My Hitch in Hell - Lester I. Tenney

   1995; 210 pages.  Full Title: My Hitch in Hell – The Bataan Death March.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : World War 2; Military history; Memoirs; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    The Bataan Death March.  It was perhaps even more of a shock to the “American Invincibility” myth than our country's initial World War 2 event: the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor.

 

    Because the Death March came on the heels of something unthinkable: the complete surrender of the American forces stationed on the Bataan peninsula of the Philippines.  Americans surrendering?  To those sneaky Japanese?  Perish the thought.

 

    The Death March became a catalyst for intense hatred by America against Japan, and an effective recruitment tool.  Lots of books have been written about it, written by lots of authors.  Lester I. “Ten Spot” Tenney is one of them.  But he stands apart from the other writers in one crucial way.

 

    Lester Tenney was a participant in, and a survivor of, the Bataan Death March.

 

What’s To Like...

    As the book's subtitle suggests, the Bataan Death March certainly is the highlight of My Hitch in Hell, and the longest chapter is devoted to it.  However, that catastrophic event only lasted eight days (April 9-17, 1942), and this book actually chronicles Lester Tenney’s full 4-year stint of overseas US military service, 3½ years of which was spent as a POW of the Japanese.

 

    I was impressed by Tenney’s even-handed “ground-level view” of the fight for the Philippines.  It is portrayed in our history books as a noble sacrifice of the American forces to slow down the Japanese advance.  But snafus abounded (see Chapter 2 and the first excerpt below), and if you were part of the units being sacrificed, facing death, torture, starvation, and brutal beatings (see second excerpt below), you might more abandoned than noble.

 

    I was pleasantly surprised to find the rest of the book just as interesting as the Death March itself.  Lester Tenney’s decision to join a local National Guard unit in 1940 eventually resulted in his being stationed in the Far East.  After the Death March and captivity in two POW camps in the Philippines, he was shipped off to Japan itself to endure barbaric conditions while working in a coal mine.  Freed only once the war ended, the latter chapters recount his repatriation and return to the US, in some ways just as excruciating as his POW ordeals.

 

    It was enlightening to see the steps Lester took to keep his sanity intact and his spirits up.  One of his tricks was to learn some basic Japanese phrases from his captors so he could understand what they were screaming about.  It also helped to keep a mental image of his wife, in order to have something to motivate him to stay alive.

 

    There were lighter moments as well.   Lester sets up a craps game while on the prison ship headed to Japan, which eased everyone’s mind since allied submarines were torpedoing any and all boats flying the Rising Sun flag and the Japanese refused to mark prison ships with Red Cross markings.  At the POW camp in Japan he helped set up, with the permission of the commandant, a musical talent show titled “The Ziegfeld Follies of 1944”.  He also arranged a sort of  black market goods-exchange system where items were bartered between both POW and Japanese patrons, with the middle man (Lester) charging an “agent’s fee”.

 

    The ending is bittersweet.  Lester comes home to a postwar America that has changed a lot in the five years he’s been away.  His wife Laura also has changed, and that needs attending to, especially since they had married in secret.  War is hell, even for the victors.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 220 ratings and 98 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.35*/5, based on 399 ratings and 62 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    We still did not have any training on the new tanks.  While we were in Honolulu, our commander tried to borrow two 37mm (the types mounted in our new tanks) and enough ammunition to practice from our transport deck while en route to the Philippines; but post ordnance in Hawaii refused this request.  When our tank unit arrived in the Philippines, we asked for the use of a firing range so that we could become familiar with the weapons mounted in our new tanks.  This request was also denied.  Therefore, it was not until the Japanese bombers and Zeros came over Clark Field that we were able to get in our “practice.”  On-the-job training does not work very well under these conditions.  (pg. 19)

 

    One of the men had a very bad case of malaria and had barely made it to the rest area.  He was burning up with fever and severely disoriented.  When ordered to stand up, he could not do it.  Without a minute’s hesitation, the guard hit him over the head with the butt of his gun, knocked him down to the ground, and then called for two nearby prisoners to start digging a hole to bury the fallen prisoner.  The two men started digging, and when the hole was about a foot deep, the guard ordered the two men to place the sick man in the hole and bury him alive.  The two men shook their heads; they could not do that.

    Once again without warning, and without any effort to settle the problem any other way, the guard shot the bigger of the two prisoners.  (pg. 57)

 

“Anyone can learn Japanese in ten easy beatings.”  (pg. 100)

    There’s not a lot of profanity in My Hitch in Hell, which surprised me, given the gruesome settings.  I noted just 8 instances in the first 50% of the book, and these were of the "milder" ilk.  This was helped by the author often choosing non-vulgar options when he was able, such as defecate, urinate, bowels, anus, feces, and others.

