Sebastian P. Breit's Blog, page 10

1. What is Alternate History?

My good friend Matt Mitrovich who also runs the Alternate History Weekly Update Blog has written a very good introductory article about the field of Alternate History on the site of the historical novel society. If you're unfamiliar with the field but are nonetheless interested in it Matt has some nice suggestions where you might start.



2. Mission to Paris

What is it that makes World War II spy fiction and summer go hand in
hand like gin and tonic? I ask this as someone who rereads suspense
standards like Ken Follett’s “Eye of the Needle” and Graham Greene’s “The Ministry of Fear” with the same seasonal regularity as dandelions sprouting.


With its menacing Nazis, Alan Furst’s latest tale — his 12th — returns to the loamy slice of 1930s history exploited by Follett and Greene. Called “Mission to Paris,”
it’s a classic cloak-and-dagger title that, with its promise of rakish
fedoras, encrypted telegrams and Walther P38s, practically sings out:
Summertime! Maureen Corrigan reviews the novel for the Washington Post.



3. Taiwan - China

There seems to be some brouhaha in the making about the politization of university history books in Taiwan. To be honest, I don't see what the bone of contention with the mentioned changes is. To me, they do seem more factually correct for the most part. You can check the article out here.



4. Korea Demands Compensation for Wartime Suffering

President Lee Myung-bak urged Japan, Monday, to
compensate war-time sex slaves and forced laborers who were mobilized
during its 36-year occupation of the peninsula.

“Japan is obliged to compensate the victims on humanitarian grounds.
Simply put, Korea-Japan relations are of a victim and an offender,” Lee
was quoted as saying during an interview with several Korean and foreign
media outlets at Cheong Wa Dae. I brought up a few proposals as to what Japan could do
for the comfort women when I met Prime Minister Noda last December, but
nothing went ahead. I think it was because of domestic politics in
Japan. Putting the legal part of the story aside, the Japanese
government should at least do something on humanitarian grounds.”



Lee’s statement came after a ruling by the Supreme Court in May held
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel Corp. accountable for
forced labor during the occupation, and ordered them to compensate the
victims.



5. Syrian Civil War could become Proxy War

A civil war in Syria risks becoming a proxy war for existing and
emerging powers — aligning the Alawite (Shiite) regime with the SCO
countries, Iran and Hezbollah, while the opposition is backed by the
West and the Sunni Arab countries. Paradoxically the ‘third element’ in
the conflict, religious extremists, mainly from Iraq, would be fighting
the same corner as the latter.





The potential for regional escalation is real and alarming, and the spectre of ‘global instability’ can be glimpsed.





The longer the Syrian crisis goes on, the more heated the re-invented ‘Cold War’ will become.



6. Hitlar, a movie about Hitler's Pakistani gangster son

What...? I don't even...

The magic of the internet often works in mysterious ways. Just a few days ago I featured the story about the new discussion among historians with regard to the US Civil War's death toll, and today my Google Fu sent me to a wholly different part of the Internet - VFR, not a place I usually tend to visit - where an intriguing point was raised, namely that there's a high (?) chance the pre-war southern way of life - including slavery! - could have survived had it not been for Lee's successful conduct of the war.



I'm just putting this one out here for your consumption and discussion. Is it a plausible assessmnet? David G. writes

One of the most overlooked dates in American history is the 1st of June
1862. This was the day when Robert E. Lee was given command by Jefferson
Davis of the Confederate Army of the Potomac, after Gen. Joseph E.
Johnston had been wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines outside Richmond.
The promotion of Lee changed everything for the South and it would
change the course of the entire nation. Lee renamed his command the
Army of Northern Virginia and infused it with the martial ardor
necessary to win Southern independence on the battlefield.

By May of 1862 the Confederacy was in deep trouble.


