Sebastian P. Breit's Blog, page 11

He's 87 years old, one eye is mostly closed, and he's wearing an American flag lapel pin. His accent is strong, his humor self-deprecating and his message is clear.





Ernie Schimmer & Werner Langer

Lt. Werner Langer fought for the Germans in World War II. On Monday in a Santa Margarita Catholic history class, Langer fought the stereotype.



He wasn't exactly what the kids expected from a former Hitler Youth and Nazi soldier, a caricature they had seen only in movies.



Yet, for the better part of an hour, Langer regaled the mostly senior class - primarily boys, a handful of girls - in Scott McIntosh's class, which devotes one semester to the Civil War and another to WWII.



As an officer in the Waffen Secret Service [sic!] which Langer likened to the Marines - he fought against the Russians, took shrapnel from a rocket and spent time as a prisoner of war.



He received his copy of Mein Kampf directly from der Fuhrer, and he held out his hand to show the manner in which he greeted the dictator as a boy only slightly younger than his audience.




Minutes later, those students shook the hand that shook the hand of Adolf Hitler.



This is the second time Langer has appeared in the classroom. A year ago, he was part of an hourlong discussion that included American seaman Ernie Schimmer, giving students an opportunity to see the former enemies side by side.




read the rest here.

Today I bring you a story from the overflowing column of "The best ways to make yourself look like a major douchebag". And, of course, it's from Japan, a nation so completely blasé about what it did between 1930 and 1945 that if any other nation had tried the same thing it'd most likely already have been invaded again by the victors of WW2 just to be on the safe side. Whether it's the tradition of honoring war criminals at religious shrines or simply denying that the atrocities in China and elsewhere never ever happened or whitewashing the whole war in its own education system, Japan never fails to disappoint.

This time Japanese officials insisted on the removal of a memorial to Korean sex slaves. In 2010, Palisades Park, which is home to several ten thousand Korean-Americans, installed a memorial to the thousands of Korean women and girls that were enslaved by the Japanese during World War II. The town says that it is the first such dedication to the so-called 'Comfort Women' and refused the Japanese officials' request, igniting a decades long quest to raise awareness of the victims' plight.

The Japanese Consul-General requested that the memorial be removed, the mayor of Palisades Park said, and mentioned that the Japanese government would be willing to plant cherry trees and donate books to the library in its absence. The mayor declined the offer.

At a demanded second meeting the Japanese went a step further.

'They said the comfort women were a lie, that they were set up by an outside agency, that they were women who were paid to come and take care of the troops,' the Mr Rotundo told the New York Times.

Korean American groups say that after the incident, they will seek to install more monuments to raise awareness about the issue of WW2 comfort women. Way to stay classy, Japan...^^

The Division of the Damned

by Richard Rhys Jones




Rating: A




The
genre-mixing of the Second World War with the realm of the mystical and
supernatural has always had me in its thrall, ever since I watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc
as a teenage boy. Seldom tried and even less often successfully so, it
has remained a niche genre with limited overall commercial appeal
outside two of the Indiana Jones movies. The first Hellboy
movie incorporated some of the occult links to the Third Reich and, in
my opinion, would have been better all around had it concentrated on
such a setting. Not that a Rasputin eldritch abomination wasn't nice,
too, don't get me wrong... The last good installment of a
WW2/Supernatural mix I know of was the 2008 horror movie Outpost
(the less said about the sequel the better). And as far as books go: in
case they exist they did theor very best to avoid my attention.




That is until now.




Richard Rhys Jones' novel took me by complete surprise. 




The
tide of war has turned against the once unstoppable German armies, and
Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, is approached by a Romanian count
claiming to be part of the ethnic German minority of the Siebenbürger Sachsen
who promises him an army of soldiers capable to fight during the night.
Enamored by the occult and by the obvious advantages of such a deal he
send newly promoted Eastern Front veteran Markus von Struck and a select
band of trusted Waffen-SS soldiers into Romania to escort his envoy Dr. Rasch to finalize the deal.




At
the same time the British apparently are approached by the same count
and decide to send Major James Smith onto a commando operation, dropping
him via parachute into the Carparthians.

What starts ordinary
enough for the peak of WW2 soon branches out into the fields of legend,
religious myths reaching back four thousand years, and horror. The lines
between ally and enemy begin to blurr, and soon a motley crew of the
most unlikely heroes are all that stand between survival and an
all-consuming darkness.

