Book Review -- Overlord, by Max Hastings

Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy by Max Hastings
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ordinarily I love Max Hastings' books, but this one was kind of a disappointment.

It almost felt like Hastings said, "Well, I have to do a book on D-Day, and D-Day has been done to death, so let's get it over with."

And while he got beyond the official record, I don't feel like he got as much narrative power into this book as he has with his others.

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That Broken Record Called History

I read the following bit – the concluding paragraph of the chapter “Bargaining with an Empty Wallet” in Max Hastings’ “Winston’s War,” an in-depth look at the work, successes, and follies of Winston Churchill during the war years, and thought it has a message that modern politicians ought to examine:

But the British people had by now hardened their hearts towards their rulers, even the greatest. Many felt less gratitude to those presiding over victory in the most terrible conflict in history than implacable resentment against the politicians whom they held responsible for getting them into it in the first place. Even if Churchill had not himself been among the guilty men of the 1930s, he was now their political standard-bearer. And for all his giant stature as Britain’s war leader, millions of voters sensed that his interest in the humdrum domestic troubles of peace was perfunctory. An anonymous officer of the Second Army, fighting in Holland, wrote in the Spectator about the mood of the British soldier under his command: “[He] is fighting for the future of the world and does not believe in that future . . . He asks a lot of the future, but he doesn’t expect to get any of it.” The writer perceived his men as chronically mistrustful of all authority, institutions and politicians, but Tories most of all: “It is, perhaps, encouraging that Tommy, 1944, will not be foozled by facile talk of a land fit for heroes. He wants deeds, not words.” Few among such men perceived Winston Churchill as the national leader likely to fulfil such hopes once victory came.

Page 421, “Bargaining with an Empty Wallet,” In “Winston’s War.”

This kind of weariness is, I think, pretty common today. We saw it with Bill Clinton – the man who could do no wrong now boiled down to the man who monkeyed around with an intern, if we’re to believe everything said by the folks at JibJab. We saw it with George W. Bush, who went from the rallying hero of 9/11 to Monkey Boy, to continue the monkey theme. And we’re seeing it with Barack Obama whom we’re apparently not allowed to compare to a monkey but we can kinda make fun of the whole “hopey-changey” thing because, well, just go back and read what that anonymous officer said of Churchill in that quoted paragraph, especially the part about fighting for a future that he does not believe will arrive, or, if it does, that he will be able to “get any of it.”

Maybe this is why I like reading history after it’s all over, not the instantaneous history most journalists produce. They say journalism is the first draft of history, but given the many changing facts we’ve seen with, for instance, the bin Laden raid, that first draft is nothing but a first draft, in need of serious revision by those who can look at the situation with cool, dispassionate eyes.

Max Hastings' Nemesis

Just finished reading a second Max Hastings book -- this time focusing on the battle for Japan during the last years of World War II. And though I understand there's criticism out there about Hastings' assumptions and some nit-picking about how he cites sources, once again I come away from Hastings' book in wonderment at it all.

If anyone, and I mean anyone, tries to tell you that war is a good and a pretty thing, have them read this book. Hastings doesn't shy away from revealing the horrors of war. That's maybe a common thing from modern WWII scholars, but Hastings picks his events carefully, I think, to maximize their effect as he ties them in historically with other events and happenings. The events he describes are not there for the sake of gory description, but rather to drive home his point that while the bad guys may do terrible things, the good guys aren't necessarily stopped from doing bad things either. Ironically, he sums up something Adolf Hitler said about totalitarianism: "The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it."

I've long had an interest in reading WWII history. I grew up with stories from my Dad, who saw World War II as a civilian in the Netherlands. That means, of course, I've concentrated on the European theater. Hastings' Nemesis is the first major work I've read that concentrates on the Pacific theater. He's definitely piqued my interest. Not because I want to read about Mac Arthur, or to revel in the exploits of the U.S. Navy -- though the Navy's accomplishments are legion -- but because Hastings touches on several aspects of Americanism that I find fascinating.

First -- and I see this in myself especially -- we tend to want to see the good in people. Take Chaing Kai-shek, for example. Not necessarily the nicest guy in the world. But because he was nationalist rather than Communist, we as a nation embraced him with open arms. When that happens, we like to think of "our guy" wearing a white hat, when, in reality, whenever we may be in his presence, we really ought to be holding our noses, because the white hat is pretty tainted.

Second, Hastings brings out the American psyche in wartime: Thinking that overwhelming technological superiority is going to win it for us. He writes:

The outcome of the Pacific conflict persuaded some Americans that they could win wars with relatively small human cost, by the application of their country's boundless technological ingenuity and industrial recources. The lesson appeared to be that, if the US possessed based from which it warships and aircraft dcould strike at the land of an enemy, victories could be gained by the exenditure of mere treasure, and relatively little blood.

We've seen time and again how this doesn't work -- we seem to forget about the human element, howthe "liberatees" will regard the "liberators," not realizing that they won't regard us all as wearing the white hat. Just food for thought there, I suppose.

Hastings writes a fine balance of praise and scorn for the nations involved in the conflict. Especially interesting is his treatment of the hand-wringing over using nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He does not belittle the suffering of those who died in those horrific attacks -- nor do I -- but he does illustrate them in the context of everything else -- including atrocities committed by all sides in the conflict -- to show how they fit into the general picture. He also makes this interesting and pertinent assertion:

Not only does the use of the atomic bombs seem to have been justified in the circumstances prevailing in August 1945, but I am among those convinced that the demonstration of nuclear horror, and the global revulsion which it provoked, has contributed decisively towards preserving the world since. If the effects of nuclear attack had not been demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is overwhelmingly likely that in the Cold War era, an American or Russian leader would have convinced himself that the use of atomic weapons could be justified.

I agree with that assertion. What was a demonstration in 1945 would have been mass slaughter on a global scale even five or ten years later.