The war in the West had been going poorly for the Confederate Army of
Tennessee. It had suffered setbacks in Arkansas and Kentucky and at
Shiloh and Fort Donelson in Tennessee. To make matters worse, the
eastern Confederate army was besieged by Union General George B.
McClellan’s Army of the Potomac on the Virginia Peninsula, the narrow
strip of land between the York and James River southeast of Richmond,
the Confederate capital.



Through superior generalship and sheer audacity Lee maneuvered the Army
of the Potomac away from Richmond during a series of battles known as
the Seven Days, while later directing Generals Stonewall Jackson and
James Longstreet to reach extraordinary heights during the Battle of
Second Manassas. Civil War historian James McPherson notes that had the
Confederacy been defeated in 1862, before Lee took charge of the Army of
Northern Virginia, the South would have remained a viable culture with
slavery intact. Think of that: no Emancipation Proclamation; no 13th,
14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; and, at worst, a mild,
Lincoln-directed Reconstruction policy.



McPherson notes the irony of Lee’s career. Essentially, all of his
successes—the Seven Days, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg,
Chancellorsville—served to ensure that one day the Southern way of life
would be gone with the wind.

...

Also, on a recent visit to the Seven Days battlefields I came across a marker that read in part:

“By mid-May the Army of the Potomac lay on the outskirts of Richmond,
hoping to capture the capital of the Confederacy and perhaps end the
war. If that strategy succeeded the nation might be reunified, but
without abolition of slavery.”

I'm not well versed enough in the US Civil War and American pre-Civil War history to comment on any of this, so... well... weigh in on it and please don't shoot the messenger.

The following post concerns a debate - and I use that terms loosely - on the Canadian contribution to the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 conducted by columnists of the Toronto Sun and the Toronto Star. Now you don't need to be a genius to figure out the broad political affiliation of either papers since it becomes blatantly obvious from the context: The Toronto Star's politics are leftwing, and conversely those of the Sun are rightwing. Which turns this into one of those kind of foreign (for me) partisan pissing contests I'd rather avoid since, quite honestly, my knowledge of Canadian politics is exhausted with the fact that Stephen Harper is the current Prime Minister. Since the Sun's article is a response I'm using it for this post. It's about the controversy whether Canadian veterans who fought in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

In the Star, Terence Rundle West
writes that “over the decades there was to be no officially sanctioned
silent moments for these heroes ... 75 years have passed, yet they still
get no respect ... the government ignores their legacy.”



To Mr.
West, an Ottawa writer who has written a novel (Not in My Father’s Footsteps) about two fictional Canadians in that war, the Mac-Paps were
“heroes of the first order” who went to Spain to fight the forces of
Hitler and Mussolini and risked their lives “to put a halt to the spread
of totalitarianism.” The Mac-Paps were part of the XV International
Brigade, that included the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Battalion.



West
says of approximately 1,543 original Mac-Pacs, only one is alive today —
one Jules Paivio, age 95 and frail. He also feels that come Nov. 11,
the Mac-Pacs should be honoured. Had more people followed the example
of the Mac-Pap volunteers in “standing up to Hitler and Mussolini ...
(it) might have prevented WWII and 44,093 Canadian deaths.”

I don't see how. The only effects I can see would either have been a Republican victory unless they joined the Allies - whose effects on WW2 occuring would've been negligeable - or plunging Italy and Germany into Civil War, something for which certainly Germany had no desires after the still fresh memories of the chaos and small-scale civil wars it had suffered through in the early 1920s. Then, I'd really like to see how "standing up to Hitler" would've defused the underlying causes of WW2...

Those Canadians who
went to fight in Spain (where West says 400 of them died) were a mixture
of communists, fellow-travelers anarchists, students, intellectuals,
and adventure seekers. It was in the middle of the depression, and jobs
were scarce.



The Communist Party was in charge of
recruiting, and rejected those volunteers it felt weren’t sufficiently
leftwing. The appeal of Spain for communists was not so much fighting
Hitler or Mussolini, but advancing the cause of socialism-cum-communism.