 

    There were some negative reviews at Amazon for this book.  Some people wondered whether the author “tweaked” some events to make himself look good.  That’s possible, but hey, that could be true in any autobiography, and I’d counter that quite often Lester suffers beatings for getting caught doing something underhanded, or for no reason at all other than Japanese barbarity.  Others thought the writing was rather amateurish.  They have a point, but I thought it added to the realism of the account.

 

    For me, My Hitch in Hell was a brutal and eye-opening read.  I’ve read about the Bataan Death March in my history books.  It’s quite different to “see” it through the eyes of one who survived it.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  On pages 211-213 in the back of the book there's an Appendix listing the 80 servicemen in Lester Tenney’s unit who didn’t make it back, along with (where known) their place, date, and cause of death.  It made for a sobering read.

Captain Hawklin At War - Charles F. Millhouse

   2024; 504 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book #11 (out of 11) in the Captain Hawklin Adventures series.  Genres : Pulp Fiction; World War 2; Military Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    It’s 1940 and Americans can smell the smoke of the second World War in the wind.  Which is not surprising since much of Europe and Asia are already embroiled in fighting.

 

    Captain Steven Hawklin’s friends and fellow Crusaders are scattered all over the globe.  Hardy Miller is in Crown City, California attending to the business affairs of Hawklin’s flight school.  Desa Wintergreen is in Paris, on some sort of mission so secret that she won’t even divulge the details to Steven.

 

    Who knows where Steven’s friend and fellow American Zane Carrington is?  He could be anywhere on the Pacific Ocean, hiding out so he doesn’t get arrested and put on trial in America for murder.

 

    And Steven?  He and his longtime friend Oscar “Oz” Lyman are presently in a plane over a very hostile Japan, carrying out an affair of honor, while a bunch of Japanese Zero fighter planes try to shoot them down.

 

    In other words, Captain Hawklin is just doing his usual stuff.

 

What’s To Like...

    Captain Hawklin At War is the latest entry in Charles F. Millhouse’s “New Pulp” Captain Hawklin Adventures series.  The book is divided into six sections, each one spanning a year’s worth of dashing deeds, beginning in 1940 and closing with 1945.

 

    For the most part we tag along on the escapades of the characters mentioned above, switching from one hero to another, with the happy result of a ton of thrills, spills, and nefarious conniving, without any slow spots.  If you’re new to the series, like I was, there are some very helpful “Character Bios” at the start of the book, including one for a baddie I was especially intrigued by, Maximilian Odenthal.

 

    Each section starts with a quick recap of the historical World War 2 events that take place that year, but keep in mind that Captain Hawklin At War is a work of the Pulp Fiction genre.  Although clearly on the side of the allies, Captain Hawklin and his associates are battling the Nazis in a different, lesser-known arena: Occult Mysticism.  It may surprise some readers that there is historical justification for this, but several of the leading Nazis did dabble in it.  The Wikipedia link about this subject is here.

 

    I loved the character development in Captain Hawklin At War.  Yes, the Crusaders are all Pulp heroes, but they can get on each other’s nerves at times, and Hawklin himself can be short-tempered, especially when around high military/government muckamucks and/or his in-laws.  The two main female characters, Desa and Juno, are not the sort you want to be condescending to.  And Hawklin’s Crusaders are integrated, much to the discomfort of the US Navy.

 

    There are a slew of characters to meet and greet, some of which I’m sure are recurring from the earlier books in this series.  The bad guys are just as resourceful as the good guys, and I always like that.  I’m a history buff, so I appreciated the tie-ins to World War 2 events, but I’m also a sci-fi/fantasy enthusiast, so the pterodactyls, tree people, lizard men, and zombies delighted me as well.  I thought the catacombs scene was particularly well done.

 

    Despite their far-flung starting points, the main characters eventually come together for an exciting, action-packed ending.  The #1 bad guy, Sykes Revan, is a formidable opponent, whose planning and anticipation skills are incredible.  Anyone foolish or brave enough to confront him does so, knowing the outcome will be costly.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: -.-*/5, based on 0 ratings and 0 reviews.

    Goodreads: -.--*/5, based on 0 ratings and 0 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word…

    Cataleptic (adj.) : resembling a condition where the body is stiff, and stops moving, as if dead.

 

Excerpts...

    “What’s your business here?” another English soldier asked as Zane and the others came nearer.

    Keeping his pistol leveled to the ground, Zane said, “I’m the captain of the Fortitude.  Just wanting to get my ship and get the hell out of here.”

    “You should have left hours ago,” the first soldier said as he lowered his rifle away.  “You’ll be lucky if you can clear the harbor before you’re blown out of the water.”

    “That’s a chance I’m willing to take,” Zane said.

    “Why are you Americans so pigheaded, ay?”

