleet at Ceylon several months earlier had used them as well. The next model [6 x .5 mg, but 320 mph and 770 miles range] of these rugged little fighters were not as fast or manoeuvrable as the Zero, but they were heavier and much tougher. They could dive through the Zero’s and absorb much greater damage in dogfights. These were the backbone of the force that broke the IJN’s naval airpower in the crucial middle years of the war, and they did this because of their durability and good tactics, rather than because of any superiority as aircraft.

As well as Wildcat’s (which they called ‘Martlet’s), the British fleet at Ceylon had the tried and tested Hawker Hurricane fighter (the mainstay and highest scoring fighter of the Battle of Britain), in it’s new Sea Hurricane IIC mode [342mph, 4 x 20mm cannon, range 460 miles – 970 with drop tanks]. This excellent fighter was getting a bit long in the tooth for land operations, but was still performing competitively in Egypt, Russia and Burma against Italian, German and Japanese opposition. The heavy 4 cannon armament was particularly useful for shattering opponents with just a few rounds, and would become the standard for most British and American fighters later in the war. It’s arrival on carriers gave the British a dog-fighter superior to either the American alternatives, and one for which the tactic of diving through formations (which American pilots were still adapting from the experiences of Chennault’s Flying Tiger’s in China), was well established and practiced. The great disadvantage of the Hurricane was that it was extremely short ranged for naval operations on just internal tanks, limiting it largely to a defensive interceptors role. On the other hand the British had enormous experience with vectoring radar controlled fighters against attackers from the most useful angles. Whereas the American and Japanese fighters tended to attack head on for most of the war, which led to a single pass at best; the British fighters would come out of the sun diving across the line of attack and hopefully hitting a couple of fighters before taking on two or three of the bombers several thousand feet below. Against durable German planes this had been moderately effective. Against vulnerable Japanese aircraft it proved brutally efficient. (Indeed, as late as 1945 the British Pacific Fleet carriers needed far smaller Combat-Air-Patrols than American carriers because of these tactics learned in the Mediterranean before America entered the war.)

In lieu of not using Dive-bombers, the British had an alternative type not used by the Japanese or Americans. A fighter/reconnaissance aircraft. The Fairey Fulmar [272mph, 8 x .303 mg and 1 x .303, 830 miles range] was a two seat fighter based on a much improved version of the Fairey Battle bomber (which had been the fastest bomber in the world pre-war). This concept was originally to allow an additional navigator to support the pilot during long flights over water, and led to a slower and less manoeuvrable fighter than most of its opposition. However it was also an incredibly rugged and stable carrier aircraft, with far fewer flying accidents than most other naval fighters. It’s size and durability also allowed it to carry much more fuel, and to take on a heavier bomb-load, than other fighters of its time, and the second seat was soon equipped with radar (something far to bulky for most fighters until very late in the war). The Fulmar therefore became an excellent long range recconnaissance/strike aircraft to back up its fighter role.

Suprisingly, the Fulmar was also quite successful as a fighter. Despite being slower and much less of a dogfighter than German or Italian opponents, it was remarkably successful at defending fleet operations against continuous large waves of Axis attackers in the Mediterranean. The secret was that successful naval attacks need relatively unobstructed approaches to get good accuracy and results. Even a limited number of fighters can break up the effectiveness of such attacks if well handled. Carriers like the Ark Royal or Furious could only keep 4 to 6 Fulmars at a time in the air against the constant waves of attackers from Sicily and Italy during convoys to Malta, but those few fighters could use the radar vectoring and dive through tactics described above to disrupt Axis attacks to the point of greatly reducing their effectiveness. Fulmars regularly shot down superior numbers of Axis bombers and fighters during their Mediteranean operations (scoring the highest number of kills of all Fleet Air Arm fighters!), and most Royal Navy aces achieved some or all of their scores flying Fulmars.

Moving on to bombers. Apart from the Fulmar, which usually had more important tasks, the British were stuck with the ‘soldiering on’ Albacore. But the Japanese and Americans had some more modern toys.

The Japanese Nakajima B5N Kate [235mph, 1 x 7.7mmm mg, 1760lb’s torpedo or bombs,1,075 miles range] torpedo bomber had been introduced in 1941, and was the mainstay of the early years of the wartime Japanese carrier operations. It had good range, was reliable, and had a good payload. But it still lacked armour or self sealing fuel tanks. As a result it was desperately vulnerable to daytime operations against reasonable fighter opposition.

Almost exactly the same could be said for the American Douglas Dauntless dive bomber [255mp, 2 x .5 and 2 x .3 mg, 1,200lb’s bombs, 1,115 miles range]. Arrived at the same time, same strengths, similar weaknesses. Like all American aircraft it could absorb considerably more damage than any Japanese plane, but like all daylight attack aircraft, its top speed made it a sitting duck against organized fighter defenses. The greatest success of the Dauntless was at Midway, where the sacrificial run of the Devastator torpedo bombers fortuitously arrived just far enough in advance to pull the entire Japanese fighter cover away and allow the Dauntless’ exactly the sort of unopposed attacks that the theoretically inferior Japanese Val dive bombers had enjoyed at Ceylon and Coral Sea. The increased success of the Dauntless later in the war was in direct parallel to the increased ability of American fighters to clear a path. By the time of the sinking of the Yamato in 1945, Dauntless’ always had almost completely unopposed runs. (Perhaps that is why it continued in operation when every other contemporary aircraft had been replaced?)

Planes in the pipeline

The replacement for the Val was en-route, but not to be in service much before 1943. It was far faster and therefore more effective Yokosuku D4Y Judy [360mph, 3 x 7.7mm mg, 1,100lb’s bombs, 790 miles range], but suffered the durability weaknesses of all Japanese aircraft. Nonetheless, had it been available for the crucial battles of 1942, there is little doubt that American losses would have been far greater. It was much faster than The Dauntless, and carried a heavier bomb, though for a shorter range. Unfortunately it was so fast that it could not be used on the smaller carriers that dominated Japanese operations after the Midway losses. Restricted to the few big fleet carriers left, this just meant that mixed carrier groups had aircraft of mixed performances, leading to more dispersion of attacks. The vast majority of these aircraft produced finished up operating from land bases.

Similarly the replacement for the Albacore was en route, but the Fairey Barracuda [245mph, 2 x .303 mg, 1,600lb torpedo or bombs, 1,150 miles range] was put back once alternatives became available. The Barracuda was slower than most other naval strike aircraft from later in the war, but was a reasonably flexible and durable aircraft. Not only could it operate efficiently as either a torpedo or dive bomber (it did so to devastating effect against the Tirpitz in 1944), or with rockets, it could use rocket assisted take-offs to operate from the smaller escort carriers unsuitable to most more modern aircraft. It’s main fault was experienced during the raids on the Netherlands East Indies, where its cold weather optomised engine had greatly reduced performance in the heat, particularly attempting to climb over mountain ranges. For Pacific operations it was usually replaced with Avengers, and it served out its operational life in the Atlantic.

Which brings us to the Grumman TBF Avenger [271mph, 2 x .5 and 1 x .3 mg, 2,000lb’s torpedo or bombs, 1,450 miles range], fairly regarded as the best torpedo bomber of the war. An excellent and very durable aircraft, with enough space to be the first American naval aircraft mount radar (some two years after the British Swordfish did so). An excellent aircraft quite capable of delivering torpedos or reasonable bomb-loads, and later adapted for depth charge/radar attacks on submarines. Unlike most other aircraft of this period, the ASW versions at least remained in service well after the wars ends.

On the other hand the Avenger’s have also been oversold. Yes they were fast and efficient for their types, but that did not save them against reasonable opposition. At Midway, the half dozen available suffered five losses, a higher percentage of losses than the obsolete Devestator’s they were replacing! In fact anywhere they met fighters in daylight, they were almost as vulnerable as any other bomber of the war lacking suitable fighter cover. There is certainly no suggestion that their greater speed and ruggedness gave them any sort of immunity if an enemy fighter got on their tail. They too were equipped for radar directed night attacks by 1944, though by that time American air superiority usually allowed them to operate with relative impunity, with their main danger being from the anti-aircraft firepower of the ships they were attacking.

Later in the war

The upgrade of the Wildcat was the Grumman F6F Hellcat [375mph, 6 x .5 mg, 1,590 miles range]. Faster, tougher, much longer ranged, and more maneouvrable, when it arrived in late 1943 it gave the Americans a distinct edge over the Japanese. (Though the British using it found the Germans a tougher opponent.) Hellcat’s were nonetheless being outclassed by other Allied aircraft by the end of the war.

Also in 1943, the British deployed the Fairey Firefly [316mph, 4 x 20mm cannon, 2,000lb bombs or rockets, 1,300 miles range], a much improved Fulmar fighter/reconnaissance plane. Long ranged, fairly fast, extremely rugged, and with an impressive range of abilities. It was radar equipped, and allowed strike leaders (which other nations still had to put in torpedo bombers) to be in faster and more survivable aircraft. Despite being a two seat fighter, its unique air brakes made it a superb dog fighter easily capable of facing Japanese fighters. It could act as a dive bomber, or use its rockets and cannon to pound targets while covering other attacking aircraft. (8 rockets – sometimes 16 on later versions – gave it a broadside like a heavy cruiser.) It proved devastating in the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Pacific campaigns, and served in a variety of roles for many years after the war.

In early 1944 the British tried out a new aircraft the Americans had deployed with the Marines, but considered too dangerous to use on carriers. The Vought F4U Corsair [417mph, 6 x .5 mg, 1,015 miles range] proved a magnificent success, and in late 1944 the Americans started deploying them to carriers too. The Japanese had no answer, not least because they were running out of large carriers and of pilots. It would often carry bombs or rockets later in the war, and could match most Japanese fighters even without ditching them. The British homemade upgrade, the Hawker Sea Fury [460mh, 4 x 20mm cannon, 2,000 lb rockets or bombs, 700 miles range], like the equivalent American upgrade the Grumman F8F Bearcat [421mph, 4 x 20mm cannon, 2,000lb rockets or bombs, 1,105 miles range], started appearing too late to see service (but both performed exceptionally well in the Korean war).

Towards the end of the war the British were also bringing into service a new torpedo/fighter hybrid, the Blackburn B-37 Firebrand II [340mph, 4 x 20mm cannon, 1,850lb torpedo or 2,000lb’s bombs, 740 miles range]. Fighter aircraft had become so big and powerful, that even a torpedo was simply a slightly bigger bomb. The Firebrand was faster than any other torpedo aircraft (or indeed most of the older fighters still in operation), and a reasonably capable fighter in it’s own right once it had dropped it’s torpedo: making it pretty much the first Allied torpedo plane of the war potentially capable of operating in daylight without massive fighter escort… though it would still have needed fighter cover until after the torpedo strike. Results looked promising, but the war ended before they were used in combat. Both Britain and America were starting to look at a new generation of jet aircraft instead, and the British Sea Vampire was actually tested in carrier landings in late 1945, with the American FH1 Phantom being operational by 1947.

Conclusion

You will note from the above that no nation had a dominant lead in naval aircraft at any time. The British possibly had the most advanced dive bombers in 1939 (Skua) and again 1945 (Firefly), and the Japanese and Americans the best torpedo bombers in 1941 (Kate) and 1942 (Avenger) respectively (though the Firebrand might have taken the title in 1945 if the war had lasted a bit longer). The British had the only night strike aircraft for the middle of the war (Swordfish and Albemarle), and the Americans the best by 1944 - the Avenger. The Japanese had the best fighter of 1941-2, the Zero; and the Americans had the best fighters in 1943 (Hellcat) and 1944 (Corsair- but note the British had used it in this role since 1943); but the British Sea Fury was the best by the end of the war. The British had uniquely effective fighter/reconnaissance planes in 1941 (Fulmar – but it suffered from being their only fighter too) and again in 1945 (Firefly – used in partnership with Sea Spitfires and Corsairs), while the Americans had such air superiority that they could use some fighters mainly as strike aircraft (Corsair again).

By contrast each nation had plenty of ‘worst’ category too. The Swordfish was a terrible day torpedo bomber by 1941, and the Devestator even worse by 1942. The Val was an obsolete dive bomber by 1942, and arguably the Dauntless only escaped the same fate through massive fighter cover later in the war. The Fulmar was an inadequate fighter pulling above its weight in 1941, as was the Wildcat in 1942 and the Zero by 1943. (The Buffalo was just inexcusable even when introduced in 1940.) The Albacore was only saved from being useless through being refitted for night operations from 1941, and the Kate and even Avenger were hopelessly vulnerable to daytime fighter opposition even when they were the best torpedo bombers available.

In other words don’t fall for the line that a particular aircraft was ‘the best naval such-and-such of the war’. All have their time and their place. Arguably the Albacore biplane was a more dangerous torpedo bomber in 1942 because of its ability to find and destroy targets by using radar at night: in comparison to the much better Kate, or infinitely better Avengers, of the same period, which had to survive opposition fighters in daylight to stand a chance. It is not the really the fastest or sexiest aircraft that is the best, but is the model that can carry out its job most effectively. It should also be the model that gives the crew the best chance of survival. That is what really makes an aircraft ‘the best’ for its time.

Uses and Abuses of Wikipedia

2010-12-15T17:23:00.000-08:00

THIS IS A COPY OF AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN AGORA MAGAZINE.

A History Teachers Association of Victoria training seminar I attended recently was a very enjoyable session with much debate about pedagogy, sources, referencing, and resources. We also spent a fair amount of time on issues of copyright, plagiarism, and social networking. The biggest debate that surfaced, not for the first time at an HTAV event, concerned the use of Wikipedia as a source for students.

Apparently some history teachers have been telling their students for years not to use Wikipedia, because they feel that it is too open to unprofessional comment. One person shared the tale of a colleague who warns students against Wikipedia, and then purposely goes onto the site to sabotage the information so that she can catch them out! (Presumably creating a new pseudonym each time: the editors do eventually catch up with saboteurs and ban them. Frankly I prefer good, honest, old fashioned Nazi-style book burning to such cynical vandalism, but I digress…)

Some of us were able to assure those present that the sheer quantity of review on the website means that, in the long term, the articles are often better than most of those available through a published Encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s own article on the Reliability of Wikipedia (accessed on 18/7/10) includes the following:
An early study conducted by IBM researchers conducted [sic] in 2003—two years following Wikipedia's establishment—found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly—so quickly that most users will never see its effects" and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".
An investigation reported in the journal Nature in 2005 suggested that for scientific articles Wikipedia came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors". These claims have been disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica.

I am particularly impressed that Wikipedia notes anything that is disputed or inadequately referenced. Wikipedia is more demanding of footnotes and references than most academic publishers, and certainly far more comprehensive than I have seen in most classroom textbooks. A brand new Wikipedia article may be the work of whichever crank has put it up, but bad articles do not survive long. It can take time for public opinion to settle a new article down to a more reasonable document, but it usually happens. This is one of the reasons that the editors of Wikipedia have banned many organizations, particularly religious cults, from commenting about themselves on site.

It is valuable therefore for students to realize that change happens, and even more valuable to track how it evolves. There is a History tab at the top of each Wikipedia page, which links to the number of changes to the article over time. This can be revealing on, say, Scientology, and downright terrifying on more immediately emotive issues… Try any article on ‘terrorism in X country’, and check what changes were made just after the most recent attack! A serious discussion with your students about sources can usefully include looking at one of these ‘History’ tabs.

Wikipedia can be an excellent tool for students, as long as they recognize its weaknesses. To demonstrate this, I suggest a nice little exercise to give students before they are permitted to use the resource on a regular basis. Ask them to find a controversial article, then click on the Discussion tab at the top of the page. There, they can examine the arguments behind changes that have been made. Any topic likely to provoke controversy is a useful start. If you can find one that relates directly to your students areas of studies, consider that a bonus.

Pointing out that there can be a debate about any particular topic is only the tip of the iceberg. To go a bit deeper, start looking at issues of ‘cultural’ censorship, such as politically correct modifications to terminology, or the assumption of automatic acceptability of things that are clearly still debatable. For example Wikipedia’s Global Warming Controversy article included under ‘Discussion’ (accessed on 6/3/10):
I noticed that the Related Controversies section dealing with the skeptics anti-science positions on the regulating of ozone depleteing [sic] chemicals and the risks of passive smoking were removed on March 29... Why was this allowed? It is quite clear that the skeptics simply did not want it known that they have resisted the scientific consensus on other notable issues as well. It was quite relevant because it lets people know just where these liars-4-hire are ideologically coming from, as spokespeople and spinmeisters for industry not for people.
(As most of the ‘climate skeptics’ I know of are mathematicians, geologists, and magnetic scientists, I don’t see how they can all be guilty of being funded by the tobacco lobby… Look at the debate on Wikipedia about how Wikipedia seems to be editing away references to ‘Climategate’ revelations!)

Political biases are equally evident. It may be worthwhile to point out to students that in many articles the cultural biases of the authors and editors require the words ‘conservative’ or ‘right wing’ in front of any opinion from right of centre (e.g. Keith Windschuttle), but reverse qualifiers are rare about opinion from left of centre! See Stolen Generations for instance. The consistency of such usage implies that ‘right thinking people’ instinctively understand the application of ‘conservative’ to imply ‘opinion that might be easily discounted’. A similarly opprobrious epithet was American practice in the McCarthyism era (then, one might have referred to the ‘communist’ Stuart Macintyre), and your more advanced students might like to consider such ironic parallels.

The very best cultural censorship examples are those that reveal the worst inherent weaknesses in the Wikipedia system: the ones that reveal the biases of the majority of its reviewers… Americans! My current favourite example for this is the article on the War of 1812.

The War of 1812 saw the United States opportunistically join the Napoleonic Wars against Britain in the hope of: A) getting ‘free trade’ with Napoleon’s blockaded Empire; B) invading Canada while Britain was busy; and C) undermining British support for the various Indian nations resisting American expansionism. Their main excuse for war was the ‘civil rights’ of ‘recent immigrants’: usually foreign nationals who had deserted their military service. In fact, the British were as likely to grab navy ‘deserters’ back from US flagged ships in 1812, as the US were to seize army deserters in Paris during World War Two. (Excuses are rarely the real war aims… see Weapons of Mass Destruction (accessed 18/7/10) as an excuse for taking down Saddam Hussein: “As Paul Wolfowitz explained: "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”)

Britain had no real war aims against the United Sates in 1812 beyond how to get out of it without losing anything essential, such as the vital blockade of Napoleon’s Empire. This they easily achieved. At the end of the war the British had fought a number of half-hearted and inconclusive military engagements in North America; achieved some minor ‘victories’ (such as landing, burning Washington the ground, and leaving); and some ‘defeats’ (Americans celebrate one British raid was that was defeated, but which happened after the peace treaty was signed); and then were generally simply happy that the whole thing was over (allowing them to concentrate on Napoleon again). Total economic effect on Britain, small. Total political effect on Britain, vanishingly small. Most British people, then and now, hardly noticed the North American skirmishes against the background of the worldwide campaigns of the Napoleonic wars.

Canada had a war aim, to avoid conquest by the Americans. This they clearly achieved, and most Canadians have always believed that their side ‘won’, because America failed in a war aim that was clearly supported by the US President and many US Congressmen at the time. The political effect of the war in Canada was to effectively unite new British colonists, traditional French Catholics (who feared rampant US Protestantism), and displaced ‘Loyalist’ American refugees hounded out of the US after the previous war. Canadians can claim that ‘winning’ this war helped create their nation.

The US had many war objectives, but it is hard to find one that succeeded since British impressment of sailors had ended before the war started. The United States attempted to break Britain’s trade blockade of Napoleon’s Empire, and failed. It attempted mass attacks on British commerce, and failed. (Initial surprise attacks by American heavyweight ‘frigates’ were quickly been beaten back, and the surviving frigates were laid up in port. It is estimated that the US captured about 800 British ships, losing about 1,900 in the process.) It attempted to invade Canada several times, and failed. It finished the war with its trade destroyed, many of its ports and cities smoking ruins, its internal economy in collapse, and completely unable to pretend that it had achieved anything like its war aims. (It is claimed in Wikipedia that the great American ‘victory’ was Britain’s subsequent disinterest in the rights of the Indian nations to resist American conquest. This is the only ‘war aim’ that the British ‘lost’ – or at least pursued no harder than previously – as a result of the war. The British did not however, return the thousands of slaves they freed, many of whom fought for Britain and received land grants in Trinidad or Nova Scotia… Britain did later pay some compensation to some slave owners, if that helps?) So it is quite amusing that Wikipedia has consistently defined this conflict as “a draw”. Some American reviewers like to claim ‘both sides won the peace’, but Germany got to say that about World War Two without claiming that conflict was a ‘draw’.

Drawing students’ attention to Wikipedia’s very specific biases - in this case a very American patriotism - is only the first lesson they can draw from the discussion of this issue. See for instance the highly amusing subheading within the War of 1812 Discussion segment (Archive 13): “Impossibility of consensus because Wikipedia is not entirely American”. The, I hope unconscious, irony of this statement is best reflected by the commentator (jmdeur) who offers the apparently tongue in cheek statement… “The header for this section says it all - obviously Americans are the only people who have misconceptions about this conflict.” In fact this is an excellent lesson to learn in regard to all sources, as most published history books reflect their own biases.

(It is only fair to comment that American nationalistic jingoism in the War of 1812 article has been much improved since this archived debate. The recent version of the article (18/7/10) is considerably better than it was. Wikipedia still won’t concede that America lost, but it does note that Canadians have a right to believe that they might have won something... a bit… perhaps…)

In some ways Wikipedia is superior to most textbook sources in that the debate is, reasonably, transparent. I used to give my Cold War students out-takes from books by the pro-Communist ‘Progress Press’ for a nice contrast viewpoint to mainstream Western texts, now I could refer them to Wikipedia’s discussion of the viewpoints. Where the ‘Stolen Generation’ debate previously involved providing students with out-takes from Robert Manne or Stuart Macintyre and ‘the right wing’ Keith Windschuttle, now you may well be better off referring students to summaries of the debates in Wikipedia… provided they note the pejoratives and at least glance through the Discussion. Wikipedia’s History Wars articles (particularly the Black Armband Debate or Stolen Generations subheadings – accessed 18/7/10) have a better analysis of the different viewpoints than most of the (appallingly partisan) textbooks I have seen.

After students have digested the weaknesses of the Wikipedia system, they will be in a good position to make careful use of its strengths; that you can look at both the History and the Discussion of any topic is the greatest strength. It’s helpful for students to recognise that an article with no history or discussion is as much of a warning sign as one with too much! The real advantage of Wikipedia is that it can be its own best analytical tool. That the investigation will introduce students to the concepts of historiography via their preferred medium is just a lovely bonus.

References: Every reference in this article in italics is the title of a Wikipedia page. Every quote notes (in brackets) the date it was accessed, as suggested by the - quite respectable really - APA Style guide. Every Wikipedia page has its own references attached. How you want to handle that in essays is up to you!

Nigel Davies
(Medieval Education)

Rating General Lord Gort

2010-12-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

Lord Gort has gone down in history as the man who was defeated when France fell in 1940. At least that is one perspective. The alternative is that he was the man with the courage to face the fact that France was going under and there was nothing that could be done, and to decide that it was vital to save Britain's army so the war against Hitler could go on. That is another view. In fact both viewpoints are correct, and both are unfair.

Lord Gort did very well in the First World War, and came out with multiple decorations and a great deal of respect in the army. Despite his relative youth he progressed steadily through the interwar period, and was well thought off. Then there was no reason why he would not have become one of the great Allied commanders of the Second World War, except that he suffered the disaster to his career of being promoted too far and too fast.

When the appointment of a chief of Imperial General staff was being made a few months before the start of the war, the leading candidates in were generals Wavell (who went on to great things as commander-in-chief of the Middle East) and Dill (who went on to be chief Imperial General staff, and to serve on the combined Chiefs of staff in Washington). Both were clearly more suitable to the role than Gort, who was far too young and inexperienced and to take up such a position. But the politicians at a time wanted a bright shiny face to impress the public, and weren't too concerned if there weren't too many brains behind it. In fact it may have suited their purposes not to have anybody who would argue with them in the role. So Gort was promoted over the heads of many seniors, and forced into a position for which he was unsuitable and uncomfortable.

His solution was to do what he's predecessors had done in the First World War and decamp with the British Expeditionary Force as soon as war started, leaving the position of Chief Imperial General staff to somebody else... anybody else. As a result the commander of the army, soon to become army group, of British national forces in alliance with the French, was described by his subordinates in the corps and army commands as " the ideal man to command a division". His juniors were appalled that his attitude to the French was that of the helpful subordinate, rather than that of a genuine ally looking after his nation's interests. More than one of them implied that his attitude was that of an overgrown puppy, rather than of a proper British bulldog.

It is interesting that General Alan Brooke (a later chief of Imperial General staff) was soon to comment in his diaries about the enormous damage had been done to many men's careers by overly fast promotion. In particular he refers to Gort, who, had he started the war in his proper role as a divisional commander, and being been slowly introduced to the experience of being a Corps Commander, may well have made a good army commander several years later: had his chances not being destroyed by being put in the wrong place at the wrong time. Brooke was even more scathing in the case of General Neil Ritchie, who Aukinleck had thrown from a position of chief of staff into an impossible Army command over people far his senior in North Africa in 1942. When the inevitable happened, and Ritchie had to be withdrawn, Brooke was furious and that his chances had been so damaged, and announced his plans to rehabilitate him as a divisional commander and groom him for his proper role with a corps later on. (Ritchie commanded an army corps from the D-Day in until victory in Germany, and did so so successfully in that they army command thereafter would have been quite sensible.)

