Data on German aircraft during WWII came from the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough.

The first German aircraft that was shot down over England and which landed intact was a Heinkel 111 brought down on 28 October 1939. Two of the four crew were dead but the airplane survived in one piece except for a few bullet holes. A Ju 88 was shot down a few days before, but it crashed into the sea, a total loss. As the war went on into 1940 and the Battle of Britain was engaged, German aircraft fell all over England. Different types were quickly recovered in various stages of disrepair and subsequently arrive at experimental stations for analysis and to be made flyable again, if possible. Those that were brought down by fighters or antiaircraft guns were usually basket cases. The more favored carcasses were those that landed because of engine failure, exhausted fuel or bad navigation. Abundantly provided by these sources, the British soon had a “flying circus” of captured German aircraft with RAF markings that toured the air bases in Britain to allow familiarization of new crews with the armament, performance and weaknesses of the opposition.

When the French captured a Me 109 E in November 1939 it was sent to the RAE at Farnborough.

Royal Aircraft Establishment, Library Bibliography No. 312, Catalog of Enemy Aircraft Reports 1939-1946, Compiled by D. I. Raitt, March 1969, Ministry of Technology, London, W. C. 2.

The title page summary states:

“This catalogue lists reports held by the Main library and generated by R.A.E. departments on enemy aircraft and components sent here for examination during the Second World War.”

The documents were identified by a Main No., such as EA 28/1. EA undoubtedly stood for enemy aircraft or airplane.

Here’s a sampling:

EA 235/- Messerschmitt Me 262
Main. No.: EA 235/1
Dept. No. AERO 1537
Department or author: C.M. Fougere and F. Smith
Date: Oct. 1944
Pagination: 4 p 4 figs
Estimated performance of Me 262

EA 50/- Junkers Ju 88 S-1 No. NLEX
Main No.: EA 50/8
Dept. No. SME 249
Department or author: Structures and Mechanical Engineering
Date: June 1944
Pagination: 5p 8 figs.
Examination of cabin heater

EA 281/- German bombsight
Main No.: EA 281/1
Dept. No.: IAP 965
Department or author: Instrumental and Air Photography
Date: Jan. 1947
Pagination: 2p 1 fig.
Examination of Lotfe - 7K German Bombsight

EA 235/- Messerschmitt Me 262
Main No.: EA 235/3
Dept. No.: EL 1375
Department or author: F/Lt. Bartley
Date: Aug. 1945
Pagination: 6p
Electrical equipment (Me 262 No.112372)

In the Air Force Museum library . The AFM library number is D 52.1/133.

The cover page states:

“ADVANCE SUMMARY for TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORTS TSNTE-5F

25 July 1946

Title: Electrical Equipment, German Aircraft, ME-262

File No. RAE Report No. EL 1375, August 1945

Author: Note Indicated

1. A brief discussion of the electrical equipment on German ME-262 airplane. No detailed examinations have been conducted. Therefore, the report is very general in nature.

Collation: Total pages 6, Text 6 pp.

Lt. S. A. Chamer, Analyst

Note: A copy of this document is on file in the Special Document Library (TSRWF-6)”

Fw 190A-8 WNr.171747

On August 30, 1944 a Luftwaffe ferry pilot deserted and landed a brand new FW-190A-8 near Birchington.

The pilot of this plane was Johannes Antonius Kuhn. He was born at November 15th, 1908 in Amsterdam. He was a former sgt. in the Military Airforce in the Netherlands. He was “forced” by his German wife to do something for the Fuehrer, so he went into the Luftwaffe in 1942.
He escaped in his Fw 190A-8 WNr.171747 on a delivery flight to Brussels-Melsbroek at August 30th, 1944.

Almost undamaged he landed his plane close to Monkton in Kent. Later the plane received serial AM230 and was shown to the public in Farnborough in 1945. After that the plane went to the Science Museum in London in 1946. Later it was scrapped.

Me262C-1a Heimatschutzer I (Home Defender I)

Work began on converting an early production Me262 W.Nr.130186 as the prototype Heimatschutzer I during August 1944. This was basically a standard Me262A-1a with the rear fuselage and tail modified to house a Walter HWK R11/211 (109-509) rocket engine. The main external difference was that the rear fuselage and rudder were cut away to allow of the rocket exhaust. The standard 900ltr forward fuel tank was replaced by a special non corrosive container for T-Stoff, and C-Stoff was carried in the rear 600ltr fuselage tank. The remaining 900 and 170ltr tanks were used for J2 jet fuel. Unlike the original Interzeptor I project, the prototype carried standard armament of four cannon. Although the prototype was known at one time as the Me262 J-1, the official designation chosen for the Heimatschutzer I was the Me262C-1a.

The prototype made its first flight, with turbojets only, when it was transferred from Leipheim to Lechfeld on 2 September but ten days later it was slightly damaged in an air attack by the US 15th Air Force. Following the change of the rocket engine and one of its Riedel starter motors, it made its second flight on 18th October. This flight was devoted to testing the T-Stoff jettisoning system, 900ltrs of coloured liquid being ejected from the forward tank. The spread of the stain over the entire bottom of the fuselage and undercarriage recesses showed that fuel dumping might result in fire from contact with waste oil.

On 21st October the aircraft carried out taxiing trials with additional mainwheels and four days later the rocket engine was ground tested for the first time. Following modifications to the engine bearers a second test of the rocket was made, but this resulted in welding faults being discovered in the combustion chamber and the engine had to be changed. Several other modifications were made including relocating the radio equipment due to fumes seeping into that part of the fuselage and alternations to the pressurised cabin.

Following these changes, the rocket engine was ground tested twice on 23rd November but the fuel pump and T- Stoff tank had to be changed four days later. Another ground run was made on 2nd December and 13 days later a third test flight was conducted to further test fuel jettisoning system. This confirmed the findings of the earlier trial and resulted in the design team moving the fuel dumping tube below the rear fuselage, emptying behind the tail.

The rocket engine was fired in the ground again on 18th December but this time another fault in the welding of the combustion chamber resulted in a small fire. After this was changed, on 4th January 1945 water was flushed through the complete system. Unfortunately water froze in the pipes leading Messerschmitt to complain that the Walter company had failed to advise them of what type of anti-freeze to use. Two further ground runs were made on 13th January without the rear fuselage fitted. After this was added, another test was made two days later, but this resulted in yet another fire. A third combustion chamber was then fitted, and the Flight Test Department was charged with developing a quick release system for the rear fuselage to minimise the time needed to remove and refit it.

Ground runs were made with the rocket on 29th January and 3rd February, and three days later the new fuel jettisoning system was tested successfully. Further problems with faulty welding in the rocket engine components were then experienced and it was not until 20th February that three successful ground tests were made. Three days later the turbojet and rocket engines were run together for the first time and on 27th February 1945, Gerd Lindner made the first flight with all three engines running. Two further rocket boosted flights were made on 16th March but six days later the aircraft was slightly damaged in an Allied air attack. Given the military situation at this time, it is unlikely that the aircraft was flown again. The fuselage of the C-1a prototype (which was also known as the second V6) was found at Lechfeld at the end of the war and shipped to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough for examination.

LINK

LINK

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H-HistGeog@h-net.msu.edu (July 2008)

Paul Robert Magocsi. _Ukraine: An Illustrated History_. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. 336 pp. Illustrations, maps, index. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-295-98723-1.