    “We come by it natural,” Zane replied.  (pg. 194)

 

    “Don’t let it get to you.  It’s war.”

    Hardy stood.  “It’s war,” he said in a dark tone as he turned away from the boy’s body.  He regarded Demonte in a fever pitch of ferocity.  “That one simple word with so much power, that gives us immunity from committing the most heinous of acts.  It’s war will be a phrase that criminals hide behind, that soldiers will tell themselves when medals are pinned to their chest.  How many of the dead will be forgotten, whittled down to, it is war?  How will history remember this time?  ‘It was war’ they will say.  But how many more wars will we have to face, huh.  How many more innocents will die behind the phrase, ‘’it’s war?’”  (pg. 382)

 

“Why is it, Max, that every time there’s a castle around, I find you lurking in it?”  (pg. 291)

    The profanity is sparse in Captain Hawklin At War.  I noticed just nine instances in the first 20% (100 pages) of the book, and they were all of the milder ilk.  I don’t recall any “adult situations”, and the one racial epithet later on is given its proper comeuppance by Oz.

 

    My main issue is the number of typos in the book.  Some examples: Oman/Orman, Oaf/Oof, flower/flour, Metals/Medals, distain/disdain, fare-shear/fair share, and many more.  I’d suggest another round of editing before the next edition is published.

 

    But enough of the quibbling.  Captain Hawklin At War is an incredibly ambitious undertaking by Charles F. Millhouse to: a.) chronicle the efforts of at least seven major characters over the course of entire Second World War and in all parts of the world; b.) do so with utter clarity and no slow spots; c.) seamlessly blend Military History with New Pulp Fantasy; and d.) keep the reader turning the pages to see what happens next.

 

   Ambitious?  Yes.  Successful?  Yes, on all four of those endeavors.  Despite being 500 pages in length, Captain Hawklin At War was a quick read for me, mostly because I kept reading “just one more chapter” to see which Crusader was going to find himself/herself in what sort of new mayhem.  So if you’re looking for a “pulpy” action-adventure novel with a World War Two setting, this book is for you.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  If you’re new to this series, and upon finishing Captain Hawklin At War, you want to read more stories about our hero, a section titled “The Captain Hawklin Timeline”, located at the end of the book, lists 10 more novels and 8 more short stories featuring him.  Happy reading!

The Odessa File - Frederick Forsyth

    1972; 329 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Suspense-Thriller; Intrigue; Holocaust; Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    I learned it in high school History class, so it has to be true.  With the exception of a few Nazi officials who knew they would be executed as war criminals, almost all of the German civilians welcomed the liberating Allied armies.  Well, maybe not the Russian army so much, since they had some atrocities to avenge, but at least the American, British, and French soldiers.

 

    The problem is, if that’s so, how do we explain why so many Nazi war criminals managed to avoid being found, arrested, and tried?  Yeah, a few were caught and put on trial, including Hermann Goring and Adolf Eichmann.

 

    Some others fled to foreign countries, mainly to South America.  But most simply blended into the German populace with forged identities, and lived out their lives to a quiet and peaceful end.  How could that happen?

 

    Frederick Forsyth's The Odessa File presents a plausible explanation for such a travesty of justice.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Odessa File is a best-selling 1972 thriller/historical fiction novel where we follow Peter Miller, a German freelance reporter as he investigates the whereabouts of SS Captain Eduard Roschmann, aka “The Butcher of Riga”, the maniacal and savage commandant of a concentration camp located there.  The story takes place in 1963-64, primarily in places all over Germany, especially the Hamburg area, with occasional quick detours to places like Egypt and Israel.

 

    The book does a fantastic job of chronicling the post-World War 2 sentiments of the German people.  Not every German rejoiced that the Nazi personnel, particularly those that had been in the infamous SS Division, were now hiding out and posing as German civilians.  The titular “ODESSA” is an acronym for “Organisation der ehemaligan SS-Angehorigen”, which translates to “Organization of Former Members of the SS”, a (fictional) clandestine group that gives huge amounts of money, muscle, and resources to any former SS person who needs to become “invidible”.

 

    I liked that lots of real-world figures have parts in the story, including Simon Weisenthal (Nazi hunter), Anwar Sadat, General Meir Amit (Mossad), Reinhard Heydrich (Nazi), Bishop Alois Hudal (Nazi sympathizer), Bruno Streckenbach (SS general), and Peter Miller’s target, Eduard Roschmann.  You’ll also pick up a few basic German phrases along the way; chuckle at ancient (1970s) things like Telex, pensions, photostats and public telephones; and ;earn how to make a car bomb out of common household materials.

 

    The overall plot of the book is fairly straightforward.  Our protagonist sets out on his search for Roschmann, gets stonewalled by all sorts of German bureaucratic agencies, doggedly keeps at it, and gradually becomes a threat to Eduard Roschmann’s well-being, which calls for the Butcher of Riga to take appropriate countermeasures.