Gort's failures in relationship to the French and to his strategic role as their ally, were more than counterbalanced by the bravery of his decision to take the necessary steps to save his national command when it became obvious that there was no alternative. He did this despite the fact that it was in direct opposition to the perspective of his Prime Minister Churchill, who did not have a clear understanding of the facts. Gort may not have been the best general, but he was more than capable of interpreting what he was facing, and more than dedicated enough to do what was necessary despite what he perceived to be the likely costs and his allies and to him personally. He had what the Americans would call true grit.

Unfortunately, despite the knowledge by Brooke and others that what had happened was not his fault, it really was not possible to rehabilitate him as an army commander. He could not be sent back to experience a division, as the political situation of the World War made in such a confession absolutely impossible. But this did not stop even those who had considered him a complete failure as an Allied Commander from recognizing the strength of his personality, and the value of his leadership. So instead, he was made Governor of some of Britain's most vulnerable possessions, at exactly the time when they needed strong and resolute leadership.

First he went to to Gibraltar, at the time that it was most under threat from potential cooperation between the Spanish and the Germans to attack it. His resolute personality could not have been bettered as he involved himself intensively in the preparation of what was decidedly a military command. The troops and naval personnel under his control, and the role that they had to fill, was almost exactly the sort of requirement that was appropriate for the "ideal man to command a division".

His next assignment was even more important. Malta suffered the second great siege in her history during the middle years of the Second World War, and no better men could have been found to provide a calm and inspiring leadership and for her survival. The much larger range of military units under his command, together with the increased administrative duties on the island, were a significant increase on the requirements of his previous command. Had Brooke sought out equivalency to the command of an army corps, he could not have found a more challenging alternative than Malta in 1942. In fact Gort was going through exactly the sort of grooming that might well have suited him to command an army for the invasion of France in 1944... except that it was all too late. Effectively his active military career had been undermined.

His final assignment of the war was to be Governor of Palestine. Again, this was a significantly more difficult task, as Palestine was facing insurrection and competition between Jewish and and Palestinian groups. Again, it would take a very impressive personality to be able to impose his authority on the disparate players, and to impress on to the point where cooperation might be achievable. Again, he was probably the right man to the job. Again, it simply goes to show that his failings years earlier were the faults of those who had pushed him too far too fast, not the faults of his own personality.

However it was not to be. By this stage he was a very sick man, circumstances only made worse by his insistence during the dark days of the siege of Malta to go on the lowest level of subsistence rations of the common people despite his incredibly high workload. He was an inspiration to all as he cycled endlessly around the island to raise morale and to organise the defences, but his declining physical state eventually overcame even his great willpower. He died before he could have any great effect on Palestine.

Gort fully deserves to be treated with disdain for his command of the British Expeditionary Force in 1940. He was not a good enough general to hold this position. However it would be wrong to suggest that he couldn't be a good enough general. The reason he failed was that others had thrown him into a situation for which he was not yet ready. Had his career been properly run, it is entirely possible that he would have been exactly such a general several years later. As it was, Churchill considered recalling him to active operations in Burma later in the war, which perhaps he could have revealed his real abilities as a more mature Army Corps or Army Commander.

Gort was never a great general, but he was certainly not a bad one either. The worst of his failings were not of his making, and the best aspects of his character revealed flashes of the potential to be one of the most reliable (if not one of the most skilful) generals of the Second World War. Possibly the most useful way to define his place in the ranks of generals, would be to point out that - apart from his senior unit commanders in 1940 - almost everybody who served under him was very impressed with him, and very loyal to him. To his men, he was a good general. How many generals can say that?

The British Pacific Fleet - Misinterpreting the past

2010-12-06T19:57:00.000-08:00

I have just finished H. P. Willmott's PhD thesis, published as Grave of a Dozen Schemes. It is a comprehensive analysis of the background to the despatch of the British Pacific Fleet to the final months of the war against Japan.

It is highly researched, very detailed, excellently argued, and completely wrong in it's conclusions.

The interesting question is why is it wrong?

For those who don't know (such as most of the American official historians if you go by their writings), The Royal Navy and it's Commonwealth divisions made a huge contribution to the defeat of Japan despite Admiral King's desperate attempts to keep them out of his private war. The combined orders of battle of the British Eastern Fleet (just finished invading Burma and en-route to invading Malaya), and the British Pacific Fleet (assembling in Australia or fighting off the coast of Japan) at the time of the Japanese surrender was about 700 ships (with more en-route from Europe). This included 6 battleship, 35 aircraft carriers, 23 cruisers, 42 submarines, and over 200 destroyers and escorts. The only reason that it was this low was because the RN was still mostly responsible for major Allied activities in the Atlantic, Arctic Circle, Baltic, Mediterranean, and Indian Oceans. Far more vessels would have been available for the invasion of Japan.

Wilmott's description of the torturous process of getting all the British, Commonwealth and American players to agree on the assembly and dispatch of this force is overwhelmingly detailed. The problems of the repeated failure of the Germans to collapse, and then the suprisingly quick collapse of the Japanese thereafter, is also adequately covered. I have no problems with most of this. What I do have problems with is the conclusions he makes.

Wilmott's main argument is that Britain should not have bothered with this effort, or at least should not have tried to make both the Pacific and Indian Ocean efforts, because it was beyond British power to do so. The factor's he raises are economic exhaustion, lack of ships - particularly fleet train, lack of manpower, and lack of sensible reasons for bothering given that Empire was a thing of the past. He argues all of this with the assumptions of hindsight , and from the safety of a modern academic consensus.

How then is it possible that the Royal Navy had so many ships there at the end, with more on the way? How was it possible that the British successfully invaded Burma, and were preparing to invade Malaya, even while expanding the British fleet operating off the Japanese coast? How could they be doing everything he had assumed was impossible, and succeeding, if it had really been impossible? Why is he arguing so hard against conclusions that his own statistics make evident?

Could it be that he believes what he is saying so strongly, that he is just doing his best to argue around the evidence? Could it be that he is trying to cement his place in academic circles by arguing what is politically correct regardless of the evidence? Or could it be that he knows he is making bad arguments, but also knows he has to do so if he stands any chance of getting a high mark for his PhD from academics who have pre-conceived notions of what they want to hear?

Whatever the reason, the problem is one common to far too many modern academic works. (This was published in 1996 but came out of research originally done in the early 80's.) The author appears to have approached the work with a pre-conceived notion of how things ought to have been viewed, and then forced the facts into that prospective by hook or by crook. (Even if a few slipped out of control in the process.)

The fact is, that the real debate was between Churchill's geo-political preference for British efforts in the Far East to be concentrated on Malaya. the East Indies, Borneo, the China Sea and Hong Kong in the lead up to the invasion of Japan: and the Chief's of Staff Committee's strategic preference to just make a contribution to the naval actions in the Pacific as a cheaper and quicker alternative. (Both considered the efforts wasted on Burma pretty pointless considering that China was never of much value in the war, and both were amused that the eventual speed of Japanese collapse made the Chinese fantasy redundant.) This debate went on for several months.

Wilmott is justified in calling a lot of this debate hot air. He is less justified in claiming that hindsight makes it clear that Churchill's perspective was wrong. He is unconvincing in the argument that everyone should have known that Britain lacked interest in what would happen in Asia in the future. He was, by his own figures, simply wrong to state that Britain lacked the capacity to try.

The debate did take too long, but that might be because things kept changing. Eisenhower's failures in North West Europe, and Germany's surprise survival into a new year, meant that Allied forces could not begin redirection to the east in October 1944 as had been planned. On the other hand Japan's suicidal offensive against India in 1944 opened the opportunity for a faster and cheaper re-conquest of Burma than anyone would have imagined. Similarly Allied plans for offensives through Borneo to Formosa (Taiwan) were initially agreed, then dropped when MacArthur preferred the Philippines, and were then renewed with the Allies agreeing to a British-Australian offensive instead. Only to be dropped again when it became clear that Japan was unexpectedly on it's last legs.

Politically, there is no doubt that had the Allies, or just Britain and Australia, militarily ousted the Japanese from Malaya, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Chinese coast: the decades of violence throughout Asia that followed would have been very different. Churchill's plans may not have been better than what we got, but they would certainly have been different.

Similarly there is no eason to accept that Britain was going to withdraw 'East of Suez' soon after the war at the time decisions were being made. In hindsight it is clear that the British voter was sick of the cost of being the world's policeman, and delighted that the Americans seemed dumb enough to want to take it up. But the Allied documents at the time make it clear that no such plans were in the allied 'mind'. Indeed, American plans to go home as soon as the war in Europe was over argued exactly the opposite.

Then there is the issue of 'power'. Britain, and most of her Dominions and colonies, were at the stage of exhaustion in 1944-5 that any state reaches after 6 years of intense war. (The US was lucky to get out in only 4 years, when the cracks in manpower for the army were only starting to rear their heads.) Nonetheless the way that Wilmott argues that Britain lacked the 'power' for such operations is also self-defeating. After dozens of paragraphs over hundreds of pages about the British lack of troop lift shipping available for the Far East, Wilmott notes in a small aside that such ships can't be spared because Britain is responsible for moving 70,000 US troops per month across the Atlantic. The fact that Britain lacked resources in one theatre because she is making up for American lack of resources in another theatre is studiously ignored.

The truth is of course that the Allies - all of them - lacked the resources to do everything they wanted to do at any time. Britain could have sent plenty of resources to the east had she not being transporting the Americans, supplying the Russians, and feeding the Dutch. Similarly Australia had plenty of resources, food and troops for supporting British Commonwealth operations, except they were deployed to feed, house and support American operations. Indeed according to the US Chiefs of Staff in 1943, America lacked the power to invade Japan without a British fleet, Australian troops, and a Russian Army intervening on the mainland in Asia. (The US COS had a brief hubris in late 1944 when they decided they could manage alone, but by mid 1945 they were busy requesting Britain get 50 aircraft carriers assembled to support 120 of theirs for the invasion... and an army corps please... don't forget landing ships... how about some bombers...)

The simple fact of the matter is that had Britain concentrated its Pacific Fleet resources in the Indian Ocean and Australia to follow the 'middle strategy', it would have been little more costly than the immense effort of projecting a fleet through the central Pacific to the Japanese islands. Malaya, the East Indies, Borneo, possibly Thailand, all might have been liberated before the Japanese surrender by the same shipping efforts that put British carriers at Okinawa and Japan.

Wilmott follows the British COS line that a political solution in Asia was less important than a prestige deployment of British units for the invasion of Japan. He quotes American documents suggesting that the lack of such a presence would have been 'unforgivable' to Americans. He claims that it was vital. Again, he is playing hindsight, and again, he is getting it wrong. How much did Admiral King want the RN sticking it's nose in to his private war? How often did the US COS, in their hubris period, say they didn't need help? How much credit do the history books give the British Pacific Fleet? How many American books fail to mention it?

By contrast how much stability might have been achieved had the British Commonwealth effort gone the other way? Would the Malayan Emergency have happened? Would Indonesia have invaded West Papua and East Timor later? How much stability if Japan had surrendered before Russia entered the war? Would China have gone Communist? Would there have been a Korean or Vietnam war? If you really want to go with hindsight, then Churchill's political forward thinking looks considerably more impressive than the limited strategic viewpoint of the British COS.

Hindsight is almost as fun a game as 'what if', but both are dangerous. People have to be judged on the information and realities of the time, not academic theories based on a misinterpretation of hindsight decades later. Books that twist the facts to come to the conclusions that seem most comfortable or acceptable to people with their own barrows to push are always dangerous.

They are also not history books. They are rationalisations.

Rating General Douglas MacArthur

2010-11-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

General Douglas MacArthur is somewhat of a problem for American historiography, being rated by many as one of the great geniuses of the American military, but being accepted by most as a vainglorious megalomaniac, whose belated sacking was the only possible solution to his rampant disdain for his elected masters. As usual, the reality is somewhere between.

Douglas MacArthur was from an American military family that had done much to expand the American empire. His father was a General, and an important figure in the conquest of the Philippines (he was briefly Governor-General), and in beating their independence movement into submission. MacArthur senior was one of the wave of American imperialists who incorporated Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, and selected parts of central America and the Chinese coast, into the American imperial expansion, after they had run out of territory to ‘liberate’ from the American Indians. Douglas MacArthur's early life experience was little different to that of the son of a British General or Governor in India or Africa.

MacArthur knew that he was born to rule, and born to greatness. Part of the reason he knew this, was that his mother repeatedly told him so. In fact when he went to West Point, she moved into an apartment nearby to supervise, and spent the next decades harassing every public officials she could think of to improve his chances of recognition and promotion.

A good Sample of MacArthur’s attitude to the world is taken from his early attempt to win himself a Congressional Medal of Honour. As a minor liaison in one of the repeated American interventions in Central American affairs - at Vera Cruz - he recommended himself for the medal on the basis of an incredible sounding adventure he had undertaken supposedly for useful military purpose (and without orders or permission). The mythology of this rampage through enemy territory on a hand pumped rail cars, while single-handedly shooting it out and emerging victorious from several conflicts, has been uncritically accepted by far too many people. Historian Jack Galloway, writing a book about the relationship between McArthur and his senior Australian commander General Blamey during the Second World War (The Odd Couple: Blamey and MacArthur at War), employed professional athletes to try and attempt a similar feat with a hand cart to the one MacArthur claimed. They found the whole thing impossible, and concluded that the story was at least partially, if not completely, fantasy.

MacArthur posed with his Great War troops very efficiently, and apparently led them with actual elan. The very flamboyant troop leader apparently inspired his men, and achieved fairly significant results. They were not significant enough to impress General Pershing, who refused to add his name to the list of those to be promoted Brigadier, and was seemingly appalled and disgusted when MacArthur’s mother apparently managed to influence the promotion anyway and wrote him a thankyou letter for the supposed recommendation. (He was only given a brigade the day before the Armistice, and ran it for a mere 10 days after fighting ceased.)

MacArthur rose to the position of Chief of Staff of the army in the 1930s, but failed to impress many in the political establishment with his suitability for the role. His use of troops during Washington protests was not well received, and his attempt to sue journalists for libel fell apart when they threatened to call his Eurasian mistress as a witness. He had to pay the costs. (He was already divorced for 'failing to provide'.) He was soon moved on by a very unimpressed Roosevelt administration, and gratefully took up the opportunity to become the military leader of the national forces of the Philippines. (The Philippines in the 1930’s had its own parliament within the US Empire while training to get full independence later – this makes it approximately the equivalent of India in the British Empire at the same time). He did of course demand rank that he felt suitable to his noble character. For several years, he was able to flaunt the rank and title of Field Marshal, despite the fact that Philippine forces would have been hard put to assemble more than a few very weak divisions. At the start he was still being paid as a Major General in the US Army as well, but they retired him in 1937.

He may well have faded from history, as a colourful if unreliable junior officer whose delusions of grandeur had grown too great, except the intervention of World War Two in the Far East. Even then, he should have been quickly discarded into the waste bin of history, had only his own actions being taken into account. His grandiose plans to defend the Philippines on a broad front, fell apart completely. His air force was destroyed on the ground, despite the clear warnings that have been sent to him after Pearl Harbor. His troops collapsed in the field, and only a portion of them made it through a retreat to a small, fortified peninsula, called Bataan. Frankly, they only held out on this peninsula, and on the nearby fortified island of Corregidor, for as long as they did because they were of no threat at all to the Japanese expansion, and they were left to rot on the vine while the assault troops took care of the more urgent matters in the Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, the Pacific Islands, Burma, and New Guinea. When the Japanese could finally spare the attention for a serious assault, the position crumbled quite quickly.

This ignominious failure in the field was frankly a far worse performance than that of the various other military leaders whose careers did not survive the disasters. Lord Gort’s handling of the British expeditionary Force in France, General Percival’s failures in Malaya, General Fredendall in North Africa, and Gen Lucas in Italy, all failed less disastrously than MacArthur. And he failed in the one place where he had years to prepare his troops and his strategy. The man should have been cashiered, and never seen leading troops ever again. Instead he finally got his Congressional Medal of Honor.

What saved MacArthur was his unrivalled ability with propaganda. He far surpassed his nearest allied military rivals General’s Patton and Montgomery. In fact he could be more closely compared to Joseph Goebbels, both in ability, and in veracity. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin would have acknowledged their equals in the ability to tell a big lie. The lengths his propaganda team went to put his earlier fantasies to the pale. The American public were bombarded with stories about valiant defenders, and glorious victories. Not only were the Japanese dying in their thousands, and being shot out of the sky, but their battleships were being sunk apparently at will by MacArthur’s vastly outnumbered but indomitable forces. For an American public receiving a steady diet of failure and disaster in the Pacific and Atlantic, MacArthur was presented as a shining beacon of steadfast endurance and indomitable will. What a crock. His troops referred to him as 'Dugout Doug'.

Nonetheless he managed to pitch himself in such a way that his surrender would have been a disaster to American morale. MacArthurs name was trumpeted, by a politically partisan Republican press as much as by his own HQ bootlickers, as the most heroic individual since David faced Goliath. Unlike his own field commander Gen Wainright, or Gen Perceval in Malaya, there was no chance that McArthur would go down with the ship. Other generals might go into captivity with their men, but McArthur, or at least the myth of MacArthur, had to escape. His American superiors ordered him to Australia.

There was a problem in this for President Roosevelt and General Marshall. MacArthur’s popularity was so great, that there was a serious move in Congress to bring him back to America and put him in command of all American armed forces. This was theoretically the position that the President was supposed to hold in the American system, and would definitely have outranked the far junior Chief of Army Staff Marshall. Neither regarded McArthur with anything more than disdain, both considered he had failed dismally in the Phillipines, and both needed him as far away as possible. Fortunately for them, an inexperienced and panicky Australian government under Prime Minister John Curtin appealed for American aid. Not being able to send much of any use at the time, and not believing that Australia was facing much of a genuine threat, Roosevelt and Marshall were pleased to offer them MacArthur instead. Like the equally difficult Joseph Stillwell (on whom another post later), it would be a pleasure to have such a loose cannon as far away as possible. Meanwhile the Curtin government was happy to accept him, as they viewed him as a convenient “suction pump” for reinforcements.

MacArthur’s relationship with his Australian ‘allies’ has filled many books on its own. He quickly had the Australian government so trained to heel that it completely ignored the advice of its own military (even those generals who had fought successfully against the Nazi’s in North Africa were treated as unimportant by a government busy fawning over a man clearly more gifted at propaganda than leading troops). MacArthur even managed to get his supposed ‘Ground Forces Commander’ – the Australian Blamey – despatched to isolation at the front. (Curtin later admitted that in his ignorance he had not realized that the commander of the national military forces cannot afford to be supervising a brigade on the front line.) MacArthur then refused to have an integrated HQ, insisted on all divisional heads being from his 'Bataan Gang', and manipulated deployments to ensure that Americans would never fight under Australian command.

MacArthur worked out fairly quickly that he had been expelled to a backwater, and attempted to fight back against his superiors (alwys a far more worrisome enemy to Doug than the Japs). With hardly any American troops available (except for a single division not suitable for front-line service), he was fortunate to discover that the Australian Army was more than capable of winning battles. For the next two years he was to build his reputation as the person fighting hardest against the Japanese on the abilities of these troops who he refused to acknowledge. Buna, Gona, Nadzab, Lae, Salamis and Finsdschafen were the Australian victories that made him a winner again. To the Australian soldiers in the field, the code became very clear. Any radio announcement that said ‘American troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur’ meant just that. However far more common was the line ‘Allied troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur’, which actually meant Australians. Not that this attitude was restricted to his allies. A good example of how MacArthur treated his own officers was when he offered one of his American generals (Eichelberger) that if he won a very dicey situation, McArthur would actually go to the extent of releasing his name to the press! This was the highest honour MacArthur could conceive, and reveals what lack of recognition those who served under him would usually receive.

Much is made, by the ignorant, of MacArthur’s achievements at this stage. Much is ignored about use inability to understand the situation, or to make allowances for what was actually happening on the ground. The dreadful hand-to-hand fighting across the Stanley range in New Guinea saw helpful comments from his headquarters about blowing up the passes with dynamite. Considering that this was terrain where soldiers had to crawl on their hands and knees, the fact that neither he nor any of his headquarters lackeys actually went to have a look is damning. (Note: Blamey, also fighting for his political life, committed the same solecism.) MacArthur also repeatedly boasted that could he get American troops onto the ground, their natural superiority would give them easy victory over the Japanese. Inevitably, the green American troops who eventually arrived ground to a halt quickly, and had to be rescued by the more experienced Australians.

MacArthur is given great credit for what is called the ‘island hopping’ campaign. This did in fact bypass various Japanese garrisons on the way back to Japan. It was not actually his idea, as his early plans clearly reveal that he planned to slog past each garrison. Fortunately a lack of resources, particularly shipping, means that more intelligent planners suggested a better alternative, and he was happy to take credit for it. The bypassed Japanese garrisons, with virtually no logistical support and no transport, could be happily left to rot on the vine (in the same way his own troops had been at Bataan and Corregidor). In fact many of them were reduced to spending their available time trying to farm to support their own needs, and played no further role in the war. MacArthur did have the sense to follow this advice, and was a big enough media presence to act as the suction pump necessary to make it possible. So certainly he influenced developments. This is a long way from crediting him with any brilliance.

The re-conquest of the Philippines was not on the agenda for the United States Chiefs of Staff. Their preferred option was to bypass the place, and head on to the island of Formosa (Taiwan). They considered this not only a superior island hopping strategy, and one that would get them closer to Japan, but also a lethal blow to Japanese shipping routes, and a brilliant opportunity to reopen the supply lines to China. MacArthur of course, had promised to return to the Philippines. In the end, his perspective would win out. This is the single most impressive result of his propaganda campaign over several years.

Interestingly, it is here that I actually identify signs of the superior strategic and geopolitical ability in MacArthur. The plans of the United States Chiefs of staff were the simplistic straight-line approach that they wanted to use in Europe. They were paying no attention to the political effects of cleaning up the mess, and re-establishing stable government in the areas that needed liberation. Field Marshal Alan Brooke, the British Chief Imperial General Staff, mentions several times in the course of his diaries about the war that he wished he had been dealing with MacArthur in Washington instead. He recognized some of MacArthur’s weaknesses, but held that he was the only one of the senior Americans who had a clear strategic understanding. It would be fair to suggest that had McArthur been in Marshall’s position, the Allies would have a least liberated Czechoslovakia and as many of the other East European capitals as they could at the end of the war, rather than handing them over to the Soviets in the good-natured stupidity of ignorance that saw Eisenhower refuse to make any efforts whatsoever. MacArthur’s presence in Washington would have made any post-war entente a much different thing.

The liberation of the Philippines did for American prestige, what the failure to liberate Malaya didn’t do for British prestige. The Americans were restored after the ignominious defeats. (It is interesting to note that a British fleet was circling off the coast of Malaya even before the Japanese surrendered, but that it could not invade because McArthur was still technically responsible for Malaya. The plan was that he was to hand this responsibility over to Mountbatten, but he managed to put this off until the chance for the British to regain their prestige had been lost. I would suggest that this may be another example of MacArthur’s conscious geopolitical planning.)

MacArthur had been so successful at setting himself up as the great hero that he was to be the one who would be given the opportunity to command of the invasion of Japan. Fortunately for the troops under his command, that never happened. MacArthur had never been a very good at commanding troops on the ground, and had relied on subordinate generals to take care of that minor detail for him. It is horrible to imagine what might have happened had he actually supervised personally. There is no recognizable tactical flair to his handling of larger forces, and his handling of his subordinates had always been miserable.

Instead, a President who despised him (and feared him as a potential Presidential challenger) and a Chief of Staff who wanted him as far away as possible, agreed to make MacArthur de facto dictator of a defeated Japan. And here, the entire world can be grateful that this man was given the position rather than the more the geopolitically ignorant American commanders who predominated in the European, African, Asian and Pacific theatres. Here, finally, there was a genuine advantage to MacArthurs refusal to ignore the orders from those in Washington who he considered to be ignorant buffoon’s. (Such as the Presidents he served under.)

McArthur, whose childhood had seen him inhale the principles of imperial government at the feet of a colonial administrator - his father - was the ideal person to administer post-war Japan. He completely ignored all the stupid instructions about degrading the Emperor (which would only lead to trouble), or about setting up a republic rather than a constitutional monarchy. He was very well aware that if he wanted a quiet and peaceful administration, American imperial arrogance was not the way to go. (The State Department later admitted that the only thing they could think of which might punish him for completely ignoring them was to cut off his access to the press!) Possibly, his understanding of history was great enough that he realized that the entire problem with the post Great War peace Treaty at Versailles was that this sort of ignorant idealism had guaranteed future problems. Instead, MacArthur played the pragmatist, and can be given almost sole credit to the magnificent Japanese miracle that followed.