Reviewed for H-HistGeog by Kerstin S. Jobst, Department of History, University of Salzburg (Austria)

Universities in the United States of America and Canada like Harvard, Toronto, and Edmonton have been for many years–thanks to a well-to-do North-American-based Ukrainian diaspora–the centers of historical Ukrainian studies. Up to now, many historians with Ukrainian roots have enriched the historical research on the Ukrainian territories with countless contributions. In many aspects they are more influential than their colleagues from the “old homeland,” Ukraine. Chief among these is Paul Robert Magocsi, professor of history and political science at the University of Toronto, and so not only in terms of quality but also in quantity: He is the author of numerous useful works essential for the research in this field.[1] Of seminal importance is his _A History of Ukraine_ (1996). Unlike most other monographs on this subject, Magocsi takes into account that ethnically the Ukrainian territories never were purely Ukrainian. Therefore, the author devotes much of his attention to the non-Ukrainian groups, e.g., Russians, Poles, Tatars, Jews, Germans, and especially the Rusyns. Some persons among these East Slavic inhabitants of the Subcarpathian region (the present-day Transcarpathian oblast’ of Ukraine, which for centuries was part of the Hungarian kingdom) believe that they are not Ukrainians but rather a distinct Rusyn nationality, sharing their roots with people in the Preshov region (Slovakia), the Lemko region (Poland), Maramorosh (Rumania), and several villages in northeastern Hungary. Undoubtedly the “awakening” of a Rusyn nationality is a thorn in the side of many Ukrainian nationalists. However, thanks also to Magocsi, who became the main and most influential propagandist of a Rusyn nationality outside its anticipated homeland, nowadays the “Rusyn case” is much more popular than ever before. He published several books on this subject[2] and made his contribution to the codification of the Rusyn language in Slovakia a couple of years ago.[3]

Why is this important for a review on Magocsi’s _Ukraine: An Illustrated History_? Because in some respects his enthusiasm for the “Rusyn case”–one can like it or not–prevents the author from the very typical nationalistic pattern of a Ukrainian master narrative so often found in historical research, especially from Ukraine itself. This master narrative ignores the profound non-Ukrainian impact on the Ukrainian nation, first and foremost the Russian and Polish. It stresses the tragic sides of the Ukrainian history (and there are many!), emphasizes the role of the Ukrainians as eternal victims, and dates the development of a distinct Ukrainian nation at least back to the early Middle Ages. Not much of this is found in most of Magocsi’s books. Maybe this is due to the rather popular character of this publication, addressing not so much an academic readership as a broad public (often, it seems, with a Ukrainian background and its specific requirements), but this book differs from his older ones. On the one hand, as usual, Magocsi emphasizes the multicultural nature of Ukraine throughout its history; on the other hand, he is closer to cherished collective Ukrainian mythologies. He does not follow the Ukrainian polyhistor Mychajlo Hrushevskyj (1866-1934) and his canonical interpretation of the Kievan Rus as the proto-Ukrainian (not Russian) state, but is convinced that the heritage of the Rus’ was preserved mainly in the principality of Galicia-Volhynia and thus on (later) Ukrainian land. All in all, he does not repeat the classical Ukrainian myth of the Cossacks, which stresses the national character of this group, and neither does he emphasize its social nature. Therefore, the events of 1648, closely connected with the name of the Ukrainian national hero Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, are for Magocsi (as for most Western historians, too) an “uprising” (and not a “national revolution”) against the Polish king for the restoration of traditional Cossack privileges. Nonetheless the result of this revolt is the emergence of a Cossack statehood. According to most Western specialists on the history of the Zaporoshian Cossacks this interpretation is not convincing. They prefer the word “autonomy” for describing the uprising’s result, not only because of the failure of the Zboriv agreement.[4] Incidentally, the fact that under the leadership of the hetman Khmelnytskyi the Cossacks committed one of the most disastrous anti-Jewish pogroms in East Europe before the twentieth century is not mentioned in the chapter about the uprising itself, but only in a later one.

There is an ongoing and fierce debate about the Ukrainian anti-Semitism in general but especially about the Ukrainian collaboration with the German occupying forces in World War II. John-Paul Himka, a historian also with Ukrainian roots, has called this “a blank spot in the collective memory of the Ukrainian Diaspora.”[5] He states that this group does not so much ignore the Holocaust of the Ukrainian Jews, but denies the participation of Ukrainians in this crime against humanity. Obviously with Magocsi this historical fact is a “blank spot,” too. In the chapters about the Ukrainian lands in World War II the atrocities against “all undesirable groups, which in Ukrainian lands meant communists, the Polish intelligentsia, eventually Ukrainian nationalists, and, especially, Jews” (p. 281) were exclusively committed by the German military and so-called Einsatzgruppen (special extermination forces). The shooting of more than 30,000 Jews in September 1941 in the ravine of Babyi Iar near Kiev is mentioned (pp. 281-282); the “help” of Ukrainians in organizing this crime is not. Not in every aspect does Magocsi follow the uncritical veneration–at least in the Western territories of Ukraine, the former East Galicia–of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), fighting sometimes with, sometimes against the Germans. He mentions, for example, the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists against Polish villages in Volhynia in 1943-44: “The victims were more often than not innocent civilians, as entire villages inhabited by Poles were destroyed by the UPA” (p. 287). At the same time, he diminishes the extent of collaboration of the political arm of the UPA, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), with the German occupation forces. It is definitely not true that after the failed proclamation of a sovereign Ukrainian state in June 1942 in Lviv the Germans were unwilling to work with these Ukrainian groups, as Magocsi claims. OUN troops, for example, followed the Wehrmacht in the summer and autumn of 1941 into the Soviet Union. For the German side it was clear that without the collaboration with nationalistic organizations such as the OUN the intended war of destruction (_Vernichtungskrieg_) in the East would not have been possible.

So my impressions of this book are very mixed. But despite the above-mentioned objections most chapters are clearly not written from a Ukrainian nationalistic perspective. And undoubtedly with its splendid presentation and huge number of pictures, maps, illustrations, and tables it will be valuable also to an academic readership.

Notes

[1]. See, e.g., Paul Robert Magocsi, _Galicia: A Historical Survey and Bibliographic Guide_ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), _Ukraine: A Historical Atlas_ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), and _The Shaping of a National Identity: Subkarpathian Rus’, 1848-1948_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).

[2]. See, e.g., Paul Robert Magocsi, _ Carpatho-Rusyn Studies: An Annotated Bibliography_, 2 vols. (New York: Garland, 1988). The author’s intention is to publish series of decennial “national bibliographies” in Carpatho-Rusyn studies. See also Paul Robert Magocsi and Ivan Pop, eds., _ Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture_ (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2002).

[3]. Paul Robert Magocsi, ed., _A New Slavic Language is Born: The Rusyn Literary Language of Slovakia_, with an introduction by Nikita I. Tolstoj (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1996).

[4]. See, e.g., Carsten Kumke, “Zwischen polnischer Adelsrepublik und Russischem Reich,” in _Geschichte der Ukraine_, ed. Frank Golczewski (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 56-91, esp. 87-88.

[5]. John-Paul Himka, “War Criminality: A Blank Spot in the Collective Memory of the Ukrainian Diaspora,” in _Spaces of Identity_ 5, no. 1 (2005): 9-24. See also Johan Dietsch, _Making Sense of Suffering: Holocaust and Holodomor in Ukrainian Historical Culture_ (Lund: Media Tryck, Lund University, 2006).

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (April 2008)

Carl von Clausewitz. _On War_. Edited by Beatrice Heuser and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. xli + 284 pp. Bibliography, notes, index. $12.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-1928-0716-8.

Reviewed for H-German by Eliah M. Bures, Department of History, University of California at Berkeley

A Clausewitz Primer

All reading, we are still sometimes told, is misreading. Whatever the truth of this assertion, little doubt remains that some works are more prone to confusions and tendentious distortions than others. Among these is the assemblage of notes, fragments, and chapters, most in various stages of incompletion, which a relatively obscure Prussian general bequeathed to his wife in 1831, and which subsequent generations have known simply as _On War_. This past year marked the 175th anniversary of its initial publication. Given the wide influence and enduring appeal that Carl von Clausewitz’s masterpiece has enjoyed in the interim, an abridged and annotated paperback edition, one aimed at making _On War_ accessible to students and the general public alike, has long been overdue.

