Max Hastings

2015

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Another masterly rendering of military history, this time looking at the secret war.

Hastings is disparaging – with reason – of many of the claims of secret services: the information obtained by diplomats often seems radically superior and more reliable than that obtained by spies, perhaps not least because it's being interpreted in a cooler and less personally dangerous atmosphere. It's hard to disagree as far as the Second World War is concerned, given that barely a single spy changed the course of the war to any measurable degree.

There are two exceptions to Hastings' conclusion, however. One of code-breaking, where he provides a carefully balanced and even-handed treatment of all sides' cryptographic skills. He places the British efforts in a context that's all the stronger because he dispenses with myth while still being left with a story of epic successes: the codebreakers were able at times to exert a major influence on tactics and strategy, even while being stymied at others.

The second is the handling of double agents, and here it is the Russian efforts that really stand out. While the British XX committee scored major successes, the Russian deceptions were incredible in both their depth and extent, often completely masking the armies' intentions even after they had started manoeuvring. In many ways the Russians achieved by stealth what Operation Fortitude achieved by physical deception, and on an enormously larger scale. It was particularly interesting that Hastings pulled out the contribution of "Rudolf Abel", which I'd just read about in Abel: The True Story of the Spy They Traded for Gary Powers, and whose contributions really deserve to be better known.

5/5. Finished 31 January 2017.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Ursula K. Le Guin

1974

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A science fiction utopian classic: how would one go about setting up an anarchist society, and what might then happen? Le Guin answers the first question by requiring a new language, new forms of relationships, new ways of naming children, and an organising principle based around the collective opinion of one's fellow-citizens in the absence of any form of compulsion. As to the second, she sees the potential for human pride and ambition even in the face of a social order explicitly predicated against them. Any desire of which someone disapproves can always be characterised as self-interest ("egoising"), which will be met with disapproval.

There are plenty of echoes in this story of the Soviet Union, especially prior to the Second World War, in which noble ambitions to re-make society showed that they could be used and weaponised by someone who was prepared to act ruthlessly in their own interest. It's the way in which someone acts that often conditions how people interpret their actions, giving power to anyone able to connive with a pious expression.

4/5. Finished 27 January 2017.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Hugh Greene

1970

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An eclectic collection of detective fiction largely contemporary with Holmes' exploits. It's a mixed bag, featuring both well-known and now-forgotten authors, and it's easy to see the selection process at work: the stories of William Le Queux and Baroness Orczy stand out (in completely different ways) for their skilled construction.

3/5. Finished 29 December 2016.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Timothy Snyder

2010

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A timely and excellent exploration of a forgotten battlefield.

It's easy to reduce the Second World War to the extermination camps, resistance, and large-scale battles. This book tells the story of the civilian terror visited on the people of Eastern Europe before, during, and after the period we usually regard as "fighting". From Stalin's Great Terror, through the Nazi occupation, and then the reprisals that Stalin re-visited on the "Bloodlands", it's an almost inconceivable story of loss and random death that Snyder manages to tell without falling into any of the traps or tropes that he might have done. He keeps his perspective while telling of the death of (literally) millions, with a good eye for the individual story and copious support from documents and eye witnesses. It's a uniquely valuable contribution to the literature on the war, and doubly valuable today when nationalism is once again on the march. Without thinking history will repeat itself, it still does no harm to be reminded of what can happen.

5/5. Finished 29 December 2016.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Erich Erdstein

1977

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It's hard to take this book seriously: I only came to read it after finding in a second-hand bookshop for 20p. There may be a grain of truth to some of it, but it's most eye-catching assertions have been contradicted by reality.

Erdstein positions himself as being central to one of the war's most critical early incidents: the Battle of the River Plate, where he records his suggestion to the British embassy that they fake news of the an impending arrival of a British battle fleet to spook the captain of the Graf Spee into scuttling his ship – which he obligingly does. Not content with this, Erdstein manages to uncover a cache of weapons buried by the crew in place of their fallen comrades. These early successes set him up for an extended career in espionage and (later) law enforcement, first in Uruguay and Argentina, and later in Brazil. It is here that he encounters both Martin Bormann and Joseph Mengele, managing to shoot the latter dead.

So far so good except... We now know that Bormann died in Berlin at the end of the war, an eye-witness story confirmed by DNA evidence, which calls Erdstein's assertion of a fingerprint match somewhat into question. We also know that Mengele was identified (again) by his DNA, and that he died while swimming, not from a gunshot.

This could just be a case of adding some eye candy to round-out a narrative, but it does call into question the rest of the book, which would actually (if true) stand as an interesting, if not particularly gripping, account of police work against real Nazis in South America in the war's aftermath.

1/5. Finished 27 December 2016.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)