Jones' human characters, even the
secondary ones, are all well-rounded, three dimensional people with
strengths and weaknesses and they, even more so than the extremely
well-paced story, are what carries the novel to its action-packed
climax. This is even moreso stunning since a large parts of the
protagonist we follow are German Waffen-SS soldiers, a group not
commonly atributed with positive traits. But over the course of the
narrative Jones manages to turn them into layered, likeable individuals,
and while they share the limelight with a handful of other characters
like a pair of Jewish KZ inmates who turn into unlikely - and ultimately
really satisfying - heroes, they are the true protagonists of The Division of the Damned.




What's at stake and who are the heroes? Well this quote narrows it down more succinctly than I ever could:

"Who'd have thought it would come to this?" Michael asked nobody in particular.




"What?" Rohleder asked without looking up from scrubbing his barrel.
"That the final fight for mankind would be fought by a couple of
modern-day knights, German SS, an Englishman, a Communist, a Jewish
woman and a Jewish werewolf?"

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is The Division of the Damned in
all its glory - and it is a glorious read indeed - condensed into half a
dozen sentences. If you haven't figured it out by now: I'm totally
enamored by this book. If you can even remotely get into the WW2/Horror
combination this is a read you must not pass by. I highly
recommend you purchase a copy for yourself, and I for my part welcome a
new author I'll definitely keep an eye on in the future: Richard Rhys Jones.

My google alert sent me towards an interesting post about the usefulness and validity of Alternate History made by the Grouchy Historian:

Alternate history
is a rapidly growing genre of science fiction that is finally beginning
to gain some respect and commercial success.  But, it remains less than
accepted by historians as anything but a fanciful flight of
imagination, useless for anything but passing some time.



However, your Grouchy Historian thinks differently.  I believe that well
written and thought out alternate history could be a very useful
teaching tool.  Now, I'm not talking about dragons in the American Revolution or anything here. 
Even I know ridiculous when I see it.  No, what I am talking about is
serious historical thought on what could have happened if a single
event, person, or action was changed--and how that change could have
impacted downstream events.



What do I mean by this?  Well, as a part time tutor and full time
curmudgeon, one of my major pet peeves when reading nincompoops talking
about historical events is the ol' theory of inevitability--history had
to happen as it did because of unstoppable forces, whether economics,
social pressures, or bigger armies.



Indeed, military history is usually the worst offender of this type of
analysis...of course the Confederacy had to lose, too many damnyankees
to kill, or, of course the Allies won World War II, because we had more
tanks, guns, soldiers, and ships than the Axis.  These sorts of
assumptions really drive me up the wall.  There is nothing inevitable
about history, and we should thank our lucky stars that so often history
DID turn out the right way.  AHHH, you want examples....here's a little
one that I will expand more later when I talk about my favorite
thing.....bacon....no really, books....and bacon...hmmm, eating bacon
while reading books...hmmm.



OK, think about the Normandy invasion and the battle of Omaha Beach. 
The German defenders, completely missed by Allied intelligence, nearly
swept the US troops of the 1st and 29th Divisions back into the sea. 
NOW, if there had been just 1 more German battalion in those
fortifications...or even if the Germans had been able to muster a single
Panzer regiment...thank how the Normandy invasion might have been
different with two widely separated Allied beachheads.  Would the Allies
still have prevailed?  Or would it have been another Anzio, where
Allied troops were penned into a beachhead with nowhere to go?



I think alternate history is an outstanding teaching tool to force
students to consider decisions NOT made, in addition to decisions made
by people throughout history.  Again, military history is the prime
example of this technique as our ol' friend Clausewitz points
out--generals must often  make snap decisions in the heat of battle,
with incomplete or outright erroneous information and it is often the
smallest quirk of fate that leads to decisions made and actions taken.

You can read the rest at the Grouchy Historian's blog (first link in the post). He elaborates a bit more and also recommends some good books on the subject.

Today I've got something different for you, and it's something I originally read way back in 2007. It's one of those nice What if? scenarios played just for the hell of it. I highly urge you to read it. As far as hypothetical scenarios go this one is really enlightening.