Unfortunately for him, MacArthur now believed his own press. When a new crisis arose in Korea, MacArthur knew he was the man to handle it. He managed to assemble enough troops to mount a successful amphibious operation at Inchon to restore the situation, and he and his commanders had enough experience to know that you bypass the front lines and cut the lines of supply. Finally he was demonstrating the skills that would make a useful front-line general. By contrast however, his self-righteous nobility now meant that he felt it unnecessary to pay any attention to the inferior sheep trying to limit his vision. He ignored all instruction from his military superiors, and treated the orders of his President with contempt. There was no choice but to sack him before he started a Third World War. Truman said, “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son-of-a-bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three quarters of them would be in jail.” Bradley (now Chief of Staff - I will do a post on him later) just called him a megalomaniac.

This then is the challenge of analyzing MacArthur. He was a pompous bastard to his troops and to his subordinate generals, and an insubordinate self-righteous arrogant insufferable pain-in-the-arse to his superiors. He was a complete and utter failure as commander of the Phillipines national defences, and an appalling disaster as a manager of allies. He failed whenever he came near a battlefield, and succeeded only when good generals won battles for him - in which case he treated them and their men with contempt and refused to acknowledge them. (When Eichelberger's staff tried to recommend him for a Medal of Honor it was no surprise that MacArthur refused.) It is not possible to imagine any front line soldier in possession of the facts ever desiring to serve under such a person.

On the other hand, he was the closest thing to a strategic thinker that the Americans possessed, and his geopolitical knowledge and understanding during the war possibly came second only to Churchill (certainly above that of the arch manipulator Stalin). Although he was a disaster in direct command, he almost certainly had the ability to organize the actual outcome of the war from a Washington desk far better than did Marshall or Roosevelt. There can be absolutely no shadow of a doubt that some of the ancient European capitals that Marshall and Eisenhower happily left to the tender mercies of the Soviets would have been on the NATO side of the Iron Curtain had MacArthur been in Washington. Perhaps his megalomania would have got him into trouble here to, but the fundamental clarity of his vision at this level could hardly have caused bigger post-war issues than the mess but was actually delivered. Probably Roosevelt or Truman would have found it necessary to sack him anyway, but certainly it would have been an interesting ride.

But the vital point is his attitude to defeated nations, and his brilliance at converting them too loyal allies. Only the very best military leaders in history have been able to achieve this successfully. Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, the Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington, and very few others. The whole world should be grateful that it was Douglas MacArthur, an American not caught up by the fantasy of American democracy, who converted one of the oldest and proudest imperial states into a modern and loyal constitutional monarchy. For that, and that alone, it is almost possible to forgive the rest of the MacArthur myth, and accept him as one of the great captains of history.

The reality though, this is not the stuff of great generals. MacArthur was a brilliant imperial administrator and Governor, with great practical insight and vision when it came to dealing with defeated states on fair terms. But it is not possible to call him a good general.

The Great Myth of Britain's "Great Betrayal"

2010-09-30T20:22:00.000-07:00

I wrote a proper book review of Ausgustine Meaher's The Road to Singapore (which inspired my recent post - The Mythology of British Weakness in the Second World War), which has been published in Quadrant magazine.

The link to my article The Great Myth of Britain's "Great Betrayal" is here.

Types of empire, (and why comparing them is iffy).

2010-09-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

Imperialism is a necessary component of the improvement of the human condition. Regional economic systems will not get off the ground to the point of allowing expansion into even such simplistic concepts as compound metals (which require trade products from widely dispersed areas) with out the concept of imperialism to allow expansion of control and security. Without imperialism, we would still be at the economics development stage of tribal groups.

Properly speaking building an empire is the role of Rulership, in a natural progression of expanding the security of your boundaries. The further away you can push enemy threats, the safer and more secure your homeland becomes, and the more profitable that security makes it. The concept of rulership automatically implies the concept of empire, in that few rulers can ever have enough security. (Although there may be exceptions, particularly islands like feudal Japan, the rule is that there will always be another threat that involves expanding the boundaries just a little bit further.) This is the foundation of traditional empire, particularly continuous land frontier empires. All of the ancient empires fall into this pattern, as do the Medieval Mongol and Turkish empires, and those of Czarist Russia, the continental United States, and Nazi Germany.

Nicola Machiavelli distinguishes six types of government three positive – monarchical, aristocratic and democratic, and three degraded versions tyranny, oligarchy and licentiousness. Perhaps we can suggest that the three basic types of imperialism - security, assistance (‘white man’s burden’), and trade, each has a negative alternative vainglory, robber-barony and competitive.

Security Empire involves making the borders safe (pushing back the barbarian raiders model), whereas Vainglory Empire involves being dragged into places no sensible person wants to go, simply to ensure that your rival does not go there (Palestine in 1918). Trade Empire is self-explanatory (India and Singapore), whereas Competitive Empire involves thinking that power comes from simply possessing a trading Empire, and foolishly expanding into areas where the cost is greater than the gains (Central Africa, New Guinea). Assistance Empire involves us in that most slippery of concepts “for the good of the people”. Assistance Empire might be exampled by Britain’s seizing power in parts of India to stamp out activities like Thuggee or in the Gulf to stop piracy or slavery; or the invasion of Nazi Germany or Hussein’s Iraq. (Some religious movements also want to bring ‘the light’ to people… Christians and Muslims?) Robber-barony would be example by the conquest of the Aztecs and Inca’s, whose entire motivation was ruthless extortion. (Some Christian or Muslim conquest might also fit into this?)

The great Middle Eastern and Asian land-based empires can be broken into two types, expansion of security (which often includes trade), and straight out conquest (which is usually a variation on robber baron, where they want to control more trade nodes and tax more peasants). Maritime-based empires, not having continuous borders, are usually more complex.

The first Trade Empire was that of the Phoenicians. They spread their civilisation around the edges of the Mediterranean, not principally in search of conquest, but rather in search of trade opportunities. The fact that their settlements were developed into local hegemonic powers such as Carthage is simply a reflection of the necessity of securing the borders of your new trading states. As such the empire of Carthage was ill suited to competition with the Roman robber baron empire that arose to compete. Rome was less interested in free trade, and more interested in subduing all possible competition, and controlling more peasant farmers to tax. Rome’s expansion into Spain, Bengal, North Africa, and around the rest of the Mediterranean certainly had trade components, but was fundamentally pursued for the glory of conquest of Roman senators, the enrichment of the Roman state, and the reward of the Roman soldiers (and more taxes). Power in ancient Rome came from glory and conquest, and was maintained by making generous gifts to soldiers and supporters who backed up that power (ie. The need for more taxes).

What we think of as the modern age of European imperialism started as trade empires. European states, particularly Spain and Portugal, were seeking an alternative way around the trade hegemony of the Muslim Middle East. Their first efforts into the West African coast, and even into Asia, were exactly the sort of trading missions that established or conquered regional bases, which are similar to the Phoenicians and Carthage. (Most of the places they traded with had fairly stable governments of their own which – parts of India and Asia, or were too strong to immediately coerce – China and Japan.) By contrast, their arrival in the Americas had the unfortunate circumstantial of discovering unstable gold and silver rich civilisations. The concept of establishing trading basis for their own sake was immediately abandoned for the preference to conquer new lands to extort wealth from. Initially this was simply a matter of capturing large amounts of processed specie from the existing states, but quickly that moved on to enslaving populations to work in the mines to keep produce coming, and taxing new peasants. This shifted the mindset of a trading nation in to the concept of wringing wealth from the land, so vast estates sprang up, and new industries were put into production to produce commodities that would be of high value in Europe. Entire populations were transported from Africa to the Americas and the Caribbean islands to push through this concept of wringing wealth from the land. The Spanish in particular created an empire of robber barons. This approach leads to inevitable disaster. Centralisation of power; devolution of interest (loss of asibaya or common interest); eventually cost of control exceeding available profit; rebellions and revolutions; bankruptcy of motherland, etc.

By contrast the Dutch and English, being proper maritime nations rather than land powers with naval pretensions, were serious traders. (The Portuguese belonged with the maritime set, not with the naval powers like Spain, France, Russia and later Germany, but they too got sidetracked in South America.) They had to established fortified basis, and they too were more than willing to expand their regional control to secure those bases and make trade more profitable, but they are rarely lost sight of the idea that trade was valuable for its own purposes. Most of the civilisations that they encountered were left largely intact and allowed to continue. (Though the effects of disease in the Americas may have made it harder to have kept such civilisations going even had the Spanish and Portuguese been so inclined. This may have helped undermine Portuguese maritime logic.) The British and Dutch settled down to make as much money as possible working through the local princes and trading structures, rather than destroying the entire system and starting from scratch.

The empires that could be classed as trade empires include not just the Phoenician’s, and that of Venice, but also the Vikings, the Dutch, British, and at least partly the French. The empires that could be considered robber baron empires include not just the Romans and the Spanish, but also the Italians, Belgians, and Germans. It is notable that the Italians and Germans in particular got in to Competitive Empire because they believed that Trade Empire had made Britain great, but the sad odds and sods of the world left for particularly the Germans to conquer were not great trading areas, so they were reduced to robber baron techniques regardless of whether that would have been their preference anyway. (It would appear it was their preference, because investment, to encourage development, to encourage trade, was markedly lagging in their imperial possessions.)

This brings up the concept of suitability to running a trade empire. Successful trade empires such as the Dutch, British and American trade empires, were run by Protestant nation’s. Robber baron empires, such as the Spanish, Portuguese, Belgians and Italians, were run by Catholic states. (The Russian land empire was Orthodox, but also fitted closer to traditional central Asian empires than the new sea based western empires.) It would be too simplistic to argue cause and effect, but the correlation is remarkable. It may be telling that Germany, which is a half and half Catholic/Protestant nation, consciously tried a half and half solution of trade/robbery.

The interesting comparison is with the Asian state that most successfully adapted European techniques. The Japanese also saw the advantage of a trade empire, but also developed their Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere more along the lines of a robber baron empire. This could be a reflection of Catholic model of central control (divine right of kings/emperors); or of subservience to the latest economic theories as put forward by German theorists; or simply of racism. Given that when Japan later adopted Anglo-sphere concepts of trade they were remarkably successful, it is possible that the answer is more to do with the problem of 19th-century and Germanic theory than with inherent in vices towards Catholic style rule in the Shinto system.

This is not to suggest that any of the named empires did not have forays into the alternative strategies. In fact every empire that I have named bounced between different attitudes at various times and in various areas. Certainly Britain finished up with responsibility for parts of Africa and the Middle East for which it had no trading interest, on the simple principle of Competitive Empire to keep the enemy’s distance. This does not necessarily mean that Britain treated those territories in the sense of traditional robber baron states, but it certainly showed that if you were going to manage a non-profitable area, it had to adopt elements of robber baron extortion to have funds to make anything possible. Interestingly, it was the failure of this sort of imperialism to satisfy the taxpayers at home that led to the abandonment of the entire British imperial system.

The United States also had a varied attitude. The conquest of Indian territory was traditional land Conquest imperialism with no real trade element involved. The repeated conquests of already settled Mexican territory in the south and California was more straightforward Robber-Baron conquest of new land and peasants to tax. The expansion into the elements of the Spanish empire in Cuba and the Philippines was as much Competitive Empire - pushing competition out of trading areas - as it was about conquering more valuable trading positions in pursuit of 19th-century ideals of greatness. Hawaii was a British style sample where the imperial state reluctantly followed its traders into a political dominance of a state that could have been perfectly capable of continuing as a profitable trading partner. Vainglory is the best description. America even finished up with its own trade concessions in China – Competitive - though they always denied that these were in any way similar to everybody else’s trade concessions, and tried to claim Assistance empire.

The history of robber baron empires is not good. Ibn Khaldun talks of asibaya failing over the course of time, leading to inevitable collapse. It is arguable that more robber baron empires have collapsed because internal organisation was not up to maintaining them, than because the outsiders who eventually moved in were actually technically or militarily superior. Trade-based empires do not seem to have the same problem. The two possible reasons for dismantling trade-based empire that is not under threat from outside: are either that it is no longer profitable, or that there is no longer any need to have imperial protection because the trade can securely go on with out. Both of these issues are related to the taxpayers are not seeing the relevance of keeping up expensive imperial power projection. In fact it seems likely that most trade-based empires could usually maintain a technological edge over their robber baron equivalents. Rome certainly had to throw enormous energies into copying the technologies of Carthage before it could overcome her, and even then it was Rome’s superior land power that guaranteed the final result not her superiority at maritime trade technology. This means that Rome was acting more like a traditional central Asian Imperial Conquest Empire than like the proper Maritime Trade Empires.

Kennedy’s interesting but ultimately unsatisfactory Rise and Fall of the Great Powers makes the assumption that all empires can be compared by their economic costs. Fair enough. Unfortunately he then compares the indisputable collapse of robber baron empires, with the often voluntary liquidation of trade empires once communications are secure, or even with the rational desire of taxpayers to abandon the irrational accretions of Competitive Empire ASAP.

In economics as in any other science, confusing different outcomes by assuming similar motivations should be a no-no. Or to put it in terms that even an economist might understand - let’s not compare apples with oranges.

The Mythology of British Weakness in the Second World War

2010-09-06T00:28:00.000-07:00

I have just finished reviewing a book by Augustine Meaher IV, called The Road to Singapore: the Myth of British Betrayal. It is an excellent analysis of how Australian political, social, industrial, and military elites, spend the entire interwar period failing to prepare Australia for what was to come in the Second World War. Its fundamental premise is that nobody should get away with shortchanging their own defences for 20 years, and then claiming that a resulting crisis is somebody else’s fault.

Imperial defence, from as early as 1863, was founded on the idea that Britain would coordinate a central response to any threat, but that each Dominion and associated territory was responsible for their own local defences. Throughout the interwar period Australia, like all other Dominions, had been repeatedly told that Imperial defence required adequate local defences to hold off raids until relief could arrive. The defence strategy of the British Empire and Commonwealth was to hold the mobile military forces, such as the main fleets and expeditionary armies (both of which had been voluntarily reduced due to League of Nations and Washington Naval Treaty commitments), at central nodes from which there dispatched to any area under threat. This could take several months. At a minimum this would be six weeks, and as worldwide threats rose when the Second World War commenced, it was raised to six months. Australia never prepared adequate defences to withstand raids for even six weeks.

The screams of betrayal from the Australian Labor Party in 1942 were an extremely good cover for their own resistance to all military expenditure for the preceding 20 years. Disarmament, pacifism, and appeasement had been the catch cries of all ALP policy right through the 1930s. Realistically the Curtin government had the choice of coming clean on their betrayal of their own people, or of pretending it was possible to blame somebody else.

Ever since poor historians have used selective readings of the source materials to pretend that the idea that the British Empire could defend itself in the Far East was always a fantasy. (Morris, J. Farewell the Trumpets; Bell, Roger. Unequal Allies; Thornton, AP. Imperialism in the 20th Century; Neidpath, J. The Singapore Naval Base in the Defence of Britain’s East Empire; Robertson, J. Australia at War 1939-1945; Johnston, W. Great Britain Great Empire.) In fact some historians went so far as to argue that Britain did not possess the power to hold her colonial territories even if she had not been involved in fighting a major war in Europe. (Beloff M. Wars and Welfare; Bell, Coral. Dependent Ally: Day, David. The Great Betrayal ; Kennedy, P. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers; Ansprenger, F. The Dissolution of the Colonial Empires; Barnett, Corelli. Engage the Enemy More Closely.) It is necessary to play quite fast and loose with the source materials to achieve such results.

At the time of the Japanese attack on Malaya, the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, Britain and her Empire and Commonwealth were engaged in an unparalleled feat of worldwide power projection. Already facing the combined efforts of the entire German and Italian Navy’s, most of the German and Italian air forces, and all of the Italian army - with substantial part of the most modern and powerful elements of the Wehrmacht including crack paratrooper and armoured forces: Britain also had to prepare a large army to defend Turkey and the northern 'Persian' frontiers against a potential German attack if the Soviet Union failed. A further cost was in fighting through a vast quantity of supplies to keep the Soviet Union in the war. (A single months worth of the aircraft and tanks sent to Russia would have saved the entire eastern position.) Aside from those minor details, Britain had to deploy large enough naval, army, and air forces to deter a Japanese attempt to take advantage of such an opportunity. Nonetheless, the forces being lined up for the Far East was staggeringly impressive, if only they could arrive in time.

By April 1942 Britain would have deployed six divisions to Malay, supported by 16 squadrons of aircraft, nine battleships and three aircraft carriers. This was in response to the early 1941 analysis that what was needed was three divisions, 22 squadrons of aircraft, seven battleships and two aircraft carriers (more aircraft equals less troops). Unfortunately the Japanese struck too soon, and there were only 3 ½ divisions, 16 half strength squadrons, four battleships and one aircraft carrier in the eastern forces. (Most textbooks do not even mention that the main British Eastern Fleet was to assemble at Ceylon, and that capital units were already there when the ill-fated Force Z took the gamble of trying to interfere with Japanese invasion fleet’s while the main Japanese fleet was clearly occupied at Pearl Harbor.)

In fact by the time Singapore fell in late January 1942, the reinforcements that had arrived - the British 18th division, another Indian and Australian Brigade, and hundreds of more modern aircraft - would almost certainly have been enough to have made the position secure if they had been there at the start. (Japanese descriptions of the campaign repeatedly emphasise their shoestring logistics and how close they came to failure.)

The British were still conscious that they were fighting a world war. Even as Singapore surrendered, and the Japanese launched an attack into Burma, the Indian Army was sending twice as many troops to face a far more dangerous prospect of a German attack into Persia. Frankly, from the perspective of a world war, the loss of a minor peninsula and naval base was a small price to pay. (Again unnoticed by most history books, is that despite fighting one of the greatest combinations of power in the history of the world until that time, total British territorial losses in World War II amounted to the tiny Channel Isles, and Malaysia and Burma - Australia also lost New Guinea. Territorially, this amounted to a few percent of the territory and population of the Empire.)

The records of the Combined Chiefs of Staff outline what was actually happening. By June 30, 1942, Britain would have 15 divisions in India, Burma, Ceylon, rising to 22 by December; and 17 divisions in the Middle East, rising to 26 by December. This is of course apart from the dozen divisions in Australia, 45 in Britain itself, and eight in the other parts of Africa. Adding in the divisions in Canada and New Zealand, this means that the British Empire was deploying more than 100 divisions in 1942. (Note that the United States reached its maximum of only 88 divisions in 1945.)

The next most ignored the fact by most of these revisionist historians, is that despite everything else that was going on, Britain kept her promise to deploy the main fleet to the Far East within six months of conflict commencing. (Even though this meant temporarily shutting down most operations in the Mediterranean to several months. The side effect of this was Rommel’s last successful attack as far as el-Alamein.) When the Japanese launched another spoiling attack in April 1942, the British Eastern Fleet had already assembled 5 battleships, 3 aircraft carriers, 7 cruises, 16 destroyers, and 7 submarines. Additional forces already en route included another 2 battleships and another aircraft carrier plus additional lighter units. In response to the Japanese raid, a further 2 battleships and an aircraft carrier were ordered to the area, with another 2 battleships being suggested as further reinforcements. It is necessary to note here that the original force was already the largest Allied fleet anywhere in the world in 1942. Lifting it to 9 battleships and 5 aircraft carriers would have made it a bigger capital ship force than the entire surviving United States Navy, despite the requirements of the Home fleet, the Atlantic (particularly the dangerous convoys to northern Russia) and the Mediterranean. This is how weak the British Empire was.

The Japanese raid was an attempt to defeat part of this fleet before it could assemble, and simultaneously to affect public opinion, particularly pro-independence agitation in India (which was hosting the Stafford Cripps Mission to discuss postwar settlement). Frankly the Japanese had only one chance to solve the problem of a two-ocean war. The Americans were temporarily in chaos, with their remaining battleships withdrawn to the US west coast, and only three aircraft carriers available to mount minor raids in the Pacific. The situation would not last, and the Japanese needed to break British naval power before American pressures would prevent them from responding to British counter attacks.

There is a suprising agreement amongst many historians, that the British Eastern Fleet was very lucky not to meet the Japanese raiders. The general consensus, is that the superior air power of the five aircraft carrier and four battlecruiser Japanese fleet would give it an immeasurable advantage over the British, who only had two modern aircraft carriers (the third little anti-submarine carrier Hermes hardly counting), and five slower battleships. There is particular concern about the four old Revenge class battleships, which were slow and had a relatively light anti-aircraft armament. Again, this is possibly an oversimplification of the source material.

The Japanese, and Americans, at this stage in the war needed to launch large numbers of aircraft to even find their targets, let alone to get successful attacks. Anybody who studies the Coral Sea or Midway battles, cannot help but be struck by how many aircraft on both sides got lost, attacked the wrong target, or ran out of fuel and crashed. On several occasions, Japanese and American fleets patrolled within a few hundred miles of each other, but failed to connect. By contrast, the British had three years of combat experience with radar, and radar equipped aircraft. The Albacore torpedo bombers on their carriers - which were still biplane models - were strong sturdy reliable aircraft, but not ones suitable to use against enemy fighter opposition in daytime. But they were perfect night strike aircraft, particularly when directed by radar. (Their Swordfish predecessors had achieved spectacular results when only a couple of dozen of them attacked the main Italian fleet base at Taranto night and during wartime. Contrast this with the relatively unsophisticated total effects achieved by a much larger numbers of Japanese planes operating at Pearl Harbor in the day time, when attacking a nation still at peace! The Japs may have sunk twice as many battleships, but the British took out the vital oil tanks and the seaplane base as well.)

Admiral Somerville, whose command of the Ark Royal and other carriers in Force H for the preceding two years made him by far the most experienced fast carrier task force commander at this stage of the war, planned to manoeuvre his fleet to strike the Japanese at night, and to be out of range during the day. His successful experiences using his radar equipped forces in the narrow Mediterranean made him fairly confident that this tactic could be used even more successfully in the vast spaces of the Indian Ocean. Excellent intelligence - as at Midway – meant that his incomplete fleet was waiting in ambush for the Japanese on April 1, 1942. Unfortunately, after a few days manoeuvring, they returned to base, assuming their intelligence had been incorrect. The Japanese arrived on April 5.

The two fleets manoeuvred over the next several days, both trying to achieve their preferred advantage. Neither got within range. Again, the implication by many historians is that even if Somerville had managed a night airstrike that damaged or destroyed some Japanese ships, he would then have been within range for a Japanese airstrike the next day. This assumes of course that Japanese damage control would be considerably better than at Midway. Or that the Japanese would be able to direct their attacks more efficiently than at Coral Sea or Midway. That they would be more efficient at taking on a concentrated fleet’s massed anti-aircraft firepower, than the Luftwaffe was in the Mediterranean. It assumes that the limited numbers of British fighters available would not have been able to be just as effective at breaking up attacks as they had been in the Mediterranean. (Note that the British carriers were using Sea Hurricane and Martlett – the US called them Wildcat - fighters, instead of the appalling Buffalo fighters that had been used at Pearl Harbour and Singapore and would still be used in numbers at Midway.) It assumes that the British practice of radar vectoring fighters out of the sun to attack from the best possible angle would be no more efficient than the American and Japanese approach of attacking the head on. (In 1945 off Japan the British would still need far smaller numbers of combat air patrol to achieve the same results as the Americans.) It assumed that the heavily armoured British carriers that survived every hit by both Luftwaffe and Kamikaze during the entire war, would sink as easily as Japanese or American carriers did in the Pacific. For some writers, it is even suggested that be lightly armoured Japanese Kongo class battle cruisers would have an advantage in attack over the slower British battle line on the defence (though there is no recorded example anywhere at anytime of a battlecruiser surviving a stand-up fight against a battleship).

In effect, it is assumed that everything the far more experienced and battle hardened British had done right in the Mediterranean previously would go wrong here, and everything that went wrong for the still learning Japanese in the Pacific over the next two years would go right here. Dubious.

The raid was a tactical success, and a strategic failure. Much like the battle of Jutland, the attackers went home crowing about how much damage they have done, but failed in their main operational goal. In both cases the British lost more ships, but in both cases they failed to suffer the strategic losses that the attackers needed to achieve to allow themselves a future freedom of action. The British lost two cruisers, and the ancient anti-submarine aircraft carrier Hermes (which did not even have any aircraft on board). The Japanese lost more of their aircraft and skilled pilots - a steadily wasting resource - then they cared to admit. The British fleet retired to await the rest of its reinforcements. (The faster aircraft carrier squadron to Bombay, and the slower defensive battleship squadron to the east coast of Africa, where it could cover the vital Middle East and Indian transport routes.) The Japanese fleet rushed back to try and maintain some momentum in the Pacific. Within months the cumulative effects of tiredness and steady attrition amongst their pilots and carriers would contribute to significant losses at Coral Sea and Midway. No major Japanese force would ever again attempt to push into the Indian Ocean.

The collapse of the Japanese offensive potential over these few months was vital. Their early successes against peace-time fleets, or small squadrons scattered around vast areas, were not repeated when they finally started to come up against larger or better prepared Allied forces. The Indian Ocean raid got good headlines, but failed its strategic goals. They may have claimed Coral Sea as a tactical victory, but the ongoing wastage of planes and pilots and ships at Ceylon and Coral Sea left them greatly weakened at Midway. They had rampaged for four months on a shoestring, and even the raids on the Ceylon ports themselves saw them taking significantly greater casualties, for significantly less effect, that had been achieved in the early months of the war. (RAF counter-attacks at Ceylon were the first time Japanese sailors saw bombs falling towards their carriers. None hit, but it was a sign of things to come.)