At the time (1937), Parliament passed the Foreign
Enlistment Act under then-prime minister Mackenzie King, “forbidding
enlistment of Canadians in a foreign conflict.” The motivation was fear
of the politics of the Mac-Paps, influenced by Bolsheviks. That sort of
thing.



To include the Mac-Pap Battalion in Remembrance
or any other day’s recognition of Canadians who went to war, is to
denigrate those who fought against Hitler. And for Canadians, that was
what the Second World War was about. Volunteers felt they were defending
their country, not advancing a political cause.



The
volunteers for the Mac-Paps weren’t concerned about Nazis or fascists so
much as they were fighting for the communist cause represented by Josef
Stalin. True, many came home disillusioned by their experience and
exposure to international communism, but that doesn’t belay the fact
that they went to Spain to advance a cause, not to halt a tyranny.

I wouldn't go that far, and I don't want to leave the impression that I'm harking on the Republicans 'just because'. In my opinion there's no doubt that a significant number of these volunteers did indeed join up with the desire to fight tyranny and advance the cause of justice, and that many of them - regardless of their political affiliation - were extremely brave young men. However, the problem is that these men I just talked about have become the public face of the International Brigades, and not those men who constituted the majority of the rank and file and the organizers behind them.



Vladimir Tismaneanu of the Foreign Policy Research Institute thus correctly notes 

...the problem with people like [Terence West], who stick to their youthful
romantic dreams of Spain, is that they refuse to contemplate the
evidence that the Republican cause was cynically appropriated and
manipulated by Stalin’s agents.



Among the leaders of the International Brigades were people
who would later make successful careers in Soviet-occupied countries of
Eastern Europe. I mention only one: Ernö Gerö, Rakosi’s
second-in-command during the worst Stalinist excesses in postwar
Hungary. Gerö was instrumental in the extermination of the POUM
leadership in Barcelona during the civil war, a typical NKVD misdeed
reproducing notorious Stalinist patterns. It should also be noted that
the Spanish Civil War coincided with the heightening of the witchhunt
that was to culminate in the bloodshed of the Great Purge.

The Republicans weren't knights in shining armor, just like the Nationalists weren't all incarnations of Mordred, King Arthur's murderous son. The overall trend, however, seems to have been one of either ignoring what the Republican side and its IB allies did or outright whitewashing it, ranging from tacit approval to downplaying their misdeeds to open unqualified appraisal. This is not meant to downplay the heinous acts the Nationalists committed. However, if you count the depictions of members of the International Brigades in relatively recent popular fiction examples of hardcore communists among them are far and few. Rather we see plucky heroes fighting in a conflict depicted in such a black and white manner that it does injustice to all that have died in it, regardless of their political affiliation or personal guilt. Even the Highlander TV series had an episode ("Blind Faith") following that very path!



Pointing to the ambiguity of the Republican cause does not mean exonerating the Falange and its atrocities. The Nationalists committed horrible acts of unspeakable terror. But the reason we remember their's and hold the International Brigades and the ideology they fought for in such high regard is, well, because they won. The death toll of their "White Terror" ranges from 150,000 up to a height of 400,000 (this includes post-war repression until the 1960s).



Yet the concurrent "Red Terror" has almost completely vanished from public consciousness! Meeting their Nationalist enemies in brutality with every stroke, Republican repressive measures started almost immediately after the outbreak of hostilities. General estimates range from a low of 38,000 to a number over 100,000. In Checas de Madrid, journalist and historian César Vidal comes to a nationwide total of 110,965 victims of Republican terror during the three years of the Civil War. In the course of the Red Terror, 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy, 20% percent of the nation's clergy, were killed. After just two months of civil war, 3400 priests, monks and nuns had been murdered. Stankley Paine writes in A History of Spain and Portugal:

During the first months of the fighting most of the deaths did not come
from combat on the battlefield but from political executions in the
rear—the 'Red' and 'White' terrors. The terror consisted of semi-organized actions perpetrated by almost all of the leftist groups, Basque nationalists, largely Catholic but still mostly aligned with the Republicans, being an exceptiom. Unlike the repression by the right, which "was concentrated against the
most dangerous opposition elements", the Republican attacks were more
irrational, "murdering innocent people and letting some of the more
dangerous go free. Moreover, one of the main targets of the Red terror
was the clergy, most of whom were not engaged in overt opposition.