Iraq immediately prior to the Coalition air war (so early January) 1991
is placed geolographically next door to Nazi Germany circa 1941,
immediately prior to the invasion of the USSR. However, to even things
up somewhat, all 1941 German equipment is directly replaced with its
1945 equivalent.


Then they slug it out. Nothing else will interfere.

Now one might think that while the Iraquis aren't exactly stellar soldiers they still have the upper hand because of superior jet and armor technology. In fact, user Leo1 put the situation in no uncertain terms:

This is not even remotely even. The Wehrmacht would get utterly owned, 1945 German weaponry is a joke compared to what Iraq had.

Tanks




A Königstiger (ie. the "best"- a joke in terms of mobility and
reliability but still) would be lucky to penetrate a T-62, never mind a
T-72. We're also talking smoothbore high-velocity 115mm guns versus 88mm
peashooters. Superior fire control technology would make the Germans
look blind by comparison. And at night? The Iraqis would be on a rampage
with their far superior night sights.


Infantry




Mechanized Iraqi infantry with lethal anti-tank capability even with
their main guns (ie. BMPs etc) versus not even wheel-mobile German
infantry (only a small minority of German infantry had even trucks,
never mind half-tracks that BMPs make look like a joke ...)



Nevermind AKs, PKMs, RPKs,
RPG-7s, SVDs and what not versus a majority of Kar 98Ks, MG42s, MP 40s, Panzerfausts/schrecks and a miniscule number of Stg 44s?

Air Force




Iraq would have total, overwhelming air superiority and by-comparison
precise attack/ interdiction capability. The Luftwaffe would be
completely annihilated both by Iraqi MiGs and their air defence network-
heck, ZSU-23 Shilkas would take the biggest toll. The only losses Iraq
would conceivably take are Su-25s, and even then it'd be hardly any.


Artillery




The importance of this can't be overstated. Iraq's got better,
longer-ranged firepower across the board (including IIRC South African
G5s)- and the command and control fire-control systems to make them
accurate as all hell. They also IIRC had counter-fire radars.

But nothing is ever as easy as it seems. Dipping into his vast knowledge and his fully stacked bookshelf, military and history buff IXJac comes to a stunning conclusion.

An abandoned Iraqi T-55 Tank after the liberation of Kuwait.

The Iraqi problems are systemic to all Arab militaries. They will not
be fixed just because of some experience in this war. Since they have never
been fixed by experience in any previous war. The Syrians didn't get
any better after being trounced repeatedly by the Israelis, the
Jordanians got worse, and the Iraqis only solved their problems
in the Iran/Iraq war by adopting rigid and inflexible battle plans that
micromanaged their forces down to batallion and company level.


The problems the Iraqis have are myriad, but some include; tyrannical
leaders with no tolerance for dissent, no initiative in NCOs and junior
officers, poor unit cohesion, poor inter unit co-operation, nonexistant
inter-service co-operation, poor mechanical aptitude, poor passage of
information, poor intelligence analysis, hording of logistics elements
and poor support to field units, and limited strategic foresight. To
name just a few.



This idea that the Iraqis will somehow blitz into Germany is a total
fantasy. Just because the Iraqis have the equipment to fight a fast
moving war does
not mean they will. The Iraqis were well known
for failing to use their equipment to anywhere near its potential, and
eight years of war with iran did not change it. The failings were based
on both training and doctrine, which in turn had deep cultural and
institutional roots. A little war won't change that. It never did
historically after all.


As to mobility, equipment is meaningless. Look at the historical facts.
The Germans were able to conduct warfare with their spearheads moving
at 100-200km a day, and the bulk of the army usually marched about 30km a
day.



This demolishes the Iraqi rate of advance, which was a whole 8km on the
first day of their invasion of Iran when they faced virtually no
resistance, and a whole 12km in one day during their grand Al Faw
offensive in 1988 when they threw 100,000 troops backed by thousands of
tanks and planes at 10,000. Whenever the Iraqis met unexpected
resistance, they halted, and requested orders from their superiors, who
would then draft a painstaking plan to remove it. This basically meant
they moved at a snails pace. This is WWI speed. Not even WWII speed.