None of these exercises demonstrate British weakness. The British Eastern Fleet was quickly diverted to the amphibious invasion of Madagascar to secure lines of communication, and soon after that large elements were sent back to the Mediterranean to knock Italy out of the war. There would be no great need for a large fleet in the Indian Ocean until the time came for major offensives in 1945. Churchill had guaranteed to come to Australia’s defence if it was ever seriously invaded. British troop convoys sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to the Middle East, always had contingency plans to head towards Australia if necessary. One of the armoured divisions that later served in Eighth Army, was listed for diversion to Australia until the events at Coral Sea and Midway made it clear that the threat of invasion was passed. As it turns out, despite the best efforts of the ALP and other Australian politicians, Australia was too strong for Japan to ever seriously consider invading.

The key thing that most of these historians seem to fail to recognize, is that Britain’s issue was not so much military power as shipping and transport. Britain had planes and tanks (many Canadian or American made), but lacked the ships to supply them to Russia, the Middle East and the Far East simultaneously. Britain did not need 40+ divisions at home, but lacked the troop-lift to be able to toss half a dozen to Singapore or Australia at whim. (Interestingly, the American entry to the war initially made this position far worse. Not only was Britain, for the third year running, trying to prop up a blitzkrieged ally - France, then Russia, then the United States - but the incapacity of the U.S. Navy to provide any convoy protection on its east coast almost lost the allies the Battle of the Atlantic. Even after the British hastily deployed 60 escort vessels to cover the US coast, shipping losses climbed to a level that undermined British ability to feed themselves, keep the Russians in the war, keep the reinforcements flowing to the Middle East and Asia, and pander to a panicked Australian government.)

For most of 1942 the British Empire and Commonwealth held the line, kept back the combined efforts of Germany and Italy and Japan (with fairly minimal imput from the United States compared to her potential power), and kept the Atlantic and Indian oceans open and suppliers flowing to the vital armies in the Middle East and Asia, and to the Soviets. No other empire in the history of the world has been capable of such a sustained multi-continent and multi-ocean operation. (There were financial costs to all this that I will discuss in another post.) Given that the British and Commonwealth taxpayers spent most of the interwar period trying to avoid just such an obligation, and greatly weakened their militaries in the process, this situation is less reflective of weakness than of the vast untapped inherent strength of the organization.

It would be nice if some historians could let their political preconceptions about how they think the world should work at least be susceptible to analyzing the actual evidence.

Science fiction, history and government.

2010-08-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

I have just finished rereading H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking, which, apart from being a good space opera romp, is certainly one of the best historical analysis books I have ever read.

Like all good fiction writers, H. Beam Piper was a student of the human condition. Like other very good historians, H. Beam Piper had a simple but profound understanding of the various streams of cause and effect in human culture. Like a very select group of exceptional science-fiction writers, H. Beam Piper told stories that reveal an enormous amount about how and why human civilisation and government develops.
This has been a consistent theme of the very best of science-fiction writers, who are to the 20th century, what novel writers were to the 19th century: a disreputable breakthrough group that eventually achieved cult status and finally even universal respect as important part of the canon of human literature. The early luminaries in the field like HG Wells and JRR Tolkien are already treated with respect by good university courses. Many others will inevitably follow.

As a historian myself - with a side interest in philosophy and politics - I’m always more interested by those writers whose stories reflect a clear understanding of how and why things change in human society’s. John Wyndham may be famous for The Day of the Triifids, or the Kraken Wakes or the Midwich Cuckoos stories, but if you really want a creepy insight into fragility of human society you should read his far less well-known but very clever The Trouble with Lichen. (Which I know for a fact has been used as a university text, because I set it for one of the Deakin University courses I taught in the early 90s, in contrast with the more famous - but I believe less astute - Brave New World.)

A less incisive, but far more recognized contemporary of Wyndham, was Robert Heinlein. His understanding of history was less impressive, but his fundamental concept of human nature has made very telling points. Unfortunately Hollywood, when attempting to convert his books to films, has failed miserably on every occasion. In particular, the Hollywood mindset - even though draped around the action hero - clearly fails to understand that Heinlein’s version of the great man is moderated by Heinlein’s version of the interaction of all men. So you get the horrible film versions of good books such as the much underrated Starship Troopers. The appalling Hollywood remix of this suggested that Heinlein’s society was simply a fascist government. Nothing could be further from the truth. Heinlein’s critique of how incompetent bureaucrats and governments drag peoples into war for little purpose, was to suggest that after the failure in one of the great world wars the returning veterans replaced the government with a government by the only people who they felt could be trusted: those who had demonstrated a willingness to risk their lives for their fellow citizens… fellow veterans. The fundamental idea was that unless you are willing to put your life on the line for your fellow citizen, you should not get a say in the running of the State. This combines Heinlein’s great man concept, with the democratic principle that participation is a responsibility rather than a right.

Clearly it is inconceivable to modern Hollywood figures that democracy is anything but a right. Which just goes to reveal how far from reality of their understanding of the world is. Heinlein was in fact reflecting on the ancient Greek and Roman version of democracy, where to be a citizen required that you be willing to don armour, practice fighting in your spare time, and go out and risk your life with your fellow citizens to get a vote. In fact, only the people who spent the most money on armour, and took the greatest risks in the front line, could ever be expected to deserve election to high office. This is certainly not fascism. This is the ideal of democracy based on a balance of rights with responsibility.

Modern democracies started the same way. To be an active citizen in the French system, was based pretty much on the property franchise. Of the 350 people in the average French village, maybe 50 or 60 were active citizens, of whom the adult male half would be allowed to vote. The American system was even less inclusive, with your tax or property franchise being further limited by your race. Other versions of the franchise in other states, have always limited the voting class by social rank, race, religion, tax status, property, or finally that most stupid of definitions, age. (Modern students it seems fundamentally struck that some magic number makes you a good voter. But they seem to like the idea that an intelligent 14 year old who can pass a simple test, should get a bigger say in the society than a stupid 18-year-old who can’t. And they are often more impressed with the idea that of some service to the community, either a year of military service or a year of helping the Salvation Army to feed the homeless, should be a pre-requisite for voting by demonstration that you put other people above your own interest.)

In fact a close and sensible reading of Starship Troopers, would reveal an incisive attack on the concept put together 30 years later by arrogant and foolish ivory tower academics, who made facile comments about the End of History. Would that such people had had the capacity to understand the science-fiction of their childhoods. The world might have been saved a lot of heartache since.

Not that Robert Heinlein delved into the nature of politics. A product of the American imperialistic nationalism of his generation, he only toyed with the flaws in democracy. (See Revolt in 2010.) Most of his characters only flirted with the nature of government, though the discussion of the process of setting up a government is quite well covered by The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

More recent American science-fiction writers have done better. Lois McMaster Bujold has looked at a wide variety of cultural imperatives, and consistently brings down a logical government structures based on the peculiar circumstances of the society she is dealing with. These range from her amusing purely male homosexual culture in Ethan of Athos, to the diverse governments of semi-feudal Barrayar, semi Chinese imperial Ceteganda, semi-piratical confederacy of Jackson’s Whole, and the semi-utopian Beta Colony: all in the Miles Vorkosigan series.

Bujold leads a pack of modern American writers to have become increasingly suspicious of the vagaries of democracy. They seem to be well aware that all political systems have weaknesses, but they certainly do not have the uncritical smugness associated with their American science-fiction forebears. Eric Flint for instance, in his amusing 1632 series, throws very democratically oriented Americans backing to post-feudal Europe where they have to contend with the rise of absolute monarchies. The series seems to be heading into accepting the necessity - and indeed superior flexibility - of constitutional monarchy with a universal franchise parliamentary democratic component.

Even more interesting are David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, where the benefits of the Constitutional Monarchy are clearly outlined. Though Weber has an equally impressive and incisive analysis of the weaknesses associated with hierarchical structures, and upper houses of Parliament based on hereditary privilege. (I have posted here on the flaws of completely replacing such his system with a weakened solution, but his points are well made.) Apparently these modern American writers are less than impressed with the idea that democracy is always the bet thing for all people, or indeed that it will ever work without very specific conditions and safeguards.

This comprehensive analysis of developing political theory, through the unusual testing of fictional scenarios, is probably better political analysis than that coming out of most university history, politics, or even philosophy departments. Compare it to a populist modern philosophy from Marxism’s fantastic and appalling theories, to Rawls’ horrible neo-Platonic (and therefore genuinely neo-fascistic - though many appear not to notice that) Theory of Justice. The modern university student would get a much better education on civics and citizenship from a few select science-fiction works than from the vast majority of supposedly serious texts from the post war period to recent ‘scholarship’.

Interestingly, the franchise in Weber’s Star Kingdom of Manticore is extended on the simple basis of positive contribution. The principal is that anybody who can fill out a simple one-page tax return (possibly of the most optimistically fantastic concept in his books), will get a vote, as long as they have contributed one more dollar per year to the tax system than they have taken from the government in benefits, for at least five consecutive years. This is a vastly simplified variation of the original French concept of active citizenship.

What this does avoid of course, is the issue of people who do not deserve to have a vote. The bread and circuses crowd, who are not contributing to society, and who unfortunately are not happy to be simply leeches on the system, but to vote on every occasion to damage a system that they think owes them an endless bounty. Webber appears to be referencing an idea most clearly stated in H Beamer Piper's Space Viking when he compares a far future demagogue (Makann) to Adolf Hitler:

The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they are uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilisation, and would like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and think civilisation is something that just exists and that all they need is to enjoy what they understand of it - luxuries, a higher living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have the government for? And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls…. Makann says they can, and he is the leader.

It wasn’t the [Great] war that put Hitler into power. It was a fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the home-made barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them… What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class ashamed of its privileges and shirking its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards.

A later character follows the tale:

There’s something wrong with democracy. If it worked, it couldn’t be overthrown by people like Makann, attacking it from within by democratic processes. I don’t think it’s fundamentally unworkable. I think it is as if you are what engineers call bugs. It’s not safe to run a defective machine till you learn the defects and remedy them.

It may just be that there is something fundamentally unworkable aboutt government itself. As long as Homo Sapiens is a wild animal, which is always been and always will be until involves into something different in 1 million or so years, maybe a workable system of government is a political science impossibility, Just as transmutation of elements was a physical science impossibility as long as they tried to do it by chemical means. We’ll just have to make it work the best way we can, and when it breaks down, hope the next try will work a little better, for a little longer.

Personally I believe it is a great hope for the future that Democratic Triumphalism appears to finally be headed into the waste bin of history along with Marxism, Communism, Fascism, or many of the other fantastically utopian experiments on government that have been attempted in the last quarter millennium. Clearly some modern American writers have seen through the infantilism of their early educations, and are grappling seriously with how you make a stable system of government that would work for the sort of society that you might actually desire to live in.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: democracy is an important component of the system as long as there are plenty of other safeguards. Democracy within a government actually performs the function of a whistle on a steam engine, as a brilliant high-pressure release valve. But no one should ever believe that the part of the machinery that makes the most noise is the most important part. Democracy has to be balanced against both the interest groups that are vital to the economy (usually represented by an upper house), and the long-term perspective which in practical terms can only be properly represented by some sort of hereditary component within the system.

It is fascinating to watch some of the most creative and forward thinking people in our culture feeling their way towards a solution which undermines the facile twitterings of an obsolete and overly smug western education system. If only such ideas had broken through before the latest attempts to impose overly democratic republics on patently unsuitable environments… Like Iraq and Afghanistan…

We can only hope that future western political leaders are better read in Sci-Fi.

The Historical roots of Western Sexism

2010-08-06T22:34:00.000-07:00

I was presenting heraldry at a girls school recently, and they asked me why it was so sexist? Why the Cadency (symbol for which son you are in the family), was only for sons? I jokingly responded, “Well it is mainly a French system, so perhaps we should blame the French?”

This immediately brought up the question, “So do other places do it less sexist-ly (sic)?”

The interesting thing is that other places do. The further north you go in Europe, the more liberal the heraldry laws, and indeed the inheritance laws become. In fact not only did England and Sweden and the Netherlands have Queens in their own right –something unimaginable in southern Europe – but Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have even changed their monarchy’s to have the oldest child inherit regardless of sex!

I shot a slightly apologetic glance at the teacher, and suggested they could have, “the polite version, or the politically incorrect version?” The teacher said, “What’s the polite version?” To which I could point out that the Northern European states had a greater tendency towards traditional Germanic legal practices, which prized women’s roles more highly, whereas the Southern European states reverted to Roman law which was far more sexist. The teacher then glanced at the clearly fascinated class, and amusedly asked for the politically incorrect version. To which the obvious answer is that the North is Protestant, and the South is Catholic.

Guess what sort of private girl’s school I was at?

The point is interesting. It could be suggested that the South is more sexist because it is more Roman Catholic. It could be suggested the South is more sexist because it is more Roman in Law. It could be suggested that the South is more Roman Catholic because it is more Roman Law. It could be suggested that the Roman Catholic Church is more sexist because of Roman Law. Or it cold be suggested that both Roman Law and Roman Catholisism are more prevalent in the South because of other issues, such as a warmer climate?

This last is fascinating. Climate clearly has an impressive effect on human civilization. All the great Ancient civilisations developed in nice warm river valleys in the Middle East or China, spreading along the nice warm coast of the Mediterannean. This is of course, because living in a nice climate that does not require much in the way of clothing or other resources to survive, leaving a lot of spare time for developing a culture, compared to those poor bastards who are stuck in snow four months of the year and spend most of the rest of the year trying to accumulate enough food, clothing, firewood and shelter to make it through.

We know this from the Australian Aboriginal experience. Tribes in the nice warm Northern Territories needed perhaps four hours of labour per day to gather enough food and other resources to be happy and healthy. That leaves a lot of time for culture, painting, corroberees, walkabouts, and dreamtimes. As a result we have extensive records of Aboriginal culture in the North. However Australian Aborigines in Tasmania, where it is cold and miserable most of the year, needed to spend up to fourteen hours per day collecting the necessities for survival. That doesn’t leave much time for culture, and unsurprisingly there are very few records of their having much culture. This is subsistence living at the edges, and it is not suprising that the Tasmanian tribes died out very quickly when hit by Eurasian diseases. (Willingness by Aboriginal males to swap a fertile female for a hunting dog probably didn’t help long term either. Jared Diamond talks in Collapse about the vanishing of certain Arctic tribes probably being more related to the women swapping to a new camp to be with better providers too, an early version of feminism voting with it’s feet perhaps?)

So perhaps it could be argued that nice warm climates where life is easy encourage sexism, and colder climates where life is harder can’t afford such silly luxuries? Certainly the least sexist Western societies were Germanic tribes like the Vikings, where a woman could demand a divorce, and a property split, at her convenience. Perhaps there is a relationship between working hard to survive, and lack of sexism? (Or perhaps it is baised towards societies where the men are away lots, and the women run things… Like Dark Ages Vikings, or early Medieval Crusaders.)

This also flags the point of laziness. The early civilisations to get off the ground did not keep their technological edge for long. The cold Northern European or Chinese areas may have taken a lot longer to get off the ground, but then they shot well ahead in technology, leaving the Southern areas far, far behind. The Northerners knew the value of labour saving devices to survive, and so became mass investors in Windmills and Water Wheels while the warm Mediterranean states stuck to the old methods. No surprise that the Ancient (China), Medieval and Modern (Europe only), industrial revolutions were a thing of the North. There could be a very good reason why the Germanic system is far less sexist than the Roman or Greek ones?

Mind you, that brings up the issue of the Orthodox Christians. They are more sexist than the Protestants, but have a wider range of perspectives than the Roman Catholics. Is it that some are Mediterranean, and some from the colder areas of the Balkans and Russia? Is it that some are from traditional farming communities, and some from Nomadic tribes - which have always treated women as lesser people? Do the northern and western farming communities of the Balkans and Russia have a more or less sexist approach than the southern and eastern mountain peoples and Cossacks? (There is no question that the Muslim areas are more sexist. I often comment to students that the Roman period had such good army surgeons that the Roman period is the only time in Western history that men have lived longer than women. I have to say Western history, because women have never lived as long as men in any Muslim society.) Certainly both the Byzantine (Medieval) and Russian (Early Modern) empires had female rulers in their own rights, which was not possible in contemporary Greece or Poland.

What other impacts can have an effect on sexism?

What legal affects for instance?

Australia has a much boasted ‘Harvester Judgement’ from the 1920’s which the Australian Union movement claims improved the standards of the working class immeasurably. What it did was to make a ‘one wage family’ a legislated possibility. Hurray! Who do you suppose got the one wage? Who do you suppose got to be barefoot and pregnant? Whose education standards were reduced because they would never need to work? Whose access to higher study was undermined because they would never need to study serious stuff, just go to University to fill in time until they were married? (No don’t laugh, I was accidentally awarded a pass BA instead of an Honours for my first degree. Of 140 graduates there were only 22 pass degrees… me and 21 Greek girls!)

What cultural effects for instance?

One of the side effects of the Russian Revolution was the legalisation of abortion. (This was a very short term ‘reform’ because within three years it was so clear that the effect on the birthrate was astonishingly disastrous, that it was re-criminalised.) Or we could take an example from the French Revolution where ‘no-fault’ divorce allowed women to leave just by claiming what we would call ‘un-reconcilable differences’. (Again short lived, because Napoleon threw it out.) Both these cultural impacts had drastic short term effects on sexism that seem promising from the modern perspective. (Though both might have led quickly to a counter-swing that actually left women worse off in the long term).

What about cultural affects that actually lasted?

Napoleon didn’t renounce the other Revolutionary social reform of ‘equal inheritance’ of all children. This replaced Primogeniture (eldest son inherits), which admittedly looks old fashioned to modern eyes until one realizes that before primogeniture even healthy kingdoms like Charlemagne’s vast empire had to be split between various sons, who then split it between their sons, etc. Various scholars have pointed out that the effects of equal inheritance on monarchical states (the vast majority of states in all human history), is devolution, insecurity, violence, chaos, poverty, disease and death. In economic terms – whether Kings or other landholders – primogeniture is the only proven way to improve the health and wealth of the culture.

So when Prof McPhee mentioned in a recent lecture that ‘equal inheritance’ was a positive result of the French Revolution, I immediately queried whether that had entrenched rural poverty and steadily reduced the size and viability of farms. He explained that the French had very quickly adapted to agreements whereby although one child would ‘own’ the farm, all the children were entitled to a share of it’s produce. (Which apparently means that farms never fall below subsistence, but that families can rarely increase their holdings or improve their lot. It certainly explains to me why British Tommies marching through France in World War One were astonished at how backwards and poverty stricken French farms appeared. I suspect that only a combination of urbanization and falling population have really improved that since.)

Which brings us neatly to Prof McPhee’s point about the real French coping strategy. Birthrates dropped, immediately.
Now the interesting thing about that is that clearly a dropping birthrate is usually an indication of improving education and opportunities for women. So perhaps it was just a result of the Revolution anyway. On the other hand the birthrate has remained lower than most of Europe even after other nations got into mass education, so maybe it is to do with this unique approach to inheritance. However the long-term implications of a reduced birthrate have led to a steady decrease in France’s influence in European affairs (starting with unprecedented defeats by just one other European nation – rather than a coalition as in previous wars - in 1870, 1914, 1940, etc.); and a comparative fall in standards of living compared to some other European countries – particularly Scandinavia, the Low Countries and Germany.

So what are the possible effects on the status of French women, and on sexism towards them? France is a partly northern European, partly Mediterranean culture. It is now largely Catholic not Protestant. It is certainly more Roman in law than Germanic – despite the ‘Franks’ being originally a Germanic tribe. It has legislated rights for women going back to the 1790’s (though noticeably it was considered shocking when De Gaulle autocratically decided French women would be allowed to vote after the Second World War). It is wealthy and well educated, and has a low birth-rate. On the other hand it has made up for its low birthrate by importing many North-African’s, who are mainly Muslim. So we see a debate on whether women should be allowed to wear the Hijab for cultural or religious reasons, when it is clearly a sexist statement culturally, and a political statement in a decidedly separated church/state environment.

The answer appears to be that well educated white French women have lots of rights, but poorly educated dark-skinned French women have far less. Is this a political, legal, religious, historical, cultural, ethnic, or climate based division? Or is it a combination of all of the above?

The correct answer in any circumstance is of course: select which apply for any time or place.

Sexism can be affected by technology, famine and food supply, as easily as by culture, war and persecution. Legislation plays an unpredictable part, and often has unexpected consequences. The interesting thing about western sexism, is that there is enough cultural variety, technological development, and economic change, to see what variables can be brought into play.

Now it will be interesting to see how pushing some of those variables into other cultures affects their attitude to sexism. Watching some northern Afghan women in business suits in parliament while some southern ones still face public stoning for being seen without adequate covering, is decidedly interesting. Did Suttee die out because of British enforcement, or as a result of European example, or just because of improving economic conditions? Or is it still desired by large elements and likely to raise its ugly head again if the more extreme end of Hindu nationalism gains more ground?

What does the varied reasons for sexism tell us about the human condition?

Can we get better?

World War Two Naval statistics - Comparing Apples with Oranges

2010-07-24T22:05:00.000-07:00

I have posted before about the difficulties of people writing about a six-year war as though they can make definitive statements on technology based on a dispersed snapshot viewpoints from different years. Such comparisons are extremely misleading. Technology simply moves too fast in wartime to allow such sloppiness.

For instance I commented (here) that the Sherman tank was quite a reasonable combat vehicle when it first appeared on the North African battlefields in mid 1942, but that it was already outclassed by the time it came up against the early Tiger tanks in Tunisia six months later. The idea that it was even remotely good enough to fight competitively in the invasion of Germany two to three years later is just laughable. Even the British Firefly versions - which actually carried a functional gun into Normandy - were still called ‘Ronson Lighters’ by the Allies and ‘Tommy Cookers’ by the Germans for very good reasons. In other words the Americans finished the war with their first generation wartime tank still the main combatant (and it was to remain so in Korea). Meanwhile the British, whose first wartime generation Matilda tank had been probably the best tank in the world in 1940, but whose second wartime generation Crusader was decidedly average in 1942, was rolling out third generation Comet and Centurion tanks in the last days of the war. (The Centurion was certainly the best design of its day. In fact it is still in service as a front line combat tank with regional powers like South Africa today!)

Another example that I have commented on before is the use of Anti-Tank artillery. The British 2-pounder (40mm) was the best anti-tank gun of 1939 and 1940, but was not really up to the mark by 1942 when the Germans had already replaced their 37mm guns with 50mm guns and were starting to use 75 or 88mm, and the Russians were starting to use the 76.2mm. But the reason it had fallen behind the pace was that the much better 6-pounder (57mm) - which had been supposed to go into production in 1940 - had been put off for 18 months because the British were facing imminent threat of invasion. In fact the 6-pounder was more than adequate for 1942 and 1943 (and even for the remainder of the war with special ammunition). Which did not alter the fact that the British already planned to replace it with the much more powerful 17-pounder even before they came across the Tiger in late 1942. In fact the Royal Artillery was using the 17-pounder as standard from early 1943, leaving 6-pounders to the infantry.

This becomes informative when contrasted to the Americans, who arrived in combat in late 1942 with an obsolete 37mm gun, and continued to use it for their infantry formations for the rest of the war. They had of course worked out that they would need to upgrade to a 57mm copy of the British-6 pounder fairly quickly, but these new weapons did not actually predominate in combat units in France until late 1944! (American troops in the Mediterranean fought all through North Africa, Sicily, and most of the way up the Italian peninsula, with an obsolete and useless weapon, which was not replaced until the end of 1944! Resulting casualty rates must have been much higher than they needed to be.) Only in the last few months was there serious interest in upgrading to a 90mm, the sort of firepower that the British had been using for more than two years. But it is hard to find any discussion of the problems of this behaviour in the literature, which simply comments that each upgrade was important… rarely noting that it was even more desperately (and inexplicably) overdue than had been the British upgrade from using the obsolete 2 pounder.

This sort of comparing apples with oranges becomes more visible when comparing naval strengths, because the comparison points given are usually totally different years. I carefully checked more than a dozen versions of naval strength tables in different textbooks produced over more than forty years, and came up with numbers in most of them that made no sense, until you work out what the authors have compared. British, French and German naval strengths ‘at the start of the war’ are always figures for 1939. But Italian numbers are usually listed for 1940, and American and Japanese numbers are for 1941. (Actually I have found a few books that list American numbers as of the morning of 7 December 1941, but seem to include in Japanese numbers battleships that were not commissioned for months afterwards!)

Astonishingly, the commentaries then seem to become biased by the incorrect comparisons. British ‘rebuilds’ of World War One vintage battleships are often criticised for not going far enough in 1939, while Italian rebuilds are congratulated for what was not commissioned until late 1940. Some commentaries even make comments about how good American rebuilds were, by sampling ships sunk at Pearl-Harbor and not re-commissioned until 1943!

Again the comparisons are unfortunate. Certainly Britain would have liked to get more rebuilds done before getting into a war, and would have, had her war waited until 1941. But the rebuilds she did get done in 1939-40 were considerably better than most other nations produced in time for Pearl-Harbor, or even after Pearl-Harbor. The rebuilt Queen Elizabeth, Valiant and Renown had, in 1940, more advanced and efficient anti aircraft batteries than any similar vintage French, Italian, Japanese or US ship (until some of those were rebuilt after Pearl-Harbor, in a few cases after being sunk and refloated.) Certainly British ‘tower-bridge’ rebuilds were considerably better developments for fighting a ship than brand new German, Italian, Japanese or American construction coming on line years later.