 

    It all builds to an exciting, twisty, and suspenseful climax.  Peter Miller survives and fulfills his mission, but not in the way you’d expect.  Not all the baddies die, but those that don’t, have to flee for their lives.  Things close with a “where are they now” epilogue that includes both fictional and real-world characters.

 

Ratings…
    Goodreads:  4.13/5 based on 58,363 ratings and 910 reviews.

    Amazon: 4.6/5 based on 508 ratings and 147 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “The trouble with you, pal,” he told his reflection in one of Sigi’s brilliantly polished saucepans as he rinsed out the cup with his forefinger, “is that you are lazy.”

    He had been asked by a civilian-careers officer, at the end of his military service ten years earlier, what he wanted to be in life.  He had replied, “An idle rich man,” and at twenty-nine although he had not achieved it and probably never would, he still thought it a perfectly reasonable ambition.  (loc. 395)

 

    “He was killed, you know, shortly after that.  He returned to his native Austria and was killed fighting against the Americans in early nineteen forty-five.  His body was identified by several people who had known him in life.”

    “He must have been a remarkable man,” said Miller.

    Dr. Schmidt nodded in agreement.  “Well, yes, some thought so.  Yes, indeed, some of us thought so.”

    “I mean,” continued Miller as if the interruption had not occurred, “he must have been remarkable to be the first man since Jesus Christ to have risen from the dead.  He was captured alive by the British on December twentieth, nineteen forty-seven, at Graz in Austria.”  (loc. 2085)

 

Kindle Details…

    Presently, The Odessa File sells for $6.99 at Amazon.  Frederick Forsyth has more than a dozen other novels in e-book format, including the highly-acclaimed thriller, The Day of the Jackal.  The prices for those range from $6.99 to $13.99.

 

“It’s a question of election mathematics.  Six million dead Jews don’t vote.  Five million former Nazis can and do, at every election.”  (loc. 2445)

    There’s little to quibble about in The Odessa File.  Cusswords are sparse, only six instances in the first 25% of the book.  There are a couple rolls-in-the-hay and two allusions to male excitement.

 

    I caught a couple of typos: Kaposs/Kapos, hose/those, rights/right, By-By/Bye-Bye, but those might have occurred when the book version was converted into e-book format.  And although the book is mostly written in "American" English, a couple of “British” spellings show up, including: disk jockey, whisky, and “waked up”.

 

    It should be noted that this is more of a Suspense/Intrigue tale, not an Action-Adventure.  Thrills-&-spills do show up, but not until the second half of the book, when Peter Miller has morphed from a nuisance into a threat to Roschmann.

 

    For those who are cinephiles, a movie version came out in 1974 starring Jon Voight and Maximilian Schell, although Wikipedia implies that its adherence to the book’s plotline is rather “loose”.

 

    That’s about it.  I found The Odessa File to be a great read, both as a work of historical fiction focusing on post-WW2 Germany and a page-turner.  This was my first book by Frederick Forsyth, who rarely discounts the e-book versions of his novels, but I will now be on the lookout for other works by him, including his equally famous thriller, The Day of the Jackal.

 

    9 Stars.  For those who wonder whether books and movies really have any significant impact in the real world, Wikipedia has this note about the 1974 film adaptation of The Odessa File: “After the film was released to the public, he [Eduard Roschmann] was arrested by the Argentinian police, skipped bail, and fled to Asuncion, Paraguay, where he died on 10 August 1977.”  All because of the movie.  Awesome!

The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman

   1997; 296 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Graphic Novel; Biography; Holocaust History; Non-Fiction.  Laurels: 1992 Pulitzer Prize: “Special Award in Letters” (winner), 10 other awards won plus 2 other award nominations (listed at Wikipedia).  Overall Rating: 10*/10.

 

    What was it like to live under the iron fist of Nazi Germany before and during World War 2, aka “The Holocaust”?

 

    Unfortunately, six million Jews, plus millions of Poles, Russians, gypsies, and Communists are unable to give an answer, since they perished in the concentration camps and ghettos, being beaten, shot, starved, and gassed to death.  To find out what it was like, it’s necessary to find those few who beat the odds and somehow survived.

 

    Art Spiegelman is an Jewish-American cartoonist, artist, and editor.  He had an “in” when it comes to researching the Holocaust: his father, Vladek Spiegelman, was a survivor, not only of the pre-war Jewish ghettos in Poland, but also the death camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, and several more.

 

    In 1978, Art began interviewing his dad, with the result being Maus, both the history of the Holocaust and Vladek’s biography, rendered in graphic novel format, and serialized from 1980 to 1991.