The overall quality of this volume is very high, and Beatrice Heuser, a Clausewitz scholar and professor of international history and strategic studies in Munich, has assembled a mostly balanced and illuminating introduction to Clausewitz’s life and thought. Explanatory notes and a chronology of major events (both military and biographical) are provided, as is a brief bibliography of works in English, French, and German. Heuser has wisely opted for the 1976 translation by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, which transformed the occasional inscrutability of earlier translations into manageable difficulty. The selections are likewise judicious. Books 1 and 2–in which appear such central Clausewitzian themes as “friction,” the primacy of politics, the importance of “moral forces,” military genius, “violent resolution” as the “supreme law” of war, the fluidity of dialectical interaction, the gulf between “actual war” and “war in theory,” and above all the “paradoxical trinity” of enmity, chance, and reason–are included in their entirety. Books 7 and 8 are provided in large part, and Heuser, in her introduction, stresses the turn in these later books away from a conception of war as massive geopolitical struggle (clearly drawn from Clausewitz’s experience in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars) toward an interest in wars of “limited aim.” The bulk of the excisions–Heuser has trimmed the text to roughly a third of its original length–have been taken from Books 3 through 6. In general, the principle of selection, as Heuser frankly states, has been to include those portions of the work that have proved of most lasting significance, leaving behind the textbook-like instructions on billeting, the defense of swamps, and other matters which were no doubt of greater interest to the officer corps of Clausewitz’s day than they are to the majority of his readers in our own. One can hardly quarrel with such a choice.

If the task of an edition of this sort is to introduce a complex work to the uninitiated, and in doing so to anticipate and head off the most likely misunderstandings without imposing an exegetical straightjacket on the reader, then I suspect Heuser has largely succeeded. Her introduction to the volume has three general aims, all of which rely on the claim (by no means new) that Clausewitz represents a “Copernican leap in our thinking about war” (p. x). First, Heuser emphasizes the radical originality of _On War_. In contrast to the tradition of philosophical and legal discussions of war on the one hand, and, on the other, the eminently practical handbooks of tactical maneuver and battlefield “rules,” Clausewitz set out to investigate war as a political, social, and psychological phenomenon and to uncover the principles governing the complex and reciprocal interactions among its various dimensions. Heuser’s discussion of Clausewitz’s military education and the limitations of earlier treatments of war should be useful to all but the most expert of military historians. Second, she examines the role that Clausewitz’s own experience as a soldier played in the genesis of his thought, stressing his desire to remain true to the reality (and thus unpredictability) of war while at the same time rendering war subject to rigorous “scientific” investigation. Finally, Heuser asks about the applicability of these ideas as an analytical framework in our own day. Clausewitz, of course, is still very much a live figure. His work continues to be assigned in military academies worldwide, and the past thirty years have witnessed something of a renaissance in Clausewitz studies in the United States and Europe, in part as a consequence of what were seen as the strategic blunders of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. At the same time, movements are perpetually afoot to hand Clausewitz over to the historians, challenging the relevance of his thinking in an age of genocide, asymmetrical warfare, and nuclear deterrence. Such debates have become particularly heated of late, for obvious reasons.[1] Heuser, while convinced that Clausewitz continues to provide “brilliant analytical tools,” steers clear of polemics (p. xxix). She rightly notes the contradictions and ambiguities that plague the work, as well its inevitable shortcomings as the product of a particular time and place.

I wonder, however, whether Heuser might have gone further toward preventing the misunderstandings to which _On War_ has so often succumbed, and which she is clearly eager to avoid. Much as several generations of scholars have worked to rescue Johann Gottfried Herder, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others from trajectories culminating in Adolf Hitler or Prussian militarism, so have Clausewitz scholars labored with success to reverse earlier efforts to tar his work. Two of the most common charges have been that Clausewitz valorizes violence and that he elevates will, determination, and boldness to ends in themselves. Neither of these claims is supported by a careful reading of the text, but a haphazard reader, especially one under the sway of any of a host of prior (or current) misrepresentations, will find ample opportunity for selective quotation.

Passages abound which assert that “war consists of single, great, decisive actions” (p. 104), or that “of all the possible aims in war, the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces always appears as the highest” (p. 43), or that “willpower … is always both an element in and the product of strength” (p. 25). Even as sensitive a historian as B. H. Liddell Hart could manage to misread Clausewitz as proclaiming “the sovereign virtues of the will to conquer, the unique value of the offensive carried out with unlimited violence by a nation in arms and the power of military action to override everything else.”[2] Heuser’s introduction certainly does not encourage such a reading, but neither does it explicitly acknowledge its tendency to crop up among those who have not given the text their full attention. To the extent that she does address past misinterpretations, her dispute is with Clausewitz’s Cold War critics.

That Heuser largely neglects to discuss Clausewitz’s place in twentieth-century German history is connected to a more basic slant in her presentation of his thought. As a scholar of international relations and strategic studies, she situates Clausewitz almost exclusively within the history of these two fields. Her treatment of Clausewitz’s intellectual influences, to the extent that it goes beyond his military education, mentions the mathematician Leonard Euler, but fails to point out that Clausewitz came of age in, and was deeply influenced by, one of the most vibrant and creative intellectual milieus in European history.

A short list of Clausewitz’s more famous acquaintances would include Clemens Brentano, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Heinrich von Kleist, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Friedrich Schlegel, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Nor is Clausewitz’s place in intellectual history restricted to his own day and age. Twentieth-century thinkers as formidable–and antipathetic–as Vladimir Lenin, Raymond Aron, and Carl Schmitt have found much to contemplate in his work.[3]

But these are quibbles, and no introduction can accomplish all things.

Overall, Heuser has put together an admirably clear, judiciously edited, and reasonably balanced introduction to Clausewitz’s thought. Writing in a review of the 1976 translation of _On War_, T. C. W. Blanning remarked that it “ought to represent a turning-point in Clausewitz studies, a point after which … knowledge of that work proceeds beyond the maxim ‘war is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means.’”[4] Clausewitz has certainly received the attention Blanning called for, and Heuser, by introducing a new generation of students to him, seems likely to continue the revival.

Notes

[1]. See, for instance, Tony Corn’s recent “Clausewitz in Wonderland,” which bemoans the “sterilizing effect” of “Clausewitzology” on the American military mind, in _Hoover Policy Review_ 147 (February/March 2008), web special, at URL:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/4268401.html .

[2]. Michael Howard, “The Influence of Clausewitz,” in Carl von Clausewitz, _On War_, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 39. This and other introductory essays published with the translation, including a lengthy reading guide by Bernard Brodie, still provide excellent introductions to the text and fill out some of the gaps in Heuser’s introduction.

[3]. The first port of call for those wanting to redress this balance is Peter Paret, _Clausewitz and the State_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). The book has recently been reissued in paperback by Princeton University Press. See also Carl Schmitt, “Clausewitz als politischer Denker: Bemerkungen und Hinweise,” _Der Staat_ 6 (1978): 479-502; Carl Schmitt, _Theory of the Partisan_ (New York: Telos Press, 2007), 40-54; Bernard Semmel, _Marxism and the Science of War_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Raymond Aron, _Clausewitz, Philosopher of War_, trans. Christine Booker and Norman Stone (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1976). Heuser does list Aron’s work in the bibliography.

[4]. T. C. W. Blanning, “Review of _Clausewitz and the State_, by Peter Paret, and _On War_, by Carl von Clausewitz, trans. and ed. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret,” _English Historical Review_ 93 (January 1978): 135.

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H-Atlantic@h-net.msu.edu (March, 2008)

Frank Lambert. _The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World_. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005. 228 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $24.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8090-9533-9.

Reviewed for H-Atlantic by Christine E. Sears, Department of History, University of Alabama-Huntsville

Since 9/11, several books about the Barbary Wars have appeared. Most draw parallels between Muslim corsairs and modern-day jihadists, and portray both as fighting a holy war against Americans. Frank Lambert’s _The Barbary Wars_ stands apart for several reasons. For instance, his work avoids celebrating the American navy, its birth, and early exploits. Instead, Lambert strives to place the Barbary Wars in an Atlantic world context. By positioning the Barbary Wars in the Atlantic world, Lambert shifts the narrative from an exclusively U.S. perspective to one in which Americans play a minor role. The Barbary States perform only as minor players, as well, caught between European powers and the Ottoman Empire. Lambert’s attempts to de-center the American narrative and to contextualize the encounters within an Atlantic world make his work one of the more balanced accounts of U.S. encounters with the Barbary States.