Consider also the effects on building programs. It takes two or three years of combat before a nation develops enough new ideas and experience to start a new generation of warships. So Britain and the US both had ‘design holidays’ for their aircraft carriers, where they just worked over existing designs – British Illustrious and US’s later design Essex’s – for three years. Fortunately for the Allies a couple of years into the war the Royal Navy started a very useful experiment with Escort Carriers, and had begun the process of ordering large numbers from US yards in time for America to adapt the program to war purposes. (The equivalent very useful American improvisation was the converted cruisers of the Independence class that Roosevelt had suggested be looked at as stop gaps before Pearl-Harbor. These arrived in 1943.) The first new design allied carriers were the British ‘light fleet’ carriers of the Colossus and Majestic classes that went into production in 1943 (which were so successful that many were still in service in the 1980’s and 1990’s). By the time the Americans developed their first new class – the Midways (also, thanks to Reagan’s 600 ship navy, in service into the 1980’s and 1990’s) – in 1945, the British were on their second wave – the Centaur, Audacious, and Malta classes. Note that this sort of lag reflects, almost exactly, what happened with the development of tanks and anti-tank guns for the two nations!

So what if Britain had enjoyed the luxury of not entering the war until December 1941? What would her navy have looked like? How would the modernisations and numbers have stacked up against the Japanese and American figured that everyone is quoting?

First conversions. In battleships only Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were modernised (along with Warspite to a lesser extent), whereas Barham, Malaya, and probably Warspite again would have been rebuilt in the intervening years. Here they would have been joined by Battlecruisers Repulse and Hood, both of which were scheduled to go through the refits that made Renown such an effective ship. In addition they would have been joined by a couple of the four new Lion class battleships (contemporaries of the American Iowa’s), with the last two almost ready. That is before any further construction had been authorized (at a probably rate of another 2 – 4).

This is important to remember, because every nation that joined the war halted new construction when it joined. The King George V class were finished, but the Lion’s (ordered before the war) cancelled. Just as the Bismarck, Yamato and Iowa classes were at least partly finished, but any follow up classes (like the American Montana’s - ordered before Pearl-Harbor), were cancelled.

Run the other way, if Japan and the US had joined the war in 1939, it is likely that the Iowa classes would have been cancelled, leaving the Americans with the South Dakota class as their only modern class. The Japanese might have finished at least one Yamato class simply because they had no modern battleships at all (the most modern being the two ships of the 1920 vintage Nagato class), but there it would have stopped.

Look at aircraft carriers too. Britain entered the war with 7 aircraft carriers (Argus, Hermes, Eagle, Furious, Courageous, Glorious, Ark Royal), of which the last four were big, fast, powerful, well equipped models with significant antiaircraft firepower. (Eagle was a proper fleet carrier, but only as fast as the old battleships, whereas Argus and Hermes were little better than escort carriers.) The only reason these carriers carried less planes than the equivalent Lexington or Akagi/Kaga classes was that the British considered permanent Pacific style deck-parks unsuitable for Atlantic conditions or continental waters close to enemy airbases. (Noticeably, British carriers deployed to the Indian or Pacific oceans quickly adopted air wings on average 50% larger than their ‘designed capacity’, coming much closer to Japanese and American ‘designed capacity’. But also note that most carriers lost to air attack in the Pacific suffered explosions amongst such deck-parks, while British carriers in the Mediterranean regularly survived bombings because their aircraft were hidden away under armour.) These 7 carriers were only inadequte for British needs because the first three named were outdated experimental models (rather like the USS Ranger, or the Japanese Hosho), so they should not really count as proper fleet carriers.

Had Britain entered the war in December 1941 they would have also had the rest of the Illustrious class - Victorious, Formidable and Indomitable - already in action, with Indefatigable and Implacable about to commission. As a result they certainly would have had another four or six modern carriers in the pipelines. That amounts to 10 large, fast, well armed and well armoured aircraft carriers, with several more in the pipeline, against the six that Japan had by that date, with only conversions planned (or indeed the five that the US had by that date with another half dozen planned).

People overlook the fact that the Royal Navy experimented with 3 carrier (Furious, Courageous, Glorious) fast strike task groups in the mid 1930’s. The Fleet Air Arm was re-established in 1939, too late to be ready for a war in 1939, but excellently timed to be ready for a war in late 1941. People also compare the British 1939 biplanes with 1942 American aircraft, somehow failing to note that the British were using the Hurricane and Wildcat fighters as their main carrier fighter by the time of Pearl-Harbor, whereas the Americans were still using many of the dreadful Buffalo fighters as well as the newer Wildcat at Midway. The British Gladiator biplane fighters, Fulmar monoplane fighter/bombers, and Swordfish biplane or Skua monoplane bombers of 1939: were in no way inferior to the equivalent Japanese Claude monoplane fighter and Susie biplane bomber, or the American F3F biplane fighter, Buffalo monoplane fighter, or Devestator bomber of the same period. In fact these British fighters were still effective in defence of Malta against the Italians and the Luftwaffe in 1941 (as, interestingly, was the Buffalo when used by the Finns against the Soviets), whereas the Devestator was a death-trap when used as the main American torpedo bomber at Midway. (In fairness to the Devestator - and the Fulmar - Wikipedia notes that even the vaunted TBF Avenger that replaced it was a death-trap in daylight hours until adequate fighter support was available.)

(Note: The British continued using biplane strike aircraft throughout the war, even after good monoplanes were easily available, but they had found a way to take advantage of their strengths - ruggedness, manouevrability, stability, excellent take off and landing abilities on small carriers, load capacity, and flexibility; and obviate their main weakness – speed – which made all attack aircraft - and biplanes in particular - so vulnerable to day fighters. By 1941 they were radar equipped night strike aircraft with proven track records against the Germans and Italians. Not only were the Japanese and Americans incapable of night ops in 1941 - let alone 1939 - they were still regularly crashing dozens of aircraft that got lost in the dusk in 1942 and 1943!)

So again, lets look at 1939 for the Americans and Japanese. In 1939 America had two big old Lexington carriers and the newly commissioned Yorktown and Enterprise, plus the failed experiment Ranger that never saw combat, while Japan had two big old Akagi/Kaga carriers, two smaller modern ones (Hiryu and Soryu), a their own little experimental one (Hoshu). So four and a bit carriers each compared to the British four and three bits. All were still using biplanes in 1939.

Had Britain entered the war in December 1941 her ten modern carriers (plus three old spares) – all with more modern aircraft – and half a dozen more carriers nearing completion; plus her seventeen new or effectively modernised battleships (plus five old spares), with two to six more in production: would have given her a much easier war. Particularly considering that the extra years of peacetime construction of steadily increasing numbers of cruisers, destroyers, escort vessels and submarines would have substantially improved her greatly reduced interwar shipbuilding capacity. The same goes for aircraft. (Note that Britain started mass producing anti submarine escorts before war in 1939, whereas the US and Japan did not start similar programs until well after Pearl-Harbor.)

In practical terms a good historian must be very careful in using references that compare information from different periods, and therefore make highly contentious assumptions as a result. The problem is that there are many examples that slip past even quite dedicated historians unless they have the time and knowledge to assess each statement to see if its assumptions are justifiable. If they do, they regularly find that the commentator is, often unknowingly, comparing apples and oranges.

But the really amusing thing that comes out of such an analysis is to note that had Britain not been sucked into war in 1939, Japan probably could not have attacked the United States in 1941. Pearl-Harbor was Japan’s only chance to take advantage of the brief window offered by Britain being busy elsewhere to get what she wanted. An uncommitted Britain, particularly with the sort of naval buildup not going to war in 1939 would have allowed, would have deterred Japan from even considering such an attack in 1941!

Democracy can be evil

2010-06-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

Unlimited democracy, like unlimited anything, is bad.

I recently had some students insist that democracy is superior to other forms of government. I actually agreed with them - at least on the Churchill-ian perspective of it being “the worst system of government except for any other system” – but I wanted them to give me actual reasons. Unfortunately the idea that they would need to justify the trite statements they have rote learned had obviously never been presented to them at school before. They struggled to find a reason beyond “everyone knows…”

Let’s get this straight. The line ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ applies to all versions of government. Including absolute democracy.

Absolute Monarchy is never a good thing over the long term. (The exception is in the most dire circumstances where many quite sensible groups like the Athenian democrats or Roman Republicans ‘elected’ short term ‘dictators’ to deal with a crisis. Unfortunately some – like Julius Caesar tried to stay beyond a short term, with the appropriate solution of a knife in the back… but that is another story.)

Theocracy is not a good system either, as both the Papacy - in the grip of yet more storms about a worldwide cover up of Priests shagging children - and North Korea, can vouch. (North Korea has a ‘perpetual’ President – who is dead – which classifies it as a theocracy, even without the fact that anyone who continues to be a Marxist in the modern world is clearly operating on prayer alone.)

Oligarchies sometimes have increased flexibility in the long term. (Certainly the Serene Republic of Venice ran a good oligarchy based on about 130 families for a long time.) But most Oligarchies – whatever their theoretical basis - have inevitable problems when technological change undermines the power base of the hereditary class structure. The United States found this when their original ‘democratic’ oligarchy of well-off white slave owners caused a civil war. But Oligarchies by their nature are about negotiated solutions, so they do not really count as absolutes.

Democracy by contrast is often absolutist, and often suffers from the weaknesses of absolutism. In fact I have posted several times about the incredibly high percentage of supposedly ‘democratic’ Republics set up in the last century that dissolved into painful dictatorships, with all the trappings of repression, civil war, and ethnic cleansing: within about twenty years. (Amusingly the only form of ‘Republic’ that lifts the average survival rates of republics any where near 40 years is the ‘People’s Republics’… otherwise known as Communist dictatorships.)

Democracy is a funny thing anyway. It is attempted in so many ways, and fails to be actually democratic in just about all of them.

Consider the ‘First Past the Post’ version which has seen the British Labour Party hold government for decades on about 20% of the total number of voters? (If only 60% vote, and the seats are biased to city centres so you only need half or a third the number of voters in cities, and those seats are safe Labour so only a fraction of the voters in those seats turn out, you quickly get to the situation where a Labour pollie needs only about 24,000 votes compared to 46,000 for a Conservative and 92,000 for a Lib-Dem.) In fact it is hard to see that First Past the Post is any more democratic than the older Rotten Boroughs they replace.

New Zealand’s half assed system where some pollies are elected directly and some come proportionally from a pool are even more suspect, because parties can ‘appoint’ - through the pool - people who no voter would ever elect.

Proportional representation may be a bit better, except that it means that the minor parties that do deals to swing their preferences to get the major parties elected can demand a disproportionate influence on policy in exchange for those preferences. So in Australia for instance, the Green Party – on an average of 8% of the vote or less, can use the threat of preference swaps to ensure that the ALP will not consider nuclear power, even though the majority of voters (and many in the ALP) are now clearly in favour of it.

There is also the problem with party based democracy, which leads to what Robrt Michels calls the Iron Law of Oligarchy. The current idea of replacing the appointed House of Lords with an elected one seems an ideal way to reduce representative democracy. Instead of appointments from all the best and most noble of proven performers in all areas of human culture – arts, sciences, religion, charity, business, unions, etc - the idea is to have another group of faceless nobodies selected in back rooms by the party machines. How appealing?

Yet the British, American, Australian and New Zealand systems at least have some safeguards built in to prevent absolute democracy from running wild. Pity those poor ‘republics’ set up since the world wars which have been abandoned to absolute democracy without safeguards. You know the ones, they are all those states in the world now suffering dictatorship, civil war, repression, genocide and ethnic cleansing. They were based on the Utilitarian ideal that 50.001% of the population should be allowed to legislate away the rights of the rest, and some smart-ass politician (Mussolini, Hitler, Mugabe, Chavez) quickly convinced the dumber voters to fall for this concept.

Democracy of course is not supposed to be a stable system. It is a safety valve component to good government, not a replacement for good government. (The most important part of the machine is rarely the bit that makes the most noise!) The Ancients knew this, and never even considered anything as stupid as absolute democracy. They only ever used democracy as a component of a more complex system. (The possible exception is when the ancient Athenians went through their most ‘democratic’ phase… the period of imperial expansion, massacres of city populations who refused to sign up, and the popularly approved murder of figures like Socrates who dared to say the mob was wrong.)

The first absolute democracy in modern history was France in the 1790’s, where race and sex didn’t matter to your vote. Of course this was a bloody dictatorship within mere months, collapsing into one of the most aggressive imperial dictatorships ever seen within a few years, but surely that was an aberration. Unless you compare it to what happened in Russia/Soviet Union, or Wiemar Republic/Nazi Germany, or China/Red China, or any Middle Eastern state called a Republic (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria – not that votes for women have ever been taken seriously through most of the Middle East), or almost all African and South American states called republics…

The United States likes to pretend that it was a democracy where “all men are created equal”, but even if we leave women out, there were still the issues of Yellow, Red or Black skinned ‘citizens’, or indeed indentured new immigrants, property franchises, etc. The United States was an extended franchise oligarchy for most of its history, and one with incredible complex safeguards against absolute democracy destroying the system or the rights of the people (or of the oligarchs at least).

The United States seems to have chosen a lot of its structure from the Serene Republic of Venice, which had lasted so incredibly long. Of course the reason it had lasted incredibly long was that the voting franchise was restricted to the small number of oligarchical families who had a vested interest in continuing the power structure. Of course there were also plentiful inputs from the Roman system, after all the United States needed a constitution that specifically justified the principles of slavery.
Unfortunately the founding father’s failed to note that the Roman Republic was based more on the Spartan system that lasted several hundred years, than on the Athenian ‘Republic’ that lasted - in bits and starts - for less than a century.

Sparta had a system of ‘democracy’ based on a free adult population of voters, including both male and female property holders. You can see why the American oligarchs were against that. The Athenian and Roman systems that treated women with contempt were clearly more attractive to Americans. Sparta also had ‘helots’ (closer to ‘serfs’) rather than slaves, so again American’s would clearly prefer Athenian slavery.

Sparta balanced the democratic component, already restricted to an oligarchy with a joint vested interest, with a pair of hereditary kings. This produced one of the most balanced and stable constitutions ever devised. (Pity that Spartan eugenics were a fatal cultural dead end.) Unfortunately, when copying the Spartan system, the Romans replaced the pair of hereditary kings with a pair of elected consuls with terms of only a year. The whole idea of a long-term perspective through a hereditary component was replaced with short-term infighting for power. Frankly, it is astonishing that the Roman Republic lasted for even a couple of hundred years before collapsing and becoming and Empire instead. (American’s take note – one little civil war should be considered an astonishingly light price to pay for such an unstable system… And that was way before anything resembling an almost universal franchise. The chance of remaining a democratic republic for more than a century or so seems slight. How many residents are already ‘illegals’ and a non-voting caste?)

American racism is particularly astonishing. I am always amused by the supposed liberality of the film ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner’. The black hero was supposed to be big in the UN, so why wouldn’t he and his white partner go and live in a civilized country like Belgium or Switzerland instead of a politically backward racist hellhole like the United States? It is STILL not allowed for blacks to be partnered with whites on American TV – whites or blacks with Asians or Hispanics yes, but with each other? (Actually I would be interested if anyone can give feedback samples of black and white pairing in main characters in any American show? British TV has no problem with it, and Europe is not far behind, but US?)

The fantasy that either the French universal franchise, or the American oligarchic one, achieved stability or desirable government respectively, is disastrous. Certainly the effect of trying to impose such systems on the illiterate peasant castes of the ‘freed’ European or American colonies and dependencies (whether African, Asian or Middle Eastern) is appalling, and simply invites a speedy and bloody dictatorship.

Absolute democracy simply means bread and circuses. In fact absolute democracy usually means eventual dictatorship, repression, ethnic cleansing or civil war. Only with appropriate safeguards can democracy be included in a stable government system. Otherwise democracy is simply one of the most dangerous and evil of all human inventions.

Christianity and the origins of science

2010-06-16T03:08:00.000-07:00

I attended a film society debate recently over the film “Collision - is Christianity good for the world”. It was a debate between Christopher Hitchins (failed dedicated Trotskyite now failing to make a convincing argument as a dedicated Atheist), and an American Pastor Douglas Wilson (with a background in Philosophy teaching). By the end of the film I thought of them as the fundamentalist hillbilly versus the fundamentalist rationalist: and, as usual, found any version of fundamentalism spurious, frightening, and completely unconvincing.

The film wasn’t very good, largely because it was presented as a glorified book tour rather than a rational debate. The title question was – eventually - summarized in a single throw away line by each protagonist near the end, leaving the main debate to be about religion in general rather than Christianity. The discussion of religion devolved into a simple debate about whether it was possible to have a moral code that was not based on religion.

Now all three questions could have been interesting if well handled. They weren’t. No evidence at all was presented about the effects of Christianity. No good debate was had on religion in general. (Possibly because Hitchins seemed to assume that all religion is approached with the blind fundamentalism of your average suicide bomber, and the pastor always diverted that to the issue of morality.) No good debate was held on morality, simply because Hitchins never answered any of the questions put to him.

Actually Hitchins was riding to a fall here. The Pastor could look him in the eye and say that he was arguing from faith, because faith was the premises of his position, and therefore he was being consistent. He constantly requested Hitchins give a rationalist or ‘scientific’ basis for morality consistent with Hitchens basing his approach on rationalism. He didn’t. (I would argue that he couldn’t, but I am open to being proved wrong here. Pity Hitchins didn’t even try.)

The debate after the film was lively, and several people made the point that Hitchins could have made some good arguments if he wasn’t blinded by his ‘faith’ in the obviousness of his position. Instead his responses were criticisms of Old Testament examples of cruelty and capriciousness that are perfectly justifiable criticisms: but presented in a way that sounded like a seven year old being outraged… “and besides, you’ve got a big nose”.

Possibly the best point that Hitchens made, was that the early Christian Fathers seriously debated whether they should start their new religion completely from scratch, rather than adopting all the package of Judaism and the old Testament God. Hitchens casual aside on the difficulties of making such an inconsistency acceptable, could have been the foundation for an excellent debate. Certainly the pastor he was debating seemed to have a struggle to avoid actually agreeing with him.

Yet here again, and there is an inherent inconsistency in Hitchens approach to world. He is an absolute believer in Darwinian evolution, and yet completely unwilling to accept human theological evolution.

My own presentations to school children on the development of religions for ancient cultures leans heavily on the concept of evolution of understanding. Because all religions start as an attempt to explain the natural world and its effect on human cultures, all religions tend to evolve around consistent patterns. Animism is the starting point for any culture which faces the most simple of issues, such as whether there will be enough rain and sun to allow the fertility amongst plants and animals which will allow the culture to survive and prosper. Animism automatically develops into Polytheism as the culture becomes more complex, develops new technologies, engages in trade, discovers exchange methods such as coinage, and comes into contact with other dangerous and aggressive tribes. Polytheism itself automatically develops into Monotheism when it becomes apparent that a group of capricious gods that must be negotiated with is not an adequate worldview to cope with yet more complex social interactions.

Interestingly many cultures have been very happy with Polytheism until their world faces radical upheaval. For the ancient Jews who invented the concept of Monotheism, it was disaster in Judea and slavery in Egypt which moved them forward. For the ancient Romans, it was the collapse of imperial power and the incursion of ever-increasing waves of barbarian raiders. For the myriad tribes who eventually became the Moslems, it was possibly inevitable result of centuries of repression and infighting. In each case, it was not a matter of finding a new god, but simply a reinterpretation of the old. Each tribal group began with Animism, moved on through Polytheism as their society developed more complexity, and finished with the last god standing amongst the polytheistic hierarchy becoming the new Monotheistic god. This process appears to be more of a reinterpretation of a people’s understanding of their god, rather than the adoption of a new religion. I would call it evolution of interpretation.

In practical terms though, we think of each stage in their development is being the adoption of a new form of religion. So I disagree completely with those who suggest that it is not possible that the early Christian Fathers could ignore the religion that Jesus of Nazareth came from in defining a new religion. Here I would suspect that Hitchens is correct in thinking that the adoption of Old Testament Judaism within the new Christian tradition was a short-term political mechanism that may well have proved more problematical in the long-term.

The interesting thing about the debate afterwards, was the repeated assertion by 'rationalists' that any form of religion could not have a rationalistic base. And given that they had already failed in any attempt to argue that the human species can develop a moral basis without religion, this is a highly suspect argument. In fact it is easier to argue, that rationalism could not have happened without monotheism, than it used to argue that morality could not have happened without religion.

The world of the Aniministic or Polytheistic religions, is the world of capricious and uncaring gods, who have no real reason to help the ‘monkey boys’ apart from some form of bribery or deal-making. Only with the arrival of a Monotheistic God do we achieve the concept of rational and consistent rules within the universe. In particular, the Christian God, who overthrew the fundamental flaws of Greek science, namely the principle that multiple gods means that there are no immutable laws, and that in fact “shit happens”. In fact it is clear that all the marvels of Greek observational science are in fact the main hindrance to development of modern science. For centuries reference to the mistaken perspectives of the ‘divine’ Galen and Platonic Realism concepts of astrology, held back the development of rational observation science. Contrary to popular belief, it was the scholarly establishments fixation with the Polytheistically limited worldview is of the Greek and Roman forebears, that prevented Bacon and Galileo from moving observational science forward faster. The Roman Catholic Church was always on the side of the concept that the revealed world in the Bible should be interpreted by the observed world around us. Those that argue that the Renaissance was brought on by the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman texts (which had never in fact been entirely lost), need to rethink their position on just how much of modern science is based on the overthrowing of those hidebound and limiting texts.

I came out of the debate convinced of two things. The first is that nobody has yet outlined a reasonable explanation of how the human species could have evolved a moral code with-out having gone through a process of religious conviction. Morality seems fundamentally based on a prospective which acknowledges some higher purpose, or an outside value that is greater than the individual. Humanity clearly evolved more effectively than other creatures largely on the basis of specializing in co-operative behaviour and teamwork. I would suggest that this was only possible because humanity had the capacity to envisage a greater good. I would therefore argue that the concept of religion was intrinsic to the concept of communication, co-operation, teamwork and out evolving other species. (I am currently seeking a good argument opposing this perspective. If anyone can suggest sources that can be more convincing than Kant, I would appreciate it.)

The second thing that became apparent from both the film and the discussion afterwards, is that supposedly rationalistic ‘scientists’ are operating almost entirely on faith when it comes to making arguments against things they do not like or do not understand. Personally I do not believe that it is possible to scientifically prove such concepts as a ‘good’, ‘truth’, ’just’, ‘moral’, or even ‘blue’ (though I have seen some interesting metaphysical arguments attempting to do so). I am well enough aware of the limitations of human understanding that I am happy to say that I have 'faith' that there can be such a thing as truth or justice. Metaphysical concepts are no more open to scientific proof than is the theory of the Big Bang. (Though if anybody would like to demonstrate some repeatable experiments on the Big Bang theory to me, I would be delighted to see their attempt. Then I would be greatly amused to point out that the process that they are proving is the one detailed in the book of Genesis.)

I was not actually particularly impressed with most of the points made by the pastor in the film, but I had to agree with him on the basic principle. He effectively said ‘my worldview is based on faith, which you have to disprove; but your world view is based on proof, and to suggest that you want me to take that on faith is inadequate’. The convener of the film group, a dedicated atheist, complained that Hitchens simply did not offer an alternative foundation of morality on which to base his claims. He felt that this was unacceptable, though obviously he hoped such a thing was possible. In the film Hitchens more or less conceded that he could not think of a way to do it given human history, but he actually suggested that we take it on faith that it might be possible. (An argument of despair familiar to all who have read the Marxist apologists – like Hitchins - in the last 50 years.)

As an historian, what amuses me most is the parallel with the previous times religions have gone through a renaissance. Reading the works of the Rationalists, Marxists, Dada-ists, and Deconstructionists, simply reminds me of the writings of those bemoaning the collapse of Roman civilization in their own time. I see parallels in the trials of Socrates for blasphemy. I hope that our understanding of religion is moving past the appalling mediaeval concepts of hierarchical church structures enforced by in fallible humans. In fact I look forward to the next stage of the human interaction with the great unknowable. I do not a moment believe that abandoning the idea that there is order and reason and great purpose, is anything but a dead end. Unrealistic though it seems, Hitchens and Dawkins and the other atheists may have as much effect on human history as their rationalistic Greek forebears, but their self-righteous arrogance seems unlikely to halt human evolution for long. I am not sure where the next stage of our understanding will take us, and but I am sure that this is not it.

Rating General Marshall

2010-05-26T01:16:00.000-07:00

General George Catlett Marshall was the US Army Chief of Staff from the day Hitler invaded Poland to the end of World War Two. He followed that with stints as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defence, which gave him at least equal public recognition, and, in the case of the Marshall Plan for economic aid to postwar Europe, possibly greater acclaim. But he never commanded a single soldier in combat. So can he be a great general?

Marshall was from an old Virginian family that considered itself middle class. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1901. He had postings around the US and the Philippines until sent to France in 1917, where he was a planner for both training and operations. He moved to Pershing’s headquarters to plan operations, including the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and develop an intimate relationship with the army’s demigod that was to help propel him to a rank partly invented for him. (One of the reasons the Americans adopted the term ‘General of the Army’ instead of using the universally accepted term, was because they didn’t want their first five star army officer to be called Field-Marshall Marshall.)