None of you have presented any rationale for why the Iraqi army will
suddenly fight several orders of magnitude better than it ever did, or
will suddely grasp concepts of tactical flexibility and manuever warfare
when it proved institutionally incapable of doing so even after eight
years of grinding warfare with Iran. In fact, the Iraqis proved so
unable to learn from history they set themselves up to be completely
blindsided by the Coalition in '91, despite the fact that even the most
basic understanding of manuever warfare would have screamed that the
Coalition would attack the Iraqi's wide open right flank.



You also seem wedded to this idea that equipment will save the Iraqis.
Equipment is not a silver bullet. History is littered with examples
(Israel '48, Chad, Congo, Ap Bac) were badly outgunned forces were able
to defeat militaries often possessing air superiority and armoured
vehicles they could not reliably harm, and they did it by being better
soldiers. On top of this, the Germans are not that badly outgunned.
Many of their weapons are competitive, if inferior, but still numerous,
which is a lot more than many other victors in history have had. The
Israelis at Ashdod facing 2,500 Egyptians with tanks and air support and
armed only with a pair of antique 65mm anti-tank guns, molotov
cocktails, and a few hundred men (they won) would have been delighted in
the kind of odds the Germans have here.



The problems the Iraqis will face are colossal. Just facing what German
had deployed for Barbarossa, they're outnumbered 3 to 1 in troops, and
over 9 to 1 if we only include those troops Iraq could actually use in
an offensive war (the bulk of the Iraqi army's 1.2 million on-paper
force were untrained conscripts with little more than rifles and no
vehicles or heavy weapons - they did not participate in any fighting in
the '91 Gulf war). The Iraqis will have to advance at the end of a very
shaky logistics chain into the difficult terrain of Eastern Europe.
They'll have to slog through the wetlands and marshes of eastern Poland,
and the mountains of Rumania, terrain that will negate many of their
advantages in range. They will have to deal with numerous river
crossings, and large urban centers which will further negate their
advantages. The relatively small size of their military coupled with
habitually poor co-ordination and communication will inevitably open
them up to being flanked through the widening gaps between formations if
they attempt to advance any serious distance into the Reich, and the
brittle and centralized Iraqi logistic system will be highly susceptible
to being cut off or disrupted.

And here comes the good stuff:

I ordered "Arabs at War" after you mentioned it in the thread, and it
arrived today. I've been reading it, and Pollack has some interesting
observations about the Iraqis.


Most interestingly, he argues that after the reforms of 1986, the Iraqi
general staff was actually quite good at strategy. Yes, they sucked -
badly - in 1982-83, but by 1986 Saddam had freed his generals to fight
the war as best they could. The Iraqi generals became adept at
conducting methodical and intricate plans to minimize the defects in
their military...



... Which Pollack states were crippling. The worst being utter
tactical ineptitude. In fact, Pollack says the Iraqis were probably the
most tactically maladroit of all Arab armies. Units that were flanked
would not reposition to defend themselves, they would not conduct recces
or post sentries, nor would they use any initiative whatsoever, right
up to batallion and brigade level. Equipment was never used to anywhere
near its potential, and advanced features such as NVGs or lead
computation computers on the newer Russian tanks were often ignored.



Basically, the Iranians were outnumbered by the Iraqis 2-1 in infantry
for much of the war, and 20-1 or worse in armour. They were essentially
a slow moving infantry army, and after the revolution and the purges
they were hardly the world's best soldiers, yet in mobile operations
they were repeatedly able to totally outmanuever and encircle large
Iraqi groupings of mechanized infantry and armour.



The Iraqi generals were well aware of these limitations, and countered
them by building massive lines of fortifications through which the
Iranians would have to slog. Even then in their last major assault on
Basra, 90,000 Iranian infantry backed by 200 tanks penetrated through 5
out of 6 defensive lines before 200,000 Iraqi troops in prepared
defences and backed by 3,000 tanks, and supported by masses of artillery
firing chemical weapons before finally being halted at the last
defensive line outside Basra. However, overall these defenses worked as
they allowed the Iraqis to apply their massive advantage in firepower,
and minimize their total lack of tactics.



The generals also drafted complex and intricate plans which the troops
rehearsed extensively before an operation, in which their every action
was dictated by a set scheme. The Iraqi generals were well aware that
the moment things deviated from plan their army would fall apart, so
they restricted any operations to no more than 36-48 hours - about the
limit they felt comfortable with before chaos would start creeping in.
The general staff knew their army was utterly incapable of conducting
manuever warfare, and so never attempted it. They worked with a
realistic assessment of what they had.