 

    Oh, and banned by a Tennessee school district earlier this year because it contains “profanity, violence, and nudity”.  Of course that caused it to become an instant bestseller, in such high demand that it took Amazon three months to be able to ship me a copy.

 

What’s To Like...

    There are two main storylines in The Complete Maus.  The first, biographical, is the recounting of Vladek’s hellish Holocaust years, where the tasks of staying alive and keeping one’s family alive, were almost impossible to achieve.  The second, autobiographical involves the present-day strained father/son relationship between Vladek and Art, as the latter tries to coax out his dad’s painful WW2 memories while trying to live up to papa’s expectations, an almost impossible combination to achieve.

 

    The Complete Maus combines two volumes published earlier by Art Spiegelman: Maus I – My Father Bleeds History, and Maus II – And Here My Troubles Began.  It’s done in graphic novel format, which is very unusual for a work of non-fiction.  Timeline-wise, Art’s arrival at the Auschwitz death camp is the dividing line between Maus I (1986) and Maus II (1992).

 

    The artwork is in black-and-white, with little shading, and in a “minimalist” style: eyes, for instance, are nothing more than dots.  The characters are rendered as heads of animals atop humanoid bodies.  The choice of animal identifies its type: Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs, Americans are dogs, French are frogs, Swedes are reindeer, Roms are gypsy moths, and Red Cross workers are birds.  The book cover shows Hitler as a cat, but I don’t recall his image appearing in the text itself.

 

    I got a nice “feel” for Jewish home life, and learned some interesting Yiddish vocabulary that was sprinkled throughout.  A couple examples are given below, plus there’s the ever-so-popular “Oy gevalt!”

 

    I was impressed by the story’s evenhanded approach to characters.  Vladek may be the protagonist, but a strain of racism runs through him.  He is not so much heroic as pragmatic, he’ll do whatever needs to be done to stay alive, including bribery, black-marketing, and occasionally cozying up to Germans.  Art renders himself with equal objectivity – the tenseness in the father/son relationship is just as much his fault as Vladek's.

 

    The main reason for reading The Complete Maus, obviously, is to experience the Holocaust.  In this respect, the book succeeds superbly.  The reader experiences the hopelessness and helplessness that millions of Jews felt when they were trapped in Nazi-held lands.  Vladek and other Jews don’t just instantly go from living normal lives to dreading a trip to the gas chamber.  It was a gradual process, carried out one outrage at a time by the Nazis.

 

    The ending is an oxymoron: a happy tearjerker.  To say more would entail giving spoilers.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.8/5 based on 8,029 ratings and 1,489 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.55/5 based on 177,310 ratings and 10,687 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Nu (n., Yiddish) : an interjection that can mean a number of things, including “Well/”, “So?”, “Come on.”, and “Go on.”

Others: Gefilte Fish (n., culinary); Meshugah (adj., Yiddish).

 

Excerpts...

    One time a day they gave a soup from turnips.  To stand near the first of the line was no good.  You got only water.  Near the end was better – solid things to the bottom floated.

    But too far to the end it was also no good.  Because many times it could be no soup anymore.

    And one time each day they gave to us a small bread, crunchy like glass.  The flour mixed with sawdust together – we got one little brick of this what had to last the full day.

    And in the evening we got a spoiled cheese or jam.  If we were lucky a couple times a week we got a sausage big like two of my fingers.  Only this much we got.

    If you ate how they gave you, it was just enough to die more slowly.  (pg. 209)

 

    In the morning they chased us to march again out, who knows where.  It was such a train for horses, for cows.  They pushed until it was no room left.  We lay one on top of the other, like matches, like herrings.

    I pushed to a corner not to get crushed.  High up I saw a few hooks to chain up maybe the animals.

    I still had the thin blanket they gave me.  I climbed to somebody’s shoulder and hooked it strong.  In this way I can rest and breathe a little.

    This saved me.  Maybe 25 people came out from this car of 200.  (pg. 245)

 

“It was nothing to eat, and nothing to do, only to wait and to die.”  (pg. 253)

    The Complete Maus was a fantastic read for me, so coming up with quibbles is difficult.  The art style is admittedly “spartan”, but I think that adds to the only stark tone of the message.  There was nothing pretty about living through the Holocaust, and if you were shipped off to Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, or Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Vladek spent time in all these death camps), it was pretty much assured that you were going to die in the near future.

 

    Some critics disliked the using of animals to denote ethnic identity.  I suppose if I were a Pole, I wouldn’t appreciate them being typecast as pigs.  Ditto for the French being rendered as frogs.  But I don’t think Art Spiegelman was intending racial slurs by this.  In his minimalist style, he’s making it easy for the reader to figure out what nationality any given character is.