_The Barbary Wars_ details American rhetoric and partisan politics alongside world developments, which allows Lambert to describe how internal politics and external events shaped U.S. foreign policy, particularly relations with the North African Barbary States. After the Revolution, for example, the United States entered the “highly competitive Atlantic” shorn of Great Britain’s protection (p. 4). Though Americans wanted to trade freely, they were buffeted by warring European powers and annoyed even by “petty” powers like the Barbary States.

Certainly, this was “not the world Americans had envisioned” (p. 4). Instead, Americans imagined a postwar world in which they would “extend [their] newly won independence to overseas commerce” (p. 7). At the same time, they longed for free and open trade; however, Americans faced disunited states loosely organized under a government hamstrung by the Articles of Confederation, daunting federal and state debts, and a foreboding economic environment. To make matters worse for the new country, mercantilist policies dominated world trade. Despite their dire circumstances, some Americans longed to spread “free commerce among nations” that would “one day usher in a ‘universal peace and benevolence’” (p. 26).

Lambert appears taken with American rhetoric while trying to describe American reality of the early Republic. Americans needed and wanted to trade after the war, and when they could not easily do so, they blamed the British for unfairly stacking the deck against them. As Lambert points out, however, longstanding mercantilist policies dominated world trade before and after the Revolution, and cutting one’s enemy out of any and all trade was standard practice. It is hardly surprising, then, that the British cut Americans out of the “lucrative West Indian trade”

after the Revolution, or that other powers protected their trade prerogatives against another nation (p. 43). Still, Lambert argues that the British refused a “commercial treaty favorable” to the United States, because the British feared the “United States as a competitor” (p. 43). What did the British fear, given that Americans were, as Lambert repeatedly writes, a “bit player” on the world stage (p. 12)?

According to Lambert, although Americans vied primarily against the considerably closer British and French, a “small band of pirates [Algerians] brought [American] commerce to standstill” when they captured a total of thirteen American ships between 1785 and 1793 (pp. 30, 56). Lambert, simultaneously, notes the actions of the great naval powers. The French took three hundred American ships and the British, refusing to recognize Americans’ neutrality, seized hundreds of ships as well. These comparative numbers indicated that the French and British brought commerce to a standstill, while Barbary corsairs only threatened the trickle of American commerce that slipped past the European powers.

Lambert vacillates in places in how he depicts the United States. At times, he portrays the United States as the underdog, who, through brains and brawn, showed corrupt Europeans how to deal with barbarian pirates. At other times, he shows the United States as a victim caught in international and economic forces until loosed by shifting world events. On the one hand, he claims that Algerian capture of eleven ships mobilized Congress to respond in 1793. On the other hand, he carefully describes changing conditions that allowed Congress to respond only in 1793, such as the ratification of the Constitution, a brighter economic outlook, and enough federal money to authorize a navy.

What finally ended the Barbary Wars? Was it a newly aggressive U.S. policy and its implementation? According to Lambert, the Napoleonic War ended, and this “gave America freedom of navigation in the Atlantic” (p. 188). Americans’ actions and re-actions to Barbary “humiliations” resulted in nothing, for “America’s rise was the result of changes in the Atlantic world more than in the country’s military exploits” (p. 202).

Lambert’s attempt to situate the Barbary Wars in an Atlantic context is ambitious and important, but only partially successful. Readers will find that this book, better than most works on this subject, offers balance and context. Lambert weaves together American partisan politics, naval history, and European events into a broader tapestry of political and commercial contexts. His book begins the work of re-situating the Barbary Wars in a world context so that the story is no longer just about the United States, but America’s place in world events.

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H-German (July 2008)

Joachim Wintzer. _Deutschland und der Völkerbund 1918-1926_. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006. 634 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. EUR 98.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-506-77519-1.

Reviewed for H-German by Wolfram von Scheliha, Independent Scholar

The Stony Path Toward Reconciliation

After the abdication of the Kaiser and in the face of the defeat in World War I, the idea of a League of Nations (LoN) was discussed in Germany with some enthusiasm. President Woodrow Wilson’s concept of a “peace without victory” and without losers[1] was attractive to many Germans in the rather desperate winter of 1918/19. But German desires for a just settlement came too late. When the draft covenant for the LoN was released to the public in February 1919 after the Paris peace conference had already begun, Germans associated the LoN with French revenge. “The present League of Nations,” argued historian Otto Becker in 1922, “is not the realization of the idea of reconciliation of nations, but their mockery; it is not an instrument through which to establish the relations of nations based on law and justice, but one to defend the injustices of the Versailles peace; it is not an instrument meant to reconcile nations, but one to suppress some nations–our great nation above all. It will, therefore, be short-lived.”[2]

From this perspective, Joachim Wintzer’s study of Germany’s relations with the LoN before it applied for membership in February 1926 is instructive. His approach illuminates, from a different angle, the central debates about the general direction of foreign policy in the first years of the Weimar Republic. Wintzer draws on discussions from within as well as from without the Foreign Office. Wintzer divides his study into two parts. In the first, he introduces the German institutions that dealt with the LoN: the relevant department in the Foreign Office, political parties, the press, and NGOs like the pacifist movement and the “German League for the LoN.” He then categorizes the international framework of foreign relations and differentiates between the “Versailles system” based on the power of the victors; the “Geneva system” consisting of the Wilsonian principals of law and justice in foreign relations; and the world economy, which was subject to the logic of market forces. Wintzer concludes this section with an overview of other nations’ attitudes toward the LoN, as well as a summary of the LoN’s organs, and of foreign political debates in Germany.

Wintzer’s second part makes up almost three quarters of the book. Here, he chronologically details the development of Germany’s relations to the LoN from November 1918 up to February 1926. This section is divided into twelve subchapters, each covering a period of four to ten months. This arrangement corresponds less to the dynamics of German attitudes to the LoN than to the rapid sequence of inner German and international crises in the course of which the problem of the LoN was always considered in political debates. The sheer amount of arguments concerning the LoN will require readers to have some stamina in order to make their way through the material, despite the fact that the book is written in a good, readable style. The basic line of German foreign policy toward the LoN was, as Wintzer points out, to make use of the “Geneva system” in order to modify the harsh peace conditions imposed upon Germany by the “Versailles system.” Wintzer notes that Germans did not seriously consider the idea of the LoN as an instrument of peacekeeping. One crucial point in the German debate turned out to be the question of whether Germany should insist on a permanent seat in the League’s council to mark its equal status as a great power. Wintzer identifies Gustav Stresemann’s security initiative of January 1925 as a key moment that led to the Locarno Agreement and eventually to Germany’s admission to membership in the LoN. This information does not, however, come as much of a surprise.

The study is an updated version of Wintzer’s doctoral thesis. He has examined a great number of archives; in addition to the files of the Foreign Office and the Reich Chancellery, Wintzer was the first to explore the papers of Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, the Foreign Office’s expert on the LoN, and the papers of Gerhard Köpke, the head of the western department. He also examined the documents of the LoN’s archives, and material from the foreign ministries in Paris, Bern, and Vienna. Why Wintzer found it useful to consult Swiss and Austrian archival documents as well, and these in preference to documents from other countries (for example, Belgium or Poland), however, remains unclear.

Wintzer does not provide an underlying thesis or trenchant arguments. But one has to acknowledge the sheer amount of material he has examined and the many details and facets of the debate on the LoN he presents. Although it is doubtful whether a narrative of almost 600 pages is actually necessary to tell the story, many scholars studying German foreign policy in the first half of the 1920s will appreciate the book as a helpful reference.

Notes

[1]. Woodrow Wilson, _Address to the Senate, 22 January 1917_, The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, eLibrary at

<http://wwl2.dataformat.com/Document.aspx?doc=30688 >.

[2]. Otto Becker, _Deutschlands Zusammenbruch und Auferstehung. Zweiter

Teil: Bedingungen für Deutschlands Wiederaufstieg_, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Carl Heymanns, 1922), 21.