He switched between staff appointments and commanding barracks – usually for training commands - for most of the interwar period, but was jumped from a one star Brigadier to a four star General between June 30 and September 1 1939 (July and August were spent as a two star Major-General), to take over as Army Chief of Staff. This sort of promotion is unheard of in most other peacetime armies, and presumably either reflected superhuman abilities, or the right connections. Various biographers have suggested either alternative, with some suggesting it needed both.

As a result he was the only Allied Chief of Staff to hold office not just for the period that the US was in the Second World War, but for its entire length. Some of his biographers have used this to claim that he was therefore a greatly superior and greatly more experienced military leader than any of the others members of the CCOS. (Forest Pogue in his magisterial book Organizer of Victory – based on the title Churchill assigned to Marshall – said: “1943… Marshall was more than ever the pre-eminent figure on the military scene both at home and abroad… fast becoming first among equals in… CCOS meetings… the only one of the CCOS to have held his position since the day war in Europe began… more experience than any other military leader in finding resources for his own forces and America’s allies, for dealing with members of Congress, the President, and the general public.

This is an interesting interpretation of what makes a great general when compared to someone like the British CIGS Alan Brooke, who successfully commanded both corps and armies in battle, and army groups in the front line facing invasion, before becoming the professional head of the wartime service, where all but his worst enemies admired his undoubted abilities. I have always wondered what qualities of generalship some biographers put above practical experience in leading troops in combat? Indeed Marshall was certainly the most experienced Bureaucrat of the CCOS (possibly explaining why he got on so well with the equally bureaucratic Field Marshal Dill), but the pre-eminent ‘General’? Not as I understand the term.

So let us analyse the parts of his generalship.

He never led troops in battle, so there is considerable difficulty assessing his abilities compared to others in many regards. But some things can be said.

Personally he was a picture of Robustness for a staff officer, though he never had the stress of field operations. He was an immensely impressive Character, though he never had the chance to demonstrate whether he would be able to inspire troops at the front. He had considerable Humanity, though many would argue that his treatment of individual soldiers as simply replacement parts of a complex machine was not something to be proud of. He had great Spirit, but again never the chance to demonstrate he could infuse it into his troops. All these things appear positive, if un-measurable in combat.

Now for the negatives.

We can judge his Common Sense by what he tried to achieve, and how he responded to failure. Many of the training systems this so-called ‘training-expert’ set up, particularly the Individual Replacement System, were quite disastrous. His refusal to change the system cannot be considered a positive. When Brooke complained in North Africa of the inadequate training of American troops, particularly replacements, Marshall’s frustrated response was “at least they learn”, which was missing the point that the untrained replacements died in vast numbers through not getting a chance to learn. By the end of the war many American units were a weakened conglomeration of tired experienced survivors who were close to breaking (if not actively deserted in their tens of thousands), mixed in with constant levies of poorly trained cannon fodder with a very short life expectancy – often only two or three days. Most of the failures of the common soldier in the American Army in the Second World War can be traced directly to this system.

His ability as a Mentor is also deeply questionable. He managed to pick at least as many failures as successes amongst the generals he appointed to high office, with particular examples like Fredendall (of whom he said “One of the best”… “I like that man, you can see determination all over his face”…); and Lucas, failing miserably in battle. Many of his other choices were highly questionable (Clark and Hodges will be other posts), and some like Lee (Eisenhower’s logistics commander in France and another post), were indefensible. He, like Auchinleck, showed a distressing willingness to stick by proven failures, and to refuse to dismiss them no matter what. At the very best he was only average in this category.

Because he never led troops, ever, his Operational abilities can only be judged on what we can gather from his suggestions and orders to others. What they reveal is a man too far removed from the realities of the front line.

Planning, like training, was supposed to be a specialty of Marshall’s, and indeed here he deserves the greatest praise. He converted an army of a few hundred thousand into a force of 8 million, and more or less made it work. Unfortunately the bureaucratic achievement is somewhat undermined by the practical results. The plan had been for over 200 divisions, not the 90 he finished with. The plan had been for a brilliant inter-operability of troops, not the frantic conversions to plug gaps that became necessary in France. The plan had been for the best equipment, not to make the barely adequate stuff available in 1942 (tanks and anti-tank guns spring to mind here) hang on in service until it was completely outclassed. The plan was to create an unsurpassed military force, not a barely average one reliant on willingness to take almost unlimited casualties to make gains. As a mastermind of expansion, Marshall was excellent: but the devil is in the detail, and the detail looks decidedly less impressive.

Logistics is an area where Americans pride themselves. Pity Marshall never understood it very well. Not in terms of producing the correct equipment, and not in terms of improving the speed and reliability of its transport. Certainly he (and Roosevelt) created vast quantities of materials, but a surprising amount of American production was obsolete even as it was being produced. The British had an excuse for continuing to produce 2 pounder anti-tank guns instead of the 6 pounder replacements they knew were needed in 1940 and 1941… they were facing imminent invasion. The Americans had no excuse for producing tens of thousands of outdated tanks and aircraft in 1943, and 1944, which just went into storage. The P39 Airocobra for instance, supposedly an air superiority fighter, had been declared obsolete by the British for European operations even before Pearl Harbour, and thereafter was used in Europe largely as ground attack aircraft by minor allies like co-belligerent Italy, Poland and even Portugal. It was nonetheless kept in production until July 1944, with a large number of the planes produced being crated and stored (though about a third went to the Russians who actually had a combat environment that suited them). Certainly GI’s watching ‘Tommy-Cooker’ British Sherman’s - at least equipped with 17 pounders that could stop any German tank - had reason to wonder why they were still using ‘Ronson-lighter’ Sherman’s, with short barreled 75mm guns that fired shells that bounced off. Marshall got a huge force into action with a lot of equipment. Pity so much of the force and the equipment was sub-standard.

More importantly Marshall never really understood the significance of opening the Mediterranean, no matter how often the shipping figures were shown to him. This theoretically could be considered a single minded, if misguided, pursuit of the most direct approach to attacking Germany from Britain: until one remembers that he was just as keen on getting supplies to China along the most lengthy and difficult supply line in the world. The lack of consistency implies that this was another area he failed to understand very well.

Topography and Movement. Again, the American military is very big on map-reading. Marshall was very big on it himself, and rightly pointed out that mountainous Italy was hardly a ‘soft underbelly’. (Though Churchill of course meant politically not geographically.) Yet his other efforts at long distance map reading from Washington are somewhat dubious. He was against British plans to invade North Africa through ports further into the Med because he preferred the ‘safer’ Atlantic Coast. (Luckily the normal swell which would have ruined the Morroccan attack was quite that particular day). Why he felt that troops who needed the ‘safety’ of distance from the Axis in North Africa, would be better suited to a head on attack on veteran German forces in France, is a mystery. Yet in both North Africa and France he then planned nice straight lines of attack in complete disregard of terrain. He argued against a campaign in mountainous northern Italy, and then supported Eisenhower’s plan to advance into the forests and mountains of Southern Germany instead of along the North Sea coastal plain. Then consider his favoured ‘hump’ route for supplies to China. There is little to demonstrate that he had above average understanding of topography or movement.

Tactics. Again, Marshall never commanded troops in battle, but he did suggest lots of ideas to his field commanders, so we can get some idea of his grasp of tactics. The best revelations are probably in the book ‘Dear General’ which runs through Eisenhower’s correspondence with his mentor. The editor himself comments that Eisenhower starts as a supplicant, but gradually grows more willing to argue with his mentor. By the end there is a feeling of exasperation from Ike when Marshall suggests clearly ridiculous things like dropping an airborne corps into France far from the chance of possible relief. Combined with his clear failure to understand the problems of invasions, we cannot rate Marshall’s tactical understanding very high.

Combined Operations are actually a particular problem for Marshall. The great proponent of an invasion in 1942 or 1943 admits in1944 that apparently a worldwide lack of Landing Ship - Tanks might be an issue (while commenting that he had hardly heard of the things a year ago).

Marshall scores somewhat better in Command abilities, but again there is always the suggestion that his Olympian perspective from Washington is far too remote from the realities at the front. He was a firm believer in good clear instructions, and his Clarity can only be admired when it comes to administrative matters. (When it comes to what he would like to happen on the battlefield however, some of his more optimistic orders to Eisenhower and Stillwell sound about as convincing as Hitler’s orders to von Paulus at Stalingrad.)

He was excellent at Delegation within the Pentagon, and no underling ever doubted that attempting to stretch or thwart his orders would bring down the wrath of God. Good people were encouraged, bad disciplined. But again there are questionable examples such as letting his administrative generals get away with unsavoury behaviour like bugging British officers they didn’t like. More worryingly, it is clear that he let distance affect his control. Again, it is unlikely General ‘Jesus-Christ-Himself’ Lee would have got away with a quarter of what he did in France if Marshall had been close enough to see what was happening. In fact this is the most concerning part of his delegation. Why didn’t any of his own people, in his own hierarchy, tell him what was going on. Or why did he ignore any who did? How much did he ignore feedback that didn’t meet his preconceptions?
There is no doubt that Marshall was excellent at relations with his political master, as long as you only include Roosevelt on that list. It is not clear that he ever understood that in the sort of coalition he was in, the political masters of the CCOS included the Prime Minister of the equal partner. (Having said that, Dill was better at relations with Roosevelt than with Churchill too: but then Roosevelt rarely actually consulted or really listened the way Churchill interacted with his generals.)

Marcshall also tried quite hard to be good at Relations with allies and other services. Certainly he was outstandingly superior to Admiral King in this regard, though the somewhat junior Chief of the Army Air Force, General Arnold, was even better. Yet he expressed constant frustration with others - British, French, Poles, even Canadians - for not seeing things his way. Eventually he let this frustration overflow into ignoring requests that he didn’t feel were important, and encouraging Eisenhower and MacArthur to do as they saw fit regardless of the opinions of his fellow CCOS, or of their host governments.

Perhaps this would have been reasonable, had Marshall demonstrated that his Strategic sense was superior to that of his Allies. But he never showed much in the way of ability in this regard. His frustration with his allies came down to the fact that he simply wanted to invade Germany by the shortest route as quickly as possible. He wanted to hit the northern French beaches in 1942, or at least 1943, and always believed that anything else was a frustrating diversion. He never agreed with clearing North Africa first. He never desired to go to the effort of knocking Italy (and her large army and navy) out of the war. He never understood the implications of clearing the Mediterranean on Allied shipping and troop movements. He never believed that there was any need to tie down dozens of good German divisions in Italy, the Balkans and Southern France. He never understood that Allies arriving over beaches in France could not possibly build up faster than Germans arriving by train (unless the German army was weakened and their communications shattered – something certainly beyond Allied ability in 1942 and probably also in 1943). He never agreed that American troops might need a little battle hardening in nice remote locations like North Africa or Sicily or Italy before facing the Germans in an attempted rampage across northern France. He never acknowledged the many failures of these troops (and some of his handpicked generals) in North Africa and Italy. He never even recognized that he simply was not sending enough troops towards Europe fast enough to make an earlier invasion anything but an assault against superior numbers. (Though he contributed to this by his constant collusion with King that if France was not going to be invaded right now, they could put off new forces so they could do more in the Pacific.) He supported Eisenhower’s ‘broad front’ strategy in France, even after the German army collapsed and a Blitzkrieg was a genuine alternative.

He believed in the value of the Chinese, regardless of all evidence. He trusted the Russians, regardless of all evidence. He opposed Churchill’s first attempt to save the Greek islands, and was unhappy about the second, successful attempt, to save Greece itself from the communists. He agreed with Eisenhower’s decision not to advance to Berlin, or even into Czechoslovakia. He supported the planned invasion of Japan even though he knew that the Japanese wanted to surrender. He agreed to the decision to drop the Atomic bombs, possibly mainly because he had finally realized that the Russians were untrustworthy.

Here we overlap into the realm of Geopolitics, and this is definitely one of Marshall’s weak areas. He apparently believed wars were for military victory, not to achieve political goals. He seemed to honestly think that once the enemies were defeated, the Allies would have a nice chat and agree to things. He was dragged kicking and screaming behind British moves to save Greece and Trieste and Denmark, and managed to prevent them saving Czechoslovakia. He then went to post war China and almost single handedly (according to McCarthy and even – much to Marshall’s shock - Eisenhower), handed over China to the Communists – leading to a domino chain in North Korea, Vietnam and Burma, and a long civil war in Malaya. In fact Marshall’s contribution to the postwar strategic situation was more to provide a firm foundation for the Cold War, rather than to contribute to a new Golden Age. That is as true when he was Secretary of State or Secretary of Defence as when he was COS.

The summary of all this would suggest that Marshall was a good administrator, but not a good general. I suppose it is possible that had he remained a two star and commanded a division or corps early in the war before progressing to three star - preferably under a particularly good mentor - he might have developed into a reasonable army commander, but this seems doubtful. He simply lacked Operational skills across the board. He certainly failed to understand equipment requirements. His correct place was certainly as a staff officer, and here he was certainly one of the best of the war. The mistake (common to most armies) was in thinking that a good staff officer makes a good executive commander. (See Churchill appointing Dill, Dill appointing Percival, Canadian PM King appointing Crerar, Stalin appointing Voroshilov, or Togo appointing Mutaguchi.)

Marshall was an impressive man of great character, but probably lacked the skills to have made a good frontline leader. He was a brilliant administrator and bureaucrat, possibly the ideal person to expand an army: but not a good CIC, and certainly needed someone to over-rule his stubbornness on such disastrous decisions as the Individual Replacement System and mass production of outdated equipment. He was a very poor choice to help design global strategy, and Brooke was probably right to wish he had the vainglorious MacArthur (who he considered to be both strategically and geopolitically excellent) in Washington instead. Marshall’s limited military viewpoint missed the whole point of why nations fight wars, with dire consequences for future generations.

In summary Marshall is in the same category as Dill. A great man, a noble man, a brave man, but completely out of his depth in the wrong job. Marshall, as the strategic voice of the United States, failed completely either to shorten the war (his personal goal), or to leave the world better placed for peace afterwards (the goal of a truly professional national military commander).

Integration - why national attitudes change over time.

2010-05-16T01:29:00.000-07:00

Yet another commentator recently boasted about the superiority of the American integration experience for new immigrants. The point they made is that, theoretically at least, immigrants come to a better life, and are therefore delighted to be integrated. Strangely I remember reading similar comments by European commentators writing 60 years ago, and we can all see where that led. So is it a genuine claim?

One of the presentations my company does for school groups is called 'Three Medieval Cultures', and compares the Medieval experiences of the Latin’s (Western Europe), the Muslims, and the Japanese. Theoretically this is pretty easy, because they all have easily defined Classical, Medieval, and Modern periods in their cultures. In practice direct comparison is almost impossible, because the Medieval periods are at such different times that they hardly overlap at all.

For the Latin’s, the Medieval period of their history goes approximately from the fall of Rome in 476 AD, to the rise of the printing press that turbocharged the Renaissance in the 1440’s – about a thousand years. For the Japanese, it is probably from the rise of the Shogunate in 1192 to the Meiji restoration in 1867 – about 700 years. For the Muslims it is possibly from end of the Sultanate in 998 to the ‘retirement’ of the feudal Sipahi class of cavalrymen in 1828 – though it would be fair to argue that large parts of the Muslim world may well still be feudal.

The affect of these disparate dates is a serious of lovely quotes that reveal very little. In the mid C9th for instance, Arab geographer Ibn Khordadbeh referred to Europe as a source of: “eunuchs, slave girls and boys, brocade, beaver skins, glue, sables and swords” and not much more. He was a classical Muslim scholar - at the peak of their cultural attainments - looking at the Dark Ages in the West. Nine hundred years later Western traders – well into their Modern period - were making similar comments about the Medieval Muslim cultures they were passing on their way to Medieval Japan.

Which just goes to show that comparisons between national outlooks should probably pay a little attention to where they are in their national, and nationalistic, cycles.

I am a proponent of the idea that modern Empires have not so much ‘collapsed’ as been abandoned by voters unwilling to pay their costs. For all that the British Empire was weakened by the Great War, careful modern assessments reveal that it was making major economic comebacks in the interwar period. In which case the argument of the economic historians that it was too weakened by the Second World War to hold on to Empire seems a bit hindsight driven. (I will do a more detailed post on this later.)

In fact the postwar British Labour government was intent on abandoning Empire ASAP, and was heartily supported by the majority of the voters. (Which led to the indecent haste of abandoning not only cultures more or less ready for independence in the ongoing pattern of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, India, Ceylon, Malaya, Singapore, Malta, etc; but also cultures not nearly ready for it like Burma, Zimbabwe, Aden, Palestine, and many other violent and repressive states that have spent their time since as nasty dictatorships indulging in ethnic cleansing.) Despite what bad economic historians might think, this was at least as much political preference as it was economic necessity.

The comparison is easy to see. The United States left Korea half occupied largely because the cost of a full liberation was too high - economically and politically. A few years later the United States walked out on a war it probably could have won in Vietnam, because the voters would no longer stand for it. More recently it has taken lies about ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to get the voters to allow the removal of some of the nastier dictators and repressive regimes of human history in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact the voter apathy is so great that there is virtually no chance of an intervention even to stop the bloodbaths of ethnic cleansing throughout Africa. (The Balkans may have been a last gasp of American willingness to do something just because it was ‘right’.)

Western Imperialism certainly had it’s faults, but it did stomp pretty firmly on Thuggee and Slavery and Headhunting asd Sati. Pity that the moral superiority that allowed the average voter to support such measures has evolved into a squeamish-ness that argues that people should be allowed to repress women and indulge in genital mutilation, child rape and ethnic cleansing if that is a traditional part of their - obviously equally valuable - culture.

So I can see very clear parallels between the attitudes towards ‘imperial adventures’ amongst modern Americans as there were amongst postwar (or even interwar) Briton’s. Which makes me suspect that the United States might be due for a rude awakening on it’s approach to ‘integration’ as well.

Europe has spent the last sixty years decrying its traditions. Nationalism is out. Patriotism is out. Duty to help the less fortunate is way out… if they are foreign at least. Instead there is a namby-pamby pastiche of feel-good phrases about multicultural futures and all-inclusive societies. The end effect of which appears to be that new Immigrant children can’t find anything of their new host society to be proud of, or even interested in. Instead they turn back to their cultures of origin for inspiration, with the effect that second and third generation Muslims in Europe are far more radical, and far less integrated, than their parents who have actually experienced the systems they were escaping. The results do not look good for social cohesion in the future.

The United States might like to think it is different, but the reality is that although it was a century behind the rest of the trends in the West at the start of last century, it is catching up rapidly. The US was one of the last Western states to abandon slavery. The US was the last (non-Nazi) Western State to try and claim a right to conquor land from its neighbours – both ‘natives’, and European imports like Canada and Mexico. (I will discount those states fighting over historical border disputes like France and Germany over Alsace-Lorraine in the Great War). The US was also a late starter in overseas imperialism, only getting seriously into it with the occupation of Hawaii, the forced treaties on Japan and China, and the conquest of Spanish possessions Central America’s and Asia. The US was one of the very last to give all citizens the vote (as long as you don’t count Puerto-Ricans as citizens in which case it still hasn’t).

All these things came well behind the patterns of Western states in Europe, or even of other planted Western colonies like Canada and Australia. But each time gap has been shorter. And the psychological component of the ‘Imperial Overstretch’ gap has been shortest of all. It lasted only a few decades between the triumphalism of America making the world safe for democracy in 1945, and it’s first failure at the fall of Saigon. By Gulf-War 1 in 1991, the Americans wanted other people to pay for them to fight. A decade later they were unwilling to go at all without a ‘coalition of the willing’. By now, the names Zimbabwe, Somalia and Darfur are carefully avoided in Congress.

How far behind these developments can a social integration problem be? All the European nations were excellent social integrators when they were in their colonial frontier periods. Look at the lovely fusion of Norman nobles with Anglo-Saxon and then Welsh and Scottish peoples in Britain. (It would be fair to say the Irish never integrated into Britain properly… Signs don’t look too promising for Irish integration in Europe just at the moment either…) Look at the disparate tribes and settlers who now make up the French, German, Spanish and even Polish states. Lots of land and lots of opportunity leads to lots of integration. But the stresses of population density and lack of opportunity have the same affect on modern Europe as they did in the time of overpopulation before the Great Famine and Black Death that halved the European population in the fourteenth century. (Allowing another round of ‘integration’ to be achieved.) Then look at the nationalism and violence and ethnic cleansing that follows many a financial crisis brought on by overpopulation and lack of opportunity. (Consider the timing of the various Pogroms against the Jews in parts of Europe.)

The United States still has a few frontiers in places like Alaska, but pretty much only in the way that Britain could export the restless younger sons to the Empire in the 1800’s. Places like California are not far behind New York in their path to European density and lack of opportunity for unskilled newcomers. The days of the average illiterate refugee making their fortunes, are a long way behind the US in states like New Hampshire or Pennsylvania. Lack of opportunity alone will cramp the integration dream.

More importantly though, the US has been advancing along the path to an ideal small ‘s’ socialist state quite quickly. (See Obama’s Healthcare plan.) With that has come the whole baggage of an intellectual and educational class more disparaging of American culture than supportive of it. They have not yet achieved the dominance they have in more ‘advanced’ cultures like Europe and the other Dominions, but they are not far off it. Inevitably the new immigrants are going to start getting the same educational experience of ‘what is there to be proud of’ as those in Europe. It may not be common in the US yet, but it is already the dominant position in certain Democrat voting states.

Fortunately the vast majority of new immigrants are apparently arriving in non-Democrat voting states. (Or perhaps there is a cause and effect here… consider voting patterns over time and look which states have moved from Democrat to Republican… hmm…) Places like Texas are moving forward precisely because they still consider themselves to be frontier economies, and are acting as though such ‘integrate by opportunity’ rules are still applicable. By contrast to the states who are trying to legislate an ‘equality’ based on fanciful ideas (and in a way that emphasises the advantages of NOT integrating), there is a chance that states like Texas can hold the dysfunctional integration tide back a bit longer.

On the other hand I heard just today a very good and entertaining talk by a Marxist (yes there are still people who call themselves that!) called Terry Eagleton (a Professor, naturally... of English Literature, unsuprisingly...) on radio. He made the delightful comment that listening to Americans go on about ‘God and Country’ (in their best impersonation of a pompous Victorian middle class English twat) just makes jaded Europeans stare at their shoes and hope it will stop soon.

If historical patterns are anything to go by, it probably will.

Rating General Dill

2010-05-12T04:22:00.000-07:00

Field Marshall Sir John Dill commanded a corps in France during the phoney war, and was then recalled to be assistant CIGS (Chief of Imperial General Staff) just before the German Blitzkreig. He took over as CIGS after Dunkirk, and spent a turbulent year and a half as Churchill’s senior army adviser during the period of the war when Britain and her Commonwealth and Empire had no other allies, and Britain herself was facing invasion. Later he became the head of the British delegation to the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCOS) in Washington, until his death from illness later in the war. He was one of the most important figures in Allied policy making from mid 1940 to 1944, and no major decision during that period was made without his input.

Dill was greatly admired by many in the British army, and even such luminaries as his successor General Alan Brooke considered him to have one of the best minds in the business. His contribution to Allied co-ordination was unsurpassed, and he became the foundation that made the CCOS work reasonably well during 1942 and 1943. (I would argue that it was fairly dysfunctional by 1944, and almost completely unable to agree on anything of moment by 1945.) He was respected, even loved by the American Chiefs of Staff, who were the pallbearers at his funeral. Marshall was shocked by his death, and never communicated as well with his allies, or even his fellow American Chiefs of Staff, after the loss of Dill’s influence as a linchpin to the co-operative process. (He was also the secret supplier to Marshall of copies of Roosevelt’s communications with Churchill, information that was usually a surprise – often an unpalatable one - to Marshall and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff.)

He was a scholar, a gentleman, a great mind, a huge contributor to Allied victory, and a generally impressive human being. But he was not a particularly great general.

Between the wars he had been a brilliant staff officer, but that rarely makes for a good battlefield leader. Between the wars he had been a superlative head of the Staff College, and an excellent mentor of future generals, but he was considerably less successful as a mentor of his field commanders after he became CIGS. Between the wars he had proven a good judge of talented officers, but as CIGS he repeatedly appointed officers who were not the best candidates available. Before the war he had been considered and excellent strategist, but as CIGS he made some of the worst strategic mistakes of the war. As a communicator and negotiator with allies he was quite excellent, but he was less successful at communicating with his own government, and hopeless with Churchill in particular. In short, he failed in many of his most important tasks of a general, and particularly of a head of the army.

Dill was a frontline commander, but only during the Phoney war. He never got the chance to lead his corps into battle, and never held another active command thereafter. We cannot be sure that he would have been a poor battlefield leader, but we can point to the general negativity of his overall approach as a corps commander, and compare him un-favourably to more active and positive leaders of the time. Despite him commanding the cream of the professional British divisions in 1st corps, his training and exercises regime looks less impressive compared to that of Brooke’s 2nd corps. It is probable that he would have been a calm leader in a crisis, and a good planner. It is less likely that he would have been quick to react to crisis, and frankly hard to imagine that he could be inspiring to his troops. Much as fellow generals loved him for his private qualities, the average soldier would have found him mild, cerebral, and ultimately remote… hardly an inspirational leader.