 

    I'll give The Complete Maus a rare 10-star rating.  Its portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust is bone-chilling.  Maus won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, the only graphic novel ever to do so.  This should be required reading in every high school or college class teaching  20^th Century History.

 

    10 Stars.  One final exercise: let's evaluate the McMinn Country Schools decision to remove The Complete Maus from its shelves.

    Profanity.  I counted 16 instances in the entire book, mostly scatological or eschatological terms.  That’s remarkably clean.

    Violence.  There are corpses.  There was a war going on.  At one point, prisoners are burned alive.  The Holocaust was by nature inhumanely violent.  To depict it otherwise would be a lie.

    Nudity.  I only recall two times (pgs. 185/86 and 218).  Both involve only adult male prisoners, and both were drawn in the author’s minimalist style.  If these offend you, or worse yet, arouse you, seek professional help.

The Secret War - Max Hastings

   2015; 557 pages.  Full Title: The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : History; Espionage; World War 2; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    During a war, how much is the knowledge about what the enemy’s up to worth?  Before you answer, keep in mind that money is precious when waging war: armies are expensive, and so are the weapons, transportation, and food needed to properly equip them.

 

    Besides the money, you also need to decide how many people to devote to gathering enemy intel.  After all, they could instead be carrying a gun and stationed on the front lines.  Even when you decide on a number, then you have to figure out what they’re going to focus on.

 

    Some should work on breaking the enemy’s secret codes, but who knows, maybe the whole war will pass by before they succeed at that.  Others should spend their time eavesdropping on the enemy’s communications, which in World War 2, was mostly radio transmissions.  Perhaps we ought to also drop some commandos behind enemy lines, equipped with binoculars and a transmitter, to give us firsthand observations of where the enemy squadrons, ships, fuel depots, etc. are located.  I wonder how’d we get anyone to volunteer for that job.

 

    Naturally, we should expect our foes to do this same kind of skullduggery to us, so we’d also need a counterintelligence department.

 

    Which means we'll need even more money and personnel.  It better be worth it.

 

What’s To Like...

    In The Secret War Max Hastings takes an in-depth look at how each of the major combatants in World War 2 approached the task of developing intel on their opponents, and in some cases, on their allies as well; the latter being especially true when England, the USA, and Russia were forced to into an uncomfortable alliance against Nazi Germany.

 

    I liked the book’s structure: 21 sections in more or less chronological order, starting with the pre-war setups and continuing through the post-war “Nuclear bomb technology” spying, capped off with a great final chapter in a “what ever happened to so-and-so” forma, which was one of my favorite sections, along with #15, “Blunderhead”, which chronicles the escapades of one Ronald Seth, in theory an English spy, who certainly knew how to milk the system.

 

    Given that espionage is by nature a secret profession, I was amazed how many agents afterward went on to have very successful and public careers.  Graham Greene became a famous novelist.  Alan Turing became famous for his work in developing the computer.  Ian Fleming is known to all for writing the series featuring the superspy James Bond.  Freeman Dyson was a pioneer in quantum physics; the “Dyson sphere” (say what?) is named after him in honor of his theoretical essays about it.  Hugh Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry both became top-tier chess players for England after the war.  Sterling Hayden became a famous Hollywood movie star.  All played key roles in the intel effort against Nazi Germany.

 

    Max Hastings gives an impressively balanced view of each country’s intelligence departments, including those of Japan and Germany.  They each had some significant intel successes; they each had some significant intel missed opportunities.  In fairness, it was always difficult to “sort the wheat from the chaff”.  How do you tell if the “Japan is going to attack Pearl Harbor” intercepted message is more valid than the “Japan is going to invade South America” one?

 

    I admired Max Hastings' objectivity about the impact, or lack thereof, that intel had on the outcome of the war.  Even if you gain important knowledge, such as “Russia is about to launch an offensive”, there’s not much you can do about it if your army is no longer a match for theirs.  And a message like “the enemy is going to attack tomorrow” does little good if it takes a week to forward it to your frontline generals.  The validity of any message of great importance also has to be evaluated.  Did your spy send it, or did an enemy agent?  For that matter, is your spy a double- or triple-agent?   And let’s not even discuss generals who ignore good intel in favor of their “gut feelings”, or intel which starts out true but becomes false because some leader, such as Hitler, simply changes his mind.

 

    Like any book about the military, there are a ton of acronyms to get acquainted with.  My favorite here was “Huff Duff”, which stands for “High-Frequency Direction-Finding” radio signals.   As with any reference book, there are a slew of extra sections in the back of the book: Notes-&-Sources, Index, Bibliography, etc.  I found the “Photographs” section particularly fascinating.  Last and probably least, be aware that Max Hastings is a British author, so this book is written in “English”, not “American”.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Pusillanimity (n.) : lack of courage or determination; timidity.