By Dennis K. Redmond, Army of the US

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Abstract : Today’s military leader when asked, who was the greatest “Captain of Military History” would probably reply with the likes of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Frederick, or Napoleon. These captains, while leading their exceptional armies, provided significant innovations in operational and strategic art that are still practiced today. Although these contributions are noteworthy, their changes were evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Truly the most prolific revolutionary but least well known “Captain of Military History” was Gustavus Adolphus, “The Father of Combined Arms Warfare.” A skilled and conscientious monarch, he created the grand army of Sweden which in the early 1630s during the Thirty Years’ War, saved Germany from becoming a Catholic state under the auspices of the Emperor Ferdinand of Hapsburg. Gustavus’ innovations and improvements in the use of field artillery, redesigned battle formations, streamlined logistics, use of cavalry as a shock weapon and improvements to musketry highlight the importance of his contributions to today’s warfighter. This strategic research paper outlines in detail those innovations in warfare that are now part of the Army’s fighting doctrine.

1631: 17 September Gustav beats Tilly at the battle of Breitenfeld.

Irish kerne (mercenaries) in Stettin during the Thirty Years War, probably serving as auxiliaries to the Swedish Army. The original German legend around this picture by G. Kaler translates as ‘In such bizarre costumes, the 800 Irishmen (or madmen) walk around Stettin … They are resilient and resourceful people who, if they don’t have bread to eat, dig. When necessity demands, they can walk twenty miles a day. In addition to their muskets, they are armed with bows and arrows and long knives.’

Warfare in the Baltic was dominated by the rivalry between Sweden and Denmark. Populations were sparse, resulting in both conscription and the widespread employment of mercenaries. Whereas campaigns in Central and Western Europe were conducted between late spring and mid autumn, in the Baltic lands the summer season was shortened by spring mud, caused by the melting snows, and autumn rains. Usable roads were scarce everywhere in Europe but even more so in the North: armies often campaigned in the depths of winter when frost had hardened the ground. Ski-troops were regularly used in the wars between Sweden and Muscovy along the Finnish-Karelian border and between Sweden and Poland in Livonia. Four hundred reindeer pulled the supply sledges of the Swedish army that attacked the fortress of Kola on the White Sea in 1611.

Despite its remoteness, the Baltic was increasingly important to the European economy: Swedish copper and iron; Norwegian cod; Russian hemp, tar and timber; and, particularly, grain from Poland and German lands east of the Elbe. Much of the trade rested with Dutch and English merchants but every ship had to pass through the Sound, controlled by the Danes.

Gustav II Adolf, better known as Gustavus Adolphus, ascended the Swedish throne at the age of 16 during the Kalmar War with Denmark (1611-13). The Treaty of Knäred brought peace at the price of Sweden’s surrendering in perpetuity Gothenburg and Älvsborg, possession of which had allowed the Swedes to outflank the Danish Sound tolls, unless she could redeem them by a payment of 6 million riksdaler within six years. Much too Danish annoyance, with the help of heavy taxation and Dutch loans, the money was paid in 1619 and the region reclaimed. At Stolbova in 1616, in return for renouncing her claims to Novgorod, Sweden received Ingria and Keksholm from Muscovy, completing a land bridge between Estonia and Finland and bringing the whole coast of the Gulf of pinland under Swedish occupation. Having achieved peace with both Denmark and Russia, Gustav turned his attention to Poland, his position strengthened by a fifteen-year defensive alliance with the Dutch, signed in 1614. A premature attempt to seize Pernau from Poland in 1617 misfired and Sweden agreed a two-year truce in 1618.

The failure at Pernau convinced Gustav that the Swedish Army needed radical reform. Accordingly, during the 1620s he improved the conscription machinery. The 1620 ‘Ordinance of Military Personnel’ registered all males over 15 years of age in every parish and grouped them into ‘files’ of ten men; as many as required could then be drafted from each file. Sweden-Finland was split into eight recruiting districts, subdivided into two or three provinces each raising one ‘provincial’ infantry regiment consisting of three field regiments comprising two 408-man squadrons apiece. Recruiting districts were allocated to the cavalry in 1623, each field regiment consisting of two 175-man squadrons, and, later, to the artillery. Light cavalry was recruited by offering tax exemptions to any farmer willing to provide a fully equipped trooper. A War Board, an embryonic ministry of war, supervised military administration - a much-improved system that produced the largely national army with which Gustav Adolf invaded Germany in 1630. The human implications, however, were considerable. The village of Bygdeå in northern Sweden sent 230 young men to fight in Poland and Germany between 1621 and 1639; 215 died overseas and only five returned home, crippled.

Equally important were the tactical innovations devised by Gustav. Many links existed between the Dutch Republic and Sweden - economic, military, naval and diplomatic. When reforming the Dutch Army during the 1590s, Captain General Prince Maurice of Orange and his cousin, Louis-William of Nassau, had drawn upon the writings of Vegetius, Aelian, Frontinus and Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium as well as the ideas of mathematician Simon Stevin and the philosopher Justus Lipsius. Previously the Dutch Army had assumed the tactical organization of the Spanish, French and Swiss whose pike-and-halberd squares, or tercios, initially of 3,000 men, later reduced to about 1,500, were fringed with arquebusiers. They were essentially defensive formations against which enemies hurled themselves until spent, at which point the tercio counter-attacked. Such formations, although preferred by under-motivated mercenaries, were ill-suited to Dutch bogs and deployed firepower inefficiently, only the arquebusiers facing the enemy being able to use their weapons, whilst most of the pikemen could not participate directly in combat.

Learning from the articulation within the Roman legion, Maurice split the tercios into five-company battalions of 675 men, each combining the pike with the arquebus, later superseded by the matchlock musket. Battalions were arrayed in ten ranks, pikemen in the centre and ’shot’ to either flank. In theory the arquebusiers could maintain continuous fire, each rank successively discharging its weapons before ‘countermarching’ to the rear to reload. The pikemen protected the arquebusiers from attack by cavalry: the 16-foot pike out-ranged the cavalry lance, and formed the offensive arm of the battalion in an advance or charge - the ‘push of pike’. In the cauldron of the war with Spain, Maurice forged a system of drill and discipline, reduced his artillery to four basic calibres, reorganized logistics, and, in 1599, equipped the troops with firearms of the same size and calibre. Stevin and the engraver Jacob de Gheyn translated Maurice’s infantry drill into a series of pictorial representations, Wapenhandlingen van roers, musquetten ende spiessen, published in Amsterdam in 1607 and quickly followed by English, German, French and Danish editions. Reinforced by the conquest of Geertruidenberg in 1593 and victory at Nieuport in 1600, the reputation of the ‘Dutch method’ spread rapidly.

Polish armies were rich in cavalry, both heavy horse recruited from the aristocracy and light horsemen from Volhynia and Podolia, their skills honed by constant raiding across the Turkish and Muscovite borders. Polish and Turkish horsemen charged at a fast trot with the lance or sabre. Unable to penetrate tercios bristling with pikes, most West European cavalries, the Swedes included, practised the caracole, in which several ranks of horsemen trotted towards the enemy, discharged their pistols, and retired to the rear to reload while another rank moved forward. Only when the pistol fire had ‘disordered’ the enemy foot did the horsemen close in with the sword. Charles IX of Sweden, who was well informed about Dutch innovations by Jacob de la Gardie, unwisely introduced them into an army of mercenaries and reluctant conscripts when already fighting Poland during the early stages of a sixty-year conflict. In 1605, at Kirkholm outside Riga, Charles met a small Polish corps commanded by Karl Chodkiewicz, but was uncertain whether to employ the new-fangled tactics or accustomed formations. The Swedish cavalry was initially positioned between the infantry squares but, in response to enemy attacks, was switched to the flanks, where it was charged and broken by lancers. Outflanked and split into three separate bodies, the Swedish infantry suffered 9,000 casualties (82 per cent) as the Polish hussaria and Cossacks penetrated their pike squares: the Poles lost just 100 men. On 4 July 1610 a Russo-Swedish army under Jacob de la Gardie was smashed by the Poles at Klushino while attempting to relieve the siege of Smolensk, only 400 survivors straggling back into Estonia; the remainder of Gardie’s mercenaries joined the victors.