That being the case, Pollack argues that the Iraqi general staff
actually did as well as anyone could have expected with what they had,
and within the limitations of their tools actually did very well. He
uses their decision to sacrifice the Republican Guard to extricate the
rest of the army from Kuwait as an example, which was a hard decision,
but made on a realistic assessment of an incredibly bad situation, and
the only good decision they could have made.



However, he also uses the Iraqi army as a caution to anyone who might
argue that good strategy and superior equipment overcomes all else. The
Iraqi army clearly showed that even massive materiel superiority
(against Iran) and the best laid plans are meaningless if your troops
simply do not have the skill to use or execute them. The Iraqi high
command would often put a superbly equipped armoured formation in
exactly the right place, only to have them sit around blissfully unaware
while enemy infantry skirted around them, and then wiped them out from
the rear.* * *



So, with all that in mind, I have to now say that - if Pollack is
correct - the Whermacht would annihilate the Iraqis after about four to
six months of fighting. Assuming the two armies are sitting on the
border across from each other the Iraqis have the advantage of a strong
set of defensive works, but the Germans will be attacking (Barbarossa
being an offensive campaign and Desert Storm being a defensive one for
the Iraqis).



With all due respect to those on this board who believe the Iraqis
Russian tanks will give them a decisive advantage, the Iranians
decisively showed that they won't. Iranian irregulars repeatedly
defeated Iraqi armoured formations with little more than smallarms and
molotov cocktails - less than what the average German infantryman
carried in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. In large part this was not
because of any undue Iranian skill, but a total lack of it on the part
of the Iraqis. Iraqi tankers would take up static positions the moment
they entered unexpected combat, refused to move even when flanked, and
were rarely properly supported by infantry. Fact is, German assault
pioneers will dismantle them. Even German tanks will be able to
routinely get kills by stalking and manuevering (unnopposed) for flank
and rear shots.



Similarly, Iraqi artillery will be worse than useless against the
Germans. The Iraqis were locked into pre-set fire missions and could
not adjust fire to save their lives. Litterally. Pollack has an
account from Desert Storm where an Iraqi artillery battery continually
kept pounding the same patch of empty land about a kilometer from an
American position which was destroying their division with no attempt to
adjust fire. As a result of things like this, Iraqi artillery was
totally ineffective throughout the campaign.



The Iraqis also had very few pilots who could actually fly in combat,
and their sortie rate was about 50-70 sorties a day. Pilots would often
ignore obvious targets (such as Iranian planes parked on the tarmack,
Iranian helicopters supporting the front, or columns of troops marching
in the open along roads) to carry out whatever set missiojn they had
been breifed to perform before takeoff, like robots. Generally the best
they could do was to bomb towns. They had no ability to pick out
actual tactical targets, and their battlefield impact was totally
forgettable. Against the Luftwaffe flying 2-3,000 sorties a day any
counter-air they fly won't make any measurable impact, nor will they
leave any appreciable mark on the ground forces, nor will their
strategic campaign be a patch on the pounding the Germans suffered from
Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force.



Iraqi AA will be much more of a concern to German fliers, but this was
centrally directed and often technically mismanaged with the gunners
unable to properly aim their sophisticated Russian equipment. Further,
the Iraqis deployed their AA to cover fixed positions, and were unable,
for various reasons (mostly related to tactical ineptitude of the AA
crews again - deployed away from central control they would not react),
to deploy it along roads and other supply routes. Once the Germans
realize this, the Luftwaffe'll stop going after hard targets and start
having a field day prowling up and down undefended roads shooting up
Iraqi supply trucks.



Iranian infantry from the Iran-Iraq war were nothing particularly
special. They were innovatively and aggressively led, but by and large
they were poorly trained and provided with limited armament. And they
were always outnumbered overall. They succeeded by picking their
targets carefully, often attacking at night and outflanking immobile
Iraqi formations.



German infantry from WWII
were special. With 1945 equipment
there's really little difference in gear between them and any of the
Iraqi conscript divisions that were deployed on the border of Kuwait.
There is, however a VAST gulf in skill. The Germans proved adept and
penetrating prepared Soviet defences, and they will go through the
static Iraqi positions like a hot knife through butter.