As CIGS he failed to master either his army, or his relationship with his political masters. Both aspects can possibly be fairly described using Churchill’s description of him as ‘Dill-Dally’. He took over from the clearly unsuited General Ironside at the time of Dunkirk, but although he was clearly intellectually superior, he was to prove not greatly superior as a leader. He was perhaps lucky that his main field commanders, the redoubtable Brooke as CIC home (read anti-invasion) forces, and the impressive Wavell in the Middle East: were hardly needful of his assistance. However it is notable that he had not chosen them himself, and that he failed to smooth their communications with Churchill. The generals he did choose for higher command were possibly not so impressive. He was the one who chose Percival for Malaya for instance, on the completely incorrect premise that a good staff officer would cover the deficiencies of inadequate troops.

The most dire of his inputs to the war effort however, was probably the decision to abandon the successful campaign in North Africa in favour of a disastrous mission to Greece. Admittedly Churchill had been a keen advocate before sending Dill and Eden to look at the situation on the ground, but Churchill’s final communications insisted that the risk should not be taken unless it was clearly going to be effective. The Greek leadership and generals were definitely against the idea, but an unfortunate death at the top level allowed Dill and Eden to carry the new Greek leader with them in their excitement, and the fateful decision was made.

Theoretically the idea of commitment to supporting an ally fighting against the Axis was a noble cause. There is certainly an argument that abandoning yet another ally without attempting to help them would not help the war effort and the attitude of prospective future allies. However the simple fact of the situation is that the North African campaign had destroyed much of the Italian army, and certainly undermined the will of the remainder to resist. Brooke wrote scornfully in his diary about failing to finish one job before rushing off to another. Just imagine if North Africa had been cleared in 1941 rather than 1943? Would Singapore have fallen? Would Italy have dropped out of the war in 1942? Would the clearing of Mediterranean shipping routes – saving millions of tons of shipping via the longer routes around Africa - have vastly sped the war? Would the invasion of France have happened in 1943? Would the combined Anglo-American fleet, not needed in the Med, and now operating from Singapore, have defeated the Japanese navy in 1943 or 1944? Would the war have been over quicker and less painfully? (Another sample by-product is that Rommel had landed in Libya with only a single battalion of German troops at the time that the British were planning their final conquest… Rommel a POW in 1941!) Aren’t ‘what if’s’ fun?

By the end of 1941 Churchill had lost faith in ‘Dilly-Dally’ and replaced him with Brooke, who was to be a much more impressive CIGS. Unfortunately Pearl Harbour happened almost immediately, and Brooke managed to save Dill from exile to India by convincing Churchill to use him as Britain’s representative to the Americans.

Many have been impressed by Dill as the linchpin of the CCOS, and he certainly did a spectacular job of herding such disparate elements as Brooke, Marshall, King, Pound, Churchill and Roosevelt, in approximately the same direction. But I would not go so far as to use the hackneyed phrase “no one else could have done it” which is so loosely applied to many generals who were clearly not uniquely gifted. In fact I would go so far as to suggest that Brooke probably regretted his suggestion of Dill as soon as he realized the implications.

Churchill and Dill agreed to a CCOS, which would be based in Washington. Brooke was scathing, and described this as “selling our birthright”. The fact that Dill, through his own efforts, more or less made it work, for a while, is not enough to call the result a success. (When I was studying my MBA I liked to quote from the CCOS records as an example of how NOT to run a planning committee.) Any discussion of the efforts of the CCOS concentrates on the endless battles over policy. Any assessment of the results admits to half-baked compromises. Any objective analysis should note that by 1944 the process had broken down to the point where separate wars were being run in different theatres with little regard to common strategy. (The Pacific was an American War. The South Pacific was MacArthurs baby – even his Australian hosts were not getting any say. India/Burma was all British. China was just a mess. The Mediterranean was pretty much a British game – even the US general Clarke realized he needed British support to buck his American superiors. In France Eisenhower was supposed to be an Allied commander, but by late 1944 he was ignoring anyone but Marshall, and a dying Roosevelt enabled Marshall to ignore his British ‘allies’.) Ultimately the CCOS was not a pretty sight. Ultimately the half-baked post war ‘peace’, with Eastern Europe behind an Iron Curtain and China and Burma on their way to Communist takeover, with endless other wars in Asia and the Middle East ahead, was a result of this approach.

As another ‘what if’, let us look at the alternative to Dill in America. The most likely candidate to be Churchill’s (and therefore the British Chiefs of Staffs’) representative to Roosevelt and the American Joint Chiefs would have been Admiral Mountbatten. A similarly charming and incisive deal-maker. Just as impressive to the Americans, but far more junior to the British. As head of mission, he would have been brilliant, but certainly that mission would not have been considered a CCOS. As a linchpin between the two nations he would have achieved quite different results to those of Dill, but probably not inferior ones. In fact, in the game of politics Mountbatten was head, shoulders, knees and toes above Dill. He could, and did, wrap Churchill and Roosevelt, and Marshall and even King, around his little finger during the course of the war. It is fascinating to imagine how the world would have looked had Churchill chosen his preferred candidate for such a role, instead of reluctantly accepting Brooke’s insistence on using Dill. (It is fascinating to wonder if Brooke later wistfully considered the same thing?)

I would go so far as to suggest that Dill’s greatest failure was on the CCOS. Certainly he was the linchpin that held it together as long as it more or less functioned, and certainly his death pretty much ended its effectiveness. But without his initial input and availability, it would probably not have been attempted in that form. Without his constant toil, different solutions would have had to be found. Without his compromises, less frustrations would have been felt by both sides. Without his narrow focus, a more broadly based strategy might have been possible. Instead of the ultimate in Chateau-Generalship from the back-seat barrackers in Washington, each front would have had a specific goal agreed between the allies, with specific tasks assigned and a specific Allied Chief of Staff put in charge. Without Dill muddying the waters, the Allies might have had to agree a proper strategy. Debates would have been resolved, rather than drag on for year after year until all trust had been lost, and until all willingness to co-operate completely vanished. (Consider Eisenhower’s attitude to the British demand to save Prague, Wavell’s attitude to American pressure over Indian independence, or King’s attitude to anyone not USN in the Pacific.)

Dill was an impressive person, of great integrity, and with great commitment. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he worked himself to death trying to make the CCOS work. Unfortunately it might be fair to say that he killed himself feeding the cuckoo that was disrupting the nest. Within a few months all his efforts seemed as ashes to world strategy and agreement between the Allies. (Within months King refused to talk to anyone, and Admiral Cunningham - British naval representative - had to resort to calling a full meeting of the CCOS just to get into his presence. Soon after that, with Roosevelt dying, even a full meeting was not reaching agreement over points of dispute, and Marshall was telling Eisenhower to ignore all input from any of the other ‘Allies’.)

Dill never had a chance to demonstrate his battlefield abilities, but that may have been a good thing. He never impressed as CIGS, and almost certainly deserved being sacked for the disasters of North Africa, Greece, and Malaya, which he put in train. He gave his all into attempting to make something workable of a fundamentally flawed CCOS, and left behind a mortally wounded hybrid. The total input of this brave and noble man into the Allied war effort was possibly almost completely negative, even after he became just a cog in the Allied machine. When he was an executive himself, as CIGS, he failed dismally.

Rating General Claude Auchinleck

2010-05-10T03:06:00.000-07:00

General (later Field Marshall) Sir Claude Auchinleck (see the link for a comprehensive career outline) is one of the most interesting generals of the Second World War. Many of his devotees would claim he is one of the most under-rated. But he is an excellent example of why it is difficult to assume that just because a general is good at one level, he can also be good at another. In fact he is the classic example of a general who excelled at two widely separate levels of command, while failing miserably at the intermediate levels.

Auchinleck followed the classic route to high command of British generals. Military family; graduated into Indian Army just before the Great War; fought through the war in difficult and challenging roles; came out highly respected, held staff appointments and studied and later taught at Staff Colleges; received his first important independent command in the late thirties, etc. The main difference being that his Great War experience was in the wildly fluctuating campaigns in modern Iraq, with their vastly different highs and lows to anything experienced in trench warfare. He started and finished the war involved in mobile warfare, even if he fought trench campaigns in the middle.

In World War Two he had the unique distinction of being the only Indian Army officer called to England to command an entirely British corps. He led it in the brief campaign in Norway without having a chance to demonstrate much that was either good or bad in the way of his own abilities. He then commanded a corps, and later an entire ‘Command’ in Southern England during the Nazi invasion scare, before returning to India to become CIC.

His energetic reaction to the Iraqi crisis brought him to the attention of Churchill just as Wavell was demonstrating increased exhaustion in the Middle East command, and the decision to swap the two commanders is another example of Churchill’s flying by the seat of his pants approach. (And another example of the poor influence that General Dill had on developments during his tenure as CIGS – the abandonment of the victorious campaign in North Africa, the disaster of the Greek campaign, the foolish appointment of Percival to the vital Malayan command, and this decision - all being standouts. But Dill will be another post.)

Auchinleck did some brilliant work in the North African campaign. Foremost amongst his efforts was that he twice fought Rommel’s army to a standstill, despite each time taking over what looked like a defeated army at the last minute to achieve such stunning results. Indeed his Tactical ability during Crusader and First Alamein is the foundation for the claims that he was an extraordinary battlefield general. In that sense at least, his supporters are right to think that he stood well above the vast majority of more famous Allied commanders from later in the war. Certainly men like Marshall and Dill, Eisenhower and Wavell, Bradley and Alexander, Clarke and Cunningham, etc: didn’t have more than a fraction of his battlefield sense. He was certainly one of the pre-eminent army commanders of the war. Rommel himself despaired of outmanoeuvring or outfighting someone of his ability, even after having stripped his predecessors in those battles of their numerical superiority. Auchinleck was the embodiment of Robustness, Character, Humanity and Spirit. His Topography, Movement, Tactics and Combined Operations were apparently superior even to Rommel’s. He was unarguably a first class battlefield general.

Unfortunately it was not his job to be a battlefield general. He was in the Middle East to be the commander in chief, not to fight in the field. More importantly, the only reason he had to take over the army in the field twice, was because the men he had appointed to command it had failed… twice. General Cunningham, despite having demonstrated ability in the East African campaign against the Italians in Ethiopia, proved himself exhausted during Operation Crusader, and had to be replaced when he effectively had a mental collapse. Possibly Auchinleck could not have expected such a collapse, but it does reveal a poor choice … regardless of the reason.

The successor Auchinlek appointed to command the Western Desert army - after winning the battle himself - was a relatively junior staff officer with no battlefield command experience of large formations. He was actually inferior in rank to his corps commanders. Ritchie was not a bad general, just a bad appointment at this particular time. Certainly Auchinleck did not help him with the lack of Clarity of his instructions. (In fact the CIGS, Alanbrooke, was furious at how Auchinleck ‘damaged’ Ritchie’s progression, and brought him home after his sacking to learn the corps command position properly. He was later to serve in the invasion of France and Germany as a very good corps commander.) Ritchie’s inexperience and lack of control of his sub-commanders made him fairly easy pickings for Rommel’s next attack. Again Auchinlek stepped in – almost too late – to save the day. But again a bad choice had been revealed.

Some argue that Auchinleck, as an Indian army officer, simply knew too little about his British army contemporaries. This is dubious. The truth is that he was attracted to positive sounding ideas men regardless of the sense of their ideas. His staff officers include Dorman-Smith and Corbett, both of whom fizzed with ideas, and both of whom were considered completely unsound (if not actually insane) by most of their contemporaries. Poor Delegation. The problem was he stayed loyal to people even after they had proved they needed replacing, and apparently relied on his own abilities to save the situation if required. Poor Command technique. Perhaps that might have been better if he was a more involved Mentor of those he was working with, but repeated failures suggest that this was not one of his strengths either.

In addition his attraction to new experimental ideas meant that he was constantly undermining the advances made by his troops in training and technique by splitting them into ‘Jock columns’ to stir the enemy up. Undoubtedly the jock columns worked, but perhaps in the same way that Wingate’s Chindits worked later, with too much effort, and far too much cost to regular units, while achieving marginal results against the enemy. Poor Common-Sense?

Sacking Auchinlek as CIC Middle East was one of Churchill’s better decisions. (As was finally dividing the vast Middle Eastern theatre into a North African and a Persia/Iraq command to face different German threat axis.) But appointing him to return as CIC India a year later was an even better decision.

The key element to Auchinleck was that he was respected, even loved, by most who knew him. The Indian army as a whole trusted him completely, and would work for him better than for probably anyone else. Even Indian politicians respected him immensely, which is why it is possibly unfortunate that Wavell was left as Viceroy struggling with the independence issues, when Auchinleck might have done so much better in controlling the disparate personalities in Indian politics.

The fascinating thing is that Auchinleck was successful as a battlefield general, but only because he was unsuccessful as a theatre commander. By contrast he was also fabulously successful as CIC of the Indian army, and probably would have been at least as successful at a higher level.

So was he a successful general?

The answer of course is both Yes and No. He was a brilliant general, who failed his duties at the crucial moment. His Command weaknesses caused him to make decisions which lengthened the war in the Middle East, and the fact that his Operational strengths allowed him to recover at least part of the situation does not reverse this decision. He failed in his appointed task at his appointed level.

Perhaps Auchinleck is an example of what Alanbrooke meant when he said that it was unfortunate that too many generals had been pushed too far too fast, and had suffered the consequences? Perhaps Auchinleck would have benefitted from a slower maturity under someone like Brooke, and could have developed his undoubted brilliance into an actual ability at higher command in the field. Perhaps he could have taken control of Burma and fought with his usual brilliance – and charmed the Chinese and Americans with his usual brilliance (Stilwell liked him… Stillwell?) Perhaps he would have been even better than Slim. His admirers think he would have been even better commanding D-Day than Montgomery or Eisenhower. Perhaps… We will never know.

All that we can say is that Auchinleck could have been one of the greatest Allied generals of the war, if he had been given other roles. Unfortunately his personality was not suited to making the best of the roles he was given. So we must judge him by what he actually did. Which means that the most important assessment we can make of him is to rank him as a failure as a theatre commander.

Such a decision seems unjust. ‘The Auk’ was truly a very great man. Declaring him a failure seems unforgiveable. As Churchill said when he had to sack him, “like shooting a magnificent stag”.

Failures of Democracy: Greece and Britain

2010-05-07T01:45:00.000-07:00

It is amusing to see the ‘birthplace’ of democracy suffering the inevitable effects of untrammelled democracy, as Greek unions and citizens are riot in the streets against the effects of several decades of their own votes.

Socialism has a lot to answer for in the last century, and it would be fair to suggest that the economies that led the world a century ago but are in trouble now have suffered the effects of far too many socialist governments in the intervening period. (Note: I am in favour of certain small ‘s’ socialist ideals like universal medicine, but completely opposed to big ‘S’ Socialism that suggests that you should not only rely on the government, but that you are incapable of managing yourself without government supervision. “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”, is not a joke by accident.)

Greece has spent most of the decades since the war with terrible governments buying their way into power by promising that the national credit card is unlimited. The result is one of the biggest and least effective government bureaucracies in the world, with a vast number of useless drones being paid to retire early after having achieved virtually nothing of real value. Meanwhile the average citizen has been showered with vastly overpriced and very poorly delivered social services, which would probably have achieved far more and cost only a fraction as much if the government had put them out to tender. On top of that a 14 month per annum pension (bonuses for Christmas and Easter) means that many retired people are being given more money than they were earning when they worked. Talk about a runaway train.

Thus the petrol bomb throwers are reaping the rewards of their own stupidity, but fortunately under a Socialist government that has long since convinced them that they bear no responsibility for their own decisions. (I hope that government is enjoying the fruits of their labours.) Once again the Roman adage of ‘bread and circuses’ being the only interests of the unwashed masses has been thoroughly demonstrated.

Of course the original version of democracy achieved almost equally stupid results without the input of the unwashed. Socrates was condemned to death by the democracy of the Polis, ie by the votes of the small percentage of the total population who were free male citizens.

Theoretically a democracy based on a small number of citizens with a similar mindset should be more stable than a democracy based on the great unwashed. To get the vote in an ancient Greek Polis you needed to be a free rich citizen who contributed to the three pillars of citizenship – farming, fighting and participation in politics – otherwise you were literally an ‘idiotes’. At the very least the fact that this boys club was of rich slave owners, with the same education and social obligations and from the same class, should have seen some commonality of purpose.

Socrates becoming a martyr to democracy , even to an aristocratic democracy, just goes to show that ‘a mob has an IQ equivalent to that of its dumbest member divided by the number of the crowd’, is also not a joke by accident. Democracy is inherently unstable. That is the nature of the human animal. Expanding the franchise to include the uneducated and illiterate and downright stupid does not improve that situation.

Which is not to say that democracy should not be part of a governmental system. The more complex the engine, the more necessary a safety valve is. Just don’t think that the entire engine can be designed around the device for letting off steam. Just because it makes a lot of noise, doesn’t mean it is actually more important than the moving parts.

The ideal government will include a democratic component, just as it will include a non democratic component based on special interests groups like those appointed to protect state rights (Senate), or appointed representatives of top minds (House of Lords), or any other special interest groups that work for your nation (Councils of Tribal Chiefs for instance). If you want the system to last, it will also include some hereditary component (perhaps along the lines of Malaysia’s choosing a prince form one of the 9 princely families), but that is another story.

The ideal government will not rely on domination by untrammelled democracy. Certainly not for long…

It might be fun to suggest that Britain probably had a far more stable government before the House of Lords lost its right to block supply in 1912. Certainly Australian examples show that the abandonment of the Upper House by Queensland because it was ‘undemocratic’ led to a long series of governmental disaster and gerrymander. More recently Gordon Brown was actually suggesting that it would be ‘superior’ to replace the group of brilliant minds appointed to the House of Lords from all the best people in science, industry, charity, arts, the union movement, etc, with another bunch of party hacks handpicked in smoke filled rooms by vested party interests. (I head Jon Faine on ABC radio today being quite excited about such ‘reform’.)

The British elections are going on as I write, and it is reported that up to 25% of votes are postal votes. Safeguards against rorting are practically non-existent. Corruption on a scale Mugabe could be proud of has already been demonstrated. Not that it necessarily counts all that much to the result. If all three major parties get exactly 33.3% of the vote, that will give Labour far more seats than the Conservatives, who will themselves have far more seats than the Lib-Dems. In fact Labour can win (as it did last time) with far less than half the votes. Hurray for democracy.

I think that if the GFC (global financial crisis for the uninitiated… how did we ever survive without TLA’s – Three Letter Acronym’s!) demonstrates anything, it is that the current fad for unfettered democracy is as obsolete as Aristocratic Hegemony, Divine Right of Kings, or Communism. Frankly unfettered democracy has failed far more spectacularly (and with far more casualties and victims), than any other system of government ever devised. The next stage of human government will no doubt contain elements of democracy, but will not pretend that a stable government can be built on democracy alone.

As a starting point, there will have to be a return to the understanding that a vote is a privilege, not a right. Certainly the idea that turning a magic age automatically gives you a say has to go. I personally like the idea that you have to demonstrate you put others above your own interest (national service or feeding the homeless) is a good start, but I see nothing wrong with a requirement to be a contributing taxpayer or some other version of weeding out those who are a danger to stability. The requirement should be achievable for anyone who wants it, but without the stupidity of requiring it from those who don’t value it (or understand it).

Secondly there will have to be a re-balancing of the parliamentary structures to return more power to vested interests… ie to those who make the world tick. I frankly find it ridiculous that we pretend that this is not how it works anyway. The fact that Washington contains 60+ lobbyists for each Congressman, and that their tax code has ‘exemptions’ for campaign contributors all the way down to individual businesses in various districts: just means that the democratic element of the system has been corrupted by the devaluing of the proper place for such influences. A special interest Senate or House of Lords, no matter how chosen, provides a protective stability to the system that counters the irrationality of the mob.

Thirdly there has to be a recognition that the party structure is not benign. In a genuine democracy people are supposed to vote for their local member, not for the charismatic twatt the party parades on the evening news as their ‘leader’. It is a bit rich for parties to complain that local members can’t change sides on the basis of their principles because they are supposed to be party lackeys. Pretending that the local member should not be responsive to their electorate is horrendous. Find a primary school definition of democracy people!

Finally, there must be a recognition that it is horses for courses. The same solution will not work in every culture. Imposing it just leads to dictatorship, repression, war and genocide. Give up the fantasy of the ideal. Liberal ideals, for all their values, are the foundation of big ‘S” Socialism. By now even the dumbest theorist should be working out where that inevitably leads.

Meanwhile lets hope that the European Union fails to survive the current crisis in anything like it’s current form. It is such a hopeless form of democracy that it is out of the control of its voters, and completely intent on achieving big 'S' socialism across the continent (possibly the world). Greece now is a harbinger of the EU to come. We can look forward to seeing rioters and petrol bombers outside the European parliament at some point in the future. (Not too distant if the German voters have their say on the Greek 'bailout'.) Self-righteousness has its own rewards. Hurray for 'democracy'.

Scoring the Generals

2010-05-02T00:21:00.000-07:00

For my amusement I have begun assessing various generals according to their Personal, Operational and Command skills (using terms taken from the best half dozen theoreticians going back to Ancient China).
Personal Characteristics - Robustness, Character, Humanity, Spirit, Common Sense, Mentoring
Operational Characteristics - Planning, Logistics, Topography, Movement, Tactics, Combined Operations
Command Characteristics - Clarity of Orders, Strategy, Propaganda, Delegation, Relations with Allies/Media/Politicians, Geopolitical understanding.

Comparing the abilities of generals of different ranks and responsibilities is not easy. It is, for instance, only possible to assess the tactical skills of a desk warrior like Marshall by analysing his tactical suggestions to Eisenhower or the CCOS; while there is no other way than inference to analyse the geopolitical skills of the vast majority of division commanders who served in the larger army groups rather than in theatres of independent operation. A general might perform superbly commanding a division despite almost no Command abilities, as long as his Personal skills are sufficient – the New Zealander Freyburg might be a prime example. Whereas some very respected members of the various COS committees had dismal Personal skills – Admiral King springs to mind.

Perhaps the most efficient description of good generalship is actually taken from Oliver Werner’s book about admirals ‘Command at Sea’. His succinct description of the best quality of command is: “always it is taken for granted that the leader knows his business from top to bottom, and will not throw lives away” (italics added).

Examples of skills versus ranks….

One of the most interesting ways to compare this distinction, is to take a few officers and consider where their relative strengths and weaknesses worked for their countries. For the purpose of this exercise I will refer to my own national force, the Australian army, which was big enough to make a huge difference to the outcome of the war (deployed and/or fighting in most of the key campaigns in Britain, North Africa, Greece, the Middle East, Malaya, East Indies, Ceylon, Australia, New Guinea, the South West Pacific, and Borneo), while small enough to allow assessment of a few key characters.

It is relatively easy to name a few characters from the Australian army, and draw attention to their differing abilities. For our sample we will use generals Vasey, Herring, Lavarack and Blamey.

Major General George Alan Vasey was one of the most effective divisional commanders of the war, but had almost certainly reached the limit of his ability in that role. Despite being a rare full time professional soldier in a largely militia based army, he was a literally stunning example of Australian coloqualism in action. (Leaving more than one senior general temporarily speechless with his trademark greeting “How are you, you dear old bastard”). Vasey was an ideal brigadier, and an excellent divisional tactician. He was loved, indeed practically worshipped, by his men, and nearly worked himself to death in the process of leading his troops. His personal skills were outstanding, but his Operational skills were no more than average, while the less said of his Command skills the better.

Vasey had the great fortune to be a brigadier where his personal skills could be of greatest value, in the difficult retreats from Greece, from Crete, and in the operations in Syria. He was then recalled to Australia, and eventually did his best work leading the superb 7th division through much of the New Guinea campaign. Perhaps if the latter had involved more open terrain for maneouvre, his Operational limits may have been betrayed, but in the jungles he was an ideal commander, and he had the ‘fortune’ to die in harness before having the chance to attempt to lead a corps – a role he would probably not have enjoyed, and one very likely beyond his ability.

Lieutenant-General the Honourable Sir Edmund Herring by contrast was the ideal corps commander, and possibly had the ability to lead an army. Certainly his command in New Guinea, which started as a mere subset of his corps duties, quickly involved complexities forcing the official recognition that his corps role was the junior partner.

Herring, a militia officer, was probably the ideal Australian to command in a situation where difficult allies - and even the most friendly and co-operative officers working under MacArthur could not avoid being difficult to work with – had to be integrated into a smoothly functional team. His Personal skills were so relaxed as to give the impression of weakness of purpose – until he needed to reveal the steel determination underneath. His Operational skills, with the notable exception of combined operations, were perhaps weaker than was ideal for a corps commander: but they were more than compensated by his Command abilities. Particularly the relations and strategy components of his diverse theatre.

Yet the most commonly agreed point by both friend and enemy of Herring (and the splintered world of regular versus militia officer in the Australian army made factional fighting unhappily recurrent), was that he was ‘more comfortable’ under direction, than in independent command. As he himself was happy to point out, he was most comfortable and productive when he could drop in each evening on his boss General Blamey, and discuss progress and requirements. After Blamey moved his headquarters, and more particularly after another level of command was interposed between them, Herring was never as comfortable or productive. In fact he happily left the army in 1944 to take up a position as Supreme Court Judge (his interwar background had been much more as a barrister than a militia officer).