War against the Poles and Prussia (1620-29) was the laboratory for tactical experiment. Gustav Adolf abandoned the caracole and imitated the Poles, training his cavalry to charge at the trot with the sabre. In addition, sections of musketeers accompanied the horse to disrupt enemy formations by fire prior to the charge. The introduction of the pike and the musket increased the shock and firepower of the infantry. Battalions were thinned from ten ranks to six, with pike in the centre and ’shot’ on either wing, increasing both the frontage and the volume of fire sufficiently to break up enemy formations and allow the pikemen to attack. The counter-march was employed only when the battalion was engaged at extended range, typically about 100 metres. At close range of 30 to 40 metres, where battles were decided, he introduced ‘volley firing’ by advancing the three rear ranks of musketeers into the intervals between the front three. Volleys were usually delivered as the prelude to a ‘push of pike’. At Breitenfeld in 1631 the Scots Brigade in the Swedish army:

ordered themselves in several small battalions, about 6 or 700 in a body, presently now double their ranks, making their files then but 3 deep, the discipline of the King of Sweden being never to march above 6 deep. This done, the foremost rank falling on their knees; the second stooping forward; and the third rank standing right up, and all giving fire together; they powered so much lead at one instant in amongst the enemy’s horse that their ranks were much broken with it. (Robert Monro, Monro his expedition with the worthy Scots regiment call’d Mackays, London 1637)

Alternatively, when within pistol-shot, the first three ranks of musketeers gave a volley, followed by the remainder, before the battalion charged home with pike, sword and musket stock. The emphasis on volley firing, rather than the Dutch rolling fire, rendered musketeers vulnerable while reloading, and dependent upon the pikemen for protection. However, battles were won and lost by furious close quarter combat and Gustav’s tactics ensured that his men enjoyed maximum advantage when they closed with the enemy.

Further to augment infantry firepower, in 1629 two or three light, 3-pounder cannon - infantry guns - were attached to each battalion: over eighty accompanied the army to Germany in 1630. Pre-packed cartridges increased the rate of fire. Gustav deployed his heavier field guns in mobile batteries. Although Maurice’s and Gustav’s reforms enhanced the efficacy of infantry, the shallow, linear battalions were more vulnerable than the older pike squares to attacks on their rear and flanks. Consequently, battlefield deployment assumed a chequer-board appearance with the spaces between the battalions in the first line covered in echelon by the battalions of the second and, if present, third lines. Cavalry, supported by parties of musketeers, was customarily positioned on the wings where it had the space and freedom to charge before turning against the enemy’s flank or rear.

Gustav, with 18,000 men, renewed the campaign in Livonia in 1621, culminating in the capture of Riga. Employing modern siege techniques acquired from the Dutch - an ability and willingness to dig was another characteristic of the new military discipline - 15,000 Swedes overcame the garrison of 300 regulars and 3,700 militia after a six-day bombardment. With only 3,000 field troops available, the Poles were unable to intervene. Mitau in Kurland was the next target but that was the extent of Swedish achievement; the men were weary, their ranks emaciated by sickness and the constant harrying of the Cossacks. Gustav had also run out of funds. Mitau was lost in November 1622 but Sigismund III Vasa of Poland was in an equally parlous condition, defeated by the Turks in 1621 and no longer in receipt of Danish support, Christian IV being more interested in northern German;: Sigismund and Gustav were content to sign a truce until 1625.

When hostilities resumed, Gustav quickly overran Livonia north of the Dvina, capturing Mitau and Dorpat, but an expedition into Kurland stalled before Windau and Libau. In January 1626, at the battle of Wallhof, south of Riga, Gustav employed his new tactics to smash the Polish arm;: The Swedes next invaded and occupied Royal Prussia, a rich province where ‘war could be made to pay for war’. This was imperative because the Livonian campaigns had been financed from Sweden’s own scarce resources. Prussian ports exported Polish grain, and their annual customs income averaged 600,000 riksdaler. In addition, Sweden levied tolls on all ships visiting the southern Baltic ports between Danzig and Narva, the ‘licence system’, which yielded a further 500,000 riksdaler. Taken together, these dues realized more money for Sweden than later French subsidies.

Having subdued Prussia, Gustav struck inland to force Sigismund to make peace. The famous Polish cavalry was overcome by the remodelled Swedish horse at Dirschau on the Vistula in August 1627, but an advance on Warsaw in 1629 was halted at Stuhm (Honigfelde) on 27 June by the Poles, reinforced with 12,000 men from Wallenstein. After failed efforts to negotiate peace in 1627 and 1628, the French, anxious to deploy the Swedish army in Germany to counter the emperor and the Catholic League, brokered a deal in 1629. By the terms of the six-year Truce of Altmark of September 1629, Gustav abandoned most of his Prussian gains but retained the 3 ½ per cent tolls from the Prussian ports and direct control over Elbing, Braunsberg and Pillau. In 1630 the Duke of Kurland surrendered the customs from his ports of Windau and Libau. In total, Gustav gained 600,000 riksdaler per annum, one-third of Swedish military expenditure.

On 12 January 1628 the Secret Committee of the Riksdag had given Gustav permission to intervene in Germany if necessary. It was invoked on 9 January 1629 because, with the Imperialists on the Baltic coast and Wallenstein constructing a navy at Wismar, there was a possibility that Sweden herself might be invaded. Gustav aimed to drive the Imperialists from the Baltic, restore the pre1618 political situation in Germany, and establish bases at Stralsund and Wismar through which troops could rapidly deploy should Swedish territory again be endangered. Gustav entered Germany without assurances of foreign aid and uncertain that Denmark would not attack while his back was turned. He did, however, take with him a reformed and battle-hardened arm):

Sailing from Stockholm on 27 June 1630 with 13,000 men packed aboard thirteen transports, escorted by twenty-seven warships, Gustav landed on 6 July at Peenemünde on the northern tip of the island of Usedom in the estuary of the River Oder, whence he probably intended to attack down the line of the Oder into Imperial Silesia, threatening Austria and Vienna. His sole ally was the port of Stralsund, which had withstood an Imperial siege from May to July 1628. Usedom and Stettin were quickly subdued, obliging the Duke of Pomerania to sign an agreement providing the invaders with a larger base area. Only the dispossessed rallied to the Swedish cause, principally the Duke of Mecklenburg and Duke Christian William of Brandenburg (1587-1665), the Protestant ex-administrator of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, who sought to regain the office he had lost following the Edict of Restitution. Magdeburg was a vital post commanding the passage of the Elbe and the routes from Pomerania into Lower Saxony and Thuringia. On 1 August 1630 Magdeburg and Sweden signed an alliance that restored Christian William and inserted a Swedish governor.

Even better was an alliance with Landgrave William V of Hesse-Kassel (r. 1627-37) that gave Gustav a potential opening into Westphalia and the valleys of the Main and Rhine, but for the remainder of 1630 the Swedish army was penned into Pomerania. The major north German princes sat on their hands, especially Electors John George of Saxony and George William of Brandenburg, who were as wary of Gustav as they were of the emperor and Wallenstein.

Another problem was supply. Through Stettin and Stralsund Gustav could receive supplies directly from Sweden, but that negated a prime objective. Gustav intended to support his army from German resources, so he needed to expand his beachhead southwards along both banks of the Oder. Eastern Pomerania was cleared, and by Christmas 1630 the ejection of the Imperial garrisons from Gartz and Greifenhagen (Gryfino) opened the lower Oder, but it was not until February 1631 that Gustav succeeded in seizing most of Mecklenburg.

On 23 January 1631 Gustav and his chancellor, Oxenstierna, signed the Treaty of Barwalde with the envoys of France. In return for a subsidy of 400,000 taler per annum over five years, they agreed to field an army of 30,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry but retained freedom of action, Richelieu calculating that any Swedish success would disadvantage the Habsburgs.

Gustav had been able to land unopposed because much of the Imperial Army had been redeployed to northern Italy, where a dispute over the succession to the Duchy of Mantua, ultimately settled in favour of the French candidate, the Duke of Nevers, gave France control of the Grisons and access to northern Italy via Pinerolo. Gustav was also greatly aided by the dismissal of Wallenstein.

