Moral Combat

There are some books that are an easy read, and there are some which are much harder. There are some whose subject matter is trivial and banal, and some whose subject matter is so horrific and important that the reader is impelled, perhaps by some sort of sense of justice or moral outrage to continue, no matter what the consequences for their own well-being may be.

One example of the latter, for me, at least, is this:

Burleigh, M., Moral Combat: A History of World War II (London, Harper Collins, 2010).

Those of you who are avid readers of my Facebook page will realise that it has taken me a while to read this. I started on 9^th May (albeit this year) and finished on the 23^rd July. Granted it is a big book: 560 pages or thereabouts, but I discovered that I really could not read a great deal at a time. I have, in recent days, put in some effort to finish it. On the other hand, as hinted above, it is not really the sort of book that you can simply stop reading and put into a cast-off pile.

What you do not get is a military history of World War II, nor a history of the Nazis or anything similar. As the author notes, there are plenty of those around anyway. What you do get is a discussion, with plenty of examples, some more gruesome than others, of the sorts of actions and considerations that the players had to make before and during the war. It is not a pretty read.

On the whole, the Western allies come out of it fairly well, although not scot-free, as you would expect. There are questions, in the book, what, if anything, they could have done, for example, to prevent or disrupt the Holocaust. In some senses, this was a non-question. Diversion of resources to attempt to bomb, say, the railway lines to Auschwitz would probably have been a waste of time and lives. The resources, in Burleigh’s view, were quite correctly retained by the effort to win the war as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, he notes, that Stalin was not in the mood to cooperate. He was reluctant to permit Western bombers to land on Russian territory to refuel anyway, and the concentration camps were mainly in the east. Stalin regarded Russian prisoners of war as deserters and traitors anyway, and he was not going to put any effort into saving Jews, although he was not personally anti-Semitic. On the whole, Burleigh concludes, it was better to put the resources into trying to destroy Nazi oil production.

Further questions are raised over the bombing of German cities. Some might argue that Burleigh rather whitewashes the decisions made, but, on the whole, there was a belief that bombing cities was going to shorten the war. Whether that was the case or not is a bit moot, and some of the calculations that it would were, at least, wildly optimistic. But the decisions had to be made based on the information and opinions that were available, not what was actually the case.

The chapters on the invasion and rape of Poland are, for me at least, the most disturbing. The brutality meted out was awful, not just on Jews, but on Poles in general. Some of the other chapters on resistance movements and Churchill’s Special Operations Executive speak of desperate and largely ineffective activities in which usually, civilians bore a large price.

We all know, of course, that World War Two was a brutal, vicious war. The book brings home exactly how brutal and vicious it was, especially on the Russo-German front. How many wargamers, I wonder, deploy NKVD battalions behind their Russian front lines to shoot anyone who runs away? I did wonder what would happen if those battalions were themselves pushed back – did they shoot themselves? All in all, the account of the fighting in Russia and Eastern Europe is enough to give even the most diehard World War Two wargamer pause for thought, I feel.

There are some interesting bits and pieces to chew over as wargamers, even beyond the sheer nastiness of much of the activities. For example, in 1937 Chamberlin diverted the British aircraft industry from building bombers to building fighters. As strategic thought at the time was that the bomber would get through and win the war, this might be thought of as a startling insight. However, it seems that the basis was that four fighters could be built for the price of one bomber. It just so happened that it was the right decision.

Another item of interest that caught my eye is the logistics for Barbarossa. The Germans suffered from chronic logistical problems. Army Group Centre needed 24 train loads per day, and got only 12. Army Group North needed 34 and was lucky if it got 18. Army Group South needed 24 and got 14. The numbers dropped, as well, over the duration of the campaign. This was not, at least solely, due to enemy action. Russian railways and roads were simply not up to the task.

Overall, this is a good but highly disturbing book, which would possibly be more so if I were a World War Two wargamer. The consumption of tobacco and alcohol by some of the leaders and generals was prodigious – apparently, Eisenhower was up to 40 a day just before D-Day. We cannot blame him, the stress of launching the world’s largest amphibious operation was immense, not to mention the knowledge that he was sending thousands of people into harm's way and that many would not come back. Such considerations bore less heavily on the totalitarian leaders, of course, although occasionally some of their subordinates might (briefly) question the casualties that were being taken, and what was being inflicted on civilian populations. On the other hand, for both Germans and Russians not instantly obeying was a ticket to being shot or worse.

As Churchill is reported to have said, the Russo-German war was won by the lesser of two evils. That is not exactly a comforting thought, particularly in light of the last few years and the rise of authoritarian and far-right groups across the world. Now, who has the location of the nearest bunker?