What are we reading?

[Gusington]

Only three mixed reviews on Amazon right now for A Knife's Edge, the 1-star review reads as if it were written by a Russian troll:

https://smile.amazon.com/Knifes-Edge-Ukraine-November-1942-March/dp/1472828348/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546476345&sr=1-4&keywords=Prit+Buttar

[Sir Slash]

I am not that far, though close. Like his other books, he jumps right in the action before the actual time period of the book's title and notes atrocities committed by both sides as well as the 'spin' on the campaign from previous decades by both sides. He lists numerous sources in the Chapter notes from other authors and Russian sources not previously available. As for the errors listed by reviewer #1, Buttar wasn't born in the UK I don't believe and so all of his books I've read have some odd unit listings and place names as English is kind of a second language for him. Also, the maps STILL need to be bigger and more detailed.

[Pete Dero]

Only three mixed reviews on Amazon right now for A Knife's Edge, the 1-star review reads as if it were written by a Russian troll:

https://smile.amazon.com/Knifes-Edge-Ukraine-November-1942-March/dp/1472828348/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546476345&sr=1-4&keywords=Prit+Buttar

The Armourer January 2019 review - Editor's choice of the month

Expert on all things Eastern Front related, Prit Buttar's latest effort is subtitled: The Ukraine, November 1942 – March 1943. It basically
takes up the story of the war in the East after Germany's catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad. It was the job of Erich von Manstein to thwart
the Red Army – which itself had suffered huge losses – and rebuild the shattered German forces.
It all starts with analysing just how prepared the German forces were for Operation Barbarossa.
The rapid victories in Western Europe papered over cracks in war materiel production, the quality of
the armour deployed and the lack of reserves.
Buttar is a good writer, so he explains the political manoeuvrings on both Russian and German
sides well, mixing in personal diary entries from those involved in the fighting. The story goes through all
the operations on the massive front as offensive and counter offensive ground down the troops on both
sides. Although it's only part of the story, it's a richly detailed history worth reading for any student of the Eastern Front.

[Skwerl]

Radix by A A Attanasio.  A great Science Fiction novel that I originally read way back in the 1980s.

[JasonPratt]

Having recently finished Hargreaves' Blitzkrieg Unleashed (see my earlier posts for comments), I'm chewing steadily along on (among other things) Robert Forczyk's Case Red: the Collapse of France.

I was hoping it would be an account of the German strategic and tactical perspective, as with several other books I've been collecting for a while, but I'm not sure it's going to be. I haven't gotten far enough to see how much reliance there is on soldier accounts and remembrances once the action starts -- I'm still in the preliminary context chapters.

RF spent years researching and writing the account due to finding a lack of detailed book-length analyzes of "Fall Rot", the invasion of most of France itself, after the breakthrough into northern France through Belgium and the Lowlands, i.e. "Fall Gelb / Case Yellow".) I'm lacking a good German-perspective book on that campaign, too, but I figure I'll get some hints from his sources.

RF's thesis after his research, is that the indispensable factors that led to French defeat in 1940 (i.e. had these factors changed, France would have had a real chance at victory, whereas a change of any other factors while these remained true would have still led to defeat) were a lack of effective air support to the army, and insufficient defensive firepower at the tactical level.

The two main causes leading to these problems were an excessive commitment to the concept of coalition warfare, which in various ways and degrees failed to support France in accordance with French expectations; and a long-running obsession with maintaining France's world image as a Great Power, leading France to build themselves as the strategic leader and material supporter of a military league ringing Germany (a ring which could be knocked out piecemeal or simply defect as with the Sudetenland), while also gearing their military to fight counter-insurgent colonial operations and to protect their sea lanes with a grossly expensive navy (and its prestige-level support bases, such as competing with Britain's Gibraltar by building Mers-el-Kebir.)

Britain (per RF's thesis) failed so hard at supporting France's coalition deterrence strategy (due to various factors including a focus on its own colonial strength) that it's singled out as the most indispensable indirect cause of France's defeat: had they, at least, been prepared to give France the coalition support to fight a serious war against a modern nation on the continent, France might have stood a real chance at winning.


It should be noted that RF thus steps away from blaming France's defeat on the standard doctrine-morale-leadership deficiency arguments we're all familiar with: obviously France wasn't a bunch of cheese-eating surrender-monkeys. ;) Nor were they married so hard to linear combat doctrines that they couldn't handle fluidity; much to the contrary, they had shifted the focus of their army, navy, and air operations to hyper-fluid counter-insurgent ops! -- ops however to be fought somewhere other than France. Their "firepower kills" doctrine was fine, but it wasn't being implemented to protect the homeland.