Others: Pibroch (n.); Sclerotic (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 773 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.84/5 based on 1,666 ratings and 198 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Do we know, or am I just not being told, what the Japanese intentions are in Burma, bearing in mind that they upset the whole of our offensive-defensive plans earlier this year and that a good deal of their movement passed unnoticed?”  (…)

    “If we do not know, then if I were the Army Group commander I should be very unhappy to go into battle with an enemy disposed I know not how, and of whose full intentions I am equally ignorant.  No doubt there is a limit to what the Japanese can do today with the land forces available to them in Burma, but past experience has shown that it is both inconvenient and decidedly unpleasant when they do the unexpected.  You will remember my saying the other day that it was never wise to assume that the Japanese will not do a thing because it seems stupid to us.”  (loc. 10266)

 

    When the first Soviet bomb was exploded in 1949, it proved to be an exact copy of the 1945 Alamogordo test device.  Apologists for Moscow’s informants have ever since made two points: first, that with or without the traitors, the Soviet Union would have built its own bomb soon enough, because that is how science and technology evolve around the world; second, that the NKVD’s informants performed a service to the cause of peace, because they ensured the creation of a balance of terror, making it impossible for America’s right-wing fanatics credibly to advocate a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union.  Both arguments merit consideration.  (loc. 19535)

 

“Diplomats and intelligence agents, in my experience, are even bigger liars than journalists.”  (loc. 496)

    A word to the wise: If I had to describe The Secret War in one word it would be “comprehensive”.  This is a deeply-researched effort, and that means you have a ton of people, acronyms, and Intel Group names to keep straight in your head.  Good luck with that. 

 

    Probably because of this, I found the book to be a challenging and slow read, yet without being the least bit boring.  The depth of the details is astounding.  This is a book for history buffs, especially those who love to read about World War 2, and I found The Secret War incredibly enlightening.  I came away with a better understanding of things like:

    a.) why Germany and Russia were initially partners, then deadly enemies.

    b.) why Japan would start a war-to-the-death against the United States

    c.) why the US didn’t believe Japan would dare attack them at Pearl Harbor or anyplace else.

    d.) why Stalin didn’t believe Hitler would invade Russia in 1941

 

    If you enjoy musing about such things, this is definitely the book for you.  If you have a book report due tomorrow, and you haven’t even started reading one yet, this is definitely not the book for you.

 

    9 Stars.  A personal note.  Several years ago, while riding the local light rail to a downtown concert, I sat across the aisle from a curious-looking, foppish man who was reading a book while completely oblivious to the crowded conditions around him.  Naturally I was fascinated.  I just had to know what book he was so absorbed in.

 

   After lots of glances, I finally determined its title was The Secret War.  I google-imaged it when I got home, and found “hits” that showed somebody named Max Hastings was the author.  I was resigned to looking for it at my local library; the Amazon price was way above my budget and searching for a particular non-fiction history tome at any used-book store is always a hopeless task.  Then lo and behold!, a couple weeks later, Amazon offered the e-book version for a paltry $1.99!  Serendipity strikes again!

 

    The rest is history.  Pun intended.

Last Train To Istanbul - Ayse Kulin

   2002 (in original Turkish), 2006 (English translation); 396 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Turkish Literature; Historical Fiction - Turkey; Historical Fiction – World War 2; Romance.  Laurels: European Council Jewish Community – Best Novel Award (winner, but I’m not sure what year).  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    It was a tragic case of forbidden love.  Kinda like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  Rafael is Jewish, Selva is Muslim, and they’re in love, much to the consternation of their parents.  Family ties run strong in their native Turkey in the 1930s, so they decide to emigrate to Paris until things cool down, since the French are more tolerant about things like religious differences.

    But things change in 1941.  World War 2 is underway and the Germans have overrun northern France and occupied Paris.  The Nazis do care about religious differences, especially if you are Jewish.  So once again Selva and Rafael are forced to pack up and move south, to Marseilles, which the Germans have allowed the French puppet government, “Vichy France”, to control, at least for now.

    The respite is short-lived though, and in 1943 when the Nazis take over all of France, they don’t hesitate to seek out any and all Jews in France, regardless of citizenship, and ship them off in cattle cars to concentration camps.  Selva and Rafael have run out of places to flee to, as have all other Jews in France, both Turkish and otherwise.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Turkey, who is still neutral in the war, is willing to take some risks to help its expatriates in France.

    It’s just a question of exactly what can be done.

What’s To Like...

    Last Train To Istanbul is written by Ayse Kulin, a tremendously popular Turkish novelist who often combines history and romance in her books.  Here, she presents several relationships (Selva/Rafael, Sabiha/Macit, Ferit/Evelyn, and others) while examining religious bigotry against the backdrop of the holocaust, and the efforts by Turkish diplomats to rescue Turkish citizens, Jewish and otherwise, living in wartime France.