The "Red Terror" was not an irrepressible outpouring of hatred by the man
in the street for his 'oppressors,' but a semi-organized activity
carried out by sections of nearly all the leftist groups. The International Brigades supported the perpetrators of these crimes and even took part in them.



So we have several ten thousand foreign volunteers, primarily recruited and equipped by the stalinist ComIntern, who went to Spain to fight against fascism and for the establishment of a communist-socialist regime. ... I'm sorry, but I have to draw the comparison here: How are these guys in any way better than the tens of thousands of foreign volunteers from all over Europe and the world who joined the Waffen-SS to fight against bolshevism and for their nationalist ideals? Why are they so revered in the media? And regardless of whether you prefer the Toronto Star over the Toronto Sun or vice versa: why should they be commemorated alongside their countrymen who did fight Nazism?

Nearly 150 years after the last fusillade of the Civil War, historians, authors and museum curators are still finding new topics to explore as the nation commemorates the sesquicentennial of America's bloodiest conflict.

Even the long-accepted death toll of 620,000, cited by historians since 1900, is being reconsidered. In a study published late last year in Civil War History, Binghamton University history demographics professor J. David Hacker said the toll is actually closer to 750,000 out of a population of 31.4 million as of the 1860 census.


"That number just sat there - 620,000 - for a century," said Lesley Gordon, a professor at the University of Akron and editor of the journal, a 57-year-old publication considered the pre-eminent publication in its field.

Now, that figure "doesn't feel right anymore," said Gordon.

The buzz Hacker's new estimate has created among academic circles comes in the second year of the nation's Civil War sesquicentennial, a five-year period during which new ways to educate and inform America about its most devastating war are being presented in various forms, including fresh exhibits and living history events that highlight the role Hispanics, blacks and American Indians played in the war.

Among the published material are articles and books that look at guerrilla warfare in the border states, an overlooked battleground where civilian populations often fell victim to the fighting. Such work represents "the new direction" some are taking in an effort to offer fresh Civil War topics for Americans to examine, Gordon said.

 


As for the death toll, many historians have fully embraced Hacker's
higher number, among them James McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
author of Battle Cry of Freedom.





"It drives home even more forcefully the human cost of the Civil War,
which was enormous," said McPherson, professor emeritus in Princeton
University's history department. "And it makes it more understandable
why it took the South so long to recover."

@ N.Y. Daily News

Originally seen here.



BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) —



The 87-year-old veteran was recently thanked for his military service with a Beaumont City Council proclamation presented in a room packed with friends and admirers.



The Brooklyn, N.Y., native and Florida transplant of Lebanese descent still had three months of high school left and a football scholarship to the


His high school principal managed to get him deferred long enough to complete his senior year and graduate, but after that, it was off to


Mackool admitted his military career hit a snag early on when he decked an officer who cursed him for obeying an order from his superior officer. He was thrown in the brig and the officer demanded a court-martial, but all was smoothed over, Mackool said.



Mackool soon became a sergeant in the motor pool, but would later sign up with the 101st Airborne Division — mainly because the pay was better by $100 per month. Big money in those days.



"What the hell is the matter with you, are you crazy?" he remembers thinking later of his decision to take on the hazardous business of parachuting.



Mackool said he was 19 when he was dropped into Normandy during an operation in which 29,000 American soldiers lost their lives.



The 101st Airborne's job was to go behind enemy lines and clear the way for the Allied troops. They were successful, eventually. But first, they endured several days of hard fighting against the German forces.