At the height of his territorial power, on 28 March 1629 Emperor Ferdinand issued the Edict of Restitution, which restored all Roman Catholic Church property sequestered by the Protestant princes and cities since 1552. In political terms the edict established Imperial-Wittelsbach control over north-western Germany, displeasing Lutheran, Calvinist and Catholic princes. Associated with this was disquiet at the cavalier manner in which the emperor had transferred the Palatinate electorate to Bavaria in 1625 whilst supporters of Denmark - the Dukes of Calenberg, Wolfenbüttel and Mecklenburg - had been dispossessed and their titles and lands given to Imperial generals. Wallenstein rashly accepted the Duchy of Mecklenburg, and Gottfried Pappenheim wanted the dukedom of Wolfenbüttel but was thwarted by Maximilian of Bavaria and had to be content with becoming an Imperial count. Tilly, older and wiser, accepted a gratuity of 400,000 guilders instead of the Duchy of Calenberg.

Aware that Ferdinand’s dominance rested entirely upon Wallenstein’s army and organization, the anti-Imperial princes undermined the generalissimo. His contribution system, which affected friend and enemy alike, was a major grievance, as was his employment of numerous Bohemian Protestants. At the Diet of Regensburg (June to August 1630) the electors made it clear to Ferdinand that they would elect his son, Ferdinand of Hungary, as king of the Romans (i.e. Ferdinand’s successor) only if he sacked Wallenstein, promoted Tilly to command of the Imperial Army, and revoked the Edict of Restitution. Ferdinand had no option but to concede his entire position.

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H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H German@h net.msu.edu (March 2008)

Robert M. Citino. _Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942_. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. xiv + 429 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978 070061531-5.

Reviewed for H German by Stephen G. Fritz, Department of History, East Tennessee State University

Defeat through Victory

Continuing his examination of the German way of war, Robert Citino has produced a cogently argued, clearly written book in which he asserts that the German defeat in World War II was as much conceptual as it was material. Given its geographical position and limited resource base, according to Citino, first Prussian, then German leaders learned that in order to survive a world of hostile enemies, wars had to be short, sharp, and decisive. Consequently, German military doctrine placed great emphasis on operational factors, to the detriment of prosaic material and logistical considerations. German planners thus concentrated their efforts on designing elegant operational schemes to achieve victory, while their opposite numbers in the enemy states tediously mobilized economic resources. As a result, Germany found itself dangerously dependent on maneuver for success, since it consistently lacked the firepower and material resources necessary for decisive victory. When it worked, as in 1870-71, the triumph was glittering and spectacular; when it failed, as in 1941-42, the defeat was total and ruinous. It seemed for Germany that war was always all or nothing; its dependence on operational doctrine left it little room for any alternative outcome.

After a short introduction in which he deftly summarizes Prussian/German military doctrine, Citino makes it clear that, based on its history, the operational situation facing German leaders after 1941was neither unique nor particularly worrisome. The fact that Germany found itself surrounded by enemies that substantially outnumbered it and had access to vastly greater economic resources was nothing new in German military history. Indeed, graduates of the _Kriegsakademie_ knew what to do, since precisely this scenario formed the basis of their operational studies. The lesson of German history screamed one thing: attack and land a crushing blow against a single opponent to shatter the enemy coalition. Citino asserts that the weakness of this approach had already manifested itself by the end of 1941. Given their emphasis on operational concerns, German military planners were in a sort of conceptual prison, one in which they thought very little about strategic concerns, but focused almost exclusively on operational victories. The weakness of this approach lay in the lack of any exit strategy. If maneuver and a war of movement failed to yield a quick strategic victory, the only option left to German leaders seemed to be more of the same: keep winning operational triumphs in the hope that they would eventually lead to overall success. Therefore, as Citino notes wryly, by 1941, “the Wehrmacht … had conquered itself into a strategic impasse” (pp. 33-34).

Just as significantly, these dazzling successes of 1939-41, whether in Poland, Scandinavia, France, or the Balkans, while not achieving any decisive results, had left the Wehrmacht dangerously overextended. Much to German dismay, the pattern established in the first two years of the war held fast in the second half of 1941. Once again, the Germans won brilliant battles of maneuver and encirclement but to no avail; the Soviets stubbornly refused to give up. More ominously, although they lent themselves to spectacular headlines and brilliant weekly newsreels, these encirclement battles proved to be grinding, grueling, costly affairs that began the process of gutting the Wehrmacht. As Citino points out, “[t]he Wehrmacht’s losses in men and material, even in victory, were far heavier than they had been in previous campaigns” (p. 42). Indeed, one might note that the German army actually suffered more combat deaths in July 1941 than in the crisis months of December 1941 or January-February 1942. For a military organization not keen on logistics or economic mobilization under the best of circumstances, these losses proved beyond capacity for replacement. From the summer of 1941, the German army consistently ran short on crucial supplies necessary to sustain an all-out war effort.

Although the grim, dogged Soviet resistance was primarily responsible for preventing the Germans from converting operational triumphs into decisive victory, another problem had emerged that would plague the Germans in 1942: a lack of clear focus on the major strategic goals of the Barbarossa campaign. For a country that lacked sufficient resources in the first place, the failure to prioritize key aims on the Eastern Front risked a serious dispersal of effort that could only undermine the larger goal of a quick victory. In a further bitter twist, the conflict between Adolf Hitler and his military leaders put another cherished German military tradition into question: the independence of army commanders in the field. Although the Germans survived the Soviet counterattack before Moscow and the savage winter of 1941-42, the experience both reinforced and undermined key German ideas on how to make war.

As German leaders pondered the military situation in the early spring of 1942, Citino raises one of the most puzzling questions of World War II: given the fact that their armies occupied much of Europe, why did the Germans fail to mobilize resources on a scale similar to their enemies?

Unfortunately, although he poses the question, Citino doesn’t provide any answers. This omission does not so much point to a failure on his part as illustrate a limitation inherent in operational military history: the focus must remain on the battlefield. And here, Citino once again proves adept in his analysis of operational factors. Although the German gaze remained squarely on the Soviet Union, at this point Citino shifts the strategic focus of his book to the desert war in North Africa. Admittedly a side show in terms of sheer numbers, the North African campaign nonetheless confronted the Germans with the troubling reminder that although they barely had strength enough to fight in one theater at a time, they now faced the reality of having to conduct operations simultaneously in a number of far-flung areas. This dispersal of energies, in turn, presented problems of both a command and logistical nature. In North Africa, of course, Erwin Rommel invoked the traditional independence of the field commander to violate orders on a consistent basis. Even as he was embarrassing his opponents with his operational and tactical brilliance, however, he lacked sufficient logistical support to achieve anything like a decisive strategic victory. In a reprise of the Russian campaign of 1941, every German victory in North Africa simply led to a strategic impasse that the Germans could not resolve.

In similar fashion, when faced with the dilemma of what to do in Russia after the blitzkrieg had failed, German planners came to the only conclusion possible given their history, training, and assumptions: launch another blitzkrieg campaign. In arriving at this decision, army leaders reinforced their tradition. As Citino also notes, though, in terms of the operational plan for 1942 they departed significantly from tradition and past practices: it was to be an exceedingly complex operation based on a series of sequential actions directed from the top with little decision-making freedom accorded field commanders. Success was assured only if the enemy cooperated once again in his destruction. The plan, Operation Blue, began to fall apart almost immediately, a consequence of both German and Soviet actions. Here, the experience of

1941 proved significant. Determined to avoid the operational chaos of the latter stages of the 1941 campaign and faced with insufficient economic and military resources (shortages in the Luftwaffe proved especially limiting), German planners now aimed not to pull off deep battles of encirclement, but instead to rely on Soviet forces staying in place and conduct a rolling series of shallow encirclements. In the event, whether from sheer panic or because of a Soviet decision to withdraw into the vast expanse of southern Russia, the initial German thrusts in the summer of 1942, while conquering much territory, netted few prisoners. The Wehrmacht found itself punching air. Rather than striking in depth to the east and trapping large Soviet formations against the natural line of the Volga, the Germans found themselves sliding ineffectually to the south in an operation that stretched their supply lines to the breaking point. Almost from the beginning, the Soviet retreat threatened to render the operational plan for 1942 pointless.