The Iraqi general staff new the actual quality of their troops and
always expected this, and their plan was always to counter attack with
well planned if crudely executed frontal charges by heavy armour once
the enemy had been slowed by the defensive lines.



Against the Coalition the intent was never to win, but rather to inflict unnacceptable losses.



Except the Germans have over 3 million men in the first offensive, with
as many more in reserve, and a totally different idea of unnaceptable
losses. The first Iraqi attacks may be a nasty shock to the Germans
simply due to the number and quality of tanks, but once chaos sets in
and things are no longer to script the Iraqis will start to come apart.
Tanks will halt and start waiting for orders while battered lead German
formations disengage and German reserves begin to penetrate past their
flanks and cut them off.



Assuming the Iraqi high command grasp the situation, they can rescue
this by ordering a fallback, sacrificing the 200,000 or so infantry on
the border, and retreating inland to Kuwait. The problem is the Germans
will pursue, and the Iraqi army, for all its on-paper mobility was
never able to conduct long term operations at anything more than walking
pace. It could do short term dash operations, such as the invasion of
Kuwait where its troops advanced 80km in one day - but that was
extensively rehearsed for six months and basically done by rote against
minimal resistance. Once things became unscripted, the pace dropped
drastically. Standard response by iraqi tank formations on meeting
resistance - ANY resistance, even a platton of Basij armed with AKs and
nothing else - was to halt, find a defensive position, fire wildly, call
for massive artillery bombardment (which could take a few hours - or a
day or more to materialize), and then wait for new orders from above
before moving again.



That being the case, the Iraqis won't have time to re-entrench in Kuwait
City, and the Germans will easily overrun the Iraqi forces in the city
which will negate all of the Iraqi advantages. It'll be like the
Iranian 1983-84 infantry offensives, but a thousand times worse. The
Germans will take losses, but they have the men.



From there, Basra and the south falls fairly quickly, and the Iraqis
reposition to the north to defend Baghdad. This would draw things out,
as the Germans would have to move troops into Kuwait and supply them,
building up forces to push north, but once the offensive began again it
would really be just a matter of time. Iraqi units never posted scouts,
conducted patrolling, and had attrocious local awareness. The Iraqi
high command could place a brigade in exactly the right place, and it
would still sit there blissfully unawares as enemy divisions marched
around it on either side.



Simply put, there is no antitode to the level of tactical inability
present in the Iraqi army. The only divisions that will provide any
real resistance will be those of the Republican Guard, but they're
better only in a relative sense. They'll fight to the death, and with
better skill, but not much better. The technology will mean casualties
to the Germans, but they can take them. If the Iranians, outnumbered
2-1 and with no armoured or atrillery assets to speak of (300
operational tanks to 3,000 in the offensives that routed the Iraqis from
Iran) could repeatedly punch through Iraqi defences and encircle Iraqi
mechanized positions on foot, the Germans with a 10-1 numerical
advantage and better infantry will roll the Iraqis up.

These are choice bits, but you can read the whole thread here. It was a great read for me and left me knowing quite a bit more than I did before.

You can read the prologue to the upcoming sequel of WOLF HUNT titled CLASH OF EAGLES here. Enjoy!

Robert Conroy is busy writing what feels like half a dozen alternate history novels lately, and their quality seems to be sliding down the mountainside if this newest example (to be released in December) is to be believed:

It is the summer of 1942 and what our historians have called the
Incredible Victory in the Battle of Midway has become a horrendous
disaster in the world. Two of America’s handful of carriers in the
Pacific have blundered into a Japanese submarine picket line and have
been sunk, while a third is destroyed the next day.  The United States
has only one carrier remaining in the Pacific against nine Japanese,
while the ragtag remnants of U.S. battleships – an armada still reeling
from the defeat at Pearl Harbor – are in even worse shape.

Now the
Pacific belongs to the Japanese.  And it doesn’t stop there as Japan
thrust her sword in to the hilt. Alaska is invaded. Hawaii is under
blockade. The Panama Canal is nearly plugged. Worst of all, the West
Coast of America is ripe destruction as bombers of the Empire of the Sun
bombard West Coast American cities at will.

Despite these
disasters, the U.S. begins to fight back.  Limited counterattacks are
made and a grand plan is put forth to lure the Japanese into an ambush
that could restore the balance in the Pacific and give the forces of
freedom a fighting chance once more.