"From there on, after we took out those machine gun nests, our troops just walked on in," Mackool said.



The smallest of his "band of brothers," Mackool said he carried the heaviest machine gun.



He said he later shattered sections of his leg and ruptured a spinal disc in a jump burdened by the .50-caliber weapon.



The 101st Airborne — nicknamed the Screaming Eagles for the bald eagle insignia they wore — went on after Normandy to fight on the frozen battlefields of the Battle of the Bulge.



Mackool and his unit were subsequently surrounded by German troops in Bastogne, Belgium, where they refused to surrender and held out until the 4th Armored Division, headed by Gen. George Patton, came to their aid.



"If it wasn't for Patton, I wouldn't be here," he said.



His unit also was involved in the liberation of Kaufering IV concentration camp, part of the Dachau complex in the Landsberg region of Germany. The soldiers had no idea what was in store for them, but they got a whiff it was bad a good way off.



The stench of rotting human flesh could be smelled from 50 miles away, according to Mackool.



None of his war experience marked him as much as seeing firsthand the horrors of Nazi atrocities.



"I wanted to get the hell out of there," he said of his feelings upon entering the camp. "It was so, so pathetic. Even the war wasn't that bad. That's how bad it was."



What he saw there scarred him for many years.



"I just went crazy after that," he said. "I took no prisoners — I blew away every German (soldier) I saw."



In the final days of the war in Europe, the 101st Airborne was occupied with chasing down Nazi war criminals amid Adolf Hitler's retreat in Berchtesgaden.



Mackool recalled senior Nazi official Hermann Goring's capture with glee.



Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's Nest retreat were beautiful, in stark contrast to what he had seen at the camps.



Mackool's unit was headed to train for service in the Pacific when the A-bomb was dropped and the war all but ended, sending him home.



For his military service, Mackool was awarded the Bronze Star and other honors and medals.



After coming home, Mackool underwent therapy to come to terms with his war experiences — particularly what he saw at the concentration camp.



"It took a good two years to straighten myself out," he said.



Even now, nightmares sometimes haunt him.



His wife, Nancy, said he never spoke about the war until after he saw "Saving Private Ryan."



He said that movie and the television show "Band of Brothers" gave accurate depictions of World War II.



One of the lasting effects of what he saw in Germany was an abiding sympathy and friendship for Jewish people that wasn't exactly natural to his Lebanese background.



"I was Arabic," he shrugged. "Jews and Lebanese didn't get along."



He settled in Miami, married and had a son, Charles, who died in 2008 at age 47. Mackool became successful in dry cleaning and carpet sales and moonlighted as a singer.



Mackool and his second wife, Nancy, moved to Beaumont 14 years ago to care for Nancy's father in his declining years. They share their home with seven cats.



He tells her she was lucky to have met him and she just smiles.



She teases him about his age: "He's older than dirt!"



But she swoops in and changes the subject when she sees — in subtle ways — that the memories of what he saw at Kaufering are becoming too much for him.



"I had quite a history," Mackool said. "I don't think I could do it again."

Thanks to all your support and interest The War Blog has evolved from an itty-bitty blog with a handful of visitors to a site averaging more than 10,000 page views per month. As you can probably imagine I'm very pleased with this development. However this measure of success has also raised the question of what the future of this blog ought to be. The simple fact is that I cannot spend as much time on reviewing books and searching the internet for relevant stories as I'd like to. I have a job, I'm looking for another, and I'm working on a budding career as a writer on my off-hours.



Some of you may have noticed that I've tried to spice things up a bit with bringing in some commentary pieces on recent events, the review of the WW2 Nazi/Vampire/Supernatural novel Division of the Damned and What If? scenarios, all of which received a fair amount of hits. I'd like to continue this trend of broadening The War Blog 's appeal - and I'd like to invite you to help me do so.




From now on The War Blog will be open for guest posts. 

You have reviewed a book (fiction, non-fiction, alternate history) and would like to present your opinion? 