Herring probably could have made a good army commander in a tightly run theatre. He would have been uncomfortable with anything more.

By contrast General Sir John Lavarack was a purely professional soldier. Unlike the majority of Australia’s top comanders, who came through the part time Militia officer system (less modern ‘reserve’ units, and closer to the older American model of state based ‘well ordered militia’ or perhaps to the even older British ‘trained bands’); Lavarack went through the entire interwar period as a professional soldier, completing all the important imperial staff courses, and holding many of the top staff positions in the Australian military forces.

It is a surprise to most foreigners to realise that Australian divisions and corps were rarely commanded by professional soldiers. The militia officers were all decorated veterans of the great war, and all spent considerable periods interwar in militia training and staff exercises. However they all held other permanent jobs as civil servants, police officials, barristers, engineers and the like. The division, and jealousy, between militia and professional officers was one of the banes of Australia’s wartime command performance. Nonetheless the decision to staff Australia’s expeditionary forces with militia commanders and professional chiefs of staff had a certain logic. The professional officers had done the staff courses and were highly experienced organisers. The militia commanders were the ones who had spent their careers working with the troops.

Lavarack is perhaps the clearest example of the problems of the crossover. Undoubtedly one of the finest professional officers, he went to the Middle-East as Chief of Staff to the commander of the Australian 6th division (the later Field Marshall Sir Thomas Blamey). Despite this, Lavarack managed to appear at many crucial points as a field commander.

After Rommel’s first shocking attack broke the weak British forces in Libya, it was Lavarack who – as temporary commander of the Australian troops not deployed to the ill fated Greek campaign – took responsibility for rounding up and organising the grab bag of troops which later fought the memorable siege of Tobruk. After Japan’s stunning attack in the Far East, it was Lavarack who was designated the Australian corps commander to command the divisions being rushed back from the Middle East. Initially it was his brief to take over the position in Malaya. By the time of his arrival the discussion was the defence of Java. His conclusion was that the East Indies were already a lost cause, and that the troops would be better placed in Australia. At which point Lavarack was appointed commander of 1st Australian Army, the pivotal concentration of divisions deployed to defend Australia’s north-eastern frontiers against the ever nearing possibility of Japanese invasion.

Lavarack never actually commanded troops in battle during the Second World War. So we cannot tell whether he was really up to the job or not. In fact every Australian division, or corps, or later army, that did actually see combat, was commanded by a militia officer. And yet it is telling that Lavarack was the man called on to assess and re-organise the situation each time it was felt that a steady hand was urgently needed. It is interesting to speculate whether he would have been the automatic selection for the New Guinea Corps had it been realised that the Japanese had neither the intention, or the logistic resources, to invade Australia. However with the new and inexperienced Australian government in panicked meltdown, it is clear that he was chosen for the key command position.

What we can say about Lavarack, is that he always came through. As Chief of Staff to Australian forces in the Middles East he was excellent. As the field commander who reacted swiftly and competently to the crisis at Tobruk he was inspiring. As the corps commander designated for the forces to be deployed against the Japanese in Malaya or Java, he was calm; considered; and not afraid to present findings, and insist on redeployments, which he must have known would cause a political storm between the Allied governments. As an army commander in Australia, his influence on a stretched and flustered defense force was as invaluable as on a weak and fearful government. In fact it is no exaggeration to say that his total effect on Australia’s military strength, planning, deployment, and operations, during the war was second to none.

Yet what we cannot say about Lavarack was how good he was in battle. All the evidence suggests he would at least have been calm, and quite able to analyse situations and deal with events smoothly and efficiently. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Lavarack was never close enough to combat command to more than inhale the aroma.

It is my belief that Lavarack could have been good. Very good. He had the experience of command. He had the experience of failure and defeat. He had the experience of coping with disaster and overcoming the odds. There is no doubt that he would have made a better divisional commander than Gordon-Bennett (discussed in a later post); or a better corps commander that Herring (discussed above). He certainly had the potential to be one of the best army commanders of the war. But he never led troops in combat, and all we can really say is that he was a man of great if somewhat unproven potential.

Which brings us to the later Field Marshall Sir Thomas Blamey. Certainly Australia’s most controversial soldier.

Blamey was appointed Divisional commander of the first division sent to the Middle East, and soon after Corps commander when a second division arrived, despite the fact that it was almost universally accepted that his Operational skills were out of date (he had spent most of the Great War as a staff officer, and most of the interwar period as a Police Commissioner). Nonetheless the Australian government had divined – possibly correctly – that he was the best choice to deal with the role of an independent force commander within the British Commonwealth coalition. This was despite the fact that Blamey’s Personal abilities were none too outstanding. He was vain, often petty, a notorious thrower of drunken parties, and had had to resign from the position of Commissioner of Victorian Police when caught out telling lies (admittedly lies designed to protect the reputation of the police – if that helps in any way). So in effect the Australian government was valuing his political skills over either his personal or military abilities.

Blamey had the fortune to only once command as a corps leader in action, where he was separately reported as having either handled the withdrawal from Greece competently; or, by his enemies, of suffering a partial collapse under the pressure. His reputation was not helped when he saved a seat on an evacuation flight for his son, and this was the final straw which caused an irreparable split with his BGS (who he later sacked as a corps commander in New Guinea under controversial circumstances). He was thereafter appointed as deputy CIC Middle East under Wavell and then Auchinleck, where he performed quite well in representing his countries interests in difficult circumstances – including insisting on the withdrawal of the 9th division from Tobruk when it was becoming tired.

When recalled to Australia to be CIC Australian army, and then CIC land forces for the SWP under MacArthur, he was again being chosen for his political skills. The new Labor government had no real understanding of military affairs (Prime Minister Curtin later admitting that “in my ignorance of military affairs I believed that the CIC of the army should be at the front”), but knew that good relations in coalition warfare were vital. They therefore overlooked more traditional, and able, generals like Lavarack – a professional soldier who had been Chief of Army Staff in the late thirties and a successful corps commander in the Middle East and army commander in Australia: and Robertson – another professional who led a brigade in the Middle East, a Division in Australia, a Corps in the South West Pacific, and then the Biritsh Commonwealth Occupation forces in Japan and Korea after the war. The professional soldiers were left with the troops, while the amateur was appointed to the political roles.

Blamey made the mistake of effectively attempting to be both Army COS, which entailed responsibilities in the Australian rear areas like Melbourne and Sydney; and army CIC, which required him to be at forward headquarters in Brisbane. His lot was made more difficult by his assigned role as CIC ground forces for the SWP area, a role which MacArthur never had any intention of letting him fill. (MacArthur specifically requested senior American generals to outrank the - lets face it – far more experienced Australian ones, and then insisted on maintaining direct control of American ‘task forces’ anyway).

There is little doubt that Blamey was probably better for the position of CIC ground forces than any other Australian general. He had the experience and the ability to play MacArthurs game. Thus the fact that his Operational abilities were below par was not nearly as important as the fact that his Command abilities were mostly, mostly, up to the weight of the job.

However his Personal qualities here let him down. He attempted to control too much because he believed it was in his, and everyone else’s best interests: not because it actually was. Split between his rear area and operational duties, he was easily out-manouvred, and eventually sidelined, by a MacArthur who had anyway achieved a frankly ridiculous control of the ignorant and incompetent Australian Labor government. Blamey was forced to spend months in New Guinea, not because he believed he had a role there, or that the generals there were in any way incapable: but simply because MacArthur had convinced Curtin’s government to push him out on a limb. As Blamey commented to one of his officers “Canberra has lost it.”

In the end Blamey was completely frozen out of most of his roles by MacArthur, and only did more damage to his cause by belatedly trying to arrange to switch the Australian forces back to British control for combined operations in the East Indies. He had come to realise that MacArthur would have no Australian forces in his all American shows anyway, but the Curtin government had effectively replaced the input of their entire military hierarchy by the simple expedient of letting MacArthur ‘advise’ them of everything they should be doing.

So Blamey can be regarded as a man whose proper role was at the higher end of the generals spectrum. He was not suited to divisional command, and his corps and army command roles were not convincing. He was at his best as deputy commander of coalition forces, whether in the British coalition in the Middle East, or the American/Australian one in SWP. In fact it was only his personal weaknesses and fear of competition that allowed him to undermine this role by attempting to control the entire Australian army, and it’s rear areas, at the same time. Had he been willing to leave this function to a more suitable officer like the real COS Sturdee, he could have concentrated on the function he was actually best suited for. There is no doubt that he had great success in co-ordinating operations in the New Guinea campaigns, and in getting a functional co-operation between Australian and American forces. Although it is unlikely that a man like MacArthur would ever have let him really take control of land forces in the area, and the Australian Labor government was putty in MacArthurs hands, it is largely his own personal weaknesses which prevented him from being in a position to try.

Perhaps one of the professional generals like Lavarack ro Rowell might have had a better chance at guiding the government, but it seems doubtful. Certainly they might have divided duties more effectively, but that might just have played further into MacArthurs hands. Certainly other generals might have done better in teh field, but would any have done better than Blamy in the political situation? Unlikely. He had already been deputy commander of teh Middle East, and acting CIC when Auchinleck was away in London, and was the most knowledgeable about politics and international relations that Australia had available. This does not make him a good general, just the best of bad choices.

So the fact that none of these generals was an ‘ideal’ general, cannot be said to undermine the fact that each of them was in fact ia good candidate for a particular role. Vasey was one of the most successful, and certainly popular, divisional commanders of the war – in any army. But he was probably at his ceiling, and incapable of assuming much higher command. Herring was probably the best possible choice to command the New Guinea area and overcome the difficulties of assembling disparate troops in a functional co-alition. The praises of all American officers – even MacArthur – speak loudly in his favour. But he was not ready or willing to assume higher command. Lavarck showed potential in every area he participated, but was never tested in any of them, so he is simply a great unknown. Blamey was, in practical terms, inadequate as a divisional commander, and possible even poorer as a corps commander. Yet he was the only realistic choice to command as a deputy commander or land forces in a coalition. Despite his weaknesses, his particular strengths gave him a unique value to his army and his country.

This then is the problem with attempting a statistical analysis of generals. Different generals require different strengths for different roles. A general who might be completely unsuitable in one scenario, or at one rank, might be an ideal candidate in, or at, another. At best we can use a statistical analysis for is to give some guidelines for comparison. Thereafter we have to assess each general specifically by the role they were given.

The Essentials of Generalship

2010-05-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

Even good generals, and they are vanishingly rare in human history, have only a limited range of abilities. It is unreasonable to expect any man (and it has almost invariably been a man), to be everything from an inspirational leader and tactician in regimental ground combat, to a clear-sighted analyst of geopolitical and global trends on an international scale. Yet the term ‘general’ in modern warfare supposedly includes everyone: from the Brigadier defending a hill or village; to the Army Commander carefully resting and rotating his Corps; to the Theatre Commander deploying multi-service resources across large segments of the globe; all the way to the Chief of Staff negotiating global responsibilities and authorities with the political representatives of a dozen nations.

The skills required for these different tasks are amazingly varied, and no man encompasses all of them. Indeed the number who can master more than a few of them is so small that every human conflict reveals more bad generals than good ones. However the key point is that even those who do have some of these abilities to a high degree, rarely have the ability to keep adding new ones if they are unfortunate enough to be promoted beyond their level of competency.

The study of generals in any war, but particularly in the Second World War, is largely the study of who managed to cope with what level of responsibility. In many cases it is a list of people who failed at any level. In some cases it is the names of those who succeeded marvellously well at one particular level, and had the great fortune not to be moved to a different role. In the most interesting cases however, it is the study of those who did very well, often brilliantly well, at one level: only to be promoted into a role for which they had no aptitude. Some of these generals were quickly revealed by smarter and more aggressive opponents. But the most fascinating are those who never realised that they were completely over their head, and whom circumstances never, quite, brought to book.

Specifically

Good managers of men; good unit commanders and tacticians; good leaders in the front line. These are things which are tested over and over at junior rank (assuming there is a front line to test one in at the right time). No one, hopefully, should get anywhere near general rank - even the ‘one star’ version of Brigadiers - without demonstrating these clearly to their peers, as well as their superiors and subordinates. Yet it is not the ability to command a few thousand men in the sort of engagement where you can physically see the entire battlefield, as in the days of Ceasar or Alexander, or Napoleon and Wellington, which encompasses the modern role of generals. Modern generals have much more diverse roles.

There are many qualities which could be listed as necessary to good generalship, and many people – some of them generals of renown in their own right – have attempted to list those qualities. Field Marshall Lord Wavell for instance, was offered the position of Commander in Chief of the Middle East in 1939, despite his relative lack of seniority: largely on the basis of the excellent national and international reputation he had gained through his lectures in the thirties. These were later collected in a book called “Generals and Generalship”. One of the fascinating comments on relative generalship during the Second World War is that while Wavell himself carried a book of poetry on campaign (often one edited by himself called ‘Other men’s Flowers”), his German opponent in North Africa – General Rommel – carried Wavell’s book on generalship. (In fact one commentator noted that Rommel may have been Wavell’s greatest disciple.)

Wavell made a good list of the basic qualities for a general in World War Two. Physical and mental robustness; calm courage and determination; character, humanity and will to win; zest for the game; common sense and knowledge. To this he added elements of: administration; command of ground and air forces; relations with staff, troops, and subordinate commanders. Most importantly he also pointed out the need for a sense of humor, and what he called ‘priviledged irrascability’, by which he meant that outbursts of temper are often admired, even expected of great leaders, whereas sarcasm is always fatal. Writing in 1943, after experience of high command, he ruefully added a need to communicate well with your political superiors as a necessity for top commanders.

This list which has not been much improved by many post war writers: though obviously elements such as intercept intelligence, combined operations, and relations with coalition partners, have increased in importance.

Unfortunately most biographers of generals fall for the undoubted strengths of character that are a necessary part of any general, and then overlook the weaknesses that make the same men unsuitable for certain roles. The resulting biographies are sincere and well argued, but ultimately unconvincing.

As an exercise, I decided it might be fun to do some ‘scientific’comparison of individuals. I have devised a more analytical division of the list, which allows for some statistical interpretation. (A rating of 10/10 for Tactical ability and Leadership being useful as a Brigadier for instance, but put in context by a rating of 5/10 for planning and 3/10 for logistics if anyone thinks such a person is suitable to command an Army Group.)

I plan to review quite a few Western Allied generals - Australian, American, British, Canadian, French, Polish and others - over the next few months. Some reviews will be non-controversial, but a lot won't be.

It will be interesting to hear the responses.

Anzac Hypocrisy

2010-05-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

Once again we have gone through the ritual of the Anzac Day decriers moaning about Australians ‘wasting’ their lives for evil foreigners. As if sacrifice for King and Country was only about seeking glory for the British Empire, or sacrifice for the United Nations was only about being an American lackey.

It has always astonished me that these people are so blatantly of the “pull up the ladder, I’m all right” crowd. Australian lives were sacrificed to make the world safe for democracies - like for instance, Australia - not because the British Empire thought it would be fun to see how many people could die per square kilometer in 1918 France. Australian lives were sacrificed preventing Nazi’s from destroying European civilization and massacring tens of millions of innocent ‘subhumans’, not because Churchill thought it would be fun to have a re-match. The only justification for claiming that Australia should not have been fighting these wars is to argue that there is no duty of care for the less fortunate, and no responsibility to help the needy. In fact such a statement comes down to “F*** you, I’m OK”.

Let’s ignore the fact that World War Two was the one where Australia was directly threatened. (Note – the only reason Japan lacked the ability to genuinely plan to invade Australia was because she was too busy fighting the British and Americans as well to spare the resources for such an invasion - people’s who, by that reasoning, should have told us where to go…) Let’s just stick to the moral imperatives of what Australians actually died for.

The concept of a just war is simply that NOT to fight it is to betray all that is right and good and just. There is a moral obligation to fight for ‘truth, justice and the blah-blah way’, and not to do so betrays the basic foundations of civilized behaviour.

In practical terms of course, those who argue against the Anzacs as a noble expression of self-sacrifice to a higher cause, have already abandoned civilization. They are intent on tearing down everything that traditional Judeo-Christian civilization would consider to be noble and just. They sneer at duty and honour while worshipping such intangible fantasies as ‘multiculturalism’. Whereupon they throw out minor inconveniences like women’s rights, and celebrate ‘cultural diversity’ by allowing Sharia law to enslave women, and ‘Aboriginal custom’ to allow the rape of minor’s. This hypocrisy they justify with meaningless post-modern drivel about cultural relativism. What they actually mean is that they are so intent on destroying the culture that has allowed them such a smug self-satisfied lifestyle, that they will betray all principles of human decency to bring it down.

The position would be more consistent if these people were genuinely pacifists, and opposed all violence, but of course most aren’t. Many of them speak admiringly of terrorists, and have gone so far as to encourage terrorist behaviour on Australian soil. (The authors of a recent anti Anzac book are deeply tied to the unsavoury lot who not only hounded Professor Geoffrey Blainey from his university for not being ‘politically correct’, but encouraged student union violence to the point of bombs being planted… on the wrong person’s lawn.) In fact these people are almost universally in favour of violence, as long as it is against their own culture – which they decry as being too violent!

If you don’t like the culture that has nurtured your postulent maunderings, please leave. Go and live, and die, in one of the horrid cultures that you fail to understand, and fantasise about. The vast majority of people would enjoy a life with a little less hypocritical self-flagellation.

Meanwhile it is encouraging to see the numbers of young people who are willing to join old people in celebrating the concept of willingness to lay down your life for the cause of decency. Who would have thought that generation Y would have such a strong reaction against the crap their baby boomer parents and teachers have been shoveling down their throats, that they might have genuine values hidden in there somewhere?

Kinda makes you feel glad for the essential rebelliousness of the human condition.

Creating an Alzheimer’s generation

2010-04-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

My background as a Kindermusik teacher has given me a fair amount of experience with young children. So I am well aware of how important positive and negative feedback is to early childhood learning and development. (Telling a toddler that the fire his hot does not actually mean anything until he has experienced what heat is. Only then is there a negative feedback reinforcement to add value to the explanation.) But I had never thought through the implications of our school systems on this development.

Recently one of my staff finished his masters degree in future studies, with an emphasis on predicting how trends will develop. One of the trends he was analysing, is the concept of how our education system will affect people over the long term.

So-called “modern” educational theorists - by which of course we mean baby boomer fanatics stuck in the 60s or 70s - have constructed an education system without consequences. There is no rote learning, and therefore no development of memory. There is no correct answer, and therefore no positive feedback. There is no failing, and therefore no negative feedback. In fact there are none of the things which early childhood education shows that are absolutely vital to brain development.

(Before I am shouted down for exaggeration, I probably should give a couple of examples. While teaching in the UK my mother was criticised by her principals for daring to write anything resembling negative feedback. She came up with the phrase, “Simon has enjoyed a very relaxed term”. This of course simply meant that Simon had not bothered to attend class. Another of my ex-staff, who went on to do their own teacher training, was recently told by his school that he must write reports for students he had never met. Apparently having their name on the role is adequate to get a pass mark, even if they never actually darkened the threshold of the school. He did however finally have to introduce one senior student to the idea that there were in fact limits. When the student repeatedly failed to turn up to a necessary examination, despite warnings that it was necessary for promotion to the final year of schooling: he had the great pleasure of informing that student that after 15 years of school they had finally found a threshold that actually had consequences. Naturally, the student, and their parents, were so shocked that they threatened to sue the system.)

So the supposed “modernists” have achieved for the education system all the benefits that Marxism achieved the economies of Eastern Europe. Almost total destruction of anything of value. This morning’s paper was bemoaning, yet again, inadequate language and maths skills amongst employees (making the automatic assumption that they are all immigrants from below English backgrounds, without bothering to note that the statistical numbers of uneducated and illiterate people are a far higher percentage of the population than the number of immigrants). The most disastrous result being the steadily increasing number of workplace injuries amongst those who cannot read or understand safety instructions.

It is a long-term perspective though, that is really terrifying. If the human brain never goes through the memory training, repetition training, and positive and negative feedback system responses, and then it does not develop properly. If you remove such feedback is from the education system, students come out with a greatly impoverished ability to memorise, or process. Not only do they have a much harder time trying to comprehend the safety instructions, they have a much harder time processing the new information as the world changes around them. The brain has in fact not been adequately programmed to deal with change.

Even worse, the safeguards with-in the brain that allow for re-routing in the case of damage, have been debilitated by exactly the wrong form of practices. This will become far more significant when these people reach the age of strokes or dementia.

The effect of trying to overturn millions of years of human development for some crazy feel- good theoretical concept (which every realistic assessment has revealed to be a failure), is that the students who have suffered the indignity is of such an appalling excuse for an education system face an unpalatable future. Physically our practical sciences may well continue to keep their bodies working longer and longer, but mentally our pseudo-sciences will have ensured that they will live many of those years in an increasing mental haze as they experience a vast increase in outbreaks of what we would have to classify as dementia.

I have never been particularly enamoured of the concept of the “the decline and fall” of civilisations through their own arrogance and stupidity, but this sample is simply too good a jest to pass up.

They know not what crap they speak

2010-04-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

Dawkins has been in the news again. This time he wants to arrest the Pope when he visits England.

His logic is that the comparable case is the - deservedly failed - Pinochet arrest and farce of a trial in Britain. Interesting choice...

There is the issue that one is the case of a well known mass murderer who, as head of state, ordered executions and tortures; and the other is the case of a minor official who 'chose poorly'. One lead to hundreds of deaths, the other led to - probable - continued sexual abuse. One was acts of commission, the other of omission.

Don't get me wrong, I think that the Roman Catholic church is 100% in the wrong in their attitude to priests and people here. (In fact I think the Roman church is THE prime example of how organising religion into hierarchies leads to corruption and immorality totally opposed to the principles of the founder of the religion... I also find it farcical that the RC continue to insist that their medieval introduction of the deeply flawed concept of a 'celibate' clergy is a good or necessary thing.... But that is another post). Nonetheless, I find the idea that you arrest a head of state for something that other men did, that people a the time failed to pursue through the courts even though they clearly had the option to, deeply flawed. Indeed the Pope was part of the cover up, but that does not absolve the people who should have been standing up for their children for not going to the police in the first place... they too were part of the cover up.

All that aside, it is Dawkins who looks the fool here. He is demonstrating that he understands neither morality or law, just the most base principles of political PR.

Why do people who are experts in one area of life start thinking that this means they can pontificate on things they don't understand? The media is largely to blame for parading airhead pop singers and beefcake footballers as though their opinions on economic policy or human ethics are more valuable than random words from a Boggle set. I can see why the airheads fall for it, but why do supposedly serious academics do the same.

I was re-reading one of David Irving's early works recently - the brilliant Rommel: Trail of the Fox. It demonstrates what a master of his craft can do, before what can only be described as rampant insanity drives him to incomprehensible positions. But at least he stuck to a stupidity within his own discipline, where he could make a fight of it.

I realise of course that Dawkins was ruthlessly and probably unfairly attacked by people who think he over-extends what he can draw from Darwinianism. Unfortunately he seems to think that the fact that some of those who shout loudest are extreme religious nutters, gives him the right to denigrate anyone who points out that there are many holes in his logic and in the theories of Darwinian evolution. In fact he believes that it gives him the right to attack not just the 'God created the world in 7 days that's all there is to it, burn any other book' American right crowd, but also the entire religious community.

Being completely ignorant of even the history of his own specialty, he probably doesn't realise that he is attacking the wrong side. It is the Roman Catholic church that has always supported the 'revealed' truth that science can add to the story, versus Protestant nutters who deny everything not in the Bible. So he doesn't seem to understand the difference between enemies and potential allies... too black and white in his viewpoint perhaps? Instead he has decided that every aspect of religion must be evil. (An interesting expansion from 'some of the people who don't agree with me are religious nuts').

So he has launched a crusade against religion... Interesting choice.

Unfortunately he knows very little of religion, and hasn't bothered to learn, so his pronouncements on ALL religions are about as valuable as those of Paris Hilton or Posh Spice.

He does this by attacking the philosophical principles of ANY beliefs based on faith.

Unfortunately he knows very little about philosophy, and hasn't bothered to learn, so his pronouncements on philosophy are about as valuable as those of Yogi Bear and Daffy Duck... (Actually I might be doing an injustice to Daffy Duck. Those Looney Tunes cartoons are a lot better scripted than most people recognise... I think the writers might have even had something resembling a broad classical education... No one would accuse Dawkins of anything except extreme narrowness in his viewpoints.)

His current method is to suggest a legal case...

Unfortunately he knows absolutely nothing about the law and has, to all appearances, fallen for some smart lawyers suggesting that they can spend many months in court proving this... as long as he pays enough. I hope he has got a lot of spare royalties to throw away. (See good opinion of legalities of case here.)

In reality of course all he is doing is pursuing a political style PR campaign.

I wonder if he actually knows enough about politics to think this will work? Or does his PR company have an equal attraction to his royalties as his lawyers?

I suppose it is possible that he is genuine. That he is so incensed at the way some ignorant peasants have been stirred up, by unscrupulous leaders of corrupt organisations, to shout down the centuries of knowledge that have been agreed by great minds: that he is willing to finance vast campaigns to spread illogical and ignorant concepts in the attempt to batter the opposition into submission.

I wonder if he can recognise the irony of 'doing unto others' what you think they have done to you?