This operational problem concealed a larger dilemma. Hitler’s goal for the war against the Soviet Union had always been the annexation of _Lebensraum_, but how was it to be achieved? The Germans barely had the resources to conquer European Russia, let alone the entire Soviet Union. Now that the Red Army had learned not to let itself be trapped in encirclement battles, destruction of the enemy forces proved beyond German capabilities. As the situation in North Africa demonstrated, the USSR’s western allies were steadily amassing economic and military resources for use against Germany. For their part, the Germans found themselves increasingly dependent on their allies, Italy, Rumania, and Hungary, nations that could marshal far few resources than those of the western allies. Hitler further compounded this increasingly unfavorable situation with his impatience and impetuosity: splitting the already over-stretched German forces, demanding that they conduct operations simultaneously that had been planned sequentially, and ignoring the threatening situation on the exposed German flanks. Once again, the Germans confronted their basic dilemma, how to do more with less. As Citino stresses repeatedly, the Germans had enough strength to win on the operational level, but failed to translate these gains this into strategic victory. This quandary simply grew with increasing German success on the battlefield, as scarce resources had to be dispensed over a wider area. To Citino, this conundrum reflects the basic German way of war itself, a conceptual framework based on historical experience that, limited in its focus to operational details, by definition could not devise an alternative approach if operational success failed to bring a swift strategic victory.

Viewed from the present perspective, in light of our awareness of the chronic German deficiencies of men and material, the outcome seems almost inevitable: the turning points at Stalingrad and El Alamein, then the grinding down of German resistance over the next three years. Citino resists that temptation, instead soberly reminding us that “the most shocking aspect of 1942 … is how absurdly close the Wehrmacht came to taking not one but all of its objectives for 1942″ (p. 306). Citino is correct in this judgment, and he both affirms and raises some questions about his thesis. As Richard Overy has demonstrated, the outcome of World War II hinged on the cumulative effect of narrow victories in a few key areas that eventually produced an overwhelming allied triumph. Once of these key areas was economic mobilization, where the Germans failed to convert the resources of occupied Europe into sufficient military strength. Did this failure occur because, as Citino would argue, the German leadership simply did not concern itself with non-military factors, being focused exclusively on operational matters and thus blind to the obvious flaws in their method? Or, as others might argue, was it the result of the chronic institutional Darwinism and inefficiency of the Nazi bureaucracy, the racist and exploitative nature of the German occupation, the burdens produced by trying simultaneously to fight a military war and a war against the Jews, or simply the ultimately limitless aims of Hitler?

As with all good interpretative histories, Citino forces the reader to think about his assertions. Was the German failure in Russia in 1941 the result of an exclusive emphasis on operational thinking, or a consequence of a poor operational plan, one with no clearly defined focus upon which the Germans could concentrate resources? How great a role did key operational decisions play in the German defeats of 1941 and 1942? Did the Germans over-extend themselves before Moscow in 1941 because of blind operational thinking or because of recent historical memories (the Marne in September 1914) of a strategic victory thrown away because of a failure of effort at the last minute? As Citino notes of German actions in Russia in 1942, “the operational plans for the summer offensive were in many ways a departure from past military practice” (p. 157). Indeed, in terms of preparation and assembly of forces, Operation Blue marked, according to Citino, “a remarkable break with the past” (p. 158). Does this information suggest, then, that the Germans might have been successful if they had maintained their operational traditions? Or, was the departure from customary practice itself the result of the failure of operational thinking? German commanders’ loss of decision-making autonomy in the field also constituted a key sub-theme of 1942, and again represented a significant departure from German war-making custom. With less interference from above and more freedom on the ground, could the defeat of 1942 been turned into an operational victory?

Robert Citino has produced an outstanding work of operational military history, a book that combines exhaustive research with a clear, well-argued thesis. Indeed, many of the endnotes read like mini-historiograpical essays; here Citino discusses interpretative controversies surrounding many key assertions in the book. His assessment of the 1942 German campaign in the Soviet Union is especially noteworthy, not simply in its discussion of the operational details, but the manner in which he demonstrates that a unique way of fighting, the German way of war, died in the steppes of southern Russia. With better decision-making and operational plans, could the Germans have fared better in Russia in 1942? The answer is almost certainly yes. Would such victories have changed the outcome of the war? Given the enormous economic potential of the United States and its development of the atomic bomb, the answer is almost certainly no.

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H-Genocide@h-net.msu.edu (September, 2007)

Casper W. Erichsen. _“The Angel of Death Has Descended Violently among Them”: Concentration Camps and Prisoners-of-War in Namibia, 1904-1908_.

Leiden: University of Leiden, 2005. xvi + 170 pp. Illustrations, bibliography. EUR 10.00 (paper), ISBN 978-90-5448-064-8.

Reviewed for H-Genocide by Robert Gordon, Department of Anthropology, University of Vermont

Namibia’s Forgotten Victims

Reader be forewarned. Do not dismiss this monograph because of the sloppy typographical and editing errors that abound in this account. This study, the product of more than four years research, is based on the first Masters thesis in History presented at the University of Namibia. Its author, a Dane, is a long-time resident of the country who has been heavily involved in promoting “activist history” and this monograph reflects that concern well.

The monograph consists of four chapters of which the first two are by far the longest. The first, “Konzentrationslager,” fifty-eight pages long, sets the context. It describes the War of 1904-07, the controversial Extermination Order, the war in the south against the Nama, and the sociology and economic role of prisoner of war camps–paying particular attention to the camps in Windhoek and Swakopmund. Boxes offering vignettes on diverse topics like “Bambusen” (youthful man-servants) and “Orion’s warrior” provide valuable supplemental information. The second chapter, “The Island of Death,” provides the major focus. In sixty-four pages it gives a detailed description of the horrifying conditions on Shark Island, the camp abutting the southern desert port of Luderitzbucht. This chapter is also supplemented with informative boxes on diverse matters. After describing the history of Luderitzbucht, Erichsen describes the make-up of the camp, which was used to house both Herero, and increasingly, Nama prisoners. A discussion on mortality rates precedes an analysis of the “anatomy of evil.” Much use is made of photographic evidence to establish the author’s case. The third chapter, only around eight pages, deals with the issue of responsibility. It attempts to discuss who was to blame for setting up the camps and points out that some officials were deeply offended by the institutions. A brief four-page conclusion suggests that prisoners were kept on the island despite soaring mortality rates “because they might otherwise go and tell others of German trickery.” Erichsen deduces that there is much validity in the conclusions reached in the controversial South African government’s 1918 _Report on the Natives of South-West Africa and Their Treatment by Germany_.

There is much that is frustrating in this short study, especially the crying need for good copy editing, the lack of attribution of the sources of photographs, and the sometimes irritatingly naïve captions provided for the photographs. But the value of the study far outweighs these irritations. Most work on the 1904-07 War are characterized by an Herero-centric focus and this study starts to broaden the perspective. Moreover, most studies in English are based on secondary sources and a recycling of Horst Drechsler’s rather dated work. Erichsen’s research is based largely on primary sources found in the National Archives in Windhoek. He is to be commended for bringing these documents to the attention of a wider audience by translating them into English, not his native language.

But there is yet another strength. The famous British Soviet spy, Kim Philby, once claimed that the most important activity he undertook was cruising the diplomatic cocktail, circuit because that allowed him to interpret the documents he photographed. Already in 1909, Governor Leutwein’s brother, Paul Leutwein, noted that there was a world of difference between what was claimed in government documents and what was happening in the colonizer-colonized interface. By actually visiting the area–the scenes of the crimes, as it were–and critically examining what remains of photographs, newspaper reports, and other arcane, Erichsen offers a monograph with a solid sense of place and credibility.

Writing with passion but without sentimentality, Erichsen provides the reader with a renewed sense of sorrow, anger, and pity for Namibia’s “forgotten” victims. With a motion dealing with German genocide in Namibia currently wending its way through the German parliament, this is a very timely contribution to the study of genocide.