You've made or found military/war artwork and would like to show it to a larger audience? 

There's a nice scenario you've spent some time developing on? 

You've written or you'd like to comment on articles related either historical wars or contemporary ones? 

Then I'm looking for you. A little diversity of opinion never hurts.



While this blog will remain largely centered on the Second World War and the years preceeding and following it, I have no problems featuring material outside that particular bracket. Though I'd rather post something about Gettysburg than Cannae, if you get my gist.



If you'd like to contribute a post please feel free to contact me at

tba.wolfhunt [at] googlemail.com

Consider SEALION


The purpose of this list isn't to be exhaustive, and I'm aware that there are most likely a myriad of other, more specific factors that play a role. It's not about operational details and specifics but more about the general line of approach to make a German victory more plausible (FYI, plausible does not mean likely or guaranteed). This list is in no way exhaustive, and I'm more than aware that some points hinge on a lot of factors out of direct control working exactly as hoped for. As such, consider this more an approach to minimize risks and maximize the chance of a potentially successful outcome.



1. Preparation




This one is self-explanatory. An operation as massive as an amphibious invasion of another country demands the creation not only of the necessary transport capacity but also the establishment of supply stocks & channels as well as working out routines to support the troops over that very specific gap once they are in the field. That means dedicated landing craft in significant quantities PLUS backup landing craft (for example converted barges for calm seas) PLUS aerial transport capacities PLUS supply stashes in northern France & open railroad connections into Germany.




This is imminently possible for Germany to achieve within a comparably short period of time (less than a year). It has the industrial backbone and - due to probably the biggest inland navigation in Europe sans Russia - the necessary manufacturing infrastructure. The main problem here is that the necessary interference into these "civilian" sectors in the time frame during which a German attack against the British mainland was plausible is not a given due to the "short war" vision the Nazi regime still propagated at the time. But the technologic and administrative knowhow certainly does exist.




a) The railway connections between northern France and the industrial heartland of Germany are adequate to support forward operations, being able to use the well-developed Dutch, Belgian and French networks to build up stocks and quickly bring in supplies from the home front.




b) Germany's large number of river ports and its established use of its main rivers for commercial purposes give it a wide range of inland shipping berths capable of producing vehicles in the <1,000 ton range. A dedicated building program of seaworthy landing crafts would be able to provide a large number of crafts within a comparably short window of time.




c) The Wehrmacht's superheavy and railroad artillery available in the envisioned window of opportunity consists of at least 60 pieces greater than 20.3 cm with a range of more than 25,000 meters. German radar on the Channel coast can track ships. Use both to prepare a "safe" corridor for the invasion fleet (the move would naturally mean a change away from the originally intended wide front approach). This represents an qualitative and quantitative increase of what Germany planned and did do historically.






No wide-front approach (as envisioned by the original SEALION plans) will ever be feasable with the ressources even a well-prepared Germany might have. It's just not possible to land forces between Lyme Regis in the west and Ramsgate in the east and expect not to lose significant portions of them already on the voyage. The wider the front the longer the journey the greater the risk of premature detection and interception. Attacking on such a wide front is like sending the RAF, RN and Royal Army a written invitation. It favors the logistics of the defender in every conceivable way. Secondly, such a wide dispersal of forces makes it very difficult to





SEALION, or: The Royal Navy's Shooting Gallery.


a) overwhelm local, dug-in defenders and




b) form a Schwerpunkt to counteract British efforts to bolster defenses at the landing zones and strike deeper into south-east England proper.




In essence that means for the Germans to attack on a limited front, ideally beneath the umbrella of CAS and coastal artillery and within a zone where the Luftwaffe in general can claim and extensive operational duration. Landing zones proper should be in an area between Dungeness and Dover, at a maximum between Ramsgate and Eastbourne.




It also means that the invasion force would form an army of its own, meaning it wouldn't consist of elements of several armies (three in the historic case - 6th, 9th and 16th), thus making it easier from a command and control point.