[Gusington]

^I've been wanting to read that book for a long time, thanks Pratt. Sounds excellent, even if it's not what you were looking for exactly.

I am currently reading German Uniforms, Insignia & Equipment, 1918-1923 by Charles Woolley and The Outlaws by Ernst von Solomon...I am on a Freikorps kick. Didn't know much about them until now.

[Toonces]

I started Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance earlier this week.  I'm about 40% done already.

It's a book I've been wanting to read for a while.  It's...interesting.  I'm not sure I'm exactly enjoying it, but it does have a one more page factor I can't explain.

[MetalDog]

Nothing is what I want.

[Staggerwing]

I started Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance earlier this week.  I'm about 40% done already.

It's a book I've been wanting to read for a while.  It's...interesting.  I'm not sure I'm exactly enjoying it, but it does have a one more page factor I can't explain.

I read that book when I was in my early 20's and was just blown away by it, even though much of it was over my head (no Google back then to look up stuff). I read it again after about 15 years, this time a more recent addition which included a new section at the end that the author added years later. Made quite an impact on me since I was not expecting it.

[Toonces]

^ I keep reading that in reviews, which is why I decided to give it a go. 

It's just now what I was expecting.  I knew it was a philosophy book, but still...whatever I had made up in my mind how it would go, I was wrong.

[Staggerwing]

Pirsig wrote a follow up book called 'Lila', where the main character ('Phaedrus') from Zen goes on a second 'journey', this time by sailboat, with a new companion ('Lila'), and further developed some of his philosophical ideas about Western values and culture.

[JasonPratt]

^I've been wanting to read that book for a long time, thanks Pratt. Sounds excellent, even if it's not what you were looking for exactly.

Still going along, still interesting -- just finished the invasion of Poland, with Britain's and France's moves during this time. I hadn't realized that France did in fact launch an offensive operation up to the West Wall area, the first offensive Allied operation of the War (apparently, happening a few days before the single major Polish counter-offensive), and came within shelling distance of a major arms factory in... Strassbourg, iirc? But then the commander decided to hang there (NOT SHELLING THE FACTORY!) waiting for further orders, while his troops indulged in a little looting.  ::) :P Eventually he was ordered to withdraw, once Warsaw was besieged and Poland seemed confirmed to be lost. Thus dooming Poland to be lost permanently.

I think the BEF is deploying now, too, and is setting up defenses on the coast. The Phony War (or Droll War in French) just started.

Another sign of France's tactical flexibility, instead of a pure commitment to "Methodical War", was that during a major training exercise they dropped airborne infantry unexpectedly on the headquarters of one side to capture it!  :o I'm not sure that counts as the first such formal exercise in history, but it has to be one of the earliest.

(The Soviets are almost surely the historical leader in airborne ops training -- something which this book naturally doesn't cover: Stalin was so hard in favor of it that he instituted informal parachute training at the level of public entertainment for years before the war! He didn't only have airborne divisions by summer of 41, he had whole airborne corps. Plural corps. As in, at least one whole airborne army in effect. What happened to this massive collection of highly trained elite airborne troops, is a whole other story. ;) Suffice to say that they rarely got deployed according to their intended training, the main events being a couple of airborne drops during one of the Soviet offensives in the Ukraine of 43 iirc.)

[Gusington]

Is there detail given on the Polish counter offensive?

[BanzaiCat]

Reading Beevor's Stalingrad.

[JasonPratt]

Is there detail given on the Polish counter offensive?

Not much, he just mentions it in passing (and I don't think when talking about the French offensive either). He correctly states that the Polish army managed to hit hard against the Wehrmacht at first, but then got crushed in the counter-riposte.

The best detail I've seen on the Polish counter-offensive (so far) is in a chapter of Hargreaves' Blitzkrieg Unleashed, which I previously talked about upthread although not about the Polish counter-offensive. Despite some peculiar shortsights (nothing about the Wisnia heroic stand, and not much about the Mlowa forts, for example), it's by far the best book I've read on Fall Weiss and the strategic and political situations leading up to it.

I can do a summary of the Polish counter-offensive tomorrow if you'd like.  O:-)