   I found the World War 2 political situation very enlightening.  Turkey was neutral throughout the storyline, and it was illuminating to see the conflict from her point-of-view.  The Allies wanted Turkey on their side, mostly so that Germany would then attack her, thus opening a new front.  Britain promised her arms, but never delivered.  Germany wanted Turkey’s chrome for its war machine, which at the time she was selling to the Allies.  Russia wanted an excuse to sweep down and take over the Bosporus Strait, gaining direct access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.  I got the impression that everyone wanted to “use” Turkey, but no one really wanted to be her friend and I wondered how much-or-little this “attitude” has changed since then.

    The history of Turkey and the Jews was also new to me.  When Ferdinand, the King of Spain, expelled all Jews from there in 1492, it was Turkey who welcomed any and all of them, recognizing that a large percentage of them were skilled and highly educated.  Therefore, despite being a Muslim country, Turkey has had a sizable Jewish element in its population for the past 500 years.

    It was also a treat to be immersed in the day-to-day life in Turkey during the 1930s/40s.  We get to play bezique and bridge, sip raki, and drink Tekel beer.   Our wives get to wear silk dresses when going to tea parties, where they’ll drink from elegant and distinctive Turkish tea glasses.  Our daughters take ballet lessons, and we all like to smoke cigarettes and partake of hot chocolate with sugar added to it. Bon appetit!

    The book is set in 1933-1943,  and in various cities in Turkey and France, with one brief side trip to Cairo.  You’ll learn a bit of French, Turkish, and Spanish, and John W. Baker seems to have done a decent job of translating the story into English.  Being a chemist myself, I liked that Rafael was also one, but it turns out that a “chemist” in Europe is what we Yanks would call a “pharmacist”.

    The story builds to the titular “Last Train to Istanbul”, which encounters a suitable number of tension-filled incidents that threaten the success of the mission.  The ending may be predictable, but it left a lump in my throat.  I found the “Acknowledgements” section at the end of the book to be quite informative, as Ayse Kulin details the sources she used to write this story.  Last Train To Istanbul is a standalone story, and AFAIK, there is no sequel.

Kewlest New Word ...

Kavass (n.) : an armed constable or courier in Turkey.

Excerpts...

    “How on earth do you speak all evening with someone you hardly know?” he asked Muhlis.

    “Come on now, what do you mean you hardly know her?  Haven’t we all been out together a few times?”

    “That was different, we weren’t alone.”

    “Tell her about your homeland.  Ask about her family.  Tell her how beautiful she is.  Don’t tread on her toes if you dance together and kiss her before dropping her off at home.”

    “What!”

    “Kiss her, my dear friend, kiss her.  Women like to be kissed.”

    “You mean on the lips?”

    “I suppose there’s no harm in being cautious; try kissing her on the cheek first, then you can take it from there.  I want to hear all about it when you get home.”

    “Never!”  (loc. 2428)

    “We’ll be providing them with passports.  But if something should happen en route, they’ll have to act as if they are Turkish.  They should at least be able to say a few words.  You teach Turkish.  Would you…?”

    “You want me to teach them Turkish, is that it?”

    “Would you?”

    “Happily.  As a matter of fact, I’ve been doing it in Marseilles for some time.  I can help them memorize a few sentences.  But I need to ask you a question – what do you mean, ‘act as if they are Turkish’?  I’m curious to know how one’s supposed to act Turkish.”  (loc. 3626)

Kindle Details…

    Last Train to Istanbul presently sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  Five other e-books by Ayse Kulin are available there, ranging in price from $0.99 to $10.99.  The Italian version of Last Train to Istanbul goes for $2.99; the German version goes for $4.99.

“There’s a saying in Turkish:  He who falls into the sea will cling even to a serpent.”  (loc. 4931 )

    There’s not much to quibble about in Last Train To Istanbul.  A number of secondary plot threads remained unresolved, mostly involving the various romantic relationships.  They could probably be worked up into a sequel, but I don’t think it’s necessary.  The book’s primary storyline – the extraction of a trainload of people suffering from the Nazi atrocities – was resolved quite effectively.

    There is a fair amount of cussing in the book, almost all of it in dialogues, but this is realistic in a wartime story.  There is one digression to Auschwitz, which didn’t seem to have much to do with the story, but Ayse Kulin explains in the Acknowledgements section why it was included, and I applaud her decision to do so.

    8½ Stars.  Overall I found Last Train To Istanbul to be both a fascinating and an informative book, and highly recommend it to anyone wanting to see World War 2 from a different viewpoint than the standard "us versus them" perspective.  One other Ayse Kulin book, Without A Country, resides on my Kindle and I'm eager to see if it's as good as this one.