3. Dispersal of Enemy Forces & 4. Deceit




Now we're getting into more troubled waters. Everything mentioned so far was ultimately hinging on the Germans simply doing something. Meaning, no specific reaction on the side of the British was needed to get it underway. Any "Sealion" that is prepared and conducted simply as a military
operation is doomed to fail. To even have a plausible chance a large
number of factors have to act in concert, with diplomatic and covert
operations starting weeks and months before the act.



Points 3 and 4 are closely related. German behavior, German actions elsewhere, German INaction, even matters Germany may have no control over whatsoever have a part in this. Some openings might be these:

- Put the focus on the Mediterranean, drawing in additional Royal Navy and British Army units. The enemy has to be occupied enough to believe he is dealing with a significant part of your overall strength.

- Act militarily passive against Britain (the island) itself: take a purely defensive stance, limit raids and submarine warfare.

- Due to a passive stance allow for RN vessels to be withdrawn prematurely to deter the Japanese.

- Convey the lasting (ie. for at least several months) impression of desperately wanting to seek peace by using non-aligned and not yet hostile nations to approach the Empire's embassies.

- (20/20 hindsight) Order your spy network to feel out the mood for war/peace in Great Britain. Since 99% of your spies are actually double agents turned by MI5 Britain will have to assume you're seriously interested in a cessation of hostilities.

- Pre-invasion (app. one week): launch surface raid into the Atlantic to draw away some of the RN's capital ships. Give them a necessary incentive to follow you in strength.



Or put simpler: concentrate your enemy's aerial and land strength elsewhere, encourage him to disperse his naval strength as much as possible.


5. The Element of Surprise




This is really just the Schlieffenplan dynamic all over again. German transportation and mobilization has to be fast enough to outpace the British response. Troops and equipment need to be carried to the harbors fast enough to avoid British detection as long as possible, and they have to get there while British forces on land, sea and air are largely engaged elsewhere. Additionally to much of points 1 to 4 having to function this also means that during the time of preparing the whole operation the Germans will have to optimize their logistics network between Germany, the Low Countries and Northern France.




* * *




Well, and that's that. Tell me what you think. As I said at the start, this list is far from exhaustive so don't get all mad because I didn't mention that one specific point you had in mind. If you like, add to the list yourself.

The crowdfunding campaign for WOLF HUNT's sequel is still running, and now you can get the full package of goods for just the $100 perk:


exclusive ebook editions of HUNT and CLASH, 
the completed manuscript the day after I saved it to my harddrive, 
both paperbacks, 
a keychain, 
and an artistic, colored map of "my" Europe in 1940 (size: 23x33 inches / DIN A1).

A few days ago my buddy Korsgaard could proudly proclaim to have reached the benchmark of 100,000 page views for his excellent blog. And now I just as proudly can say that The War Blog has passed the 60,000 page view threshold, adding 10,000 views in just a month! Thanks to all of you for your interest and support - and onwards to our own 100k!

Well, this is about something recent for a change, which means it pissed me off enough to draw me out of WW2-mode. This Der Spiegel article is based on a paper of the Atlantic Council, which is a

...Washington, D.C. think tank and public
policy group whose mission is to "promote constructive U.S. leadership
and engagement in international affairs based on the central role of the
Atlantic community in meeting the international challenges of the 21st
century.

Since it's so symptomatic for how much of the American political elite approaches the issue of German military engagement I'll comment it to weigh in with a German perspective. I apologize for the harsh language, but some things really get me all riled up.

Source: Der Spiegel

Germany may be Europe's driving force in the euro crisis, but a
prominent US think tank has accused the country of shirking its defense
duties. In a report released ahead of the NATO summit in Chicago, a
group of experts criticizes Germany for threatening the future of the
whole alliance through its weakness.