Do I really need to go into how mind-boggingly retarded that scenario (not the loss at Midway itself, mind you, but what follows) is?



*sighs*



I probably will have to. So here's the gist of it in a nutshell: Japan lacks the logistics to pull this off, plain and simple. Getting the Pearl Harbor strikeforce where it was without detection was a major gamble and only worked because it came there to attack, not to occupy. Invading Alaska, of all places? Talk about throwing men into a sink hole. Even assuming the IJN could resupply them - which, given the scarcity of large harbors in Alaska at the time is a doubtful proposition - the relative proximity of US and Allied harbors and the comparably fast time in which significant forces to repell such an invasion could be mustered makes the whole operation look like something a Bond villain would come up. And considering we're talking about the massively defective Japanese Imperial High Command that's saying alot!



The Panama Canal being nearly plugged? Fine, I can believe that since the Japanese actually planned on doing just that with floatplanes launched from large submarines (which, again, does sound like a Bond villain plot, come to think of it...).





But the West
Coast of America being ripe with destruction because of Japanese bomber attacks? Are you kidding me? With the only tool available to the Japanese being these guys? Really? Even all of them let loose on a single city for weeks wouldn't amount to the destruction a single bombing run of the 8th USAF achieved! You know what a city looks like that's been subject to real bombing? Take a look to your right. And that took years of strategic bombing by waves of hundreds, sometimes thousands of four-engined heavy bombers! The West
Coast of America being ripe with destruction because of what maybe 200 single-engine low-payload divebombers do? Because, you know that's what the Japanese got in range of the coast.



Even if they somehow ended up taking Hawaii, none of their medium and heavy bombers have the operational range to attack the continental US. So, again, I call bullshit on this. Or Conroy having a warped sense of what ripe with destruction meant in WW2. Probably both.



In the end, I'm not sure why I would want to read this novel, even assuming Conroy finally manages to come up with characters that aren't boring or wooden or both. No matter what the Japanese do by late 1943/early 1944 the Pacific will be swamped by a flood of US warships, making the whole POD of the novel moot. Maybe he ends up surprising me, who knows? But I somehow doubt it. Just like Turtledove I think he's past his zenith.



It probably won't be quite as bad as this here, but the description doesn't exactly raise my desire to read, let alone buy it.

Once upon a time the FPS marketplace was absolutely littered with
WWII-themed shooters, and though many classic franchises have been
inspired by the famous war (Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Wolfenstein),
the glut of crappy Nazi-killers started to become a bit overwhelming
before the big shift to so-called "modern warfare." But despite the bad
rap that WWII shooters have these days, Stuart Black of City Interactive
believes Enemy Front offers a refreshingly unique take on the genre:



"What I wanted to do was get away from the Saving Private Ryan kind of
attitude towards the second World War" Black explained. "The 'reverance
for our grandfathers,' 'sacrifice,' and all that sort of thing. Get back
into the fun 'rock and roll' sort of spirit." 





As Black explained, his desire to get away from the tired war epic
makes for a game which draws more from cult war films like 'The Dirty
Dozen.' Rather than re-visit the same World War II battlefields players
have seen a million times before (Black seemed especially proud to have
not included a Normandy beach segment in Enemy Front), the game instead
takes players through some less known locales, laying waste to the
destructable environments much like in Black's most famous
title... Black.





You'd assume Black would have a big ego, having once named a video game
after himself. However his confidence in Enemy Front seems more based
on careful testing, and it was easy to tell that he cares deeply about
the player experience, even requesting critical feedback after demoing
the game for us. It's apparent that a lot of factors have been taken
into consideration in order to make the game appeal to a variety of
players, with Black mentioning that he developed the game so players of
all types can approach the challenges differently:


"If you're the kind of guy who says I'm just going to go in and run n'
gun, you can do that, that's fine. If you want to be slow and careful,
headshot guys as you go, that's fine (...) it's all customization of the
way you want to play."




Definitely a lot of cool new ideas here, but the question has to be
whether Enemy Front will be noticed among the coming wave of futuristic
shooters like Call of Duty: Black Ops II or Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
Strange to consider how the landscape has changed, where a WWII shooter
sticks out in the crowd!

Article originally found here.

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