The Council places high value on using a diplomatic tone. So when its
members resort to strong rhetoric it causes a stir, especially so now,
on the eve of the NATO summit on May 20-21 in Chicago. In a 12-page
report titled "Anchoring the Alliance" the Council's experts dissect the
future of the defense alliance -- and make Germany into the main
scapegoat for NATO's problems.



"A stronger Germany would be the greatest boost to NATO's future," says
the study. But the authors say that the exact opposite is actually true,
namely there is less German involvement. Germany, which has taken a
lead role in the euro crisis, behaves like a "lost nation" when it comes
to political and military leadership.

What a bunch of bloody wankers. First you make certain that every ounce
of militarism is bred and educated out of us for the past six decades.
Then we gut one of the most powerful mechanized armies of the world to
conform to your stupid little idea of "lightweigh, mobile intervention
forces" trying to make ends meet while shirking over a hundred billion
Marks per year to rebuild the former GDR. And when we simply can't put as much meat on the table as you do for all the stupid interventions you
drag us into - ones that we didn't care for in the first place -
because we don't want to run annual deficits in the hundreds of
billions, we are the bogeyman.

Germany's helpless behaviour has consequences, says the study. "A weak
Germany that lacks a capacity to act globally will inevitably weaken
NATO," the authors write. "Europe cannot remain a major force within the
NATO Alliance if a country of Germany's size, geography, and prosperity
makes the kind of deep reductions in defense spending announced by
Chancellor Angela Merkel's government in 2011."

Germany isn't interested in acting militarily on a global scale.
We did that twice during the past century and guess what? You didn't
like that. Now we tend to spend our money and efforts on diplomacy and
other stuff we see as worthwhile. More worthwhile than playing Janissary
for you, that is.

Such accusations against Germany are not new. At his farewell speech in
June 2011 in Brussels, former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates left no
doubt that he thinks that the budget burden is unfairly split among NATO
countries.


In his sober analysis, he said that NATO has become a "two-tier
alliance." He accused some members of cutting their own defense budgets
and deliberately exploiting the US, which now shoulders 75 percent of
NATO's costs. The Atlantic Council's current study also comes down hard
on Britain, where Prime Minister David Cameron's austerity program
includes a 7.5 percent cut in defense spending over the next five years.
"The trend lines for the capabilities of the UK military are
worrisome," argues the report.

And that couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the USA's GDP is about as big as the rest of NATO's combined GDPs?

The study's authors share the opinion of Polish Foreign Minister
Radoslaw Sikorski, quoting his now-famous November 2011 speech in
Berlin, where he said: "I will probably be the first Polish foreign
minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less
than I am beginning to fear German inactivity."

Yeah, right. I'm sure a more self-confident Germany would be welcomed with open arms by Poland...

That inactivity was on display when Germany debated whether or not to
support the NATO operation against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, say
the authors of "Anchoring the Alliance." They write: "Germany's decision
to opt out of NATO's Libya operation and side with Russia and China in
the United Nations Security Council against the United States, France,
and the United Kingdom was a serious mistake."

No, it was a wise choice not to get involved in a tribal pissing contest
that had nothing to do with Germany - or NATO, for the matter - in the
first place.

Even worse, say the study's authors, these mistakes are not only the
fault of the hapless German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, who
decided to keep Germany out of NATO's intervention in Libya. Merkel
should have overruled Westerwelle, said Nicholas Burns, a former State
Department undersecretary and one of the report's authors, at the
study's launch.

Westerwelle "decided" nothing of that sort. He's a subordinate of the Chancellor and as such "decided" exactly what he was told
to decide. Which, in this case, was to wisely stay the hell out of a
venture that had no popular backing in Germany and that ultimately
destablized the region more than it did any good and ended up with a
fractured, unruly Lybia.

When asked what will primarily define German foreign policy in 2020,
only three experts cited "the trans-Atlantic relationship" with the US.
By contrast, 14 experts said the most important influence would be
"Berlin's preference for the status quo."

Considering the status quo has worked rather well for Berlin and Europe: why shouldn't it?